The Wrong Man (2 page)

Thirty-two Months Later

Bishop opened his eyes and stared at the fluorescent light behind its steel grid in the ceiling. Then he studied the spot-welded
railing of the bunk directly above him. Then back to the ceiling. Not that it made much difference. The eight-by-nine cell
was hardly brimming over with visual stimulation.

There was a combo washbasin and john in one corner. A small, barred window with a brick wall for a view. Three shelves weighed
down with toiletries and books. A desk built into the same wall. And a plastic stool.

Stretched out on the bunk in the prison-issue grey shirt and pants, Bishop absently scratched at his goatee before reaching
down to knead the muscles around his collarbone. The facial hair was only one example of how he’d changed in the last two
years and eight months. In addition, the professional Harvard haircut of his old life had grown into a shoulder-length brown
mane. His naturally tanned complexion had become a distant memory too, and his six-foot-one-inch frame had filled out a little
thanks to the starchy food. No prison tattoos, though, which was something.

The room’s other occupant was Jorge, an overweight Latin American forty-something whose last armed robbery meant he might
see daylight again in fifteen years. He sat on the stool, carefully rolling a ‘Grand Central Special’ from leftover butts
in his improvised ashtray. He was humming
to himself as he waited for his call to the visiting room, a part of the prison
Bishop had only seen once in the nine hundred and seventy-three days he’d been there. At his request, his older sister, Amy,
hadn’t come a second time. Although he’d appreciated the thought, he didn’t like her seeing him in this place. He was fairly
sure she hadn’t enjoyed the experience
much, either. Further visits would only make things harder for both of them.

Bishop just hoped his cellmate wouldn’t start talking. He usually did at some point and then Bishop had to try to block him
out. But
humming he could live with. He’d heard it so many times it had become a sad soundtrack to his life in here. In truth, it actually
helped him think,
although he’d never admit that to Jorge.

The so-called evidence that had led to Bishop’s arrest for the murders of Randall Brennan, Natalie Brennan and Ryan Oates
had been expertly planned. Whoever set him up had spent a lot of time and effort making sure the cops didn’t need to look
anywhere other than at him.

In Bishop’s rented Queens
apartment, they found blueprints of the Brennan house on his hard drive with convenient notations
marking the secret vault’s location in the third-floor office. They also found over a hundred pornographic shots of Natalie
Brennan that appeared to have been taken in his bedroom. Career-ending ‘evidence’ that had simply added further motive for
Bishop’s actions that night.
And at the house, there’d been nothing to back up Bishop’s story of his fight with the missing
fourth raider or his claim that his comms and pager had been jammed. But it was the knife that really did him in.

Covered in the Brennans’ blood and with Bishop’s prints all over the handle, it must have seemed like a winning lottery ticket
to the homicide detectives
when they got the results back. Especially when forensics found enough similarities between the
9mm hollow-points in Oates and Bishop’s piece to add Oates’s murder to the charge sheet, too. He was just surprised they hadn’t
tried to pin Neary’s death on him as well.

Add the three dead raiders and you were left with a body count of seven. The newspapers had
loved that, of course. As far
as they were concerned, seven bodies constituted a
massacre
. It might have been nine had Brennan’s wife and son not been holidaying in Malibu with friends at the time. That was something
to be grateful for, at least.

The timing had been perfect, too. Bishop’s team, having completed their four-month rotation, had been expecting
their replacement
squad that very evening. The impostors had merely turned up an hour earlier with the right identification and the correct
authorization codes. Everything seemed to check out. Until the shooting started.

And as for motive, a little digging into his email account brought up a cryptic message leading the cops to an offshore account
in Bermuda. One opened in Bishop’s name two months before which suddenly became two million dollars healthier on October 18,
three days after the attack.

Tucking his free hand under his head, Bishop could see how plausible it must have all sounded to a cop unwilling to think
outside the box. But most of it was just lazy. For instance, if he’d been
smart enough to pull the rest off, how could he
be dumb enough to leave the knife without wiping his prints off first?

His thoughts went back to the questions of ‘who’ and ‘why’. Two little words, but the only ones that counted. And Bishop knew
that without figuring out one, he would never get the other to reveal itself. He also had a feeling the ‘why’ was
going to
be easier to solve than the ‘who’, since everything usually came down to money and Randall Brennan had plenty of the stuff.

In this case two million had been set aside just to make Bishop look bad, an amount that would tempt any number of heist men
just on its own. Which meant the vault must have held something more than that. A
lot
more. After all,
Brennan must have had the vault built for a good reason. As a highly successful international arms negotiator,
he must have had plenty of income lying around he couldn’t afford to declare.

