Rules of Vengeance (5 page)

“Touch anything and that’s where I’ll send you.” Kate examined the bolt locks embedded in the doorframe. One functioned vertically the other horizontally. A biometric sensor was built into the wall, below an alphanumeric keypad and a video screen to show the faces of whoever was coming to visit. “Who was he trying to keep out?” she asked Cleak. “I’d have thought that three doormen on call day and night and that medieval portcullis downstairs would be sufficient.”

Cleak pointed to the passive infrared sensor positioned high on one wall. “That’s not all. He has himself a state-of-the-art system inside, too.” Just then his phone rang and he stepped away to take the call. “That was the security company,” he said afterward. “Alarm was set at 1830. No activity reported until Russell returned from his parents’. He disarmed the system at 2:41:39 and turned it back on at 2:41:48.”

“And he fell before 2:45,” said Kate. “Whatever happened, it happened quickly.”

They walked into the living room. Kate opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the balcony. She observed that the railing was slim and metal, certainly too narrow for a man Russell’s size to sit on. With a downward gaze, she confirmed that there was nothing protruding from the building that he might have struck as he plummeted to his death. From her vantage point, it appeared as if the body had actually veered toward the building as it fell.

She stepped back inside. Robert Russell had shared his parents’ tastes as well as their money. The residence looked as if it had been furnished in 1909, not 2009. There was plenty of chintz and floral furniture, oriental rugs, and Louis XV chairs. There was a zebra-skin rug beneath the dining room table, a carved elephant tusk from the Raj, and even an oil of HMS
Victory
lying in wait for the French and Spanish fleet off Trafalgar. She’d stepped back in time. It was England at the height of the empire.

She walked into the kitchen, which was modern and up-to-date, with the Viking range she’d dreamed of and a Sub-Zero refrigerator big enough to hold a side of beef. A swinging door led into a formal dining room, which in turn gave onto a long hallway. Halfway along the corridor, they found Russell’s bedroom. It was more of the same: parquet wood floor, four-poster bed, curtains drawn, an oil of Russell as a teenager dressed in rugby kit, his cheeks rosy from exertion. The bed was neatly made, and a bouquet of fresh flowers stood in a vase on the side table. She opened the closet and peered in. A fleet of dark suits hung in perfect order, an inch separating each. A stack of pressed and laundered shirts sat on the dresser. Twenty-odd pairs of polished shoes were arrayed on custom-built shelves. “Look, Reg, he has a special place for his shoes. Got one of these at home, do you?”

Cleak stuck his head into the closet. “A regular Mrs. Marcos. Me? I’ve got my work shoes, a pair of tennis shoes, and my Sunday best. They all fit very nicely under the bed, thank you.”

Kate picked up a pair. A label inside read “Made by John Lobb, Ltd. for R. T Russell, Marquess of Henley.” She whistled softly. “Our lord has a title.”

Just then one of the forensics team rushed into the bedroom. “Come to the end of the hall,” he said. “We’ve found Russell’s command center.”

“What do you mean, command center?” Kate asked.

“You’ll see,” came the reply.

   It was a room from the future. If the rest of the apartment lived in the nineteenth century, Russell’s office, or his “command center,” as it had been aptly nicknamed, came from the twenty-first. The floor was of sleek travertine. The walls were paneled in some kind of glossy white wood. A long stainless steel desk occupied the center of the room, and on it were three slim monitors. More impressive was the massive video screen built into the facing wall. The screen measured at least 2 meters diagonally. Lighting came from halogens built into the ceiling. Like the rest of Russell’s residence, the room was meticulously, even obsessively clean.

At either end of the desk stood neatly arranged trays piled high with papers. “Here’s a timetable for Victoria Station,” said Cleak, pointing to a brochure. “This one here’s called ‘Forecast of World Oil Production.’”

Kate leafed through several of the stacks. Some were Internet downloads from foreign news sites, others glossy company reports, and still others appeared to have been typed by Russell himself. The subjects ranged from weather patterns in Antarctica to something about a new military headquarters in Moscow to some mathematical sillyspeak about subatomic decay rates. She even found a copy of
Constabulary
, the monthly magazine “written by police for police.” She wondered who had given him that.

“Anyone know what he did for a living?” Kate asked.

