Once she finally had Cooper back in the land of the breathing, she looked to his guests apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I think you should go.’
‘Take me with you, Mickey!’ Cooper managed to joke, ashen faced after his episode. ‘Stark, lad, give her a karate chop across the back of the neck and we’ll stuff her in the bed as a decoy.’
The nurse managed a weary smile.
‘Don’t let him slip away this time, Mickey.’ Cooper was serious now. ‘Good people worked hard. Make him tell you, Mickey. Make him tell you where she is.’
They nodded farewells and followed the nurse out to reception where the robot glared at them over the counter.
‘How bad is it?’ asked Groombridge.
The nurse looked apologetic again. ‘I’m sorry, I can only discuss that with family.’
‘Of which he has precisely none living, as you know,’ said Groombridge softly. ‘But the uniform he wore for forty years protecting and serving his community makes him family to me and this young man. So I would beg a little flexibility.’
The nurse cast an eye at the watchful receptionist and spoke quietly. ‘Chronic emphysema. But it’s not just his lungs. His heart could go at any time. That’s why we try to stop him getting overexcited. Not that he’ll listen. He’s bullish enough on the outside, but inside, he’s giving up. I know the look.’
Groombridge nodded. ‘He loved his wife.’
‘The last few days have been different, though. He’s come alive.’
‘He loved his job too,’ said Groombridge. ‘Please look after him, he’s earned his full measure of respect.’ He handed his card across. ‘Please call me if his health deteriorates. I’m his family now.’
36
‘Right …’ Groombridge strode to the board, pulled off Mark White’s photo and held it up to the team. ‘In 1989 the man we know as Mark White was an eighteen-year-old called Simon Kirsch. Although it was never proved, it was believed that he attacked and killed sixteen-year-old Kimberly Bates as she walked home on a wet November evening. I was only a rookie constable back then and can’t tell you much; only that he’s been lying to us from the start. That doesn’t make him our killer but it does make him a person of interest. Not enough to search his flat again, yet, but if he’s definitely gone to ground … Fran, anything from uniform?’
‘Nothing yet, Guv. Everyone has his description.’ Stark could see from her face that she was frustrated. Wishing, like him, that he’d got Cooper’s full name from that first call.
‘Okay. Well, it’s usually just a matter of time. Request the original case files from storage; use my name.’ Groombridge nodded to Harper. ‘You all know what to do. Keep me in the loop.’
No sooner had he gone than Harper turned to Stark. ‘I told you to go home.’
‘DCI Groombri—’
‘Don’t hide behind the DCI’s skirts, Constable,’ interrupted Harper. ‘Request the old files and then clear off, understood?’
‘Sir.’ Harper’s eyes narrowed, but Stark would not call him Guv’nor until he earned it.
Stark requested the files, went home, had a shower and some food and set the alarm.
He hardly seemed to have blinked when the clock radio woke him, but it was dark outside and six hours had passed. The newsreader covered foreign policy fears, domestic policy gaffes, the latest celebrity fall from grace and the impending stormy weather the jet stream was bringing their way following heavy snow in North America. Stark let it all roll over him as he summoned the will to get up.
‘In the latest development in the recent double murder of a Blackheath businessman and his wife, Metropolitan Police are now describing Mark White, who has been interviewed several times already and is the subject of intense media speculation about his identity, as a “person of interest”. White has not been seen at his home. The public have been urged not to approach him, but to report his whereabouts.’
At least the news of White’s real identity hadn’t leaked yet.
Forcing himself up, he dressed and cycled to the gym. If he wasn’t allowed to progress the case he would progress his own.
Andy eyed him curiously as he set up his spinning bike. Stark was disappointed to see Selena wasn’t there, but she bustled in with a minute to spare and took a bike opposite Stark. Andy made a comment about taking it easy this week and the class groaned theatrically at the lie. Soon they were blowing hard. Stark felt the weariness and frustrations of the day fall away, heart rate rising, adrenaline stoking him to life. Opposite him, Selena glistened with sweat. A wisp of black hair had escaped her bungee, and in a brief drinks free-wheel she set about resetting the whole ponytail. Elbows high as she reached up, sweat ran down her cleavage, her legs still pumping up and down in neutral. She took a long drink, looked directly at Stark, smiled and leant into Andy’s next burst of high-tempo sadism.
