The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

  “Erm, can I ask a question boss?”

  O’Neill suppressed a sigh. “You’re not back in school sunshine. Just spit it out.”

  “Right, erm. What do Harry Grogan and the Russians have to do with Jacks?”

  For a moment O’Neill froze. As far as he knew, the only person apart from him who knew Kelly had been threatened by Russian thugs—or that Grogan had put a price on her head—was Kelly herself. How had Dempsey got onto it?

  He glanced across at the detective constable sitting on the other side of the desk. The kid might look like a geek but there was a brain lurking under the surface after all. O’Neill forced himself to chew and swallow with every appearance of calm.

  “Go on,” he invited.

  “Well I was reading through the file, and the emergency call about the dead wino at the warehouse where Douet was later found, it came from a Russian. Then the tip about Douet came from another guy with an eastern European or Russian accent. In fact, listening to the tapes, it could even be the same guy. And then you ask me to check if Harry Grogan’s got any Russian connections . . .”

  His voice trailed off, misinterpreting the scowl of concentration on O’Neill’s face.

  O’Neill registered his alarm and hastily rearranged his features. “No, no—it’s a good point,” he said. “We thought there was something hinky about that second call. The floor where Douet was found isn’t readily visible, so how did our mysterious good citizen just so happen to witness the murder?”

  “Ah—unless he was there.”

  “Shame Matthew Lytton doesn’t have any Russians on the payroll.”

  “No, but his partner Steve Warwick is married to one.”

  O’Neill let his eyebrows climb. “You mean somebody actually opens those spam emails pretending to be from lonely young Russian girls who dream of love and marriage to a man with a nice handsome British passport?”

  “Ha, the only spam I get are the ones offering fake Rolex watches and cheap Viagra.” Dempsey wiped his fingers on a paper serviette then leaned across and rifled through the paperwork balanced on the corner of his desk. “You know you asked me to pull Lytton’s phone records?”

  “Anything crop up that might have been to or from Jacks?”

  “I didn’t find anything direct to Jacks’s flat or work cellphone but there was a call to Lytton’s office from a throwaway cellphone the day you went to see him.” He handed across a printout with a list of numbers, one of which was highlighted. “Mean anything?”

  O’Neill squinted at the sheet and shook his head. “Have you tried calling it?”

  “Yeah—not available. If it is her she could be anywhere.”

  O’Neill scanned the rest of the numbers briefly but nothing popped. The office was quiet except for the distant droning vacuum of the night cleaning-staff and the whine of an overhead fluorescent tube just about to fail.

  “Any of these turn out to be interesting?”

  “Well, funny you should ask that,” Dempsey said, diffident. “I mean, it might be nothing but—”

  O’Neill fixed him with a hard stare. Dempsey broke off and then grinned at him a little sheepishly.

  “OK boss—short version. You wanted me to go through the files on Grogan and look for Russian affiliations, yeah?”

  “And?”

  “Well lately he’s been getting involved in importing a lot of stuff from all over the former Soviet Union. Craftsman-built furniture, mainly. Artisan rugs, ceramics, that kind of thing.”

  When O’Neill still looked nonplussed, Dempsey took a nervous sip of his Diet Coke. O’Neill wondered why he bothered with no-sugar soft drinks. The young DC was as skinny as a park railing. “When I say ‘a lot’ boss, I mean it,” he went on. “Like, by the container-load. Upmarket stuff too. I had a quiet word with a mate of mine who works for Sotheby’s. He reckoned it was worth a fortune to the right buyer.”

  “So what’s he doing—smuggling it in?”

  Dempsey shook his head. “All above board and legal according to Customs. But—and this is the interesting bit—Grogan employs some guys from that part of the world who are not exactly all above board and legal. They’re listed as ‘advisors’ but I’m not sure what kind of advice they’d hand out unless it was which leg to break first.”

  So the Russians were working for Grogan. O’Neill thought of Tina Olowayo’s boyfriend Elvis lying immobilised in his hospital bed. They hadn’t needed to ask which leg to break there.

  But what he didn’t understand was why Harry Grogan should be involved in chasing down Kelly Jacks—or setting her up, for that matter. She’d claimed he wanted her badly enough to put up a reward. A man like Grogan had a lot to lose but what secrets did he think Kelly Jacks might be able to expose?

  He looked up. “Why ‘funny’?”

  Dempsey was concentrating on fumbling for his last battered prawn. He gave up on the conventional chopstick approach and speared it instead. “Huh?”

  “You said, ‘funny you should ask’ about Lytton’s phone records. Why?”

  Dempsey put a hand to his mouth before he spoke as if not wanting to spray his senior officer with half-chewed food. “Ah, there’s been quite a bit of phone traffic between Lytton’s office and numbers associated with Harry Grogan, that’s all.” He shrugged. “I had to ID the numbers for the trace.”

