My problem was where to start.
Imogen’s house was the obvious place, but for the time being it would be cordoned off behind crime scene tape and a horde of investigators. Going there would solve nothing and most likely see us behind bars.
‘Does Walter have any idea who’s behind this?’
‘Abadia.’
‘OK. Let’s play make-believe for a minute,’ I said. ‘Let’s just suppose that Abadia survived three point-blank rounds in the chest and he’s now looking for revenge: where would he start?’
‘He starts by identifying the men sent to kill him.’
‘Exactly. But those files were buried. So how does he get to them?’
‘He needs someone on the inside,’ Bryce said. It was like he’d just confessed a sin and he jerked upright in his seat. ‘Hey, now hold on! I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with this?’
‘Calm yourself, Bryce. If I thought you were involved, I’d have already broken your neck. I’m thinking someone else.’
‘There is no one else.’
‘There are plenty. There were officers from the Drug Action Service along for the ride. Any one of them could’ve been forced into feeding him the information he’d need.’
Bryce looked pensive. ‘Victor Montoya was the first to die. It’s possible that someone led Abadia to Victor and then the other names were extracted from him. Remember he was tortured. Maybe it was because he wouldn’t speak that his family were murdered in front of him.’
It sounded feasible.
‘Next question: who does Abadia use to get his revenge? All of us are highly trained; he doesn’t send someone incapable of getting the job done.’
‘Has to be ex-military,’ Rink said.
‘A mercenary,’ Bryce offered.
‘Probably Special Forces,’ I said. ‘Someone just like us.’
‘That doesn’t narrow things down very much,’ Bryce said. ‘There have got to be thousands of ex-Special Ops out there looking to make a buck.’
‘Most of them are men of honour. They wouldn’t make war on women and children.’ Rink stared directly ahead into the growing storm. ‘Most of them.’
‘Why would they have to be Special Forces?’ Bryce asked.
‘Could be something else,’ I concurred. ‘Whoever it is, he’s highly trained and highly efficient. He has experience with sniper rifles. It’s possible that he’s a freelance assassin or a cop or maybe even a run-of-the-mill soldier. But I’m still running with the Special Forces angle.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
‘The guy I spoke to on the phone sounded Caucasian. I think that Abadia – or whoever – met the killer while he was on active duty in Colombia. British and American Special Ops guys have been in and out of Colombia for years, training and equipping the anti-narcotics cops down there. The SAS were there back in the nineties, more recently it’s been the US Army Rangers.’
Beside me Rink grunted. Rink was a Ranger before he joined my unit.
‘Next time we stop,’ he said, ‘I’ll get Harvey on to it.’
Harvey Lucas was also a Ranger in his past life. He still had connections: maybe he could draw information from someone that would send us in the right direction. If not, Harvey was still a good man to have at our backs.
‘If he’s a Ranger, we’re in for one helluva fight,’ Rink said. He squirmed a little, as though his loyalty to his old troop meant he had to give the killer a modicum of respect. It was an abrasive notion.
‘We’re surmising an awful lot,’ Bryce said.
‘Yeah.’
Maybe I was way off base in my thinking. But as usual I was going to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Anything less would be a welcome bonus.
Chapter 15
Culver in Hancock County, Maine is somewhere that you would normally struggle to find on a map, but the small town was where Rickard headed. Following the assassination of the two cops in Tampa, he’d travelled to Bangor on a scheduled flight, but from Bangor had jumped to the coastline on a small seaplane. From Trenton, he’d then used a speedboat to cross the bay to Culver, where he’d collected the FedEx truck that was necessary to his ploy. His boat was moored in a disused boathouse ready for the return trip across the water. At Trenton, the plane was waiting for his return, but there wasn’t room in the cabin for the pilot and him, plus an unconscious woman. But that was OK, he never intended for Imogen Ballard to leave Maine alive.
The car he’d appropriated after dumping Imogen’s Suburban would have to be torched to eliminate any trace evidence, but that was a task he’d see to prior to firing up the outboard motor on his boat.
‘First we deal with you, Imogen,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we can raise a little fire in you, shall we?’
Imogen was incapable of replying. But that would be rectified within a minute or so.
The boathouse, once used to house a fishing boat, was not one of those fancy type buildings you see in rich men’s playgrounds but a wholly utilitarian affair of sun-bleached planks and wind-scoured shingles. It was like a small hangar, open to the bay at one end with a normal door on the side and another two doors where a truck with a winch could drag a boat out of the water on the landward side. Wooden walkways ran the length of both inner walls, while a beaten earth ramp down the centre gave way to the cold North Atlantic. Rickard’s boat was moored on the right-hand side; the other walkway was clear.
Upright beams held the shell of the building together and supported the sagging roof. To one of the beams on the walkway opposite the boat, Rickard cuffed Imogen. He fed the cuffs behind the beam, then snapped her wrists into them. A cross-beam held the cuffs from slipping down, forcing the unconscious woman to stand upright. If she awoke her position would be torturous.
Rickard dumped his kit in the boat, the dart gun stripped down now and the delivery driver’s uniform finished with. Both would be sunk to the bottom of the bay when he travelled to Trenton. His sidearm was holstered in his shoulder rig because he wouldn’t need it for what he now planned. From a holder on his belt, he pulled out a small ceramic object with a switch on the side. He slid the switch, baring three inches of razor-sharp ceramic blade. When security measures would detect a gun or other metal weapon, Rickard counted on the undetectable ceramic knife to keep him armed.
