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‘You want me to get him on the phone?’ asked Crane.

‘No, hold off on contacting Chief Superintendent Marsh,’ said Erika, realising that this could work to her advantage.

61

The next morning, Chief Superintendent Marsh lay with Marcie in a beautiful hotel room – the name of the hotel escaped him, but he knew it was far from London with a sweeping view of Dartmoor. Her head lay on his bare chest, and he had that warm post-coital rush. The feel and smell of his wife’s skin was intoxicating. It was now light, and they’d woken from a night of repeated lovemaking, something unheard of since the twins had come along.

The phone beside the bed screamed out, breaking the silence. Marsh rolled over and saw it was nine-thirty in the morning. He reached over, lifted the receiver, and dropped it down into the cradle again.

‘Did you order a wake-up call?’ murmured Marcie.

‘Course not,’ he said.

‘Ooh. That turns me on the most, you not answering the phone,’ purred Marcie. She kissed him, sliding her hand down over his stomach . . .

The phone rang again. Marsh cursed, rolled over and yanked the cord from its plug on the wall. He rolled back to her and grinned. ‘I believe you were about here,’ he said, placing her hand on his growing erection.

Again? Chief Superintendent.’ She grinned.

Suddenly, there was a hammering on their door. ‘Sorry, hello . . . it’s the front desk,’ came a voice.

‘What the hell!’ exclaimed Marsh, as Marcie was poised to unroll a condom over the head of his stiff cock.

‘Tell him to piss off; this is the last one in the pack,’ said Marcie.

The hammering came again. ‘Sir, sir?’ quavered the voice of the young boy from the front desk. ‘I know you said not to bother you under any circumstances, but there’s an Assistant Commissioner Oakley waiting on the line. On your phone . . . Sir? He says if you don’t pick up there will be consequences . . . That’s me quoting him . . . that’s what he said.’

Marsh leapt up out of bed and scrabbled to reconnect the phone into the wall socket.

‘Where the hell have you been, Marsh? We have a situation!’ snapped Oakley when Marsh picked up the phone.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know it was you . . .’

‘One of your officers, that bloody Foster woman, showed up on Sir Simon Douglas-Brown’s doorstep at five this morning with an armed response unit. She’s taken him and his daughter Linda into custody. She’s taken Giles Osborne into custody too.’

‘What the hell?’

‘Now I’m up in Scotland, Marsh, on a much needed bloody holiday and I do not want to have to return to London. I trust you will rectify this.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘You’d better. I don’t often get woken up before nine by someone from the bloody cabinet office. Heads will roll on this one if we’re not careful, Marsh.’

The call was abruptly disconnected. Marsh stood there, naked, his penis now shrivelled to nothing. He picked up the phone again and dialled, shouting that he wanted to speak to DCI Foster. Immediately. Marcie pulled the bedclothes up around her, and bit back her tears. This would be yet another holiday ruined by her husband’s work.

62

Erika and the rest of the team were struggling after little sleep. They had worked into the early hours, piecing the evidence together with the new information, and at one o’clock in the morning they’d experienced a breakthrough. A frenzy of planning had ensued, and at three am Erika had sent everyone home to grab a few hours’ sleep, before they came back at first light to begin the first phase of Erika’s plan.

It was now eleven am and Erika sat with Moss, Peterson and Crane in the observation suite at Lewisham Row. In front of them were four screens. Each screen showed a police interview room.

In interview room one, Linda Douglas-Brown was agitated and paced up and down, wearing a long dark skirt and a vast tea-stained white jumper covered in black kittens. On the next screen, in interview room two, her father, Simon Douglas-Brown, sat impassively with his hands on the table, staring ahead. Despite being pulled out of bed by a group of officers in armed response gear, he had dressed smartly in dark slacks, a freshly ironed blue shirt, and a V-necked jumper.

On the next screen was interview room three, where Giles Osborne cut a curious figure. He was dressed in skintight bottle-green jeans, his belly barely constrained by a tight t-shirt with a tropical print of palm trees. His greasy hair was parted to one side and he stared up at the camera.

‘He hasn’t looked away from the camera for twenty minutes,’ said Crane, tapping his biro against the screen.

‘The only one who looks like he hasn’t got a care in the world is Igor Kucerov,’ said Erika, watching the screen of interview room four.

Igor sat behind the table, slouched back in his chair with his legs spread wide. He’d been working out when the police arrived to arrest him at his house on a pleasant middle-class street in Kilburn. He wore a tight white t-shirt with a Nike tick emblazoned across the front, shiny black Nike running shorts and trainers. His body was lean and muscly, and his skin a baked olive colour. The stubble he had in the pictures with Andrea was gone. His black eyes flicked up and regarded the camera.

‘Let’s have a crack at him first,’ said Erika. Moss and Crane remained in the observation suite, as Erika left with Peterson. They met Igor’s solicitor in the corridor, who was a thin, greying man with a neat little moustache. He started to protest as to why his client was being held.

‘I will be recommending that my client answers none of your questions until you have credible . . .’

They moved past the solicitor and entered interview room four. Igor stayed slouched back in his chair. His black eyes looked Erika up and down as she filed in with Peterson. There was a long tone as the recording equipment kicked in.

‘It’s five minutes past eleven on the morning of January the twenty-fourth. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Foster, and with me is Detective Inspector Peterson. Also present is solicitor John Stephens.’

Erika and Peterson took a seat opposite Igor and his solicitor. She spent a few moments checking over her paperwork, and then looked up at Igor.

‘Okay, Mr Kucerov. Or should I call you George Mitchell?’

‘Call me what you want, darling.’ He grinned. His voice was deep, with a trace of a Russian accent.

‘Could you explain why you use two names?’

He shrugged.

‘Do you work for MI5 or MI6? Or are you a secret agent involved in espionage? Perhaps you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act?’

Igor gave her a lopsided grin, and rubbed at his chin. ‘No,’ he said, finally.

‘I’m sorry, but these are absurd questions,’ said the solicitor.

‘No, these are valid questions. Were you aware, Mr Stephens, that your client was tried for the murder of a young woman called Nadia Greco? Her decomposing body was found dumped in a quarry, zipped up in a hold-all.’

Erika pushed a photo of Nadia across the table. Her bloated, blackened body could be seen through the open folds of the hold-all.

‘The hold-all was traced back to Mr Kucerov’s then-girlfriend, Barbora Kardosova. Nadia Greco had been beaten to death at Barbora’s house. Igor’s DNA was found at the scene, and Barbora testified against him at his subsequent trial. However, the jury failed to reach a verdict, and the trial collapsed.’

The solicitor glanced to one side at Igor.

‘Prove it,’ said Igor, shrugging.

‘That’s the problem, Igor. The records and transcripts from your trial are now marked as CMP: closed material procedures. This classification is only reserved for criminal trials involving matters that could damage national security. Are you aware of this, Mr Stephens?’