  “So Lytton has been doing some kind of a deal with Grogan. That is interesting.”

  “Could be a coincidence boss. After all, Lytton’s into property. For all we know he’s simply buying a shedload of furniture for a new development.”

  O’Neill shook his head slowly, aware he was tired and his brain was going round in circles without making much forward progress. He reached for his cup of coffee hoping a hit of caffeine might do the trick.

  “Kelly Jacks queries the suicide verdict on Veronica Lytton,” he said. “She and Douet report back to her boss. Next thing, McCarron’s been professionally worked over, Douet’s dead and Jacks is in no position to make any kind of fuss because she’s got enough problems of her own.”

  “When you put it like that,” Dempsey murmured, “I suppose it doesn’t seem much like coincidence, does it?”

  The phone rang on the desk, unexpected enough to make both men start. Dempsey reached for it. As soon as O’Neill realised from his noncommittal tone that it wasn’t a scramble emergency he tuned out the conversation, letting his mind pick over the information without direction as if hoping something would present itself more clearly from the shadows.

  Eventually Dempsey dropped the handset into the crook of his neck, eagerness all over his face.

  “Erm, fancy a ride out to Reading nick boss?

  “What—now? Why?”

  “Well, you know the lab identified a vetinerary anaesthetic in Jacks’s blood?”

  O’Neill made a get-on-with-it motion with his chopsticks. “And?”

  “Well I’ve got Thames Valley on the phone. They just picked up Harry Grogan’s vet DUI after an accident and he reckons he’s got information we need to hear.”

  102

  In a quiet corner of Reading Services eastbound on the M4, Kelly Jacks grabbed a couple of hours’ rest. Just another tired late-night driver dozing with the seat reclined and her sweatshirt bunched up behind her neck.

  She had the car doors locked to keep out the unwanted world but in the end the disturbance came from inside anyway.

  The raucous clamour of McCarron’s cellphone jerked her upright, momentarily disorientated and rife with panicked guilt.

  She recognised the incoming number and almost didn’t answer at all, her hand lingering over the keypad. Eventually she let her breath out with a hiss of annoyance and snatched up the phone.

  “What do you want Ray?”

  Ray McCarron matched her stony voice. “Callum Perry had a girlfriend.”

  “I don’t remember anyone coming forward after his death,” Kelly said after a moment’s silence. “Something else Allardice forced you to sit on?�
��

  She heard his sharply indrawn breath and felt a complete bitch.

  “I know I can’t begin to make up for anything I’ve done—or not done—in the past Kelly but I’m telling you now,” he said tiredly. “If you want me to shut up and go away you only have to say so.”

  She struggled not to apologise, instead giving him a brusque, “Go on.”

  There was a pause, then he read out a name and address. Kelly scrambled for a pen in the door pocket and a scrap of paper, her head still muzzy with sleep.

  “How did you get this?”

  “I copied some of the paperwork and case notes,” McCarron admitted. “I suppose I thought . . . well I don’t know quite what I thought to be honest.”

  Kelly decided to let that one go. “Was she interviewed at the time?”

  “I don’t know,” McCarron said. “I dropped the bloody file down the stairs and it’s going to take me a while to put it back into any kind of order.”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “I was sidelined in pretty short order if you recall,” he pointed out. “And I would have been kicked out if they’d caught me taking this stuff. I shoved it through the photocopier as fast as I could and hightailed it out of there.”

  Kelly swallowed as much to keep her silence as to clear her throat.

  McCarron waited a few moments for her to speak then sighed again. “Look Kelly love, why don’t you let me help—”

  “It’s a bit late for that,” Kelly said and cut the call. A few minutes later she pulled back out onto the motorway and headed for London.

  103

  “Where we go?” Viktor demanded. “Is middle of night.” He was leaning forwards slightly in the passenger seat so he could hold a towel-wrapped ice pack against the back of his head and he still sounded groggy.

  Anyone else hit that hard with a shovel would have a fractured skull or be dead, Dmitry thought from the driving seat. Not Viktor.

  “I told you,” Dmitry said, his own voice terse. “The boss wants us to pick up Myshka.”

  “Why?”

  Dmitry shrugged. “He was in a pissy mood. I didn’t ask.”

  Viktor considered this for several miles.

  “Is shame,” he said at last. “I like Myshka.”

  Dmitry took his eyes away from the road for long enough to flick him a quick stare but saw nothing in the other man’s face. “So do I,” he agreed. “She’s clever—maybe more clever than the boss, eh?”

  Viktor turned to look at him, an incredulous frown creasing his brow. “She’s a woman,” he said in such a tone of finality that Dmitry knew there would be no arguing with him.

  “I noticed,” he snapped. “And keep that damn towel over your nose. I don’t want blood on the leather.”

