The Last Temptation (2 page)

What made it worse was that it had been so ridiculous. So very Katerina. She’d been driving her Mercedes SLK with the top down. She’d just left the Berlin ring road at the Ku’damm exit, so she’d probably still been going too fast when a motorbike shot out from a side street in front of her. Desperate to avoid hitting the careless rider, she’d swerved towards the pavement, lost control of the powerful roadster and careered into a newspaper kiosk. She’d died in the arms of a paramedic, her head injuries too appalling to comprehend.

The biker was long gone, unaware of the carnage he’d left in his wake. And mechanical examination had discovered a fault in the circuit that controlled the anti-lock braking in the Merc. That, at any rate, was the official version.

But once his initial grief had receded to the point where he could function again, Tadeusz had begun to wonder. Krasic, ever the loyal lieutenant, had reported that in Tadeusz’s temporary absence there had been a couple of more or less subtle attempts to move in on his business. Krasic, who had stoically refused to be distracted by his boss’s bereavement, had dealt ruthlessly with the threats, but as soon as Tadeusz showed signs of life again, he had laid out the full story before him

Now, the word was out. Tadeusz wanted the biker. The police officers on his payroll had been little help; information from witnesses was scant. It had all happened so fast. It had just started to rain, so passing pedestrians had their heads down against the weather. There were no surveillance cameras in the immediate area.

The private investigator Tadeusz had hired to reinterview the witnesses had come up with a little more. One teenage boy had been enough of a wannabe rider himself to have noticed that the machine was a BMW. Now, Tadeusz was waiting impatiently for his police contacts to provide a list of possible candidates. One way or another, whether her death had been an accident or a more cruel design, someone was going to pay for it.

While he waited, Tadeusz knew he had to keep himself occupied. Usually, he left the planning on the ground to Krasic and the competent cadre of organizers they’d built around them over the years. He dealt in the big picture and the details were not his concern. But he was edgy. There were threats out there in the shadows, and it was time to make sure that all the links in the chain were still as sound as they had been when the systems were set up.

And it did no harm now and again to remind the peons who was in charge.

He walked over to the water’s edge, gazing down the river. He could just make out the leading lights of a huge Rhineship, the grumble of its engine drifting across the water. As he watched, the barge angled into the narrow, deep channel that would bring it alongside the boatyard wharf. Behind him, Tadeusz heard the gates opening again.

He turned to see a battered van drive in. The van cut away to one side, over by the Mercedes. Moments later, he heard the electronic beep of a reversing warning. A large container

lorry backed into the boatyard. Three men jumped out of the van. Two made their way towards the wharf, while the third, dressed in the uniform of a Romanian customs officer, headed for the back of the truck, where he was joined by the truck driver. Between them, they removed the customs seal from the container, unfastened the locks and let the doors swing open. Inside the container were stacked cases of canned cherries. Tadeusz curled his lip at the sight. Who in their right mind would contemplate eating Romanian canned cherries, never mind importing them by the truckload? As he looked on, the customs man and the driver started to unload the boxes. Meanwhile, behind him, the barge glided up to the wharf, where the two men expertly helped it moor.

Swiftly, a narrow passage between the cardboard boxes appeared. There was a moment’s pause then, suddenly, bodies surged through the gap and leapt to the ground. Bewildered Chinese faces gleamed sweating in the dim lights that glowed from vehicles and the barge. The stream of humanity slowed, then stopped. Around forty Chinese men huddled tight together, bundles and backpacks clutched to their chests, their frightened eyes flickering to and fro across the alien boatyard like horses who smell the taint of blood. They were shivering in the sudden cold, their thin clothes no protection against the chill of the river air. Their uneasy silence was more unsettling than any amount of chatter could have been.

A whisper of a breeze gusted a waft of stale air from the back of the lorry towards Tadeusz. His nose wrinkled in distaste at the mingled smells of sweat, urine, and shit, all overlaid with a fault chemical tang. You’d have to be desperate to choose this way to travel It was a desperation that had made a significant contribution to his personal wealth, and he had a certain grudging respect for those with courage enough to take the path to freedom he offered.

