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She was strikingly beautiful in that effortless, double-take way that some women are. Five feet nine, smooth brown skin, slender yet curving where it counted, rounded cheeks and curly black hair that just kissed her bare shoulders. She wore no jewellery – never had – apart from the Tiffany’s twisted heart necklace that her sister had given her on her 18th birthday that nestled in the smooth curve of her breasts.
As she buttoned the blouse and tucked it into the waistband of her black trouser suit, she looked around at the windowless painted breeze block walls that encircled her and smiled, the dimples creasing into her soft brown cheeks. Even though it was small, she had still not quite got used to having her own office. Her own space. Her own air. After only three months back in DC, the novelty had certainly not worn off yet. Not by a long way. Not after three years down in the Atlanta field office, afraid to breathe out too far in case the cubicle walls collapsed. She was glad to be back; this time she was planning on staying.
There was a knock at the open door and Jennifer’s thoughts were interrupted. She looked up reproachfully but relaxed her frown when she saw that it was Phil Tucker, her Section Chief, right on time. He’d told her yesterday that he wanted her in early, that he needed to talk to her. Wouldn’t say why though.
‘Hey there,’ she called.
‘You okay?’ He walked up to the desk and squinted down at her through frameless glasses in concern, his double chin flattening over the top of his tie. ‘Another late night?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ Jennifer self-consciously smoothed down her hair and rubbed the sleep out of the corners of her eyes.
‘Nope.’ He smiled. ‘Security told me you hadn’t gone home… Just so you know, I appreciate it.’
That was Tucker all over. He wasn’t one of these bosses who just expected people to stay late and then never noticed when they did. He kept track of his team and made sure they knew it. She liked that. It made her feel like she was part of something again, not just an embarrassment that had to be explained away.
‘No problem.’
He scratched his copper-coloured beard, then the top of his head, his scalp pink and raw where the hair was thinning.
‘By the way, I spoke to Flynt, and the Treasury boys are going to handle everything from here on in on the Hammon case. They were very grateful for your help. He says he owes you one. Good job.’
‘Thanks.’ She gave an awkward shrug, never having been good at accepting compliments and changed the subject. ‘So what’s all this about? Why the early start? Some Congressman lose his dog?’
Tucker levered himself into a chair, his hips grazing its moulded plastic arms.
‘Something came up yesterday. I volunteered you.’ He grinned. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’
She laughed.
‘Would it make a difference if I did?’
‘Nope! Anyway, you won’t want to. It’s a good opportunity. Chance to get back on the inside track.’ He paused and looked suddenly serious. ‘A second chance, maybe.’ His eyes dipped to the floor.
‘You still trying to earn me my redemption?’ With her dream still fresh in her thoughts, something bitter rose to the back of her mouth and made her swallow hard.
‘No. You’re doing that all on your own. But you and I both know that it’s hard to change people’s minds.’
‘I’m not looking for any hand-outs, Phil. I can make my own way back.’ Her eyes shone with a fierce pride. Tucker nodded slowly.
‘I know. But everyone needs a break once in a while, even you. And I wouldn’t have suggested you if I didn’t think you’d earned it. Anyway, I told him to swing by here about now, so it’s too late to back out.’
He checked his watch, shook his wrist, held it to his ear and then checked it again.
‘Is that the right time?’ he asked, pointing at Jennifer’s desk clock. She ignored the question.
‘Told who to swing by here?’
There was a knock at the open door before he could answer and a man walked in. Tucker leapt up.
‘Jennifer – meet Bob Corbett; Bob – meet Jennifer Browne.’ All three of them stood motionless for a few seconds and Tucker’s eyes flicked anxiously to Jennifer’s, as if he was worried she might do or say the wrong thing.
They shook hands. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Here, take my seat.’ Tucker pointed eagerly at his chair before perching unsteadily on the edge of Jennifer’s desk. Corbett sat down. ‘Bob heads up the Major Theft and Transportation Crimes Unit here.’
‘We were introduced in the elevator once,’ Jennifer nodded with a curious smile. From the times she’d seen him around the building, she knew that Corbett always looked immaculate, from his smoothly shaved chin to his polished black shoes, thin laces neatly tied in a double knot. But now she immediately noticed that something was different. The knot on his woven silk tie was much smaller than usual, as if he had loosened it and then re-tightened it several times. As if he was worried.
Corbett frowned and looked at her quizzically before nodding slowly in sudden recollection.
‘Sure. I remember. Hi.’ He spoke in short, sharp bursts and there was something in the precise urgency of his machine-gunned words that suggested a military background. They shook hands again.
