‘Who else?’
‘The house is only four years old, so there are the architects, contractors and sub-contractors who worked on the place; the civic authorities, planning department and so forth – a lot of people, man.’
‘And you think one of them gave the plans to whoever did this?’
‘Someone did, that’s for damn sure. Anyway, once the guards are dead, at least five people get out of the limo and come this way.’
‘How do you know there were five?’
‘You’ll see.’
Parker walked through the gate, gesturing to Carver to follow, talking as he went.
‘The gate closes behind them so no one outside can see what’s happening. The limo drives away. We know this because a local resident who’d been out for the night drove past at around five past five and he’s absolutely certain there was no white Hummer parked here.’
‘It would be pretty hard to miss.’
‘Exactly. Now, the five walk towards the house.’
As they came up the drive, Carver got his first proper view of the Klerk residence. It was a two-storey, flat-roofed modernist building, massed in a series of linked boxes. Plain walls of olive-grey concrete were pierced by wide expanses of floor-to-ceiling glass.
The geometric starkness of the construction was offset by the lush greenery all around it. Palms and other trees stood among impeccably trimmed hedges and brightly coloured flowers spilled from huge concrete planting boxes. The drive swept up to a formal entrance but Parkes ignored it and kept walking round the side of the building.
‘They came round here to the back of the building.’
Carver followed him to an expanse of flagstones, framing the turquoise water of the house’s swimming-pool. A set of steps ran from the pool area up to the back of the house. Parkes set off up the stairs. At the top, he stopped in front of a wall made up of wooden-framed glass panels, one of which had been smashed.
‘They got in through the lounge area here. Just shot a couple of holes in the glass and knocked the rest out with the butts of their guns.’
‘Must have made a helluva noise,’ observed Carver.
‘Damn right it must. But whoever they were, they didn’t care about that. I get the feeling they wanted Klerk to know they were there.’
‘Because they knew how he’d react?’
‘That’s what I think, ja.’
‘But how could they know that?’
Parkes shook his head ruefully. ‘I don’t know, man, not for sure. But anyone who knows Klerk knows he’s never, ever going to back down from a fight. They were probably trying to provoke him.’
‘And it worked.’
‘Oh ja, it worked all right. And now I’ll show you where he found them.’
78
The lounge led into a dining area. Sixteen chairs ringed a huge hardwood dining table. There were more David Shepherd water-colours and drawings of elephants on the wall – studies, perhaps, for the huge oil painting at Campden Hall – and another set of tusks on either side of a modern marble fireplace. The room looked completely untouched. Carver wondered when he’d get to the scene of the action.
Then they walked into the kitchen, and suddenly they were in a war-zone. The solid oak kitchen cabinets had been ripped apart like balsa wood. Huge holes had been gouged in the walls. And every surface – walls, floors, units, even the ceiling in some places – had been spattered with dark crimson blood.
‘Bloody hell,’ Carver gasped. ‘What happened here?’
‘Are you familiar with the AA-12 automatic shotgun?’
‘I’ve heard of it. Never used one.’
‘Well look around, because this is what happens when twenty-nine twelve-gauge rounds are fired in quick succession in a confined area, hitting four human bodies at point-blank range: three male, one female, each with multiple rounds.’
‘Klerk had an AA-12?’
‘That’s right: one in every house.’
‘So he found the intruders, opened up, took four of them out. And the fifth?’
‘Didn’t come into the kitchen with her buddies but sneaked round another way, went into the hall, followed Klerk into the kitchen and took him out just like the boys down at the guardhouse: two to the head from a Walther TPH.’
‘Same shooter?’
‘Can’t be certain yet. The cops won’t have the full ballistics report for two or three days. But I don’t think so. I reckon the first shooter stayed where she was. This was a different one. But just as homicidal.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it? There’s Klerk blasting away with an automated bazooka and he gets popped by a pea-shooter.’
Parkes looked at Carver coldly. ‘If you say so. But the way I see it, my employer died on my watch. Ironic’s not the word I’d use.’
‘No, I suppose not. What did the shooter do after she’d taken out Klerk? Did she go looking for Brianna Latrelle?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. We reckon she went back out of the property, met up with her girlfriend and they both left, leaving the gate closed behind them.’
‘How did they leave? You said the Hummer had gone.’
‘I reckon there was another vehicle involved. I’ve got a couple of my guys with the police at the moment, going over the footage from every camera between here and the Taboo nightclub, which is where we think they came from, trying to see if we can spot it.’
‘So they were gone by the time the first XPT cars arrived?’
‘Uh-huh. Response time was actually five minutes and nineteen seconds, which is within their six-minute guarantee. But all the bad guys had skedaddled.’
‘And Latrelle?’
‘She was safe and sound in a panic room. Most of the big houses round here have one. She was majorly upset, obviously, and suffering from shock. They took her to hospital, just to keep an eye on her. But basically she was fine. She’s upstairs now, if you want to speak to her.’
‘That would be good.’
They headed into the main hall of the building from which a glass and steel staircase rose up to the first floor.
‘So Klerk would have been fine if he’d just gone into the room with Latrelle, right?’ Carver asked.
‘Yep.’
‘But somehow they must have known that he wouldn’t do that because they didn’t care about making a noise and alerting him. Just like they knew about the security systems, and the layout of the house… Hold on a minute.’
Carver stopped by the foot of the stairs. When he spoke again his voice was barely a whisper.
‘Was Latrelle their contact on the inside? She may play-act the pretty arm-candy, but she’s not stupid.’
Parkes nodded. ‘I agree. You underestimate her at your peril.’
‘She could have got hold of the plans,’ Carver continued. ‘She’d have known how Klerk would react to an attack. She knew she couldn’t be touched in the panic room. Why not her?’
‘She’s a suspect, for sure. But I tell you, I got here yesterday morning a few minutes after the boys from XPT and I saw Miss Latrelle as they were getting her out of the panic room. I also saw her go to pieces when she caught sight of Klerk’s body, just a glimpse of it as they were carrying her past the kitchen on a gurney. I tell you, that woman was falling apart. She’d have to be a bloody Oscar-winning actress to fake that. The other thing is, everyone knows she wanted Klerk to marry her. As his wife, she’d have first call on all his cash if he died. If she wanted him dead, why not wait till after the wedding?’
‘Yeah, OK… I don’t think Latrelle wanted Klerk dead either,’ Carver agreed. ‘She loved the old bastard, though she had no illusions about him at all. And I’ll tell you something else. She was certain something bad was going to happen. She told me so, but I didn’t take her seriously. Wish I had. But even so, I don’t think she expected Klerk to be on the receiving end.’
Carver sighed as he weighed it all up. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go and talk to the grieving girlfriend.’
79
Brianna Latrelle looked wrecked. She was clearly exhausted, physically and emotionally shattered. Her face was bare of makeup, her hair scraped back in a carelessly tied ponytail, and her usually immaculate designer clothes had been replaced by a battered old pair of Levis and a plain silk blouse. The effect, however, was to make her seem more human, more vulnerable and to Carver’s eyes infinitely more attractive than the painted doll who’d been on display throughout that weekend in Suffolk.