Born in a Burial Gown (40 page)

He was being held in a secure hospital room in the Cumberland Infirmary. Armed guards were outside the door. He was immobile but alert. One of his wrists was handcuffed to the metal bed frame.

Fluke took a seat near the bed. Mortimer took one near the rear of the room.

‘Who hired you?’ Fluke asked.

Cross told him. It was as Fluke suspected. A nobody thinking he was a somebody. A dot.com millionaire who couldn’t bear to lose. He’d been a victim of Samantha’s. Instead of paying, he’d tried to kill her at the drop. She was too good for him but she knew her card was marked in the States. She’d fled back to the UK. Cross had been hired to find and terminate her.

The FBI had already arrested dot.com. Some of the crimes in the case had been committed in the States. Soliciting murder. He’d never see the light of day again.

‘How’d you find her?’ Fluke asked. ‘She’d changed her appearance. You had no idea what she looked like.’

‘No. But I knew what she did. As long as she kept on doing it I knew I’d catch up with her. It’s what I do. It was time-consuming but the result was inevitable.’

‘I want more details than that, you prick,’ Fluke said. ‘If I walk out, the deal’s off. You can fucking rot here.’

‘Empty threat, Mr Fluke. We both know as soon as I can walk, I’m going home.’

Fluke said nothing. Cross stared at him and realised that Fluke wasn’t bluffing.

‘I knew she was back in the UK. I came over and started tracking her. I monitored the police computers for drugged rapes, ones where the victim had disappeared. Every time I found one I had someone search your PNC for me. I was looking for name searches in the same town with no hits. It was laborious but eventually, I found one of her victims. He refused to speak to me, but at least I knew my methods were working. The next victim I found was in Birmingham, the one after than in Glasgow. All rich men with too much to lose.’

Fluke nodded. It was a variation on how he’d thought it had happened. He understood how Cross had tracked down old victims. He didn’t yet know how he’d managed to get ahead of her though. Cross was just getting to that part.

‘The next man I spoke to was a landowner in Norwich. Landed gentry, I think you call them. He was with her when she got a phone call. Before she could hide the screen he’d seen the number. He recognized it as a Cumbrian area code. 01229 apparently. Kendal. He knew the code because he had a friend up there he goes grouse shooting with.’

‘So?’

‘So. What if this was her researching a potential victim. She must select them somehow. She’d get most of her intel before she arrives in a city. That’s how I’d do it anyway.’

‘So you came to Cumbria to look for her?’

‘How do you catch a ghost, Mr Fluke?’

Fluke shrugged.

‘You wait for the ghost to come to you. So yes, I came to Cumbria. A calculated risk but I literally had nothing else to go on. Nothing at all. This had been the only slip up she’d made and it could’ve meant nothing. I monitored all drug-assisted rape allegations in here through a contact I made in your police force, hoping for a break.’

‘Gibson Tait?’

‘No, not Gibson Tait. He was her contact it seems. I had someone else. I don’t think they even knew they were breaking the law.’

‘And she did go back to work?’ Fluke said, thinking of Kenneth Diamond.

‘Yes, I had a break. A rape, drug-assisted, was reported. The victim couldn’t remember her attacker. It fit the profile. I now just needed to identify him before she could get paid. Before she became invisible again.’

‘Bit of a stretch,’ Fluke said.

‘I was could only work with what I knew about her. I knew her methods. Knew she chose men without criminal records. She didn’t want the police identifying them. It would have defeated the purpose.’

‘How’d you find him?’ Fluke knew how FMIT did it but it wouldn’t have worked for Cross. He’d have needed to find Kenneth Diamond to find Samantha. They found Samantha first.

‘I persuaded my man to search your PNC to see who’d made searches without hits. Searches for men in Cumbria who weren’t on the computer.’

Fluke understood. Samantha had asked Gibson Tait to see if Kenneth Diamond was on PNC. He wasn’t, but the computer recorded the search anyway. Cross had simply got someone to check who was looking at names without results. He could probably narrow it down to a couple of days before the rape was reported. Fluke knew Samantha had asked Tait for one final check to make sure nothing had changed.

Cross continued and confirmed Fluke’s suspicions. ‘There were eight names in the period I specified. I spoke to four of them. Pretended I was a detective from the rape team. The first three didn’t know anything.’

