Souls of Men

by A. R. Ashworth

  Janko sat back and exchanged looks with Anton. Nilo couldn’t contain himself. “What is this about? Were they in the office? Here?”

  Janko ignored the questions. “Did they see your car?”

  Nilo’s voice was rising. “Of course they did! I drove right past them. What the hell is this about?”

  Anton slid a business card across his desk toward Nilo. “You say her name is Beth. According to this card, she is actually Detective Constable Elizabeth Barker, so Beth makes sense as a name. The woman she called Auntie Dragon is Detective Chief Inspector Elaine Hope. They were here to investigate the murders of Sheila Watson and Geri Harding.”

  Nilo slumped back in his chair, stunned. “What do they know?”

  Janko ignored him again. “When were you last at the Leaside property?”

  “End of January. We were packing a shipment from Spain. Why do . . .”

  “Did you take a young woman there about that time?”

  Nilo hung his head. “Yes. It was only for a bit of fun. You know. Show her around.”

  Anton licked his lips. “The DCI was fishing, so it appears they don’t know much at the moment. But they suspect. The Met murder detectives are efficient and thorough, and this one will certainly follow through. We need to learn some things and we need to act quickly. If you were not my nephew, I would consider eliminating you.” Nilo felt his stomach knot as Anton continued. “But I will not. Right now, I think it is best if you stay low for a while. Use your house. Go there now. Do what the Americans say. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. I would also add that you do not take the Audi. Go out the back entrance and take one of the Transit vans we use for maintenance. Leave your mobile with me. I will arrange for groceries and drink and a prepaid mobile and whatever entertainment is required to keep you there until we know what to do.”

  “Okay, Uncle Anton. Can I ask . . .”

  “No, you may not. Go now. Use the stairs, not the lift. I will contact you when I need to know more.”

  Nilo picked up the Transit keys from the closet and stormed down the stairs. Thank God he had the sense not to say anything about giving her his number. Uncle Anton could be so bloody minded. Fucking detective bitches. That Beth or whatever her name was had played him like he usually played women. If he ever saw her again, she’d wish she’d never been born. Auntie Dragon my arse. Middle-aged bitch, more like. Standing by the wall putting on the act. What was her name? Elaine something-or-other. She wouldn’t like meeting him again either.

  He slammed open the back door to the building, startling two office workers outside smoking on their break. They glared at him with surprise and anger until he shouted, “What are you looking at? Fuck you!” and took two steps toward them. When they backed off at his belligerence, he sneered and swaggered to the first of two IRG maintenance vans parked at the back.

  He started the small diesel and clattered toward Crouch End. Piece of crap transport. Entertainment, though. It might not be too bad if he could coke up a couple of tarts and party. Then he would have time to think about Detective Beth and Auntie Elaine. That, Nilo my lad, would be a party to make even Uncle Anton smile. He’d be sure to get some good fucking first. Not like with that other little tart. Then, afterward, it would be strawberries and cream. Sweet and slow. Strawberries and cream.

  * * *

  The boy was growing more out of control, which troubled Anton. It took extra energy to moderate Nilo’s excesses and the unreliability that resulted from his increasing cocaine habit and his consuming taste for women. It would be so much easier if he hadn’t made those promises to his brother Marko. The blood ties and the words that were spoken made it impossible to send Nilo back to face Serbian justice. Perhaps he could work something out with the Mexicans once the agreements were reached. Cabral would have no qualms about dealing with the boy if he got out of control, which would have to be seriously out of control given the Mexican cartel’s disposition to using excessive violence. Nilo would either thrive or be found hanging from a bridge, relieving Anton of any responsibility in the matter. But the agreement hadn’t been struck yet, and if Cabral got a hint that Met detectives were sniffing around, it could damage or seriously delay the alliances they had spent almost a decade forging. He would discuss alternatives with Janko, but first he dialed a number into the prepaid mobile he kept handy.

