from a computer. No real-world experience.’
Hans smiled thinly and led Harper and Levene down to his lab. He waited for Harper to say something. Clearly Harper was supposed to acknowledge his old-school brilliance. Harper didn’t. He looked around at the images on the walls — all of them bullets and cartridges. ‘You like bullets, Hans?’
‘Yes, I like bullets. That’s called dry humor, isn’t it?’
‘If you ever got caught up in a murder investigation, you’d be a prime suspect,’ said Denise, staring at the obsessively neat closeups of bullets.
Hans led them past the workbenches to a desk with three computer screens side-by-side.
‘So this is where you get to play now?’ said Harper.
‘Since I retired, yes. Anyway, I like to do my own work out here away from those new guys with their smart shirts. I don’t like bright colors, you see. What did they find in these bullets?’
‘Nothing,’ said Harper. Denise watched from a distance.
‘Nothing is correct, Detective. But what did I get?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harper. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘What have I got for you? Here,’ said Hans. A picture came up on the screen.
Harper looked at two close-up photographs of the twisted gray bullets. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘It didn’t take long — not long at all, considering that no one else spotted it. There is something unusual in your bullets. Your instincts were right, Detective.’
‘What did you spot?’ said Harper. ‘Come on, he could’ve murdered again in the time you’ve taken building up to the show.’
Denise Levene felt her interest growing as she stared at a magnified picture of a used bullet. A bullet that had passed through Esther Haeber’s body.
‘Look, here’s the Capske bullet. And here’s your bullet from Esther Haeber. They are both badly damaged. Much more deformed than you would expect. You can see that right away. I presume that is why the young technical specialists at the CSU labs could not identify them. They only know modern bullets. But even for me, this is not something I’ve seen outside of museums and I’ve seen everything post 1961. So that led me to believe that this was older.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. This, Detective Harper, is, as you know, a 9mm Parabellum. But it is an unusual 9mm. Firstly, the metal is different from usual and so is the color.’
‘Looks like it got burned.’
‘It’s a different metal. Not a metal anyone uses to make bullets.’
‘What is it?’
Hans Formet put his hand on top of Harper’s. He whispered, ‘This, Detective, is an iron bullet.’
‘An iron bullet — what does that mean?’
‘Very rare in this size of ballistics. Very rare. So rare, in fact, that you have a connection between your apparently unconnected murders.’
Harper put the third bullet down on the desk. ‘This came from our next victim, Marisa Cohen.’
Hans pulled it out of the bag with forceps and turned it under his eye. ‘It appears the same,’ he said. He dropped it into a small dish and squeezed some droplets on it. They changed color. ‘Iron,’ nodded Hans.
‘But an iron bullet isn’t conclusive, is it?’
‘Iron is made strong by the addition of various impurities. Pure iron is very soft, whereas iron with the right mix of impurities becomes steel. So I had the iron content analyzed. The proportion of iron, carbon and other impurities.’
‘Okay, I get iron, Hans, but what does it tell us?’
‘Well, guess what I found? An exact chemical match. Not only are these bullets of a similar type, they are from the same batch.’
‘Is that admissible?’
‘Who knows what the DA would accept, but for a detective, knowing there is a real link is worth something in its own right. Correct?’
Harper’s skin was tingling. Hans was a showman all right. This was the first piece of real physical evidence, providing a link between the three murders.
‘The bullets might not be from the same gun, but they were manufactured in the same factory, at the same time, is that right?’ said Denise.
‘Yes.’
Harper caught Denise’s thinking. ‘A munitions factory must make a million bullets of the same type at the same time. How does this give us a link?’
‘It’s not absolutely conclusive. I never said it was. But who makes iron bullets, these days? And iron is different from lead. This match is not close, it’s identical. Same batch. How many killers are there in New York using old iron bullets?’
‘You’d say not many,’ said Harper.
‘One. No more,’ said Hans.
‘Can you tell me anything more about these bullets?’ said Harper.
‘I have to continue my work. At the moment, I don’t know what they are or where they were made. I will try for you, Detective.’
Harper stood up and let the idea swim in his mind. It was a material link between the cases. And that meant that he now had evidence linking three Jewish murders. It was potentially explosive.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Harper’s head was full of iron bullets as he ran up to the investigation room with Denise. She put her arm out, touched his. ‘What do you think it means?’ she asked.
‘Our killer is not new to this game. He’s tried before.’
‘What else?’
‘He’s not politically motivated. He’s killing people because they’re Jewish.’
‘Can we be sure? There’s just three murders.’
‘Each killed in similar ways with iron bullets. He doesn’t want to get caught, does he?’ Tom said. ‘If we’re right, then the man in prison for killing Esther Haeber is the wrong man.’
‘And that adds something vital to our profile. He’s stalking these people, killing them, then setting up other people and staging it to avoid us joining the dots.’
‘Intelligent, strategic, psychotic,’ said Tom.
‘Add brutal and determined. He wants to carry on. He really enjoys this. Like some… necessity, you know.’
‘A religious killer?’ asked Harper.
‘Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. It has that visionary zeal about it.’
‘God help us, then.’
‘Or just avoid helping him, if at all possible.’
Harper left Denise and marched into Captain Lafayette’s office. ‘I got a link for you.’
Lafayette stood up. ‘Really? Evidence?’
‘Yes, real evidence.’
‘Go on, tell me.’ Lafayette moved round the desk. ‘We’re getting busted on this by the hour. They want to know why Lukanov walked. I need some good news.’
Harper produced a printout of Hans Formet’s photographs. ‘We’ve discovered a link between the bullets found at the Capske scene and the Esther Haeber and Marisa Cohen scenes. It links each murder.’
‘What’s the link?’
