Hannah Shapiro had set the whole thing up. I’d taken her spiel and swallowed it – hook, line and sinker.
Harlan Shapiro had been the real catch all along and she had been the perfect bait. Perfect for Jack, perfect for me and perfect for Harlan.
Guilt. It’s a powerful motivator.
And a deadly one.
Chapter 84
Kirsty Webb and DI Natalie James stood in front of the exposed safe.
Looking for a series of numbers that would open it, they had been through Chappel’s diary and every bit of paperwork.
Nothing.
DI Webb was convinced that they would be written down somewhere. They always were. When it came to passwords or codes, the public were pretty bad like that.
It was like leaving a key under the doormat, or in a wellington boot on the back porch, or under a flowerpot as millions of people throughout the country did. Might as well just leave the door wide open and a welcome mat for burglars to wipe their feet on.
Kirsty nibbled on a thumbnail, then pulled out her mobile and tapped in some numbers.
‘Dan,’ she said when it was answered, ‘I need your mate Gary’s number.’ She listened for a moment. ‘I’ve got a safe that needs opening, that’s why! It’s a combination dial. And I can’t find the code anywhere… okay, I’ll try that and call you back if I need you.’
‘Who was that?’ asked DI James after she hung up.
‘My ex-husband.’
‘That wise?’
‘I certainly wasn’t wise marrying him.’
‘I meant telling him what you’re up to.’
‘He runs a private detective agency. He’s been helping me.’
DI James threw her a pointed look. ‘Like fast-tracking DNA identification.’
Kirsty nodded. ‘So forth and suchlike.’
‘And this Gary – he’s a security consultant for him?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Must be some agency to run a DNA check that fast, and with the Romanian police.’
‘He’s with Private International.’
‘Yeah. They have resources,’ DI James said dryly. She nodded at the safe. ‘So what’s he suggest?’
‘That we try his date of birth. Most common numeric aide-memoire, apparently.’
‘Aide-memoire, you say?’
‘Dan’s been to college. Thinks he’s smart.’
‘And is he?’ DI James pulled out her notebook and flicked through a couple of pages.
‘He’s smart in some areas, dumb as a box of rocks in the ones that count.’
DI James stepped up to the safe and spun the dial clockwise and counterclockwise a number of times. She paused and tried the handle.
Nothing.
‘Try his number plate,’ Kirsty suggested.
DI James flicked through her notebook, spun the dial again a few times and turned the handle.
Open sesame.
Inside was the laptop that the optician had placed there earlier. DI James reached in took it out and put it on the desk. There was nothing else in the safe.
Kirsty eased the laptop open and pressed the power button.
The computer’s desktop display appeared. A coastal scene – somewhere near Dover, by the looks of it.
The desktop was remarkably uncluttered. Kirsty probably had fifty or sixty icons on her machine’s desktop.
She used the track pad below the keyboard and clicked on the Windows symbol. The system was a few years old and running Vista by the looks of it. Kirsty went to the start function and clicked on recent documents. It revealed a drop-down menu of about ten jpegs. Kirsty clicked on one and a picture filled the screen.
After a moment Kirsty swallowed dryly and nodded to her colleague.
‘Well, there’s your motive,’ she said.
Chapter 85
The Sun was still high in the sky that Sunday.
But it was late afternoon, almost evening, now and a light wind had picked up. The caretaker was doing his final rounds in the cemetery and it would soon be time to lock up.
He looked across at a lone figure, the only visitor left in the park. Kneeling in front of a child’s plot that had a large white marble headstone. Disproportionately large compared with the tragic smallness of the plot. It was more than a headstone, it was a monument in the grand Victorian style.
Fresh flowers had been laid there every day for the last month. Some parents looked after their children in death better than others did in life, the caretaker thought to himself as he glanced at his watch. He’d give it five minutes and then he’d have to lock up. Sad world, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time, in which you have to lock a cemetery against the ravages of vandalism and mischief.
The inscription on the gravestone read: ‘In loving memory of Emily Jane Lloyd: she danced through our lives all too briefly, and now she dances with the angels. 14/2/2000 – 19/3/2009.’
There was a small lidded chalice at the front of the plot among the stone angels and the vases of flowers. The surgeon leaned forward and raised the lid.
If the caretaker had been able to see what was inside the chalice, he would have had far more troubling thoughts about the state of the world than those caused by mere vandalism that he’d had earlier.
The surgeon opened a small handkerchief and removed the object inside. A scarred, burned piece of flesh. A human finger. Or part of it. The surgeon put it in the pot among the others and closed the lid, replacing the container back with the other objects adorning the shrine to the dead girl.
The voice was a soft whisper, almost a chant. ‘Just one more to go, my darling.’
Chapter 86
Hannah Shapiro was dressed now.
Tight jeans tucked into knee-length chocolate-brown boots, a sweater, her hair tied back, make-up on. The transformation was amazing.
She was rubbing her right wrist, still red from the rough abrasion of the rope she had been tied with. Attention to detail. You have to admire that.
‘We know it was a set-up, Hannah. Tell us now what we need to know and it’ll go easier for you.’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve made a mistake, Mister Carter.’
Mister Carter. Just like the mechanical voice had called me on the telephone. It had been her all along, laughing at us. Laughing at me.
I remembered the younger Hannah once more, sitting next to me on the flight over, discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald and teasing me. I realised the past wasn’t just another country, as another novelist once said. You can travel to another country but the past is a whole different life.
‘Where have they taken your father, Hannah?’ I asked.
She shrugged.
I felt like taking two steps forward and backhanding her across the face. My god-daughter had been hospitalised because of her. She’d had us dancing around like puppets while she jerked the strings and it made me angrier than I had felt for a long, long time.
She must have seen something in my eyes because she stepped back a pace.
Her eyes flickered nervously. There was still something wrong with the picture. But I couldn’t work out what.
‘You can talk to us, Hannah…’ I said. Her eyes flicked to Del Rio who was leaning against the wall and saying nothing.
He’d told me earlier that it was my play. He’d follow my lead. I didn’t think we’d need the good cop, bad cop routine. We had her cold and she knew it. Just a matter of time.
‘Or we can take you down to Paddington Green and you can talk to the cops,’ I continued.
‘He deserved it!’ she spat out finally.
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Hannah shouted back at me, incredulous. ‘Why do you think, you dumb prick!’
Her West Coast accent had come back strongly now. ‘He refused to pay the ransom and my mother died. She died, Mister Carter! But not before I was made to watch her being raped. And then they shot her.’
She broke down in tears and I regretted the urge to slap her. I felt more like putting my arms around her. She was right in some ways. Maybe Harlan Shapiro did deserve a bit of payback. But not this.