Raw Bone (31 page)

“Quite. Well, detective, Colonel Lyttelton requested we meet in a less formal environment.”

“By which you mean secret and confidential,” MacNeice said.

“I prefer the term
less formal
.” The smile was gone. “Your meeting will last one hour and thirty minutes. All questions are permissible, with the understanding that some may go
unanswered, for national security reasons. The colonel is in the city for this meeting only, following which he will fly home to London.” Portman’s smile returned and appeared sincere; he wanted to avoid any diplomatic missteps. “Are we clear?”

They nodded and Portman took them into an elegantly appointed sitting room and on through a set of oak panelled doors to the drawing room. Lyttelton was standing by a large window, looking out to the garden.

“Detective Superintendent MacNeice and Detective Inspector Aziz, please allow me to introduce Colonel Sir Giles Lyttelton.”

Lyttelton swung around and walked smartly toward them. Crisp handshakes done, Portman said, “I’ll take my leave, then.” Stepping backwards, he pulled the oak doors closed behind him. Lyttelton motioned for them to sit down.

A trim man just under six feet, the colonel wore a tailored dark blue suit, a red tie with tiny gold SAS heraldic crests on the diagonal, and a white shirt with a crisp cutaway collar. His shoes were deep burgundy and polished to glass. It occurred to MacNeice that Lyttelton would be impressive in his regimental dress uniform, though this Savile Row number was a close second.

The pleasantries that followed, primarily focused on Aziz’s English accent, were brief. Lyttelton positioned himself on the window side of the refined Edwardian mahogany table, which meant MacNeice and Aziz sat opposite. The remaining chairs had been moved off to line the wall. There was a large manila envelope on the table in front of him.

Clever
, MacNeice thought. The colonel would be in silhouette and they’d be squinting at him against daylight. He was free to study their brightly lit faces while remaining unobserved—a military brain choosing his opponent’s position on the field of battle.

“If you don’t mind, colonel, I’ll just close those curtains.” Before Lyttelton could object, MacNeice had levelled the playing field.

The colonel was handsome and masculine, an echo of earlier British adventurers and explorers. He had sharp, falcon-like features, a narrow nose and piercing eyes, with flesh drawn so tight over his cheekbones that two vertical lines dropped to his chin like cables anchoring a suspension bridge. Close-cropped salt and pepper hair was swept severely away from his temples and forehead. It was clear the man was a hunter, a single-purpose creature.

“Shall we proceed to the matter at hand,” Lyttelton said. It was a non-question delivered with a brief, squinty smile. He took off his jacket—trim torso, flat stomach—and draped it crisply over a nearby chair.

He pulled a file folder from the envelope, opened it and pushed a photograph of a man in a dress uniform across the table. Jacko Mars Bishop. “His name is Robert Gordon Buchanan.” As they studied the image, a prototype of the warrior portraits released to the media whenever a soldier was killed in action, all MacNeice could see was the man who had terrorized him and Samantha and left them for dead. “The finest soldier in the finest regiment I know,” Lyttelton added.

“Buchanan re-enlisted twice and served his full term,” he went on. “He was decorated several times for valour. In Yugoslavia, for example, during the 1990s war, with one wounded comrade in the back of his Land Rover and only a young recruit beside him, Buchanan faced down a Serbian captain and twenty heavily armed troops. He led forty-three Croatian female students and their six female teachers to safety in a UN compound.” With each citation he mentioned, Lyttelton pulled out another document to prove it.

MacNeice and Aziz waited and watched. When the file folder was empty, Lyttelton set it aside to reveal another. This one he didn’t open, just placed both hands flat on top of it. MacNeice noticed a ring with the SAS seal on the baby finger of his right hand.

“You served with him, colonel, throughout his time with the SAS?” MacNeice asked.

“I did. And I tried to persuade Robert to stay in, but as you know, there’s no shortage of conflicts in the world.” Her Majesty’s forces were facing redeployment back to the UK after Afghanistan. Buchanan, he said, “was extremely well trained and not the least bit interested in sitting at home. He wasn’t alone. It’s not unusual for NATO forces to lose some of their finest to private defence contractors. They usually say they’re leaving for the larger income—we cannot compete on that level—but they’re really pursuing the action. I’ve come to think of them as similar to elite athletes,” he said reflectively. “The men know they have a period of time to use their physical and intellectual talents, and be well compensated. In the forces, that would mean patiently climbing the ranks until you have enough pay and pension to buy a decent home when you retire. But that’s a pittance to what a man of his calibre could earn in the same period with a mercenary outfit. Assuming you exit alive, you would indeed live well.”