“Some kind of analyst or researcher, if you ask me,” said Cleak.

“Yeah, but what kind?” She sat down at Russell’s desk and slid open the drawer. “Reg,” she said, her voice gone hard as flint. “Better have a look.”

Cleak gazed over her shoulder. “Very nice, indeed. And the latest model.”

Inside the drawer lay a gray steel semiautomatic pistol and next to it a box of bullets. “Beretta?” asked Kate.

“Browning,” said Cleak, who had served in the Queen’s Guard years ago. “Standard army issue. Ten bullets in the clip, one in the chamber. Not a lot of range, mind you, but plenty of punch if you use it close in.” He picked up the pistol by its nose and sniffed the barrel. “Hasn’t been fired in a while.”

“What do you suppose Russell needed one of those for?”

“Same thing he needed the bolts on the door and the
Star Wars
alarm system for. The man had enemies.”

“I want to review the apartment’s security videos for the past seventy-two hours. Both interior and exterior. Someone was in this apartment waiting for Russell when he arrived home last night. He didn’t get that bump on the noggin hitting his head on the doorway. There has to be footage of the killer somewhere inside the building.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Have the body transferred to the coroner’s office. Tell them I need a preliminary examination completed by lunch. I want to know just how seriously that blow to the head affected him.”

Cleak nodded, listing each instruction on his notepad. As he did so, he made a not-so-quiet sucking sound. He stopped abruptly, aware that Kate was looking at him. “Two impacted wisdom teeth. Six-month wait to see an NHS dentist, or I can cough up a thousand quid to visit a private doc on Harley Street.” He shook his head. “The wife has her heart set on Christmas in Bethlehem. I’ll have to wait, won’t I?”

“I can loan you the money. I’m flush. Got Billy’s insurance. Have to spend it on something.”

“Wouldn’t hear of it,” said Cleak, in a tone that said that was the end of that. He opened a package of chewing gum and folded two sticks into his mouth. “That’ll cure it for a while.”

Kate nodded, then turned back to Russell’s desk and pulled the keyboard close to her. She hit the return key, thinking that the PC was in slumber mode. No one turned computers off anymore. The screen remained dark. She tried again, then rebooted the CPU. Finally the screen came to life. Dozens of icons indicating various files appeared, but the titles were all gobbledygook: letters, symbols, wingdings. “What’s this, then?” she asked.

“The hard drive’s been defragmented,” said one of the forensics men. “Mind if I have a go?”

The tech took Kate’s place and began to tap away at the keys. “Whole thing’s shot. You’ll have to take it to the lab, but even then I don’t think you’ll have much luck.”

“What about the backup?” asked Kate.

“It’s ruined, too. Someone did this deliberately. Two independent systems don’t crash on their own. The hard drive’s one thing, but not the backup. If you ask me, I’d say someone ran a very powerful magnet over both drives. It’s like putting all your papers through a shredder at once, except worse. Not only is the stored data ruined, so is the hard drive holding it. Might as well have stuck a grenade inside the computer and set it off.”

Just then the large flat-screen television built into the wall came to life. Kate looked at the keyboard, wondering if she’d somehow activated it with her typing. “I thought you said it was broken.”

“Sshh!” said Cleak.

Activity in the room ground to a halt as all eyes focused on the screen, where a young woman sat in a dimly lit room staring into the camera. She was plain and disheveled, her brown, shoulder-length hair matted and uncombed, and she wore wire-rimmed specs and a black V-neck sweater.

“What the hell?” Kate looked over her shoulder.

“It’s a live feed,” said the computer technician. “Coming in off a DSL line. Must be independent of Russell’s rig.”

“Can she see us?”

“I don’t know. The rest of Russell’s computer is broken. I imagine that the camera is, too.”

“Rob, you there?” she said. “It’s seven. I know I’m early, but I had to reach you. Why aren’t you answering your phone?” She looked to her side, then back into the camera. “Are you there? I can’t see a thing. Don’t you have your camera on?” She paused, expecting a response, and for a moment everyone in the room—Kate, Reg Cleak, the forensics men— held their breath, praying that she wouldn’t terminate the connection.

“Tell me we have Russell’s cell phone,” whispered Kate.

Cleak shook his head, never taking his eyes from the screen. “Not yet. It wasn’t on his body when he fell. No one’s spotted it on the premises.”