Stark felt the inner boy rise to the challenge and push hard. At the end of the session he was dying, gasping, buzzing. They entered the two-minute warm-down amid shared groans, gasps and laughter from the masochists. Selena grinned at Stark, noticeably more flushed and out of breath than the previous week. She had a competitive streak. He liked that.
As they gathered their belongings she stood next to him and quietly slipped him a note, smiled and was gone. Andy was grinning.
Stark glanced at the note and sighed. A Facebook ID. As a policeman he lauded the additional level of first-contact security it gave a girl, but if this was how the dating game had moved on since his last ventures, he was at more of a disadvantage than he’d thought. He had no Facebook profile or Twitter account, nor any form of social media. Aside from his private nature, his public notoriety made it impossible. He kept an email account for family and close friends and another for the day-to-day necessities of online life and commerce, both anonymized.
‘Why so glum?’ grinned Andy. ‘Not a bad end to the day, I reckon.’
Fran stepped on the gas. Harper was en route from his home but she would get there first. She would have preferred to have Stark along. He was handy for this sort of thing. She’d grown accustomed to the security he gave her, his solidity, frankly his unflinching capability. But Harper expressly forbade it. They didn’t have time, he said. Arsehole.
She slowed down as she passed the restaurant, if that was the right word for an all-night McDonald’s. She craned her neck but could not pick out Mark White, or Simon Kirsch if that was his name. Three uniform cars were waiting around the next corner, two of them armed response.
She spoke briefly with the sergeant in charge. Harper pulled up minutes later.
Kirsch was still inside. Harper entered into a forthright exchange with the ART sergeant. The latter was firmly of the opinion that Kirsch represented an unknown danger and as such they should all wait for the CO19 Specialist Firearms Officers, the Met police equivalent of an American SWAT team. Harper’s view was that he and Fran should go in quietly so as not to alarm the suspect or endanger the other diners, and that he held higher rank.
Fran cursed him. Eighteen months ago she’d felt what it was like to have a killer hold a pistol to her head. The Simon Kirsch inside was a lot scarier than the Mark White she’d let out of her car that morning. They had no reason to think he’d be armed. She kept telling herself that, as they crossed the street on foot. She watched Harper’s big frame moving with his usual misguided confidence and misdirected purpose. The great lumbering oaf. At least if bullets started flying she could hide behind him.
Kirsch was sitting in the corner looking out, a baseball cap low over his face. He looked up as they entered and clocked them at once.
His eyes shot wide with panic. He dumped his burger and scrambled to his feet.
Harper walked forward, hands out to show they were empty. ‘We just want a word, Simon.’
Bloody fool! Fran cursed inside. Why tip Kirsch off that they knew who he really was?
Kirsch looked like he would choke on his mouthful. He forced himself to sw
allow; but not to speak.
The other customers stared in a mixture of confusion and concern.
Harper took another step.
Kirsch looked panic-stricken. Then he pulled out a gun and shot Harper in the chest.
Harper dropped like a stone, convulsing to the crackling tune of arcing electricity.
It took Fran several horrified seconds to register what she was seeing. Not a real gun. Not a lead bullet but tens of kilovolts – a Taser!
The look on Kirsch’s face was one of strange fascination. Then he looked up at Fran and their eyes locked. For a moment she thought she was next. But most Taser guns were one-shot wonders. His face flashed with anger, and with an animal snarl he charged the serving counter and vaulted it, crashing through the kitchen.
Fran was already shouting into her radio.
The responses were abrupt. Barking sitreps, orders and confusion, but Fran wasn’t listening. The only words that mattered were hers: ‘Man down’.
