So deep in thought was Katie that she didn’t even notice the train passing through Calais and then entering the tunnel, heading downward and eventually making its way underneath the bedrock of the English Channel. With billions of tons of water overhead, she looked out onto the well-lighted tunnel, unconcerned with leaks or walls of water smashing the train flat.
Twenty-five minutes later the train emerged into bright sunshine. They were in England. The whole trip would take about 140 very pleasant minutes and Katie had electricity for her laptop computer and the convenience of her cell phone, though she had no one to call. Indeed, after the episode at the hospital, she had no desire ever to use her cell phone again.
She thought too about Shaw’s words: My life is over. But whoever did this to Anna is going to die. She had no doubt that he meant it. She had doubt at all he would try to kill the person or persons with his bare hands, injured or not.
But after that? What would he do? Or what if he died in the attempt? Someone who could orchestrate the slaughter of nearly thirty people was not someone who could be easily killed.
And she had stories to write now. What would Shaw think if he found out she was reporting on the London murders, earning a living from Anna’s death? But that was what she did. She was a journalist. Still, though, he would be angry. Very angry.
As she was thinking about this, she noticed the small bottle of red wine on her tray that had been served with lunch. She’d kept it when the steward had cleared the tray. Katie kept staring at it as the train rolled on. Twenty minutes later when the Eurostar reached the outer fringes of London and the old dwellings with their unique chimneystacks, she was still gazing at the wine. She unscrewed the top, took a whiff and a quick gulp, and felt immediate gratification followed by crushing, searing guilt. Yet she took another swig. And the guilt grew a thousandfold. She screwed the cap back on, dropped the bottle on her pulldown tray, and muttered, “Shit.”
The fellow next to her heard this, glanced at her and then at the wine. “Bad year?” he asked with a smile.
She gave him a burning stare. “Bad life!”
He quickly went back to his newspaper.
Katie knew she could not do her job this way. She could not help herself as a drunkard. She could not wallow in self-pity, no matter how enticing that might seem right now. When a steward walked by she stopped him and asked him to take the bottle away.
A few minutes later they pulled into St. Pancras Station. Katie detrained and quickly made her way to the cab stand.
Like Shaw she would be staying in the Strand in the West End of the city, but not at digs as nice as the Savoy. London was not cheap at any time, but one could find bargains, and Katie had traveled enough to where she knew them all. If her stay in London was going to be a long one, she hoped, much as she had done in Paris, to crash at the flat of another news correspondent friend of hers who was away more than she was home.
She checked into her cut-rate hotel, dropped her bag in her room and took a cab to The Phoenix Group building. At some point she would probably run into Shaw. If she did, she felt fairly confident of her action plan.
I’ll run like hell.
CHAPTER 51
ON THE DRIVE over to Anna’s former office, Shaw pulled out the business card he’d been given and called MI5 agent Edward Royce. The man answered on the second ring and Shaw explained that he was in London and had reconsidered helping Royce on the Red Menace investigation.
When Royce asked about his change of heart, Shaw said, “Long story not worth going into, but I’ve got a favor to ask. I’ve already cleared it with Frank.”
“He called me.”
“Really, and said what?”
“To help you any way I could. He told me of your… personal connection to the murders in London.”
“Can you get me access to the building?”
“Well, we might be able to kill two birds with one stone, actually. How does that plan work for you?”
“What are you talking about?” Shaw said curiously.
“You’ll see when you get here.”
“Here? Where?”
“At The Phoenix Group building.”
Shaw’s mouth sagged. “What are you doing there?”
“I’ll see you when you get here,” Royce said tersely.
Shaw put his phone away and leaned back, rubbing his injured arm.
What the hell is going on?
After he’d gotten to Katie’s cell phone and found out about Anna’s death, the next two days in the hospital had been worse than any mission he’d ever done, worse than any nightmare his subconscious had ever conjured. He did remember being sedated again and again after busting up his hospital room and actually throwing someone against a wall. This outlet for his grief, his fury, hadn’t helped. It just kept building until his mind and body had been unable to endure any more. And he had just collapsed. He actually thought he’d died. And a real big chunk of him wished he had.
For twenty-four hours he didn’t move or speak. He just stared at the white wall of the hospital, much as he had done as a little boy at the orphanage, trying to fashion a different reality from the abject collapse of his life. Yet when he’d finally risen from his bed, Anna was still dead. She would always be dead.
The only thing keeping him going now was the thought of finding and killing whoever had done it. It was the one goal that could possibly keep him from simply disintegrating. He hadn’t lapsed into melodrama when he’d told Katie that his life was over. It was over.
All he had to do now was finish it right, by avenging Anna.
He grabbed a cab and headed to the place where her life had ended. What he really wanted to do was run the other way.
CHAPTER 52
ROYCE MET SHAW AT THE FRONT DOOR where police lines were still strung across. Inside the building the activity was intense, with police and forensic teams examining every square inch of the place. As Shaw stepped carefully around their work he saw the pools of dried blood and white tape outlines that distinctly marked where a body had dropped.
Royce eyed his injured arm. “What the bloody hell happened to you?”
“My dog bit me. What did you mean about killing two birds with one stone? And why are you here in the middle of a homicide investigation?”
“I’d like you to see this first.”
He led Shaw into a room on the first floor that had been set up as a crime scene investigation office. On one table was a computer terminal. Royce sat down in front of it and started hitting keys.
“We got a video feed from a surveillance camera on the street that was put there to record license plates for the congestion charge. Here’s what it captured on the day the killings happened.”
Shaw looked over Royce’s shoulder as the screen sprang to life. The positioning of the camera up on a pole afforded a complete exterior view of the building. A van with a satellite dish sprouting from the top pulled up in front of the building and two men got out.
Royce explained, “The uniform of the London road crews.”
The men pulled a number of traffic cones from the van and used them to cordon off one end of the street and the sidewalks in both directions. The instant this was done Shaw noted the satellite dish started moving.
“They’re jamming cell phone reception,” he deduced.
Royce nodded. “After having earlier cut the hard-line phone wires to the building.”