‘ All I’m doing,’ Henry concluded patiently, ‘is giving you the opportunity to say, 'Hey, yeah, got a bit upset, bit obsessive and it won’t happen again.' That’s all, Jack. Just hold your hand up, say sorry and we’ll all walk out of here and that’s that. Promise.’
‘ You can stick your promise right down your prick, Christie, because I’ve done nothing wrong and I’m not apologising to a paranoid bitch who can’t bear the thought of me finishing with her.’
‘ We’re not in the business of name-calling, Jack,’ Henry said softly. ‘We’re trying to solve a problem, adult to adult, and swearing isn’t gonna help.’
Sands held his hands up. ‘Sorry… just got a bit up-tight. Wouldn’t you? What you’ve alleged is absolute crap and you’ll never prove a thing because there’s nothing to prove.’
Henry tutted. He hadn’t wanted it to go this far. To Danny he said, ‘Last night you said you received several phone calls of a distressing nature?’
‘ That’s right, from about eight o’clock onwards. But whoever it was must have either dialled 141 before putting my number in to ensure the call couldn’t be traced, or they were phoning through a switchboard.’
‘ How many calls did you receive?’
‘ Four that I answered. I took my phone off the hook then, but I checked with BT this morning. They told me I got twenty-five more calls up to midnight.’
‘ How did you feel about the calls you received?’
‘ Frightened. Scared. As if I was being violated in my own home.’
‘ Thanks, Danny.’ Henry raised his eyebrows at Sands. ‘Jack, did you make those calls?’
His answer was short and to the point. ‘Did I fuck.’
‘ Okay,’ said Henry, unflustered. ‘Danny, what else happened last night?’
‘ Some creep,’ she shuddered at the memory, ‘stuffed a dozen red roses through my letterbox about half-one this morning.’
‘ I’ll bet that had an effect on you, too?’
‘ I was absolutely terrified.’ Her breath came in steps now as she thought about it. ‘Someone prowling round my house, watching me, stalking me.’
‘ Jack — any response?’
He remained silent for a while, considering, lips pursing and unpursing. He breathed in and sat up. ‘Yeah, just get to fuck, the pair of you. This is absolute shite. I’m off.’ He pushed himself up again.
Henry said evenly, but with a deadly tone, ‘You walk out of this room, Jack, I’ll arrest you.’
The words struck Sands as heavily as a lorry. He sat slowly back, eyes fixed firmly on Henry, who held the look, unwavering. Inside, Henry’s heart was pounding dramatically. It was all he could do to maintain his composure. His mouth was dry, but his armpits were very wet. He knew he was in very dangerous territory.
Sands was the one to break the gaze between the men. He re-focused them immediately and savagely on Danny.
‘ Danny?’ Henry continued. ‘The night before last?’
‘ Someone smashed a window at my home, cut my face.’ She placed the tip of a fingernail on the stitched cut on her cheek. ‘They also damaged my car, scratched it and snapped the Mercedes badge off.’
‘ Jack?’ said Henry, feeling like a facilitator.
Sands was tight-lipped. ‘Evidence?’ he snapped.
‘ I saw you holding a Mercedes star in your hand when I left work last night,’ Danny accused him.
Sands uttered a short, barking laugh. ‘Your word against mine,’ he said pityingly.
Henry reached for a folder on his desk. His hand slid into it and extracted a piece of paper. ‘Our IT department ran this off for me,’ he explained and handed it to Sands. ‘It’s a printout of all the phone numbers dialled from the extension in your office between 5 p.m. and midnight last night. You’ll see that one number features pretty highly, wouldn’t you say? In fact, it features twenty-nine times, Jack, doesn’t it?’
Sands swallowed. His eyes were transfixed on the figures in front of them. His cocksure exterior crumbled slightly with the assistance of Henry’s hammer and chisel. ‘Wonderful thing, this IT lark,’ Henry commented.
‘ Anything to say, Jack?’
‘ Proves nothing. I needed to speak to her on a work-related matter. She’d obviously taken her phone off the hook.’
‘ The work-related matter was what, Jack?’
‘ I’ll think of something,’ he said blandly.
‘ Fine, fine.’ Henry’s hand disappeared back into the folder and pulled out another slip of paper. He gave it to Sands. ‘This is a copy of the receipt from the florist on Elm Avenue. That’s your Barclaycard number, your signature and your order for twelve red roses.’
Sands leaned back, his look of defiance wavering after his previous rally. ‘Still proves nothing.’
‘ It can stop here and it can stop now, Jack. Believe me, trust me. This does not have to go on. You can say sorry and walk out of here and forget it.’
‘ You mean that’s all you’ve got? It’s crap and you know it, Henry. I have an answer for everything and I’m therefore not apologising for something I’m not guilty of.’
Henry pointed at Sands. ‘Don’t forget, Jack, I gave you the chance to save face.’
His hand went into his jacket pocket and extracted something. He held out his hand, turned it over and slowly opened his fingers to reveal a small, clear, plastic evidence bag.
In it was the famous three-pointed star seen so prominently on the front radiator grilles of Mercedes Benz cars. A silence fell heavy on the three people in the room.
Myrna Rosza looked down at the two dead bodies of Bussola’s bodyguards. The one sprawled to the right had been taken down by Mark Tapperman’s double-tap. Ba-bam! The other on the left had been killed by herself. She was painfully aware that the first bullet which left her gun had basically removed the guy’s throat and smashed through the back of his neck. He had been dead before he hit the ground squirming. Myrna didn’t know that for sure, but she would happily have laid money on it.
She too had attempted a double-tap. The idea of that method of shooting was to put two bullets pretty roughly in the same hole in quick succession. Her second shot, however, had gone well off-target and disappeared to where only God knew.
She stared down at the dead guy, fascinated by the pool of blood forming slowly underneath his grotesque body. It was going nowhere fast on the non-porous surface of the parking lot.
The first man she had ever killed.
Her jawline tightened.
Her time with the FBI had been concerned with more mundane matters — accounts, financial fraud, the occasional mob-related paperwork.
Nothing like this.
Never once had she faced a gunman, let alone drawn a weapon in anger. The only raids she had ever been on were the ones where she had been armed with folders, and were carried out during office hours — rifling through suspects’ desks, drawers and computer files, arresting people possibly armed with a letter-opener at worst. The only real danger she had ever faced had been from paper cuts.
Now this.
What surprised her was how little it was affecting her, but she was intelligent enough to know about delayed shock. A reaction would come — and she would have to deal with it. For now, she was cool.
‘ Y’okay?’ Tapperman asked.
She nodded. ‘Yeah, thanks.’
Behind her, this level of the parking lot was a flurry of police activity. Why the hell did the emergency services love flashing lights so much? A migraine threatened. She closed her eyes and held the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘Switch the damned things off!’ she wanted to yell.
‘ You did good,’ Tapperman said encouragingly. He patted her arm, squeezed it gently. ‘There won’t be any legal repercussions. I’ve already spoken with the DA and the Coroner. Nothing to worry about.’
She pulled her arm out of his fingers. Courts and the American legal system were a long way from her mind. ‘You’re still an asshole,’ she said bluntly.
