[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second Page 9

  But now he had a specific target in mind. He would find the man who robbed him of Katie, use the skills honed during his time in the States, and visit upon him ten times Katie’s pain. He didn’t want to hurt Alicia to attain the information he’d need. But he would.

  If he had to.

  The station was yellow brick and modern. Reporters staked out the lobby, but Murphy drove around the back. They all got out. Alicia—still holding his hand—led Richard through a door that required a card swipe. The corridors echoed with every step. It seemed vulgar somehow, the noise, the clattering.

  Murphy swiped his card at another set of doors with the word “Morgue” printed on them. These swooshed open and the floors here were tile rather than stone, muffling their footfalls.

  Richard pictured the killer: for some reason this was a man in leather pants, naked from the waist up, holding a knife before him. A strange image, and he couldn’t understand how he’d constructed it. The man was also muscular, grinning, offering to put down the knife, to fight Richard fairly, himself in a smart suit—the one he would wear to Katie’s funeral—and he’d take up the offer of a fair fight, allow the leather-pants man to land a punch in his midsection, before using a K-bar hunting knife to gut the miserable bastard inside out, then—

  “Donald will see if she’s ready,” Alicia said softly.

  “Thank you,” Richard said.

  When Murphy reappeared, he nodded, and the three of them went inside.

  Richard expected a morgue like in US telly programs, all chrome doors and gurneys. This was mostly blue with hints of grey. Yet it was the grey that stood out, less of it, but like the two colours had fought over who would dominate the room and the grey won. There was only one door, where he imagined all the bodies went. One lay outside, in a black bag on a table next to the wall.

  Katie.

  Alicia asked once more if he was ready. He said yes. She took the zip in one hand, the bag in her other, and pulled. Now he’d see what the damage. Feel it, the pain.

  Katie’s pain.

  The zip clacked open, a smell, kind-of perfumed, leaching from within. They warned him so many times about the state of her that no further concern was necessary. A tech cleaned her, they said earlier, collected what Murphy called “evidence” but Richard knew was the blood and other matter that would have coated his daughter.

  Alicia Friend then fixed him with a stare that said “last chance” and Richard nodded.

  She parted the bag.

  Katie was visible from head to collarbone. Beaten, cleansed of blood, but mangled, destroyed. This wasn’t the person he raised, who started reading sooner than any kid at her school, the ten-year-old in the middle of a pub screaming for Johnny Wilkinson to kick that ball … the girl who, years later, drank pints to save queuing.

  He ran his finger over his daughter’s neck.

  So pale.

  And her collarbone, intact. Which struck Richard as odd.

  What had the man seen in her that he felt compelled to destroy her face so comprehensively?

  Richard himself killed, yes. But he wasn’t a sadist.

  He opened the zip wider, not embarrassed by the corpse’s nakedness. Katie would be mortified if she knew, but he needed the clues, to understand how this man thought.

  His finger moved the edge of the bag and something suddenly wasn’t right.

  God. He had been so gullible.

  “There’s something on her shoulder,” Richard said.

  Alicia moved the bag for a clearer angle. One of the girl’s breasts popped out, grazing the zip, but Alicia didn’t draw attention to it. She was looking at the thing on the corpse’s shoulder. “It goes all the way down her arm.” She opened the bag further to gain a wider view. “It’s a tiger.”

  Murphy examined it too. “Couldn’t see it for the blood earlier.” He caught himself, apologised to Richard.

  “That’s okay,” Richard said, smiling. “Katie doesn’t have a tattoo. This isn’t my daughter.”

  Chapter Ten

  Alfie Rhee was done packing. He turned off the water, donned a pair of comfy pants and ensured he packed a change of socks in his hand luggage along with a book on Hillary Clinton, his iPod, passport, and an empty and activated credit card in his wallet. The credit card was a work of art. Saving his cash, he made semi-regular large purchases on it, paying it off in instalments that attracted a little—but not too much—interest, until he worked the credit limit all the way up to $25,000. If he maxed it out, no problem. Once it served its purpose, it was unlikely Alfie could ever return to the United States.