But Bishop wasn’t about to rule out revenge as a motive, either. His team hadn’t been hired as a status symbol to impress
the neighbours. The family had been receiving
threats. Serious threats. Brennan hadn’t reached the top of his game by playing
by the rules and it was entirely possible he’d made a dangerous enemy somewhere along the way. Someone who’d do anything to
achieve satisfaction and was more than willing to corrupt one of RoyseCorp’s men to get the job done. But that was always
when Bishop hit the wall. Because why involve him?

Even if he was just a diversion, why not somebody else? There had to be a reason good enough to want him locked up for life.
It would have been a lot simpler just to add him to the night’s victims. And this was the part that really got him. Not everyone
could set up an attack against New York’s top protection firm and bank on Bishop’s getting life for a triple
murder charge.
Which meant it came down to one of the three survivors from his team. Sam Chaney, Chris Tennison or Martin Thorpe. To influence
the night’s events and arrange all the evidence against him, the man needed to be there. On the spot. Without a doubt.

Along with Neary, all three had been a regular part of his team for years. Private security and
close protection attracted
more than its fair share of disreputable characters, so you tended to keep the ones you
could trust close. Which was why Bishop insisted on handpicking his own crew when he was promoted to team leader less than
a year into his RoyseCorp service. His immediate supervisor, perhaps sensing he would have walked otherwise, had consented
to his wishes.
Thorpe was the first to be picked, with Chaney and Neary following close behind. Tennison had just two and
a half years on the team, with Oates the most recent addition.

And although he had to sometimes reproach one of them for the occasional lapse, it was never for anything serious or they’d
have been out. If anything, he’d gone out of his way to understand
their idiosyncrasies. Like red-headed Tennison’s attitude,
or Thorpe’s claustrophobia, or Chaney’s wandering eye when it came to little ladies in distress. So after spending his first
week inside going through everything he knew about each of his men and getting nowhere, Bishop had decided that maybe he needed
to look at it from their point of view.

It was possible a mild rebuke from Bishop had stuck in one of the men’s craws, and grown until the idea of setting him up
for murder seemed a fair revenge. Although Bishop hadn’t believed this angle he’d still evaluated every job they’d done together
over the past six years. Another week later he was back to square one. Nothing flagged up. And the one thing he could rely
on was his power of recall.

Bishop never forgot anything. Never had. Not since school. Photographic or eidetic memory, they called it. Found in less than
ten per cent of children and usually gone by the time they reach their teens. Usually, but not always. Bishop was living proof
of that.

So, by day fifteen of his sentence, he’d
concluded he wasn’t going to find answers by concentrating on Chaney, Tennison or
Thorpe. Which just left the guy he’d shot on the landing. The one who’d drugged him. Since the doctors who worked on Bishop
had found no trace of any drug in his system, the cops claimed he and the raider had been working together. Which only fuelled
Bishop’s anger and made him even more
determined to find the guy. And he knew once he found him, he’d be able to trace everything
back to the source. To the Judas on his team.

And that was where Bishop had got his first small break. Just before he’d shot the man he’d caught a momentary glimpse of
his lower facial features as he’d pulled down the ski mask. Cleft chin, lipless mouth, slightly sunken
cheeks and long, almost
patrician nose with a ridge along its centre. The image had buzzed around Bishop’s brain like a
mosquito and he became certain he’d seen it before. Somewhere. And not too long before the attack.

Unfortunately, a photographic memory wasn’t like accessing a hard drive with everything filed neatly by category or date.
The mind didn’t
work like that. Everything he’d seen was stored in there, but sometimes it took a while to find the right
folder. In this case, it took longer than usual. Much longer. The mental torment of not being able to place the guy had actually
been worse than the physical confinement. For months he’d chased the memory through his tour in the Marines, the two years
spent in LA, and
then the six years with RoyseCorp. But he hadn’t been able to pinpoint that face. It had almost driven him
crazy, until finally, six months and two days after he’d been admitted into Greenacres Medium Security Prison in the picturesque
south-westerly region of Ulster County, the answer flashed before him at an unexpected moment. He’d just stood there at the
urinal, mid-flow,
with a dumbstruck expression on his face.

Randall Brennan’s Wall of Fame.
That’s
where he’d seen him.