  The answering voice spoke simply. “Yes?”

  “Tell me about Elaine Hope.”

  Anton thought he heard a sharp intake of breath before the voice answered. “She’s smart. A lateral thinker. She connects facts before anyone else even compares them. Doesn’t back down.”

  Anton had thought as much from their brief meeting. “Weaknesses?”

  “Too much loyalty to her team. She can be impatient and hot-tempered. She’s got some enemies.”

  “Send me the names of her enemies. What about Elizabeth Barker?”

  “Don’t know much about her. Just out of uniform. Something of a protégé to Hope.”

  There it was. Nothing to it if you knew who to call. Anton closed the connection and walked up the hall to Janko’s office. Janko was looking out the window and spoke as Anton entered. “This was not a pleasant afternoon. We need to handle this before we meet with Cabral’s people.”

  “I’m taking steps. Have you spoken with Marko yet?”

  “He’s not happy, but he’ll come around. I reminded him that if it weren’t for us, his precious son Nilo would be fighting off rapists in Zenica prison. Or dead. What do you propose?”

  “As long as he stays in his house, we don’t need to arrange an accident. Let’s keep him there until after the meeting. If it goes well, perhaps we can move him to Mexico to learn that end of the business. If not, we either arrange an accident or send him back and let Marko decide. Nilo’s his son, after all.”

  Janko spun his chair around to face Anton. “We can’t give him up. He’s too unpredictable. Make sure he understands to stay out of sight. If he doesn’t, we’ll need to lock him down. Bring Goran over to deal with it.”

  “Did Marko say how things were going with our partners to the east?”

  “On schedule. Waiting for us to close the loop.”

  Anton nodded. “We’ll close it.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Cranwell stood at the side of his desk and indicated a chair. “Take a seat, Elaine. Care for tea?”

  “No, thanks, sir.” She sat and composed herself, notebook and pen at the ready on her lap. Cranwell invariably started unpleasant meetings with formality. He didn’t appear to be in the best of moods.

  He moved to his chair, primly adjusted his uniform trousers, and sat with his hands folded on the desk in front of him. “I’ve reviewed your progress up to now, as has Commander Hughes. He’s uncertain about the direction you’ve taken, and frankly, so am I. How you could connect these two murders is quite beyond us. A teenager out on a surreptitious date, murdered and then dumped in a nearby ditch. A professional leasing agent murdered in her flat miles away from the teenager and left in her own bathtub. We both think you’re putting entirely too much emphasis on what is a tenuous connection at best. Unconnected victims, dissimilar methods. Sheer coincidence.”

  Hughes, Elaine thought. So that dinosaur was behind this. Hughes could rarely remember his female detectives’ names, so he always called them “Lassie” at social functions. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “Yes, there is the slash to consider, but that’s the only consistent forensic evidence. Other than that, the methods are completely different. We don’t see it. And now you start harassing a respectable businessman in his offices. It doesn’t look promising.”

  Elaine knew the Sreckos hadn’t lodged a complaint. For one thing, if they had, it would have been the first thing Cranwell mentioned. For another, she knew in her gut that they were dirty and thus didn’t want any scrutiny from the Met. But she had to ask. “Have the Sreckos lodged a complaint?”

  “No, they haven’
t. I heard of it through unofficial channels. But I suspect if you push them harder, they will. Given the weakness of your overall case, and the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that they have any involvement beyond your suspicions about that part-time solicitor, well, you’re on thin ice.”

  Elaine took a moment to compose herself. “Sir, if I may, I know that the victims and methods are different, and I know that the connection isn’t obvious. But it’s stronger than it appears on the surface. I believe that Sheila and Geri were murdered by the same killer. The killer’s motives and methods don’t have to be the same for both victims. I believe he’s simply a man who solves problems that way. Perhaps Sheila refused to have sex with him, so he beat her and slashed her to destroy her beauty. But he took her to the dump site through the industrial estate, so he knew about the wasteland and the shoddy fence. He’d been there before. We’re convinced he had sex with Geri, but her death appeared premeditated. The sex was for fun or to get her to relax her guard. The common factor between the two is IRG, and it points to someone inside that firm. I’m convinced of that.”

