The Last Temptation (60 page)

‘We need ambulances, Shark. I don’t want these two bastards to bleed to death. Go and radio for the paramedics. And you better get KriPo along too,’ Petra said dully. She dropped her gun to the floor and walked like a zombie to Tony. She crouched down beside him, slipping her jacket off and putting it over his shoulders. His face was a mess, though nothing like as bad as Carol’s had been. ‘Somebody get a knife over here,’ she called.

One of the Special Ops guys trotted over, opening a Swiss Army knife and handing it to her. For the second time that night, she freed someone she liked and respected from their bonds. Tony gave a shuddering cry as his arms and legs cramped at their sudden release.

Morgan knelt down by Tony and started massaging his legs. ‘It’s a bastard, but it passes quickly,’ he said.

Then Tony thought he was-hallucinating. He heard Carol’s voice, riven with concern. ‘Tony? Tony, are you OK?’ He struggled to roll on to his back, but his arms had no strength. Gently, Morgan grasped his shoulders and turned him towards the door.

Petra jumped to her feet, astonishment on her face as she

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registered the arrival of Carol and Marijke. ‘What the fuck are you two doing here?’ she said, half-laughing, half-crying.

Carol ignored her, making for Tony like a pigeon for home. Candle stepped into her path. ‘DCI Jordan?’ he said uncertainly, putting a hand on her arm.

‘Take your fucking hands off me,’ she snarled, brushing past him and continuing on her way. Unconscious of her own injuries, she knelt on the floor beside Tony, cradling his head against her breast. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she choked. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Words were beyond him. He simply clung to her. There they stayed, oblivious to the hubbub around them as paramedics and police swarmed into the building. They were impervious to everything until Radecki’s voice cut through the clamour in a roar. ‘You think you’ve won, bitch?’ Suddenly there was silence. ‘I might be going to jail, but compared to you, I’m free. You’ll never be free of me.’

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Petra let herself into her apartment and closed the door quietly behind her. It was early evening, but she didn’t want to risk waking Tony if he’d managed to fall asleep. He’d been staying in her apartment at her insistence ever since his discharge from hospital. They’d kept him in for a single night, out of concern about possible hypothermia rather than his acute injuries. Three broken ribs, two broken fingers and a shattered cheekbone weren’t enough to justify occupying a hospital bed, the doctor had firmly told Petra when she had protested against so swift a release. ‘He’ll probably need some reconstructive surgery on his cheek, but that’ll have to wait for a while,’ he’d said.

So Petra had brought him back to her place. She didn’t think he was fit to be left alone, and he didn’t want to return home until Wilhelm Mann had been arrested. Now his involvement in the case was out in the open, his profile had been shared with the German police teams investigating the murders. She knew, because he’d told her, that he’d been taking phone calls from the officers in Heidelberg, Bremen and Kohl, but he’d said little about their content, merely that they seemed to be taking his analysis seriously. In truth, he’d not said much about anything, spending long hours staring into space, apparently oblivious to Petra’s presence.

Carol of course had been whisked away to Den Haag by

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Morgan and Candle. They had informed Hanna Plesch that they would debrief Carol there and pass on all their information to the Berlin criminal intelligence unit, who were working flat out to roll up Radecki’s networks across Germany and beyond. Petra had complained about this too, but she might as well have saved her breath. Plesch was perfectly happy to have one less thing to think about in the aftermath of the dramatic and unorthodox climax to the operation against Radecki.

Petra had endured an uncomfortable interview with her boss on the subject of Tony’s presence in Berlin and her own involvement in the serial killer investigation. But once it looked as though nothing was going to emerge in the media about the more bizarre elements of the showdown, Plesch had relaxed. She’d been more concerned over the possibility of having to answer questions about the presence of a Dutch cop and two British intelligence officers in a Special Ops action than she was about what she called Petra’s anarchic behaviour. She could afford to be indulgent after such a good result, Petra thought.

Marijke had left for Koln the next morning on an early flight. They’d managed to spend rather less than an hour alone together in the course of that chaotic night, and they’d both been too dazed by events to be capable of anything other than bemused, sporadic conversation. Petra had a horrible feeling that they’d never find a way back to their previous ease with each other, and she regretted the loss already.

