Perfect Kill

by Helen Fields

  ‘You seen the DCI yet?’ Lively shouted, breaking the quiet.

  ‘I have,’ Tripp replied. He was an unwilling public speaker, but people obviously wanted to know what the structure of the next week was to be. ‘I’m going to be following up on the Bart Campbell disappearance with DC Monroe. The chief agrees there’s a possible link to Malcolm Reilly which needs looking into. She wants you and DI Graham to keep moving on the Gene Oldman murder.’

  ‘Aye, I bet she wants me dealing with that one, keeping me where I belong, out with the good folk of Wester Hailes,’ Lively sniped.

  Tripp wandered over to speak with Janet Monroe, as Detective Inspector Graham entered the room.

  ‘Right, there’s a lot to do. Sergeant Lively, any news on the footprint we found on the floor in Gene Oldman’s kitchen?’ Graham began.

  ‘Sure. Given that it was only a partial print the shoe size is estimated to be a five, so we’re working on the basis that whoever left the print is either an adolescent, or if it’s an adult it’s likely to be a female. The foot width is slim, although that may be due to not putting the full foot on the floor because of the injury. DNA profile is definitely not a match for Oldman’s.’

  ‘Anything from any of Oldman’s family members yet that might help?’ Graham asked.

  ‘He’s got a sister whose exact words were, “Why the fuck are ye bothering me with this shite? Sodding git got what he deserved.”’

  ‘Does she have an alibi for the time of death?’

  ‘Depends if you call long-term residence in Her Majesty’s Prison Cornton Vale an alibi or not. I’d say Cornton probably has a better community spirit than Wester Hailes,’ Lively sniggered.

  ‘Sir!’ PC Biddlecombe arrived in the doorway, panting.

  ‘Yes, constable?’

  ‘Farmer from a pig farm out at Roslin just called in.’ She stood, breathless, staring into the packed incident room as if it were an exam hall and she’d forgotten to study.

  ‘And that would be of interest to us because …’ Lively prompted.

  ‘Oh my God, right, he found pieces of skulls this morning when he was mucking out a pen. He’s certain they weren’t there a week ago. Should I … um …’

  ‘Give Sergeant Lively the details,’ Graham instructed. ‘And get a crime scene investigation team out there straight away.’

  Biddlecombe spun round to exit as quickly as possible, succeeding only in smacking her left shoulder into the doorframe. There was a ripple of laughter that Graham quelled with a look.

  ‘You want me to go out there and take a look in person?’ Lively asked.

  ‘Yes, but keep it brief, liaise with the forensic team, then get back on with the Oldman case. The leads are getting staler every day, and these skull fragments may not be human, or they might be from ancient bodies the pigs have just scratched up from the ground. I don’t want to get distracted by it until we have some hard facts.’

  ‘Take some gloves, Sarge,’ a young officer shouted gleefully from the back of the room. ‘That pig shit isn’t gonna search itself.’

  ‘Is that right, DC Swift? I’ll be needing some assistance then. Grab your coat, lad, you’ve pulled.’

  There was a groan followed by the sound of back-slapping.

  ‘I’m supposed to be helping DS Tripp establish who was in the restaurant the night Bart Campbell disappeared, sir,’ John Swift moaned.

  ‘I can spare you, constable,’ Tripp confirmed. ‘And I’ll notify DCI Turner about the skulls.’

  Lively threw a hi-vis jacket in Swift’s direction, and the two of them headed for the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fleury-Mérogis Prison, the largest prison in Europe, sat in 180 hectares of a southern suburb of Paris, a reminder to all who saw her what good came of criminal enterprises. Sadly, it was a lesson that hadn’t been learned by its 4,100 occupants. A central polygon-shaped building off-shot five three-armed wings, each home to four floors of inmates: men, women and juveniles. Wire on the roofs discouraged daring attempts at escape by helicopter, necessary given the connections some of the inmates had. Over the years, Callanach and Jean-Paul had delivered plenty of new ‘guests’ to Fleury-Mérogis, many of whom were still in residence, some never destined to freely see the light of day.