  He looked around one final time, and ran an electromagnet over each side of his computer, erasing the disk. He was set.

  A knock at the door.

  Alfie’s place was a good size. Not too big, but open-plan, kind of like the apartments in that old sitcom, Friends. He’d bought it with a payoff from his former employer, the result of suing for racist discrimination having cited several white Americans who breached similar procedures and did not suffer the mental anguish he was forced to endure.

  Alfie opened the door to Special Agent Turner.

  “Hey,” she said, presenting her FBI creds, as if Alfie wouldn’t know who she was.

  “What?” Alfie said.

  “Going on a trip?”

  “What gives you that idea?” He let the holdall drop from his shoulder onto the floor and placed his small case on the kitchen table.

  “Inviting us in?”

  “Depends who ‘us’ is.”

  A man stepped into the doorway, his creds also on display. “Agent Morris.” Perfect suit, set hair, broad shoulders. White. Well-spoken, no accent, and Alfie pictured him wearing real expensive shades outdoors. Like a model hired to pose for an FBI recruitment poster.

  “You look okay I suppose.” Alfie stood aside. “And you’re with Gail Turner, so I guess I can trust you around my expensive china.”

  They gathered in the kitchen area. Alfie offered coffee. The two agents declined. He was glad. He’d have had to turn the water back on.

  “You mind telling me where you’re going?” Turner said.

  “Visiting friends.”

  “Going far?”

  Alfie shrugged.

  “You haven’t booked a flight yet,” Morris said.

  “You tapping my phone?”

  “Your financial records, actually. It’s routine when we trace someone hacking into our systems.”

  “I’ll be sure to let you know if I hear anything about that.” He shook his head. “Nasty business. Goddamn hackers. Makes me glad the Patriot Act exists.”

  Morris sat at the table, pulled Alfie’s hand luggage towards him.

  “If you don’t have a warrant, leave that the hell alone,” Alfie said.

  “Oh right,” Turner said. “Nearly forgot.”

  She handed Alfie a signed search warrant.

  He read it. “Says here you can seize all computer equipment and official documents,” Alfie said, snatching his bag. “Seize away. I got a plane to catch.”

  “Sir, you don’t have a plane to catch at all,” Morris said. “We already established you haven’t booked one.”

  “I know. I was hoping to get a cheap last minute deal to Aruba.” A glance at Morris. “It’s where my friends live.”

  “Okay, enough bullshit,” Turner said. “Sit down and listen.”

  The three now sat around the table.

  Classic Bureau tactics. The old put-the-suspect-at-ease play, then hit ’em. It wasn’t standard practice to do it in a suspect’s kitchen, though. If they were here to take him down for hacking into ViCAP they wouldn’t even have knocked. He’d be handcuffed, face down, with Morris looking even smugger than he did right now. Which was pretty damn smug.

  “You’re heading to England,” Turner said. “The warrant is down to the hack, but it isn’t why we’re here. We have an IP address but no solid evidence. Just enough for a warrant. But I’ve personally known about the co
de you planted for years now. I knew why you did it and I persuaded our tech guys not to send it up the pipe. You’re looking for something that isn’t there, but I figured if we took that away, you’d do something far more stupid.”

  “For something that isn’t there, it looked real solid to me. Still does.”

  “You weren’t objective enough to make that decision. Hell, you weren’t even a profiler.”

  “And profilers are never wrong?”

  “Not with something that big, no. Your wife was killed by a burglar, Alfie. Not some boogie man. I mean, Jesus, Alfie. They even have a guy in custody for the thing in England. I checked.”

  Alfie stood quickly, clattering the chair into his stove. He caught himself, didn’t shout, didn’t swear. Just pointed. “I know what you think. But now I have proof. He’s surfaced.”

  Turner wasn’t fazed by the outburst. She watched him carefully. “In England? You really believe that?”

