The Last Temptation (55 page)

He saw the gun butt coming but he was powerless to do anything more than swerve helplessly. It still caught him, and he heard as well as felt the splintering as his cheekbone shattered. This time, he threw up properly, a stream of hot vomit pouring over his thighs.

‘Stop lying,’ Tadeusz said, his voice gentle and sad. ‘I know the truth. What is it they call it? A black operation. The sort of devious shit that never becomes public. I know what you

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people did. You killed the woman I loved because she looked like Carol Jordan. And then Carol Jordan moved in on me. Advised, no doubt, by your psychological expertise.’

Fuck, Tony thought. If that’s what they believe, there’s no way out of this. But he had to keep trying. ‘No, please. That’s not how it was. Look, Carol isn’t a cop any more, but she still has friends who are. One of them showed her a photograph of Katerina, after she died, not before. Because he thought it was amazing how alike they were.’ He paused to draw breath. The fact that nobody had hit him again gave him hope. ‘She decided off her own bat to take advantage of that. She decided she was going to get into bed with you. Literally and metaphorically.’ Big words for a battered man, he couldn’t help thinking irrelevantly. ‘I had to come to Germany for this murder investigation. The killer who’s targeting psychologists. You must have seen it on the news?’

Tadeusz and Krasic exchanged a quick look. Tony thought he saw a trace of uncertainty in their eyes. Tm telling the truth,’ he said, almost sobbing. ‘I thought I could talk Carol out of what she was doing, get her back on track somehow. I love her. I don’t want her to be on the opposite side of the fence.’ He forced himself to cry, racking sobs that made his ribs scream in pain.

‘So what were you doing here, checking out the barges?’ Krasic demanded, his fist crashing into Tony’s ribs, smashing his opposite shoulder into the cold steel bulkhead.

Tony screamed with the pain, folding his arms across his chest. This time, the tears were real. ‘We’ve got a suspect,’ he gasped. ‘For the murders. We think he’s a bargee. His boat’s here. The Wilhelmina Rosen. Please, you’ve got to believe me,’ Tony begged. He wiped the strings of snot from his nose, trying not to think about the blood streaking them.

‘It’s a good story,’ Tadeusz said. Krasic looked at him as if

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he’d gone mad. ‘It’s a really good story. It’s almost good enough to be true.’

‘Boss,’ Krasic protested.

Tadeusz raised one finger. ‘It’s OK, Darko. There’s a very simple way to prove whether it’s true or not. We’re going to take our good friend Dr Hill back to Berlin with us. We’ve got a warehouse we can store him in temporarily. And then we run our little test.’

‘What test?’ Krasic said suspiciously.

‘If he’s telling the truth, then Carol Jordan won’t have any compunction about fucking me, will she?’

The cold hand of panic constricted Tony’s heart. What had he done?

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Marijke put the phone down, struggling with mixed feelings. When Tony hadn’t called her back, she hadn’t known whether to be worried or pissed off. Either way, it left her hanging in mid-air, not knowing what was happening to her one semisolid lead after weeks of chasing dead ends on the de Groot case. She also found, to her surprise, that she was feeling guilty about keeping her ideas from her colleagues. Reluctantly, she had to admit to herself that she was neither ruthless nor self confident enough to put her own ambition ahead of the need to put a stop to these killings.

She’d pushed her paperwork to one side and drawn up a brief report of her reasons for suspecting Wilhelm Albert Mann. Of course, without being able to attach Tony’s name to the theory, it didn’t have the advantage of the weight of expertise, but she considered she’d done a good job of making it sound convincing. She’d concluded with the suggestion that, in the absence of any hard evidence, Mann should be put under surveillance.

Then she’d gone in search of Maartens, eventually tracking him down in the bar across the street where he’d stopped for a quick beer on his way home. ‘I want to send this to the cops in Koln,’ she’d said, thrusting it under his nose.

He’d read it carefully, sipping at his Oranjeboom with an expression of vague distrust. ‘Nice work, Marijke,’ he said

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when he got to the end of it. Tm impressed with your knowledge of nautical knots.’

‘The internet,’ she said. ‘Great research tool. What do you think? Should I send it to them, or is it going to make me look like a crazy woman running on intuition rather than evidence?’

