Venner’s face clouded over. ‘Where do you
Gidney sensed an almost silent footfall behind him. He detected the faintest shadow on the carpet. Venner bringing in his team, the Russian in front, the Albanian behind, to intimidate him. But today he was The Man Who Was Not Timid.
He would stand his ground.
He was shaking, his face burning, rivers of perspiration rolling down inside his white shirt. But he was standing his ground. ‘I have them in a safe place.’
‘Exactly how safe?’ Venner enquired coldly.
‘Very.’
‘Good. Sensible.’
‘If you want them back, you have to pay me what you promised. And-and-and I,’ he was blurting now, gabbling, ‘I-don’t-want-to-dothisanymore.’
Then he stared at the carpet, gulping down air.
‘Is that right, John?’ Venner said calmly. ‘You don’t want to work in our team any more?’
‘Ummm, no.’
‘I’m really hurt! I figured we all got along so well! You know, John, I thought you and I were becoming real good buddies. I’m really hurt. Of course, you want to leave, you want your money, that’s absolutely fine.’
The Weatherman was silent; he had not been expecting this reaction. He had expected Venner to explode.
‘So exactly where is this very safe place you have the laptop and the cloned disk?’
Smiling proudly, Gidney looked up. ‘You would never believe it. No one will look there; no one will find them in a thousand years!’
‘That so?’
The Weatherman nodded excitedly.
‘Not even the police?’
‘Absolutely not!’
Venner beamed happily at the Weatherman, then swung his left hand sharply through the air.
The movement puzzled the Weatherman. It appeared to be some coded signal. But he did not have long to fret about it.
‘Watch the birdie!’ Venner said.
The Weatherman felt increasingly confused. The Russian standing beside Venner was holding up a small video camera.
The Albanian, standing behind him, took two swift steps forward and, with one chop of the side of his hand, snapped the Weatherman’s neck and spinal cord in two.
82
The Fingerprint Department occupied one of the largest floor spaces in Sussex House. On the ground floor, a short walk along from the High Tech Crime Unit, it was a hive of quiet activity, and every time Grace went there, he noticed just the very faintest aroma of ink in the air.
Derry Blane, one of the senior fingerprint officers, sat at a workstation more or less in the middle of the labyrinth of desks and machinery. On his computer screen was the best print Joe Tindall had lifted from the Volkswagen, off the interior mirror. Grace and Tindall stood behind him, looking down over his shoulder at the screen.
Blane, a balding, bespectacled man, had avuncular looks and a quiet, learned manner which inspired confidence. He clicked the keyboard and a full set of ten prints appeared. He clicked again and Grace’s heart skipped a beat. There on the screen was a police custody photograph of his man. And his name. The driver of the Golf. Janie Stretton’s date at the Karma Bar.
‘We’ve got a match,’ Derry Blane said. ‘I’ve run him through NAFIS, and he was printed just over a year ago, after a brawl at the Escape nightclub in Brighton. He was released with a caution. His name is Mik Luvic. He’s an Albanian, of no fixed abode.’
‘What else do you have on him?’ Grace asked.
‘Here’s the thing.’ Blane tapped his keyboard again. ‘There’s a PNC marker on him as someone to watch – at the request of Interpol.’
Grace’s excitement increased. PNC was the Police National Crime database.
‘So I ran an international search on his full set – we need a full set to do that – and it came up with a link to this charmer.’
Blane tapped another couple of keys and, after a moment, the head and torso of a grossly fat man appeared on the screen. He had a small head in comparison to the bulk of his body, with gelled silver hair pulled back into a tiny pigtail.
‘His name is Carl Venner. Also goes under the name of Jonas Smith. He has an interesting history,’ Blane continued. ‘Venner was in the US military. He started out as a chopper pilot in Vietnam. Got a purple heart for being wounded in combat, then stopped flying for some health reason and became a radio operator. He later got promoted to a high position in military communications out there. After that he was involved in a scandal. You may remember it – a war cameraman and a couple of photographers were indicted on charges of filming the torture and execution of Vietcong, and then flogging the footage.’
‘Snuff pictures?’ Grace asked.
‘Exactly. But Venner wormed his way out of the charges. He stayed with the US military and was moved to an intelligence posting in Germany. Then when Bosnia started up he was posted there. The same thing happened as in Vietnam. Eventually he was court-martialled for filming the execution of prisoners and selling the films into the international snuff movie market.’
‘For real?’ Grace asked.
‘Yes, absolutely. This guy is lower than lowlife. He’s your absolute bottom feeder. A smart lawyer got him off the charges, but enough mud stuck and he was slung out of the military. Next thing, his name crops up in an international child pornography ring based in Atlanta. Except it’s not just men having sex with children; it’s footage of kids being murdered. Mostly Asian, some Indian, some white too.’
‘You really mix with the best, don’t you, Roy?’ Tindall said with a smile, his humour back.
‘That’s me all over. You should come to one of my dinner parties.’
‘I keep waiting for the invite.’
‘So what happened to him?’ Grace asked, turning back to Blane.
‘Seems he did a runner. Fell off the FBI’s radar. Then… three years ago he popped up in Turkey. Then Athens. Then Paris. A cosy little snuff movie ring got busted there. The French police raided an apartment in the Sixteenth Arondissement of Paris. They seized a load of equipment and a bunch of people who said Venner was the ringleader. He hasn’t been seen since.’
‘What’s the link with Luvic?’
‘Interpol have a desk man in London who knows about that. I have his number. His name’s Detective Sergeant Barry Farrier.’
‘Thanks, Derry, you’ve done a great job. And incredibly quick!’ Because of the traffic, it had taken Grace twenty minutes longer to get back to headquarters than he had planned. But Joe Tindall must have had the same problem. Blane couldn’t have had the prints more than fifteen minutes.
Back upstairs, in his private office opposite MIR One, Grace checked first with the surveillance team watching the Golf. The driver had not yet appeared. Then he was about to dial Detective Sergeant Barry Farrier when his mobile rang. As he answered he recognized Harry Frame’s high-pitched, effusive voice.
‘You have something?’ Grace asked the clairvoyant.
‘Well, I don’t know if it means anything to you or not; I’m getting a watch.’
‘A watch?’ Grace said. ‘Like a wristwatch?’
‘Exactly!’ Frame’s enthusiasm mounted. ‘A wristwatch! There is something very significant. A wristwatch will
