A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  Even changed the drapes and the cologne in the bathroom. For a while, Johanna had been very real. He had surrendered to her, opened all the closets of his privacy and his secret life.

  When she had left, because it was still not enough, he had been devastated. No woman had slept in the apartment since. It had slowly reassembled itself as it had been, growing and healing around him like a broken carapace. You have a cold place in you no one can reach — and God knows I’ve tried, Johanna had said, a week before she moved out. Only one person could reach him

  — and she was dead. Johanna had been right, in a way. He had never wanted to share, be part of someone else. He had never wanted to give all his secret self to someone who wasn’t entitled, like Beth was.

  Had he ever gone into analysis, the shrink would have identified that snow-covered-ice stretch in a Vermont forest where his parents’ car had gone off the road and struck a fir. In its facile way, it would have told him what he already knew, all too well.

  The trees were red-gold along the quiet street. There was no ice in the whisky he had thoughtlessly poured. Two kids kicked up heaped, fallen leaves — turned away at once from that image. Too like, too like …

  He and Beth, kicking up New England leaves as children. As his older sister she would shower him with them, then brush him down so that Mom would not berate him. He turned quickly from the window, sensing that other, even stronger images, a whole army of them, were on the point of attack.

  On his retinae was the image of a car, just beyond the shrilling children and their kicking legs and the flying red leaves. He did not want to turn back, but did so. The image was still retinal, that of a topcoated, hatted, squat man getting into a black sedan, and another man, taller and well wrapped up, getting out; an exchange of guards. He looked down into the street. The car was moving away from the kerb, its exhaust wintrily smoking.

  The man who had gotten out of it flicked behind a tree-trunk.

  The children played obliviously.

  Lock realised he was under surveillance — who, why? The questions came immediately; that instinct that long training had placed there and State had not allowed to fall into disrepair.

  Then another realisation. That the void he had been speaking into and imagining while he was on the line to Turgenev — and to Vaughn Grainger, earlier — was not entirely the void of his own grief. The hair on his neck tickled with curiosity, and fear.

  It had been that special kind of void, that added distance, that only occurs when a phone is bugged.

  Even zipped up in their black bags, the bodies were not less damaged, less shocking. They lay like the victims of a road accident or a war zone, side by side, in the corridor. If Vorontsyev turned his head even slightly, the bags appeared to him like a black snowdrift. He turned his head frequently, such was his frustation and anger; as if blaming the bodies.

  Because there was no drug shipment in the ruins of the flat

  … no trace of drugs. Maybe a month-old powdering of spilt heroin vacuumed up from a corner of the room by Forensic.

  There were two TV sets that might have been stolen, stored in the bedroom where condensation had frozen on the livid wallpaper; there was little food. There were four bodies. The occupants, Hussain, and another man whose face wasn’t quite intact, someone Vorontsyev thought he vaguely recognized though not criminally, not from a mugshot or an arrest.

  Hussain had brought nothing with him. That was Dmitri’s all but anguished conclusion. They’d been had, and how. Someone

  — maybe even one of the officers in the ruins with them — had provided a tip-off. Hussain would never have thrown the heroin from the taxi. He’d stopped nowhere, except for traffic lights.

  He’d been watched closely at the airport. There’d been no switch -

  someone else’s luggage? He didn’t actually carry the heroin?

  Vorontsyev stamped his feet on the thin, purple carpet, waking his toes back to life in the wet boots. There were bootmarks all over the carpet, superfluous to the exploding cooking fat that had splashed it and the walls and the bodies. That was what Forensic suggested. Cooking on a faulty paraffin heater, spilt fat, explosion — poor sods. They were all burned, scarred by flying fat and paraffin. The heater or stove had gone off like a bomb.

  They’d been gathered round it to keep warm.

  But there was no heroin, his thoughts insisted like an addiction.

  The information was certain, Dmitri persisted, Hussain had been scheduled to bring in heroin. He must have had it with him, mustn’t he?

  Which left a switch or a blind. Either way, he and Dmitri had been tricked. It had been a set-up for them, a charade, two raised fingers — probably originating from somewhere at headquarters, someone on the payroll of whoever controlled Hussain.

