Rules of Vengeance (4 page)

   “Murder squad.”

Detective Chief Inspector Kate Ford of the London Metropolitan Police flashed her badge at the uniformed constable standing guard at the entrance to 1 Park Lane. “I’m looking for Detective Laxton.”

“Morning, governor,” replied the constable. “He’s inside speaking to the building concierge. I’ll ring him for you.”

“Do that.” As Kate pulled into the circular driveway, she made a quick visual of the crime scene. A half-dozen uniforms manned the perimeter, keeping pedestrians and joggers moving along smartly. Blue-and-white security tape cordoned off the north end of the driveway and the stairs leading into the building. A sheet covered the corpse, but nothing had been done to clean up the blood. That was as it should be, she thought, as she brought her car to a halt and killed the engine. Everything appeared to be under control.

It was 5:45 a.m. by the dashboard clock. Kate angled the rearview mirror toward her face and ran a five-second diagnostic. Makeup all right, hair fine, eyes clear.
First day back
, she told herself.
Make it count
.

She opened the door and stepped outside. An ambulance was parked a few meters away. Its crew lounged against the bodywork, smoking, chuckling. “This is a crime scene, not a pub on a Friday night,” she said. “A man died here. Show some respect.” She yanked a cigarette out of the fat one’s mouth and flicked it to the ground. “Get in the cab and wait till we call you.”

The driver tucked his chin into his neck. “Yes, boss.”

Katherine Elizabeth Ford was thirty-seven years old, tall and blond and rail thin. She was dressed in a navy blazer, white T, and razor-creased slacks, and as she crossed the drive she appeared to gain not only speed but purpose.
Like a shark coming in for the kill
, someone had once said in the squad room.
Yeah, but a shark’s got a sense of humor
, came the response. Her face was all right angles, her nose sharp as a ruler, jaw set against the rigors of the coming day, blue eyes narrow as gun slits. She knew that she stood too straight, walked too fast, and didn’t laugh loudly enough at the boys’ jokes. But that was her way, and damn the lot if they didn’t understand.

“Hello, there, Katie!”

A trim silver-haired man emerged from the building. In a natty gray suit and pearl tie, he was dressed too nicely for a detective pulling night duty. As he jogged down the stairs, he held a hand on his head to guard his hair against the swirling morning breeze.
God help me
, thought Kate as she raised her hand in greeting.
It’s too early for Pretty Kenny
. “Hello, Ken,” she called, forcing a smile. “Bit of a mess, eh?”

Detective Ken Laxton of the Homicide Appraisal Team shook her hand and nodded at the body. “Bugger had to land on the stairs, didn’t he? Missed a perfectly nice patch of grass three meters away.” He laughed loudly at his joke.

“Where’d he fall from?” Kate asked, not sharing his humor.

Laxton pointed to a balcony halfway up the building. “Fifth floor. I’m seeing it as a jumper, plain and simple. Apartment was locked. The alarm was on. It’s a biometric job. Needs a thumbprint plus a code. The place is the size of Buckingham Palace.”

“What about family? Wife? Kids?”

“He was a bachelor. Looks like he’d decided he’d had enough of being alone and got on with it.”

“So you’re calling it a suicide,” said Kate. “Fair enough. Did he leave a note?”

“Not that we’ve found.” Laxton shrugged off the fact. “Like I said, he was a bachelor. No wife. No kids. Just his parents.”

Kate mulled this over. The great majority of suicides left behind some kind of message. She’d learned that it didn’t really matter who they wrote to, simply that they said goodbye. “You mentioned that his father was the duke of Suffolk? He the rich one?”

“To the tune of five billion quid. Owns half of Covent Garden and the West End. Lord Russell here is the sole heir. Sorry to rouse you, but what with the title, I didn’t want there to be any cock-ups.”

As duty officer of the Homicide Assessment Team, Laxton was the first detective called to the scene of a suspicious death or suicide. It was his job to conduct a preliminary investigation and decide whether to call in the murder squad.

“No worries. You did the right thing.”

Laxton began to say something, then bit back his words. “You all healed, then?” he asked after a moment.

“Better than new.”

“You’re looking wonderful,” he said, sincerity thin as paint. “I’m sorry about what happened to Billy. We all are.”

