The Unlikely Spy(64)

The uniformed officer standing watch outside the warehouse door moved aside as Kidlington approached. "The lift is at the far end of the warehouse, sir. Take it up one level. There's another man on the landing. He'll show you the way."

Kidlington slowly crossed the warehouse floor. He was tall and angular with a head of woolly gray hair and the look of someone perpetually preparing to break bad news. As a result his men tended to tread lightly around him.

A young detective-sergeant named Meadows was waiting for him on the landing. Meadows was too flashy for Kidlington's taste and put himself about with too many women. But he was an excellent detective and had promotion written all over him.

"Pretty messy in there, sir," Meadows said.

Kidlington could taste blood in the air as Meadows led him inside. Vernon Pope's body lay on an Oriental rug next to the couch. The dark circle of blood extended beyond the gray covering sheet. Kidlington, despite thirty years on the Metropolitan Police, still felt bile rising in his throat when Meadows knelt beside the body and drew back the sheet.

"Good Lord," Kidlington said, beneath his breath. He made a face and turned away for a moment to regain his composure.

"I've never seen one like this," Meadows said.

The dead body of Vernon Pope was lying naked, faceup, in a pool of dried black blood. It was obvious to Kidlington that the fatal wound was struck only after a brutal struggle. There was a large ragged slash across his shoulder. The nose had been badly broken. Blood had drained from both nostrils into the mouth, which had fallen open in death, as if to issue one last scream. Then there was the eye. Kidlington had trouble looking at it. Blood and ocular fluid had drained down the side of his face. The eyeball was destroyed, the pupil no longer visible. It would take an autopsy to determine the true depth of the wound, but it appeared to be the fatal blow. Someone had shoved something through Vernon Pope's eye and into his brain.

Kidlington broke the silence. "Approximate time of death?"

"Sometime last night, perhaps early evening."

"Weapon?"

"Hard to say. Certainly not an ordinary knife. Look at the shoulder. The edges of the wound are ragged."

"Conclusion?"

"Something sharp. A screwdriver, an ice pick perhaps." Kidlington glanced across the room. "Pope's is still on the drinks trolley. Unless your killer is walking around with his own ice pick, I doubt it was the murder weapon." Kidlington looked down at the body again. "I'd say it was a stiletto. It's a stabbing weapon, not a slashing weapon. That would account for the ragged wound on the shoulder and the clean puncture wound in the eye."

"Right, sir."

Kidlington had seen enough. He rose to his feet and gestured for Meadows to cover the body.

"The woman?"

"In the bedroom. This way, sir."





Robert Pope sat in the passenger seat of the van, pale and shaking visibly, as Dicky Dobbs drove at speed toward St. Thomas Hospital. It was Robert who had discovered the bodies of his brother and Vivie earlier that morning. He had waited for Vernon at the East End cafe where they ate breakfast each morning and became alarmed when he didn't appear. He fetched Dicky from his flat and went to the warehouse. When he saw the bodies he screamed and put his foot through the glass table.

Robert and Vernon Pope were realistic men. They realized they were in a risky line of work and that one or both of them might die young. Like all siblings they fought sometimes, but Robert Pope loved his older brother more than anything else in the world. Vernon had been like a father to him when their own father, an abusive unemployed alcoholic, walked out and never came back. It was the way he died that had horrified Robert the most: stabbed through the eye, left on the floor naked. And Vivie, an innocent, stabbed through the heart.

It was possible the killings were the work of one of their enemies. Their operation had thrived during the war and they had branched out into new territory. But it didn't look like any gang murder he had ever seen. Robert suspected it had something to do with the woman: Catherine, or whatever her name really was. He had made an anonymous call to the police--they would have to get involved at some point--but he wouldn't rely on them to find his brother's killer. He would do it himself.

Dicky parked along the river and entered the hospital through a service door. He came out again five minutes later and walked back to the van.

Pope asked, "Was he there?"

"Yeah. He thinks he can get it for us."

"How long?"

"Twenty minutes."

Half an hour later a thin man with a pinched face dressed in an orderly's uniform emerged from the back of the hospital and trotted over to the van.

Dicky wound down the window.

"I got it, Mr. Pope," he said. "A girl in the front office gave it to me. She said it was against the rules but I sweet-talked her. Promised her a fiver. Hope you don't mind."

Dicky held out his hand and the orderly gave him a slip of paper. Dicky passed it across to Pope.

"Good work, Sammy," Pope said, looking at it. "Give him his money, Dicky."

The orderly took the money, a disappointed look on his face.

Dicky said, "What's wrong, Sammy? Ten bob, just like I promised."

"What about the fiver for the girl?"

"Consider that your overhead," Pope said.