by Val McDermid
“What did you tell her?”
Tony smiled. “I told her she’d better book a hotel room since I’d turfed you out of your bed and I didn’t think the two of you would fancy sharing the sofa.”
Petra felt a blush spread up her neck and across her face. “So when does she get here?”
Tony looked at his watch. “She’ll be walking through the door any time now.”
Her face crumpled into a mask of consternation. “Oh shit! I need to shower, I’m disgusting.”
“I don’t think she’ll care about that.”
“I care!” Petra started for the bathroom, but before she could get there, the door buzzer sounded. “Oh shit,” she repeated.
“Too late.” Tony edged forward on the seat, wincing as his ribs protested at the movement. “I’ll just go and have a lie-down.”
“No, stay,” Petra commanded, looking worried. She pressed the door release and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Jesus, I am so nervous about this.” She swallowed hard and went to open the apartment door. She leaned in the doorway and listened to the footsteps echoing in the stairwell.
Then suddenly Marijke was there, grinning from ear to ear. “Hello,” she said. “You don’t mind?”
Petra opened her arms and enveloped her in a hug. “I’m so glad to see you,” she mumbled into her hair.
“I booked a hotel, like Tony said. But I wanted to talk to you both first,” Marijke said, pulling away to plant a kiss on the corner of Petra’s mouth.
“Both of us?”
Marijke nodded. Petra took her hand and led her inside. The three of them exchanged greetings and commiserations over Tony’s injuries while Petra opened a bottle of wine. “So,” she said. “What is it you need to talk to us both about?”
“I have to go back to Köln to discuss what we do about Mann,” Marijke said. “They have been looking at him for four days now and he has done nothing at all suspicious. And they tell me that tomorrow the Rhine will be reopened to commercial traffic, and it will be difficult to keep him under surveillance once the Wilhelmina Rosen is under way.”
Petra snorted. “What they mean is that it’ll cost too much. Jesus, I hate those tight, stupid provincials.”
“They might also be afraid that they’ll lose him and he’ll kill again and they’ll get caught up in a firestorm of media blame,” Tony pointed out.
“I don’t think they want to call it off. But we know now that the Wilhelmina Rosen’s next destination will be Rotterdam. Mann must be aware that he’s the subject of a manhunt here in Germany, but so far we have managed to avoid anyone in the media making the connection with our case in Leiden, so I think he’ll feel more safe to kill in Holland.”
“So you’re going to continue the surveillance once he crosses the border?” Petra asked.
“This is what we will discuss tomorrow. If he comes to Holland, I want to end it. I don’t want this to drag out. But unless he makes a definite move, we will have nothing against him except circumstantial evidence. So I need your help. I am thinking maybe you will have better ideas than me?”
Petra stood up and paced the floor. “Let’s look at what we’ve got. We have the car that Dr. Schilling’s boyfriend saw and a matching car with Hamburg plates near the scene of de Groot’s murder, which gives us Wilhelm Mann. We have a smear of marine engine oil on the folder he left in Pieter de Groot’s filing system…”
“And no forensics from any of the other three recovered files,” Marijke chipped in gloomily.
Petra continued undaunted. “We also have a sailor’s knot, which leads back Wilhelm Mann.”
“And thousands of other people,” Tony pointed out.
“Thank you, Tony,” Petra countered with a sardonic smile. “Thanks to the work the river police have been doing over the last week, we can put the Wilhelmina Rosen at or near all four murders, which also gives us Wilhelm Mann. We have a killer who uses the alias Hochenstein. Tony’s list from Schloss Hochenstein gives us an Albert Mann who was a child survivor of psychological experiments.”
Marijke butted in. “Yesterday we heard from the cops in Hamburg. They did a records search on Wilhelm Mann which gives him a grandfather called Albert Mann with the same date of birth as the man on Tony’s list from Schloss Hochenstein. He died two years ago. The inquest said it was an accident, but if you look at it with the idea that his grandson is a killer, it is not hard to see that it could have been murder.”
“Christ, with that much circumstantial evidence, why don’t Köln just bring him in for questioning? I would,” Petra complained.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Tony said. “I doubt he’d say anything.”
“So what do we do?” Marijke said plaintively.
There was a long silence. Petra threw herself down on the sofa, making Tony flinch. He gritted his teeth and said, “I think I could break him.”
“They wouldn’t let you interrogate him,” Petra pointed out.
“I’m not talking about a formal interrogation,” Tony said. “I’m talking about me and him, one on one.”
Petra shook her head. “No way. You’re not fit enough for anything like that. He could kill you like snapping a stick.”
“I’m not that pathetic,” Tony said. “I’ve been moving around a lot more today. The painkillers are starting to kick in. I can do it.”
“I thought you said his English was poor,” Petra objected.
“Ich kann Deutsch sprechen,” Tony said.
Petra stared at him open-mouthed. “You kept very quiet about that.”
“How do you think I managed to read the case files?” He dipped his head at Marijke in acknowledgement. “I was very grateful that you had your material translated into German, because I really can’t manage Dutch.”
“It’s still far too risky,” Marijke said.