  They showed their Interpol credentials and emptied their pockets into lockers. Built fairly recently in the 1960s, the prison atmosphere was nonetheless tense with an oppressive sense of history, perhaps because time moved so slowly within its walls. They didn’t talk as they were escorted to the interview rooms, each of them caught up in their own memories of previous criminal endeavours whose perpetrators had been incarcerated there. A terrorist cell whose movements they’d watched until minutes before an attack. A copycat killer who’d perfected his skills to such a pinnacle that he’d far outshone the man he’d admired. Others whose lives were just pathetic, and who’d turned to crime in boredom and frustration. Fleury-Mérogis was a miniature city, with all its class divides, volatile micro-economies, victors and victims, every conceivable language whispered and screamed in its hallways and darker places. Callanach hated it.

  Giorgia Moretti-Russo had been fifty-three years of age when Jean-Paul led the case that resulted in her multiple life sentences. Callanach had spent his night reading the files. Seven counts of murder, all for organ harvesting purposes, and those were just the bodies that had been found. It was pretty clear that Russo hadn’t started with those victims, though, and Interpol’s internal memos theorised that thirty to forty was a more accurate estimate. A former surgeon in Italy, she had all the skills necessary for the practical side of the business, while her French husband had taken care of the administration. He’d been killed resisting arrest. Her only comment on the subject, reportedly, was how wasteful such a death was, when her spouse’s organs could have netted her in the region of half a million dollars.

  Jean-Paul and Callanach waited for her, arms crossed, the chill air in the interview room only half the reason they felt so cold. Moretti-Russo had never expressed a single regret for what she’d done, abducting men and women to specific racial and age specifications, killing to order and making herself rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams. With better self-control, she could have taken the money and run away to a non-extradition South American country, and lived the rest of her life under the warm sun in luxury. But she’d wanted more.

  The woman who appeared in the doorway accompanied by a prison guard was an exception among Fleury-Mérogis lifers. Incarceration seemed to suit her. Now in her early sixties, she was slim but not skinny, her skin looked as if she’d never missed a day of moisturising, and she walked straight-backed with a confidence that made Callanach feel as if he were the inmate and she the visitor. But then she had nothing to lose, and they did.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she cooed, extending her hand regally, bent slightly at the wrist, as if they should kiss it. Jean-Paul stood up and opted for shaking it instead. Callanach kept his seat, arms folded. Russo wanted them to acknowledge her as if she were a fellow professional, living life beyond the walls she’d made for herself, and he wasn’t going to play her game.

  She sat down opposite them at the small table, crossing her long legs demurely at the ankles, and tossing her dark, bobbed hair to one side. Callanach saw she must have been an extraordinary beauty in her youth, obviously intelligent, used to getting her own way. She smiled at him with perfect teeth, marred only by a black space at the back. Callanach couldn’t help himself; intrigued, he tipped his head further to the right to better view the aberration.

  ‘Curious?’ she said breathily, leaning towards him. ‘Let me open my mouth for you.’

  She did so slowly, running her pink tongue across her lower lip, drawing the moment out. Callanach didn’t stop her. This was part of her game, and he’d learned with narcissists that it was easier and more fruitful to let them play a while. Turning her head to the side, she slid a finger into her mouth then pulled her cheek away to give him a bet
ter view. She’d lost a tooth, presumably while in prison or there was no doubt she’d have had a dentist fit a crown.

  ‘You want to know how it happened, so let me spare you the embarrassment of such obvious interest. A woman who’d been here some time, in for kidnapping I think, although I was too bored to bother with the details, decided she didn’t like the way I held my head. She rather stupidly thought that trying to carve her initial into my face in the showers might be a good way of bringing me down to her level. Sadly for her, the shiv she’d secreted in her rectum was slippery from the soap she’d used to get it out. My hands, expecting her as I was, were dry, so the shiv ended up in her temple rather than my cheek. During the altercation she landed a punch that fractured my jaw, and my tooth was the casualty, but it was a small price to pay for the overall victory. She’s in a special unit now, and every meal is provided to her by a plastic teaspoon, while she listens to piped music from her wheelchair. Since then my life here has been … remarkably peaceful.’