  “You may be. We are not. Benford already made a hash of this investigation. He splattered egg all over our faces, haring off after that American doctor. The Directorate of Public Affairs has been wrestling with the press all week. Hughes wanted me to bring in a more experienced DCI after Marcus became ill, but in the end, we felt we needed a fresh approach. You certainly gave us that, didn’t you? Are the tabloids going to splatter us again?”

  So that’s where this was going. Public relations. “With all due respect, sir, I’ve gotten a lot of damned fine results in my career. Better than most of my colleagues. You made the right choice. And the tabloids never need an excuse to splatter whatever they want.”

  “You got a lot of those results working with Benford. But he’s not here anymore, and it’s beginning to look to us like we didn’t make the right choice.”

  She started to grit her teeth but caught herself. “You did make the right choice, sir. We need a bit more time, and it will come together.”

  * * *

  Elaine fumed. She stared at the situation board through the window that separated her office from the incident room, but Cranwell and Hughes dominated her thoughts. Bastards. Hughes was a consummate politician, but he wasn’t incompetent.

  Benford, the primary source of Elaine’s knowledge about Hughes, had taken her to the commander’s office several times to report on various cases and make sure she was noticed. She had also done some informal research on her own, mostly at the pub after work. According to the retired officers she had talked to, Hughes’s early years as a detective were good but not brilliant. He achieved reasonable results, had cultivated the right mentors, and had taken advantage of his knack for being in the right place at the right time. After serving his time in the various divisions, he began a carefully planned move into the upper echelons of the Met. She had thought his office decor had been revealing. Oak desk, oak paneling, overstuffed leather chairs, one fake Turner, and three fake Wardles. He had a vanity wall with pictures of him receiving the awards for whatever rank he had achieved at the time.

  On the opposite wall, nicely framed photos attested that he was a model family man (as he was, by all accounts), with a well-manicured, tweedy wife and three children, who, according to the photos, loved playing with large, hairy dogs on freshly mowed lawns. Hughes was the model of a modern, polished police executive who would have felt right at home in any large corporate executive suite. A model, except that he believed a woman’s ordained role was as a supporting character.

  According to Cranwell, Hughes believed that Elaine had built her hypothesis on nothing more than coincidence. Because Hughes believed that, Cranwell did too. Or said he did.

  At least, Cranwell would never say he did not. He was in many ways the opposite of Hughes. He was older and had most likely topped out in his career, despite a good record with several high-profile results. Where Hughes was large, with a red nose that testified to his love of the grape, Cranwell was ascetically thin and teetotaling. Where Hughes liked luxury, Cranwell was almost Benedictine in his simplicity. Those differences aside, Cranwell was doggedly loyal, the perfect subordinate. As such, he would never challenge his superior officer.

  Elaine decided there was no point hashing through the hierarchical politics of the Met for the millionth time. The only way to have her way was to be right and get a good result. She shoved Hughes and Cranwell out of her mind and refocused on the board, studying the lines connecting each bubble with other people, places, and times. The chart had plenty of bubbles, but it was woefully lacking in lines.

  Sheila and Geri each possessed a photo and a bubble and had connecting lines to the Leaside industrial estate and “slash” bubbles. She felt that Danny—Nilo—was the other connection between the two, but they hadn’t confirmed it.

  She noted with some joy that Willend’s information had been removed from the chart. She told herself that the joy was because her misgivings about his guilt were proven right, but she also realized it was because he was an interesting man. She wondered if he would call her. She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to. There would be lots of tabloid fodder there.

