Authors: Ian Rankin
In his flat, Michael Barclay was busy packing for the trip to Calais. He’d pack one item, then have to sit for a while to ponder the same question: why me? Those two words bounced around in his brain like cursors gone mad. Why me? He couldn’t figure it out. He tried not to think about it. If he continued to think about it, he’d be sure to forget something. He switched on the radio to take his mind off it. There was music, not very good music, and then there was news. It included a story about some banker murdered in his bed. Barclay caught mentions of handcuffs and glamorous models. Well, you could tell what
that
particular dirty banker had been up to, couldn’t you? Handcuffs and models... some guys had all the luck.
Michael Barclay went on with his packing. He decided to take his personal cassette player and some opera tapes. It might be a long crossing. And he tried out a few sentences in French, desperately recalling the work he’d done for A Level (C grade pass). Christ, that had been seven years ago. Then he had a brainwave. On the bookshelves in his study, he eventually tracked down an old French grammar book and a pocket French-English dictionary, both unused since schooldays. They, too, went into his case. He was pausing for coffee when he caught the next lot of news headlines. It seemed the banker had been found
handcuffed
to the model, that she’d been hysterical and was now under heavy sedation. Michael Barclay whistled.
Then he zipped up his case.
Tuesday 9 June
When Greenleaf arrived in the office that morning, Doyle was waiting to pounce.
‘You are not going to believe this,’ he said. ‘I could give you five thousand guesses and you still wouldn’t guess.’
‘What?’
Doyle just leered and tapped the side of his nose. ‘The Commander wants us in his office in five minutes. You’ll find out then.’
Greenleaf suffered a moment’s panic. He was going to be carpeted for something, something he either hadn’t done or didn’t know he had done. What? But then he relaxed. Doyle would have said something, something more than he’d hinted at. And besides, they hadn’t put a foot wrong so far, had they? They’d set up the Folkestone operation, and they’d made good progress with the list of possible assassination hits. They’d started with 1,612 names on the list: 790 individuals (MPs, military chiefs, senior civil servants, prominent businessmen, etc.), 167 organisations or events (such as the summit meeting), and 655 buildings and other landmarks, everything from Stonehenge to the Old Man of Hoy.
This was an extensive, but not an exhaustive, list. It had been designed by the Intelligence department known as ‘Profiling’ to encompass the most likely terrorist targets in the UK. The details of Witch sent by Joyce Parry to Special Branch had also gone to Profiling, and they’d used these details to begin whittling the list down. Events and individuals were Witch’s specialities; even at that she usually targeted an individual at an event rather than the event itself. Profiling had spoken by phone with Dominic Elder, who had agreed with their assessment. They were looking for an event, where a specific individual would be targeted.
Usually, a sitting of Parliament would be top of the list. But not this month. This month London was hosting something even bigger, and Greenleaf himself had compiled a report on its security.
Doyle had pointed out though that they couldn’t know there was an assassin actually at large until
after
a hit had been attempted, successful or not. All they had so far was theory, supposition, and precious little fact. All they had was coincidence. Joyce Parry and her department had been at their cagiest. What reports had been sent over were full of ‘might haves’ and ’could bes’ and ‘ifs’. Riddled, in other words, with get-out clauses. Only Elder seemed sure of his ground, but then it was all right for him, he was out of the game.
Greenleaf mentioned this again as he waited with Doyle outside Commander Trilling’s door. Doyle turned to him and grinned.
‘Don’t worry, John. We’ve got confirmation.’
‘What?’
But Doyle was already knocking on and simultaneously opening the door.
‘Come in, gentlemen,’ said Commander Trilling. ‘Sit down. Has Doyle told you, John?’
Greenleaf cast a glance towards his ‘partner’. ‘No, sir,’ he said coldly. ‘He’s not seen fit to let me into the secret.’
‘No secret,’ said Trilling. ‘It was on last night’s news and it’ll be on today’s. Well, the bare facts will be. We’ve got a little more than that.’ He glanced over a sheet of fax paper on his desk. ‘A man’s been murdered. A banker, based in London.’
