Blindside (23 page)

They stood together looking inside the house and listening for any sound. It was silent.

‘Does he have a family?’ Irvine asked.

‘Don’t know.’

‘It’s too quiet.’

‘Do you want to call for support?’

‘Armed response?’

He nodded.

Irvine looked inside the house. It felt empty. Or, at least, devoid of life. Whatever that would turn out to mean.

‘No. I don’t think we need to worry about anyone who might be in there.’

He got her meaning. Irvine walked inside.

There was an open staircase at the back of the hall leading up to a first-floor balcony with a glass guard along it. They went through each of the rooms on the ground floor and found nothing until they got to the kitchen at the rear of the house.

It was a high-end installation in black and grey with a central island and the best in appliances that money could buy. Marble-tiled steps led down to a dining area that had a glass roof.

Irvine walked around the island and stopped. She motioned for Armstrong to join her and pointed at the floor.

There was a dark smear of blood on the floor and a splash of it on one of the lower cabinet doors.

‘Looks like it was contained here,’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s no blood trail anywhere else down here.’

Irvine walked closer and saw that a drawer at the end of the island had been left open. There was a collection of towels in the drawer.

‘Probably took a towel from here,’ she said, pointing at the open drawer. ‘And applied it to the wound.’

Armstrong nodded.

‘Either he took him upstairs or outside.’

‘Let’s go upstairs.’

There was a trail of blood on the wooden floor of the first-floor balcony leading to a room at the far end of a long hallway. They walked carefully along the hall to avoid stepping in the blood and contaminating the scene.

The door at the end was closed. Irvine felt her heart thudding and blood rushing in her head. She reached out and opened the door.

It turned out that Marshall did have a family.

A woman was on the floor inside the door and her body prevented Irvine from pushing the door all the way open. Her face was discoloured from the beating she had suffered and her throat had been cut so deeply that her head was almost severed.

The room smelled of blood and evacuated bowels and Irvine put a hand to her nose when the stench hit her.

Marshall’s body was on the bed. She noticed straight away the mess of his right hand: two fingers were missing and the remaining ones were horribly disfigured. There was a pillow over his face. Or what was left of the pillow: shredded and soiled by blood from so many thrusts of a knife.

Irvine walked around the foot of the bed and found Marshall’s son lying on the floor on the far side of the bed. Armstong stood in the doorway staring at Marshall.

The boy was in his early teens, from what Irvine could tell from his clothes. It was impossible to know based on the mess where his face used to be.

Something burbled in Irvine’s stomach.

Hold it in, Becky
.

She turned from the boy’s body and looked at Armstrong.

‘There’s another one here. He’s just a boy.’

‘He tortured them.’ Armstrong continued to stare at Marshall. ‘Why?’

‘Looks to me like he did it because he enjoys it. Which makes him extremely dangerous.’

6

DS Ewen Cameron called Irvine from the other accountant’s house an hour later. She was standing in Marshall’s driveway as the Scenes of Crime team pulled up to the house in a van. Cameron was a fifteen-year street veteran and still his voice wavered.

‘They’re dead,’ he said.

‘How many?’

Please, no more kids
.

‘Two. Husband and wife.’

‘Were they tortured?’

He made a sound. Irvine wasn’t sure what it was supposed to have been.

‘Yeah, you could say that,’ he managed to say eventually.

‘Did they have any children?’

‘Looks like it from the photos in the house. A daughter. We’re still trying to track her down.’

‘But she’s not in the house?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

Armstrong came out of the house and stood beside her.

‘They found Scott and his wife,’ she told him. ‘Same story over at that house.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. But doesn’t sound like their kid got caught up in it. At least, not yet.’

Armstrong shifted from foot to foot. Irvine looked at him. It was clear he wanted to say something.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He stopped shuffling and met her eyes.

‘This is what the Frank Parkers of the world do, you know.’