  ‘Mrs Moretti-Russo, we’re here to talk to you about a case,’ Jean-Paul began. ‘I gather you were informed of that when we asked to speak with you. Did you have a chance to consult with your lawyer about the meeting?’

  ‘Call me Giorgia, please,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not really appropriate, so if you don’t mind we’ll—’

  She cut across the attempt to maintain formality.

  ‘You’ll call me Giorgia and I’ll call you by your first names, or we don’t speak at all. My house, my rules. There’s a very attractive young woman in my cell waiting to massage my feet, so don’t think I don’t have anywhere else to be.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jean-Paul didn’t miss a beat. Callanach wanted to leave. Giorgia Moretti-Russo was serpentine and calculating. ‘I’m Jean-Paul and this is Luc. We’re grateful you agreed to see us. Do you mind if we use a voice recorder?’

  ‘Of course not. There’ll have to be a deal, after all. I certainly want you to feel as if you’re getting value for money.’ As Jean-Paul set up his voice recorder, she made a point of turning to look Callanach full in the eyes, with a quick up-and-down sweep for good measure.

  ‘Are you allowed to speak or just here for security purposes?’

  ‘I speak as and when I feel the need,’ Callanach replied.

  ‘You don’t like me.’ She tipped her head to one side.

  ‘Did you expect me to?’ he asked, knowing she was drawing him in and wanting to resist, but unwilling to let her dominate the conversation.

  ‘I expect an Interpol agent to keep an open mind and judge based on his own perceptions, rather than having an emotional reaction to a file of papers that tells only half a tale.’

  Callanach found a spot on the wall to stare at. She wanted him to look her in the eyes, and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. It was her eyes, in fact, that had led the police to her. With one light hazel pupil and the other dark brown, she was too recognisable for her own good, but too vain to have worn coloured lenses as a disguise. She was scouting for victims when she’d approached a plainclothes police officer, and that had been the end.

  ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ Jean-Paul interrupted.

  ‘You’ll have spoken to the governor already, of course, and agreed terms with him.’ She smoothed an eyebrow as she waited for Jean-Paul to open with an offer.

  Instead, he opened an envelope and began spreading photos of Malcolm Reilly on the table, starting with three photos as he’d been in life: one in his ski gear, one taken at the gym, and another that had been downloaded from a social media post – Malcolm on holiday, shirtless, tanned, on a beach. That stopped her in her tracks. She reached out her fingers slowly, manicured nails stroking the images.

  ‘No body fat,’ she purred. ‘Muscly without bulk. He was what … five foot nine?’

  Jean-Paul checked his notes.

  ‘Five ten,’ he confirmed.

  ‘So you believe his organs were harvested, but you have no leads. How much of him was taken?’

  ‘Most of the major organs,’ Jean-Paul said, taking out the photos of Malcolm’s body as it was discovered, followed by the postmortem photographs.

  Giorgia picked them up one by one, taking her time, sliding a slim pair of glasses from her pocket and putting them on, her movements self-conscious for the first time. She hated wearing them, Callanach realised. It made her acknowledge ageing. And the glasses dulled the impact that her extraordinary eyes made, of course. The second she’d finished her examination, she slid the glasses back off, returning them to her pocket rather than leaving them on the table where she would have had to see the space they occupied.

  Callanach and Jean-Paul both knew better than to prompt. They sat silently waiting for her to open up. She was enjoying the involvement and the attention. That much was clear from her demeanour. She leaned forward on the table, frowning then closing her eyes, imagining the scenario that had eventually delivered Malcolm Reilly into the hands of the pathologist, no doubt.

  ‘Do you have the postmortem report with you?’ she asked. ‘I need more details on the incisions and the treatment of the blood vessels. The photos are good but they’re not the whole story.’

  Jean-Paul passed it over.

