White Death (20 page)

‘Simultaneous exhibitions?’

‘When you play multiple people at once. Don’t want to let all my preparations go to waste now, do I? Music is the second. I’m a trained concert pianist, and as luck – perhaps not luck: perhaps fate, or kismet – would have it, the New Haven Symphony have got a temporary vacancy. They’re due to perform Rachmaninoff’s Second and Third Concertos next weekend, and their pianist has taken ill. No time to find a replacement through the usual channels. So I volunteered myself. I know Rachmaninoff like the back of my hand. And I know my presence there, because of all the – well, you know what I mean – all the
events
of the past few days, it’ll help sell tickets. That’s the way it is.’

‘And the third?’

‘Yes: the third concerto, and the second too.’

‘No. Your third passion.’

‘Oh! Excuse me. Rare books. The library at Yale has some of the most exquisite examples to be found anywhere.’

‘The Beinecke?’

‘That’s right. How did you know?’

Patrese thought fast. There was no reason to tell Tartu about the help Anna had been giving him. ‘It’s pretty famous. And I walk past it most every day now.’

‘I’ve never been. I can’t wait. I have quite a collection of rare books back home.’

‘I’m sure. Listen – I’d like your help.’

‘I don’t know what help I could give.’

‘We think the murders have a chess theme. Kwasi’s playing Black, if that makes sense. We don’t know who’s playing White. We need to find that person, and we need to find Kwasi. If we can get a sense of their tactics, their strategy, then maybe we can do that. But we need someone who plays chess at Kwasi’s level.’

‘And that’s me?’

‘That’s you.’

Tartu pressed his hands to his face, covering his nose. He studied Patrese over the top of his fingers, as though Patrese himself were a chessboard. It was some time before Tartu took his hands away and spoke.

‘In a world championship match, you go very deep into yourself, you know? You’re like a diver, exploring hidden worlds no one else has ever seen. No one else apart from the man sitting opposite you, that is. You go deeper and deeper, and then when it’s all over, you have to come up very fast. That does strange things to you. After Kwasi and I played last time, in Kazan, I was depressed for a year, and only a little of that was because I’d lost. I wanted Kwasi’s company, I missed him.’

‘He’s a murderer.’

‘I wanted to warn him. I wanted to say, Kwasi, you’ll feel like a god, people will love you, history will obey you, you’ll think your problems are over; but in those high places it’s very cold, very lonely. I wanted to warn him that soon would come depression, the fall. I was afraid for him. I like him.’

‘He’s a murderer,’ Patrese repeated.

‘So you say. But has he told you that? Has he confessed? There are many reasons a man might run from the police, especially someone like Kwasi. The only place he feels comfortable, the only place in the whole world, is the chessboard. But even there it’s not safe. Until you play at that level, you don’t understand the stress involved. Your heart rate can easily double during a game, especially when you’re having to play quickly in time trouble. Normally when your heart rate’s doubling you’re moving around, being active,
but in chess there’s no outlet for this. So you develop problems
with your mind.’

‘Mr Tartu, I asked you a simple question.’

‘And I’m giving you a simple answer.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes. You’re just not listening.’

‘Will you help me try and find Kwasi?’

‘No.’

‘
No?
’

‘No. Kwasi’s my friend. I understand him, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, certainly now his mother’s dead …’

‘Dead? Murdered. By him.’

‘… again, so you say. If you find him, and then you want me to talk to him, try and help him, then yes. But while you’re hunting him like dogs, no.’

‘You’re duty bound to help …’

‘I’m duty bound to do nothing. You can’t arrest me. I’m not in any way obstructing your process. I’ve spent the past year preparing for a match that isn’t going to take place. I’m tired, and I don’t want any more to do with this. Is that so hard to understand?’

He picked a pair of shoes off the floor and put them in his suitcase.

‘No,’ Patrese said. ‘No. I guess it’s not.’

There were days when Officer Sinclair Larsen, Boston Police Department, felt he was actually doing some good, actually contributing to the nation’s well-being. A day, for example, when a shopkeeper would stop him and say how much safer they felt now that foot patrols were being reintroduced to some of Boston’s higher-crime areas; or a day when he had to give evidence in court, knowing that his testimony would be part of the proof that put a gang of organized criminals behind bars.

