The Black Art of Killing

by Matthew Hall

  Black looked up from his screen with a puzzled expression.

  ‘The bureaucracy. Have you ever tried calling the US government? By the time I’d convinced them I was legit we would both have grown old and died.’

  ‘So call in a favour from someone they will listen to.’

  Towers looked at him blankly for a moment, then snatched up the receiver and dialled Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorism Command. He was put through to its Deputy Chief, Eleanor Grant, and switched tone without missing a beat. ‘Ah, Eleanor, hello. Freddy Towers here. We met last month at the Home Office. Yes, that’s right … Look, I know you’ve got your hands ever so full, but I wonder if you could do me an awfully big favour. There’s someone I’m trying to identify, I’d be hugely grateful …’

  He got his way. The Chief Superintendent was charmed into submission and agreed to put in urgent requests to the NSA, FBI and CIA.

  ‘There’s one woman I can always depend on,’ Towers said, putting down the phone. ‘Good sort. Married to a QC. Went to Cambridge.’

  ‘A proper person,’ Black said, aping one of Towers’ favourite phrases.

  ‘Exactly.’ He tapped the desk with his forefinger. ‘Manners. Honour. Decency. Where have all those things gone, Leo?’

  ‘To the senior ranks of the Metropolitan Police, evidently.’

  Ignoring the quip, Towers leaned over his keyboard and started typing furiously. ‘Remind me of the Range Rover’s registration again.’

  ‘401 D 894.’

  ‘Diplomatic plates. That’s one database they do deign to let me into.’ He worked his way through several screens, navigating the government network until he arrived at a secure section of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. He keyed in the registration and waited impatiently for the result. ‘No current match. Discontinued 2015. Previously registered to the government of Tunisia. Well, that gets us precisely bloody nowhere.’

  ‘Traffic cameras?’

  ‘That would involve the Met again. I’d rather avoid that if I could. Things could get complicated.’

  ‘You’d rather risk her getting away? I don’t follow.’

  ‘Ideally, it’s the rat’s nest we want, Leo, not the rat. If the police get to her before we do, she’ll never talk.’

  Black struggled to keep up with Towers’ reasoning. ‘You told me this afternoon’s op was cleared with the Met, that we were taking her to Paddington Green.’

  Towers gave a snort and pushed his glasses up the flattened bridge of his nose. ‘It was cleared, certainly.’

  ‘But you were going to take her somewhere else?’

  Towers didn’t answer.

  ‘I do have lines, Freddy. I always have had. You know that.’

  ‘Then it’s a good job she got away, isn’t it?’ Towers picked up the phone and dialled another number. ‘Colonel Towers, Ministry of Defence. Can you patch me through to Mr Khan, please …? Then I’d be grateful if you’d contact him at home; it’s most urgent.’

  While Towers wrangled with the switchboard at Transport for London, Black contemplated what he might have had in store if they had managed to snatch Drecker. Would he have expected Black to tie her up in some basement flat and torture her? That would be far beyond the pale even in the height of war. If female suspects were to be interrogated, female officers had to be present. He struggled to comprehend what Towers was thinking.

  What else was he hiding? Why not just be straight with him?

  He pondered darkly on the possibilities while Towers argued his way through to someone able to access the capital’s congestion charge database. There were cameras positioned all around the perimeter of the circular zone that covered central London north of the Thames and a sliver of the city to the south. The number plates of every vehicle that entered and left were recorded and the owners charged for the privilege. In true Orwellian style all these movements were duly recorded and saved.

  ‘The Albert Embankment? Really …? Yes, that would be about the time. Any chance you could send me over the picture? Thank you.’ He spelled out his government email address as if to an imbecile. Then, call over, he turned to Black. ‘They were travelling west south of the river. Virtually went past MI6’s front door.’

  Black brought up a map on his computer and honed in on the location. ‘So they were either planning to turn left and head south or –’

  ‘London heliport. Battersea. Three miles to the west.’ He snatched up the phone. ‘What’s their number?’

  Black couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the receptionist who answered Towers’ next call. He demanded to be put through to the control tower immediately, threatening dire consequences if he was stalled. He succeeded.

