Extremity, page 3
I frown, turning the car. “I thought we couldn’t touch Bruno’s phone?”
“People like Bruno Donaldson don’t just have one phone, not for the stuff they want to keep under the surface. Not for stuff they really need to hide. But I knew Bruno. I knew them all—that’s why they brought me in. That Samsung with the silver case? That’s the phone Paul gave Bruno to talk to him. It’s a private line between them and no one else. If he had that phone on him, that’s who he was talking to just before he was killed. You’ve got a gun in your boot, right?”
“I . . . wait, what?”
She looks up at me. “You’re on Grossman’s special squad, so you’re an AFO. There’ll be a firearm locked in the boot of your car if you need it. I hate going into unknown situations without a gun.”
“You can’t have a gun,” I tell her. “You’re not a police officer.” She gives me a withering look and I feel like I’m shrinking back into my seat. “Ma’am,” I add, stupidly.
“It’s not for me, idiot.”
I shake my head. “I can’t get it out whenever. There are . . . rules. If there’s no reason to suspect that—”
“The last time I followed a lead without a gun,” she says, “I wished to God one of us had brought one. There was a fight. I was forced to use a knife, and the suspect pulled one too. Doesn’t matter how good you think you are, you know who loses in a fight with two knives?”
I shake my head. She leans back and lifts up her top, showing a long white scar across her belly.
“Everyone.”
Julia Torgrimsen: I let him take a good look at my hysterectomy scar before I put it away. It seemed to do the trick. That’s the thing with most people—you don’t actually need to lie to them. Put down the right pieces and they’ll draw their own conclusions.
I knew we’d have a bit of time. John was never going to alert the station. He’d never tell you this, because he’s such a goody-two-shoes, but I knew he’d try to find me all by himself so he doesn’t have the whole station realise he’s screwed up. He’s so desperate to constantly appear supremely competent that he’s utterly predictable.
Meanwhile I’m stuck with this kid and his barrel full of questions and I’m starting to think it would have been easier to get a taxi.
“You seemed pretty pleased that Bruno Donaldson was dead,” he said.
“He was a nasty piece of work.”
“Really?” he replied, in that same blind acceptance that everyone else gives. “He always seems so nice on like . . . TV and Instagram and stuff. All his money’s in renewable tech and environmental stuff.”
I rolled my eyes. If Mark was going to be a part of this investigation, no matter how small, he needed to know the truth.
“He liked to whip young girls. Boys, too, sometimes.”
His neck twisted round hard and he gave me an incredulous look. I had to nod back to the road to remind him it was there.
“I could never work out if it was a sex thing or a power thing, but it was definitely a thing.”
“What do you mean young?”
“Oh, age of consent, if you believe the paperwork. And that’s how legal systems work. We believe the paperwork. The truth? Human-trafficking victims mainly, often as young as nine or ten, but paid off enough so that they and any families they had would lie and provide alibis. His lawyers tied the whole operation up in enough nondisclosures and red tape that it would appear, for all intents and purposes, legal.”
“And you knew about this?” he demanded. “People in the police knew about this?”
I wanted to laugh at his naivety, but it came out bitter. His accusation sat heavy on my chest. “Do you have any idea of the mountain of evidence it takes to convict someone with that much wealth? This isn’t a poor black kid with an ounce of weed you can lock up for looking at you wrong. Everything needs to be bulletproof. Everything. And even then . . . Do you remember the Panama Papers?”
He looked confused. “The tax-evasion thing?”
“Eleven-point-five million leaked documents demonstrating, irrefutably, a range of criminal activities from tax evasion, fraud, racketeering, money laundering, obstruction of justice, all the way to criminal conspiracy. Do you know how many people are in prison for that right now?”
“I—” he stumbled.
“Zero. A few fines here and there, but not enough to make a dent. And five years later, and no one locked up. Not a single person. The law doesn’t work the way you think it does. If you’re rich, you can get away with anything.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true, though. Dmitri Yegorov was arrested. He was taken in because of you, of the evidence you—”
“You know nothing about Yegorov,” I snapped.
He was silent for a while after that, quietly staring out at the road in front of him.
We rolled up outside Paul Merkaton’s place in Kensington at about 1 a.m.
The lights on either side of the gated drive flicked on as we approached, and a security guard with a torch appeared next to our car. Mark rolled down the window.
“How can I help you?” the guard asked, eyeing up the car.
“Police business,” Mark replied. “We need to see Mr. Merkaton.”
The guard shook his head. “It’s the middle of the night. He’s asleep. You’ll have to make an appointment.”
I leant forward. “Paul doesn’t sleep before three a.m. Too much coke.” The guard opened his mouth, as though he was about to contradict me, so I said, “Just tell him it’s Julia Torgrimsen.”
DCI John Grossman: I was pacing up and down the scene, trying to get a read on where Julia and Mark had gone. I’d asked Nazir to find someone at the station with his mobile number, but at that time of night most people were asleep. Julia had, of course, turned off the radio in his car. I doubt he even realised.
Meanwhile, I was still trying to work out what the hell was going on with Bruno Donaldson.