Shit!

Fluke remembered getting an email a few days ago about a man impersonating a police officer investigating a rape. Two separate complaints if he remembered correctly. Nothing had been stolen and CID hadn’t been putting too many resources into it. Fluke hadn’t given it a second thought.

‘The fourth man was Kenneth Diamond. As soon as I explained what I was there for I knew it was him. He tried to tell me he was being blackmailed and that he was innocent. I removed him from his property without difficulty, he thought he was being arrested. I moved Diamond to the empty house next door. Took him into a cellar they used to store cheap wine.’

‘You tortured him.’

‘I got what I needed.’

‘You’re a psychopath.’ Fluke remembered looking at Diamond’s face. It was so swollen, his features so badly mutilated that it had been impossible to tell what he looked like.

‘Maybe,’ Cross conceded. ‘But I needed information straight away and I needed to be able to rely on it, I didn’t have much time. From what I understood from my client, she doesn’t wait long to get paid. She approaches her victims, demands cash and expects it straight away. I needed to get to the drop before her.’

Fluke reached for the water jug and poured himself a glass.

‘He told me that he was a powerful man although I’ve since found out that it’s his youngest son who leads the organisation. He threatened me, he begged me. He told me his family were out looking, and I knew she’d disappear if those idiots got within a mile of her. I had to be sure he was telling me the truth first time. I was only going to get one chance at this.’

Fluke’s jaw tightened. Nathaniel Diamond was anything but an idiot. If he ever found out who’d killed his father he didn’t think there was a cave dark enough or a safe house so remote that he wouldn’t find Cross.’

‘You smashed his elbows and knees with a hammer. You crushed his testicles. All you had to do was tell him you had a shared goal. He’d have told you all you needed to know.’

‘I did and he did.’ Cross was showing no remorse. He’d stopped smiling at least. He was discussing it with Fluke the way a TV repairman might explain why a diode wasn’t working correctly. Calmly, using small words. ‘As soon as I showed him my Ruger, he told me everything I needed.’

‘So why torture him? You don’t strike me as a sadist. Psychotic obviously but you seem to be in control.’

‘I think you know the answer, Mr Fluke.’

‘Humour me or you can humour the inside of Durham nick for the next forty years.’

Cross raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. ‘Very well. When I found Diamond, I was improvising. He threatened me with his criminal underworld contacts so I decided to make it look exactly like that. An underworld execution. If you hadn’t found Samantha, you would have no looked no further than a drug’s connection. You certainly wouldn’t have linked it with a rape allegation.’

‘What about Tait though? You used the same gun. We were bound to link them. He’s not involved in the same business as Diamond,’ Fluke said.

‘I’ll help you there, Mr Fluke. I hadn’t decided what to do with him, that’s the simple truth. I considered setting him up for Diamond but couldn’t make it work. I could have made him disappear for a while but someone would have started looking eventually. In the end I put him in the compost heap to hide the smell. By the time I was ready to do anything, you had found Samantha, as you call her. I decided moving him was too dangerous. I sat and waited, to see how close you were getting. And you came knocking. You’ve no idea how close I came to killing you. How’d you like my English, by the way? Courtesy of the CIA linguistics department.’

‘That’s enough, Cross,’ Mortimer snapped. The first thing he’d said during the whole interview.

Cross ignored him. ‘I got through your interview with my fake accent and a bit of computer nonsense. I knew it wouldn’t hold, though, and that I’d have to leave.

‘What did Diamond tell you?’ Fluke said, deciding that he needed to move on.

‘Everything.’

‘Talk me through it.’

Cross ignored him again. ‘You already know. She phoned him. Told him that she’d reported him for rape. Laid out all the evidence the police had and explained the only thing they didn’t have was his name. Fifty thousand pounds would make the whole thing go away. Told him she’d ring with the where and when.’

‘He had that kind of cash?’

‘Not to hand, no, but his family did and, in the meantime, they went looking for her. He put his son in charge of finding her. I don’t know what their intentions were but I suspect her passing would have been cruel and unusual compared to mine. I took his phone and when she rang it was me she spoke to, not him. I’m good at accents.’

‘She told you where she wanted the money?’