“Damn.”

On-screen, the woman drew a breath and her manner hardened. “Mischa’s in London,” she said, leaning closer to the camera, as if vouchsafing a secret. “The entire team is coming. It’s all very hush-hush. Some kind of under-the-radar visit to establish a new security protocol. Just the one seance, then it’s back home. Scheduled for tomorrow at eleven-fifteen. Sorry, but I couldn’t find out where. Whatever you said, it must have really scared them. God knows you’ve been right about this kind of thing before. Robbie, I’m frightened. The upgrades you talked about take months to implement. Seven days isn’t long enough to even figure out where to start. Are you sure that it’s going to happen so soon?”

From off-screen there came a bloodcurdling wail. The woman darted a look to her right.

“What the hell was that?” asked Cleak. “You think she’s in some kind of danger?”

The wail grew louder. Kate stepped closer to the screen. “I’ve no idea.”

The woman rose from her chair and disappeared out of the picture. She returned ten seconds later with a bawling infant in her arms.

“So much for your danger,” said Kate.

On-screen, the woman continued. “Call me and tell me if you were able to figure out the stuff about Victoria Bear. I have no idea what your friend was talking about. Asked everyone I know and came up empty. Tell him it’s about time he learned proper English. He’s been here long enough. Victoria Bear. Probably got the whole thing cocked up. Anyway, I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

The infant continued to fuss and the woman rocked it gently. “Call me if you learn anything more,” she said. “I mean, do I need to leave or anything? Just promise me you’ll be careful. And call. Don’t forget!”

The screen went black.

“What the hell was that?” said Cleak, folding his arms. “Did Mary Poppins just warn us about a pending attack?”

“I’m not certain,” said Kate.

“Well, she sure as hell is. Seven days, she said, and she looked like she was scared out of her wits.”

Kate turned to the computer technician. “Can you find her? I don’t care what toes you have to step on. Just tell me, is it possible?”

“Possible,” replied the technician. “But a long shot. First we need to learn which provider is giving Russell his cable hookup. From there, it’s a question of following the transmission back to its source. Everything leaves a trail. Like Hansel and Gretel and their breadcrumbs. Problem is that if someone doesn’t want you to follow it, there’s plenty of ways to gobble ’em up.”

Kate summoned Cleak. “Get on to Russell’s parents and ask them a few questions about their son’s profession, and if he happens to have a girlfriend, or if they happen to have a grandson, for that matter. But go easy. They’ve only just gotten the news. Oh, and Reg, ask them what time Russell left their place after dinner.”

As she waited, Kate leafed through more of the papers on Russell’s desk. There were titles like “Democracy in Estonia,” “Open-Source Coding for the Military,” and a whole pile dedicated to the Arsenal Football Club, which played out of North London.
He’s a spy
, she thought rather crazily.
A spy with a football fix
. But what kind of spy communicated with mousy housewives with newborn babies?

Ten minutes later Reg Cleak came back into the room. “Russell left his parents’ home in Windsor at eleven-thirty. Just after football highlights on BBC2.”

“Eleven-thirty?” Kate ran a hand over the back of her neck. “That leaves nearly three hours unaccounted for. Maybe he hit the clubs, such as they are on a Sunday night, or maybe he visited a friend. Either way, I want to know. His car’s downstairs. Send the plates to AVS. Ask them to run the number through their system and see if they get any hits.”

AVS stood for Automobile Visual Surveillance, a division of the Metropolitan Police that monitored the thousands of closed-circuit television cameras positioned in and around London. Advanced software scanned the stream of images every three seconds, identifying each passing automobile’s number plates and storing them in a temporary databank for five days. By searching for a given number plate in a given time period, it was possible to track a vehicle’s movements from camera to camera as it drove across the city.

“I’ll put some of the boys on it back at the nick,” said Cleak.

“Anything about the woman?”

“Nothing. Russell’s a bachelor. Parents don’t know anything about his having a girlfriend.”

“We’ve got to find her, Reg. She’s our first priority.”

Cleak nodded, all the while writing in his log.

“And what did the duke of Suffolk say about his son’s job?” asked Kate.

“He teaches,” said Cleak. “He’s a don at Christ Church College, Oxford.”