The Double Eagle (17 page)
Authors: James Twining
5:35
A.M.
T
om threw himself out of bed as the alarm went off. He had rigged the system up himself; the computer screen perched on the tea chest at the foot of his bed lit up with a floor plan of the building, the flashing red section showing where the alarm had been triggered—someone was in the shop downstairs. A sickening crash as something fragile was knocked to the ground echoed up the stairwell confirmed it.
Tom grabbed a shirt and a pair of jeans off the floor and pulled them on, wriggling his feet awkwardly into a pair of sneakers that still had the laces done up. He could hear them coming up the stairs now, their molded rubber soles squeaking on the concrete, doors slamming, shouts of “clear” and “on me” rolling ever closer as they made their way through the maze of offices toward him.
Finally the door crashed open and six black shapes tumbled into the room.
“Armed police! Don’t move!”
Tom put his hands up. No point in arguing, not with these odds.
“Tom Kirk?” asked Daniels. Tom nodded sullenly.
“Of course it’s Tom fucking Kirk,” gasped Clarke. He had appeared in the doorway breathing heavily, his face flushed with the effort of running up the stairs, his tie askew. The armed men stepped back to allow him into the room, still covering Tom with their guns.
“Tom Kirk,” said Clarke between breaths. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Henry Julius Renwick.” Tom’s eyes widened with bewilderment. “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court.”
Clarke walked right up to him and stood with his nose only a few inches away from Tom’s.
“Anything you do say can be given in evidence against you.” His lips stretched over his teeth in a thin smile. “I’d told you you’d slip up eventually, you smug bastard.”
Tom was stunned, uncomprehending. Uncle Harry? Dead? He had murdered Harry? It was ridiculous. It was insane. It was too awful to even begin to take in. He didn’t believe it. Refused to believe it.
“Clarke, even you know that this is bullshit. I may be many things, but I’m no killer. Harry Renwick and I are almost family.”
“People like you don’t have family.”
“I saw Harry last night, had dinner with him and a friend of his. When I left he was alive. Just ask her.”
“Is that right?” sneered Clarke, walking behind Tom. “Funny that the table was only set for two then.”
“For two? There must be some mistake.”
“No mistake, Kirk, at least not by us. Because guess whose prints we found all over the place? That’s right. Yours. Yours and Renwick’s. No one else’s.”
Tom could feel Clarke’s wet breath against the back of his neck as he reached into his pocket and took out his handcuffs.
“I’ve waited a long time for this. And believe me, it’s been worth it to see the expression on your face,” Clark hissed.
Tom knew that he should just go quietly. He was outnumbered and outgunned. But the table only set for two? Only his prints at the house? This was an old-fashioned setup and somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to get it right. And Clarke had clearly fallen for the bait. Every instinct that Tom had developed and trained and refined over the years was screaming at him to get out of there and get out of there fast. But if he was going to make his move, it would have to be now.
Clarke grabbed one of Tom’s wrists and began to twist it upward behind his back. Rather than fight him, Tom relaxed his arm so it gave away easily under Clarke’s rough grip. Clarke, who had braced himself forward in expectation of Tom resisting him, overbalanced slightly. Tom immediately snapped his wrist out of Clarke’s grasp and in an instant had spun round behind him, grabbing his arm and pinning it to his back.
The armed men, momentarily caught out by the sudden blur of Tom’s movement, took a step forward and raised their guns as they realized what had happened. Tom sheltered behind Clarke and twisted his arm viciously, causing him to shout out in pain.
“Don’t move. He’s breaking my sodding arm.”
“I’ve got a shot, sir,” one of the men called out to Daniels, aiming just past Clarke’s head.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Clarke screamed at him. “You’ll shoot me, you stupid bastard.”
Daniels lowered his gun and motioned with his hand for the others to do the same, fixing Tom with his eyes.
“Don’t be an idiot, Kirk. We’ve got the place surrounded. Give it up. No one needs to get hurt here.”
“No one will get hurt if you stay back,” Tom responded.
He backed across the room and into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him and bolting it. He pushed Clarke to his knees and bent him forward over the toilet, handcuffing his hands together, so that his arms were stretched forward and joined at the wrists under the soil pipe. He couldn’t move. Clarke was white with fear and rage.
“You bastard, Kirk,” he said, his voice muffled and hollow as it echoed out of the toilet bowl. “You’re dead. I’ll fucking kill you myself. You hear me?”
Tom opened the bathroom window and checked outside. It gave onto a narrow, empty alleyway, a thin ribbon of pigeon-soiled tarmac some fifty feet below. There was hammering on the door.
“Open up, Kirk. You’ve got till the count of ten and then we’re coming in for you.” Daniels started to count. “One…two…”
Tom jumped up onto the windowsill.
“Three…four…five…”
He reached out and flushed the toilet before clambering out and sliding down the drainpipe.
