Fifth Victim Read online

  As I left the house, I found Raleigh was already loading Dina’s horses into a trailer hitched to the back of the riding club pickup. His arm was in a scuffed cast, and he had brought along one of the ubiquitous girl grooms to help him with his cargo.

  When he spotted me, he gave me a brief wave, but didn’t stop to chat. I guessed he was anxious to be out of there with his remarkable piece of good fortune, before anyone came to their senses about exactly what it was they were giving away. Geronimo might be getting on a bit, but he was a willing ride, and Cerdo had the potential to develop into a top-flight dressage horse. More than worth having an arm broken.

  I didn’t see Dina before I left the house. She was, according to Silvana, locked in her bedroom, weeping. I wondered if Caroline Willner knew that her daughter would probably never forgive her for this. It was a sad reflection, I thought, that Dina was more upset by being forced to give away her horses than she had been about Torquil’s murder.

  With the Buell consigned to the nearest breaker’s yard, I was in the agency Navigator. For once, I can’t say I was sorry to have more than three tons of steel around me as I went hand-to-hand with the morning traffic. Not to mention the visibility afforded by the vehicle’s extra height.

  That, and the fact that the Navigator lived up to its name by having the latest satnav fitted – as did all Parker’s vehicles – the system linked to the traffic reports. It suddenly began warning of heavy congestion ahead on the 495, and advised me to get off the freeway, fast.

  Without that, I might not have spotted the tail.

  He wasn’t very good, which was the first reason I caught onto him. The second was because of a cluster of slow-moving trucks that meant I had to accelerate hard and then change lanes late to make my exit.

  I heard a cacophony of horns blast behind me, and checked my mirrors just to make doubly sure I wasn’t the cause, even though I knew I’d left the other vehicles plenty of room and completed the manoeuvre smoothly. One advantage of this job was the opportunity to take plenty of offensive and defensive driving courses.

  In my rear-view mirror, I saw an old tan-coloured Honda Accord pop out of the line of trucks onto the slip road behind me, like a cork squeezed from a bottle. I saw the front end of one of the Peterbilts dip as it braked hard enough to fishtail the trailer behind the massive chrome-laden cab.

  I sucked in a breath, but the truck driver corrected the wriggle before it got anywhere near out of hand. His fist was still wedged on the horn as his rig disappeared from view, giving a nice working demonstration of the Doppler effect.

  The lights at the top of the slip road were against me, which was maybe another reason I was feeling twitchier than normal. I wondered how long it would be before I’d be able to view a red light as anything other than the prelude to disaster.

  With my foot on the brake, I watched the Accord roll up slowly behind me, just to get a look at the driver’s face. I suppose I was part suspicious, and part curious about a man who enjoyed the thrill of almost becoming the puréed filling in a truck sandwich on his morning commute. I half expected to catch him yacking on his cellphone, oblivious.

  Instead, his reflected image showed someone who was intensely uncomfortable. It was a dull day, leaning towards overcast with a chance of rain, but he was wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap with the brim pulled well down. I could just make out the intertwined NY logo on the front. He was a young guy, from what I could see of the rest of his features, dark hair sticking out at the sides, pale skin, wearing a T-shirt. He rang no bells.

  One hand gripped the top of the steering wheel so hard he was going to leave dents for each finger. He didn’t seem to know quite what to do with the other, and currently had his elbow resting on the door top, fingers rubbing at his temple in a self-conscious gesture that only drew attention to how hard he was trying to mask his face.

  I’d already glanced down at the front of the Accord before it was hidden behind the Navigator’s tail, but there was no plate. Nothing overtly suspicious about that. Nineteen US states did not require a front licence plate, and neighbouring Pennsylvania was one of them, even if New York was not.

  Still, it was … convenient, if nothing else.

  I drove on, sticking to the speed limits, making no sudden moves and giving no indication that I’d spotted my tail, if that’s what he was. Coincidentally, he happened to be heading from Long Island towards Manhattan, but so were thousands of other people at that time of day.