She walked quietly through to the living room, where Tony was sitting upright on the sofa. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Good day?’

She shrugged out of her leather jacket and tossed it over a chair. ‘Hard work. We’ve been pulling in Radecki’s under508

lings all day and trying to find enough bodies to interview them. Even with all leave cancelled, we’re struggling.’

‘But at least you feel like you’re getting somewhere,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah, we’re making real progress.’
^”p>

‘That’s more than can be said for Marijke.’

Petra gave him a quizzical look. ‘Have you been talking to her today?’

He nodded. ‘She called this afternoon. She’s got to go back to Koln tomorrow, and she wanted to know if she should come via Berlin. She couldn’t get hold of you at the office or on your mobile, so she rang here.’

‘What did you tell her?’

Tony smiled. ‘I told her she’d better book a hotel room since I’d turfed you out of your bed and I didn’t think the two of you would fancy sharing the sofa.’

Petra felt a blush spread up her neck and across her face. ‘So when does she get here?’

Tony looked at his watch. ‘She’ll be walking through the door any time now.’

Her face crumpled into a mask of consternation. ‘Oh shit! I need to shower, I’m disgusting.’

‘I don’t think she’ll care about that.’

‘I care!’ Petra started for the bathroom, but before she could get there, the door buzzer sounded. ‘Oh shit,’ she repeated.

‘Too late.’ Tony edged forward on the seat, wincing as his ribs protested at the movement. Til just go and have a Lie down.’

‘No, stay,’ Petra commanded, looking worried. She pressed the door release and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Jesus, I am so nervous about this.’ She swallowed hard and went to open the apartment door. She leaned in the

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doorway and listened to the footsteps echoing in the stairwell.

Then suddenly Marijke was there, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind?’

Petra opened her arms and enveloped her in a hug. Tm so glad to see you,’ she mumbled into her hair.

‘I booked a hotel, like Tony said. But I wanted to talk to you both first,’ Marijke said, pulling away to plant a kiss on the corner of Petra’s mouth.

‘Both of us?’

Marijke nodded. Petra took her hand and led her inside. The three of them exchanged greetings and commiserations over Tony’s injuries while Petra opened a bottle of wine. ‘So,’ she said. ‘What is it you need to talk to us both about?’

‘I have to go back to Koln to discuss what we do about Mann,’ Marijke said. ‘They have been looking at him for four days now and he has done nothing at all suspicious. And they tell me that tomorrow the Rhine will be reopened to commercial traffic, and it will be difficult to keep him under surveillance once the Wilhelmina Rosen is under way.’

Petra snorted. ‘What they mean is that it’ll cost too much. Jesus, I hate those tight, stupid provincials.’

‘They might also be afraid that they’ll lose him and he’ll kill again and they’ll get caught up in a firestorm of media blame,’ Tony pointed out.

‘I don’t think they want to call it off. But we know now that the Wilhelmina Rosen’s next destination will be Rotterdam. Mann must be aware that he’s the subject of a manhunt here in Germany, but so far we have managed to avoid anyone in the media making the connection with our case in Leiden, so I think he’ll feel more safe to kill in Holland.’

‘So you’re going to continue the surveillance once he crosses the border?’ Petra asked.

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‘This is what we will discuss tomorrow. If he comes to

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Holland, I want to end it. I don’t want this to drag out. But unless he makes a definite move, we will have nothing against him except circumstantial evidence. So I need your help. I am thinking maybe you will have better ideas than me?’

Petra stood up and paced the floor. ‘Let’s look at what we’ve got. We have the car that Dr Schilling’s boyfriend saw and a matching car with Hamburg plates near the scene of de Groot’s murder, which gives us Wilhelm Mann. We have a smear of marine engine oil on the folder he left in Pieter de Groot’s filing system …’

‘And no forensics from any of the other three recovered files,’ Marijke chipped in gloomily.

Petra continued undaunted. ‘We also have a sailor’s knot, which leads back to Wilhelm Mann.’

‘And thousands of other people,’ Tony pointed out.