A few seconds later and the bathroom door splintered open as three men, led by Daniels, flew in, their guns poised. Seeing that the room was empty, Daniels rushed to the window and looked out, taking in the drainpipe and the now empty alleyway.
“He’s gone out the window. Get everyone outside. We’ll need to lock down the whole area.”
The men trooped obediently out of the room, but as Daniels turned to leave, he heard a coughing and spluttering noise from behind the battered door. Pushing it aside, he saw the back of Clarke’s head, his hair and shoulders soaking wet, his body shaking violently.
“Daniels. Is that you? Get me the fuck out of here!” roared Clarke, the water still swirling only inches from his nose. Daniels bent down toward him and whispered in his ear.
“Nice collar, Clarke.”
5:45
A.M.
T
om had planned out this escape route when he had first moved in. Old habits die hard. The alleyway led him to a maze of backstreets and passages that eventually brought him out down by the river nearly a mile from his building.
The Embankment was still quiet when he reached it, the odd car and taxi heading toward the City and Canary Wharf, traders rushing to catch the end of the Asian markets or steal a march on the European ones. A few joggers panted past him, nodding to the music playing through the MP3 players strapped to their waists.
As he slowed to a walk, he tried to make some sense of what had just happened. Uncle Harry dead. Himself framed for it. Why?
“Kirk,” a woman’s voice called out. “Kirk, over here.” He looked up and saw Jennifer waving him over from the open door of a black cab. Tom stopped and stared at her accusingly. First Piccadilly, then Harry’s, now here. She was persistent, if nothing else.
“Get in,” she said more urgently now. “They’re sealing off the whole area. You’ve got to get out of London. Let me help you.”
Tom stood there, certain that whatever she wanted, helping him was not her prime concern.
“Listen,” she continued, stepping out of the cab now and shouting over the occasional traffic. “You’ve been set up. I know you didn’t kill Harry. I can prove it. Just get in and I’ll show you.”
Whatever suspicions Tom had of Jennifer’s motives, he knew that it was risky for him to stay out in the open. The sound of an approaching siren made his mind up for him. He jogged over to the cab and climbed in. Jennifer stepped in after him and slammed the door shut.
“Are you okay?” she asked breathlessly, folding down the seat opposite him. Tom looked past her to the taxi driver sitting behind his plastic screen.
“I think you met Max yesterday. Don’t worry, he’s one of our people here. The taxi just helps us blend in a little.”
Max winked at Tom in his rearview mirror and Tom recognized him as one of Jennifer’s minders from the day before. The square-jawed driver with his blond crew cut and thick muscular neck could hardly have looked less like a London cabbie if he had tried.
But then the cab was obviously not standard issue, either. The windows were clearly bulletproof; the bodywork—judging from the meaty clunk made by the closing door—armor-plated and in all likelihood cork-lined as well for sound insulation. Most noticeable of all, the usual diesel whine had been replaced by the throaty roar of a transplanted V8 to cope with the extra weight.
“No, I’m not okay,” said Tom, taking in Jennifer’s packed bag on the floor next to her, clothes poking out from the zipper fastening. “Why are you here? What’s going on?”
For the first time since he had met her, Jennifer looked uncomfortable, sad, even.
“I’m sorry about Harry. We should never have got him involved.”
“You can apologize later. Just tell me what happened.”
She paused before answering.
“About forty-five minutes after you left, three men broke into the house and attacked us. They shot him, shot him right in front of me.”
“Shot him?…And you? How come you got away?” His voice was loaded with suspicion.
“I don’t know. I tried to help him. Tried to fight them off. But there were too many of them. They were armed. They knocked me out and when I came round there was no sign of Harry, just blood all over the hall floor. But I smelled burning and followed the blood trail to the basement. They’d set fire to him. They shot him, dragged him to the basement and set fire to him.”
“Shit.” Tom bit his lower lip, his brain feverishly conjuring up an image of Renwick’s charred and twisted corpse before immediately straining to banish the ghoulish scene from his mind. Harry was gone. Harry, who had always been there, who had been more of a father to him than his own father. His grief struck him like a sudden wave, leaving him disorientated and gasping for breath, uncertain whether to swim up or down to get back to the surface. Even so, he wouldn’t allow himself to cry, not in front of her. Not in front of anyone.
“Then I called Max here to come and fetch me. He called the cops after we’d left.”
The taxi crossed the river and made its way past the poured concrete mass of the South Bank and the delicate steel web of the Millennium Wheel, its now stationary pods shining like pearls in the morning sun.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“We’ve had people here following you for several days. They were watching you last night to make sure you didn’t disappear or make a move for the coin. Luckily, one of them saw you jumping out that window.”
“Where’s the coin now?” he asked, his throat swollen.
“Gone.” Jennifer’s voice was hollow and she turned her head to stare out the window as she answered. “It was the only thing they took. It’s what they came for.”
“You mean it was some sort of professional hit?”
