head. Filbin heard the shots but the Garda took their time getting to the scene and the killer was long gone.’
‘Killer or killers? One woman taking out three men?’
‘Don’t get sexist on me, Spider. You’re starting to sound like your dinosaur of a colleague Jimmy Sharpe.’ There was a packet of Marlboro on the table and she reached for it, then plainly had second thoughts. ‘He sends his regards, by the way.’
‘I can’t see Elaine Carter taking on three IRA killers in a shoot-out,’ Shepherd said. He pushed the cigarettes towards her.
Button picked up the packet and took one out. Shepherd lit it for her. ‘The driver was shot in the back of the head, the guy in the back seat took a double-tap to the chest and didn’t even have his hand on his gun,’ she said. ‘Lynn wasn’t armed. It was hardly a shoot-out.’
Shepherd nodded thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want to get all forensic on you, but if this happened in a field, there must have been footprints.’
‘It happened in Ireland, and they’re not as forensically minded as we are,’ said Button. ‘Half a dozen of the Garda’s finest were trampling around before anyone thought to cordon off the area.’
‘But the same gun was used?’
‘They’re going to check the bullets and will send us the results, but they’re insisting on doing the work themselves. The murders took place on Irish soil so we’ve got no claim on the evidence. But the way Lynn was shot makes it a fairly safe bet that it’s the same killer. Now, talk me through this. When did you last see her?’
‘Yesterday evening.’
‘So she’d gone when you got up this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she could have left last night?’ She looked around for an ashtray.
Shepherd retrieved one from the draining-board and put it in front of her. ‘Her car’s still in the driveway,’ he said. ‘She either walked or called a cab, and before you ask I didn’t see a cab.’
Button put her still-burning cigarette into the ashtray and ran her hands through her hair. ‘This is one hell of a screw-up, Spider.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m not saying it’s your fault – I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault – but the shit has really hit the fan. We were tasked with monitoring the single suspect in a multiple-murder case and now it looks as if she’s killed again.’
‘Assuming it’s her.’
‘It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? The one day she’s not here Gerry Lynn’s blown away. A shot in each leg and one to the head. Same way her husband died.’
‘She travels a lot, so it’s not unusual for her to be away,’ said Shepherd. ‘She’s always driving to see clients.’
‘But her car’s still here.’ She picked up her cigarette and drew deeply on it.
‘Maybe she took the train. Look, we still don’t know she’s the killer, Charlie. And nothing she’s said or done has suggested to me that she is.’
‘Except that you can’t account for her whereabouts last night when Lynn was being marched into a field and executed.’
Shepherd held up his hands. ‘Hey, you know as well as I do that you can’t have effective surveillance one- on-one,’ he said. ‘If you’d wanted her watched every minute you should have put multiple teams on her. There’s only me here, and even if I sat by the window all day I’ve still got to sleep.’
‘I said I’m not blaming you, just trying to work out where we go from here.’
‘She’ll be back. I’ll talk to her, sound her out.’
‘You’re getting closer to her?’ She picked up the cigarette, took a drag and blew smoke.
He considered her question. ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘but probably not close enough for her to tell me she’s shot and killed six men.’ He took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I should tell you,’ he said. ‘I had a look around her house today.’
Button’s eyes narrowed. ‘You broke in?’ She stubbed out the cigarette.
‘I had keys. I did a pretty thorough search and there’s no gun. But I did find some ammunition in the attic.’
‘First of all, if she went to kill Lynn then, it’s pretty bloody obvious that she’d have taken the gun with her,’ said Button. ‘Second of all, what the hell did you think you were doing? You can’t break into a suspect’s house without a warrant, you know that. If you had found anything it wouldn’t have been admissible. Damn it, Spider, you could have blown the whole case.’
‘First of all we don’t have a case,’ said Shepherd. ‘Second of all I already said I didn’t break in. I had keys. And third of all, if I had found a gun I sure as hell wouldn’t have done anything with it. But at least we would have known it was there.’
‘And if you’d been caught?’
‘That’s hypothetical,’ said Shepherd. ‘I wasn’t caught. And there was nothing in the house to suggest that Elaine Carter is a serial killer or a mass murderer.’ He went to the kitchen cabinet above the fridge and came back with the round he’d taken from the box in Elaine’s attic. ‘Except this.’ He gave the bullet to her and splashed more wine into her glass. ‘You’re right, of course. It was the wrong call. I just wanted to push things along. And maybe I didn’t find the gun because she had it with her. But there was a box of those rounds in an old trunk along with some papers and photographs.’
Button weighed the cartridge in her palm. ‘It’s a .357, same as Carter’s service revolver, right?’ She put it on the table by her glass.
‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Shepherd. ‘PMC .357 Magnum 158-grain semi-jacketed rounds. They’d be my ammo of choice for the gun he had.’
‘PMC?’
‘That’s the manufacturer’s name,’ said Shepherd. ‘One of the firms that supplied rounds to the RUC. It was an old box. The manufacturer’s date was two years before Robbie Carter was killed, so they almost certainly belonged to him. The box originally contained fifty and there were twenty-six left. Twenty-five after I took that one. Your forensic boys should be able to tell if it’s similar to the rounds that were used to shoot his killers.’
‘That’ll be a help, but it’s no proof that she’s the killer even if the rounds are the same. If they are RUC issue we can assume that dozens if not hundreds of officers had the same ammunition.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Shepherd. ‘Remember, most RUC officers were issued with nine-millimetre Smith amp; Wessons. But I take your point. Without the gun we don’t have proof. So, where does that leave us?’
‘The words “shit”, “creek” and “paddle” spring to mind,’ said Button. ‘The powers-that-be are going to be looking for someone to blame for this.’
‘Me, you mean?’
‘I was thinking me, actually. It’s my operation.’
‘You’re still assuming Elaine’s the killer,’ said Shepherd, ‘and we don’t know that.’
‘Proving a negative is going to be next to impossible,’ she said. ‘We either prove she’s killed these six men, or that it’s the work of someone else. It doesn’t get us anywhere to say that we don’t think she did it.’
Shepherd sipped his wine. ‘There is a bright side,’ he said. ‘At least it was Lynn and not Kinsella who was killed. Lynn was a nasty piece of work and I doubt there’ll be many tears shed for him.’
‘I’ll be sure to tell the Home Secretary so when I’m next in his office,’ said Button. She raised her glass to him. ‘Here’s to my short and eventful career with the Serious Organised Crime Agency,’ she said. ‘I need another cigarette.’
The widow was quite beautiful, thought Viktor Merkulov, as he watched her at the graveside. She was in her late twenties and her knee-length black coat was open to reveal a low-cut dress that showed off an impressive pair of breasts. Her long blonde hair glistened in the afternoon sun and her nails were painted blood red. She was wearing a pair of Gucci sunglasses, but every now and again she would glance towards a good-looking man at the edge of the crowd of mourners. He was a few years older and elegantly dressed, the suit almost certainly Armani and the shoes Italian, handmade. Merkulov was sure he was the woman’s lover. There were no children around, and no one old enough to be the deceased’s parents. Merkulov didn’t know who the dead man was, but he was fairly sure that the widow wouldn’t miss him.
The widow had arrived at the cemetery in an expensive Mercedes sports car, the man in the Armani suit a few minutes later in a yellow Ferrari. Most of the mourners were men in their forties, probably work colleagues –