  The drugs had come off the flight in another bag or in the cargo.

  He glared towards the open door of the flat and the icy corridor and its black body bags. That containing the TacTeam officer lay alongside the others. He’d get a better burial, with a flag over the cheap coffin. The flat reeked of paraffin and other, unnameable, scorched odours. Cheap carpet, furnishings, fat and muscle He cut off the thought there.

  ‘We were set up — all the way from the plane!’ Dmitri whined beside him. Vorontsyev glowered at him. Undeterred, Dmitri continued. ‘They sacrificed these poor sods just to cover their tracks!’

  And, without doubt, they had done just that. Hussain, who must have been a good courier, the two others who were packagers, cutters, distributors.

  ‘It could have been an accident,’ Vorontsyev corrected his own thoughts, Dmitri’s words.

  ‘Like it was an accident there are no drugs here?’

  They were standing in the middle of the room, on the most scorched area of the thin carpet, like a couple engaged in some depressing marital quarrel. Forensic fussed at the tag-end of their examination, searching as much for merit badges as for clues.

  ‘Their stove blew up,’ Vorontsyev tried to insist.

  A bright, chilled, young face stood beside Dmitri, smiling as breath clouded around it. Dmitri held up a clear polythene envelope.

  ‘Lubin here found some of these scattered around the room.

  Embedded in the furniture and walls,’ Dmitri announced.

  Inside the envelope were metallic slivers, tiny steel diamonds glittering through the clear plastic.

  ‘What are they — Lubin?’

  ‘I think they’re from a fragmentation grenade,’ the young man replied, as if suddenly thinking better of a wild, improbable piece of guesswork.

  Vorontsyev turned the envelope in his fingers and the steel splinters caught the light. Dmitri appeared to be silently urging the young forensic officer to continue, as if his own conviction was dribbling away like water into sand.

  ‘There are fragments of what might be a child’s balloon!’

  Dmitri eventually and incongruously burst out. ‘Some of them embedded in the victims’ skin — tell the Major, Lubin!’

  ‘I’ve — er, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, sir. It’s normally a terrorist device.’ The wind gusted through the shredded curtains of the room, making the remnants float like seaweed.

  ‘Yes?’

  Most of the others had left the room, drifting out of the gap where the front door had been.

  ‘I think the balloon and the grenade were inside the heater, sir. I wouldn’t have guessed, except I’ve’

  ‘- seen it before. You said,’ Vorontsyev interrupted impatiently.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lubin replied shamefacedly. ‘The balloon would have heated up inside the stove,’ he hurried on, as if successfully overcoming a violent stammer, ‘probably had water in it, enough expansion to pull the pin out of the frag grenade, which would then explode. The heater was old, the metal thin, the fragments would have come flying out — ripping the poor sods to shreds.’

  ‘Couldn’t these be fragments from the heater?’

  Dmitri shook his head. L
ubin’s similar gesture was slower in coming, but as certain.

  ‘They’re too regular — see, sir?’ he offered. Steel needles. ‘A gas or liquid in the balloon, sir, heated up … it’s possible, sir.

  I mean, it’s not clever or anything, just messy. It can be done.’

  Again, Lubin wound down like a clockwork toy, confronted by Vorontsyev’s scepticism. Or perhaps he didn’t want to believe it, he told himself. Too much like another warning, like Rawls’ single, professional wound? He cleared his throat. Glanced around him, then nodded towards the door of the bedroom.

  Dmitri and Lubin followed him.

  It was colder than the living room and smelt of paraffin, dirty clothing, soiled bedlinen, stale food. All three of them were engaged in some laughable conspiracy, or a dream. He turned to confront Dmitri. The envelope between his fingers caught the light once more and the steel splinters gleamed mockingly.

  ‘Your boy’s well coached,’ he murmured.

  Dmitri appeared wounded. Lubin said abruptly:

  ‘I came to Inspector Gorov with the idea, sir. The balloon, the shards of steel, the force of the explosion.’

  ‘Enough to kill the TacTeam man who kicked the door down?