‘It’s not a machete, but it will do,’ he said to the unresponsive woman.
When mutilating the others, he’d employed various tools on them: guns, knives, a machete, even a meat cleaver to decapitate one of his victims, but the intimacy that the small ceramic knife brought gave him the most satisfaction. He’d last used the knife on Jessica Case and her father. If he checked he was pretty sure that he would find traces of their blood caught in the mechanism.
He jabbed a hypodermic syringe in Imogen’s arm and depressed the plunger. Then he held the knife ready because her return to wakefulness would be almost instantaneous.
He watched her eyelids flicker, then her head snapped up and she was staring directly at the blade of the knife. A siren song began to rise in her throat. Prepared for this, Rickard jammed a wadded rag into her mouth.
‘Spit it out and I’ll have to gag you in a different way. I’ll cut out your tongue.’
She shuddered, pulling against the cuffs. Her right shoulder was twisted painfully towards him. It wasn’t for her comfort that he reached out and stood her upright again. He wanted a good view of her. Taking hold of the neckline of her top, he sliced down with the knife. The ceramic blade was sharper than any steel and it parted the material like he was slicing a sheet of paper.
‘Nice-looking body,’ he noted. ‘You keep yourself fit and toned. That’s good.’
Behind the gag, Imogen yelled something, but her words were just a garbled shriek.
‘That was supposed to be a compliment,’ Rickard said.
He slid the knife under the front of her bra, snicked through the elastic band and exposed her breasts. Imogen yelled again and kicked out at him with both feet, one at a time like she was climbing a steep flight of stairs. One foot caught him sharply on his shin, but the other missed entirely as he skipped out of the way. Imogen twisted her head to follow him and he could see the veins thrumming in her throat like harp strings.
Rickard laughed at her. Wiggling the knife at her, he swayed along with it, as though caught in a slow dance. ‘I thought it might take a little more to get a rise out of you.’
Imogen gnawed on the rag as if it was a tough piece of meat. She pushed it free with her tongue, spitting and retching. ‘Who are you? What do you want from me?’
Rickard allowed his earlier threat to drop. He would get more out of her if she could talk. ‘I want you to see me.’
‘I see you. You’re a maniac; that’s what I see!’
‘I need you to look deeper than that, Imogen.’
She wrenched at the cuffs again, the metal crossbar digging into flesh and wood with equal ferocity. The support beam creaked ominously and dust and old shingles sifted down, pitter-pattering in the water. Rickard pounced, grabbing her chin in his left hand and guiding the blade very close to her eyes with the other. ‘Stop that. Stop struggling or I’ll blind you.’
Imogen went very still, but there was something in her posture that made Rickard step back. Imogen nodded at the knife. ‘You do that, you pig. But how will I
see you
then?’
Rickard stared at her. His breath came heavy, in time with the lapping tide. He allowed the blade to drop by his side. He took another step back, his heels very close to the edge of the walkway.
‘Tell me, Imogen. Tell me and maybe I’ll let you live.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re going to kill me whatever I say.’
He folded the blade away and slipped the holder into the pouch on his belt. He showed her his empty hands. ‘You have my word.’
‘That
maybe
I’ll live?’
‘I can’t offer more. Satisfy my curiosity, Imogen. Tell me the truth and I will consider what happens next.’
Rickard watched her. He saw the machinations of hope and denial and mistrust make war in her mind. Hope seemed the stronger emotion.
‘What am I supposed to see in you?’
‘My true essence,’ Rickard said.
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes and she shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The
serpent
,’ Rickard said.
Imogen nodded slowly, peering into his eyes. The tears rolled down her cheeks and she blinked quickly to clear her vision. ‘Yes. I see it.’
Rickard smiled.
‘I see it in you. A great big snake. Its forked tongue flicking in and out.’
Rickard’s smile froze. Then melted away.
‘Liar.’
‘No. I’m not lying!’ Imogen pushed herself upright against the beam, worming her shoulders round so she was less constricted. ‘I can see it like a superimposed shadow towering over you.’
‘Liar!’ Rickard lunged forwards and grasped her throat in one hand, his other fist poised to strike. ‘You don’t see
that
. The serpent is nothing like you describe. Now, do it: look into my eyes and tell me what you really see.’
Imogen could barely breathe. She twisted against the beam and there was a crack of shifting wood. She pressed down with her chin, trying in vain to push away his hand.
Rickard slapped her across the face and the shock sent a wave of blackness through her skull.
‘Tell me, goddamn you . . .’
‘Go to hell!’
Imogen kicked out blindly, but her foot found a viable target in the juncture of Rickard’s thighs. Caught unprepared, Rickard’s eyes bugged and a red flush crept up his face. He let out a groan. Imogen didn’t stop; she kicked out with both legs as though pedalling a cycle, thrusting at his legs and stomach. Rickard hopped backwards and his heels skidded on the edge of the walkway. He grabbed at her to halt his slide, but Imogen snatched herself back from him and his groping fingers found only empty space. One foot went off the walkway and then he plummeted down, suspended on the platform by the strength in only one bent knee. Imogen kicked again.
Rickard let out a wordless cry and toppled over, going down on his back in the water. Foamy bubbles rushed over him for a moment, then he erupted out again and roared in anger. Water streamed through his dark hair and from his clothing.