  Alfie leaned on the counter top, head down. All the years he’d known Turner, before and after he left the Bureau, never once had she believed him, believed what he knew. It was simple, too simple for her.

  “He’s surfaced,” he said again.

  Turner stood up slowly. “Alfie, we can’t let an ex-FBI agent race around England chasing an imaginary killer.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Morris said, “The code implanted in our system is enough to hold you.”

  “When the evidence is declared unusable I’ll be free—free to go to England and free to sue you assholes for harassment, false imprisonment and whatever else my lawyer’ll throw at you.”

  Turner and Morris noticed the magnet simultaneously. Turner said, “Fine. But hear me out one last time?”

  Alfie checked his watch.

  Why did I do that?

  He was going to jump on the next plane that came up. Figured it might avoid a scene like this one if he didn’t book it in advance. He guessed Gail watched him, bugged him, made sure he wasn’t using the information for nefarious means. His crime was relatively minor, so unworthy of FBI man hours.

  “You knew,” Alfie said, moving toward Turner. “You were watching, flagging the same things I was.”

  “I was worried,” she said.

  “You were worried? Worried what? Worried I might catch this guy?”

  “No…”

  He was close to her now. Morris rose and edged forwards.

  “You know I’m right. You know he’s real, that he killed Stacy, that he killed the others.”

  “Alfie, I was worried about you. I still am.” So this was not just an official visit.

  “You know I’m right.” Alfie put his face up to hers. “Say it. Say I’m right.”

  “That’s enough, buddy.” Morris was on him, his thick arm about Alfie’s neck, a frowned-upon “sleeper” hold in effect, pulling him off Turner. He gripped Morris’s elbow in one hand, wrist in the other, and pushed the elbow toward his eye. Morris let out a yelp and Alfie was free. He pressured the arm further and held the agent on the floor with one hand.

  “Stop struggling,” Alfie said. “It’ll hurt more.”

  “Let him go,” Turner said, without concern for her colleague. “And get this through your head. There is no killer. Hundreds of people all across America are murdered by a single stab wound every day.”

  “Not to the heart. Not to the heart.”

  “Yes to the heart! Stacy was not the victim of some mass murderer. She was killed during a break-in.”

  Alfie released the agent. Morris stood up, rubbing his shoulder.

  “I’ve worked on this for years,” Alfie said. “I don’t need some profiler telling me that a serial killer doesn’t change his weapon or his methods or his victim profile. Single stab to the heart, let them die. That’s his trick.”

  “And one report of a stab wound to the heart and you jet off across the Atlantic.”

  “Plus an older corpse found next to it. It’s his dumping ground. Who knows how many more they’ll find.”

  “You think you can track down one man in an unfamiliar country?”

  Alfie picked up his bags again. “I got a contact over there to act as tour-guide. Besides, a country the size of my butthole, how hard can it be to find one guy?”

  “You’re pushing fifty, Alfie. Think you’re up to this?”

  “I run ten miles a day. I bench-press one-twenty. And your pal here knows I can handle myself.”

  Turner exchanged glances with Morris. She hugged Alfie once and he wanted to hug her back, but his hands were full.

  “Be careful,” she said. “I doubt you’ll find what you need, but be careful. If you get in trouble, we can’t help you. Here, you got friends. Over there…”

  Alfie nodded and led them out into the hall. Locked up.

  “Be careful,” Turner said again.

  “I will.” This time, Alfie initiated the hug. “One thing,” he said to Morris, breaking away. “You might have had a warrant, but this wasn’t official business. I don’t know you from Adam, so what brought you along?”

  “I owe Agent Turner a favour.”

  “She save your life or something?”

  “Nah,” he said, rubbing his arm. “Nothing that lame.”

  Turner smiled, kissed Alfie on the forehead, and winked. “He knocked up my sister.”