“What choice do we have? Do we just sit back and let him kill again?” Now Tony sounded angry. “I came into this business because I wanted to save lives. I can’t do nothing while a serial killer is left at liberty to take more victims,” he said vehemently.
“Marijke’s right. It’s insane,” Petra insisted.
Tony shook his head. “One of two things is going to happen here. Either the police are going to help me, or I’m going to do it alone. So, which is it to be?”
Every day, he was growing stronger. Because at first he had thought what he did with Calvet was a weakness, he had nearly let it destroy him. There had been days and nights when he feared he’d never chase the darkness away again. But he’d gradually come to see that his first reaction had been the correct one. Making her his had been the ultimate demonstration of his power. It took a special sort of person to carry a plan like this to the limit, and he knew now that fucking her hadn’t tainted his mission. The realization had brought peace, and with the peace came a lightening of his spirit that was all the confirmation he needed. The headaches disappeared, and he felt released.
As if mirroring his personal relief, he heard the news that the river would be open again the next day. He would be able to continue his work. He’d been scanning the papers and the internet, and nobody seemed to have realized that he had crossed borders and killed in Holland. He had to believe that, there, his victims would still be oblivious to risk. He couldn’t afford to think otherwise, or the fear would eat into his soul and make it impossible to act.
With the news that life would soon return to normal, he had e-mailed his next target and rearranged their appointment. He’d have to be cautious, just in case the police were trying to trap him by deliberately keeping de Groot’s death out of the picture. He would have to make sure he wasn’t walking into an ambush. But in three days time, he felt confident that he would be knocking on a door in Utrecht. Professor Paul Muller would have to pay the price for what he’d had no right to inflict on others.
He leaned on the stern rail, watching the mourning pennant flutter in the gentle breeze. It was the fifth one he’d hung there since the death
of his grandfather, a constant reminder of what he had achieved. It was pleasant to contemplate what he was going to do to Muller. Just the thought of it made his blood pump faster in his veins. Tonight, he’d go ashore and find a woman to fuck, fuelled by the fantasy of what Utrecht promised. He really had made progress. Now he could use their bodies for rehearsal as well as release.
Carol stared out of the window at the fat russet buds on the tree outside. She had no idea what kind of tree it was, nor did she care. All she knew was that there was something profoundly restful about gazing at it. Every now and again, the counsellor would ask her something in an attempt to provoke some response, but she’d found that it wasn’t hard to ignore the banal questions.
She wanted her life back. She wanted to be where she was before, in a place where betrayal was not a common currency used as cavalierly by those who claimed to have right on their side as it was by those who knew they were the bad guys. She wanted to be somewhere she could escape the conviction that her own side had treated her worse than the enemy.
Radecki had raped her. But that was something she could survive, because in a sense that had been a legitimate act of war. She had done everything in her power to destroy him; the risk she had taken was that he would fight back.
What Morgan had done was infinitely worse. He was supposed to be on her side. In her book, that meant he owed her a duty of care. Or at the very least, honesty. But he had thrown her to the wolves in an act of cold-blooded calculation. He had set her up as surely as he had set up Radecki.
She knew now that Radecki had been telling nothing less than the truth when he had accused her of being part of a conspiracy whose first act had been to murder his lover. She knew because on that first morning in Den Haag, she had sat in the briefing room and refused to say one word about what had happened until Morgan had answered her questions.
She hadn’t spent a single night in Berlin. Morgan had accompanied her to the hospital and stood over her while a harried doctor had reset her nose. He’d had the decency to leave her alone while they gave her an internal examination and confirmed that she had sustained no lasting physical damage in spite of the brutality of Radecki’s attack. Then he’d insisted she be discharged into his care. She hadn’t had the energy to argue. There had been a car waiting to take them to the airport and a private plane to carry them on to Den Haag.
Then they’d left her in peace in a silent room inside the Europol complex for twenty-four hours, the only interruptions being from a blessedly uncommunicative doctor who regularly checked she wasn’t suffering from concussion. The following morning, Gandle had appeared, telling her Morgan was waiting. She’d demanded time to shower and dress, then she’d walked into the briefing room.
Morgan had stood up, wreathed in smiles. “Carol, how are you feeling? I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way this turned out.”
She’d ignored his proffered hand and sat down opposite him, saying nothing.
“I realize you must be feeling terrible. But I want you to know that whatever support you need, it’s there for you. We’ve set up counselling sessions for you, and you must tell us whenever you get tired during these debriefs so we can take a break.” Morgan sat down, not in the least disconcerted by her apparent rudeness.
Carol maintained her silence, her grey eyes cool and level amid the puffy purple bruising that surrounded them. Let her face be his reproach, she thought.
“We need to go through your reports in detail. But first, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you about what happened between you and Radecki at the end. Is that OK?”
Carol shook her head. “I have some questions first.”
Morgan looked surprised. “Well, fire away, Carol.”
“Were you responsible for murdering Katerina Basler?”
Morgan’s eyes widened, though the rest of his face remained immobile. “I don’t know where you got that idea from,” he said.