  My cellphone was slotted into the hands-free kit on the dash, and I had Parker’s number on speed dial. As usual, it hardly seemed to ring out before he answered.

  ‘Hi, boss,’ I said. ‘I think I may have a problem.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  So I did, short and sweet, adding, ‘Could be nothing, but after yesterday I’m sure you’ll forgive me for being a little jumpy in traffic.’

  ‘You did right, Charlie. How d’you want to play this?’

  ‘I’m tempted to simply call the cops and get them to pick him up. After Torquil’s death, I would have said they’ll play ball with that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Parker agreed, and I heard the marked reluctance in his voice. ‘But that may well cause big trouble for our client.’

  ‘Nothing she doesn’t deserve.’

  I heard him sigh. ‘Yeah, well, not everybody gets what they deserve. While we’re still in Mrs Willner’s employ, we have to protect her interests as far as we can – and yours. Drive straight to the office. The parking garage has a security entry system. He can’t follow you there.’

  ‘So, we just let him get away?’

  Another set of overhead lights loomed in front of me. I must have just hit the timing wrong, because all of them seemed to be turning against me. Maybe I’d offended the small god of traffic lights and he was showing his wrath in the only way he knew. I eased off the throttle. My tail was still following, again unhappy about being forced to close up.

  ‘We’re not law enforcement, Charlie,’ Parker said, a hint of pleading behind the firm words. ‘In theory it’s not our job to catch the bad guys.’

  ‘It’s our job to stop them.’ I glanced in the mirror again. ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Charlie, I—’

  But suddenly I wasn’t listening to what Parker was saying, because in that moment’s slice of view, I realised the identity of the guy in the tan Accord, and now this wasn’t about theoretical boundaries anymore.

  This had become very personal.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ‘He’s injured!’ I said, cutting across whatever Parker was saying. ‘He’s wearing a T-shirt and he’s just lifted his right arm, but stiff, awkward. I see a bandage.’

  I remembered the close-up CCTV image of the guy in the passenger seat of the Dodge, throwing his arms up as the side glass rained around him. Maybe even throwing an arm into the path of my next round. The arm nearest the window. His right arm.

  Parker went silent for a moment, all arguments about law enforcement intervention put on hold.

  ‘Can you engage with minimum risk?’ he asked then.

  Risk. An all-purpose word with a raft of meanings. Risk of success. Risk of discovery. Risk of imprisonment. Risk of injury or death.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, his voice shortened and tense. ‘If you can, lead him somewhere … quieter. What’s your current location?’

  ‘On Atlantic Avenue – don’t ask, it was the satnav’s choice. I was going to take the Williamsburg Bridge in but there must have been some sort of traffic snarl-up.’

  ‘Stay on Atlantic and head for Bushwick. Plenty of places there to have a nice long … discussion, without being disturbed.’

  Places where the residents aren’t likely to call the cops, more like.

  I said dryly, ‘The last time I went to Bushwick, I was arrested in a brothel.’

  ‘Yeah, try not to do that again, huh?’ He paused, as if hating to ask, but doing so anyway. ‘You need backup?’r />
  ‘No time. I’ll call you.’

  ‘You better, or I’ll be sending search parties.’ Another pause, and this time I heard the smile in his voice. ‘And when you talk to this guy, Charlie, be polite.’

  No lasting damage.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, and hung up.

  I got off Atlantic at the next lights, started threading deeper into run-down side streets lined with decrepit apartment buildings that looked barely able to support the weight of their own roof. The factories were huge old red-brick affairs, closed mostly to the point of dereliction. Someone had told me that Bushwick had the cheapest rents in the whole of New York City, but you got exactly what you paid for. I saw nothing to disprove it.

  As I’d reminded Parker, the last time I’d been here – the last time I’d done more than drive through the place with the windows up and the door locks buttoned – it had ended badly. I’d been arrested in a police raid on a brothel, in the company of Sean, my father, and an underage hooker. Not one of our finer moments.