MacNeice glanced deliberately at his watch and noted that twenty minutes had passed. “My experience of Bishop—or Buchanan—is not as inspiring as yours.”

Lyttelton had caught the gesture. “Right. Let’s turn to your homicides. After reading the materials provided and seeing the CCTV images, I am not disputing that Bishop was Buchanan. It’s not unusual for these men to have several identities and to wander the world between assignments. Nor is it unusual, sadly, that they find it difficult, while wandering, to avoid getting into hot water.”

“Hot water?” MacNeice’s jaw tightened, fury rising in his face.

“By that, detective, I mean that mostly we hear of them wreaking havoc in a bar in Thailand, crashing a motorbike in Spain, or throttling a prostitute in Calcutta. What you have here, however, is so rare I might refer to it as unique.”

“Neither DI Aziz nor I are unaware of Buchanan’s expertise. I’ve personally experienced it first-hand. We’re also aware that the killing of two innocent women and a young man—civilians—was not what he was trained to do. The psychotic transformation of this man is not our concern. Apprehending him for these murders is.”

Lyttelton stiffened. He studied MacNeice’s face, then glanced over at Aziz. “I am not an apologist for murder, detective superintendent. I am offering you another, perhaps parallel, reality. There are, at last count in my regiment alone, and in the towns and villages in which we served together, at least twenty friendly combatants and another two hundred civilians that owe their lives to Robert Buchanan.”

“Yes, but you see, colonel, I’m only concerned with the three homicides Buchanan committed in Dundurn. We’re here to seek his extradition and arrest, and your assistance will be deeply appreciated.”

Lyttelton looked down to the folder under his hands before returning his gaze to MacNeice. “Sadly, I can’t help you. Major Buchanan was killed in Nigeria on Thursday last week.”

MacNeice sat back in the chair and exhaled.

Aziz leaned forward. “Can you prove it?”

“I can. Buchanan’s broker had been contracted by a French-Nigerian mining complex, Or-Afrique S.A., to provide security for the evacuation of French nationals due to political unrest in the country’s northern provinces. The team Buchanan led was experienced but underequipped
and without support. Worse, explosives supplied by the Nigerian army, intended to secure the perimeter of the compound, for the most part failed to explode. Many were killed.”

Glancing over at MacNeice, who was still silent, Aziz pressed: “But do you actually have proof that Buchanan died there?”

“Yes, we do.” Lyttelton opened the remaining file folder. It contained two affidavits and a packet of black and white photographs. Before he passed them across the table, he looked solemnly at MacNeice. “Buchanan was known to his seven subordinates as Angus Robertson. One of these transcripts”—he laid his palm on the paper—“is by the sole survivor of his team, a wounded former US Marine named Mostacci, currently recovering from a stomach wound in a Marseilles hospital. The other affidavit is from Madame Monique Fillion, wife of Or-Afrique’s last man in Nigeria. The photographs were taken from a camera mounted in the evacuation helicopter.”

Lyttelton eased the documents across the table.

Once they were in their hands, the colonel stood and picked up his jacket. From his pants pocket, he produced a flat silver case from which he removed two cards. “If any more questions arise, don’t hesitate to contact me.” Lyttelton laid the cards on the table. “Unless you have further need of me, detectives, I’ll be off.” Putting on his jacket, he picked up the empty military file, tucked it smartly under his arm and walked around the table to Aziz. He shook her hand and then MacNeice’s. A moment later he’d disappeared through the side door of the drawing room.

Aziz picked up the first of the transcripts as MacNeice peered somewhat numbly at the photographs. Whatever he was about to discover paled against the satisfaction he’d been robbed of—he’d never see the man he knew as Jacko Mars Bishop in court.

The first photograph, taken from the door of a helicopter, revealed two buildings under attack, with fires alight in an infield and dark figures either running and firing, or lying flat and twisted on the ground, likely dead. The photograph had a narrow bar at the bottom right with “03. 24. 13. / 21:34P / EV-2.” He glanced at the bottom of the next photograph, each was dated and timed sequentially.