Maartens spluttered a mouthful of beer over his hand. ‘Marijke, if the guys in Koln are looking at as little as we are, they’re going to give you the keys to the city. If nothing else, it gives them something to do that feels like action. Sure, it might just be coincidence, but what you’re saying looks a lot like sense to me. It’s not as if this guy has any legitimate professional reason for being here in Leiden, since we don’t have commercial traffic on our canals. If this landed on my desk tonight, I’d have a team on the bugger by midnight And I’d keep them on him till either he made a move or somebody else got killed at the other end of the country. Come on, let me buy you a drink to celebrate the first bit of forward movement we’ve had since de Groot got killed.’

She shook her head. ‘Thanks, boss, but I’ll take one in the pump for later. I want to get this on the fax to Koln right away.’

Hartmut Karpf in Koln hadn’t wasted any time. Within fifteen minutes of her sending the fax, he’d called her back. ‘This is really interesting material,’ he’d said enthusiastically. ‘Look, I want to move on this fast. But it’s going to take a lot of manpower to do it properly. Is there any chance that you can come to Koln tomorrow? It would help me to convince my boss that it’s worth doing if you were here to make the case in person.’

‘I need to dear it with my commander, but I don’t think he’ll have any objection. Let me get back to you on that, OK?’

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Half an hour later, she had made the arrangements. She needed to be in Koln by noon the following day. Which offered some interesting possibilities. Marijke checked her watch. Before she made any decisions, she had to check out flights.

It was turning into a very good day indeed. If only Tony would call, then it could get close to perfect.

The lane that ran past Matic’s farm was as black as an underground cavern. High hedges cut out any light from the farmhouse, and cloud obscured the thin sliver of the crescent moon. It was hard to believe they were only a couple of miles from the edge of town, so still and dark was the spring evening. Petra peered at a green and black world through night-vision goggles, courtesy of the Special Ops commander. She felt as if she were underwater, men swimming in and out of her field of sight like strange aquatic creatures, their faces obscured with goggles and masks to protect against the smoke and tear gas they’d be using when they storrned the place.

The laconic tough guys who had been strutting their stuff all afternoon, crowding out her office, lolling in chairs and sprawling on the floor, had been transformed as night had fallen. They’d become a disciplined team, economic of movement and stealthy as shades. As soon as it had grown dark, a couple of them had flitted across the yard, silently planting microphones in the walls of the farmhouse and diverting the phone line via their own communications system. No incoming calls would be able to get through, and if Matic or his wife tried to make a call, all they would hear would be an unanswered ringing tone.

Now the team had the farmhouse encircled. When the word was given, they would rush the place, breaking the door

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down with a hydraulic ram. Petra had the plan off by heart. First the smoke, then the tear gas, then the men would pour in. The primary objective was to secure the child, the secondary objective to capture Arkady Matic and his wife. Petra was to wait in the lane with the commander of the unit, only approaching once those objectives had been secured.

The commander was standing over his communications specialist. ‘Where are we up to?’ he asked.

‘They’re talking in the kitchen. One adult male, one adult female. The child is there too. The woman just told her to sit at the table. They’re about to eat dinner.’

‘Good. We’ll wait till they’re sitting down, then we’ll move in.’ He turned to Petra. ‘We want the minimum of fuss, so we’ll go in when they’re occupied with their food.’

She nodded agreement. ‘The last thing we want is a hostage situation.’

‘Quite,’ he said briskly, the fingers of one hand beating a tattoo against his thigh. ‘God, I hate the waiting game.’

They stood in tense silence for a long couple of minutes, then the comms specialist gave the thumbs-up sign. ‘The woman’s dishing up dinner … She’s sitting down and joining them. Yes, they’re all there.’

The commander grabbed his radio. ‘This is K-one to all units. Move in. Repeat, move in.’ He gestured to Petra to follow hmi and they jogged the twenty yards to the farm gate. Moving shadows flickered around the house, caught in the soft light from curtained windows. Suddenly the night was split open by the crash of the ram against the solid wooden door, and cries of, ‘Armed police, freeze!’ filled the air.