The ART boys burst in and found her furiously yanking the two barbed electrodes from Harper’s chest and slapping his face. Serve the stupid oaf right if he’d had a heart attack. Kirsch hadn’t been holding a police issue X26. It was something bulkier. Some of these illegal imports carried double the power or more and no time limiter.
‘Wake up, you stupid prick.’ She slapped him again.
He groaned, eyes fluttering open.
Fran slapped him again, for luck, and got to her feet.
One of the ART guys knelt by Harper to check him over. The rest had already disappeared through the kitchens.
Fran saw blue lights outside. More racing up the road under sirens. She snatched up her radio from the floor but couldn’t make sense of the overlapping calls. She hurried outside; the ART sergeant had disappeared.
What the hell was happening?
It was ten agonizing minutes before she knew.
Kirsch was gone; dissolved into the night. A helicopter was up, cars out, ART boys running hither and thither, but Kirsch had evaded them. Perhaps he’d scoped out his escape route on the way in. Stark would say something like that. Stark would’ve anticipated that. Stark would’ve stopped him. Stark wouldn’t have got himself shot with a bloody Taser!
Fran swore viciously, earning wary glances from the chagrined ART man. Mark White, aka Simon Kirsch, had just jumped from person of interest to prime suspect, and he was in the wind.
PART TWO
* * *
37
It was dry, hunkered down in the ditch; the autumn rains long bled off. The sun was nearly at its zenith but he could still see his breath. The desert had a purple tint beneath grey clouds. The distant mountains were whiter with snow than they had been a month earlier. And the insurgent sniper still had them pinned down.
Rousseau had sent him forward to try and pinpoint the sniper’s location. He had a good eye for reckoning, a reputation for sneaking up, and for killing without hesitation.
He’d worked his way forward three hundred metres along the dried irrigation ditch, barely deeper than his prone shape. The sniper either hadn’t seen him or was waiting for the kill shot. One soldier was already in a chopper to the field hospital and a villager was dead, shot at random just after dawn to get this whole sick game underway.
He didn’t fancy being next. He was enjoying himself too much. This was what it was to be alive. A battle of wits. A contest of nerve. His heart skipped with the unfettered joy of it.
Removing his helmet he slowly raised his head, using the fallen branch of the nearby tree to mask his dome, scanning for the sniper’s position through his own scope, checking the sun’s angle to ensure it didn’t glint off the glass. He held his breath, lest the faint breeze lift it into sight.
Where are you?
There? Sun glint off something, scope glass? Yes? Yes.
Eyes wide, he took in every detail; then slipped slowly back down, gradually letting his breath escape. He checked his GPS, bought at home with his own money, better than shit military issue; took out his radio and relayed the coordinates. The sniper was in a house up near the top of the hill, packed in among others, each probably full of families huddled together in terror of what the viper in their nest might bring down upon them.
He waited. Impatient. Itching.
There. Finally. The point man of Rousseau’s team, then three others, crabbing along the side of a house within a hundred metres of the sniper.
Eyes straining, he meticulously studied the scene again, re-estimating distance, elevation, wind speed, and carefully adjusted his sights accordingly; he’d only get one chance.
Rousseau looked in roughly his direction and gave a thumbs-up. If the sniper wanted a target, they’d oblige.
The point man crept up the edge of the house, poked his head round the corner and withdrew it. Then again, just an edge. Then pulled off his helmet and put it on his rifle butt and tilted it into view.
The muzzle flash lit up the distant window and the helmet spun off the rifle butt.
He squeezed his trigger.
The sniper was down before the helmet hit the ground, limp hand hanging in the air as he slumped against the window frame. Another insurgent appeared and began firing wildly. He took aim again and shot him. A third began climbing awkwardly from another window on to the adjacent roof but fell to a third bullet.
No more movement.
He let out his breath with a low hiss of satisfaction, of monstrous triumph.
