Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes (26 page)

“We’re not related,” Mitchell said.

“But—”

“There’s a time and place for questions like that,” Mitchell said. “It isn’t now. Check his desk. The drawers.”

“I really should get you—”

“Please,” he said. So she did.

“What am I looking for,” she asked, as she opened one drawer, and then another.

“The next part of his plan, the final part that ties all of these smaller pieces together. Failing that I’d settle for a list of whoever he had working for him in the police department.”

She took out papers, letters, and blank sheets. It was possible that there was some clue hidden within them, but not that was obvious at a casual glance.

“Maybe he’s got a safe like Weaver has,” she said as she turned to the last drawer, the one in which the commissioner had kept his gun.

“Yeah, maybe. I should have realised,” he said. “A staged crime scene that looked like it had been done by a copper who’d never seen a real one. A politician with access to police records. It’s obvious now, but then it always is after you’ve been given the solution.”

There were more papers, but any of them could be innocent or incriminating and she doubted she would ever know which. She lifted them out and placed them on the desk. There was something else, lodged at the back of the drawer. It looked like an old coin. She bent down and picked it up just as Mitchell groaned, more loudly than before.

“That’s it,” she said. “I’m going to get help.”

This time, Mitchell didn’t object.

Chapter 16

The Broadcast

23
rd
September

Ruth stared at the coin that she’d taken from the drawer of the commissioner’s desk. On one side was something that almost looked like a backwards ‘L’. Around it, with each word separated by five stars, were the words ‘THE TRUTH LIES IN THE PAST. It was an odd thing to put on a coin. Odder still that it was in English. On all the old coins she’d seen, the inscription was always in Latin. Perhaps it wasn’t a coin, but some heirloom or keepsake from Wallace’s childhood. It didn’t matter. She’d give it to Weaver later, but for now, she put it back in her pocket and picked up her fork.

Yesterday, she’d run to the hospital, and raced back with the ambulance. They’d loaded an increasingly pale Mitchell inside just before Riley arrived, looking to see what was taking them so long. If things had moved quickly before, they’d sprinted after that. She’d explained what had happened to Riley, and then to Weaver, and then to an admiral and a man in a suit who worked for the Prime Minister. Fortunately, she didn’t have to speak to the woman herself though Weaver had. Around two a.m. the captain of the SS Britannia, who was supervising the sailors searching Wallace’s house, told her she was in the way. She’d gone home.

Maggie was still up, and when Ruth had told her what had happened, her mother had left the house with barely a word. Ruth didn’t understand why, but had been too exhausted to care. Despite that, she’d not slept well, and woken long before dawn to an empty house.

She’d stared at the cold stove for a long minute before donning her uniform and heading into town. Dawn was barely breaking by the time she’d arrived at Police House. The cabin in the yard was as dark and empty as her home had been. The rest of the building was buzzing with rumours though even the most implausible weren’t as outlandish as the truth. She’d dodged questions from Simon Longfield and a dozen others who’d learned that she was somehow involved. More by accident than design, she found herself at Wallace’s office. It wasn’t empty. Weaver was there along with half a dozen men and women in Naval uniform, all methodically tearing the room apart.

“I didn’t know where else I should go,” Ruth had said. “So I came to work.”

“Good for you,” Weaver had replied. “But you can’t be in here. This is a crime scene.”

“What are you looking for?” Ruth had asked.

“I know Wallace didn’t kill Turnbull himself, but a man as arrogant as that is bound to have left a clue that will lead us to the murderer. It’s why the Navy is here. We don’t know who we can trust.”

That had cut through Ruth’s confused fog like a knife through the heart.

“You can trust me,” she said. “And I can help.”

“I can, but you can’t. It’s a matter of procedure. Appeals procedure,” Weaver qualified. “I don’t want the killer getting off on some technicality.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I’ll… um… do you know where Riley is?”

“She’s guarding the stage by the antenna. From what you said about your confrontation last night, and from what I found in Wallace’s home, I think he might have been planning to disrupt the ceremony. But you can’t help with that either. Take some time off, cadet. You got caught up in something big, something you weren’t prepared for. By rights you should have had time off after Emmitt shot that woman in front of you. Certainly you shouldn’t have been allowed back to work after you killed that man in the alley. Had Wallace not wanted to keep you around to inform on Mitchell, you would have been forced to take some leave. Go home. Go fishing. Go anywhere that isn’t here. There will be plenty of work to do in the days to come.”