The helicopter must have been taking fire, because in the second print the point of view had swung about, presumably to the advantage of an on-board machine gun. In the corner of the photo, he could see a white
X
painted on the roof of one of the buildings. There were three figures near the small stairwell and someone was lying at the edge of the roof, firing out toward dark figures caught in pools of light at the perimeter.

He picked up another photo. Two minutes had elapsed, and the helicopter was about to touch down, blowing dust and bits of debris everywhere. To one side of the image, smoke was rising from the twisted wreckage of a tower. More dark figures were running and firing at the building. In the next photo, the helicopter was on the roof. There were two figures—women—huddled against the stairwell shack wall, cowering from the powerful wash of the rotor blades. Beside them was a body wrapped in white fabric.

The following print sent a chill down MacNeice’s spine. A large man stood in the stairwell doorway. Like a giant, he filled the void. The women were getting up: the big man was firing off to his left and the women covered their ears. Realizing Lyttelton had provided him with a storyboard, MacNeice fanned the rest of the photographs out on the table.

In the next, the big man had picked up the wrapped body. As he carried it over his shoulder, he shielded the women and kept firing; they were running toward the helicopter camera. In the next photo, the big man was close to the camera, dropping the wrapped body
inside the chopper. He was yelling something, presumably to the crew chief inside. MacNeice’s heart was racing as he studied the face of Major Robert Buchanan, Jacko Mars Bishop and Angus Robertson.

In the following images, Buchanan, with his back to the camera, was running to the stairwell door, where another man had fallen. All about him, the roofing gravel was spitting with the incoming fire. In the next, Buchanan was back at the helicopter, the wounded man on his shoulder. Buchanan again appeared to be yelling something, this time to his left, possibly to the pilot.

In the next, Buchanan appeared to have been running back to the stairwell door when he was hit and launched sideways, struck in the hip or abdomen. MacNeice picked up the next. The helicopter was lifting off, twenty feet or so above the roof. There were dark figures pouring out of the stairwell door, firing toward the chopper. Buchanan lay off to the right side, firing back at them.

MacNeice’s heart sank when he picked up the last photograph. No longer interested in the helicopter, the dark figures had fanned out in a semicircle and were concentrating fire on Buchanan. His assault rifle had been cast aside and clouds of dust and blood rose from his body and the gravel all about him. Anniken Kallevik, Duguald Langan and Sherry Berryman’s killer was literally being ripped to pieces.

MacNeice got up and walked over to the windows. Pulling the curtains apart, he looked out to the garden, aware that his heart rate had shot up dramatically. Behind him, Aziz was reading the second transcript—she hadn’t spoken. He didn’t have the stomach to read, at least not now. The pictures had done enough. Buchanan had saved the lives of hundreds, and in those
grainy black and white prints, it was clear he had died saving several more. The man had been capable of giving life, but terribly proficient at taking it.

So, there was nothing fundamentally sinister about Bishop. Had they met prior to his running amok in Dundurn, MacNeice might have enjoyed his company.

Bishop was a bullet in a chamber, but it was the hand on the trigger that had made him lethal.

MacNeice swung around and said, “Pack it up, Fiza. Let’s go talk to Paul Zetter.”

Chet Baker’s sad and tender ballads filled the Chevy all the way from Toronto to the turnoff for Dundurn. Aziz knew MacNeice loved music, but she knew he also used it to discourage conversation and to find some silence in himself.

Crossing the bridge above Cootes Paradise, she noticed him looking for the little bay. It was impossible to see from that height. He coughed, cleared his throat and said, “I’m not sure how to measure two hundred lives or more saved against the three taken here in Dundurn.” He did a U-turn and headed for the botanical gardens, driving down to the inlet where they’d carried Anniken Kallevik’s frozen body to the shore only weeks before.

Stopping where he had parked that day, he said, “I’ll just be a minute.”

As Aziz waited in the car, he walked to the shore and stopped to stare in the direction of the marina Anniken and Duguald had left on their final boat ride. Looking down at the water lapping softly onto the stony shore, he thought even the bay seemed exhausted, unable to summon the energy to break a wave, let alone disturb the pebbles from their sleepy algae beds. MacNeice knelt down and picked up the flattest stone he could find. Standing, he turned it so his thumb and forefinger held the edge. Intent on skipping it to the end of Cootes and into Dundurn Bay, he wound up and sent it flying low across the water.