  ‘Colonel Freddy Towers, Ministry of Defence, I need your full cooperation, this is a critical matter of national security. We are tracing two suspects involved with a fatal shooting in central London earlier this evening. One Caucasian female, late thirties, one male early thirties, Hispanic or mixed race. We believe they arrived at the heliport approximately seventy-five minutes ago. Our best guess is that they were bound for an airfield outside London … I appreciate that … Yes, if you would.’

  Having secured cooperation, Towers demanded details of all flights that had taken off during the hour after Drecker and her companion’s estimated arrival. Two flights fitted the bill. One was bound for Biggin Hill Airport in Kent, the other for RAF Northolt in west London. A call to Biggin Hill revealed that the passengers who had embarked comprised a party of businessmen en route to Inverness.

  ‘Northolt doesn’t make a lot of sense,’ Towers muttered. ‘I know the RAF has opened its runway to civilian aircraft, but it wouldn’t be my first choice in her shoes.’

  ‘It’s virtually a commercial operation these days,’ Black said, skimming over the airfield’s website. ‘Over thirty private flights a day. Small jets, mostly.’

  Towers found details of the station commander in the MOD’s internal directory and moments later was speaking to him on his private mobile. Although he didn’t know Group Captain Tommy Chandler personally, Chandler knew exactly who Towers was. He had served extensively in Bastion where Freddy ‘Fireballs’ Towers had a reputation for demanding air transport to obscure corners of Afghanistan at a moment’s notice and for screaming blue murder if he didn’t get his way.

  Knowing better than to offer any resistance, Chandler kept Towers on the line while he called through to the operations manager at Northolt. He came back with the information that only one civilian flight had taken off during the relevant window. There were two passengers on board a Gulfstream G450 bound for Miami, Florida. The aircraft was registered to a private operator whose company address was in Panama City. Their names were Jean-Baptiste Bonheur and Marianne Villiers. They were travelling on diplomatic passports issued in the overseas French Department of French Guiana. The aircraft had been in the air for over an hour, meaning that it would already be well out into the Atlantic. It was possible that Miami was to be a refuelling stop rather than a final destination, but there was no record of the fact.

  Towers thanked Chandler for his help, put down the phone and sat back in his seat. ‘Did you catch that?’ he said, staring intently into space. ‘French Guiana.’

  ‘Yes,’ Black said, the unsettling seed of an idea starting to form in his mind.

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Unexpected,’ Black said, keeping his theory to himself. He studied Towers’ face and tried to read it. He could see his mind turning, struggling to make connections. Black began to wonder if the doubts that had been forming in his own mind about the nature of Towers’ intentions had been entirely groundless. Perhaps beyond a vague plan to capture and interrogate Drecker there was nothing else. Perhaps this was genuinely how off-the-record operations were haphazardly conducted. It was no more or less chaotic than the way they had run things in Baghdad for more than two years. They had made up the objectives of the war as they went along, isolating targets day by day, hour by
hour, and begging, borrowing and stealing whatever resources they needed to catch them.

  ‘It can’t be the French,’ Towers said. ‘Surely –’

  The telephone rang, interrupting Towers’ flow of thought. It was Professor Simon Wilkie from Guy’s Hospital. He had completed the post-mortem on Drecker’s associate and was in a state of high excitement. He knew Towers would be bursting to come and see what he had found.

  33

  Once again, Black’s curiosity got the better of him. Towers drove, too fast, along the Embankment into the City where, at Moorgate, he turned right over London Bridge. The river sparkled in the late-evening sunlight. Off to their left a vast cruise liner was passing through the raised bascules of Tower Bridge. Ahead of them, the Shard rose like a two-pronged dagger. Black was able to view the modern additions to the central London skyline that had arisen in the new millennium either as hubristically dystopian or as striking parts of a harmonious continuum, depending on his state of mind. Tonight, his feeling was ambivalent. The gleaming glass skyscrapers reached for the clouds but gave no food to the soul. The spirit of the city was still to be found in the grimy bricks and blocks of stone set by human hands.

