Headhunter

8:16 p.m.

Joseph Avacomovitch was too tired to sleep. For a while he had watched the lights on English Bay from the window of his room in the Sylvia Hotel, then he had plugged in his Chess Challenger computer and set up a board.

Avacomovitch moved the black queen to put the white king in check.

8:31 p.m.

The woman emerged from the front of the house and approached the TR 7.

Sparky moved back in the shadows and watched her come up the driveway, knife in hand.

The rain had now stopped and her black hair was blowing wildly in the wind, whipping strands about her face and shoulders and high into the air. She was thinking about Camus. I, I, I. the woman thought, nodding to herself. If no man or woman is innocent, then no man or woman may judge others from a standpoint of righteousness.

When she reached the car she inserted a key into the driver's door, opened it and bent in to retrieve the bottle of port from between the bucket seats. The sucking sound of her rubber soles on the tarmac made her once more think: I, I, I.

As the woman eased her body back out of the car and began to straighten up, Sparky left the shadows of the trees and crossed the distance between them.

As the woman turned the knife began its sweeping diagonal descent, the whickering sound of the blade lost in the wind among the trees.

Then suddenly her world was turning over and over and over again, her vision spinning madly until with an abrupt jar her horizontal slammed to a halt on the perpendicular.

Oh God!she thought, I see my body!For there on the ground not ten feet away her headless form had hit the tarmac, spurting blood in all directions as it twitched in the death-throe spasms.

I've lost my head! her mind screamed with terror, but no sound came from her lips.

Then her eyes saw feet and legs approaching, a human figure walking toward her on the horizontal, crouching, reaching down, one gloved hand gripping a bloodstained cutlass, the other entangling its fingers within her hair, as her mind thought I, I, I, I, and then died because the oxygen in the blood within her severed head had all of a sudden run out.

Sparky picked up the head, bagged it and ran off into the mist.

9:03 p.m.

Not ten minutes after the report of the killing came into Headhunter Headquarters the Prime Minister called. Chartrand picked up the receiver in DeClercq's office and thought: So we have a spy in our midst.

'Chartrand?'

'Yes, sir.'

'The Solicitor General is with me. In fifteen minutes we're telling the Commons that you have personally assumed command of the Headhunter investigation.'

'Yes, sir.'

'This man DeClercq, the one in charge. I want him pulled right now.'

'Yes, sir,' Chartrand sighed.

I'm sorry, Robert, he thought.

9:06 p.m.

It was the final turn of the screw. No sooner had Robert DeClercq put down the phone than he grabbed the instrument violently and heaved it across the room. The telephone line was wrenched out of the wall. In the process the remains of the bottle of Scotch smashed all over the floor.

There was another killing and he was sacked: that was all he knew. He didn't care where. He didn't care who. I don't give a damn, he thought.

Then he began to settle down. 'Yes, I do give a damn,' he said aloud. He wanted another drink. You're smashed already, he thought. Then his eyes struck the photograph.

Weaving, he walked across the living room and picked up the picture. His eyes watered as he looked at the little girl, so very, very long ago, laughing in the leaves.

Then he slumped into the chair.

'Can you hear me. Princess?' he said to the photo. 'This time believe me. Daddy's coming for you.'

He went to get his gun.

Firefight

9:11 p.m.

The call came through on the radio of every Headhunter Squad patrol car.

'Spann. Scarlett. This is Tipple. Our boy just came home. He's carrying something in a bag and he's just gone into the shack. Here's how to get here.' No sooner had Tipple finished giving the address directions and signed off than he came on again. 'Spann. Scarlett. It's me again. Hardy's just come back out. He's going to his car and from what I can see in this light, he hasn't got the bag. I'm on his tail. And this time no one gets lost.'

Monica Macdonald was down with the flu and therefore Rusty Lewis was on patrol alone. He was driving along the Upper Levels Highway in North Vancouver when he heard the broadcast. Something's up,he thought.

Ed Rabidowski was less than a quarter mile from the murder scene when he picked up Tipple's reports.

With a frown of puzzlement on his face, he turned up the radio volume.

9:47 p.m.

Inspector Mac Fleetwood (no relation to the pop group; in fact he loathed rock music) was standing near the water cooler in the bull pen of Major Crimes when a constable who manned the front desk at 312 Main came up with an envelope.

'This was just dropped off,' the wide-eyed man said. 'There's a taxi driver downstairs says he went into McDonald's to get a coffee and when he returned to his car that was on the seat. He has no idea who left it.'

Fleetwood glanced at the envelope which was labeled For the police. It had been opened.

He dumped the contents onto a desk and out fell a roll of film and a note pieced together with newspaper clippings. The note said: say uncle robert haven't you had enough? ps you develop this one.

'Hey, Al,' Fleetwood called to the man across the room. 'It's the Headhunter again.'

Detective Al Flood rose quickly from his desk and ran across the bull pen.

10:02 p.m.

'Where are you. Tipple?' Rick Scarlett said into the microphone of his radio patrol car. He was parked behind Katherine Spann's vehicle on a small dirt road up on Grouse Mountain. Spread out before his eyes, down below, were the jewels of the city. At least a million of them, some of them in motion.

Spann was standing outside the door. She listened to the reply through the open window.

'We're coming across the Lion's Gate Bridge. I think he's coming home.'

'Where's he been?'

'To the record studio, but he just drove by. He didn't stop. He must be looking for Rackstraw.' 'Maybe