Wanted (33 page)

Ray had concluded that reporting straight into the Scottish cops might have ended up getting him into the papers, thereby tipping off the PSS Killer that his involvement was suspected, giving him time and opportunity to disappear back underground.

No. Ray had decided back near the farmhouse, as he’d sat in his car tending his bruised shoulder, cracked rib and bleeding head, that when he involved the Scottish police, he had to have incontrovertible proof. Which meant the blood. The FBI already had a sample of the PSS Killer’s blood, taken from the snow outside the cabin where Danny Shanklin’s wife and son had been murdered. All Ray needed now was a match.

The FBI DNA profiler to whom he had sent the sample, simultaneously requesting he keep whatever he discovered to himself for now, had come back yesterday with email confirmation that it was indeed a match to that taken from the PSS Killer’s last known attack. His ex-colleague had also come back with a question:
Where the fuck did you get this?
Because for the FBI, of course, proof that the PSS Killer was not only alive but active again opened up a whole can of trouble for their Elite Serial Killer team: they’d stopped actively hunting the PSS Killer several years ago, having mistakenly put down his disappearance and lack of new offences to the fact that he was dead.

Ray’s ex-colleague had further written:

And where the hell are you? You need to get back to me, Ray. I’m not going to be able to keep this under wraps for long. And you know better than anyone, Ray: you don’t want to go hunting this guy on your own. . .

Ray hadn’t answered the email. Not yet. For one thing, he didn’t work for the FBI any more. He worked for Danny Shanklin. And, for another, he knew how the FBI would react to the discovery that they’d made a mistake. Not by trying to cover it up: too much time had passed for that – the honcho at the Elite Serial Killer team who’d called off the hunt had retired last year. The case would be reopened by his successor. And with the chance of closing a case file as notorious as this one, he had no doubt that they’d throw everything they’d got into it. They’d descend on that farmhouse like locusts on a fresh crop.

Which, again, Ray worried, would scare the PSS Killer off.

The PSS Killer had avoided capture for so long because he was smart. More than that, Ray reckoned, he was professional. The way he’d fought Ray – even the way he’d been dressed to avoid contaminating the crime scene with his DNA – had all tied in with Danny Shanklin’s theory that the killer had been, perhaps still was, either intelligence or police.

The PSS Killer knew how cops and feds thought. And if a bunch of them turned up here and started snooping, Ray had no doubt that he’d vanish just as surely as he had done into that snowstorm outside Danny Shanklin’s cabin.

Ray wasn’t keen on having the FBI snooping round anywhere near himself either. They’d want to know why he was trying to track the PSS Killer. Out of purely professional interest? A sense of duty? Or a desire to lay the past to rest?

Even though all three of these motives were true, Ray knew there was no goddamn way the feds would stop there. They’d wonder who he was working for. And they’d look. And if they looked hard enough, they’d soon find his link to Danny Shanklin.

And no matter how appealing a catch the PSS Killer might be, the truth was that the US authorities were more interested right now in finding Danny. With the CIA, and God only knew how many other official and covert government organizations, they’d get stuck right into interrogating Ray and ripping his communications history apart to get a sniff of where Danny might be.

But even though Ray hadn’t yet given away his location, he knew he was living on borrowed time. His ex-colleague, as he’d stated, would be able to keep quiet only for so long or he’d risk a severe disciplinary.

Were the FBI then to launch an intelligence investigation into Ray, they’d soon track his flight here and subsequent movements. They’d also more than likely do as he had – namely, cross-reference recent crimes against the PSS Killer’s MO. They’d soon put two and two together and find the farmhouse. And it wouldn’t take them much longer to find Ray.

None of which bothered him one jot, he thought, as he parked his hire car next to the ticket machine. Because the plain fact was he didn’t need a lot of time. Just enough to follow this last lead. To find out where the PSS Killer was staying. And then he’d call the feds, the cops, and the entire goddamn British Army if he could. He’d do whatever it took to make sure the motherfucker did not escape justice again.