  Why wasn’t it he who triggered the explosion? Or was he just unlucky?’

  ‘There may have been something wired to the door. I’m not sure about that’

  ‘Or about this?’

  Their breathing smoked like a burning fuse in the icy bedroom.

  ‘I can’t be certain, sir — at least, not yet. But I’ve seen it done before.’ His hands sculpted the room’s stale air. His parka rustled with the small, intense movements. To find out how exactly, in this case, I’d have to run tests at the lab. If you doctor the pin mechanism, it doesn’t need much force to explode a grenade.’

  ‘Alexei — I’ Dmitri demanded at once, as if he had been waiting for his cue. He turned Vorontsyev aside from Lubin and pressed close to him. ‘Why don’t you want to believe it? Eh, why not?’

  He was tugging at the sleeve of Vorontsyev’s coat like an importunate, wheedling child.

  ‘It’s too fancy and too pat,’ he snapped back.

  ‘Lubin saw what he saw. He’s not a fool — and he’s not working to any script of mine! This was a set-up, a false lead!’

  He sighed aloud, irritated at surrendering to the nonsense woven by Dmitri and the young, enthusiastic Lubin — who, he remembered, had diagnosed more than one murder as mafiainspired and not the consequences of a brawl. He didn’t need more conspiracy theorists — he already had Dmitri and he was sufficient unto the day.

  The thought would not be ridiculed into submission. Rawls’ murder had been an assassination and meant to appear as such.

  It was a declaration, a warning … were they connected, then?

  That was crazy …

  The wind rattled the loose metal windowframe of the bedroom.

  He could hear, quite distinctly, the rustle and creak from the corridor as the bodybags were lifted and moved. The TacTeam man, Hussain, the other bodies … one ragged face he had vaguely recognized. He’d have to look at that face ‘You’re certain these slivers are from a frag grenade?’ he snapped with unreasonable anger.

  ‘I’m — pretty sure, sir.’

  ‘Then bloody make sure!’ He snatched them away from Lubin’s gaze and carried them into the wrecked living room, still dimly lit by its single bulb. An image of the paraffin stove exploding made him nauseous for a moment. The steel slivers glinted in their clear plastic envelope. Regular, small, needlelike. ‘Bloody make sure!’ he repeated over his shoulder, hearing them follow him from the bedroom.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  If Lubin’s nonsense was true … as true as his own conviction concerning Rawls’ murder … then someone had gone to all this trouble to eliminate their only lead to the drug-trade in Novyy Urengoy, and to tell them what they’d done.

  Lubin was at the door of the flat, examining the charred frame.

  He was nodding to himself with intent, silent satisfaction.

  Vorontsyev sensed the malevolence and the organisation that could make a deadly practical joke out of an exploding paraffin stove and a bomb-wired front door. You have been warned. We know what you know. We’re untouchable.

  He placed his hand on Dmitri’s shoulder, who looked up at him like some faithful and rather singleminded hound. He realised his own features were bleak, as if he had been standing face-on to a storm. The smell of the flat nauseated him and the wind through the broken window carried snow into the room that stained the cheap purple carpet as violently as blood had already done. He shrugged Dmitri’s shoulder with his hand, gripping it fiercely. The warning off made him edgy — and angry.

  Very angry.

  Lock turned from the door closing behind the bellhop, and saw unmistakable fear in the collapsed posture of Vaughn Grainger.

  The old man was slumped into the chair, and his heavy, lined features were quivering. Lock shook his head as if to clear his vision, but the stigmata of fear rather than grief remained on Grainger’s face and body. Then he appeared to become aware he was being studied and roused himself in the chair.

  The sitting room of the suite in the Jefferson Hotel was pale walled and draped, the furniture heavily antique. Grainger had been drinking on the flight — too much — but he wasn’t drunk.

  It wasn’t the alcohol that blurred his features and made his hands shake. Afternoon light gleamed through the net curtains.

  ‘You OK?’ Lock asked quietly. ‘You want something to drink?’

  Grainger shook his head. ‘I’m all right, John-boy. OK.’ His right hand waved in front of him as if to ward something off.

