Chelsea Mansions Part 6

'Sorry,' Kathy said. 'I almost lost it with Hadden-Vane.'

'You did fine,' Brock said.

'I wanted to hit him.'

'That I would have liked to see . . . oh.' A wave of nausea and dizziness suddenly overwhelmed him and he stopped and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees.

'You all right?'

'Dizzy.' There was a bench nearby in the shadows, and he stumbled towards it and slumped down. 'Hot,' he muttered. 'Is it me or is it very hot?'

The local CID man came towards them. 'Everything okay?'

'My boss isn't well,' Kathy said, sitting down beside Brock. He felt her cool hand on his brow and heard her intake of breath. 'I think I'd better get him to a doctor.'

'No . . .' Brock objected, but he found it suddenly hard to frame the words.

'We've got one here.' The detective strode away and returned a minute later with a figure shrouded in a blue paper crime scene suit. He was the local forensic physician, who'd just completed a preliminary examination of Moszynski's body. Now he unfastened his bag and checked Brock's temperature and pulse. He asked Kathy and Brock a few questions and then said, 'Looks like influenza, maybe swine flu. Have you been immunised?' Brock shook his head. 'He shouldn't be at work,' the doctor said. 'Get him home to bed now and contact his GP in the morning.' He searched around in his bag and said, 'You're in luck.' He pulled out a packet of Tamiflu tablets. 'These will ease the symptoms.'

'Come on,' Kathy said to Brock. 'I'll take you home.'

'No,' he croaked. 'I'll get a cab. You stay here. You're senior investigating officer now.'

'Take him home,' the detective said. 'There's not much you can do till morning. You'll need to be fresh then. I'll ring you if there's any results from CCTV.'

'You're interviewing people in the square?'

'Of course, all under control.'

Kathy turned to the doctor. 'Anything you can tell us?'

'I'd put time of death at two to four hours ago, three puncture wounds to the heart, narrow blade, neat grouping, very precise.'

Brock heard their discussion as if through a blanket. 'Like an exercise in fencing school,' he whispered.

Kathy put a hand under his arm and said, 'Come on.' As he got groggily to his feet he heard the detective chuckle. 'He's probably given it to all our witnesses. See if you can spread it among the press on your way out.'

They avoided the crowd around Chelsea Mansions and reached Kathy's car parked in the next street.

As he pulled the belt across his chest he gathered his breath and said, 'Sorry, Kathy. Came on so fast. Feel so b.l.o.o.d.y helpless.'

'A friend of Nicole's caught it, said it was like being poleaxed.' She opened the packet of pills and gave him one with a bottle of water she had in the car. 'One a day,' she said, and started the engine.

Brock was silent for a while, his eyes closed, trying to think, and then, as they were crossing Chelsea Bridge, he said, 'This is going to be big, Kathy. Did you hear what the press were shouting? Litvinenko. They think it's another political killing. MI5 will be involved, the Foreign Office . . .'

'Yes of course, I understand that.' She paused. 'You think it's too big for me?'

'Not the detective work, no, but the politics is something else.' He coughed and tried to put some force into his words. She had to understand. 'Sharpe will feel obliged to appoint a more senior SIO. Probably d.i.c.k Chivers.'

'Superintendent Chivers,' Kathy sighed. 'Oh.'

'Yes. He's got his own team. It won't be our case any more.'

He watched her thinking about that. Would it matter to her? He had seen the look of distaste on her face as they'd been confronted by the gaudy opulence of the Russian's house. Perhaps she'd be happy to let Chivers have it. But I wouldn't, he thought.

There was a long silence as they drove on into South London. They were skirting Clapham Common when Brock spoke again. 'It would only be for a day or two.'

'Sorry?'

'The Tamiflu will sort me out in a couple of days. If we can hold them off until then . . .'

'How could we do that?'

'Nancy was going up to Scotland, wasn't she?'

'Yes, to Angus.'

'Then an urgent lead has taken me away to Angus.'

Kathy laughed in a way that suggested he was joking, or mildly delirious.

'It'll be all right,' he insisted. 'You can tell them I'll be back tomorrow night, then put them off till the next night . . .'

'You're not serious, Brock! Commander Sharpe would have kittens.'

'You and I would be in constant touch.' Then he sighed and closed his eyes again. 'No, you're right, it wouldn't be easy, especially for you. Forget it.'

There was a long silence.

'It'd be like sabotage, telling lies, undermining the system.'

'Mm.'

She was driving down his high street now, slowing for the turning beneath the archway into Warren Lane, and then he heard the tyres drumming on cobblestones. They pa.s.sed under the horse chestnut tree, huge in her headlights, and came to a stop outside his front door.

He staggered inside, up the book-lined staircase to the rooms on the first floor, and Kathy helped him to his bedroom.

'Thanks, Kathy. Too far for you to go home tonight. The spare bed's made up.'

'Yes, sounds good. I'll ring Suzanne tomorrow, let her know.'

'No, don't do that. She's gone to the West Country for an antiques sale.' He could hardly get the words out now. 'There are things she wants for the shop. I don't want her charging back here just for this.'

All the same, Kathy thought. She'd probably get in trouble either way from one of them. The terms of Brock and Suzanne's relationship remained unclear to her. They loved each other yet preferred to live separate lives.

There was an alarm clock in the spare room, which Kathy set for five a.m., three hours away, wanting to be back in Cunningham Place at dawn, when the detailed search of the square would begin.

EIGHT.