Ever since I got the call from Sarah I’d been on high alert. Then I saw the picture from Vauxhall—the second Donaldson body—and a big red alarm inside my head started going off. Something very dangerous was incoming, I knew it, and I needed to find out what was happening right now. The doctors currently had the body in autopsy just to check it over, but just as I was about to make some calls, and try to put out some fires, Julia disappeared.
I looked up from my phone and saw Norman Horner cutting across the room, making a beeline directly for me.
Christ,I thought, I’m getting too old for this.
“John,” he said, looking like he was about to bite me. “Where is Julia?”
“She’s back at the station,” I said, and then, “I don’t need to explain the movements of my staff to you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The station? Then why did I get off the phone with Paul Merkaton saying that Julia showed up in a police car outside his house?”
My stomach rose into my throat. I was trying as hard as I possibly could not to betray anything on my face, but every single internal alarm that I was aware of, and some that I wasn’t, was screaming in my head.
Let me explain for a second. I was Julia’s contact when she was undercover on the Yegorov case. Julia had spent six years with those people, working for Bruno, for Paul, for Dmitri and the rest of them. It had been a job she’d pushed to be on after she’d worked a case where some dead women washed up in the Thames. No one else could quite connect the dots, but she was convinced there was something nefarious going on amongst this cabal of uber-wealthy and she went in deep. Some of the stories she told me, well . . . I’m not going to repeat here, partly because they aren’t relevant and partly because I don’t want to deal with the legal ramifications of me saying them on record.
Dmitri Yegorov—that was her golden goose at the end of it all. He was running just about the largest human trafficking ring that any of us had ever heard of, providing boys and girls—mostly underage—to celebrities, to the rich, to anyone who felt like they were above the law.
Julia had to watch this happen for years, because even though she saw it, Yegorov was sneaky. Everything was run through disposable contacts, through handlers and little black books. She knew she needed incontrovertible evidence, and a lot of it, if she was ever going to take him down, and that meant she was in deep, with all of them. Paul, in particular.
I knew about everything—the illegal shit she had to do, the stuff that was redacted from all the reports. When I say Julia holds a grudge against Paul, that’s like saying Tyson had a mild dislike for Holyfield’s ear. The things he did to her. The things he made her do.
“John?” Horner repeated. “Still in there?”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, backing towards the lift. I went to take my phone out to fake a call, only to remember once again that Julia had bloody stolen it. “I need to . . . see to something in the lobby. Nazir! With me!”
Horner gave me that predatory smile, the one that tells me that he’s got me bent over a barrel, but I don’t have a second to worry about it.
“Where’s your car?” I asked Nazir as the lift doors closed.
“Parked on the street out front, sir.”
I put my hand out. “Give me your keys.”
I was running the moment the lift doors opened.
Julia Torgrimsen: As Mark pulled down the drive towards Paul’s mansion, I tried not to think about Paul as an actual person. He was a lead. A cog in the machine of this case that needed interrogating and moving on from. Whoever I remembered him as, whatever I saw him do, that wasn’t the same Paul that I was speaking to that night. I couldn’t allow it to be.
We rolled up towards the front, around a stupidly ostentatious fountain with a statue of a horse—I hate that horse—and in front of the main white steps.
Mark got out next to me, his gun nestled into his holster. He looked a little uncomfortable and I couldn’t blame him. I was surprised he’d come this far. Part of me was a little impressed.
The front door creaked open and Paul stepped out in his dressing gown. He looked awful, which made me happy. His eyes were bloodshot and his face gaunt. He was holding a glass of something brown in one hand and leaning against the doorframe.
“Julia,” he said, in a low croak. “It’s been a while. Who’s the kid?”
“I’m not here for fun, Paul,” I replied. “Bruno’s dead.”
He nodded, then lifted his glass and looked at it. “I know. It’s a sad day.”
“You were on the phone to him just before he died.
What were you talking about?”
He coughed. “Is this an interrogation, Julia? Come on, you know better than that. I thought they made you resign after Yegorov? I’ve already called Norman. He’ll have the whole Met in court for this.”
Mark put his hand up, as if he was about to say something stupid, so I stepped in front of him.
“There’s no time for that, Paul. Something very weird is happening. Do you know about the other Bruno?”
Paul frowned. “What other Bruno?”
Mark turned towards me, and mouthed what?
“The second body,” I replied. “There was a second body of Bruno found, like a clone or something. It’s exactly the same.”
Paul’s face dropped, his expression shifting from confusion to fear. He took a step forward. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Paul. I’ve seen the photos.”
“And it’s dead? You’re sure it’s dead?”
“Lying on the floor in a big pool of blood, both of them. What is going on here?”
Paul shook his head. He let out a long, deep breath and put his hand on his brow. “Bruno wouldn’t have. He was so careful. He wouldn’t . . .”
“Wouldn’t what, Paul?”
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He shook his head. “Okay, Julia. Okay fine. I’ll tell you, but you have to make sure—”
And that’s when his head exploded.