“The bike that caused the accident that killed Katerina was registered to the National Crime Squad,” Carol said flatly. “Radecki knows that. It’s not much of a step from there to the assumption that you were behind her death.”
Morgan tried an indulgent smile. “None of this has anything to do with what happened the other night. So why don’t we just concentrate on that?”
“You don’t get it, do you? I’m not saying a word until you answer my questions. And if you won’t answer them, I’ll keep on asking them until I find someone who will.”
Morgan recognized steel when he saw it. “Radecki was a cancer that was spreading through Europe. When you find cancer, you cut it out. And sometimes that means you cut away healthy tissue too.”
“So you did kill Katerina?”
“Katerina was collateral damage. For the sake of the greater good,” Morgan said cautiously.
“And what about Colin Osborne? Was he collateral damage too?”
Morgan shook his head. “Osborne was no innocent abroad. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. He hitched his wagon to Radecki, he paid the price.”
“But you had him killed too?”
Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Carol, this isn’t playschool. These people are responsible for untold amounts of human misery. You can’t tell me you’re losing sleep over a piece of scum like Colin Osborne.”
“You’re right. I don’t particularly care about some Essex gangster who traded in people’s lives. But I care about my life. I care that you set this whole black operation up because somebody somewhere told you there was an ambitious detective in the Met who was the spitting image of Katerina Basler. And you thought that was too good a chance to let it go by. You set me up for this. You wound me up and let me go, and all the time you knew there was a bomb underneath me waiting to go off.” Carol’s voice was infused with cold rage.
Morgan stared down at the table. “I’m ashamed that you had to go through that, Carol. But if you’re asking me whether that’s an unacceptable trade-off for putting Radecki away and winding up his rackets, I’d have to say no.”
“You bastard,” she said quietly.
He looked up and met her eyes. “You’re a cop, Carol. It’s bred in the bone with you, just as it is with me. If our roles had been reversed, you’d have done exactly the same. And that’s what’s killing you right now. It’s not that I betrayed you. It’s that you know you’d wouldn’t have done anything different if you’d been calling the shots.”
40
Every day, he was growing stronger. Tony could feel the vigour returning to his body as bone and muscle gradually healed. He was a long way from full fitness, but he no longer felt the debilitation of the first couple of days following his beating at the hands of Radecki and Krasic. He still moved stiffly and awkwardly, but at least he could walk around without feeling his body was about to fall to pieces.
And he had to admit that there was something very healing about being on the water, especially after the bruising encounters he’d endured. He had insisted on accompanying Marijke to the summit meeting in Köln to put his case for confronting Mann. But while the German police had been grateful for his profiling advice, they remained adamant that they wouldn’t support such an unorthodox operation. Senior officers had argued that it would be seen by their courts as entrapment, and refused to risk any potential trial by going along with Tony’s proposal. He’d argued as persuasively as he knew how, but they’d remained obdurate. All they were prepared to do was to maintain surveillance on Mann and his boat.
After the meeting, Marijke had grabbed him and hustled him off to a quiet bar near the police headquarters. “I didn’t agree with you at first,” she’d admitted. “But I listened to you today, and I think maybe yours is the only way to put a stop to this.”
Tony stared at the table, knowing that if Marijke understood why he was so keen to confront Mann she would withdraw her support. There was nothing more dangerous in a police operation than personal feelings that spilled over into professional actions. He felt as
if all he’d achieved since he’d arrived in Germany was to make things infinitely worse for someone he loved, and he desperately needed to do something that would feel like an atonement. Keeping these thoughts to himself, he’d simply replied that what they needed now was a plan. “The academic community is going to be buzzing with rumours,” he added. “Like I said in the meeting, either he’s going to go to ground until the fuss dies down, or the chances are anyone he targets now will refuse to have anything to do with him. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he’s thwarted like that. I know they talked today about trying to set up a sting, but there are just too many potential targets for that to be practical, especially if he changes the way he makes his rendezvous with victims. I understand why the police are reluctant to endorse me going head to head with Mann, but there’s no other way. So how do we persuade your people to back me?”
So they’d tossed suggestions back and forth until finally they came up with something that had the feel of possibility to it. Marijke, who was flavour of the month with Maartens, had managed to convince her boss that she should take part in the pursuit. She had hired a twenty-nine-foot leisure cruiser with a couple of berths, a tiny galley and a pungent chemical toilet. The idea was to maintain visual contact with the Wilhelmina Rosen as she made her way up the Rhine towards Holland. If Mann appeared to be targeting another victim en route, the German police would do what was necessary. But if they made it over the Dutch border without incident, Tony would attempt to confront Mann and extract evidence from him, with Marijke’s team providing back-up. It had taken all Marijke’s powers of persuasion, but she’d eventually convinced Maartens to go along with the stratagem. The temptation of being the man who would succeed where the Germans had failed had proved too much in the end. Petra had supplied them with a state-of-the-art surveillance kit; a tiny radio microphone embedded in a pen whose signal could be picked up on a remote unit by Marijke. As soon as Tony had elicited enough evidence, Marijke and her colleagues would play the cavalry and come riding to the rescue.