  Greene and Nilo had replaced Willend. There was little information about Nilo, but Evan was systematically checking his background. Greene was a common link, with lines to Geri, Nilo, and Leaside. Other lines connected Sheila to the Leaside and slash bubbles, but she was unconnected to the others socially. Her connection to Leaside could be meaningless. But there was the slash.

  They didn’t have much. Like Hughes, any defense lawyer would chalk it all up to coincidence. Coincidences. She hated them. They really did not exist, at least not in the realm of criminal investigation. By the time an investigation was under way, there was usually a glimmer of connection. What decisions did the victim make? What decisions did the killer make? What is coincidence but the result of decisions taken by people who share some subtle nexus, some obscure impetus that, at some point, begins to forge a chain of events—a chain held at one end by the murderer’s hand and at the other by the hand of the victim? Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, each party grasped the next link in the chain, driven by some personal need. With each decision, they made the chain shorter. Possibility crept toward probability. Whatever they wanted, whatever that desire was, they grew closer, until they reached a point at which only one link separated them. At that crux, a single decision either averted tragedy or made it inevitable.

  Causality must exist, otherwise there would be no action, so Elaine gave short shrift to coincidence. But jurors could believe in coincidence, and that belief spawned reasonable doubt in their minds. Reasonable doubt led to acquittal.

  She pictured the courtroom in her mind. The defense barrister, with his ill-fitting wig perched on a head filled with visions of silk, looked at each juror in turn as he succinctly pointed out that murders always occur near some property or other. Did that mean that the owners of the property were automatically involved in the crime? No. And what about the defendant? She pictured Nilo sitting in the dock, looking as benign as he could, while his barrister pointed out that, yes, he goes to dance clubs and raves. So do many young men in London. Young women go as well. The clubs are always crowded. Are we to suspect every young person who likes to dance?

  “I hope wherever you were was lovely.” Paula stood at the office door, smiling. “The lab says it can have the fingerprint results on the bottle tomorrow, but the DNA tests will take at least three days. Most likely a week.”

  Elaine shook her head to remove the thoughts from her mind. “I was strolling through the scrapyard of coincidence. It wasn’t a pleasant place. So three days, eh?”

  “Most likely a week. They’re short-staffed and swamped.”

  “What else is new? That’s sooner than it usually takes.” Elaine pulled her jacket from the back of her chair. “I’m going home. I hear a hot bath, a bottle of Rioja, and an empty bed pleadin
g for my company.”

  Paula laughed. “G’night, Chief. Too bad about the empty bed.”

  Elaine nodded, then glanced at the situation board once more as she left the office for her car. Greene was the common link between Geri, Nilo, and Leaside. Who was trailing Greene tonight?

  * * *

  No sooner had Elaine buckled her seatbelt than her mobile warbled. She answered without looking to see who was calling. “Hope.”

  An unfamiliar laugh floated from her earpiece. “I feel full of that this evening. Do you feel like a beer after you get off? If you have a favorite pub, I could meet you there.” The voice was familiar.

  “Ummm. This is DCI Hope. Who is speaking, please?”

  “Oh. Sorry. This is Peter. Willend. Is this a bad time?”

  Elaine hesitated. Funny how life can force a decision when you aren’t ready to make one. She needed a moment. “I’ll call you back. Two minutes.” She rang off and sat quietly in her car, staring through her windshield at the brick wall of the station. The one time I don’t check to see who the caller is, and it’s him. Was it too soon? And what did “soon” mean? She wasn’t involved with anyone or even getting over anyone. There was no solid reason not to meet Willend. Peter. It was only a beer, after all. The downside was that it would probably be awkward and uncomfortable for both of them. The upside was that it would most likely end with a vague “see you around” as they went their separate ways.

  She dialed him back and he picked up on the second ring. Elaine got to the point before Peter could say anything. “I could use a drink. I assume you’re at home. Got something to write with?” She gave him directions, ending with, “I’ll be there in a half-hour.”