  My tail, meanwhile, stuck within a couple of cars’ lengths all the way. He was too anxious about getting cut off at lights and losing me to ask himself where the hell I might be leading him. He might as well have had a flashing neon sign on the roof.

  Eventually, after several abrupt turns, I found myself back in the same kind of area as that seedy brothel. The scenery was overwhelmed by gang-tag graffiti and litter. Not so much quiet as cowed, with no inquisitive faces likely to appear at windows. Hardly any windows, for a start, and most of those had part-rotted plywood instead of glass.

  It was not a side of the city mentioned on the tourist tours, but perfect for what I had in mind.

  I slowed, ducking in my seat and making a big show of looking at the buildings on either side of me, as if searching for an address. The guy in the Accord naturally hung back, so he was caught flat-footed when I hit the accelerator and the Navigator’s massive V8 attempted its best impression of a fighter jet leaving an aircraft-carrier catapult along the empty street.

  The Accord driver floored the throttle in an attempt to close the gap. Immediately I was up to speed, I stamped on the brake pedal and stuck the gear lever into ‘Reverse’. The transmission thunked in protest, but Lincoln build ’em tough and I had actually managed to pick up some rearward velocity when I connected with the nose of the Accord.

  The laws of physics took over at this point. The Navigator’s large ground clearance and twenty-plus inches of departure angle meant its fat rear tyres were already attacking the Accord’s front bumper before the overhanging body fouled on the low-slung bonnet.

  The tyres gripped and lifted, carried up and on by buckets of torque and a driver who was not about to let her foot off just yet. The Navigator mounted the front end of the Accord and sat on it, crushing the engine bay. I can only imagine what it must have looked like from inside the car.

  I rammed the gear lever back into ‘Drive’ and, with less difficulty than I’d imagined, bounced back down onto the road surface. I’d always been taught to ram a solid object with the back of a vehicle rather than the front, if that were possible. Fewer vital moving parts to damage, for a start. As it was, the Navigator still felt perfectly driveable. The airbags hadn’t even deployed. Glancing in the mirrors, I was pretty sure the Accord was a write-off.

  Well, good!

  By the time I was out from behind the Navigator’s wheel and level with the wreck, leading with my left shoulder, I had the SIG out in a double-handed grip and pointed firmly at the driver’s fear-frozen head. It took him about half a second to jerk both hands up in surrender, palms facing.

  The speed with which he got his right hand in the air, in particular, gave me a moment’s horrible creeping doubt. Bullet wounds, in my experience, severely restricted all movement, regardless of the situation. In the back of my mind, I began to wonder if I might have to go for a variation on the ‘I’m just a girlie and my foot slipped off the brake’ excuse.

  Ah, well, too late to worry about that now …

  ‘Out!’ I barked, firm but not shouting. The driver’s window was down, so I didn’t have to. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them. Put them out of the window, right now! Come on, both hands!’

  I moved round towards the A pillar, staying forward of the door hinge and keeping my knees soft in case he tried anything.

  He didn’t.

  In fact, the Accord driver fumbled in his haste to comply, fingers scrabbling awkwardly for the exterior door handle. He climbed out, shaky, his bandaged right arm beginning to droop. As he shuffled forwards he was leaning to that side, as if to compensate or maybe hoping to disguise the injury.

  I transferred the SIG to my right hand only and edged closer, flicking the sunglasses and baseball hat off with my left and chucking them back into his car. He flinched as I uncovered his face, almost cringing.

  My pursuer was maybe in his early twenties, late teens at a push, neither fat nor thin, with dark blondish hair, casually cut so its natural curl was taking over. His T-shirt and jeans were tight enough that I could tell he wasn’t carrying without having to frisk him. I frisked him anyway, just to be sure.

  In the back pocket of his jeans I discovered a battered canvas wallet. Inside, along with a credit card and loose change was a driver’s licence that could well have been genuine.

  I checked the picture, compared it to the face in front of me. Ross Martino, with an address in Elizabeth, across in New Jersey, right under the final approach for Newark International. I memorised it, threw the wallet back to him. And then, more in fear of a random police patrol than anything else, I tucked the SIG back under my jacket.

