The Death Messenger (Matthew Ryan Book 2)(44)

‘Perhaps Mr Ford could answer for himself.’

‘Nice one, guv,’ said Ryan, while Grace signalled her approval with a fist pump.

There was a moment’s silence on the tape, then Eloise continued:

‘You have said repeatedly that you have no information to give me at this time. Does that mean that the matter is under review, that you may be able to release such information at a later date?’

‘I have no information to give you at this time.’

‘I’d like to thank you for being helpful, Mr Lawson. For your information, I’m going to proceed as if the briefcase is unlawfully missing and most probably in the hands of criminals. And, because you know how my unit is funded, sir, if you have information now that you are failing to disclose, please tell Mr Ford that I will recoup any wasted police time, energy, effort and money from your own department. Thank you very much.’

O’Neil stopped the recording. ‘He thought he was home and dry. He could not have been more wrong.’ She grinned at the others, pressed the play arrow on her mobile phone.

‘Before I go, I’d like some information about a British expatriate. Can you tell me if Ambassador Dean had received threats of any nature before he was murdered in Copenhagen?’

‘Who told you that?’

It was Ford’s voice, loud and clear.

‘Sorry, sir. I’m losing you. Hello? Sir? Are you there?’

The dialling tone arrived when O’Neil cut him off.

‘Ha!’ Grace was out of her seat, hands pressed together, head bowed, no eye contact, as if paying homage to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She raised her head. ‘Oh, Special One, I am truly impressed.’

Ryan laughed.

O’Neil did too.

Such an evasive response and downright lack of cooperation from the powers that be was no more or less than they’d expected. For all that, it was no easier to take. O’Neil’s nous and leadership had cemented a unit forced to plough on regardless. Her retired and serving detectives might well be in a temporary state of desperation, but she was confident that they were up to it. No conspiracy of silence would blow them off course.





25


The afternoon was a long hard slog, the hands of the clock winding themselves round to six before Ryan took a breather for anything more than a bathroom break. O’Neil was still head down in her work; the axe from the North Shields scene was clean and prints on the Coke can were useless – it had probably just been lobbed from a passing car. She took it in her stride, resigned to the fact that no one was going to hand her evidence on a plate. Grace was so swamped she’d had to insist that any requests to Gold Command must come in via email from here on. She simply didn’t have time to field calls and do all O’Neil had asked of her.

Ryan was missing his former role: preventing terrorism, monitoring subversive organizations and disrupting organized crime. Back then he knew who the enemy was. From the dejected look on her face, O’Neil was probably feeling the same way. Her old job – investigating police wrongdoing – was preferable to fighting those who were supposed to be facilitating their enquiries.

What they wouldn’t give for a level playing field.

Fountain Lake, Battersea Park, London. Newman was sat on a bench reading a newspaper. A figure approached, grey woollen coat, striped scarf, a nondescript man in his forties, earphones in place. He was holding the volume control, occasionally nodding as if talking to someone. In fact he was doing nothing of the kind.

He took a seat, making no attempt to greet Newman. ‘What do you want, Frank?’ he said.

Newman kept his eyes on the news. ‘To locate a briefcase,’ he said. ‘It’s in the hands of a Mercedes driver. Young. Attractive. Female. Male accomplice. One of yours, I suspect. She’s getting in the way of an operation—’

‘Whose?’

‘Special unit operating out of Newcastle.’

‘Nothing to do with us.’

‘Shame. I need the lowdown on that too. You have work to do.’

‘Like I said—’

‘I’m in credit, Tom. Find out. There’s a time and rendezvous point written on the page I’m reading. Memorize it.’

Tomkinson’s eyes scanned left and right as if he was taking in the park’s lake view. He stood up, took off slowly, heading back towards Chelsea Bridge.

Ryan’s tired eyes met O’Neil’s across their desks. They were exhausted, making negligible progress. At every turn, a brick wall presented itself, wrecking their theories, ruining their plans. There was no one to interrogate, no leads to follow up. They had nothing tangible to go on and little prospect of that state of affairs changing anytime soon. All they had were scores of unanswered questions. Their work base, nice though it was, was driving them nuts.

‘Crime pattern analysis isn’t going to help us,’ O’Neil said. ‘There are no signposts, just the bloody woman’s voice baiting us. I know we haven’t seen them all yet, but the crime scenes we’ve visited so far are clean. I’m beginning to think Ford wasn’t so stupid after all in thinking that Spielberg robbed a blood bank and staged the killings to piss us off.’

‘Except we have three bodies now,’ Ryan reminded her.

‘And nowt else.’

They lapsed into morose silence, hoping that Newman’s informant activity might pay off. He hadn’t yet called to update them.