‘Kenny, I’m not some bimbo straight out of school. I mean, I spent my time on patrol and I earned the right to the job I have now. I know what these people are like.’

‘Do you?’

‘I do. I’ve seen …’ She turned away from him as the first of the forensics team walked past her to enter the house. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she went on. ‘To know what people are capable of.’

‘And you still treated him like he was worthy of respect.’

She turned to face him, angry now.

‘That’s bullshit, Kenny, and you know it. I was doing my job. Following a line of inquiry and trying not to let my personal feelings get in the way of that.’

He started shuffling again. Didn’t look at her.

‘I’ll quite happily snap the cuffs on him if the time comes for it. But right now he might be able to help us find out who did this. Because we’re no closer now than when we started.’

‘He’s poison,’ he said, looking at her now.

She decided to ask him straight out. It felt like he wanted to tell her anyway. ‘What is it with you and him?’

Armstrong watched as more forensics drew up at the kerb.

‘I had a good mate who was undercover. Maybe three years ago now. Anyway, Parker found out and stitched him up. Made him look like a dirty cop and he went inside for eighteen months. Lost his job, his pension and his wife.’ Armstrong looked down the street, seeing something much further than the house at the end of the road. ‘He killed himself when he came out. First day, in fact.’

‘How do you know it was Parker?’

Armstrong gave her a look.

‘I’d take him over a thousand Frank Parkers.’

He left her and went back into the house.

The day dragged long. Time stretched out interminably. Irvine left Armstrong on scene at around five-thirty, he not saying very much to her now after the argument about Parker. She could do without his mood.

Back at Pitt Street she was surprised to see Liam Moore still at his desk. She told him that they were getting exactly nowhere: every witness smeared from the face of the planet.

‘You’ve got to give him credit,’ Moore told her. ‘I mean, he is committed to this scorched earth policy of wiping out everyone and anyone who can connect him to the bad drugs. It’s impressive in its singular purpose.’

‘Impressive?’

He shrugged his massive shoulders.

‘It’s all relative.’

‘I suppose.’

‘What about this Parker guy? Think he can come up with anything?’

‘I don’t know. I only met him the once.’

‘Keep an open mind. Armstrong will get over it.’

‘Yes, boss.’

Moore snorted, leaned back in his chair and stretched. Irvine waited for the chair to break under his bulk. She was grateful it held out.

Moore looked at his watch and then out at the almost empty office outside. Most everyone had gone home already. ‘Getting late,’ he told Irvine.

She looked around at the office then at her own watch. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Go home. Nothing more to do tonight.’

She stood and opened the door of Moore’s office.

‘And Becky,’ he said behind her. ‘We
will
get this guy.’

She turned back to look at him and nodded. Not sure that he was right.

7

It had been a frustrating morning for Logan and Cahill. The four D. Hunters that Bruce had tracked down turned out to have no remote connection to either Tim Stark or the FBI. They were a housewife in Broomfield, an attorney who worked for the public defender’s office, a construction worker who was holidaying in Vegas for the week and a fifteen-year-old high school student. They had known the details of the individuals from the information Bruce had given them. And it turned out that they were exactly what the records showed.

‘Dead end,’ Cahill said as they got in the car after the last house call with the teenager’s mother.

‘What did you expect? That it was some sort of code name?’

Cahill gave Logan a pained look.

‘So,
now
are you going to tell the FBI about it?’

‘Why? It’s a dead end.’

‘It is in Denver. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to be restricted to the city?’

From the look on Cahill’s face, Logan figured that the thought had not occurred to his friend.

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Cahill said.

Logan shook his head.

‘Jesus,’ Cahill went on. ‘How stupid do I feel.’

Logan told him not to worry about it.

‘But we’ve done what you came to do. You got an answer on Tim and Melanie can rest a bit easier now. Let’s go home.’

Cahill gripped the steering wheel.

‘Maybe we should talk to Webb again,’ he said. ‘Tell him what we found out.’

‘I think that would be sensible.’