‘She did. I had an hour to get there and set up observation. I only had once chance. Fail, and she’d never resurface.’

‘Where was the meeting?’

‘The library in the mall in Carlisle. If you can call something so small a mall.’

The Lanes was Carlisle’s indoor shopping centre. Not big compared to other towns and cities but it had a reasonable selection of cafes and shops. It was also home to the council-run library. A decent enough place for a cash drop. Busy but not crowded. Large windows covering the main approach. Fire exits leading out to the shopping centre but also into the delivery areas.

‘You got there first?’

‘Oh no. She was good. She would’ve already been there. That’s where she would’ve have called from. She’d have been able to slip out quietly if she sensed trouble. If Diamond turned up with help or the police showed.’

‘So how did you get in without her seeing? You didn’t even know what she looked like.’

‘I didn’t know what she looked like but I still knew what I was looking for. I also knew what I’d have done. All I had to do was cover the exit she’d use. No way would she leave by the main exit. If there was someone waiting, that’s where she’d have expected it. She’d be slipping out through the staff exit, into the delivery areas. I waited there for her.’

‘And?’

‘Fifteen minutes after the agreed time, she came out. She was good. Very good. I nearly lost her twice, but I was better it seemed. I’ve been trained to follow the best.’ He paused and looked Mortimer. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Bit too much information there, Mr Fluke. Where were we? Ah yes, she was careful but I followed her home. I watched her flat all night and all next day.’

Fluke hadn’t yet made any notes. Up to then, everything Cross said fitted with the facts.

‘I waited until she went out. I got into her flat quickly enough. I avoided the crude anti-intruder alert under her doormat and the lock wasn’t challenging. I waited in her living room. Two hours later, she came back. She came in carefully but the potato chip under the mat was undisturbed. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She ground some coffee and filled her filter machine. She came into the living room to wait for it. I treated her with respect. She was dead before she knew I was there. One shot to the back of the head. I caught her before she fell. No noise.’

Fluke had heard nothing comparable before. He’d heard killers confess. Normally crimes committed in anger or passion. The perpetrator wanting to talk, to get it off their chest. Sometimes he’d heard confessions from murderers whose lies had talked them into such tight corners, only the truth was left. Cross was different. He could have been telling him how he’d got rid of the weeds in his lawn. It was descriptive rather than emotive. There was no pride. There was no remorse. He was just telling him what happened.

‘You’ve seen the golf bag I’d brought with me. A marvellous invention for my trade. No more rolled up carpets for contract killers,’ he said, smiling wryly at his own joke. Fluke didn’t join in.

‘What could be more innocent than someone taking their golf clubs to their car?

‘When did you write down your blood test results?’ Fluke asked.

Cross looked surprised. ‘So that’s how you found me? I was wondering about that. I got the phone call when I was waiting in her flat. Jotted them down, more habit than anything else. I’m cured now. Well, in remiss—’

‘You took her body in Diamond’s car?’ Fluke interrupted. He didn’t give a shit about his health.

Cross looked mildly hurt. ‘No, Gibson Tait’s,’ he replied.

There was a natural pause in the conversation.

Cross spoke again. ‘How did you find her, by the way? I’ve been doing this a long time and not once has a body been found that wasn’t supposed to be, and not once did I have anywhere near as good a place as that.’

It wasn’t quid pro quo. Cross could die wondering. ‘Why does it matter? We found her,’ he said.

‘Professional curiosity,’ Cross replied. He waited for an answer with a bemused expression. ‘Can I assume by your reticence that there was a witness? It can’t have been that boy who lived opposite her. He didn’t see me, I know that. Even if he did, all he’d have seen was me walking out with a golf bag. He didn’t know where I was going. It could only have been someone on the site. It must have been that office.’

Fluke said nothing.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Fluke, I won’t be arranging retribution.’ He waited for Fluke to speak. ‘Oh, well. Sloppy work on my part but I thought the site was ironclad. No way was she being found. Not for centuries.’

He reached for his glass of water. Because of the angle of the handcuffs, he struggled to get a proper drink. He coughed. Fluke thought the restraints were a bit of overkill but knew it was pointless arguing with anyone. Cross didn’t deserve any of his compassion anyway.