by Chris Ewan
A group of boys in dirtied tracksuits, not unlike the outfit Wade was wearing, watched the taxi from the remains of a collapsed bus shelter. Two of them were straddling BMXs. All of them had restless, baleful eyes.
Wade got out and marched over to the group as the taxi turned in a tight circle and roared away.
Thugs know other thugs.
Wade flattened the square of paper in his palm and showed it to the group like he was a cop flashing a badge. No reaction, so he opened his other hand to reveal a one-hundred-euro note. The tallest boy, a lean and stringy black kid with a thick gold chain around his neck, muttered something to a younger white kid on a BMX. The kid sniffed and shrugged, then dropped his bike to the floor and motioned with his head for Wade to follow him.
He led the way through a sunken concrete underpass, scriptured in graffiti, towards a pair of twin apartment towers that looked like the final outpost of some long-ago collapsed communist regime.
The entrance to the tower on the right was ankle-deep in litter and when the dented elevator doors shuffled apart they released a fetid stench. Wade pulled the sleeve of his tracksuit over his hand and covered his nose and mouth as the kid punched a button and they rode the elevator to the twenty-third floor, where the doors parted again and Wade stepped out.
There was a plain plywood door opposite the lift, the frame splintered and scratched from being jimmied multiple times. Wade’s guide barely gestured to it before snatching the cash from his hand as the elevator doors stuttered closed and the carriage began to descend.
Wade checked the address on his paper but there was nothing to indicate he was in the right place. He stepped up and knocked, then listened to silence, followed by footsteps, followed by the slide and clunk of multiple locks and bolts being withdrawn.
A slim girl of East Asian origin stood before him, aged about fifteen. She was wearing a grey school dress over a navy blue blouse and knee-high blue socks.
‘Show it to me,’ she said, in perfect English.
Wade unzipped his tracksuit top and removed the stolen iPad. He watched as the girl flipped back the magnetic cover and hummed in surprise and delight as the security screen flashed up.
‘Can you crack it?’
‘Of course,’ the girl replied. ‘How much money do you have?’
Chapter Forty
Another city, another hospital, but this time Miller found himself sitting in the waiting area of the casualty department of Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, one hand clamped to the bruising on his hip, a sterile patch covering a graze on his thigh. Kate was next to him with her head resting on his shoulder. A line of four stitches curved across her forehead. There were adhesive patches on her elbow and wrist.
Three hours had rushed by in a blur of sirens and police officers and paramedics, of hospital paperwork and triage questions and medical treatment. Miller knew they’d been lucky. Their injuries were minor. It was much worse for Christine. She’d been loaded on to a spinal board and driven away in the first ambulance. Right now, surgeons were working on her in an operating theatre somewhere. Miller hadn’t been able to obtain an update on her condition from the nurses rushing by. He took that as a bad sign.
Just an hour ago, a female police officer had sat across from Miller and written down his preliminary statement in a pocket notebook, then gone through the same process with Kate. The officer had confiscated their passports and told them to report to a central police station within the next twenty-four hours to sign off on full witness accounts and reclaim their IDs. Not that that would happen. Miller couldn’t contemplate the risk. And besides, it was largely irrelevant, because he was confident the police would never catch the driver of the red Fiat 500.
He’d been able to provide an accurate description of the man, largely because he’d recognised him, but he hadn’t provided a name. What was the point? Mike Renner was experienced enough to get out of Italy without being caught. And if he identified Renner, Miller would have to explain how he knew him and why they’d been targeted.
But that didn’t mean he could forget what had happened. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to make amends. First, though, he had to wonder what Renner’s intentions had been. Had he been aiming to kill Kate? Was Christine just collateral damage? Or was something else going on?
‘How much longer until we get some news, do you think?’
Miller stirred and looked down at Kate, nestled against his arm. All around them was speed and bluster and noise, the banging of doors, the shuttling to and fro of trolleys and patients and staff.
‘Could be a while.’
Kate hadn’t said anything before snuggling up to him and she hadn’t said much since. She’d treated it as a perfectly normal thing to do. And perhaps it was. For her.
But it was different for Miller. He’d tensed at first, then relaxed in degrees, and now he was leaning into her just a little.
What would Becca say if she saw them? Something that didn’t need to be said any more.
‘What is it?’ She rested the flat of her hand on his chest. ‘Your heart is racing.’
‘It’s the stress.’
He straightened until she had to lift her head away from him, then feigned a stretch and a yawn, trying to make it seem like a natural response. Which obviously didn’t work, because Kate frowned at him, one eye closed in a squint.
‘You want coffee?’ he asked her. ‘I know a great little vending machine.’
But she tugged at his shirtsleeve, not willing to let him escape just yet.
‘Promise me something, Miller. I don’t want to be like Clive or Christine. I don’t want to end up alone in a foreign hospital. I don’t want to die without anyone knowing who I really am.’
‘Christine’s not by herself. We’re right here for her.’
‘I couldn’t bear it, Miller. Truly. If something happens to me, I want you to find my brother. Find Richard. I want you to tell him about me. Tell him I was looking for him.’
