Die Twice (2 page)

I didn’t reply.

“No trouble en route, I hope?” he said.

“None,” I said. “Why? Should there be? It’s hardly an arduous journey.”

“Nothing untoward at La Guardia?”

“Nothing. I used the Marine Terminal. It’s small. Quiet. There was no problem at all. I wish all airports were like that.”

“Well, that’s good. It’s a relief, actually. I’m just glad we were able to pull the right strings. Get the NYPD to back off for long enough to get you out.”

“We?”

“Well, the New York people did the actual string pulling, obviously. But I’m happy we’re here to offer you a port in a storm, as it were. No use them getting you out if you had nowhere safe to go.”

“Are you confusing me with someone else? No one got me out of anything. I’d finished what I was doing over there. And the police had no reason to be sniffing around me.”

“Of course,” Fothergill said, pulling a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and placing it in front of me. “Whatever works for you. I completely understand.”

The paper was a copy of yesterday’s
New York Times.
It was folded to emphasize the story beneath a double-width photograph. The picture showed a house festooned with crime-scene tape. The headline read
BUTCHERED IN THE BRONX: WOMAN, MEN MASSACRED IN UNEXPLAINED, SAVAGE ATTACK
. I didn’t need to read the report. I knew they wouldn’t have got the details right. And what happened in that house didn’t strike me as unduly savage, given the circumstances. So instead I took a moment to glance around the room, checking the walls and furniture for signs of bullet damage. I wanted to know if the story about how he’d been injured was true. Being shot in your own office by a colleague did seem a little unusual. Not to mention embarrassing. But then, I’d known this guy less than two minutes and already I was beginning to understand how it could happen. Only if it had been me pulling the trigger, he’d have been left needing more than a fancy sling.

“Interesting story,” I said, thinking of the last time I’d seen Tanya. “Someone must have had a pretty good reason to do all that.”

“A very good reason,” he said. “I hear the first officer to respond
lost his breakfast, the scene was so brutal. Which is something, for a cop used to working the Bronx.”

“Really?” I said. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there.”

Well, I’d been there once, actually. To one house. To take care of one piece of business.

“Of course you haven’t,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. “Of course, the NYPD think otherwise.”

“They’ve been wrong before,” I said.

“Not this time. I understand they’re very confident.”

“How so? I hear there were no survivors. No witnesses. No usable forensics.”

I knew there were none. I’d gone out of my way to make sure.

“But they do have the victim’s identity,” he said. “And that tells them a lot.”

“Which victim?” I said. “Weren’t there several?”

I remembered each one’s face. Their clothes. Their smell. What they’d been doing as I tracked them through the house. How they looked as I lowered them, lifeless, to the ground and moved on to the next one in line.

“There were eight or nine, they think,” he said.

“I’d say more like seven,” I said. “From what I heard.”

Only four of them had been any good, though. The others should have found another line of work.

“It’s the woman they’re focusing on,” he said.

And why not? That’s exactly what I’d done. Though for an entirely different reason.

“How chivalrous,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Just practical. A lot of things stand out about her.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“I’m serious. The way she was singled out, for example. She was the last to go, you know.”

I did know. Because I’d planned it that way. I hadn’t wanted any interruptions.

“Are they sure about that?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “They’re certain.”

“Then maybe she was hiding when, whatever it was, all kicked off. Maybe the others were trying to protect her.”

They didn’t try very hard. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. Nothing and no one could have saved her that night.

“That’s what the NYPD think,” he said. “That the men were her bodyguards.”

“They didn’t do such a good job, then,” I said. “They hardly put up a fight. By the sound of it. She should have hired more carefully.”

I remembered the misplaced sense of peace in the house, when the final guard was dead. The stillness. The silence. The inevitability, once the last obstacle had been removed.

“The police don’t think it was the guards’ fault,” he said. “They’re not blaming them at all.”

“Why not?” I said.