DC Mark Cochrane: Just as I’m staring at the two of them, trying to process the crazy shit that Julia is saying about there being two identical bodies, there’s a crack of a gunshot and Paul’s head is splattered all over his front porch.
I stumble back in shock, splatters of red on my hands, but Julia is already in motion.
“Round the side of the house,” she says urgently, pointing to the left. “Past the pool and right. That’s the only way round to the back door. The other way will be blocked.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“The shooter’s in the house. I’m going in the front door. You go round back and head off the exit. Go!”
And she dashes past me, over Paul’s body and into the building.
I scramble to my feet and start running, pulling the gun from my waist. My fingers are clammy, my hands shaking. For all that I’ve seen dead bodies before, I’ve never seen someone’s head explode right in front of my face. It’s not the sort of thing you brush off.
But the adrenaline has taken over and my training kicks in. I cut round the left of the house and leap over the gate. Lights come on. Cameras turn to look at me.
I pass by the pool, moving slower now—taking in my surroundings. I’ve got the gun out in front and I’m checking the doors and corners. I see the back exit Julia was talking about: a big set of windowed patio doors that are still closed.
Does that mean the shooter is still in the house? I think. Or that they closed the door?
Then I realise Julia is in there alone and doesn’t have a weapon. Fuck. I cross over the patio and pull the doors open, stepping into the house.
It’s dark—really dark. None of the lights in here come on automatically. I swear at myself, wishing I’d brought a torch from the car, but there’s not much I can do now. Slowly, ever so slowly, I take a few steps into the house.
I hear the swing just before it hits my head.
I yank my hands up in time to stop the butt of a rifle. It hits my wrists and I feel a crack, yelping in pain. My gun falls to the floor, clattering on the tile.
Stumbling backwards, I refocus and see a woman. She’s small—maybe a couple of inches over five foot—and wiry. I reach forward to grab her, but she swings a leg underneath like some kind of judo move and chucks me to the ground.
My back slams against the floor. My breath explodes right out of me.
She turns, ready to escape out the patio doors, when I reach out and grab her leg. Her clothes are all grimy and dusty, and she kind of stinks, but I still manage to pull her down with me. She almost growls when she hits the floor and proceeds to kick me right in the fucking nose, right here.
Yes—it’s still broken.
While I’m screaming in pain, she literally pounces to her feet and swings the rifle round. She points it directly at my head and I fall silent. All I can think is, This is it. This is fucking it. I’m going to die.
“Mark!” Julia shouts, sprinting at full tilt from the other side of the room. The girl darts away, escaping back off into the house with the rifle.
Julia grabs my gun and follows.
I try to get up, but my brain’s in shock. All I can think about is the muzzle of that rifle directly in front of my eyes.
Julia Torgrimsen: I knew Paul’s house like the back of my hand, and by the way the shooter was moving through it, she did too.
I followed her left out of the back living room and into the library.
The house was dark, with just the reflections of the garden and pool lights coming through the windows. She was a silhouette, darting ahead in front of me, rifle in hand.
There was no doubt she had training: the accuracy of the shot, the way she decked Mark. She’d probably killed Bruno, as well.
As I entered the library, I lifted Mark’s gun to try and get a shot at her leg while she negotiated the sofas, slow her down a bit, but she hurdled over them, barely breaking stride. I was breathing hard, my legs reminding me I was no longer cut out for a chase like this.
I needed to be smarter.
If Mark stayed and watched the back door, the front door was the only other obvious exit left in this house, but if she knew it like I thought she did, she might be heading for the small door out the maid’s room at the side.
When we got to the games room, I fired at the ceiling.
She stopped on the other side of the room, glancing over her shoulder just long enough so she could see me dart right and into the pantry.
Let her think I’m headed for the maid’s room exit, I thought. Let her know I know this house too.
She barely looked back for a second before she was off again. I burst through the tiny room and out into the garden. There were sirens in the distance—the security guards at the gate had called the police, not ready for a firefight for the rich bastard that paid them minimum wage. I put them out of my mind.
If she thought I was waiting for her at the maid’s room, she’d head for the front door, and I could get there first by cutting round the house. A house like that—with its furniture and doors and adjoining rooms—it’s faster to go round than it is to go through.
My whole body was sweating as my feet pounded gravel, climbing the outside stairs from the back garden and pushing through the side gate.
I collided directly into her as she barrelled out the front door.
We fell, tumbling over Paul’s body and down the steps, and the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was a musty, dirty stink that I could have sworn I recognised, but she was already back on her feet before I could process it, running.
Pulling up to my knees, I lifted Mark’s gun and pointed it right at her.
“Stop or I shoot!” I shouted.
She froze, metres away from me, and with the bright lights on in the drive I saw her clearly.
She was just a girl. Her clothes were a mess—a black hoodie with a big white star imprinted on it, and matted brown hair that looked like it was covered in dust. Her jeans were ripped and filthy.
I looked at her, I saw the fear in her eyes, and it all came back to me.
Everything I had been trying to bury under bottles of booze and packets upon packets of cigarettes. Everything I left the force to forget.