In the west a murder of crows took flight, laughing their raucous song of death …
Stark woke, swallowing hard at the sudden rush of nausea and imagined taste of bitter blood in his throat, the wild thrill of violence in his scudding heart.
He blinked at the ceiling, letting the past retreat to its proper place. He hadn’t thought about that day in a long while. Had forgotten about it in fact. What did that say? Was it better that it was all still locked away in there, or to hope that one day it would be gone for good? Regular dreams morphed between surreal imaginings and twisted recollections but could be relied on to fade after waking. Dreams like this did not. A reminder of what you were. Lest you forget.
He fumbled for the phone vibrating on the nightstand. ‘Stark.’
‘You’re awake,’ said Fran.
Stark glanced at the clock. One in the morning. ‘Is that enquiry or triumph?’
The station was buzzing. All three choppers were up now and uniform were busy covering a search grid of the borough. Fran stood in the centre of it all, demanding the plates spun themselves to her satisfaction. Stark strode in barely twenty minutes after her call, clean-shaven and neat as a damn pin. How did he do that? she wondered, for the umpteenth time.
‘Right,’ she jerked her head upward. ‘We’ve a city-wide search on but things are about to go national. I need bodies at desks. Get upstairs and chase archive for the Kimberly Bates case files; wake someone up if you have to. Then dig into Mark White’s file and see if there are locations we’re not already looking. Get Williams and Dixon to help, they’re on their way in.’
‘DI Harper?’ asked Stark.
‘Hospital, getting checked over.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Bit his tongue when he was shocked and hit his head on the floor.’
Stark made no comment, but looked at her with those piercing eyes. ‘And you?’
‘I hid behind Harper.’
‘Good thinking,’ he smiled, satisfied. You could almost see his mind ticking that off and moving on as he left. He had a sharp intensity in moments like these, she’d learned. A cut-to-the-chase efficiency of movement, thought and purpose; part of the reason she would far rather have entered that burger joint with him than Harper. Harper made a show of things; Stark made short work of things … as he had proved more than once, not least the time a perp held a gun to her head.
Fran stayed down on the uniform floor where they were marshalling the search, checking and rechecking with border control, regional police, national crime agency and traffic contr
ol. The most likely scenario was that White – or Kirsch, or whatever other names he might have – was hiding in a local hole, but there was no guarantee.
The hospital called to confirm Harper was concussed and staying in for observation. Fran almost felt sorry for him. She’d experienced concussion, and not being allowed to sleep when all you wanted to do was curl up in a ball with your eyes screwed shut till the dizziness and nausea went away. Harper was in for a rotten night, meaning she had maybe twenty-four hours without him in the way. She had every intention of making the most of it.
The search dragged on into the daylight hours.
She didn’t even know Groombridge was in the building until she was summoned up to his makeshift office. In the windowless room there was no reference to day or night, and she wondered whether he’d just arrived or been here all night, whether indeed he ever went home any more. She shook her head. Tired thoughts.
He listened, nodding, but adding little. ‘Search warrant?’
‘Waiting on the wig.’ Judges didn’t get out of bed for detective sergeants.
‘I’ll see if I can chivvy things along.’
‘Time to release Mark White’s real name?’ she asked.
‘Not yet,’ mused Groombridge. ‘Our best chance of finding him is still to find out where he’s been all this time. Better if he doesn’t know we know, for now.’
‘DI Harper called him Simon to his face.’
Groombridge’s face darkened. ‘That’s a pity. Nevertheless, it could still prove a distraction.’
‘It might help – get the journalists working for us for a change?’
Groombridge considered this but shook his head. ‘We’ve no proof yet.’
‘But you’re sure it’s him?’
‘Sure enough. But his DNA and fingerprints didn’t flag up a hit on the database.’
‘Maybe the old ones weren’t logged. Might be copies of his prints in the files when we get them. You’ll do the tap dance?’ she asked, meaning the press statement.
Groombridge shook his head. ‘You need the practice. Keep it bland – unknown aliases, et cetera …’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 16