Ruth had left the office with Weaver’s words ringing in her ears. The captain was right, of course. Ruth had merely been caught up in something, and had done nothing to actively help in the investigation. She’d killed a man, yes, but that only meant one more suspect they couldn’t interrogate. She’d been the one to suggest it was the Home Secretary who was behind the conspiracy. That had led to her and Mitchell going to the commissioner’s house, but it didn’t qualify as ‘help’. She’d asked a lot of questions, and got very few answers back, and now it seemed unlikely she would get any more. The only tangible good she’d done was to keep Wallace distracted long enough for Mitchell to shoot him. It wasn’t much, and she couldn’t help think that her presence had distracted the sergeant from realising the truth earlier. In fact, she was certain of it, because, on leaving Police House, she’d gone to the hospital. There she’d been confronted with the most confusing sight of the past few days. Maggie had been sitting by Mitchell’s bedside.

“How is he?” Ruth had asked.

“He’ll live,” Maggie said. “And be released as soon as he wakes. It was a shallow wound, but he lost a lot of blood. Give it a few days, and he’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Ruth had looked at the sleeping sergeant, then at her adoptive mother. “Maggie, why are you here?”

Maggie hadn’t answered immediately. “He saved my life,” she’d finally said. “It was a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten.”

“Was it during The Blackout?” Ruth had asked.

Maggie had sighed. “Yes, and after.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ruth had asked. “I mean, you acted like you’d never heard of him.”

“I asked him to keep an eye on you when you applied for the police,” Maggie had said. “I didn’t want you to know. I’m not sure that was the right decision.”

She’d wanted to ask for the details of how the sergeant had saved Maggie’s life, and a million more things besides. It wasn’t the right time. Maggie looked older and frailer than Ruth had ever seen her. Instead, Ruth had laid a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and watched the sleeping sergeant, until restlessness overtook her, and she’d left.

Life in the city carried on oblivious to the events of the night before. It was absurd and infuriating. Ruth had paced through the streets until her feet had taken her to the outdoor stage from where the signing ceremony was going to be broadcast.

The antenna towered above the cliffs. It was impossible to tell where it began and the scaffolding ended except by watching the engineers scrabbling up and down, hammering out and screwing in their last minute adjustments. Ruth couldn’t get near it. The common in front of the stage was empty, the nearby streets roped off and guarded by Marines.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Riley had said when one of the Marines had finally relented and gone to find the constable.

“I had nowhere else to go,” Ruth had replied. “I thought I could help.”

“The Navy is running things,” Riley had replied with a shake of her head. “I’m here as a token. A representative of the civil power so it doesn’t seem like a military coup. I couldn’t let you through the barrier even if I wanted. You’ve got a day off. Enjoy it.”

“Oh. Yes.” Ruth looked behind Riley to the stage in front of the apartment building. In front of the stage were rows of empty chairs that ran across the common all the way to the next empty apartment block. Agent Clarke, the woman who’d been with the ambassador on his visit to Serious Crimes what seemed like a decade ago, was pacing up and down the vacant rows.

“Can I get a seat for later?” Ruth had asked. “I’d like to see the ceremony.”

Riley shook her head. “They’re not going to use the seats. The only audience will be listening on the radio.”

“But there are all those chairs,” Ruth had said.

“Weaver thinks that the commissioner planned to disrupt the ceremony. It’s possible someone might still try. No one is being allowed to get close. They would have moved the equipment inside, but it’s too late for that. The engineers had a fit when I suggested it.” She’d grinned.

Ruth tried to smile back.

“Come back this evening,” Riley had said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Ruth had taken to the streets again. Increasingly hungry, she found herself wandering through the town until she reached the Golden Hind – the pub opposite the shoe shop owned by Xavier Collins. The windows of the shop had been cleaned, and there was no sign of those lurid trainers. There was a new sign, too, promising shoes repaired while a customer waited in the pub.