Billy was Lieutenant William Donovan, Kate’s fiancé, as well as her superior in the Met. A month earlier, a high-profile arrest had gone bad when the suspect opened fire on the police without warning. Billy took a bullet in the chest and was dead before he hit the ground. Kate was shot twice in the lower abdomen. There was more to it than that, but she didn’t want to think about it right now.

“At least it was fast,” Laxton went on. “No suffering, I mean. Still, it must have been a surprise. One second you’re knocking on the door, certain that you’ve got your man. Collar already pinned to the wall. The next, the bloke starts shooting like it’s the O.K. Corral. Don’t beat yourself up, Katie. Nobody else knew he had any priors. Why should you have?”

Kate met Laxton’s eye.
You want me to cry, you preening little peacock
, she said to herself.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you
. “What’s this one do, then?” she asked, pointing at the body lying at her feet.

Ken Laxton frowned. “No one around here knows. He came and went at all hours. By all accounts he was a serious chap. Not one of them carousers out burning through his millions.”

“Run me through the protocol.”

Laxton consulted his notepad. “Call came in at two forty-five. One of the residents heard the body hit. Lady on the second floor. One of them Saudi princesses. Said she thought it was a bomb. Al-Qaeda come to Hyde Park. Mayfair nick sent a radio car over. It arrived on scene at two fifty-five. They found him. The doorman identified the body.”

“Anything else?”

“Doorman said Russell entered the building through the garage and went straight up to his apartment. No more than ten minutes passed before he fell from the building. He’d been out to the parents’ for Sunday dinner.”

“Was that a regular affair?”

“Like clockwork, according to the doorman. Left every Sunday at six-thirty.”

“Anyone with him when he returned?”

“Doorman says no. He followed Russell on the CCTV into the elevator and all the way to his flat. He’s certain Russell was alone.”

Kate made a mental note to interview the doorman herself. “Rather late to get in from the folks’ house, isn’t it?”

“Maybe the duke
likes
to eat at midnight.”

“Maybe,” said Kate. “Did the doorman notice if Russell was acting strangely? Drunk? Merry? Morose?”

“Doorman didn’t speak with him, did he?”

“Yes, that’s right. But you said another resident called it in. What about the doorman? Didn’t he see anything? I mean, Russell practically landed right in front of his face.”

“Too dark. You know how you can’t see a thing out of a lit room. Same thing.”

“What about the noise?”

“Listening to his iPod, wasn’t he?” said Laxton. “Ask me, he’s telling the truth, though I did catch a whiff of something on his breath.”

“I take it it wasn’t mouthwash?”

“More like a bit of Bushmills.”

Kate stared at Laxton. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone had a drink on duty.”

Laxton colored, but said nothing. Two years earlier he’d been suspended for drinking on the job after the car he was driving mounted the sidewalk and nearly ran over a mother and daughter. The incident had cost Laxton a promotion to detective chief inspector and put a halt to any further advancement within the force. Kate knew all the details. The adjudicating officer had been Lieutenant William Donovan.

“So that’s everything?” she asked.

“All yours,” said Laxton. “Have a look around, but I’m sure it’s just a formality. Russell’s got some kind of security system up there. Motion detectors, pressure pads, thermal sensors. There’s no way someone could have gotten into the place to harm him. Take my word, Katie. I know a jumper when I see one.”

“Got it, Ken. Thanks.”

“I’ll stick around for a bit, if you need me,” said Laxton, rocking on his heels.

“Aren’t you set to go off shift at seven?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m happy to help.”

It suddenly struck Kate why he was even more dressed up than usual. Russell’s death was sure to stir up a hornet’s nest of media attention, and Pretty Kenny wanted his share of the spotlight. He’d probably already worked out how appearing in the papers would return him to the Met’s good graces and get him another crack at a promotion.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Kate.

“Really, I can stay. You might need an extra hand.”

“I can handle it from here. I’ll catch you back at the nick.”

Laxton frowned, then stormed off.

“Oh, Ken,” she called after him. “Who belongs to the blue Rover over there?” She pointed to a navy four-door Rover parked next to the ambulance. No other private vehicle was parked inside the police tape.