  Was he afraid of his own mortality? Billy’s murder had hit him like a stroke.

  Lock poured himself a large bourbon and swallowed eagerly.

  He didn’t want to be in the room with Billy’s father. He wanted to be outside, where his own grief could be distracted by other people, things, lose itself in the indifference of the streets. The car journey from the airport had been claustrophobic and now the suite pressed in on him like a migraine. He swallowed more bourbon, his back to Grainger, aware of small, shuffling movements, the creaks of the chair, the aimless, lost slapping of old hands on old thighs, the rub of fingers against stubbled cheeks.

  ‘You — don’t mind Beth being — being buried with Billy? In Phoenix? There’s no family plot or anything, is there?’

  Lock ground his teeth together at the sense of appropriation he felt. He couldn’t say he wanted her to be buried near his parents in New Hampshire, in the country churchyard; not in the burned dryness of Arizona … because it was stupid. She was gone, and that was it and all of it, and it didn’t matter where her — remains lay to desiccate.

  ‘No, Vaughn. They — should be together, right?’

  He vigorously crushed all memories of the many visits he and Beth had made to that country churchyard, deep in leaves or grass or snow. From the first visit, when there had been coffins and dizziness and dislocation and eventual nausea and fainting, to the last, they all reminded him of Beth and his parents and there wasn’t the least thing good about any of them any longer.

  ‘Thanks, John-boy,’ Grainger murmured. ‘I — maybe I’ll have that drink now.’

  ‘Bourbon?’

  ‘Sure.’ He poured two more drinks. Grainger took his with a deliberately firm hand. His eyes were self-aware, concerned with presenting himself in a certain way; masking things Lock might have noticed. Why?

  Why do I think he’s afraid — really afraid? Because I’m afraid, unsettled by the car that tailed me to Dulles and then followed me back into the city? Disturbed by the man on the street outside the apartment, the man outside the hotel now? He smiled concealingly at Grainger and sipped his bourbon. Grainger’s face was half-hidden by his hands as he lit one of his long Cuban cigars. Part of the suite’s claustrophobia could be put down to his sense of being under surveillance. And
not knowing why.

  ‘What do the police think, John? Really think?’

  Lock perched himself on the edge of the chair on the other side of a deeply polished table. The net curtains were a sheened blankness beside the table, as if both men sat on a bare, modernist stage set, waiting to begin a play.

  ‘Robbery was the motive. There’s maybe three, four million dollars’ worth of paintings, jewellery, other stuff missing. The lieutenant in charge of the investigation called me, gave me the insurance assessor’s estimate. It couldn’t be anything else’ It was not quite a question, but it alerted Grainger’s body like the sting of a small insect.

  ‘What else could it be?’ he protested.

  ‘Billy had enemies — in business. Who doesn’t?’

  ‘Do they go around killing-?’ Grainger’s reply was throttled by a growling sob. He shook his head, staring at his cigar. A cocoon of ash had fallen onto the carpet. ‘He wasn’t into things that could cause …’ He looked up, his eyes flintily grey, harsh.

  ‘He ran Grainger Technologies, not some gambling palace, whores, stuff like that. Jesus, it’s so senseless, John — so damned senselessl’

  ‘I know.’ He swallowed grief, more bitter than the drink.

  They will find these animals?’

  ‘The police department — maybe, they say. If some of the stuff, the paintings for instance, comes onto the market. They may have had a shopping list,’ he added. ‘It might never see the light of day.’

  ‘You mean people order stuff they want, to fill up their houses, from animals like that?’

  ‘You — we both know it happens, Vaughn.’ His own unsatisfied need for justice — revenge — was reflected in the old man’s face.

  They must have had the place under surveillance — ‘ He swallowed, aware of the window near which they sat, of 16th Street below, of the man on the other side of the street in the sunlight.

  ‘- for days, maybe weeks.’

  ‘Then why didn’t they go in when Billy wasn’t at home?’

  Grainger all but wailed.

  ‘The alarm system, perhaps. They must have bluffed their way in — maybe pretended they were caterers, something like that.