“Exactly,” said Trilling. “We can’t know which particular group of investors ordered the assassination, but we can be pretty sure that they wanted it to be newsworthy, and newsworthy they got.”
“And we think the assassin is Witch?” Greenleaf surmised. Trilling shrugged his shoulders.
“There’s no modus operandi for us to identify the present hit against. The killer was clever and well informed. An alarm and a window were taken out, a fit young man overpowered. What we do know, from the Dane, is that we’re looking for a woman.”
“Description?”
Trilling shook his head. “It was dark. He didn’t see anything.”
Doyle leered again. “She didn’t chain two wrists and two ankles to bedposts in the dark without him waking up. It was a sucker punch, sir.”
“That’s not what the Dane says.”
“With respect, sir, bollocks to what the Dane says. He was awake, and she suckered him.”
“How?” asked Greenleaf. Doyle turned towards him so suddenly, Greenleaf knew he’d been waiting for the question to be asked.
“A woman comes into your bedroom and says she wants to tie you up. You fall for it. Why? Because you think she’s got some hanky-panky in mind. The stupid bugger’s supposed to be a bodyguard, and he lets some bird he’s never seen before tie him to a bed. Sucker punch. Maybe she slipped him a couple of thousand on the side, make the whole thing more... palatable.”
“There you go again, Doyle. Stick to short words.” Trilling shifted in his chair. “But we’re checking him anyway. We don’t think he was in on it, but you can never be sure. He did receive a nasty blow to the head, not far off being fatal according to the hospital.”
“What else have we got, sir?”
“Not much. Not yet. But the assassin did leave some clues behind.”
“What sort of clues?”
“Things required to do the job. The handcuffs for a start, six pairs. You don’t just place an order for six pairs of handcuffs without someone raising an eyebrow. Then there was some...”
“Sticky-backed plastic,” offered Doyle helpfully. “That’s what they used to call it on Blue Peter.”
“Probably bought locally. There’s a murder team busy at the scene. They’ll do what they can, ask around, check the various shops...”
“You don’t sound too hopeful, sir.”
“I’ll admit, John, I’m not. This was a pro, albeit one with a warped sense of humor. She won’t have left many real clues, though Christ knows how many red herrings we’ll find. And even if we trace the stuff back to a shop, what will we get? A general description of a female. She can change her looks in minutes: wig, hair dye, makeup, new clothes...”
Shape changer, thought Greenleaf. What did you call them? Proteus? Now that he thought of it, why weren’t there more women con artists around? So easy for them to chop and change disguises: high heels and low heels, padding around the waist or in the bra, hair dye... yes, a complete identity change in minutes. Trilling was right.
“But at least now, sir,” he offered, “we know we are dealing with a woman, and we know she did land in the country. At least now we’ve got two facts where before we only had guesses.”
“True,” agreed Commander Trilling.
“But at the same time,” added Doyle, “she’s finished her job before we’ve even had half a chance. She could already be back out of the country.”
“I don’t think so,” Greenleaf said quietly. Doyle and Trilling looked at him, seeking further explanation. He obliged. “You don’t hire an outside contractor for a single hit like this. And nobody’s going to blow up two boats just because they’re on a job to bump off a solitary banker. It has to be bigger, don’t you think?”
“You’ve got a point,” said Trilling.
“I’ve trained him well, sir,” added Doyle. “Yes, doesn’t make much sense, does it? Unless the whole thing is one huge red herring, keeping us busy up in Jockland while Witch is busy elsewhere.”
“Could be,” said Greenleaf. “But there’s something else in one of those reports, the ones Mrs. Parry sent over. Something said by that man Elder. He points out that Witch often kills for money in order to finance another operation. What is it he says?” Greenleaf threw his head back, quoting from memory. “To finance her ‘pursuit of a pure terrorism, untainted by monetary, political or propaganda gain.’” He shrugged self-effacingly. “Something like that.”
“As I say, sir,” Doyle said to Trilling with a wink, “I’ve trained him well.” And turning to Greenleaf. “You’re doing fine, John. Just remember who it was taught you everything you know.”
“How can I forget?” said Greenleaf.
The final edition of the day’s Evening Standard ran with the story, as did other evening papers throughout the country. In Edinburgh and Glasgow, copies of those cities’ evening offerings were snapped up. Radio news expanded on their previous day’s coverage of the murder. Nor did television show much restraint as more details were leaked. Detours had to be set up at either end of the lane to stop the curious from blocking the road outside Khan’s house.
In the field across from the house, a sky-platform, the sort used by firemen tackling fires and by council workers changing the lightbulbs in street lamps, stood parked beneath a telegraph pole. The platform had been elevated to the height of the top of the pole so that two CID men (afraid of heights and gripping onto the safety bar) could be shown by a British Telecom engineer just how the alarm wires from Khan’s house had been severed. Prior to this, forensic scientists had taken the juddering trip to the top of the pole, dusting the junction box and photographing sections of the wooden pole itself, picking out the holes made by climbing spikes and the chafing of the wood made by some sort of harness. The engineer was clear in his own mind.
“It was another telephone engineer,” he told the murder squad detectives. “Had to be. He had all the gear, and he knew just what he was doing.” The detectives didn’t bother telling him that he’d even got the sex wrong. They were keen to get back to Dundee, back to their watering holes, where ears would be keen to hear the details. They pitied their poor colleagues who’d been sent to track down contact paper and garden twine, leaving no general store or garden center unturned. But at least garden centers were situated on terra firma, and not forty feet up in the air...
In London, Joyce Parry sat in a railway station buffet, drinking tea and deep in thought. During her many telephone conversations that day and the evening before, no one had uttered much by way of condolence regarding Khan. He was a loss, but only as a merchantable item, not as a human being. His information had been useful, of course, but it could be gained in other ways. Government Communications already provided a lot of data — Khan’s snippets had often served only to confirm or consolidate what was already known. Intelligence services in other countries, for example, passed on information about the bank’s operations abroad. Joyce Parry hoped the bank would not find itself in trouble because of Khan. One bad apple shouldn’t be allowed to... She’d already had to divert the attention of the Serious Fraud Office. If the drug barons and crime cartels moved their money out of the bank... well, then the security services would have to start all over again, locating the new bank, shifting spheres of operation so that the new bank was part of the orbit. Time-consuming, expensive, and prone to losses.
No, Joyce Parry hoped things would stay as they were. She hoped upon hope.