Slotted in amongst photographs of Brennan shaking hands with politicians, heads of state, and the odd sports celebrity had
been a colour shot taken at a private aircraft hangar showing Brennan with King Saleh of Yajir. On the right-hand side the
tail of a small jet just made it into the frame, while a smiling Brennan and the king shook hands in the foreground, surrounded
by assorted flunkies. And in the background, partly obscured by the king’s bodyguards, had been a Caucasian face. Brown, wavy
hair over a high forehead. Light-coloured eyes. Dark complexion. Small ears set flat against the skull. And the exact
same
long nose. The same sunken cheeks. Same cleft chin.

It was the man who had chloroformed him at the house. He was certain of it. The killer was someone Brennan had known or worked
with before Bishop’s team even entered the picture. He was the link to the traitor who set him up. All Bishop had to do was
find him.

Trouble was,
his next parole hearing wasn’t for another twenty-seven years.

Bishop glanced over at Jorge, who was reading an old letter and blowing smoke towards the ceiling, stinking the place out
even more. Amidst the constant clamour of prison life, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps and knew it was a guard
without looking. They were the only ones in here with leather
soles.

The footsteps came to a halt a few feet away and a voice said, ‘Visitor.’

Harris, by the sound of it. One of the real mouth-breathers. Continuing to massage the spot on his clavicle where the 9mm
Parabellum from Chaney’s Glock had passed through, Bishop watched Jorge put down the letter and crush the cigarette remains
in a cup
as he prepared to rise.

‘But not for you, Jorgey boy,’ Harris said.

Jorge sank back onto the stool and threw a questioning look at Bishop, who frowned and swung his legs off the bunk. The short,
burly guard stood outside the cell, looking down at him with his usual bored expression as he noisily chewed gum.

‘Yeah, you, Bishop,’ he
said. ‘On your feet, let’s go.’

‘The courier company they’re using is Bearer Logistics,’ Miles Pascombe said, facing Bishop across the table in the visitors’
area. ‘They’ll be making the delivery on September eighth. Three Sundays from now.’

Bishop sat with his arms crossed and studied the overweight, badly dressed lawyer. He was surprised at the news. And
seventeen
days didn’t give him much time.

He leaned back in his seat and cast his eyes around the visitors’ room. Most of the tables were occupied by inmates and their
wives, girlfriends, relatives, kids or lawyers. Thanks to the high ceiling, the noise level almost equalled that of his cellblock.

‘They give a time?’ he asked.

Pascombe dipped his head briefly to look at the legal papers in front of him, his chin instantly disappearing into his neck.
Bishop studied his slightly shabby grey suit and wondered if he was the guy’s only client. It would explain why he was here
when a simple phone call would have been sufficient. Or maybe he just felt news like this should be delivered in person.

‘Says here it’ll be between midnight and six a.m.,’ Pascombe said, looking back up. He tilted his head slightly at Bishop’s
neutral expression. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. We won the suit.’

‘Believe me, I’m smiling on the inside,’ Bishop said. ‘Anything else?’

Pascombe rubbed his upper lip with a forefinger. ‘Well, you’re under a
gag order like I guessed, but that’s usual in these
early settlement cases.’ He frowned and said, ‘What isn’t usual is how quickly we got a verdict. I still can’t quite believe
it. I mean, in my experience these things usually go on for
years
. I was thinking five or six, maybe. Not
two
.’

Bishop stroked his beard. He’d been wondering the same thing.

Just two years since he found that weak spot in the system he’d been searching for. Followed by three weeks in the prison
library going through
the pitiful selection of law books to find the precedents he needed. Finding a lawyer hadn’t been a problem, with Pascombe
more than willing to actually file the suit and wait for his fees at the back end. He’d said he knew he
was onto a winner,
and he’d been proved right yesterday when the judge handed down his verdict. More important to Bishop, however, was the tiny
clause he’d insisted on. The one that legally bound the defendants to notify the plaintiff immediately of the exact time and
date of delivery.

‘What’s your take on it?’ he asked as Pascombe began putting
his papers back in his briefcase.

‘Not sure,’ the lawyer said, pausing. ‘All I can think is maybe our suit caused a few ripples within the system and they wanted
it wrapped up quietly.’

‘Before inmates in other prisons started getting ideas.’

‘Could be.’

Bishop nodded. It made as much sense as anything. He rose from his seat
and said, ‘Good job, anyway, counsellor. Thanks.’

Pascombe stood up as well and shook the hand Bishop held out with a grin. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

Bishop gave him a final nod, then began walking towards the door. The lawyer had done his part and Bishop hoped the success
gave him better paid jobs from now on. Enough to buy a new suit anyway. His thoughts
then shifted to his preparations and
the two weeks he had to work with. It really wasn’t much time. But not impossible. It was just a challenge, that’s all. Probably
the first real one since he’d been in here.