She bit down on her lip and he knew right away what it was that she expected him to say. She wanted him to tell her that it wouldn’t be necessary because he wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her. That he was strong and smart and could protect her from every kind of danger.
But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that because he wasn’t sure he believed it any more. Look at how he’d failed Sarah and Melanie. Look at Clive. Look at Christine.
‘Signor Miller?’
A doctor was standing before them. He had on crumpled blue scrubs, white plimsolls and a day’s worth of stubble and eye-strain. He reached up and scratched at his head, then took a deep breath and gave them the news.
Miller didn’t listen to the details. The doctor’s sombre expression and regretful tone had told him everything he needed to know.
Chapter Forty-One
‘Something occurred to me,’ Jennifer Lloyd said, when Foster eventually answered her mobile. It had already rung out twice before. ‘There’s something we haven’t focussed on nearly enough.’
‘Sorry? Who is this?’ A pause. ‘Lloyd? Is that you?’
‘Something is bothering me.’
‘Something is bothering me. I’m off duty, Lloyd. I’m on a date.’
A date, yes. Women like Foster did things like that. They socialised. They had a life outside of work.
Lloyd backed into the pillows she’d propped behind her on her hotel bed, the notes from her file scattered around her. She was staying in a Travelodge and her room was almost entirely bland. The only exception was the cheap, abstract piece of art on the wall across from her. She didn’t care for it.
‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’ Foster continued.
‘Think about this for a second – Sarah and Melanie Adams were killed the night before they were due to go into a protection programme. That suggests their killer had foreknowledge of their situation. Nick Adams had that knowledge.’
‘We’re really doing this, are we?’
‘Same thing
applies on the Isle of Man with Kate Sutherland. Nick Adams shows up again. He finds her when she’s already in the programme.’
‘So you’ve basically just called to tell me you still think your theory holds water. That’s great.’
‘It does. I’m not worried about that.’
‘So then what are you worried about?’
Lloyd’s stomach rumbled. The radio alarm clock beside her bed told her it was just after 8 p.m. She supposed she should eat soon. She’d bought a cold pasty and a bottle of Lucozade from the petrol station linked to the Travelodge. She even had a bruised banana for dessert. Fine dining, for her.
‘How did Adams know? That’s what bothers me. How did he find out where Kate Sutherland was in hiding?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Or suppose you’re right. Suppose Connor Lane sent the dead guy to that house on the same night. How did he know where Sutherland was living?’
Foster sighed. ‘What’s your point?’
‘We could have a leak. If Nick Adams didn’t kill his family, we had a leak four years ago, too. But either way, we sure as hell have a security problem now. Somebody could be selling information.’
‘Come on.’
‘You come on. Unless you have another explanation?’
Foster fell silent for several long seconds and Lloyd glanced down to consider the yellow legal pad she’d been doodling on. There was one other alternative explanation. Possibly. But she wasn’t about to lay it out just yet.
‘One minute,’ she heard Foster whisper, presumably to whoever she was on her date with. There was the clink of a glass and the sound of liquid being poured.
‘You need to look into this,’ Lloyd told her.
‘Me?’
‘I’m outside of London. And now is the perfect time. It’s out of hours. It’s quiet. You need to get back to the incident room and check records. Check logins. See if anyone has been accessing Kate Sutherland’s file who shouldn’t have been.’
‘You expect me to do this now?’
Lloyd didn’t say anything. There was no need to push too hard. Foster already knew she had the ear of Commissioner Bennett.
‘OK, fine,’ Foster said. ‘But only because this date was never going to work out anyway.’
Lloyd heard the wounded plea of a male voice from somewhere close by.
‘Oh, please,’ Foster said, sotto voce. ‘You’re wearing a pork-pie hat. To a restaurant. Where do you think we are? The 1940s?’
Chapter Forty-Two
Miller had the middle-aged guy behind the luggage counter at Roma Termini go back and check for their bags a second time. The guy was a jaded type who’d seen it all before, so he puffed out his cheeks and rolled his eyes, and then he did as he was asked, or maybe he just went around behind the partition wall that screened off the storage area from paying customers and pretended to do what he was asked, before returning empty-handed once more.
Miller was tired and irritable and emotionally wrung out – he’d drifted around the city in a daze with Kate in the hours since they’d left the hospital – and he barely listened to what the guy was trying to say before he told him that he wanted to take a look for himself. The guy refused. He said it wasn’t possible. And anyway, he’d already checked twice and their things were definitely gone.
Miller slapped a palm on the counter and asked to speak to the guy’s younger colleague, the one they’d dealt with earlier that day. Miller was told that wasn’t possible either, and when he swore and planted both hands on the counter as if he might vault over it, the guy backed off and told him in a hurry that his colleague had gone home sick.
‘What time did he leave?’
The guy exhaled and told him it had been around ten or eleven o’clock in the morning.
‘Which one? Ten, or eleven?’
‘Ten. I think.’
Miller looked down at the ticket stub in his hand. They’d deposited their luggage at 9.38 a.m.
‘I want to speak to your manager. Now.’