Cahill started the car up and pulled out from the kerb. Logan checked his phone and saw that he had two voicemail messages: one from Irvine and one from Ellie. He listened to both and wanted to be back home with them.

‘What time is it?’ Cahill asked him.

Logan checked his watch and said it was after three.

‘Okay, let’s get back to the room to get freshened up, then we’ll grab an early dinner. We can go see Webb tomorrow.’

‘And arrange flights back home?’

‘Maybe.’

Logan wasn’t convinced.

Logan took the laptop from his bag and went to the bar in the hotel to wait for Cahill to finish up in the bathroom. He ordered a bottle of locally brewed wheat beer – Easy Street – and sat at a table by the window, looking out on to the street. The beer was good.

He put the laptop on the table and opened it, settling back in his seat to read the newspaper he had bought that morning while he waited for the computer to boot. The first couple of pages were taken up by some story about illegal campaign donations in a local election. Seemed to Logan like politicians were the same the world over.

The computer beeped, waiting for him to input a password. He typed it in and connected to the Internet via the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection.

He was annoyed by the futility of their search today for the elusive D. Hunter, so he found a local phone directory and typed the name into the search box.

The search returned two of the people they had checked out today, a whole bunch of other, plain old ‘Hunter’ entries, one Dr Hunter and a law
firm – Dutton Hunter Green. He thought that the law firm might be more of a possibility than the others so searched again for its own website and then scrolled through the names of all the lawyers. Nothing jumped out at him.

He tried a new Google search: ‘Hunter, Denver’. It returned over a hundred pages of results. He skimmed through the first fifteen pages before he saw one that caught his attention. It was an article from the same newspaper ten years ago – about a young police officer injured in a bank robbery which had descended into a gunfight. It had been an FBI operation that he stumbled into before his very first shift as a uniformed cop. His name was Jacob Hunter.

Logan read the story twice, something nagging at his mind. There was a quote from the Chief of Detectives about the investigation into the shooting.

Logan had a thought: if Hunter started in the force ten years ago, maybe he was a detective now.

D. Hunter – Detective Hunter.

That would make sense. What if Tim Stark had seen something that meant this Hunter was somehow involved in whatever the gang he had infiltrated was up to?

He ran a search on ‘Detective Hunter, Denver’, found a recent news story about a disabled veteran who had been found dead in one of the city centre parks. There was a quote from a homicide detective about some potentially related deaths in recent weeks. As usual, the cop was noncommittal.

The cop’s name was Detective Jake Hunter.

‘What do you think?’ Logan asked Cahill back in their room. ‘Maybe it’s him.’

Logan waited while Cahill read the articles Logan had found.

‘I don’t know,’ Cahill said when he was done reading. ‘I mean, why would an undercover FBI agent have an interest in a city homicide detective?’

Logan thought for a moment.

‘Maybe he’s dirty. The detective. Involved with whatever Stark was investigating.’

Cahill scanned the stories for the third time.

‘We need to tell the FBI, right?’ Logan said.

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We don’t know what his part is in all of this. Or if it’s really his name that Tim sent to himself. If he is involved, could be Tim was simply reminding himself that he was someone he needed to speak to about the case. I mean, you remember what Webb said. Tim was using an alias on the flight because his undercover status had been compromised. He must have known the bad guys were after him and maybe he didn’t know how much time he had or whether he’d make it out alive.’

‘Webb didn’t exactly say that, Alex.’

‘He said as much.’

‘If you’re thinking what I
know
you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea. Let the professionals handle it.’

Cahill put the paper down and stared at Logan.

‘After everything we’ve been through over the last couple of years, you can say that to me without a trace of irony? You’ve seen the so-called professionals at work. Does that give you the confidence to hand something over to them?’

‘Not the FBI.’

‘Same thing so far as I’m concerned. I mean, I’m not about to trust something like this to those guys. I owe it to Tim to do more than that.’

8