As he zipped up his jacket and stepped out into the gale, Ray pictured the photos in his study back home, the ones he’d copied before retiring, of the men, women and kids the PSS Killer had butchered. He saw the kids’ names and the names of the schools they’d gone to, the lives they’d never had.

Do nothing. Await further instructions. Do not do this alone.

Danny Shanklin couldn’t have made his orders any clearer. But aside from the fact that Danny had enough problems of his own and wouldn’t be available any time soon, if, indeed, ever, to help with this, Ray had never been a do-nothing kind of a guy. He’d messaged Danny back to let him know that he’d hold fire. But even as he’d done it, he’d known he wouldn’t. The PSS Killer was at large. He couldn’t ignore that. He had to press on and do what he could to find him. Then he’d let Danny know, before he attempted to confront the lunatic.

He had to lean his whole body at a forty-five-degree angle to make any progress towards the ticket machine. He fed coins into the slot and took the ticket it spat out.

This was the third car park he’d visited in the last twenty minutes. As well as having the name of the town printed on it just like the other two tickets he had already bought, this one had a serial code that matched the parking ticket the PSS Killer had dropped as he’d fled from the farm.

That was proof of nothing in itself, Ray acknowledged. The PSS Killer could have stopped here for a rest, or a smoke, or to walk his goddamn dog down there on the beach.

But – he turned back towards the town, studying the holiday cottages and bed-and-breakfasts hugging the craggy hillside, with no vehicular access from the main road – it could mean the opposite.

It could mean the PSS Killer had been staying near here –
and still was.

Ray fought his way back to the car and wrestled to keep its door open, stuck the ticket he’d just bought on the dash, then locked it and set off towards the holiday rental store and post office on the main road.

He’d start there. An old cop with old methods. He’d start by telling whoever worked there that he was looking for a friend, a fellow American tourist, whom he’d arranged to meet locally but whose mobile-phone number he’d lost. He’d tell them what his friend looked like: white, bald, powerfully built, over six feet tall, with slate grey eyes.

Oh, yes, if the PSS Killer was still here, Ray would find him, keep him under observation and call in the authorities. He’d watch the motherfucker being taken down. He’d watch and savour every second of that.

And Scotland Yard, the FBI, the CIA, MI5, and whoever the fuck else came for him, they could ask him whatever they wanted. By then, he’d have destroyed and ditched the laptop and phone he’d used to communicate with Danny Shanklin.

They could do their worst and it would make no difference. They’d have no way to get to Danny through him.

And Ray would face them, knowing he’d finally done what Danny had hired him to do. He’d have laid his own ghosts and Danny Shanklin’s to rest.

A hundred miles east of Berlin, Ruth parked the four-by-four Merc at such an angle that its German number plate couldn’t be seen from the farmhouse’s front door or the road. Rain drummed on the roof and blurred the windscreen.

‘Wait here,’ Danny said.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘It’ll worry them less if anyone’s in.’

Danny doubted anyone would be. No lights on. No vehicles parked out front. Ruth was right, though. It was gone nine in the evening. If someone did answer the door, their hackles were less likely to rise if a woman, rather than a man, asked for directions.

‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’
he asked.

‘Like a native,’ she answered. ‘It’s not just the CIA who recruit kids from the top of the class.’

He smiled, the same smile he’d given during their journey here, first by car to Dover, where they’d put the British hire car on the Eurotunnel train, then by a different car they’d hired in Paris, and finally by this Merc which they’d collected in Berlin from a Mossad agent there. God only knew what story she’d told her fellow agent. Something about an assignment in Moscow, in Finland, she’d said. Danny had not been introduced.

Danny, of course, had stayed in the background throughout, still travelling under a false passport he considered safe. Ruth had switched IDs twice, but had been happy to deal with any officials. Their car had been waved through Passport Control at Dover and a cop had stopped and fined them for speeding east of Paris. Whatever nerves Danny had been feeling had been erased as he had sent them on their way after checking Ruth’s licence, passport and the car’s plates. Mossad fake IDs were as flawless as ever, it seemed.