  Towers seemed to read his mind. He nodded towards the Shard, which was now looming over them as they drew closer to Guy’s Hospital. ‘Looks like Stalin’s wet dream. Whoever gave it the OK ought to be shot. Can you imagine having to go to work in something like that? I’d sooner slit my wrists.’

  ‘I doubt the situation would arise, Freddy.’

  ‘Too bloody right.’

  He shifted down into third and slammed his foot to the floor, eager to put the building behind them.

  Professor Simon Wilkie was a tall, smiling man in his mid-sixties with a contagious, irrepressible energy. Due to the late hour Wilkie was alone in the mortuary and greeted them personally at the door dressed in green surgical scrubs.

  ‘Come in, come in.’ He ushered them inside like the genial host of a cocktail party.

  ‘Simon, this is my colleague, Major Leo Black.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you. We’re along here.’

  He led them through a corridor that smelled of heavily perfumed disinfectant. Black hung back as Wilkie and Towers engaged in animated conversation. The two had a long association: Wilkie had made a specialism of conducting post-mortems on servicemen killed overseas. He and Towers had conducted a lot of business together.

  They passed through a set of swing doors into the autopsy room, which was maintained at several degrees cooler than the corridor outside. Wilkie tugged two flexible paper face masks from a dispenser screwed to the wall and handed one each to Towers and Black. ‘Just to be on the safe side. I caught TB off a cadaver once. Not a pleasant experience.’ He gave a mischievous smile and strolled over to the large stainless-steel dissection table on which the body was laid out.

  In the fullest extent of dismemberment it had been turned into a mere object. The torso had been opened from neck to navel and the ribs cut through and spread apart to allow removal of the principal internal organs. These had been weighed and sliced into sections for detailed inspection and were now sitting in a row of kidney dishes on a steel-topped counter at the side of the room. What remained of the face had been peeled backwards over the jagged remnants of the skull, leaving a single eye staring out from its bony socket. The portion of the brain that had not been blown out by the bullet had been removed, exposing the smooth inner surface of the cranium, which was the colour of clotted cream.

  ‘Right, well, there’s no question what killed him.’ Wilkie picked up a scalpel to use as a pointer. ‘Three entry wounds from nine-millimetre rounds on the right side of the skull and most of the left side missing. He’s approximately thirty years of age and seems to have been fit and strong. Not quite an athlete but getting on for one. You asked me to look for any clues to his origins, Freddy – you’ll be happy to know I found a number.’ He glanced up, smiling with twinkling eyes. ‘The most obvious are immediately visible.’ He pointed to a healed scar on the outside of the left upper arm. ‘This is a previous bullet wound. At least five years old, I’d say. A small arms round. X-ray doesn’t show any healed fractures, so we can assume he was lucky and it was just a flesh wound. Now, these are more interesting.’ He pointed to the back of the left hand, where there were three circular healed scars. ‘There’s another on his right hand and one on his right cheek. I’m pretty certain we’re looking at leishmaniasis. You might know it as Jericho Buttons.’

  Black was all too familiar with the syndrome. He had experienced a minor dose in Libya. ‘Ulcers caused by bites from infected sandflies.’

  ‘Not always sandflies. Some jungle insects are vectors, too. These aren’t too bad, as they go. Probably had prompt medical attention. But that’s the ancient history; the more recent stuff is up here.’ He shifted his focus back to the head. ‘Chipped and cracked upper-right incisor. The sort of thing you’d get from a punch in the mouth.’

  Towers shot Black a glance. They were both sharing the same thought.

  ‘Working on that assumption, I took an X-ray, and, indeed, I found what appears to be a recently healed hairline fracture to the right zygomatic bone.’ He pointed his scalpel to the bottom outer edge of the eye socket. ‘A blunt force injury consistent with the damaged tooth but not necessarily related. Is this useful?’

  ‘Extremely,’ Towers said. ‘The blood match I asked you to perform?’

  ‘I’ll have it tomorrow. Our colleagues in Paris seemed reluctant to exert themselves after office hours. I’ve yet to receive the three DNA profiles you requested.’