I felt like I was back there, moving from room to room, feeling her presence, knowing the end was near.

“They were all ex-military,” he said. “Well trained. Heavily armed. No trace of drink or drugs. None of them had been sleeping on the job. They were just overwhelmed.”

“Implying a number of attackers, then, surely?” I said.

I’d had her in my sights once before, and then stood aside to let the authorities take their shot. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. And she knew it.

“No,” he said. “Just one. A professional. Someone who does this kind of thing for a living.”

I had warned her. She knew I’d be coming.

“They don’t know that,” I said. “The police are just fishing.”

“No,” he said. “Look. These guards were killed one at time. Silently, so as not to alarm the others. Or the neighbors. Some had their necks broken. Others were stabbed, neatly, between the ribs. One was suffocated. They were picked off methodically to give . . . someone . . . access to this woman.”

He was right. It had been methodical. A means to an end. Collateral damage. Nothing more. And no worse than you can expect, if you sign up for the wrong side.

“That proves nothing,” I said.

“And there’s the way she was killed,” he said. “Someone physically dragged her out of her panic room. Then shot her in the head. Twice. From close range.”

I hadn’t wanted to touch her, but there’d been no choice. She wasn’t dignified enough to come out on her own.

“Probably a mob hit,” I said.

“No,” he said. “The police think not. She wasn’t on her knees when she was shot, for a start. Mob guys always make their victims kneel, apparently. Whoever did this wanted to look her in the eye when they pulled the trigger.”

He had it backward, this time. I didn’t want to look at her, particularly. I wanted her to look at me. To know who was pulling the trigger. And to have no doubt as to who was being avenged.

“Maybe this guy took more pride in his work,” I said.

“Maybe, but it wasn’t brutal enough,” he said. “There was no sadism. If one outfit was moving in on another, they would have wanted to send a message. Something depraved. Crazy. Psychotic, even. It’s the same the world over. But whoever did this was cold. Calculating. Deliberate. Like a surgeon chopping out something malignant.”

Now he was back on the money. The woman had been malignant.
Like a virulent tumor, corrupting everything she touched. There was no way, in all good conscience, I could have let her survive.

“Well, we could speculate all day,” I said. “But whoever killed her, I expect she deserved it.”

“I’m sure she did,” he said. “But the point is, this was personal. This woman was executed. This specific woman. Who you just happened to know. Very well, I understand.”

“I did?”

I knew her only too well. And I wish with all my heart that the day I met her had never dawned.

“You were a recent houseguest of hers, apparently,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “Who was she? I didn’t see any names in that report.”

“The police withheld it. My sources could only give me a first name.”

“Which was?”

“Lesley. Although I think you knew that.”

Lesley. An ordinary name before I met her. Now a name I’ll never forget.

“Lesley?” I said. “That’s pretty common sounding. There must be lots of Lesleys in a city the size of New York.”

“Come on, David,” he said. “I’ve played along with this for long enough. We all know what you did. And you’re with friends, here.”

“Nice try. But I’m admitting nothing.”

“Of course not. That’s the first rule. But you wouldn’t be worthy of the uniform if you’d just stood back, after what this woman did.”

I didn’t reply.

“I understand, David,” he said. “I do. Working here isn’t that different from life in the field. The liaison community, well, we’re a pretty tight bunch. I heard about what this Lesley did to Tanya. And I heard you two were close.”

I wasn’t happy that we’d become fodder for the navy gossip machine. And I had no idea what he’d heard about us. But whatever it was, I could guarantee it fell a long way short of the truth.

“Besides, Tanya had a lot of friends,” he said. “We’d all have done the same thing. Given the chance.”

I bit my tongue.

“Look, David, even London approves,” he said. “Unofficially, of course. That’s why the NYPD were kept at arm’s length for so long. But there’s a limit to what they’ll turn a blind eye to. They were straining at the leash. You dump the worst horror show anyone’s ever seen in the middle of their patch and leave them looking like they can’t catch the perpetrator. The press are slaughtering them ten ways till Christmas. They’re humiliated.”