‘Murdered, sir?’
‘Assassinated, if you like. No other motive, certainly not burglary. And the world of business espionage doesn’t usually encompass slaughter.’
‘Killed to order then.’
‘You could say that,’ Doyle said. He sat well back on his chair, with legs apart and arms folded. He looked like he was having a good time.
‘Who was he exactly, sir?’ asked Greenleaf.
‘A Mr Khan, senior banking official for a small foreign bank based in London.’
Greenleaf nodded. ‘I heard it on the radio. Killed up in Scotland, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he has a house up there, near ...’ Trilling examined the fax sheet again. ‘Auchterarder,’ he said, and looked up at Greenleaf. ‘Gleneagles, that sort of area.’
‘“Senior banking official” you said. What precisely does that mean, sir?’
Trilling sighed, exhaling peppermint. ‘We’re not sure. Nobody seems to know what Mr Khan’s role was in this bank of his. Serious Fraud Office investigated the bank, but even they’re not sure.’
‘He was a fixer,’ said Doyle bluntly.
‘I’m not sure that description takes us much further,’ Trilling complained. ‘Whatever his job entailed, it seems to have made him enemies.’
‘How professional was the hit, sir?’
‘Very.’
‘But not without its funny side,’ added Doyle.
Greenleaf looked at Trilling. ‘Funny?’
‘Doyle has a strange sense of humour,’ muttered Trilling. ‘The murder took place sometime during Sunday night. Mr Khan was due to fly back to London yesterday morning. He has a cleaning lady tidy up after him—’
‘Wiping the leftover coke off the hand-mirror, that sort of thing,’ said Doyle.
Trilling ignored the interruption. ‘A Mrs MacArthur tidies for him. She has her own key. But she was surprised to arrive at the house yesterday afternoon and find Mr Khan’s car still in the drive. She went inside. There was no noise, but as she climbed the stairs she could hear sounds of a struggle in the room occupied by Mr Khan’s chauffeur—’
‘Bodyguard,’ said Doyle.
‘—a Danish gentleman. She went into his room and found him handcuffed to his bed, and trying desperately to free himself. He’d been gagged.’
‘And he was stark bollock naked,’ added Doyle.
‘She didn’t have any way of freeing him, so she went in search of Mr Khan. She suspected a robbery, and there was a phone in Mr Khan’s bedroom. When she arrived, she found Mr Khan’s girlfriend weeping and frantic. One of her wrists had been chained to the bedpost. The other was handcuffed to one of Mr Khan’s wrists. Mr Khan himself was dead, tongue cut out and throat cut. The poor girl had to wait for police to release her. She’s under sedation in hospital.’
‘Christ,’ said Greenleaf.
Doyle was chuckling. ‘Isn’t it a beauty? It’ll be all over the papers. You couldn’t keep it quiet if you tried. Blonde beauty driven mad in corpse-chaining horror. That’s what the assassin wants, of course.’
‘Why?’ Greenleaf asked numbly.
‘Easy,’ said Doyle. ‘It’s a message, isn’t it? Like sticking a horse’s head in somebody’s bed. Shock value. It scares people off.’
‘But scares them off what?’
Trilling cleared his throat. ‘I heard from Mrs Parry earlier this morning. It seems that her organisation had been ... using Mr Khan.’
‘Using him?’
‘As a source of information. Mr Khan was skimming a certain amount from his bank without anyone’s knowledge. Parry’s agents found out and Khan was... persuaded to exchange information for silence.’
‘Complicity,’ corrected Doyle.
‘That’s a long word for you, Doyle,’ warned Trilling. ‘I’d be careful of long words, they can get you into trouble.’
‘Come on, sir, it’s the oldest blackmail scam in the book. Sex and money, the two persuaders.’ Doyle turned to Greenleaf. ‘Khan’s bank’s been laundering money for years. Terrorist money, drug money, all kinds of money. Parry’s lot have known about it for just about as long as it’s been going on. But it’s convenient to have a dirty bank, just so long as you can keep tabs on its business. That way you know who’s doing what to whom, how much it’s making them, and where the money’s going. They’ve had Khan in their pocket for over a year.’