  Alfie guessed he was free to go, and walked away toward the stairs. In the street, he hailed a cab, and settled in to plan what he’d do when he located the man who murdered his wife.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alicia and Murphy checked in with the operations room, which was now thick with the strange odour of middle-aged men hard at work on not that much, Ball and Cleaver having arrived three hours early for their night-shift at Murphy’s request. They were updating what they already knew, had brought in a new whiteboard and placed Tanya Windsor’s name on it as Alicia had the others.

  It had to be her.

  Odd, though, that the file mentioned no specific tattoo, but they’d been told she had them. The detail would be somewhere, maybe one of the hundreds of boxes of statements and other evidence accumulated during Wellington’s investigation. According to the abridged version Murphy carried, she was also exhibiting “wild” behaviour, and “dressing differently.”

  How dare a young woman not behave in the way men of a particular class expected her to? What a disgusting Jezebel.

  No. Concentrate on the case. On the facts.

  The description of her clothes on the day she disappeared would have hidden the ink. Maybe it was new. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone about it. Or maybe the man who kidnapped her painted it like some sort of brand.

  They’d need to confirm with Tanya’s friends.

  Alicia allowed Murphy the honour of outlining how they now believed Tanya Windsor to be both the latest and earliest victim of the man holding Katie Hague.

  “So Brunette Bertie did a blonde,” Cleaver said, chuckling along with Ball. “He swings both ways, then.”

  “Brunette Bertie?” Alicia said. “Really?”

  “I told you I don’t want you using that name,” Murphy said. “Not here, and definitely not in the pub with journos hanging round.”

  Alicia located a Yellow Pages and flicked through it. Yep, a phone book. Made of paper.

  “What’s up, love?” Ball said, standing over her. “Do we offend you?”

  Alicia chose to smile at the man she was reluctantly beginning to think of as a dickhead. “Nobody offends me.”

  Hygiene only just about bearable. Married, hasn’t had sex with his wife for at least a year. Probably uses prostitutes, which is why he prefers vice to murders.

  She’d save that for later if she needed it; now it would only push him further from her. “I’m looking for something.”

  “You know,” Carver said. “That humming box is connected to a thing called the internet.”

  Dickhead number two.

  Ball asked, “What do you need? Hairdresser
?” He and Cleaver sniggered, not even qualifying as a chuckle.

  “Bikini wax?” Cleaver offered.

  “Thank you, no,” Alicia said. “But you’re in the right area. Bodily improvements.”

  Murphy slapped Cleaver and Ball on their backs, buddy-style. “There’s a cell free now, so catch a little shut-eye if you can. You’re spending the rest of the evening checking out tattoo parlours.”

  “Ah, come on, boss,” Ball said. “Some constable can do that.”

  “Yeah, boss,” Cleaver said, “We need to chase down this posh bird’s mates and make sure it’s her. If it isn’t the Hague girl then—”

  “Hey.” Alicia ducked under Murphy’s arm, still attached to DS Ball’s back, and popped up so they huddled like a basketball team. “Here’s an idea. Katie should be dead by now, but isn’t. That’s great news, donchya think?”

  Ball and Cleaver nodded, Murphy looking at each in turn.

  “But Tanya, who we already thought deceased more than a year ago, was killed instead. Which is sad, right?”

  Again, the nods.

  “Which means what, gentlemen?”

  Nothing. They weren’t enjoying this and, despite the grin, neither was Alicia.

  “It means he is not going to give her up,” Murphy said.

  “Correctamundo!” Alicia said.

  With a backslap of her own, the huddle disbanded and Ball and Cleaver sat on a desk facing her and Murphy.

  She paced between them all in turn as she spoke. “This person took Tanya eighteen months before Pippa Bradshaw. We are reasonably certain he took no one else in the meantime. So why now? He’s held Tanya for so long, keeping her alive, doing whatever he does to them—”

  “Which is nothing,” Cleaver said.

  “Nothing physical,” Murphy corrected.

  Alicia thought for a moment. This was tough. At least Murphy listened.

  She said, “Do either of you know how much sheer willpower it would take to do what he did to Tanya?”