Swiftly, the truck driver, the two men from the van and the barge crew organized their cargo. A couple of the Chinese spoke enough German to act as interpreters and the illegals were readily pressed into service. First they emptied the truck of its cherries and chemical toilets, then hosed down the interior. Once it was clean, they formed a human chain and transferred boxes of canned fruit from a container on the jarge to the lorry. Finally, the Chinese climbed aboard the ?arge and, without any apparent reluctance, made their way into the now empty container. Tadeusz’s crew built a single ayer of boxes between the illegals and the container doors, then the customs official affixed seals identical to the ones ie’d removed earlier.

It was a smooth operation, Tadeusz noted with a certain amount of pride. The Chinese had come into Budapest on tourist visas. They’d been met by one of Krasic’s men and taken to a warehouse where they’d been moved into the container lorry. A couple of days before, the barge had been baded under the eyes of customs officials near Bucharest with an entirely legal cargo. Here, in the middle of nowhere, < they’d rendezvoused and been swapped. The barge would take far longer than the lorry to reach Rotterdam, but it was much less likely to be searched, given its documentation and customs seals. Any nosy official with serious doubts could be referred to the local customs who had supervised the loading. And the lorry, which was far more likely to be stopped and searched, would continue to its destination with an unimpeachable cargo. If anyone had seen anything suspicious enough at the airport or the warehouse to alert the authorHies, all they would find would be a truckload of canned cherries. If officials noted the Hungarian customs seals had been interfered with, the driver could easily shrug it off as vandalism or an attempt at theft.

As the customs official crossed back to the truck, Tadeui intercepted him. ‘A moment, please. Where is the parcel fd Berlin?’ j

Krasic frowned. He’d almost begun to think that his bos had had sensible second thoughts about the Chinese hero; the illegals had brought with them to pay part of their passag There was no reason for Tadzio to change the systems th Krasic had so punctiliously set up. No reason other than 1 foolish superstitions he’d been prey to since Katerina’s deau The customs man shrugged. ‘Better ask the driver,’ he sai with a nervous grin. He’d never seen the big boss before, a: it was a privilege he could well have done without. Krasi ruthlessness in Tadeusz’s name was a legend among corrupt of Central Europe.

Tadeusz cocked an eyebrow at the driver.

‘I keep it in the casing of my CB radio,’ the driver saic

He led Tadeusz round to the lorry cab and pulled the radii

free of its housing. It left a gap large enough to hold fou

sealed cakes of compressed brown powder. lj

‘Thank you,’ Tadeusz said. ‘There’s no need for you to b<

troubled with that on this trip.’ He reached inside an<

extracted the packages. ‘You’ll still get your money, of course

Krasic watched, feeling the hair on the back of his necl

stand up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d crossed

frontier with so much as a joint of cannabis. Driving across

Europe with four kilos of heroin seemed like insanity. Hij

boss might be suffering from a death wish, but Krasic didn’l

want to join the party. Muttering a prayer to the Virgin, he

followed Tadeusz back to the limo. ”<

10

2

^arol Jordan grinned into the mirror in the women’s toilet

nd punched the air in a silent cheer. She couldn’t have had

better interview if she’d scripted it herself. She’d known her

tuff, and she’d been asked the kind of questions that let her

low it. The panel - two men and a woman - had nodded

md smiled approval more often than she could have hoped

for in her wildest dreams.

She’d worked for this afternoon for two years. She’d moved from her job running the CID in the Seaford division of East Yorkshire Police back to the Met so she’d be best placed to step sideways into the elite corps of the National Criminal (Intelligence Service, NCIS. She’d taken every available course on criminal intelligence analysis, sacrificing most of her off duty time to background reading and research. She’d even used a week of her annual leave working as an intern with a private software company in Canada that specialized in crime Imkage computer programs. Carol didn’t mind that her social life was minimal; she loved what she was doing and she’d disciplined herself not to want more. She reckoned there couldn’t be a detective chief inspector anywhere in the country who had a better grasp of the subject. And now she was ready for the move.