“Don’t know. It was there when we arrived.”

Laxton stalked back to his car. The wind picked up, making a mess of his hair. For once Pretty Kenny left it alone.

Kate returned to her car and took a box of latex gloves from the backseat. “Sergeant Cleak,” she called out as she slipped on the gloves. “The time is now six-oh-seven. Please note that as of this moment, we have officially taken charge of this investigation.”

“Yes, boss.” Reginald Cleak fell in behind her. Balding, stout, and possessed of untrammeled humor, Cleak was a thirty-five-year veteran of the Met and Kate’s right hand. Over the years the two had done tours together in fraud, cybercrime, and most recently the Flying Squad, better known as “the Sweeney,” the elite task force assigned to hunt down and capture armed robbers.

In one hand Cleak held a notepad, in the other a pen. The notepad was officially known as the “decision log.” It was Sergeant Cleak’s job to follow Kate around the crime scene and record every order, observation, and instruction she gave. The reasons were twofold: First, if Lord Russell had by some stretch of the imagination been murdered, and if one day his murderer was brought to the Old Bailey, the decision log would serve as a minute-by-minute record of every step taken during the investigation. Second, after the investigation and trial were completed, the log would be the subject of a thorough analysis conducted by the Murder Review Board.

“Victim is Robert Russell. Approximately thirty years of age. Cause of death, blunt force trauma resulting from a fall from the fifth floor of his residence at One Park Lane, London.” Kate knelt. “Let’s have a closer look, then,” she said. “You may do the honors, Sergeant Cleak.”

Cleak pulled off the sheet.

Russell lay facedown, his neck clearly broken, head bent grotesquely to one side. It appeared as if he’d landed head first. There was a lot of blood, but it didn’t faze Kate. She’d seen worse.

The deceased was dressed in a blue blazer, jeans, and a collared shirt. The force of impact had scattered his shoes and personal effects to the far end of the driveway. Kate noted that his arms were splayed to either side of his torso and that the palms were turned up. She lifted his left wrist. The crystal of his Rolex wristwatch was shattered.

Odd, she thought.

No matter how committed jumpers were, they nearly always raised their hands to break their fall. The survival instinct was difficult to master. For Russell’s watch to have struck the stairs in that fashion, his arms would have had to have been relaxed, possibly hanging at his side. It crossed her mind that Russell might have been sitting on the balcony railing and somehow fallen asleep. Instances of drunken students falling from their college windows after dozing off were common enough.

She ran the notion past Cleak. He shook his head, as if she were daft. “Look at the railing. Barely wide enough to set an elbow on.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Kate returned her attention to the body. It was then that she noted a prominent bump on the crown of Russell’s head. She parted his thick blond hair. The scalp bulged as if a golf ball had been inserted beneath the skin. In a moment her eyes traveled from Russell’s shattered Rolex to the balcony and back to the grotesque lump on the dead man’s scalp. It was obvious that at some point, either during or prior to the fall, Robert Russell had been hit on the head.

“Interesting,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“Excuse me, boss?” said Cleak.

“There’s nothing below Russell’s balcony. I mean no terrace, no window box, nothing.”

“And so?”

“Gather up Lord Russell’s belongings,” said Kate, no longer whispering, but speaking clearly in the competent voice of a senior homicide investigator. “We’ll need his wallet and his phone. And be sure to check all his pockets. Catalogue everything. I don’t care if it’s a used hankie. Next, find all CCTV cameras within fifty meters. I’m sure there’s one somewhere along the street that was trained on the stairs. Check the park, too. I know it was dark, but maybe the boys in the lab can find something. Put the doormen into separate rooms. I’ll want a word. Oh, and get on to the alarm company. Find out what time Russell came home last night. And I mean to the minute.”

“Yes, boss.”

Kate stood and peeled off her gloves. “I’m officially declaring this a crime scene.”

   “Hands in your pockets, ladies and gentlemen.”

Kate Ford opened the door to Lord Robert Russell’s flat, followed by Reg Cleak and several members of the forensics squad. She took one look at the high ceilings and the expansive living room with its view of Hyde Park and whistled. “Not bad for a starter flat.”

“Just a wee bit nicer than Lambeth Walk,” said Cleak with sarcasm.