Perfect Kill

by Helen Fields

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  By 10 a.m. Callanach had slipped into two hours’ sleep after a night of research, and awoken to the sound of the email alert pinging on his mobile. He stretched and grabbed the phone. There was an update from social services saying that Azzat and Huznia had successfully transferred to a family and were settling in. After that was an email from Jean-Paul. Daily phone calls to the hospital meant that Callanach knew his friend’s eyesight was recovering slowly, but that it still wasn’t up to staring at a screen and writing emails. He’d obviously drafted in assistance from Interpol to help him get through the admin building up in his absence.

  Luc, you have, apparently, decided against taking on a new partner while I’m temporarily out of action. That doesn’t seem like a good choice given the recent difficulties we found ourselves in. I can arrange either a replacement from Interpol for you, or pair you with an experienced officer from the local French police. Also, an update once in a while wouldn’t be a bad thing. What the hell’s going on? Jean-Paul.

  Callanach grinned. Jean-Paul could never maintain formality from the start of an email to its end. He could see him as clearly as if he were in the hospital room, trying his best to maintain an air of professionalism while stuck in bed, desperate to be up and involved.

  Callanach began typing.

  Jean-Paul, Many thanks for your email. I gave detailed consideration to requesting the assistance of a partner from either Interpol or the local police force but decided, due to expediency, that it would be more efficient to proceed with the investigation alone. I am aware that others continue to pursue strands of the investigation and will liaise with them as needed. Given that a second Scottish citizen is also now known to be on French soil, I believe it is crucial for me to take a lead in this case. I’m doing fine, by the way. No, I’m not taking any risks. No major shifts in the investigation. Now let me get on with the job, take the doctors’ advice, and get some rest. If anything comes up, you’ll be the first to know. Luc.

  He clicked send and opened the email he’d been saving until last.

  Luc, I’ll be out of contact most of today. We have leads in two murder cases, which may also resolve three others. There will be a large-scale operation tonight in an attempt to detain multiple suspects at a single scene. If you need me urgently, please contact the incident room and they will do their best to pass a message along. As soon as this is completed I will be in touch for a full update on the Malcolm Reilly and Bart Campbell cases which I know is overdue.

  And I’m sorry to email this rather than phone. Yesterday, the doctors confirmed that they still weren’t content with the extent of the surgery. Natasha is due to have a mastectomy in the next few days. We’re just waiting for them to confirm the appointment. She doesn’t want a lot of fuss. In spite of how brave she’s been, this is hitting her hard. Don’t race back. I’ll let you know as soon as I have more info. Ava.

  Callanach threw his mobile down on the bed.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, closing his eyes before drawing in a deep breath.

  His mobile offered another alert tone. He didn’t want to look. Enough news for one day. What he needed to do was write to Natasha, but anything he came up with sounded trite in his own head, and that was before seeing it reduced to a font. Something was better than nothing though. She needed to know he was thinking of her.

  He picked up his phone again, opening his email.

  The latest message sat in bold type, seemingly innocuous, its subject line proclaiming nothing other than the bland, ‘Your Condition’. He didn’t recognise the sender’s name.

  He took a screen grab, then opened the message. It was written in French and addressed to Monsieur Chevotet. He’d given a false email address to the clinic and had all messages diverted into his usual email. He took another screen grab of the complete email before beginning to read.

  Monsieur Chevotet, We are contacting you privately and confidentially to offer you a consultation regarding a possible treatment for your condition. Access to our treatments is extremely limited, due to cost and practical considerations. You have been referred to us as an end of life case, and in those circumstances we are prepared to include you in our potential patients list. You will need to consent to engaging with us in absolute confidence. Big pharmaceutical corporations and governments conspire together to keep alternative treatments from the public, receiving billions of euros each year in covert payments for licensing only those drugs and treatments that serve them. We have consistently refused to engage in this corrupt process, and thus a licence has been refused. If you cannot guarantee discretion then we will have no choice but to remove your name from our list, as you will jeopardise the opportunity for many others to receive potentially life-saving treatment at a time when their medical advisors have told them their situation is hopeless. Your invitation to receive further, more detailed information will expire within one hour. You can confirm your interest by replying to this email, upon which you will be given details for an in-person meeting, with an access code and password. You alone will be allowed to attend that meeting. You must bring photographic ID and be prepared to be checked for recording devices.

  It was signed from Group 2029. No name.

  He messaged Interpol immediately, asking for a trace on the email, not that there would be a simple IP address that would lead them to the author. Whoever was organising international abductions of organ donors wasn’t going to fail to protect themselves at the most basic communications level.

  He waited half an hour, made sure Interpol was watching and recording the email exchange, then replied.

  Dear Group 2029. I am interested in hearing more. My doctor has said there’s no treatment available except a transplant, but my chances of getting a suitable liver in time are millions to one. I have a lot of questions. Do you have a website? What are your success rates? Would this be in France or do I need to travel? Is there a phone number I could call, as I’m anxious not to lose any more time. Yours, Luc Chevotet.