The crunch of splintering wood reached them on the fault night breeze, then the soft crump of smoke grenades and the rattle of gas canisters against a hard surface. Muffled shouts followed, then the sound that Petra had dreaded. The boom

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of a single gunshot rang out. Horrified, she turned to the commander.

‘Shotgun,’ he said laconically.

There followed the sudden chatter of automatic fire. Then silence. ‘What’s going on?’ Petra cried.

‘I’d guess the farmer got a shot off before one of ours took him down. Don’t worry, it’s not turning into a fire fight.’ His radio crackled and he raised it to his ear. Petra couldn’t distinguish the words, only an excited jabber. Til be right there,’ he said. He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Come on, it’s all over. They’ve got the girl.’

She followed him up the track. Tendrils of smoke drifted out of the open door, which sagged from a single hinge. As they reached the farmhouse, one of the Special Ops men walked out with a wailing child in his arms. Petra ran up and took his burden from him. ‘It’s all right, Tanja,’ she said, stroking the girl’s lank, unwashed hair. ‘I’m taking you back to your mum.’

The commander was nowhere in sight. ‘What happened?’ Petra asked the officer who had brought Tanja out.

‘Stupid bastard went for his shotgun,’ he said. ‘We’ve got one guy with flesh wounds to the arm and thigh. Nothing serious, I don’t think.’

‘What about Matic?’ she asked, rocking the whimpering Tanja in her arms.

The officer made the traditional throat-cutting gesture. ‘We had no choice. It’s a bugger, though. The come-back we get from something like this, you’d think we went around shooting people for the hell of it.’

‘You don’t have any option when somebody’s pointing a gun at you,’ Petra agreed. ‘Look, I want to get Tanja out of here. Will you tell your boss I’ve gone? We’ll need to have a proper debrief, but that can wait for morning.’

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He nodded. Til pass it on.’ |

Petra walked away from the farm, wishing her car was |j parked closer. Tanja was growing heavier with every step, and she didn’t know if she could carry her all the way. What a day, she thought, plodding onwards. She wondered momentarily how Carol was coping. She presumed there would be a report of yesterday’s meeting with Radecki waiting in her mailbox, but there was no way she was going to get to that for the next couple of hours. She had to get Tanja off to the safe house and make sure all the security was in place. Tomorrow, she would organize the first of a series of interviews with Marlene that she hoped would give them enough to make sure Radecki stood trial in Germany, not in liberal Holland.

There was so much to be done. But it would all be worth it when she sat in court and watched Radecki go down for a very long time. She grinned in spite of her aching back. God, she loved this job.

Carol was finally managing to enjoy herself. Marijke had kept her posted about everyone else’s activities, and she’d been frustrated at her inability to lend a hand. But there was no point in fretting, she scolded herself. So she’d taken a long luxurious bath, which had left her feeling more relaxed than she had since she first arrived in Berlin. She’d discovered that her apartment TV had a cable channel showing English films in the evenings, and she was sprawled on the sofa in Caroline Jackson’s silk kimono, savouring the black humour of Shallow Grave and a bottle of Sancerre.

The film had just reached the point where Christopher Ecclestone was holed up in the loft with the money when the entryphone buzzed. Surprised, she hit the mute button, rolled languidly to her feet and went through to the hallway. The

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only person it was likely to be was Radecki, she thought. She wasn’t in the mood for his company, nor was she dressed for it, but she could probably put him off.

Carol picked up the handset. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Tadeusz. Can I come up?’

‘I’m in the middle of some work, Tadzio. Can’t we meet tomorrow?’

‘I really need to see you. I can’t stay long, I have to be at the TV studios in an hour.’

She could manage an hour, she thought, pressing the door release button and hurrying through to the bedroom. A silk kimono was far too suggestive for Radecki right now, she knew. She pulled on some loose linen trousers, hastily fastened her bra and grabbed a shirt, then he was knocking at her door. She dragged the shirt over her head as she walked back into the hall and let him in.

He gave her no time to greet him, simply hauling her into his arms and kissing her hard and fierce on the mouth. He moved into the apartment, taking her with him, kicking the door shut as they went. Carol managed to free her lips from his, rearing back and laughing nervously. ‘Hey, whoa! This is all a bit sudden,’ she said.