Vendetta (11 page)

She stood up as she cut the call. Walked towards Mac. ‘I’ve got to go. Sounds like another murder. They’re like buses, aren’t they? – they come along in twos and threes. Let’s talk later.’ She started towards the door, but stopped as she pulled the handle. Turned back to him. ‘If you don’t ring Phil, I will.’

Then Mac found himself alone. He stood there for a while, sifting through the information Rio had given him. If Elena’s DNA was on the system, it would be a few hours before they identified her for definite. Either way, it would be a few hours before his DNA was identified, as he was on the system. Then there was the security camera footage that he hadn’t factored in. He needed time. But Rio wasn’t giving him any. And as soon as Rio realised he had been in the hotel room with the body, he would be the hunted, not the hunter.

Mac left the café. Got ready to pop two pills . . . then he saw the car. Black Merc, just like the one he’d seen outside Mo Masri’s clinic. He hadn’t seen the car anywhere near Elena’s flat, but maybe whoever was inside had been there as well, waiting to get him in a confined space so they could burn him alive? The heavily tinted windows were up so he couldn’t see who was inside. It was parked up on the other side of the road. Mac kept his head down. Started walking. He heard the engine start. His feet beat against the street, taking longer strides. Tyres squealed behind him.

twenty-one

Noon

Mac ran. Eyes darting as he looked for an escape. A short Victorian lane, protected by two bollards, headed off down to his right. Turning into it, he chased over the cobbles, assuming the car would be too wide for pursuit. He heard the engine behind him ease up slightly and the scraping of plastic as the bumper tried to force its way past the bollards. He kept running. There was a pause, then the car reversed, accelerated, and then crashed its way through. Now it was hurtling down the lane at full speed.

For as long as he’d been a cop, Mac had enjoyed chasing and being chased; there was something primitive about it. Second-guessing the pursued or pursuing, jumping walls, weaving in between cars, disappearing into crowds or spotting the slightly out-of-breath pedestrian trying to blend in with the everyday. But not today. Someone had killed Elena and they were now on his tail trying to put him down permanently too, like they’d meant to in the hotel room.

At the end of the road, he reached out a hand and swung to the right on a lamppost, just before his pursuers could ram him. Although the brakes were applied, momentum carried the car out into the middle of the main road that lay in front of it. Mac turned and watched as passing traffic came screeching to a halt at angles to the Mercedes. Angry drivers sounded their horns. Yelled abuse at its driver. Mac kept running, looking and keeping a frantic eye open for any hiding place. For a few moments, the Merc sat motionless where it had come to rest, as if embarrassed at its mistake. Then it revved. Weaved its way past the angry drivers and began its pursuit again.

It soon pulled level with him and veered violently across the road, mounted the pavement and came to a halt, blocking the way. The driver’s door began to open, but Mac leapt onto the bonnet and skidded down the other side. He stole half a glance as he went over but the black tint on the windows meant there was no identifying the men inside. He crossed the street to where a bus had been taking on passengers and was preparing to pull away. He hammered on the door but the driver merely shook his head and the bus set off. Mac kicked the bodywork of the bus as it went. The driver applied his brakes and sounded its horn. There was some shouting but it wasn’t for him. The Mercedes had cut the bus up and was now thirty or forty yards down the road.

Mac seized his chance. He didn’t run. He walked casually across the road and down another street. He put his head down, but now he wasn’t being pursued, the energy in his legs started to slip away. He couldn’t think straight and the blood vessels in his head throbbed. He walked a block. More sounds of an engine being pushed to the limit followed by brake pads being burned out on the road he’d just left. The car had doubled back and was now hesitating out at the junction of the street it was on, unsure where its prey was. Mac stopped and looked in a shop window. A pet shop. Rabbits were trying to jump around in the cramped pen behind the glass. He stole a glance down the street. His pursuers did a turn and came down the street but seemed unsure.