  They were in Dmitry’s Mercedes heading deep into the Berkshire countryside, the lights cutting swathes through the narrow lanes, startling the occasional fox and rabbit that scuttled for the verges as the big car flashed by. At one point Dmitry saw the flutter of huge pale wings at the periphery of his vision—an owl perhaps—disappearing into the moonless night.

  He wished himself anywhere but here.

  He waited for Viktor to query what a sophisticated woman like Myshka was doing out in the wilds but it never seemed to occur to him. Viktor was a good foot soldier, Dmitry thought. He followed orders without question, broke heads when they needed to be broken. His lack of imagination made his loyalty without question—he could not be bribed, threatened or reasoned with.

  “This is it,” Dmitry said catching sight of a reflective marker in the tumble of brambles by the side of the road. He braked and swung the Merc carefully along a narrow track. The tree branches clawed in alongside and overhead, lending the darkness another eerie suffocating layer.

  Dmitry had been brought up on folk tales of ghosts and wolves and demons. Tales designed to keep a child frightened and in line. He was not a child any longer but he would have taken the most dangerous ghettos of the city over this untamed wasteland.

  Viktor showed no signs of alarm about his surroundings. That lack of imagination sometimes had its advantages.

  “We walk from here,” Dmitry said switching off the engine and climbing out. He turned the collar of his coat up against the cold, hunching his shoulders down.

  “Soon be winter, eh?” he said over his shoulder, pulling on gloves and retrieving a powerful flashlight from the Merc’s boot. “What passes for winter here anyway.”

  “In Moscow the winters freeze a man’s breath still in his mouth, remember?” Viktor asked solemnly. He lifted the ice pack away from his skull and something twitched around his mouth. “You grow soft Dmitry.”

  “I do, my friend,” Dmitry agreed. “But not so soft.” His eyes slid past Viktor’s face. “Hello Myshka.”

  The big Russian turned. Myshka approached out of the gloom, dressed in a long black coat with a fur collar and a hat to match. She carried a flashlight in her gloved hand and lifted her booted feet carefully over the uneven ground.

  She stopped a few metres away and set the flashlight down on its end. It was the type that doubled as a lantern. For a moment none of them spoke. She fished in her pockets for cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply until the end glowed like hot coals.

  “So he sends you for me and you come, yes? That’s how it is between us?”

  Between us? Dmitry wondered sharply. Surely she hasn’t . . .?

  “Yes,” said Viktor simply.

  She gripped the edges of her coat as if about to strip. “And nothing I can . . . offer you now will change your mind?”

  Viktor paused a moment, regretful, then shook his head slowly.

  “Am sorry,” he said.

  Myshka’s eyes sought Dmitry’s face, cocked an eyebrow to ask him a very different question. Dmitry hesitated then gave a tiny shake of his own head.

  Myshka sighed. “So am I,” she said.

  Her voice was cold and clear. Something about it must have penetrated Viktor’s brain. His head lifted like a dog suddenly catching the scent of danger. He started to turn, not towards Myshka but to Dmitry, bewildered questions forming in his eyes.

  And as Viktor turned away from her, Myshka pulled out a squat black pistol from inside her coat and shot him through the neck.

  The sudden noise and light and heat in the darkness was astounding. Dmitry staggered sideways as if hit himself, disorientated by the report that thundered away through the trees and blinded by the flare from the muzzle.

  When he looked back, Viktor had dropped to his knees in the dirt, hands clasped weakly to his ruined throat. The round had passed straight through and carried on into the night, tearing a pathway of wanton destruction. Blood gushed between the big man’s fingers, pulsing out at a rate that was clearly unsustainable.

  His eyes were fixed on Dmitry’s, his gaze gentle and uncomprehending when it should have been enraged. Viktor tried to speak, producing only a muted gurgle. He collapsed very slowly onto his side, chest heaving as his lungs flooded, and lay there shuddering.

  Dmitry had seen enough gunshot wounds to know there was nothing to be done for him even if he’d wanted to. He caught movement and realised Myshka had moved to stand next to him, the gun held loosely at her side. She was staring down at Viktor with only mild curiosity in her eyes.

  “He is too stupid even to know when he is a dead man,” she said, her voice breathy. She raised the gun, aiming for Viktor’s head this time. Dmitry caught her arm.

  “No,” he said. “We are not so far from civilisation that gunshots won’t be investigated.”

  Myshka pursed her lips. The light from the makeshift lantern seemed to make her eyes appear very bright. “You would let him suffer?” she asked, something almost triumphant in her tone.

  If you had been more careful he would not be suffering. Dmitry glared at her but held his tongue. “Give me the gun.”

  Now it was Myshka’s turn to hesitate. “It was necessary—we agreed,” she said, losing some
of her certainty. “You said you would talk to him but if he would not join with us then—” a shrug, “—he must go, yes?”

  “Yes,” Dmitry agreed in a low voice. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  Myshka dumped the pistol into his outstretched hand. It was a Glock, the barrel still warm even through his gloves.