  They sat in silence again as she read. Callanach had read the documents so many times they were pretty much ingrained in his memory. The oral morphine wasn’t difficult to get hold of. It was prescribed regularly to patients with conditions causing extreme pain, particularly those receiving end of life care at home.

  ‘Pen,’ she ordered. Jean-Paul handed her a pencil in compliance with the governor’s orders. Pens were too easily broken, sharpened and turned into lethal weapons.

  Glasses back on, Giorgia began underlining and dashing off notes in margins, drawing circles around certain words. Callanach watched as she worked. This was a different woman, utterly focused and unaware of herself. She was less dislikeable like that, he decided, her vanity replaced with an instinctual return to the professionalism that had marked her early days as a surgeon. This time when she was done, the glasses remained in place. She tapped her fingernails on the desk. It was strategy time. She was obviously intrigued and engrossed, but that wouldn’t prevent negotiations.

  ‘Best offer, in one go. Don’t mess me around. And before you ask if I can help you or not, yes I can. Your pathologist is good but he’s not a surgeon so the insights are, being polite, lacking.’

  ‘A cell to yourself. No more sharing. An additional sixty minutes per day out of your cell in recreational areas. Your choice of jobs inside the prison. One extra visit per month,’ Jean-Paul announced.

  It wasn’t a bad deal, but she was holding the cards and they all knew it. They’d expected her to ask for more, of course, but Jean-Paul hadn’t held anything back. There was no point. Anything less than the offer he’d made wouldn’t yield results. It was up to her to decide whether she wanted the little extras that the deal would give her. To a life prisoner, an extra hour a day out of her cell added up to an awful lot over the years.

  ‘That’s all?’ she directed at Callanach, playing games again. He nodded. ‘I’ll need a week to think about it. Come back again in seven days. If I need more thinking time than that I’ll have the governor let you know.’

  ‘Don’t bother with that,’ Callanach said, stretching his legs out in front of him and keeping his shoulders loose. ‘You don’t want us to play games, and we don’t want you to. You know there’s a time issue, we know that life inside a prison – even with your skills at manipulating people – is dull. You may not find it scary any more, you may have become accustomed to the crappy food, and perhaps there’s a certain hierarchy that you’ve topped, but you’re bored. An extra hour a day out of your cell, better access to all the people and information you need to maintain your status, is worth a lot.’

  Giorgia pushed her glasses to the top of her head. That, Callanach realised, was what she did when she thought no one was watching her.
<
br />   ‘It is, Luc,’ she purred, ‘but there are other things I’d rather have.’

  ‘Name them. Just out of interest. Our hands are tied as far as negotiating goes,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Much of my authority in here comes from my former job. I’m a good doctor. Whatever else I did wrong, no one could ever say my expertise was lacking. I want access to the latest medical journals to stay up to date. The library here says they’re too expensive to stock and won’t make the expenditure for me alone.’

  ‘Noted,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘I can ask about that.’

  ‘And I’d like a stethoscope and an otoscope. It’s designed for checking ears, but works just as well for other parts of the body. Neither instrument costs much.’

  ‘What for?’ Jean-Paul asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ she snapped. Giorgia took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Apologies, I’m not used to being questioned. I run an informal clinic in here. It keeps my mind occupied but there are limits – severe limits – to what I can do with no medical kit.’

  ‘There are doctors here, and for serious cases inmates are referred to the hospital. I don’t see the point,’ Jean-Paul said.

  ‘Of course you don’t. You’re not used to waiting a month to see a doctor while your throat’s getting sorer, or your urinary tract infection gets so bad you can’t piss without screaming. You’re not used to having prison guards ask you for favours just so you can be referred to the medical centre. You don’t understand how it feels to be laughed at and told it’s too bad when you’re in pain. I offer a fast way to get medical advice. I even save the doctors here valuable time. I know when symptoms are serious and I can pass that information on to the guards who are the most easily persuadable. Twice I’ve diagnosed signs of serious illness that the prison doctors had decided were malingering or hyperbole. One of those women got the treatment she needed, and the other at least got proper pain relief and a hospice bed to pass in peace. Not all monsters are useless. It’s just a different set of rules.’