“Or both,” Rog said, raising his knife.
“Thanks for that, Dodger.” I looked around the table. “Where do we start, then?”
“Well, we’ve got the three properties that Sara bought in the southeast,” Rog said. “The flat in Hackney, the house in Oxford and the farmhouse in Kent.”
“True enough,” I said, “not that she’s necessarily using them.”
“She’s probably got them booby-trapped,” Pete said.
Andy grunted. “Probably. What about your millionaire friends, Boney? Have they seen her recently?”
Pete shook his head. “The last actual sighting I have of her is in Zurich nearly a year ago.”
“What do you think she looks like now?” Rog asked, pushing his plate away.
I glanced over at him. “How do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Well, she’s hardly going to be letting the CCTV cameras of the capital record her as she was two years ago. She’s a fugitive, isn’t she? Wanted for her part in several murders. At the very least she’s going to be using disguises.”
“Good point, Dodger,” Pete said. Then he frowned. “What do you mean, ‘at the very least’?”
Rog grinned. “Ever heard of a thing called cosmetic surgery, Boney?”
“Shit,” I said, dropping my cutlery. “That would make our job a whole lot harder.”
Andy shook his head. “I don’t see why. We just nail anyone acting suspiciously. She’s probably hired people anyway.”
“That would be ‘nail’ as in what you failed to do with the motorbike rider you saw trying to hand something to Sara’s birth mother?” I asked with more sarcasm than he deserved. He shouldn’t have called me Oates.
“Steady on, Matt,” Pete said. “The last thing we should be doing is taking shots at each other.”
“Quite right,” I said, raising my hand. “Sorry, Slash.”
“Forget it,” he said with a grin. “I’m not the person on the front page of the newspaper.”
That made us laugh, but not for long. Andy brought over another pot of coffee and we refilled.
“Okay,” I said. “Plan. For a start, we’re not doing anything on our own. We stay in pairs. That way we reduce the chances of being surprised by Sara or her sidekicks.”
“How about checking the properties?” Rog asked. “For a start, there’s the one in Hackney. That shouldn’t take long.”
I nodded. “Okay. Who’s going to do that?”
Pete looked around the table. “We haven’t decided on pairs yet.”
“Boney, why don’t you do that with Andy?” I suggested.
They both agreed.
“What about us?” Rog asked me.
“I need to keep checking my e-mails in case Doctor Faustus or Flaminio sends another clue,” I replied. “In the meantime, you can start tinkering with those bank accounts of Sara’s you’ve been logging.”
“Tinkering with them?”
“Yes, Dodger,” I said, with a thin smile. “I want you to transfer as much as you can from them into a new account in my name. That should get her attention pretty quickly.”
“Way to go, Matt!” Andy said.
“Yeah,” said Pete. “Make her squirm!”
I suddenly felt a wave of emotion. Up till now we had basically been chasing the game, but now we were going on the attack. The question was, how many people were going to end up dead before we flushed Sara out?
Karen Oaten was sitting in front of the assistant commissioner’s desk, in a low chair that she was sure he had carefully chosen to emphasize his superior position.
“Tell me, Karen,” he said, flicking a speck of dirt from his uniform tunic. “What are you doing to find Matt Wells?”
She tried not to sigh too obviously. It was clear that her boss had paid more attention to the
“I’ve applied to have his phones tapped and his Internet service provider monitored.” She rubbed her forehead. “But it’s likely that he’s using other numbers and sites. He’s been preparing for Sara Robbins’s return for some time.”
“Is that who you think murdered the two crime writers?”
“There’s no evidence of it, though the note mentioning Matt suggests someone with an agenda. Sara Robbins did threaten him in an e-mail after the White Devil’s death.”
The AC picked up an expensive-looking pen and held it like a surveyor judging an angle. “I have to tell you, Karen, that questions are being asked about your team. The outbreak of killings in East London is unlikely to have come to an end. The shooting of the Shadow hard man by someone wearing Muslim women’s clothes is going to make things worse. I understand you’ve kept Ron Paskin in charge.”
“Yes, sir. He has the experience and the manpower to handle it.”
The AC raised an eyebrow. “Is that a hint that you need more bodies, Chief Inspector?”
“I always need more bodies,” Oaten replied. “At least, living ones. My monthly report has stressed the need for more detectives and support staff in the VCCT ever since I arrived.”
“Just be thankful you have a team to command at all,” the AC said firmly. “There are plenty of senior personnel in the divisional homicide units who would be delighted to see the disbandment of what they feel is the interfering VCCT.”
“Yes, sir. I am aware of that.”
The man behind the desk opened a file. “No fresh leads in the Mary Malone case?”
“No, sir.”
He opened another file. “The Dave Cummings shooting?”
“No, sir.”
The AC looked down at her. “And the Eastern Division murders? Are they just tit-for-tat gang idiocy?”
Karen Oaten held his gaze. “I’m keeping an open mind, sir. Do you know something I don’t?”
“I have spoken to Detective Superintendent Paskin, but he assures me he’s copied you on all the case notes.” The AC pushed his chair back and stood up. “Come on, Karen,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence? A series of murders starts that we can link, at least in principle, to Sara Robbins, and at the same time someone starts taking out gang members in East London?”
Karen chewed her lip. The thought had occurred to her. She didn’t like the feeling, not least because the idea was interesting. She decided to play devil’s advocate.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever tying the crime-writer murders even to that of Dave Cummings, let alone to the East End killings, sir.”
“Indeed there isn’t,” the AC said, looking at the photograph of the Metropolitan Police rugby union team that he had captained. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some connection.”
If Amelia Browning had come up with an evidence-free idea like that, Karen would have sent her off with a verbal slap. But the AC wasn’t prone to flights of fancy and he did have an outstanding record as a detective. She knew that she’d be a fool to ignore his input, even if it was nothing more than a hunch.
“So you want me to take over the cases from Ron Paskin, do you, sir?”
“Not necessarily,” her boss replied. “Just consider the possibility that there’s more to the gangland murders than meets the eye.”
“Right, sir,” Oaten said, standing up.
“By the way, how’s that young sergeant coming along?”
“Amelia Browning? She’s keen and I think she’ll make the grade.”
The AC opened the door of his office. “Good. I had a feeling she would when we interviewed her.”
As she left, Karen twitched her head. The AC might have given the impression of being the most straitlaced of commanders, but he had the ability to put his finger on things with unerring accuracy. It was about time she did the same, if she wanted to remain in charge of her team.
I watched as Rog’s fingers flew over the keyboard like a concert pianist’s. He had already managed to transfer a million dollars from an account in Venezuela to the one he’d set up in my name in London. Now he was
