“Yeah,” Patterson said. “Van Winkles we call ’em at State. And they’ve already gone back to bed by now.”
“So, your father, Mr. McCullough, found the bodies and called you, is that right, Chief?” Congreve asked.
“Yes,” Ainslie said. “He couldn’t talk really. He was crying and mixing everything up. I knew something horrible had happened at the Slade house. My deputy, Nikos Savalas, and I came right out here. You’ve never seen such savagery, Inspector. Children, for God’s sakes!”
“Anything else you think we should know, Chief?” asked Congreve.
“Yes,” she said. “There were flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Lying atop each of the bodies. One flower. A single stem iris.”
“An iris, you say?” Congreve said. He’d gotten to his feet and was standing at the railing, looking down over the little harbor, puffing on his pipe.
“Yes, an iris,” Ainslie replied. “Mean anything to you, Chief Inspector?”
“Doesn’t mean anything yet, perhaps,” Congreve said thoughtfully, “But perhaps it will. Hmm. Iris is Siri spelled backwards, as you are well aware.”
Patterson looked carefully at Ambrose Congreve, then at Hawke, shaking his head.
“I’ll be damned,” Tex said. Hawke smiled.
“Ambrose is usually roughly three thoughts ahead of the rest of the planet,” Alex replied.
After a few moments had passed, each man deep in his own thoughts, Alex spoke. “How’s Evan Slade holding up, Texas?”
“Aw, shoot, Hawkeye,” Patterson said and just shook his head.
“On his way here now. Lands in Portland at three. I’m going down to meet the plane. What the heck do I say to the guy?”
A short time later, Patterson and Alex followed an eager Congreve into the house. As they went though it, starting in the basement, both men were aware of Congreve’s photographic mind at work. In the stillness of the dead house, you could almost hear the shutter click of his eyelids as he moved from room to room.
“Never seen this much physical evidence at a crime scene in my life,” Patterson said as they mounted the blood-spattered stairway. “Heck, the girl’s prints are everywhere. The murder weapon, the bathroom mirror, a Coke can in the library. We even found her blood-matted hair in Deirdre Slade’s hairbrush. She brushed her hair, Alex. Afterwards.”
“She didn’t care, Tex,” Alex said, “She’s been taught since infancy not to bloody care.” He turned away and walked into the children’s room. Congreve followed him in. Patterson remained out in the hall. He just could not bring himself to go into that godforsaken room again. Ten minutes later, the two Englishmen emerged, ashen-faced and visibly shaken.
“I’m so sorry, Tex,” Alex said. “We’ll do all we can to help you stop these bloody bastards.”
“I found this,” Congreve said, showing them a small fragment of cellophane in the palm of his latex-gloved hand.
“What is it?” Patterson asked.
“Easy for your chaps to have missed it first time round,” Ambrose said, eyeing the thing more closely. “It was stuck on the underside of the toilet seat in the children’s bath. There’s printing on it. The letters ‘S’, ‘O’, ‘N’, and below that ‘V’ and ‘H’. She possibly sat on the john, unwrapping a fresh Sony videocassette. Then, when she flushed, she threw the cellophane wrapper in. Static electricity caught this fragment on the underside. So it hasn’t been there long.”
“Jesus,” Jack Patterson whispered as they descended the stairs and returned to the living room. “Where’s this going?”
“Videotape is common enough, but not in this house,” Ambrose said. “Had to come from the girl, I’m quite sure of it.”
“I don’t follow you,” Patterson said. “From the girl?”
Congreve said, “She videotaped the whole thing. Went in the loo, stuck a new tape in her camera, and then went in and did the children. Telescoping tripod that would hide in her bag, I imagine.”
“But, how do you know it was the girl who—”
“Trust him, Tex,” Alex said, smiling at Ambrose. “His brain’s just getting warmed up. Hell, he’s almost tepid.”
“Talk to me, Hawkeye.”
“I think maybe he’s got it, Texas,” Alex said, “Videotape? A video camera? In this house? It’s the girl. Doesn’t make sense otherwise.”
“Why not?”
“There’s not a single VCR in the entire house,” Congreve said. “I looked.”
“No VCRs, no televisions,” Hawke added.
“Holy God,” Patterson said, collapsing into an armchair, pressing his fingertips into his eyesockets.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“The thing in Venice? The miniature smart bomb? Pieces we scooped up sifting through the mud? One of our top forensic guys told me he thought he’d found a piece of a lens from the nose of the thing. Said there had been a nose camera. Chasing Stanfield through Venice and filming the whole damn thing.”
“So there you have it,” Ambrose Congreve said. “Our killer, whoever he or she may be, has it in for America and likes to watch his victims die. I say, Alex, we know anyone like that?”
Patterson sat back and regarded the two men for a moment. Then he said, “I believe I do know someone who fits both halves of that equation perfectly.”
“Who, Tex?” Alex asked.
“They call him the Dog,” Patterson said. “He’s got a dozen aliases, but ‘Dog’ describes him perfectly. He’s been Number One on the DSS terrorist hit parade for more than a decade. We’ve come close a couple of times, missed him by minutes.”
“Country of origin?” Congreve asked.
“Thin air, far as I can tell,” Patterson replied.
Chapter Twelve
London
ATTAR AL-NASSAR APPROACHED SNAY BIN WAZIR THE WAY A master jeweler at Van Cleef & Arpels might have a go at an uncut twenty-carat diamond. He screwed in his eyepiece and went to work. He paused before each strike, his instrument delicate and poised, and when he struck it was swift, precise, and perfect. Gradually the rough edges became fine under his hand and Attar could begin to see fragments of his own brilliance reflected in his new friend.
If Snay was the uncut diamond, Attar was the diamondback rattler of his era. In the rough-and-tumble world of international arms dealing in the eighties, he struck swiftly and with deadly precision. Having reached a certain age, Attar was, albeit imperceptibly, slowing down. But, no matter, Snay was now fully on board. Having made a fortune in gladiolas, he had moved up to dealing Kalashnikovs, bullets, and helicopter gunships.
Attar gradually displaced some of his more onerous responsibilities onto his new partner’s shoulders.
Snay never complained about these duties. His partnership within the vast al-Nassar arms empire had made him rich beyond measure. As an added benefit, he had a keen appetite for some of the more distasteful things which needed doing.
His lust for blood remained undiminished. He found outlets, always discreet and well hidden from both the police and the aristocratic society of London to which he now so desperately sought acceptance. He still enjoyed killing, but now getting away with it was the real thrill. His murders sometimes made the papers, but the police didn’t have a clue.