By eight the next morning it was becoming clear that they were unlikely to find any traces of the killer in the garden. A German shepherd from the Dog Support Unit had followed a trail out of the garden gate and across the street, but no further, and it was probably Moszynski's own. They would have to hope for fingerprint or DNA evidence that forensics may have picked up on the gate or bench, or on Moszynski himself. Another detective from the borough command, a DI, had taken charge of the scene, and briefed Kathy on the search that had been going on through the night for possible CCTV sightings, so far without a firm result.

Kathy phoned Dot at Queen Anne's Gate and told her about Brock's illness, and his plan to keep control of the investigation. She seemed unfazed by his Scottish deception, which, in the light of a new day, seemed increasingly unrealistic to Kathy. Together they went over the most urgent administrative tasks that would need to be covered, and Kathy asked her to send Phil, her usual case action manager, and DC Pip Gallagher, now permanently attached to the team, to meet her at the Chelsea police station as soon as they arrived.

They gathered there with borough command officers to plan the next stages of the investigation and allocate manpower. The steps were familiar and predictable, everyone busy, but as the time pa.s.sed and no tangible leads to the killer emerged, Kathy began to feel the same nagging sense of frustration that she'd been feeling about Nancy's investigation, as if they were missing something. It's the public interest, she told herself. The morning editions of the papers were full of it. It was like dancing naked on an empty stage.

She was on her way to Moszynski's autopsy, which had been pushed to the front of the longlist usual for a Monday morning, when a call came through from Marilyn at the Press Bureau.

'I can't get hold of Brock. Do you know where he is?'

'He's not available, Marilyn.'

'Not available? I'm arranging a press briefing for one o'clock. Top priority. Commander Sharpe's agreed it with the Deputy Commissioner. Where the h.e.l.l is he?'

Kathy took a deep breath. 'In Scotland, I'm afraid.'

She heard Marilyn splutter. 'Did I hear that right? Another Russian oligarch gets murdered in London, every media unit from here to Vladivostok is hammering on our door, and our front man b.u.g.g.e.rs off to Scotland?'

Kathy swallowed. 'An important line of inquiry. But not for publication at this stage.'

'Sharpe doesn't know about it, does he? I think you'd better talk to him, quick smart.'

'Yes, I'll do that.'

Kathy had been putting this off, but now, glimpsing the heavy machinery of senior management that had obviously been grinding away, she saw her mistake. As if to underline it, she got another call, this time from Dot.

'Sharpe's office is on the warpath, Kathy. Better give him a ring.'

'Did you tell them about Scotland?'

'I thought I'd leave that to you.'

Kathy felt a sudden spasm of nausea and wondered if she might have caught Brock's bug. She had an overpowering desire to tell Sharpe the truth, but she had already begun the lie and to switch stories now seemed pathetic.

Sharpe's secretary seemed reluctant to put Kathy through at first.

'He's in a meeting,' she said. 'He really needs to talk to Brock.'

'That won't be possible. I'm leading the Moszynski investigation at the moment. I have to speak to him.'

There was a short hesitation. 'Hang on.'

Then a male voice, harsh and impatient. 'Sharpe.'

'Sir, it's DI Kolla.'

'Yes?'

'Concerning the Moszynski murder last night.'

'Yes, yes. I need Brock to brief me immediately.'

'I'm afraid he's been called away urgently, sir.'

'Called away?'

'Yes, a critical line of inquiry, sir, which he had to attend to personally.' Kathy hesitated, picturing herself hanging from a public gibbet. 'In Scotland.'

'Scotland!'

'Yes.'

'I think you'd better get in here and tell me what's going on.'

'Yes, sir. Can it wait for an hour or so? I'm on my way to Moszynski's autopsy.'

There was a strained silence, then Sharpe said. 'Just tell me, Inspector. What's he up to? What is this critical line of inquiry?'

'Nancy Haynes, the American tourist, was about to go on to Scotland when she was killed last Thursday. We learned of a substantial legacy up there which she intended claiming. This provides the first real motive we've had for her murder, and Brock felt it was so important that he had to pursue it immediately.'

'But . . . for G.o.d's sake, that can wait. Moszynski's the priority now. Moszynski, not Haynes.'

'That's what made it so urgent, sir. You see, if Haynes' death was indeed a planned murder, and not a random act, then Moszynski's murder may be simply an attempt to divert our attention and resources onto a much higher profile case, away from the real reason.'

'The same killer . . .' Sharpe said. He sounded mildly sceptical but not entirely incredulous, Kathy thought. She hoped that a ba.n.a.l, domestic motive for Moszynski's death might have some appeal to Sharpe, at least enough to buy a day or two.

'How long before he gets back?'

'Hopefully tonight, sir, but I'm waiting for him to contact me. Unfortunately the castle's in a rather remote area, with poor mobile coverage.'

'The castle?'

'The legacy, sir, a castle.'

She wondered if she'd gone too far, then heard him muse, 'A castle in Scotland . . .' and imagined the picture in his head, a turreted stone keep in the middle of a lonely loch among purple hills inhabited only by s.h.a.ggy highland cattle.

'We were planning on Brock holding a press conference today.'

'I wonder if that could be delayed, sir, until we have something concrete to report?'

'We'll get back to you. Let me know immediately you hear anything, understand? Immediately.'

Kathy hung up and continued to the autopsy, which confirmed what they'd already a.s.sumed. Moszynski had died as a result of three stab wounds to the chest, one of which had punctured the left ventricle of his heart. The blade was sharp and narrow, about one centimetre wide and at least ten centimetres long. The a.s.sailant had most likely been sitting or crouching on the victim's right side, and would have been right-handed. His or her right hand and forearm would have been covered in blood.