Ruth scraped at the horseradish and mustard sauce that was the pub’s speciality in search of the potato underneath. Theoretically, it was a nice day. The streets were clean and busy. The sun was bright, though it had failed to burn off the morning’s chill. Everyone who walked past seemed content, but Ruth felt a great sense of disquiet. In her mind she replayed the conspiracy as it had happened, and then as Wallace had planned it. There was a piece missing, but she couldn’t place what it was.

At half past three, she gave up, and began a meandering walk back towards the outdoor stage, intending to watch the broadcast and then go home via the hospital. She reached it fifteen minutes before the broadcast was due to begin, and the Marines wouldn’t let her near. She craned over their uniformed shoulders, trying to spot Riley, or even Agent Clarke, but the only person she could see was a young man with a notebook, looking lost amidst the empty seats. She backed away. There wasn’t even a crowd. Everyone else, she guessed, on seeing they couldn’t get close had gone to some pub or home where they could listen on the radio. She could do the same, of course, but what would be the point? The speeches weren’t important. It was the fact that there
was
a broadcast that mattered. That they’d trained engineers, and had electricity to spare, and that there was somewhere else on the planet that would broadcast a reply, that was the real achievement. From what she’d seen of the script on the commissioner’s desk, the words were forgettable, full of vague sound bites that promised a lot without… without…

There was a man, on his own, loitering by the side of the building ahead, and there was something odd about him. Was it the white streak in his brown hair that ran from his crown to where the top of his ear was missing? Or was it something else? Something about the way he was looking up and down the street almost too casually. The building in question was on the other side of the common from the apartment block on which the antenna had been built. It was covered in almost as much scaffolding as the radio mast. With the introduction of electricity to the area, she supposed it was being renovated. The man didn’t look like a labourer told to stop hammering until the broadcast was over. He didn’t look like anything except that he didn’t belong.

Ruth kept walking, not quite towards him, but as if she was angling for the old hotel at the bottom of the hill. A small crowd was queuing outside, wanting to get inside to listen to the broadcast. The man turned his head. Left, right, left again, this time looking at her. He looked away, almost too quickly, and then back at her. Ruth pretended to ignore the man as she got closer. There was something about him. Was it the hair? It must be. Had she seen him before? She didn’t think so. The man turned and began walking down the road.

It was nothing, Ruth thought. She was getting paranoid, that was all. Then, when he reached the end of the building, the man abruptly ducked around its corner. That was suspicious. Too suspicious. Ruth quickened her pace. As she reached the end of the block, her hand dropped to her belt, flipping the button on her holster, drawing the revolver. She turned the corner and saw… nothing. The man had gone.

There was a clear view of the road on the far side of the building, the cliffs beyond, and the path that led down them to the beach. He wasn’t there, and there was no way he could have disappeared. That left the door to the building. It looked sealed. She stepped closer and tried it. Despite looking secure, the door swung silently outward.

Her heart began to beat faster. She tried to calm it. What was the danger? Where was the threat? The building was at least four hundred yards from the stage. An image of Emmitt came back to her, standing in that field, the sleek old-world rifle in his hands. But that shot had been made at a distance of fifty yards, sixty at most. No, she told herself her fears were the product of nothing but sleepless paranoia.

Except four hundred yards wasn’t far, not for a shooter who’d had training. She stepped into the doorway, her revolver tracking from left to right. It was a stairwell, with a door leading into the ground floor, and stairs leading up. Be rational, she told herself. Yes, of course it was possible that someone might have a gun that could accurately hit the stage from here, but was it likely?

There was no crowd, she realised. No spectators to spoil the shot. The PM would be standing on the stage near the microphone as the ambassador gave his speech, and then he would wait for her to do the same. Those speeches had been timed and scripted. The commissioner had had a copy of that script on his desk, with the timings written in the margin. They might be off by a few seconds, but not much longer.

She tried the door that led into the building. It was sealed. She crossed to the stairwell and began to climb.

And Wallace had had a map of the stage. With that and the script, someone would know exactly where the microphone was, and when the Prime Minister would be standing by it. They could have practiced somewhere out in the wasteland until they knew they could make the kill.

Elbows bent, revolver pointing upward, Ruth began to climb the stairs.

But it wasn't Emmitt that she’d seen, just a man with a white scar in his brown hair, missing half an ear. She took a breath, and spun around the landing, pointing the gun up. There was no one there.