  They weren’t going to answer any of his questions in an email, but a failure to ask them would raise an immediate red flag. Offer this sort of potential life-saving treatment to anyone who needed it and they would inevitably come back asking for more information. It took only eight minutes for the response.

  Monsieur Chevotet, Please attend at 167 Rue des Bateliers, Clichy, apartment 206, this afternoon at 4 p.m. precisely. Attend alone. Identification and a body check will be required. You will have a 30-minute consultation session. Our representative will have information for you. He is not from Group 2029, but he will be able to pass any questions you have along to us after the consultation. There is no fee payable at this stage. If you attend with other people, you will not be allowed access. If it becomes clear that you have notified other people about our services, your consultation will be terminated to protect our other patients. You will not need a medical. We offer treatments that differ from normal medical procedures. If you do not attend this meeting, no further appointment will be offered and no further communications will be entered into. We look forward to meeting you and helping to reshape your future. Apartment access code 87961, password Cathedral. Group 2029.

  Callanach checked the details for the apartment. It was a new build and rooms were being offered for short-term business purposes as well as for longer-term residential lettings. Payment would inevitably have been made in cash or using an online payment facility that couldn’t be traced back. Interpol would be attempting to identify the lessee already, but Callanach wouldn’t be holding his breath. If it were a hotel room, they might have some success persuading the management to allow them to place surveillance in a room, but the lease would have begun in the private building already, and at that stage they’d require a court order to force the building owner to comply. It could be done quickly, but not quickly enough if there was a lease in place and rights potentially being infringed.

  He emailed an update to Jean-Paul, copying in both Ava
and Interpol HQ. French police would detain whoever met him in person at the end of the meeting, and an order to examine their communications would be obtained within an hour of identifying them. What they actually needed, though, was evidence of where Bart Campbell was being held. That’s if he was still alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It had been a relatively easy afternoon. Scalp had instructed that the flat doors be closed to clients given the number of guards he had at the warehouse setting up. The new boss had been unusually jovial all day, parading around barking instructions, reminding them time and time again that his first race was going to make everything that had gone before look like amateur night at the dog track. The comparison of the women to dogs wasn’t wasted on Elenuta. Like so many greyhounds, the women were being kept for business purposes only, worked until they broke, then put down as soon as they weren’t earning their keep any more.

  Scalp had adopted an air of superiority that, almost impossibly, made him even more dislikeable. One phone call after another had come through to his mobile. Guards had come and gone, lockable cash boxes had been unwrapped from pristine cardboard, new SIM cards had been inserted into phones to be destroyed immediately after the race was over, and Scalp himself had changed outfit three times, never quite satisfied that he was looking his absolute best for his crowning moment when he took the microphone.

  Elenuta had got through the previous night quietly after Lively had gone, desperate to tell the other women that their time left in captivity was on a countdown, but convinced she’d jinx it if she did. She’d slept wearing the jeans that contained Lively’s knife, reaching down repeatedly to run her fingers along its outline in the hem, and fallen asleep clutching it, even though it meant having her leg bent up at an unnatural angle. She’d woken up stiff, her hip sore, and happier than she’d felt since the day she’d been forced into the back of a truck and driven across Europe. All she had to do now was wait it out. Just a few hours and the police would be there. Safety was waiting just outside the door. It was four in the afternoon when Scalp turned up with two new goons in tow. Elenuta kept to the back of the row of women when they were called out into the corridor, head down but listening carefully. Any additional information she could give the police when they turned up would help.

  She stole a quick glance at Scalp. He was paler than she remembered, a sheen of sweat across his forehead lighting him up beneath the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  ‘Right, I’ve got a special job on tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ll be needing a couple of volunteers for it.’

  Elenuta’s stomach shrivelled. She’d known this was a possibility but hoped the women who’d be racing had already been selected from the other flats. Not that it made it any better for those women, just that she wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that she’d kept information from her flatmates that could have helped them avoid this situation.

  ‘So who hasn’t been pulling their weight?’ he asked their regular guard. ‘Only this would be an opportunity for them to get back in my good books.’

  None of the women spoke. They might not have known what was going on, but they’d all long since stopped trusting anything they were told.

  ‘Her,’ the guard pointed at one of the oldest women in the group, Suzan, who rarely got chosen unless all the other girls were busy, ‘or her.’ He poked Anika in the shoulder. At just sixteen, Anika might have been a favourite with the regulars if she took better care of herself, but lately Elenuta had noticed the girl pulling out patches of her hair and eyelashes. She’d lost so much weight that every rib showed as clearly as on an X-ray, and her eyes appeared overlarge. The effect was ghoulish and off-putting.

  ‘All right,’ Scalp said. ‘You can both come. If you’re good, you’ll get a prize.’

  Suzan looked shocked and terrified, while Anika began to smile. Elenuta wanted to slap some reality into her.

  ‘What prize?’ Anika asked, stepping forward towards Scalp.

  Elenuta saw heroin’s delusion in her eyes, and realised she’d been using far more than the other women to cope with the day-to-day existence. Anika wouldn’t stand a chance in the race. She was just as likely to sit on the floor and wait for death as she was to run and fight. If the police didn’t intervene in time, whatever their plan was, Anika was almost certainly going to be the first to die. The only place she could possibly survive was in the flat with the other women to protect her.

