“It’s celebrities’ kids. Inbred offspring of the rich and famous. The Paris Hilton crowd. Fucking bunch of privileged silver-spoon—”
“Really, Hugo? We have time for this?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. It’s a sore spot with me. There’s just too much going on in the real world for me to want expend any consideration for stunt events.”
“Message noted. Now, back to matters at hand. Where’s Circe?”
Chapter Twenty-one
Whitechapel, London
December 18, 9:54 A.M. GMT
“Captain Ledger!”
I turned to see Detective Sergeant Rebekkah Owlstone hurrying along the bystreet toward me. Owlstone was the coordinator for the team to which I’d been assigned. We were doing background checks on the Hospital staff and I was coming out of a house where the family of a dead nurse was lost in the horror of shared grief. The day was bitterly cold, with a raw wind that smelled of salt water and ash. Owlstone waved me toward the lee side of a parked delivery van. It was about a degree warmer out of the wind.
“What is it?” I asked.
Owlstone, a petite and pretty brunette from Hampshire, pitched her voice in a confidential tone: “We have a situation, sir. A pair of our lads—Constables Lamba and Pettit—have been interviewing the families of the janitorial staff, and they found something very curious taped to one of the apartment doors. Lamba took a photo of it with his phone and e-mailed it to me.”
She produced her BlackBerry and pressed a button to bring up a picture of a standard apartment door: beige wood with metal numbers. A crooked sign read: HAPPY CHRISTMAS. Garland and lights framed the door. Owlstone pressed the “plus” button to enlarge the image to show a white index card taped just under a length of bright green plastic garland. A finger, presumably the constable’s, held the garland back so that the note could be read.
In shaky block letters it read:
They are with Jesus. May God forgive all sinners.
“Christ! Have they entered the scene?”
“No,” she said. “They notified me straightaway. I called it in and they told me to fetch you. Everyone else senior is too far away.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We climbed into her car, with Owlstone crammed next to me and both of us crowded by my hulk of a dog, and drove the three blocks to the apartment building. A constable was outside erecting sawhorse crime scene barriers. The apartment was on the top floor. Most of the doors in the hallway were decorated for Christmas, and more than half of them were ajar, with concerned and curious neighbors looking out at all the policemen in the hall.
A constable, with PETTIT on his name badge, stepped forward to intercept us.
“No one’s touched the door, Detective Sergeant,” he reported. “But the card fell down and there was something behind it that you need to see.”
“What is it?” asked Owlstone, but I looked past the officer and I could feel the Warrior inside my head tense for fight or flight.
Someone had used red and black felt-tip pens to leave a message on the apartment door. A message, or a signature, no larger than a silver dollar. A number 7 overlaid atop the word “KINGS” and encompassed by a bloodred circle.
Son of a bitch.
“Captain,” gasped Owlstone, “is that—?”
“Yes, it damn well is. Evacuate the building. Now!”
Owlstone hadn’t been told to take orders from me, but she didn’t argue. She spun and began shouting orders to the other bobbies.
I dug out my phone and called Church.
He said, “Seal the building. I’ll tell the authorities here and advise that they certify this as a D-notice situation. We don’t want that logo in the press; otherwise gangbangers will tag it on every wall in the country. And I’m sure Barrier will roll a team out to you.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
“Then do what you have to do. I’ll clear it so you’re in charge of the crime scene until Barrier takes over.”
Owlstone closed on me and lowered her voice to an urgent whisper: “What the hell’s happening, Captain?”
“Call me Joe, and I think we just caught the first break in the London Hospital case. Barrier is on its way, but I’m in charge until then. Orders to that effect are being cut right now. Call in if you’re uncertain; otherwise let’s get to work. You okay with that?”
There was a flicker on her face that suggested she wasn’t completely okay with it, but she nodded. A lesser person might have tried to fight that, because this was likely to be a career-making moment. Owlstone was too much of a good cop to play politics, and that elevated her several notches in my book.
“Floor’s clear!” called Pettit from the other end of the hall.
I took a digital camera from my pocket and snapped off twenty frames, catching the symbol, the door, and the surrounding hallway. Then I bent and made a close no-touch examination of the door. I had Ghost sniff it, too, but he didn’t give me the signal for a bomb. He did, however, give a quick double bark that he was trained to use when he was searching for missing bodies. Search and recovery dogs are trained to sniff out cadaverine, a foul-smelling molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction of animal tissue. In other words, eau de rot.
Something in there was dead.
Chapter Twenty-two
Whitechapel, London
December 18, 10:28 A.M. GMT
“What’s he found?” Owlstone asked, backing away. “Is it a bomb?”
“No,” I said. “He’s also trained to find bodies.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Time’s not our friend, Detective Sergeant. We need to kick the door.”
She nodded, but she looked scared.
“Backup,” I suggested quietly, and she took a steadying breath and waved for Pettit and Lamba to join us.
“Okay, lads,” she said. “Captain Ledger will kick the door; we’ll cover and then clear the apartment in a two-by-two pattern.”
They nodded and drew their guns. I drew back and kicked. The door flew open and I went in and left while Owlstone covered my right. We moved fast, yelling for anyone who was there to lay down their weapons. But no one was there, and we all knew that going in.
“Clear!” yelled Pettit from the kitchen.
“Clear!” yelled Owlstone from what looked like a teenager’s bedroom.
“In here! In here!” yelled Lamba from the doorway of the master bedroom. “Two down. Civilians! Two down. Get a medical team.”
Owlstone made the call, but it was well past the point where medics could do anything. The woman and teenage girl on the king-sized bed were far beyond the need for first aid. Or any aid. Ghost sniffed the air near the bed and gave a brief whine.
Pettit checked the adjoining bathroom. “Gun in here! Plenty of blood, no bodies.”
“Step out, Ed,” ordered Owlstone.
Ghost suddenly whuffed softly and sat down by the hamper, looking from it to me and back again. I froze.
“What’s he found?” snapped Owlstone.
“He’s cross-trained as a bomb sniffer,” I said, and the constables all took reflexive backward steps. “Don’t worry; I don’t think that’s what he’s found.”
I was right. All we found in the hamper—after a very careful search—was dirty clothes. There was one set of coveralls with the name Plympton embroidered on the breast that Ghost sniffed, again giving us the single whuf.