“Looks that way.”
“But how did they even know it was there?”
“Two possible explanations. One, that I was followed there by someone who knew I had the coin on me. Two, that someone else tipped them off. We know you didn’t make any calls on your cell or from home last night so that puts you in the clear.”
“So you think that Harry—”
“We’re analyzing his phone records.” There was a pause until Jennifer spoke again, regret in her voice. “Look, Kirk, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we ran some checks on Harry Renwick last night. There was no rich relative, no inheritance.”
“What are you saying?” Tom was instantly on the defensive.
“Think about it. Those paintings, that huge place. He must have paid for it all somehow. Maybe he just got greedy?”
Tom bit his lip. He refused to believe it. Harry on the take? It just didn’t make sense.
“And whoever murdered Harry and stole the coin made it look like you did it. When I went back to the kitchen I saw that they’d removed my place setting and just left yours and his. I guess they just had to look for the lipstick.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I want to know.” Jennifer’s eyes glinted with determination. “I guess you make a pretty convincing suspect.”
Tom nodded, reliving that morning’s events in his head.
“You should have seen Clarke’s face when he came to arrest me.”
“Clarke?”
“A cop. Been trying to nail me for years. He must have thought he’d finally hit the jackpot.”
There were a few moments’ silence as Tom’s mind raced over everything he had just heard.
“So let me get this straight,” he said eventually. “You’ve got people who can prove that Harry was alive when I left him, that I didn’t move from my place all night long and that I didn’t call anyone.”
“Uh-huh.” Jennifer nodded.
“So what do you want? What’s the catch?”
“Did you steal those coins, Kirk?” Her eyes searched his out as she asked the question. Tom returned her gaze unblinkingly and answered in a firm, confident voice.
“No. Before last night I’d never even heard of them. I wish I still hadn’t.”
She nodded and Tom sensed that she was wrestling with a decision that she didn’t really want to make. The cab had reached Vauxhall, and the glass-and-stone castellated mass of the M15 building dragged past them.
“The catch is that if I help you, you have to help me.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom warily.
Jennifer sat back in her seat and again gazed out the window as she spoke.
“That coin was one of five stolen from Fort Knox three weeks ago.”
“Fort Knox!” Tom interrupted. “Christ! How did they do that?”
“That’s not important right now. What is important is that one of them turned up in Paris two weeks later. The same coin I showed you last night and which I’ve now lost. So we think the other coins are in Europe, too, possibly being sold to a private collector. The question is, if you didn’t steal them, who do you think did?”
Tom looked away from her angrily.
“I’m no snitch.”
“What about Harry?”
“What about Harry? What’s he got to do with it?”
“You think the Fort Knox job and his murder are unrelated? My money says that whoever stole the coins, somehow lost one, found out that Harry had it, and killed him to get it back. Help me find who was behind this job and you’ll be helping catch Harry’s killers.”
Tom was silent as he considered what she had just said.
“I’ve got to go to Paris,” she continued. “I’ve got a meeting set up with Van Simson this afternoon. Afterward, I want to have a look around. It’s where the coin was found. You know the city, understand the way things work over there. I’m talking about a couple of days of your time at most.”
“You’re kidding, right.” He almost laughed his question.
“Why not?”
“Are you crazy? For a million different reasons. You think I trust you guys? I got screwed over once. I’m not falling for the same trick again.”
“I don’t know what happened to you before, I don’t want to know. But this is the real deal, I promise.”
“We both know your promises aren’t worth shit.”
Jennifer nodded slowly.
“You’re right. It’s not my call. But come to Paris and I’ll speak to my boss. If he refuses the deal then I’ll let you go, say you gave me the slip or something. That I can promise,” Jennifer continued, leaning back in her seat and looking out of the window. They were heading out toward Clapham now, the office buildings and plush riverside developments having given way to rows of neat Victorian terraced houses. She knocked on the screen and the taxi slowed to a halt.
“Otherwise, it’s up to you to take your chances here and now.” She opened the taxi door and waved toward it. “But I can tell you that the U.S. government will not be in a position to back up your story. There will only be your word that I was at that dinner, that Harry was alive when you left and that you didn’t leave your place all night. Frankly, I don’t envy your chances.”
Tom started laughing in spite of himself.
“Just so I know, is this you helping me still?”
“I’m not trying to make any friends here. I’m talking about a truce. You help me find the coins and whoever took them. I help you to find Harry’s killers, square things up with your friend Clarke, and wipe your file clean. It’s up to you, but it’s a good deal.”
Much as Tom hated to admit it, she was right.
“Fine, I’ll come to Paris and you talk to your boss. If he doesn’t like it I’ll disappear before you can say ‘extradition treaty.’ But I’m doing this for Harry, not for you and certainly not for the FBI.” He raised his voice slightly to emphasize his point. “And when we find them, whoever they are, don’t stand in my way. I want the people who did this to him. I want them to pay.”