Fran turned to her granddaughter when Caroline got out at the service station. "This is exciting, isn't it, dear?"
Lucy shrugged. She was on the cusp of adolescence and nothing her elders said was satisfactory. "I don't see why Mummy had to take my phone away."
"You have to trust her," her grandmother said. She had turned her own cell phone off. That didn't bother her, as she despised the things. She was more concerned at the disruption to her latest book. The Flight of the Bumbling Bee was at the crucial second draft stage. At least she'd remembered to bring a disk with the text on it. Presumably there would be a computer in the safe house. The standing instruction was that laptops were not to be brought, in case bugs had been fitted. Fran didn't see how that could happen as she never took her laptop away from home, and Matt had made sure that her home was equipped with armored windows and doors, enough locks and chains to keep a prison governor happy and an alarm system that must have cost him a fortune. She hadn't been happy when he told her that an expert could still get in and out, and leave no trace.
"Gran?" Lucy said, her eyes fixed on the door of the service station. "Who's Mummy talking to?"
Fran's stomach clenched when she saw that Caroline was deep in conversation with a woman whose back was turned to the car.
Ignoring Matt's strict instructions, Fran opened the door and swung her feet out. Lucy wasn't staying on her own. She wrestled with the rear-opening door and clambered out after her grandmother. Seven Karen sat down next to me at the kitchen table after she'd taken a preliminary look. We were both in coveralls and overshoes. All my clothes had been taken away for examination.
"This is awful, Matt," she said, touching my arm. My hands were in clear plastic bags prior to fingerprints being taken. "Tell me what happened."
I had decided to come clean with her about the others' presence-detectives knocking on doors would probably get descriptions of several men in black combats and woollen hats, and I didn't want any potential sighting of the killer to be compromised. So I told her about Dave's call using the alert code and the way we got in.
She shook her head as I talked, her eyes lowered. When I'd finished, she looked me in the eye. "I understand you've just lost a close friend, but Christ, what were you thinking of, Matt? Why didn't you call me as soon as you heard from Dave? We'd have arrived here quicker and that might have saved his life."
I glanced away. "I don't think so. Sara was playing with us. She'd have got away whatever, and sirens would just have given her more warning."
Karen's eyes flared. "We don't always use sirens. Didn't it occur to you that you might have been walking into a trap?"
"There were four of us," I said, though I wasn't going to tell her that Pete had been out the back with his sniper's rifle and Rog had been waiting with his Glock for anyone who left by the front door.
"Coming through the pantry window meant you could have been picked off by a primary school bully," she said, dropping her gaze again. "What were you armed with?"
I kept my mouth shut.
"The others took your weapon, didn't they? Where are they?"
"I've no idea," I said, and that was the truth. The plan we'd agreed on stipulated that we would split up if there was an attack on any of us.
It looked like she believed me, but I was sure there would be cars dispatched to their houses to check. They wouldn't be there-we each had our own list of randomly selected hotels and bed-and-breakfast places that none of the others had seen.
There was a tap on the door. The potbellied form of Dr. Redrose approached. "Mr. Wells, I understand the deceased was a friend. My condolences." He turned to Karen. "I've finished. Cause of death was obviously the four close-range shots to the head. CSIs have dug out what looks like a 9 mm bullet from the sofa. There were single shots to each knee and two shots to each thigh."
His small eyes moved from Karen to me and then back again. "There's no message in any obvious place. We'll see what the postmortem shows. As for time of death, the body temperature suggests between two and three hours ago." He waddled away.
Karen was studying me. "You got here at ten-fifty, you said. He was killed not long before that."
I nodded. "I told you, she's playing with us."
"Why are you so sure it's Sara?"
I shrugged. "I'll bet you'll find no traces of the killer. That smacks of Sara's organizational skills. But it's also obvious from the modus operandi, Karen. She shot Dave in the legs just before her brother was killed. He was finished in execution-style by shots to the head, as the SAS men did with the White Devil."
"And as you described in your book that's been read by millions of people." She blinked at me. "Why no message?"
"There might still be one," I said, swallowing a surge of vomit. "Inside him."
She looked away.
There was another knock, and Taff Turner came in. Karen nodded to him to sit down. He'd already offered me his sympathy, but I knew he was unhappy about how I'd found the body.
"There isn't much to go on, guv," he said. "The techies are looking for prints, but they'll need to take all the family's to exclude them." He looked down at the pair of black leather gloves in front of me. "I'd put money on the fact that the killer was wearing gloves." He shook his head at me. That was the nearest I was going to get to an admission that he knew I wasn't a formal suspect. "The driveway is asphalt, so we can forget getting any shoe imprints from there."
"Anything you find in the garden will have to be compared with Matt's miniature army's boots," Karen said. "The four of them were here."
A weary sigh passed Taff's lips. "Wonderful," he said. "Anything else we need to know?" He gave me a questioning look.
"How the killer got in," I said, still bothered by that. "The alarm was off and there's no sign of a break-in." I held Taff's gaze. "Is there?"
"No," he said.
"So Dave must have opened the door to her," Karen said, glancing at her subordinate. "Assuming it's Sara Robbins."
"Yes," I said, "but there are two heavy-duty chains on the door. Dave knew to check through the spy-hole. He must have taken the chains off."
"Disguise?" the Welshman suggested.
Karen nodded. "Make sure the local detectives are aware of that possibility when they're taking statements from the neighbors."
"No one so far has reported hearing any shots," Turner added. "The killer must have used a silencer."
"Interesting," Karen said. "That suggests it was a pro."
"Sara was trained by the White Devil," I said. "You don't get much more professional than that. For all we know, she's been honing her skills over the last two years."
Turner got up and left. At the door, he looked around. "Are we going to take over this case?" he asked his boss.
Karen ran her tongue across her lips, an action that I would normally have found provocative in another context. "I'll have to discuss that with the AC." Her eyes were on me. "I think it's time you checked your e-mail, Matt. Bring my laptop in from the car, will you, Taff?"