‘Thank you, Tony,’ Petra countered with a sardonic smile. ‘Thanks to the work the river police have been doing over the last week, we can put the Wilhelmina Rosen at or near all four murders, which also gives us Wilhelm Mann. We have a killer who uses the alias Hochenstein. Tony’s list from Schloss Hochenstein gives us an Albert Mann who was a child survivor of psychological experiments.’

Marijke butted in. ‘Yesterday we heard from the cops in Hamburg. They did a records search on Wilhelm Mann which gives him a grandfather called Albert Mann with the same date of birth as the man on Tony’s list from Schloss Hochenstein. He died two years ago. The inquest said it was an accident, but if you look at it with the idea that his grandson is a killer, it is not hard to see that it could have been murder.’

‘Christ, with that much circumstantial evidence, why don’t Kohi just bring him in for questioning? I would,’ Petra complained.

‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ Tony said. ‘I doubt he’d say anything.’

‘So what do we do?’ Marijke said plaintively.

There was a long silence. Petra threw herself down on the sofa, making Tony flinch. He gritted his teeth and said, ‘I think I could break him.’

‘They wouldn’t let you interrogate him,’ Petra pointed out.

‘I’m not talking about a formal interrogation,’ Tony said. ‘I’m talking about me and him, one to one.’

Petra shook her head. ‘No way. You’re not fit enough for anything like that. He could kill you like snapping a stick.’

‘I’m not that pathetic,’ Tony said. ‘I’ve been moving around a lot more today. The painkillers are starting to kick in. I can do it.’

‘I thought you said his English was poor,’ Petra objected.

‘Ich kann Deutsch sprechen, Tony said.

Petra stared at him openmouthed. ‘You kept very quiet about that.’

‘How do you think I managed to read the case files?’ He dipped his head at Marijke in acknowledgement. ‘I was very grateful that you had your material translated into German, because I really can’t manage Dutch.’

‘It’s still far too risky,’ Marijke said.

‘What choice do we have? Do we just sit back and let him kill again?’ Now Tony sounded angry. ‘I came into this business because I wanted to save lives. I can’t do nothing while a serial killer is left at liberty to take more victims,’ he said vehemently.

‘Marijke’s right. It’s insane,’ Petra insisted.

Tony shook his head. ‘One of two things is going to happen !{ here. Either the police are going to help me, or I’m going to

do it alone. So, which is it to be?’

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Every day, he was growing stronger. Because at first he had thought ^what he did with Cilvet was a weakness, he had nearly let it destroy him, Thete had been days and nights when he feared he’d never chase the darkness away again. But he’d gradually come to see that his first reaction had been the correct one. Making her his had been the ultimate demonstration of his power. It took a special sort of person to carry a plan like this to the limit, and he knew now that fucking her hadn’t tainted his mission. The realization had brought peace, and with the peace came a lightening of his spirit that was all the confirmation he needed. The headaches disappeared, and he felt released.

As if mirroring his personal relief, he heard the news that the river would be open again the next day. He would be able to continue his work. He’d been scanning the papers and the internet, and nobody seemed to have realized that he had crossed borders and killed in Holland. He had to believe that, there, his victims would still be oblivious to risk. He couldn’t afford to think otherwise, or the fear would eat into his soul and make it impossible to act.

With the news that life would soon return to normal, he had emailed his next target and rearranged their appointment. He’d have to be cautious, just in case the police were trying to trap him by deliberately keeping de Groot’s death
out of the picture. He would have to make sure he wasn’t walking into an ambush. But in three days’ time, he felt confident that he would be knocking on a door in Utrecht. Professor Paul Muller would have to pay the price for what he’d had no right to inflict on others.

He leaned on the stern rail, watching the mourning pennant flutter in the gentle breeze. It was the fifth one he’d hung there since the death of his grandfather, a constant reminder of what he had achieved. It was pleasant to contemplate what he was

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going to do to Mullen Just the thought of it made his blood pump faster in his veins. Tonight, he’d go ashore and find a woman to fuck, fuelled by the fantasy of what Utrecht promised. He really had made progress. Now he could use their bodies for rehearsal as well as release.