Owain grimaces. ‘Then either he volunteered, hoping he could do it, or his cover was blown. Do you have an idea which?’
Gareth Madoc has been trying to piece together the same puzzle. ‘The police say he fought with another man on the sidewalk and killed him before detonating the vest.’
‘They have their facts wrong, someone else will have detonated it.’
‘It could have been Nabil. We only got eyes back on him post-explosion as he returned to a safe house.’
Owain watches guests heading in to the dining room to take their places at tables. ‘I have to go. I’ll call you later. For God’s sake, make sure we don’t lose Nabil. He’s young enough to make mistakes. We’re old enough to capitalize on them.’
‘I’ll look after it personally.’
‘Thanks. I want you back here unhurt. We’ve lost too many good men in too many bad situations and I fear this wave of attacks is far from over.’
53
Mitzi and Irish listen to the news on the car radio as they drive to her hotel in Kensington.
She notices he’s pale and sweating. He’s gripping the wheel and seems pained by a migraine or more likely the mother of all hangovers. ‘You got any help on this case? Maybe you do need to lie up for a day or two.’
‘Some borrowed hands from other investigations, that’s all.’
‘A double homicide doesn’t get you your own team?’
‘Team? Child murder will get you a team. That’s about all that does these days.’
‘Times get tough, criminals get tougher. It’s the way of the world.’
‘Sure is. There’s a bright kid called Kirstin Collins doing some leg work for me. She’ll be a good cop one day. If the system lets her.’
‘Or she doesn’t get pushed upstairs to drive a desk.’
He thinks about asking her some personal stuff. About her career. Her colleagues. Her life. Men. Relationships. Only a wave of sickness washes over him.
‘You okay?’
Irish coughs. Blood spatters the wheel.
He splutters red all over his hands and collapses.
‘Christ.’ Mitzi grabs the wheel.
His foot is jammed on the gas.
The Ford surges forward.
Sixty.
Mitzi swings the Ford wide of an SUV. Horns honk all around her.
Sixty-five.
Her heart hammers as she struggles to push Irish off the wheel.
Seventy.
A monumental shove sends his unconscious body crashing into the drivers’ door but his foot stays heavy on the accelerator.
Mitzi can’t move him any more.
Seventy-five.
Traffic brakes hard in front. She jerks the wheel. It twitches and skids from the outside lane to the middle one.
Eighty.
There’s a truck ahead. Red brake-lights flare. Mitzi squeals the Ford through to the inside lane. Crashing is now inevitable. It’s only a question of where.
The Taurus mounts a grass verge. A wing mirror clips a tree. The back of the car fishtails. Mitzi sees a clump of oaks rushing up fast. She spins the steering wheel.
The car flips. Slides on its side. Rolls on its roof. Metal crunches. Glass shatters.
There’s a deafening thump. She feels a vicious stab of pain in the middle of her face.
Then there’s blackness.
PART TWO
54
Angelo Marchetti feels like someone clubbed him with a baseball bat. He puts a hand to the pain in his forehead. Opening his eyes is like winding up rusty metal shutters and squinting into the blaze of a scorching summer’s day.
He’s in bed. That much he can work out. The lights are on, the curtains open. But it’s black outside. The digital clock next to him says 0447. No time to be awake.
But this is not his own room. It’s a hotel. Not in America. Abroad.
There’s a noise. The stirring of a body. He pulls the duvet back.
A naked woman is asleep alongside him. No one he recognizes. Which isn’t so strange. Women he had relationships with bailed on him a long time ago.
Angelo pulls himself upright and looks at her. She’s olive-skinned, Latin, maybe Hispanic. Hair even longer and blacker than his. Small-breasted and full-hipped. A tattoo of a serpent hugs her waist like a belt. Its diamond-shaped head rests upon her shaved pubic area and its long, thin tongue disappears between her legs.
Insects are buzzing. Not in the room but in his head. Swarms of crickets, wasps and bees are angry at being woken and are stinging the soft grey honeycomb of his brain.
Marchetti gets up and wanders around. There is white powder on a low table. Needles. Mirrors. Antiseptic wipes and empty plastic bags. Speedballs.
Now he remembers. He’d sat in here with the hooker. Gisela — her name had been Gisela. Spanish and wild. They’d done enough coke to kill a rock band.
The floor ahead of him is covered with torn-off clothes. Empty bottles of water. Money.
Stacks and stacks of pound notes.
It all comes back to him. He’s in London. And last night he got lucky. Very lucky.
55
Sharp morning light bursts through a beat-up shade in Fulo’s office and makes Mitzi squint painfully.
An airbag in Irish’s car broke her nose and left her with multiple bruises, including two black eyes and lips that look like she’s just done Botox.
Mitzi shifts her chair into a patch of shade while the captain reads a note on his computer.
‘The latest from Memorial Hospital is that he’s stable but still critical.’
‘He’s lucky to be alive.’ Mitzi tentatively puts fingers to the painful throb in the middle of her nose.
‘Not so lucky.’ Fulo reads the rest of the note. ‘He has broken ribs, left collarbone, and right wrist. He’s dislocated his right kneecap, sprained his left ankle and’ — he dries up.
‘And what, Captain?’
Fulo continues in an even more sombre tone. ‘His liver’s failing. It’s totally screwed. That’s what caused the blood you say he coughed up just before the blackout.’
‘Liquor?’
‘Years of it.’ His face contorts with anger. ‘Fuck, he was a good cop. Once. Before the freezer case.’
‘The what?’
‘Domestic over in Brookland. Young woman staggered into the precinct looking like she hadn’t eaten in a year.’ He points at Mitzi, ‘She had panda eyes — like yours. Kid was black and blue. Scars all over her flesh and she couldn’t speak.’
‘Shock?’
‘Doctors said some years back her tongue had been stapled to her lip with a carpet-fitter’s gun. When it turned gangrenous, her captor sliced off the end. Kid was left with a stump. But she could write. Wrote down stuff you’d never want to read. Fitzgerald was lead on the case. He went back to the shack she picked out as the one she’d been kept in and abused. Unsub had long gone. Searched the place and he found a freezer in the garage.’
‘I think I can guess what was in it.’
‘I don’t think you can. Fitzgerald found corpses of newborns.’
Mitzi hangs her head.
‘Four of them. Laid out in a line. The psychopathic son-of-a-bitch had abducted the woman when she was thirteen, and got her pregnant four times.’
She grasps at a straw of hope. ‘The kids were stillbirths?’
‘No. He’d delivered them, cut the umbilical cords and put them in the freezer to die.’
‘Why? Why did he keep them? Why not bury them?’