  All Elenuta had wanted was to keep quiet, stay put, and wait. The day’s hours had slipped away, and now the end was in sight. She believed that Sergeant Lively, or someone under his command, would come to the flat. Any guards that remained would be arrested. Scalp would be far away, at whatever venue he’d chosen for the race, and the police would be there too, ready to stop that bloodbath before any more women lost their lives. That was why she’d waited all day – so the police had a chance to figure out everything about the race. Only nothing in life was certain. She’d learned that lesson the hard way when she was abducted. It was possible that the police would be a split-second too late. Scalp might change the format for the race and start it early or, God forbid, decide to sacrifice some poor woman at the very start to prove – mainly to himself – how incredibly powerful he was. Or it might all be fine. It would have to be, she told herself. She wasn’t going to die today. But she couldn’t let someone as young and vulnerable as Anika die either.

  ‘Fuck,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Not my problem.’ But her conscience objected immediately. Reluctant hero or not, Elenuta knew it wasn’t even a choice. The police would save them all, she persuaded herself, because they had to. It was that, or execution.

  She’d thought this would be the last time she’d have to look at Scalp’s face, unless it was from a witness box in a courtroom with police and prison officers there to protect her. She welcomed the chance to look into his eyes under those circumstances. But she couldn’t send a child to her death. Much as she hated to, she stepped forward.

  ‘I want chance,’ Elenuta said. ‘I want win prize.’ She raised her eyebrows and stared at Scalp.

  ‘You can get back to work,’ Scalp said. ‘I’ve got what I wanted.’

  ‘I run away again. I did before.’

  ‘That was you, was it? Lucky for you you’ve a half-decent fucking face. You’re a money-earner.’

  ‘If no prize, I kill next client. Police will come look.’

  ‘Are you fucking threatening me?’ Scalp stepped towards her, pushing the still-grinning Anika out of the way. She stumbled into the wall as Scalp grabbed a handful of Elenuta’s hair and twisted her neck upwards.

  ‘I want prize,’ she repeated.

  ‘That’s because you don’t know what the prize is.’ He snarled in her face and she resisted the temptation to headbutt him. Scalp wasn’t above strangling a woman to death out of sheer anger, even if it made no commercial sense.

  ‘I have first go. Anika is only sixteen. She try next time.’

  ‘She’s young. The crowd will like it. Plus she’s useless here. I’ve made my decision. Get back in your room.’ He released her, letting her fall into her doorway. Elenuta got upright again and walked after him.

  ‘I see film of race. I know what is. I escape and tell police.’ She held his gaze, watching his frown turn into something closer to hatred.

  ‘You’ll die,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want?’ Elenuta held her tongue. ‘Because if that’s it, I can help you with that right here, right now. Shall I?’

  He bent down to look her straight in the eyes. His breath stank of stale cigarette smoke, and just below his nose were tell-tale grains of white powder. She counted down from ten, rigid, waiting for his decision.

  ‘All right, you fucking bitch, you want to race, you can. I don’t ever want to see your face again, so I might as well make some money out of you. The kid can take the next turn. And now we’re fucking late, that’s just great. Get these two in the car,’ he told the man next to him. ‘The rest of
you get cleaned up. It bloody stinks in here.’ He kicked a bin as he walked past, head held high, king of his castle.

  One of the men took Elenuta by the arm, pulling her towards the door.

  ‘Wait! Collar,’ she remembered.

  Scalp took a knife from his pocket and cut through it.

  ‘You won’t be needing it again anyway,’ he told Elenuta, as he did the same with Suzan’s collar.

  ‘Maybe I win,’ Elenuta said quietly.

  ‘If you win, sweetheart, I’m going to celebrate by wringing your fucking neck myself. How’s that for an evening to look forward to?’

  Scalp shoved her and Suzan across the threshold. Elenuta took a last look at the row of women staring in horror as she left. The police were nowhere to be seen as they exited the building. Either the operation had gone terribly wrong or they were doing their job exceptionally well. She was betting on the latter with her life.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Rue des Bateliers was out of Paris’ centre, an innocuous enough road with the Grand Parc des Docks de Saint-Ouen on one side and semi-high-rise flats in different stages of construction along the other. It hardly seemed the place you’d go to buy a new organ from a kidnap victim, but then, Callanach wondered, where was? Officers were stationed outside the building to provide backup, but none were inside. It was too much of a risk. The apartment had been rented for the previous two weeks, and it was safe to assume Group 2029 had security arrangements in place which included monitoring people entering and exiting. A sudden influx of people would immediately arouse suspicion.

  He repeated the routine, yellowing his eyes and preparing himself for likely questions. Group 2029 had paid the rent in cash, together with a deposit that limited the amount of questions asked by the landlord. There were no company records available for them, and no intelligence about them. It seemed likely that the name changed on each email. Callanach punched the entry code into the panel outside the apartment door and entered.