  Ross Martino relaxed visibly as the gun disappeared from view. Or maybe not relaxed, but certainly became so much less tense that the effect was the same. And as his fear released its grip on his senses, his peripheral vision opened up again. Maybe that was why he suddenly realised the state of the flattened Accord.

  ‘My car! Aw, man, you wrecked my car.’ His accent wandered under stress, I noted, veering from an artificial neutrality down towards more working-class origins.

  ‘You wrecked my bike,’ I fired back. ‘This just makes us even.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ He went almost squeaky with outrage. ‘Shit, man, are you crazy? Just look what you did …’

  ‘Crazy? No. Livid? Well, now you’re talking.’

  ‘Hey, I—’

  I didn’t have time for this. So far, nothing had stirred in the buildings on either flank, but how long that state of affairs would continue was anyone’s guess. I lunged forwards and grabbed the biceps of his right arm, just about in the centre of the bandaged area, and dug in hard.

  The effect was immediate and severe. His speech chopped off, eyes ballooning as the spike of pain locked him up solid. He staggered back against the door-frame, almost fell. I pushed up close.

  ‘Yeah, getting shot’s a bitch, isn’t it?’

  ‘Shot? What the shit are you talking about? I ain’t been shot!’

  Under the pain I registered surprise – shock, even – but no desperate invention. No outright lies.

  ‘Prove it – whatever’s under there,’ I said, and when he wavered, I sighed and reached towards the SIG again. ‘Or I will give you something to compare it with. Lose the bandage.’

  I didn’t even need to clear the holster. As soon as my hand flipped under my jacket, he was already tugging at the dressing, letting it unravel down his arm like a loosely dressed mummy, paddling it on its way.

  Beneath the bandage was a simple rectangle of gauze and a mass of intertwining bruises with a definite shape at their epicentre. I gestured and, with obvious reluctance, he peeled back the gauze. Only then did I recognise the central pattern on his discoloured flesh.

  It was a near-perfect partial imprint of a horse’s hind shoe.

  Horses’ hind feet are a very different shape to the front, more oval, less rounded, so their hoofprints are distinctive. And I realised at the
same time that I’d been coming at this from completely the wrong direction.

  When Cerdo had let rip with both back legs at Dina’s would-be abductor, that day at the riding club, he’d landed a direct hit on the man’s upper arm. That much I knew.

  The thin curve of metal with its central fullered groove – designed to give more grip in soft ground – had caused a small but nasty gash, even through the guy’s clothing. It should have been professionally stitched, but I could understand why he’d kept away from the hospitals.

  The sheer horsepower behind the blow had also caused a welter of bruises. After several days, they were dispersing in multicoloured array in all directions along his arm. It looked like he’d probably torn up the muscles at the same time.

  But no way was it a gunshot wound.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s ironic,’ I said after a moment’s inspection, ‘that you clobbered Dina’s riding instructor with that baseball bat, and it was her horse who laid into you?’

  Ross scowled, carefully sticking the gauze back in place and gathering up the streamers of bandage. He didn’t want to even look at me.

  I shrugged. ‘OK, you don’t want to talk here, that’s fine – talk to the police instead.’ I hooked my cellphone out of my pocket, started to dial. ‘But you were the one following me, don’t forget.’

  He hadn’t forgotten, not for long. He barely let me key in the first digit.

  ‘OK, OK! Jesus, why d’you think I’ve been on the run, man? I daren’t go home, in case the cops are there already. We thought the big guy at the riding club was the bodyguard, all right?’ he admitted through his teeth. ‘All we knew was she had a bodyguard called Charlie, and it sounded like she called him that. How the hell were we supposed to know you’d be a chick, huh? I mean, c’mon – shit, I thought your name was Pam or something.’

  It might almost have been funny, if it wasn’t so bloody tragic instead. ‘What were you going to do if you’d managed to grab her?’ I asked. ‘Bury her alive? Or beat her to death first, like Torquil?’