Corbett often passed for a man ten years younger than his forty-five years, although the deepening creases around his eyes and mouth suggested that time was at last beginning to catch up with him. Next to Tucker certainly, he looked fit and healthy although that was possibly an unfair comparison. There was something streamlined about him, from his slicked back steel-grey hair to the rounded contours of his chin and cheekbones that gave him the chromed elegance of one of those 1930s Art-Deco locomotives that look like they are powering along at two hundred miles an hour even when they are standing still. Above the sharp angle of his nose, the cold light of his close-set grey eyes suggested a very clever and very determined man. He reminded her, in a strange way, of her father. Hard but fair.
‘You know, Bob’s got the best clean-up rate in the Bureau?’ Tucker continued. ‘What is it now? Only five unsolved cases in twenty-five years? That’s outstanding work.’ He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with it.
‘Actually, Phil, it’s two. And I haven’t given up on them yet.’ Corbett smiled, but Jennifer could tell he wasn’t joking. He didn’t look like the sort of man who did.
‘Bob needs someone to work on a new case for him. I suggested you.’
Jennifer shrugged awkwardly, her face suddenly hot as two pairs of eyes focused in on her.
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best. What’s the case?’
Corbett slid a large manila envelope towards her and motioned with a wave that she should open it. Warily, Jennifer lifted the tab and pulled out a series of black-and-white photos.
‘The man in that photo is Father Gianluca Ranieri.’
She studied the picture carefully, taking in the man’s contorted face and the large gash in his chest.
‘They found him in Paris yesterday. River cops fished him out the Seine. As you can see, he didn’t drown.’
Jennifer flicked through the rest of the photos, her mind focused. Close-ups of Ranieri’s face and the knife wound flashed past her large hazel eyes. A quick scan through the translated autopsy report at the back confirmed what Corbett had just told her – stabbed and then presumably thrown in the river. A single blow through the xiphisternum, aimed up towards the left shoulder blade, had caused a massive, almost instant heart attack.
As she read, she flashed a quick look at Corbett. He was studying her office with a faint smile. She knew that some of her colleagues found it strange that she kept the stark green concrete walls bare. Truth was, she found the lack of clutter helped her keep her mind clear.
‘Any thoughts?’ Corbett asked, his eyes snapping back round to meet hers.
‘Judging from the injury, it looks like a professional job. Some sort of hit.’
‘Agreed.’ Corbett nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he was re-appraising Jennifer in the light of her quick diagnosis.
‘And it was public. The body dumped where they knew it would be quickly found.’
‘Meaning?’
‘That they’re not worried about getting caught. Or that maybe they wanted to send someone a message.’
Corbett nodded his agreement.
‘Perhaps both. Best guess is that he was killed round about midnight on the sixteenth of July, give or take three or four hours either way.’ He got up and padded noiselessly over to the filing cabinet, Jennifer noticing now that he seemingly kept his pockets empty of change and keys or anything else that might give away his position, like a cat who had had the bell on its collar removed so that it might be better able to stalk its unsuspecting prey. She continued to leaf through the file.
‘From what we know, Ranieri trained as a Catholic priest and then worked at the Vatican Institute for Religious Works.’
Jennifer looked up in surprise.
‘The Vatican Bank?’
‘As it’s also known, yes.’ Corbett raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed now. ‘He was there for about ten years before going missing about three years ago, along with a couple of million dollars from one of their Cayman Island accounts.’
Jennifer swivelled her chair round towards him, her forehead wrinkled in anticipation. She sensed that he was building up to something. Tucker, meanwhile, sat enthralled with his arms crossed and resting on his belly, his mouth slack and half open. Corbett ran his finger along the top of the filing cabinet as if checking for dust. She knew there wouldn’t be any. Not in her office.
‘He must have spent all the cash though, because he turned up in Paris last year. The French say he set himself up as a low-level fence. Nothing big. A painting here, a necklace there, but he was making a living; a good living, judging from the size of him.’
All three of them laughed and the tingle that Jennifer had felt slowly building inside her chest vanished like steam rising into warm air. Corbett moved back round to the chair and sat down again, Jennifer just getting a glimpse of the top of his shoes where over the years the constant rubbing of his suit trousers had buffed the leather to a slightly deeper shade of black than the rest of them.
‘I don’t get it.’ Jennifer replaced the file on the desk and sat back in her chair, confused. ‘Sounds to me like he got whacked by someone he ripped off. Or maybe he had some sort of deal go sour. Either way, it’s got nothing to do with us.’
Corbett locked eyes with her and the tingle reappeared and instantly sublimated into a cold, hard knot in the pit of her stomach.
‘Our angle, Agent Browne – and you won’t find this in the autopsy report – is that when they opened him up, they found something in his stomach. Something he’d swallowed just before he died. Something he clearly didn’t want his killers to find.’
Corbett reached into his pocket and, leaning forward, slid something sealed inside a small clear plastic bag across the desk towards her. Against the desk’s veneered expanse an eagle soared proudly, its majestic flight etched in solid gold.
It was a coin.
