ZeeZee carefully put the fat manila envelope he'd been delivering on the arm of a white leather sofa and considered his options. He could call the police or he could just leave, quietly and quickly. Returning the way he'd come, on the back of his 650cc Suzuki. And why not? He now had no one to meet. No reason for being there.
'Shit.' ZeeZee picked up his envelope and headed downstairs, the Debussy nocturne looping in his head. He made it as far as the sand-blasted glass front door before someone yelled his name.
'Hey, ZeeZee ...' The amused shout came from behind him. 'Going somewhere?'
He turned to see two bulls he knew in SPD jumpsuits flanking a woman who wore a black Chanel suit, black shoes and Shu Uemura make-up. Not that she needed it: even naked, her face would have been flawless, her eyes bright, brown and hard as glass. He had no idea who she was.
All he knew was the woman had to have practised that contemptuous, deadpan stare. It was too convincing to be real. The grins on the faces of the uniformed officers were something else entirely. Certainly not real smiles, more grim-faced got-you-you-bastard kind of expressions.
'Micky O'Brian ...' ZeeZee began, breaking the silence.
'Yeah,' said the woman. 'Why don't you take us to meet him?'
'He's ... When I got here ... I didn't know
She looked at ZeeZee without saying anything. Just waited until his words stumbled to a halt and then kept waiting while the English boy skidded around in his head for the right approach to take to what was about to happen — and realized there wasn't one.
'Don't tell me,' she said finally. 'You got here a couple of minutes ago and found the front door open. You knocked but no one came, so you went inside. And guess what, you found Micky O'Brian shot through the skull ... Or was it the throat?'
'A head shot,' ZeeZee said, without thinking.
The two uniformed officers looked at each other. As if that only confirmed what they expected.
'And you were on your way to call the police?'
ZeeZee nodded.
'So why didn't you use the hall phone?' The woman nodded to a Sanyo fixed to the wall by the front door, its screen black but one diode flashing lazily in the lower left corner, to signal the system was set to standby.
'I didn't see it,' said ZeeZee hastily. 'I was too shocked.'
'Which is why you were whistling ...' She hummed back at him the main motif from Clair de Lune. 'I can see the headlines now. The whistling hit man ...'
'I haven 't killed anybody,' ZeeZee protested.
'Of course you haven't,' she said sourly. 'So why don't you come and show us the person you didn't kill?'
Micky O'Brian 's body was where he'd left it. The blood seemed a little darker, Micky a little more obviously dead. Other than that, walking into the gallery could just have been a bad attack of déjà vu.
'So you found him lying there like that?'
ZeeZee nodded.
'And you touched nothing?'
He shook his head, then hesitated.
'Yes?' she said, drawing out the word until it ended with a hiss.
'I touched the wine bottle. To check how cold it was ... And I turned off the music.'
'How thoughtful of you.'
'But I didn't touch anything else. I didn't kill him. And I didn't take the paintings,'
The detective flicked her gaze to a blank space on the wall. Then back to the body. So far none of them had checked Micky for a pulse. But maybe they'd decided it wasn 't necessary, given the very final expression on his face.
'So you're trying to shift the blame to an accomplice, right? He shot Micky, took the paintings and left you to lock the front door ... Yeah, I know,' said the woman, as she held up her hand to still ZeeZee's protest. 'You didn't kill him and you don't know who did.'
Shrugging, she walked over to Micky and looked down for a while, then bent to free something trapped under him. 'Here,' she said, tossing it to ZeeZee. 'You left this behind.'
The fat envelope he'd been carrying hit the floor as ZeeZee fumbled to make the catch. And then, while he was still worrying about what he'd dropped, ZeeZee realized what he'd just caught. What he'd just tagged with his sweat, fingerprints and oil. An old Wilson Combat, its usual barrel replaced with a .22 conversion. The deep scar of an acid etch where the barrel's identification number should be.
'Ditch the gun.'
ZeeZee heard her words but he wasn't really listening. Had he always been the patsy: or was he only now surplus to requirements? He looked in disbelief at the weapon in his hands, knowing exactly who it belonged to ... Wild Boy had just, very firmly, taken him out of the loop.
'Drop it.' The woman nodded to the man beside her, who flipped his service-issue Colt out of its holster and trained the sight on ZeeZee's chest before the English boy realised what was happening.
'Put it down real slow.' The man holding the revolver had a Southern drawl and a liking for theatrics. The trigger on his gun was already pulled, his knuckle white from depressing the trigger to its fullest extent. Only his thumb was holding back the hammer.
'Your choice,' the woman said coldly.
Wasn't it always?
ZeeZee kneeled slowly and placed the Combat flat on Micky's white carpet, muzzle pointed safely towards the wall. He didn't want any misunderstandings.
'I didn't kill Micky O'Brìan. I didn't...'He wanted his voice to sound decisive and confident but instead it sounded shrill, as if he was trying to convince himself.
'Switching to .22 was a good move,' said the officer with the gun. 'But, you know what ... ?'
ZeeZee shook his head.
'You really should have used a silencer. We got a call about the shot right after it happened ...'
ZeeZee looked through the gallery's long window, taking in the rugged coastline, the choppy grey waters, the sheer isolation of this stretch of Puget Sound. Yeah, he'd bet there'd been a call, but not made from around here. There was no other house within miles. He couldn't wait for the part where they looked in the envelope and discovered Micky's delivery: half a kilo of uncut coke.
Chapter Twenty-two
6th July
300-3500 Hz (with harmonics peaking above 3500), is an average frequency-range for the human voice. And the sensitivity of human hearing is pretty smooth between 500-5000Hz, with 110dB being usually as loud as a voice gets.
The prisoner in the next cell was breaking 120dB, his screams emptying in a single breath that ended as swallowed, choking sobs. And though the air in Raf's small room now stank of sweat, everyone was being positively polite.
The bey was good — Felix had to give him that. He hadn't tried to claim immunity or demanded to talk to the Minister. He'd even allowed an embarrassed sergeant to wire him to a polygraph, fastening the band round his own wrist and placing his right hand completely flat on the plate. Not that the bey was exactly cooperating, either.