Drys.
I went back to the computer and started from scratch. The sun. Could the message be a series of opposites or pairs? “The moon rose far from the least eastern grains of-” Whose? Alexander the Great’s father Philip? His chief enemy Darius? His soul mate Hephaistion? I let that go. And mankind instead of womankind? So the target was a male? Going back to the beginning, I didn’t know anyone called Moon, apart from the long-dead drummer of the Who. “The moon rose…” Rose was a common enough name. I’d once done a radio program with a chicklit author called Rose Jones. I found her e-mail address on the Internet and sent her a message suggesting she keep a low profile. After I’d done that, I realized that she didn’t fulfil the new criterion of being male. If that was right…
And so I went on, driving myself up the wall with abstruse ideas and unlikely solutions, as the clock steadily ticked toward twelve midnight.
Karen Oaten stopped in front of the police barrier tape in the street in Hackney. The uniformed officer with a clipboard recognized her and lifted the cordon so she could drive in. The area that had been shut off was lit up by bright lights powered by a generator.
“Here we go again, Amelia,” the chief inspector said.
“Yes, guv.” Detective Sergeant Browning got out of the car quickly, enthusiasm all over her face.
Oaten smiled, remembering when she’d been like that. She accepted a bag of protective gear from a CSI and began to pull the contents on.
“This is getting ridiculous,” said Detective Superintendent Ron Paskin, still looking vast in his white coverall.
“Certainly is,” Karen replied. “What happened this time?”
“No one’s talking, at least not yet. This is Shadow territory. The man on the pavement over there is a Shadow, too.”
“Jesus. This is going to turn really nasty.”
Paskin nodded. “Hello, DS Browning,” he said. “Would you like a transfer to Homicide East?”
“No chance, Superintendent.”
“There’s plenty of action here.”
The sergeant smiled. “Even more at the VCCT.” She went over to the body.
“Only if you actually take these cases,” the policeman said to his former subordinate.
“Are you asking me to?” Oaten asked.
Ron Paskin shrugged. “Not yet. Though I reckon this killing is connected with the other ones in this area.”
“Any evidence of that?”
“The cartridge cases are similar to those found in the basement. Ballistics will prove that one way or the other.” He pointed toward an open door. “And there’s blood on a bed and on the floor upstairs. There are ropes up there, too-they’ve been cut. Someone who was tied down got cut loose.”
“So what happened?”
“Hard to tell. According to the pathologist, the victim was shot three times in the chest at close range, at between five and six o’clock this evening.”
Oaten looked around the houses. “And no one saw or heard anything?”
“Oh, they saw and heard, all right. They’re just not telling us. Don’t worry, we’ll find out. I’ve got Turkish- speaking officers. They’re going around now.”
A man in his thirties with rings around his eyes came up. “You’re not going to believe this, guv.”
“DCI Oaten, meet DI Ozal. He’s one of the Turkish-speakers I was telling you about.” Paskin looked at his subordinate. “Go on, then. It isn’t every day you get the chance to show how smart you are to the senior investigating officer of the VCCT.”
Ozal gave Karen a wary glance. “No, guv. Well, I managed to get a couple of the lads to talk. They won’t give formal statements, but I’ll work on them.”
“What happened, then?” Paskin asked impatiently.
“Like I say, guv, you’re not going to believe this. The guy on the ground’s the Wolfman.”
The superintendent whistled through his tobacco-stained teeth. “So that’s what he looks like.” He turned to Oaten. “You remember him?”
She nodded. “The Wolfman was in the frame for a string of killings and near-fatal assaults on behalf of the Shadows. We never managed to lay a finger on him when I was here.”
“That’s not all, guv,” Ozal said, his face flushed with excitement. “He was shot by someone wearing the
Karen Oaten raised a hand. “Hold on, Inspector. How do you know it was a woman?”
Ozal looked like he’d been asked if the earth went around the sun. “No man would wear those garments, Chief Inspector.”
Oaten looked at him. “Maybe not in your community. But that wouldn’t stop a non-Muslim.”
“Who said anything about non-Muslims?” Paskin put in. “The killer could have been a Kurdish woman with a relative who was a victim of the Wolfman. Anyway, what else did they see?”
“A couple of men came out of that house.” Ozal pointed to the open door. “One of them, in his twenties, was only wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and there was blood all over his legs. He had a bandage on one hand, too. The other was older, with a mustache. He was supporting the first one. Neither appeared to be armed. The Wolfman came running along the road, shouting, after the younger guy got into a green car, probably an Astra. When he got close, the woman…the
“Did anyone get the registration number?” the superintendent asked.
Ozal shook his head.
Oaten and Paskin exchanged looks.
“The young man had a wounded hand,” the chief inspector said. “Maybe he was the survivor from the basement.”
“A Kurd, then, like the dead man?” Paskin said. “Since he had blood on his legs, the Wolfman had probably been working on him.”
Karen Oaten rubbed her forehead. “When you’ve got the paperwork done and the tests from the blood on the bed are in, let me know. If they match that found in the basement, I’ll talk to the AC. Obviously we’d have to take this murder and the previous one. I’ll see if you can keep handling the groundwork.”
Her former boss nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Let’s just hope there aren’t any more killings,” Oaten said.
Paskin grunted. “That’ll be a squadron of pigs I can hear flying over.”
DI Ozal, a devout Muslim, looked at him in disgust.
Andy Jackson was getting seriously pissed off with hiding behind the seats in the van. He liked action, not skulking. More than once, he’d had to stop himself going over to the bridge club and dragging Doris Carlton-Jones out. He reminded himself that people in the U.K. found most Americans to be extremely polite. Most Americans hadn’t grown up in the back streets of New Jersey’s most underprivileged city.
It got dark, and still Sara’s birth mother was playing cards. Andy wondered if money was involved. Maybe she’d be there all night trying to win back her stake. And now it was getting cold in the van. He considered turning on the engine so he could let the heating blast out. No, that would make it obvious that there was someone inside. He stuck his hands into his armpits to warm them up. It was either there or his groin.
He wasn’t even able to look forward to a night in Matt’s well-heated luxury apartment, as the text message had told him to hit the first hotel on his personal list. Matt was obviously busy and Andy didn’t want to disturb him. He’d be working on that puzzle. Andy still wasn’t sure how seriously to take it. Sure, if Sara had owned up to sending it, they’d know to watch out. But why would she hide behind those other names? And why was she giving Matt a clue in the first place? That wasn’t her style, as she’d shown with Dave. The only heads-up they’d been given was the call to Matt. That didn’t give them any time to stop her. So why all this bullshit now?
A triangle of orange light appeared on the grass in front of the bridge club. Andy leaned forward and watched as people came out. He caught sight of Doris Carlton-Jones. He pulled himself over the seat backs and got behind