And then there were days like today: an endlessly depressing litany of all the shit that the city’s detritus could scoop up and fling in his direction. Stolen cars, convenience-store robberies, and now the inevitable domestic violence call-out. What really got Larsen was the paucity of ambition
in these crimes. These weren’t daring or exotic master crimi
nals taking on the police in a battle of wits; they were nasty, brutish, squalid.

Squalid was the word of the day, he decided. The city’s Egleston Square district, sandwiched between Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, was squalid. The apartment complex outside which he was pulling up was damn sure squalid. It might have been OK when new, but now it looked like a trailer park without wheels. The perimeter fence sagged where it had fallen away from its supports, and the cars parked up against it all had dents in their hoods: sure signs that people climbed the fence and used the cars to break their fall, Larsen thought. Beer cans lay toppled on the ground like felled trees. Dogs barked, couples shouted at each other. Just another day in paradise.

Other units were en route, Larsen knew. The sensible thing would be to wait for them. All cops in the Greater Boston area had been briefed about Howard Lewis’ murder, and warned that they might be targeted in a similar fashion. The advice sheet circulated had contained the usual mix of health’n’safety overcaution and the bleeding obvious: be vigilant, vary your routes home, try to avoid being alone when out on the streets. Sinclair Larsen, along with at least 99.9 per cent of his fellow officers, reckoned that a cop who couldn’t be trusted to look after himself didn’t really have the right to call himself a cop at all.

Alone on the streets? He was a first responder, that was his job. If he got there before everyone else, so be it. The 911 call had described a screaming match and furniture crashing in apartment 24. The kind of low-lives who lived here weren’t above using fists on their women, and where fists came, knives and guns often followed. Larsen didn’t know whether he had time to spare. He didn’t want to find out too late that he hadn’t.

He came out of the car fast, gun drawn. No one in the communal gardens. The apartments were built on two levels. A quick check of the numbering showed him that 1–20 was first floor, 20–40 was second. There was a stairwell away to his left. He ran for it.

It stank of piss. Of course it did. There wasn’t a public staircase anywhere in the world that didn’t. He took the stairs two at a time, turned back on himself at the landing, and felt a blow to his face so sharp and savage that for a second he thought he must have run full tilt into the wall without realizing.

Sinking to his knees, hands coming to his face, gun clattering to the ground. A man above him, punching him for a second time, this time hard in the solar plexus, and the breath whistling out of him like a freight train. As he pitched forward, reflexively trying to get some air – any air – back into his lungs – Larsen caught a quick glimpse of his assailant. Hoodie. Smooth features. White skin. Gloves.

No sirens. Other units weren’t yet here. Have to get to apartment 24, Larsen thought, have to get to the domestic violence … and through the fog of pain, he realized dimly that there
was
no domestic violence in number 24. This was the call-out, right here; an ambush, an attack, first unwary copper gets it.

A couple of kicks to his ribs. He’d have screamed if he hadn’t been so busy sucking in breaths. Not that it would have made a difference. Places like this, no one came to investigate a fight, not unless they wanted to be next.

Hands turning him over, under his armpits, grabbing and dragging him up the stairs. The concrete slammed into Larsen’s back. He winced and twisted, grabbing upwards at the man’s chest. Couldn’t reach all the way to the man’s face, but Larsen’s fingers brushed against something. A chain, a medallion, something like that. He reached again, shirt and jacket riding up on his chest as he fastened his hand round the chain …

… and suddenly, just like that, the man with the hoodie dropped him and took off. By the time Larsen had struggled to his feet and half run, half tumbled back down the stairs to retrieve his gun, his attacker had run across the complex’ front yard, through the gates and was gone, weaving down the lines of dented cars till he disappeared from sight.

Patrese had asked that any attacks on Boston police officers be reported to him. A Columbia student had been murdered shortly before a Harvard student; by the same logic, the murder of a New York cop should presage something similar in the Boston area.

That Sinclair Larsen was white was unsurprising; apart from him fitting the tarot/chess pattern, four in every five Boston police officers were white. That he’d survived
was
surprising. That his attacker had voluntarily let him go seemed inexplicable.

Patrese didn’t like inexplicable. He got Larsen to tell him what had happened, blow by blow, no detail too small, no recounting too exhaustive.