“They’ll get over it,” I said, “or they’ll just frame someone. Some lowlife they’ve been trying to rid themselves of for years. It’s happened before. Whoever’s behind this probably did them a favor.”

“They don’t see it like that. Seriously, we needed you out of there. Pronto. I was genuinely worried we’d left it too late.”

“I left because I was ready. Nothing else. My only question is, why am I here? I should be back in London. It’s time to get back to work.”

“It is. And that’s exactly why you’re here. Your next job is here.”

“It can’t be. You never work the same country twice. It’s a rule. You know that.”

“Technically, it’s a convention. But that doesn’t matter. The point is, you’re still off the books. Officially, you don’t exist. And that’s what’s important right now.”

“Why?”

Fothergill took a moment to reply. He licked his lips, and I saw his eyes track across to a point on the wall in the shadow of the radiator below the left-hand window. To a patch of paint that was slightly lighter than the rest. A recent repair. Around an inch and a
half square. The kind of area a bullet could still make a mess of, even after passing through someone’s arm.

Immediately, that second, I knew what was coming my way. Housecleaning. Again. The most distasteful task there is. And I realized something else at the same moment. That there was another difference between my aunt and me.

It gives me no pleasure when my premonitions turn out to be right.

None at all.

Back in the far-off days of basic training, I remember the various exercises we took part in always started with a full, formal briefing.

In the early days of the course, the administrators made a point of giving us plenty of notice. They gave out printed timetables, and posted any amendments on the huge notice board that dominated the training school foyer. That way, if something went wrong with someone’s performance, the instructors knew the person’s underlying skills were to blame, rather than wondering if they’d just misunderstood their instructions. As time went on, though, things became less reliable. We’d find ourselves being dragged into a conference room at the end of a run or hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, when we were too tired to concentrate properly. We were given less time to absorb the information. And details that were always bang-on accurate at the start became increasingly vague and unreliable with each passing week.

At the time I thought this was all done to boost our powers of
initiative and self-reliance. It certainly did that. And whether this was an intended consequence or not, it taught us something else.

That however bleak things look at the outset, there’s a pretty high chance they’re going to get a whole lot worse.

Fothergill fetched some coffee, closed the door behind him, and told me how a man he’d known for ten years had tried to kill him.

“So who is this guy?” I said.

“His name’s Tony McIntyre,” he said. “He’s Scottish. A lieutenant commander, just like you. Five years’ less service, but a good man all the same. Or so I thought.”

“You worked with him in the past?”

“Four times. On four different continents. Plus another stint when we were instructors together. It’s funny how people’s paths keep crossing like that.”

“And he was recently posted here?”

“No. He was AWOL. Made it here under his own steam. Sought me out. Told me he’d gone off the rails—blamed some other people for it, of course—but said that he wanted to come clean.”

“Really? He just came out and told you that?”

“Yes. You’ve got to understand something. I’ve been around a while. People hear about me. And they’re only human. Sometimes they slip. This wasn’t the first time I’d been asked to help someone get back on his feet.”

“So what was it that tripped him up?”

“Weapons. The urge to steal them. Then sell them. To all sorts of shady characters, he said. For large sums of money.”

“That’s not good.”

“Actually, it was worse than just weapons. He’d got his hands on something really filthy. A canister of some kind of poison gas. Awful stuff, apparently.”

“Only one?”

“That’s more than enough.”

“Above the counter? Or below?”

“What do you think?”

“How did he come across it?”

“Goodness knows. But he’d been in Afghanistan for more than two years. Have you ever been there?”

“I can’t recall.”

“Well, I’ve been. Twice. And I can tell you—it’s crazy there. Absolute insanity. I’m not surprised by anything that finds its way over there. Or back out again.”