Unbuckling her seat belt now, Ruth twisted round and half climbed into the back seat to retrieve her coat. She had great legs, Danny observed, not for the first time, and stopped himself staring. He’d been trying not to glance at her too often during the long drive in case she’d noticed. Hard not to stare, though, at someone as striking as her . . .

She was beautiful, but not in a conventional way. He reckoned other people might be more inclined to describe her as intimidating. Her physical condition was part of it, but not all. There was also the way she stood, the natural authority with which she occupied a room or even a car. If she had something of the athlete about her, then she had something of the actress too. Poise. Self-awareness. As if she knew people would stare. As if she were never quite fully relaxed.

Then there were the details. Her black hair, lush as cat’s fur, asking to be stroked. And the light blue eyes that contrasted with her dark skin.

She twisted back into her seat and threaded herself into her coat, arching her back as she zipped it. Turning up its collar, she took her black peaked cap from the glove compartment and put it on, tucking her hair up under it to protect it from the rain.

‘And I thought the weather in England was bad,’ she said, in perfect German, with a slight Munich accent, Danny observed – clearly practising, occupying a role, knowing in a couple of minutes it might become real.

She chambered a round into her SIG Sauer P226 pistol and stuck it down inside her jeans – which every operative had been trained not to do but did all the same – then opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

Danny watched her go, keeping the engine running. She’d left the passenger door open, in case she had to rush back. Danny approved, just as he did of her going out armed, even though there was no reason to expect any danger out here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a cold, freezing night.

She was trained, the same as him. This wasn’t her day job. This was her life. She’d filled him in a little on her past during their drive. How her father had been American-born, but had moved to Israel as a child with his parents, who’d then been killed in a bombing.

Ruth’s father, she’d explained, had met her mother at university there, where he’d been lecturing in history. She’d been younger than him. ‘A good ten years. Probably around the same age difference as you and me,’ she’d added, in a tone that had suggested how outlandish such a gap was, maybe for Danny’s benefit, or maybe as a joke. He hadn’t yet decided which. ‘And for a while,’ she’d continued, ‘Dad used to joke that he was in charge, before realizing it was the other way round. He ended up respecting her more than anyone he’d met in his entire life.’

Had that been for Danny’s benefit too? To remind him that they were equals in all this? Or to warn him that he’d damn well better respect her?

If so, she needn’t have bothered. Because he did respect her. Enough to be wary of her. Enough to think of her as a wolf that would lie down with a hunter and remain perfectly safe as long as that hunter provided the meat.

In other words, Ruth needed him as long as it suited her. That was how Danny saw it. To help her get her revenge. Which made her no different from him, he supposed. He needed her comms skills, in case Glinka and the Kid’s trail went cold again.

This was just business. No matter how attractive he found her, no matter how much he’d liked just
being
with her on the journey, he needed to remember that.

He flipped the wipers on to see her better. She’d given up on the farmhouse’s front door and was now peering through a small gap in the ground-floor window to its right, her gloved hands cupped round her face.

She turned and waved, beckoning him forward. He leaned across and pulled her door shut, then drove through the open gates and up the short driveway, winding down the window as she hurried back to the car.

‘It’s deserted,’ she said. ‘Not much furniture. A letterbox full of junk mail. I’ll meet you round back.’

Danny drove to the side of the house, out of sight of the road. He stepped out into the driving rain and retrieved his bag from the back. Ruth was already inside by the time he got to the front door. Elegantly done, too. The lock looked intact. He couldn’t see how she’d managed it. Must have used some kind of electronic pick, he guessed. Something smaller than the lock-buster or he’d have noticed it on her when she’d left. Little point in asking her about it: Mossad agents guarded their secrets with their lives.

It was as cold inside as out, but at least it was dry. Ruth was nowhere to be seen, as he slipped silently into the kitchen. He heard a creak, then saw her ascending the stairs leading up from the hallway, ignoring his presence as she continued her sweep of the house.

He trailed a gloved finger through the dust on the kitchen surface by the stove. It didn’t look like anyone had been in here for months.