But they couldn’t talk to the manager right away because she was on her break and she didn’t return for another twenty minutes, even though Miller made the guy behind the counter radio her. Twice.
Miller was in a fury by then. He was pacing the floor, cursing loudly. So when the young woman finally appeared, strolling across the station concourse with a two-way radio clipped to her belt and a can of Diet Coke in her hand, Kate stepped in front of him and apologised for calling her back from her break a little early.
The manager looked to be only five or six years out of school, but she was smartly dressed in a grey trouser suit with a crisp white blouse and an identity lanyard around her neck, and it was clear from both her appearance and her attitude that she took her job very seriously. She seemed genuinely concerned when Kate told her that their luggage appeared to be missing, and when Kate added that a good friend of theirs had been killed in a car accident just a few hours earlier and that they were drained and upset and really just wanted to collect their things and go to a hotel, the manager framed an expression of deep compassion and invited them to follow her through the hatch in the counter.
The luggage storage area was vast and well organised. There was row upon row of metal bins and wooden cubbyholes and clothes hooks, all of them numbered sequentially, many of them empty now that the day was nearly through. But there was no sign of Kate’s suitcase or Miller’s rucksack in any of the cubbyholes or bins close to where their numbered tags said they should be. There was no sign of them anywhere.
‘You have surveillance cameras.’ Miller pointed at the ceiling. It was a statement, not a question.
The manager winced. ‘But you leave your bags this morning. I’m sorry, this is a long time ago. I cannot go through it all now.’
‘Then let me look.’ Miller showed her the receipts for their bags. ‘We know the time we left our things. We know that one of your staff went home sick shortly afterwards. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’
‘Please just let him,’ Kate added. ‘Believe me, he won’t let this go otherwise.’
The manager eyed Miller, gauging his resolve.
‘Thirty minutes of footage,’ he told her. ‘That’s all we need to see. And if I’m right about your luggage guy, you need to know about it. Think what else he might take.’
But Miller wasn’t right. At least not completely. Eight minutes into the footage, they saw something worse than he’d feared. The young guy behind the counter hadn’t taken the bags for himself. He’d exchanged them in return for a cash payment from a stocky blonde man in a blue tracksuit.
The manager propped her hands on her hips, holding back the tails of her suit jacket. ‘I will call the police. Tomorrow, I can speak with him. I will find out—’
‘Forget it,’ Miller told her. He was already removing his smartphone from his pocket, opening the camera app, snapping an image of the blonde man on screen. He grasped for Kate’s hand and pulled her out through the fold-up hatch in the middle of the counter.
‘We have insurance,’ the manager called after them. ‘You can fill in the forms. We will pay for your things.’
But Miller just shook his head without looking back, his thumbs tapping away at his phone, attaching the image to an email to Hanson.
‘That man,’ Kate was saying. ‘Miller, he was sitting behind me on the plane.’
‘He followed us from Hamburg.’
‘For Lane?’
‘Of course for Lane.’
‘But why? What does it mean?’
‘It means Christine wasn’t a target. And neither were we. At least not directly. Christine was a distraction. It could have been any of one of us.’
Which was not entirely true. Renner had been aiming for Kate, Miller was sure. But the repercussions would have been much the same.
He put his phone to his ear, scanning the area all around. The food outlets were almost empty and most of the shops in the underground section of the train st
ation were shuttered and in darkness. The only person close to them was a maintenance guy in a blue jumpsuit, up on a ladder, pulling on a tangle of cables hanging from the ceiling.
The call connected and Hanson picked up.
He said, ‘We’re still so upset about Christine. Becca wanted to call you but she’s been kind of a mess. We both have, to tell the truth.’
‘No time for that now. We have a problem. One of Lane’s men got hold of our bags. He has our aliases.’
Hanson whistled.
‘He also has my iPad.’
‘It’s security protected.’
‘This was more than ten hours ago.’
Silence.
‘Can you wipe the iPad remotely?’
‘No problem. I’ve got this. Oh, and by the way, I just opened your email, and yikes – that guy’s eyes are so far apart he must have to walk sideways to see where he’s going. And check out his arms. He’s like a human crab. Relax, Miller, there’s no way this steroid-abuser could bypass my security patch.’
‘Just wipe it, OK? I want to be sure.’
Miller heard the rapid clatter of computer keys followed, seconds later, by a muted, ‘Huh.’
‘What?’
‘Minor issue. Somebody did get through my security. They’re blocking me.’
‘Can you get round it?’
‘Eventually.’ Miller heard more keystrokes. ‘But whoever they are, they’re good. I think we have to assume that the first thing they’ll have done is to copy all the data from the iPad on to another device.’
‘You’re telling me they have everything?’
‘That would be my guess.’
Miller hung up and covered his eyes with his hand.
‘What is it? Miller? What’s wrong?’
He told Kate.
‘So? It’s just an iPad.’
‘The details of my clients are on there.’
‘All of them?’
Miller lowered his hand from his eyes. ‘Nearly all. We’re talking real names, assumed names, locations, medical records, bank accounts. Pretty much everything except an exact address and recent headshots.’