THREE (#ulink_1cae2e9c-6c92-53b9-9e6e-9e1757a362a4)
Clerkenwell, London18th July – 4:30pm
Outside, the afternoon rush hour traffic rumbled past, a never-ending river of rubber and steel that surged and stalled in tidy blocks to the beat of the traffic lights.
Inside, the shop windows glowed yellow as the sunlight fought to shine though their white-washed panes. In a few places, the paint had been scratched off and here narrow shafts of light pierced the gloom, the dust dancing through their pale beams like raindrops falling across car headlights.
The room itself was a mess – the orange walls blistered, the rough wooden floor suffocating in a thick down of old newspapers and junk food wrappers, while bare wires hung down menacingly from the cracked ceiling like tentacles.
At the back of the room, almost lost in the shadows, two tea chests rested on the uneven floor. Hunched forward on one of them, Tom Kirk was lost deep in thought, his chin in his hands.
Although he was just thirty-five years old, a few grey hairs flecked the sides of his head, becoming more noticeable in the several days of rough stubble that covered his face, the hair slightly darker in the shallow cleft of his square chin.
He reminded everyone of his father, or so everyone told him, much to his annoyance. Certainly he shared his delicately angular face, messy brown hair and deep-set blue eyes that nestled under thick brown eyebrows.
He was more athletic than his father though; a lithe, sinewy five foot eleven physique that suggested someone both quick enough to steal second base and strong enough to crack a shot into the bleachers if he had to. The irony, of course, was that he’d never been much of a big-hitter in high school, his signature play instead being a split-fingered fastball that had batters swinging at thin air as it broke violently downward. It fooled them every time.
Perched on the chest opposite him, a large backgammon board threatened to slide onto the floor at any moment. It was an intricately inlaid set that he’d picked up for next to nothing in some dusty side street off the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul years ago. It still smelled of glue and grease and spices. When he couldn’t sleep, he would sometimes play against himself for hours; checking the probabilities, shifting the pieces around the board, studying how different moves and strategies evolved. The half-empty bottle of Grey Goose on the floor next to him suggested that it had been a long night.
But Tom wasn’t even looking at the board. Instead he was considering the black ski mask that lay in his lap, carefully cradled as if made from the finest Limoges porcelain. With a half smile, he slipped his right hand into the neck opening and then stuck a finger out of each of the eye holes, wiggling them playfully up and down like fish chasing each other in and out of a skull’s eye sockets.
He had long, elegant fingers that made graceful, precise movements, each joint flexing like individual links in a chain, large white half moons at the bottom of each neatly clipped nail. And yet the back of his knuckles were covered in small white scars and his palms were rough and worn. It was almost as if he was a concert pianist who moonlighted as a bare knuckle fighter.
Tom knew that he couldn’t avoid making the call any longer. He’d been out of contact for three weeks now and didn’t have a choice. But would Archie understand? Would he even believe him? Abruptly his smile vanished and he flung the mask as far as he could across the room, willing it to shatter into a thousand pieces against the opposite wall.
He took his phone out of his back pocket and dialled, the high-pitched tones echoing back over the traffic’s low rumble. It was answered almost immediately, but there was silence from the other end. Tom coughed and then spoke, his voice smooth and soothing, his slight American accent more pronounced than usual as it often was when he was nervous.
‘Archie, it’s Felix.’
‘Jesus Christ, Felix!’
Felix. A name that he’d been christened with years ago when he had first got going in the game and one that he was stuck with now.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I got … held up,’ Tom answered.
‘Held up? I thought you’d been nicked.’
Archie. The best fence in the business. Tom had often wondered whether his was an invented name too, a shield to hide behind. On balance, he thought that it probably wasn’t. Somehow it seemed to fit.
‘No. Just held up.’
‘Spot of aggro?’
For once Archie sounded genuinely concerned.
‘No, but I’m not doing the States again. I’ve told you, it’s too risky doing jobs back there. I know I’m the last person they expect to see but one day they might get lucky.’
‘How did it go?’
‘Pretty much like we planned. Except they were having some construction work done and I was worried about extra security until it was finished. So I staked it out for about three weeks in the end before I went in – you know, just to be sure. I dealt with the pressure pads and the combination hadn’t been reset, so it was all pretty simple.’
‘Nice one. Usual place, then?’
‘My stuff already there?’
‘What do you think?’ Archie almost sounded offended.
‘Fine. I’ll drop it off in a few days.’
‘You’re going to have to get your skates on for the second one, though. You’ve not left yourself much time.’
There was a pause and the line crackled with static as Tom sat down on the tea chest, massaging his temple with his left hand. As he’d thought, Archie wasn’t going to make this any easier for him. But he’d made his decision and he was going to stick to it.
‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Archie’s tone was immediately suspicious.
‘Thing is, I’m not going to do the other job.’
‘You what?’