Larsen went through the whole thing. When he finished, Patrese was still mystified. The $64,000 question: Why had
Larsen’s attacker suddenly dropped him? No other cops had
arrived, no curious resident had poked their head out of another apartment. Yes, Larsen had gotten hold of the chain round the man’s neck, but it had only come away in his hand once the man had dropped him; it hadn’t been the action of Larsen yanking the chain that had caused the man to drop him.

It didn’t make sense.

So Patrese made Larsen tell him again, even slower and more painstakingly than before. This time, Patrese played the part of the attacker: mimicking the ambush, pretending to drag Larsen along the ground, seeing how Larsen reached for the chain, shirt and jacket riding up …

There
.

Larsen had a tattoo on his stomach. A Red Sox logo, perhaps nine inches in diameter.

Right on the place where the patches of skin had been removed on the other victims.

The killer had seen the tattoo, and that had spared Larsen’s life. Whatever he and Kwasi wanted with the patches of skin, a big tattoo didn’t seem part of it. If the skin wasn’t clean, they weren’t interested. None of the other victims had had tattoos.

‘You want to see the chain?’ Larsen said.

Patrese was still thinking about the tattoos. ‘The chain?’

‘The one I grabbed from his neck.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Sure.’

Larsen passed over a transparent evidence bag. ‘We’ve got people checking it out. Mainly sold at the gift shop, I think.’

Patrese took the chain from the bag. It was silver, and had a circular charm bearing a seal. There were two men pictured: one with a hammer and anvil, the other engrossed in a book. They were leaning against a plinth marked ‘1861’, and below them was the legend
Mens Et Manus
. Mind and hands.

Words ran round the perimeter of the seal, but Patrese didn’t need to read them. He knew what they’d say, as he’d already seen this seal; two days ago, in fact.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Patrese called a sitrep meeting first thing Monday morning. Anderssen and Dufresne had come up the night before, and they’d been drinking with Patrese in his hotel bar till the small hours. Patrese had put it all on his room tab. God alone knew how he was going to get that one past the Bureau bean-counters. Perhaps he could call it a ‘liaison meeting with multi-jurisdictional law enforcement personnel’. Or maybe food was chargeable as a legitimate expense. Trouble was, every item on the tab was strictly liquid. Ah well.

Now he stood in front of the task force and outlined where they stood. Officer Larsen had been attacked by someone with an MIT pendant. Forensics were seeing what, if anything, they could get off that pendant by way of evidence. So far, all they’d managed to ascertain was that the pendant had been purchased from the MIT shop, where they sold hundreds each year, and that the only fingerprints were those of Sinclair Larsen where he’d grabbed at it during the attack.

Kwasi King was working with Thomas Unzicker of MIT on Project Misha. There was no way of knowing for sure whether Unzicker had been the guy who’d attacked Officer Larsen, or if Unzicker had called in the fake 911 call himself. Analysis of the tape revealed that the caller had used some sort of electronic voice modifier. But at the very least, they’d needed to investigate Unzicker further, which was exactly what they’d done. The task force had spent most of the weekend digging up whatever they could find on him, and boy was there a lot of it.

First, the Ivy League connection.

Not only was MIT just down the road from Harvard, with well-documented friction between the two, but Unzicker had been at Harvard beforehand: he’d done his undergraduate degree there. Patrese had asked for any Harvard therapy reports on Unzicker – the initial request to Ivy League colleges had been for current students only, so Unzicker hadn’t been included in that – and Harvard had come back with plenty.

That led Patrese on to the second point: Unzicker’s mental
problems. In childhood, Unzicker had suffered from a condi
tion called selective mutism, an anxiety disorder that manifests itself in the sufferer speaking very quietly and infrequently – and often not at all – in situations most people would find entirely normal and unthreatening. The mutism had, with sad predictability, been exacerbated by the reactions of other children. They’d teased him, offered their lunch money just to hear him talk, called him Trombone Boy for his habit of walking to school alone carrying his trombone, stuffed him in garbage cans and made him eat trash. When a teacher had threatened to fail him for not participating, he’d begun talking in a strange, deep voice which had sounded as though he’d been possessed by an alien or had something stuck in his mouth.