‘So Khan feeds titbits of information ...’
‘In return for Parry’s lot keeping quiet about his skim. Nice and easy, and nobody gets hurt.’
‘Unless you’re found out,’ said Greenleaf.
‘Unless you’re found out,’ agreed Trilling. ‘If you’re discovered - or even simply
believed -
to be an informant, suddenly you’ve got a lot of enemies. Ruthless enemies, who will pay not only for your elimination, but will demand something more.’
‘A very public execution,’ said Doyle.
‘To scare off other potential informers,’ Greenleaf added, completing the deductive process.
‘Exactly,’ said Trilling. ‘We can’t know which particular group of investors ordered the assassination, but we can be pretty sure that they wanted it to be newsworthy, and newsworthy they got.’
‘And we think the assassin is Witch?’ Greenleaf surmised. Trilling shrugged his shoulders.
‘There’s no modus operandi for us to identify the present hit against. The killer was clever and well-informed. An alarm and a window were taken out, a fit young man overpowered. What we do know, from the Dane, is that we’re looking for a woman.’
‘Description?’
Trilling shook his head. ‘It was dark. He didn’t see anything.’
Doyle leered again. ‘She didn’t chain two wrists and two ankles to bedposts in the dark without him waking up. It was a sucker punch, sir.’
‘That’s not what the Dane says.’
‘With respect, sir, bollocks to what the Dane says. He was awake, and she suckered him.’
‘How?’ asked Greenleaf. Doyle turned towards him so suddenly, Greenleaf knew he’d been waiting for the question to be asked.
‘A woman comes into your bedroom and says she wants to tie you up. You fall for it. Why? Because you think she’s got some rumpy in mind. The stupid bugger’s supposed to be a bodyguard, and he lets some bird he’s never seen before tie him to a bed. Sucker punch. Maybe she slipped him a couple of thousand on the side, make the whole thing more ... palatable.’
‘There you go again, Doyle. Stick to
short
words.’ Trilling shifted in his chair. ‘But we’re checking him anyway. We don’t think he was in on it, but you can never be sure. He did receive a nasty blow to the head, not far off being fatal according to the hospital.’
‘What else have we got, sir?’
‘Not much. Not yet. But the assassin did leave some clues behind.’
‘What sort of clues?’
‘Things required to do the job. The handcuffs for a start, six pairs. You don’t just place an order for six pairs of handcuffs without someone raising an eyebrow. Then there was some ...’
‘Sticky-backed plastic,’ offered Doyle helpfully. ‘That’s what they used to call it on
Blue Peter.’
‘Probably bought locally. There’s a murder team busy at the scene. They’ll do what they can, ask around, check the various shops ...’
‘You don’t sound too hopeful, sir.’
‘I’ll admit, John, I’m not. This was a pro, albeit one with a warped sense of humour. She won’t have left many
real
clues, though Christ knows how many red herrings we’ll find. And even if we trace the stuff back to a shop, what will we get? A general description of a female. She can change her looks in minutes: wig, hair-dye, make-up, new clothes...’
Shape-changer, thought Greenleaf. What did you call them? Proteus? Now that he thought of it, why weren’t there more women con artists around? So easy for them to chop and change disguises: high heels and low heels, padding round the waist or in the bra, hair-dye... yes, a complete identity change in minutes. Trilling was right.
‘But at least now, sir,’ he offered, ‘we know we
are
dealing with a woman, and we know she did land in the country. At least now we’ve got two facts where before we only had guesses.’
‘True,’ agreed Commander Trilling.
‘But at the same time,’ added Doyle, ‘she’s finished her job before we’ve even had half a chance. She could already be back out of the country.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Greenleaf said quietly. Doyle and Trilling looked at him, seeking further explanation. He obliged. ‘You don’t hire an outside contractor for a single hit like this. And nobody’s going to blow up two boats just because they’re on a job to bump off a solitary banker. It has to be bigger, don’t you think?’