Donaldson went on, ‘For this one he had a major change of MO. He hit a gay bar in downtown Miami, usual style. Then he exploded a bomb underneath the FBI RV point, killing three agents. Next he kills the two agents who found him on a nearby rooftop.’
‘Why the change of tactics?’
Donaldson shrugged. ‘Anybody’s guess. Maybe to show us who’s boss. . I just don’t know. How do these guys’ minds operate?’
‘How did he manage to plant a bomb at the RV point?’ Henry asked curiously, trying to get his head round the scenario. ‘Surely the RV point would have been established after the bomb had gone off in the gay bar?’
‘It was planted in a drain before the RV point was set up.’
Henry scratched his head. ‘He definitely didn’t have the opportunity to sneak it in?’
‘Nope.’
‘How did he know where the RV point would be set up?’ Henry’s tired mind cleared of its fuzziness as he worked through this one, the photo of the two dead law enforcement officers and the RV point bomb being the catalysts.
‘Good question: knowledge of FBI tactics at the scene of such devices, plus a thorough recce of the area which would have given him a good idea where we would be likely to set up. It’s possible he planted bombs at other possible RV points, we don’t know.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to send you a message.’ Donaldson looked quizzically at Henry as he twisted the photograph round in his fingers, tilting his head sideways.
‘The one on the left is my pal, Col Briscoe. We were partners for a while when I worked the Miami Field Office. He was a close personal friend and a damned good agent. I’m still shocked how he got caught like that. He left a wife, two kids, one grandchild. Fucking tragedy. Amazingly he was still alive when our guys got to him. Died minutes later in the ambulance, but couldn’t talk or communicate anything before he died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry mumbled. His attention was fixed firmly on the photograph. ‘I hate to suggest this, but have you and your colleagues considered that the perpetrator, as you call ’em, could be a rogue agent? Or an ex-agent, fired, maybe with a grudge.’
‘Considered: dismissed,’ Donaldson said crisply.
‘Really?’ Henry sounded surprised. ‘Not some disaffected ex-agent, or serving agent with a downer on the organisation and minorities; someone recently fired or under investigation or disciplined?’
Donaldson said no. He sounded a little annoyed at Henry’s persistence.
‘Stick with me here, Karl. Have you ever seen a word puzzle which, when you first see the word, looks just like a few disjointed blocks, shaded grey. Then someone says to you what the word is and you go, “Hell, yes, I see it now!”’
‘Can’t say I have.’ Donaldson’s brow creased.
‘The one I’ve seen is where the word is “TIE”, written in capital letters. All you see at first on the paper are a few square, grey shaded blocks, then when your mind fills in the lines for you, the word becomes obvious. It’s all about perception and some people will never be able to see the word, even when it’s blindingly obvious to other folk. You’ll definitely have seen that famous one that looks like a Grecian urn one minute, then two faces staring at each other the next. Or the old woman/young woman one — yeah? It’s a matter of a bit of mind adjustment.’
‘I know ’em. They’re very well-known ones, always cropping up in training — but haven’t you lost the plot here, pal?’
‘Possibly.’ Henry gave the photo back. ‘Have a look at the blood next to your friend’s body, hold the photo the right way up to start with.’
Donaldson peered closely, then held it further away from his face. ‘Looks like he slipped and slid in it, tried to stand up, maybe.’
‘Could well be,’ Henry admitted. ‘Now start to turn it round very slowly — you said this guy was a good agent?’
‘One of the best.’ Donaldson rotated the photograph as instructed, tilting his head too.
‘Keep your head still.’
‘Naw. . nothing.’
‘Well, maybe it is nothing, perhaps my exhausted brain going into overload, y’know, the one with three hours sleep, now a blubbering jelly. Give it here,’ Henry took the photograph back and laid it on the coffee table. ‘But, I’ll lay a pound to a pinch of shit — an old, northern saying,’ he said in answer to Donaldson’s expression of incomprehension, ‘meaning I’ll give you good odds, that no one has looked with a really critical eye at the pattern of the blood, but if you look at it and tell yourself it’s not blood you’re looking at, it’s ink, what do you see?’
‘I think I’m being dim here.’
‘No, you just need to open your mind a bit.’ Henry placed his fingertip on the photograph. ‘I know it’s rough and I could be wrong, but I’d say your old pal wasn’t a good agent — he was an exceptional one right up to the end.’
Henry traced a shape in the blood with his finger. Then another.
‘Anything yet?’
Suddenly Donaldson gasped and sat bolt upright. ‘Jesus — unbelievable.’
‘The very last efforts of a dying man to identify his killer, maybe,’ Henry finished cautiously.
‘Once you see it, it’s so obvious!’
‘He probably couldn’t finish it off — fatally injured, shot in the head, that’s not a surprise.’
Donaldson could not stop shaking his head in disbelief. Now he could clearly see the letters ‘F’ and ‘B’ written in blood next to Col Briscoe’s body.
‘Unless he’s saying that ACC Fanshaw-Bayley is the killer — which would be fantastic because I’d love to lock the twat up — could he have been trying to write FBI? And if so, why?’
Kit Nevison stood in the dock of court number one at Blackpool Magistrates Court, hardly even listening to the heated exchange between prosecution and defence. It meant nothing to him. Words. Garbage. Either he’d get bail or he wouldn’t. Eventually the magistrates retired to have a private conflab, returning about fifteen minutes later.
‘Stand in court,’ the cloaked usher said loudly.
Everyone rose, including Nevison. He was flanked by security guards from Group 4.
‘Mr Nevison,’ the chief magistrate addressed him. ‘We have reached a decision concerning the matter of your bail.’ Nevison swayed slightly. ‘You will be released on bail on the condition that you report daily to Blackpool Police Station at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. prior to the next hearing on the fourth of next month.’
‘Eh?’ Nevison replied dumbly, scratching his head.
‘In other words, once you have signed the bail forms, Mr Nevison,’ the magistrate said testily, ‘you are free to go.’
Two minutes later, Nevison staggered unsteadily from the court having had his property returned to him. He stood at the top of the flight of steps outside the court building and with dithering fingers rolled himself a ciggie. He lit it and sucked deeply. He patted his pockets in the forlorn hope of finding something. They were empty. Shit. He needed to score. But without money and feeling incapable of even robbing a granny, things were pretty desperate. Then he had an idea: he would go and see his friend. Yeah, that was it. Davey was always a soft touch. ‘And,’ Nevison thought, ‘I have a key to his flat somewhere — where the fuck did I put it?’ His eyes narrowed. If he could find it, he could let himself into his friend’s flat and help himself. Davey was always leaving shit lying around.
Thirteen
David Gill was shivering. He was becoming colder, the more he held himself back from walking out of his little flat onto the streets, picking up the first dark-skinned person he saw and butchering them. He was desperate to kill, but knew that if he did so, everything would be put in jeopardy because it would be unplanned, careless and he would probably make a mistake. A thoughtless kill could ruin years of meticulously planned work; but he had spilled so much blood over the last two days that he had become addicted to it and longed for more. He had to pull himself away from it, but he knew he could not do it alone. He needed help. There was only one person capable of giving it.