  ‘Bloody typical. I’ll put a rocket under them,’ Tower promised. ‘Any idea of his nationality?’

  ‘He’s of mixed race – as you guessed. Partly African or West Indian and partly Hispanic. If I were pushed, I’d say the facial structure suggests South American rather than European.’

  ‘Any idea which part of South America? It’s rather a big place.’

  ‘From his body I couldn’t tell you. But this might give you some clue.’ He reached beneath the table and brought out a hand-held lamp. ‘Would you mind turning off the lights, Major?’

  Black stepped over to the bank of switches and plunged the room into darkness. Relishing his moment of theatre, Wilkie switched on the ultraviolet lamp, casting a purple glow over the body. ‘Step closer.’

  They shuffled forward.

  Wilkie concentrated the light on the left upper forearm. ‘Look carefully, you’ll see the outline of a tattoo. It’s been lasered, and really rather well – it’s quite invisible in normal light.’

  Black leaned in further and made out the ghost of a design beneath the outer layers of the smooth, pale-coffee-coloured skin. It appeared indistinct at first, but as he accustomed his eyes it came into focus. The background shape was that of an anchor. Crossed in front of it were what appeared to be a sword or cutlass and a lightning bolt.

  ‘Recognize it?’ Wilkie said.

  Towers shook his head.

  Black had seen it before, a long time ago. In 2003 he had been sent on a covert reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence on the connection between the Chinese Special Forces, the Quantou Budui, and those of Venezuela, which at the time was under the presidency of the arch socialist and antagonist of the West, Hugo Chavez. It had been one of the few assignments in which Towers, caught up in Iraq at the time, had played no part. Operating entirely alone, Black had observed joint exercises deep in the jungle that had revealed a high degree of skill and expertise from both parties. The symbol tattooed on to the dead man’s arm was the badge of the Venezuelan naval Special Forces.

  ‘Venezuela? You’re sure?’ Towers seemed reluctant to accept his word on the matter.

  ‘Certain.’ Black was already searching for the symbol on his phone’s web browser. There it was. Identical. He showed it to Towers and Wilkie.

  ‘Mystery solved,’ Wilkie said.

  ‘Venezuelan …’ Towers said,
as if nonplussed by the idea. He gave a short exclamation of surprise.

  Black kept his thoughts to himself.

  Still mulling over the implications of this discovery, Towers thanked Wilkie for his swift work and arranged to speak later the following day, when DNA comparisons had been made between the blood spatters recovered from Finn’s body and that of the Venezuelan former special serviceman. With a promise of lunch at his club by way of thanks, he bade the professor goodbye.

  They had got only as far as the top of the staircase at ground-floor level when Towers’ phone rang. The caller was Eleanor Grant. He held her at bay for a moment and gestured Black to follow him through the nearby door into the multi-faith prayer room. They entered a quiet, soothing space containing only a few chairs, some kneelers and prayer mats. Towers switched to speakerphone.

  ‘Sorry about that, Eleanor. Fire away.’

  ‘We’ve got a positive ID on your suspect.’ Grant’s confident, purposeful voice betrayed no doubt. ‘You’ve caused quite a stir.’

  Black, who until now had spent the evening in a state of unnatural calm, felt his nerves tingle.

  ‘She was on the CIA’s files. Her name is Irma Stein. A captain in the US Army Intelligence Corps. She was stationed in Baghdad during late 2004 and early 2005. In February 2005 she went missing going about routine business inside the Green Zone. She was twenty-four at the time. It was presumed she was kidnapped by enemy insurgents but no ransom demands were received and she was never found. She’s still officially unaccounted for. The CIA is obviously intrigued to know more.’

  ‘Email me your contact’s details and I’ll be happy to fill them in,’ Towers said. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been most helpful.’

  He rang off and met Black’s gaze. ‘It was her, wasn’t it – the woman you engaged in the firefight?’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ Black said.

  ‘Intelligence Corps. She must have jumped ship and joined one of our friends in the private sector. She probably had the inside track on some of Saddam’s hidden billions.’