Mac walked down the street as calmly as he could. The car went gently by while he went into the next shop. A mini-supermarket called Price Buster. The car came to a halt in the middle of the road, as if searching for a parking space. The shop was empty except for a teenage girl, wearing a sky-blue hijab with funky silver tassels hanging at one side, who stood behind the counter near a display of mobile phones. Seeing him, her hand fumbled under the counter. Panic button, he decided. Mac didn’t blame her. Sweating, out of breath, panic-stricken and wearing a baseball cap, he could hardly have looked any more sinister.

He leaned into her face. ‘Have you pressed an alarm?’

She gestured at the door. ‘Get out.’

Mac panted, ‘Is your alarm connected to the cops?’

But the girl was brave and she leaned towards Mac with attitude, until their noses were nearly touching. ‘Get out – unless you want to get banged up.’

So her panic button was connected to the police – but in an area like this, it could be ten or fifteen minutes before they arrived, and Mac might be dead by then.

He leapfrogged the counter, the suddenness of his move making the girl stumble back. On a stand nearby was a plastic statue of Buddha, like the ones found in cheap tourist shops in the Far East. Mac grabbed the statue and pulled the painted figure from its base. It gave way to reveal a long metal spike.

He cornered the girl. Pressing the spike against her neck he warned, ‘I’m not a criminal and you’ll be all right as long as you do as you’re told. I’m going to hide down under the counter, but you pull any shit and I’ll run this through the femoral artery in your leg? You do know what will happen if I do that . . . ?’

‘I’m not a dummy, mister; I’ve got a GCSE in biology. Probably bleed out and be dead in minutes if you cut me at an angle. But if it’s a straight cut—’

‘All right, enough with the mouth.’ He crouched down. Pressed the makeshift weapon to her thigh.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘Call the cops.’

twenty-two

‘They said they’ll be here in five minutes,’ the girl said, reporting back her conversation with the police.

‘What’s your name?’ Mac asked.

‘What? So you can get the spelling right on my gravestone?’

The girl was full of sass; if this had been any other day, Mac would’ve admired that.

‘Lean over to one of those throwaway mobiles and top it up,’ he instructed.

He felt her move and without being asked she threw the mobile down to him. With one hand, Mac raised the bottom end of the right side of his trousers, then stuck his new phone into his sock. Once his trouser leg was back in place, he laid his other mobile on the floor.

‘Nice and easy, I want you to pick up the mobile and take the SIM card out of it and pass it to me.’

She did what he asked. He tucked the card in one of the front pockets of his trousers, putting the phone that linked him to the outside world out of action for good.

Jingle. The door opened. Mac tensed. Someone was in the shop. Couldn’t be the cops because five minutes wasn’t up. He pushed the spike, just enough pressure for a warning.

Footsteps. Then a voice. Male.

‘Twenty Benson, love.’

Mac relaxed. Just a customer. The girl leaned sideways and pulled a pack of ciggies off the shelf. The transaction was done quickly. Footsteps faded towards the door. Jingle. The door opened as the man let himself out. Mac gently tapped the girl’s leg with the spike as a mark of approval.

Abruptly, the girl started yelling, ‘Behind the counter.’ She kicked Mac in his arm. ‘He’s got a blade! He’s got a blade! Behind the counter!’

The girl rushed to the side. Who the fuck was she talking to? Then he realised that the man with the cigarettes must have let someone else into the shop when he’d opened the door to leave.

Mac stormed up, spike raised. All he saw was a blurred, one-two, black movement of something coming straight at him. Bang, bang. Something hit his right arm, then his left. He grunted as the spike tumbled from his hand. He cried out as something hit him hard in the side of the neck. He went down. Stayed down as he lost consciousness.

twenty-three

The victim was tied to a chair. His eyes wide open. A hypodermic needle was sticking out of each eye. Rio Wray crouched down by the chair in the doctor’s surgery as she stared at her second murder scene of the day. She winced. She’d had a thing about needles since she was a kid. Rio didn’t wrinkle her nose at the stink coming off the body. She’d smelt that stench too many times before – the victim had lost the contents of his bowels and bladder as he’d died.