Her references, she knew, would have been impeccable. Her former chief constable, John Brandon, had been urging her for

11

1

a long time to move away from the sharp end of policing in the strategic area of intelligence and analysis. Initially, she h resisted, because although her early forays into the area h given her a significantly enhanced professional reputatio they’d left her emotions in confusion, her self-esteem at an a time low. Just thinking about it now wiped the grin from h face. She gazed into her serious blue eyes and wondered ho long it would be before she could think about Tony Hill witho the accompanying feeling of emptiness in her stomach.

She’d been instrumental in bringing two serial killers ^ justice. But the unique alliance she’d formed with Tony, psychological profiler with more than enough twists in h own psyche to confound the most devious of minds, haj breached all the personal defences she’d constructed overf dozen years as a police officer. She’d made the cardinal errc of letting herself love someone who couldn’t let himself lo\ her.

His decision to quit the front line of profiling and retre to academic life had felt like a liberation for Carol. At last si was free to follow her talent and her desire and focus on thl kind of work she was best suited to without the distractioj of Tony’s presence.

Except that he was always present, his voice in her heac his way of looking at the world shaping her thoughts. I

Carol ran a frustrated hand through her shaggy blondl hair. ‘Fuck it,’ she said out loud. ‘This is my world now, Tony.]

She raked around in her bag and found her lipstick. Sh^ did a quick repair job then smiled at her reflection again, thu time with more than a hint of defiance. The interview pane, had asked her to return in an hour for their verdict. Sh^ decided to head down to the first-floor canteen and have thfi lunch she’d been too nervous to manage earlier. j

She walked out of the toilet with a bounce in her stride:)

12

Ahead of her, further down the corridor, the lift pinged. The doors slid open and a tall man in dress uniform stepped out and turned to his right without looking in her direction. Carol slowed down, recognizing Commander Paul Bishop. She wondered what he was doing here at NCIS. The last she’d heard, he’d been seconded to a Home Office policy unit. After the dramatic, anarchic and embarrassing debut of the National Offender Profiling Task Force that he’d headed up, no one in authority wanted Bishop in a post anywhere near the public eye. To her astonishment, Bishop walked straight into the interview room she’d left ten minutes before.

What the hell was going on? Why were they talking to Bishop about her? He had never been her commanding officer. She’d resisted a transfer to the nascent profiling task force, principally because it was Tony’s personal fiefdom and she had wanted to avoid working closely with him for a second time. But hi spite of her best intentions, she’d been sucked into an investigation that should never have needed to happen, and in the process had broken rules and crossed boundaries that she didn’t want to think too closely about. She certainly didn’t want the interviewers who were considering her for a senior analyst’s post to be confronted by Paul Bishop’s dissection of her past conduct. He’d never liked her, and as Carol had been the most senior officer involved in the capture of Britain’s highest profile serial killer, he’d reserved most of his anger about the maverick operation for her.

She supposed she’d have done the same in his shoes. But that didn’t make her feel any happier with the notion that Paul Bishop had just walked into the room where her future was being decided. All of a sudden, Carol had lost her appetite.

€We were right. She’s perfect,’ Morgan said, tapping his pencil end to end on his pad, a measured gesture that emphasized

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the status he believed he held among his fellow officers.

Thorson frowned. She was all too aware of how manj things could go wrong when unfathomable emotions were dragged into play in an operation. ‘What makes you think she’s got what it takes?’

Morgan shrugged. ‘We won’t know for sure till we see her in action. But I’m telling you, we couldn’t have found a better match if we’d gone looking.’ He pushed his shirtsleeves up over his muscular forearms in a businesslike way.

There was a knock at the door. Surtees got up and opened it to admit Commander Paul Bishop. His colleagues didn’t even glance up from their intense discussion.