‘Do we know who the vic is?’ she asked the responding officer who had been first to attend the scene.

He stood behind her, next to Detective Martin. ‘He’s a Doctor Mohammed Masri. This is his clinic, a lucrative private practice by all accounts.’

Rio turned back to the unfortunate doctor. Looked over his body. Blood lay in dried stripes, layered on top of each other, beneath his eyes. The blood had a glaze to it; she presumed some type of clear liquid that had come from his eyes, but she wasn’t sure. She’d get the forensic specialist to check it out when she arrived. The needles were stabbed into his eyes with little finesse, like someone aiming at the dartboard for the first time. The needle in the right eye was stuck just outside the pupil. What colour his eyes had been she couldn’t tell because of the leakage of blood. From his name she guessed he must’ve been Asian, so his eyes were likely to have been some shade of brown. Rio switched her gaze to the other eye. Here the needle was almost dead centre in the pupil. Something to the side of the needle caught her eye. She leaned closer. Peered deeper. She couldn’t be certain, but it looked like there was another tiny hole in the white of the eye, almost as if the murderer had stabbed the eye before and then thought better of it, taken the needle out and stuck it in the pupil. A murderer who thought they had time on their hands. A murderer who took pleasure in the pain they were inflicting. Most people would be shocked to hear that most of the murderers she’d caught hadn’t thought about the pain they were causing. Most had been domestic situations; a husband angry at finding out his beloved was having an affair, a childish dispute between teenagers, a wife who just couldn’t take the beatings her husband had been giving her for years any more.

The needles hadn’t been the murder weapon. What had been inside them had been. Whatever had been pumped inside his eyes, travelling down through his body, had delivered the fatal blow. What that had been, she didn’t know, but the autopsy would determine that. His mouth was open. The tongue hanging out like he’d been screaming until the very end. Froth and blood lay encrusted round his lips. She shifted away from his face and studied his tied arms. No, tied hands, she corrected herself. Each hand was secured to the thick black plastic arm of the large swing-back chair. The three middle fingers rested on the arm, while the thumb and small finger were tucked underneath. Tied with rope that was red and twisted like the twine of a washing line.

Rio stood up and spoke to one of the officers holding the security log. ‘Make sure that forensics identify what type of rope was used to tie him. If it didn’t come from here, we might be able to trace where it was purchased.’

‘I didn’t expect to see you again this morning,’ a voice said.

She turned to find the forensic specialist, Charlie, and her team behind her.

‘It’s looking like one of those days for murder,’ she answered.

The forensic expert stepped forward. Moved towards the victim. ‘Interesting.’

‘Like “your usual murder” interesting? “Serial killer” interesting? Or it just “gets your forensic blood flowing” interesting?’ Rio asked as she moved to stand beside Charlie.

The other woman was grim as she peered closely at the victim. ‘No, “I’ve seen something like this before” interesting.’

That got Rio’s full attention. The other woman carried on. ‘It was years back. I was doing some international work in Russia. Working on a joint op with the forensics team there. A small place, Vayasibirsk, not the type of place most people would have heard of. Quite pretty, really, except for the gang violence that was going on. A speciality of one of the gangs was sticking syringes full of bleach into the eyes of any witnesses they thought were going to inform on them to the police.’

Rio frowned. ‘Why choose that method of murder?’

She kept her gaze fixed on the victim. ‘It’s like these Mafia killings in Sicily, message deaths. We found one victim, a young woman, dead beside her crying baby son. Next to her was a note: “The tongue speaks, but the head doesn’t know.”’ She turned to look at Rio. ‘Sometimes it’s best to keep your mouth shut.’

Rio was about to tell the officer to take note of what the forensic expert was saying, but when she turned to her she was already writing the information down. So was this murder gang-related? A Russian gang who continued to use ways of murdering people from the old country in their new homeland? Maybe the doctor had patients he was seeing out of hours? The type of patients who didn’t like going to hospitals?