The Grass Tattoo (#2 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (37 page)

“Agreed. Ross Ellis shoots, doesn’t he?”

“He goes deer hunting. We’ve had a few arguments on it. What about the D.N.A.?”

John was silent for a moment, and Craig could feel his sadness before he said anything. His voice confirmed it.

“Marc, I know this girl is probably, well, almost certainly a killer. And I know your sympathy always lies with the victims. But I have to tell you, after what she went through, I don’t think anyone would be normal.”

“Tell me.” Craig knew that whatever he heard next would be terrible.

“The D.N.A. went back to a War Crime’s database, compiled after the Bosnian conflict in 1992-1995. It belonged to a seven-year-old Serbian girl called Kaisa Mitic.”

Not Moldeau. “Both the D.N.A. and the prints match her.”

Craig’s voice was gentle. “What happened to her, John?”

He hesitated for a moment, and then started. “She was living in a small village in Serbia with her family; parents, an older brother and a baby sister. The older brother was fourteen. They were poor, just making enough to live on. They had a smallholding near some woods, beside the river Sava.” His voice became angry. “They had absolutely nothing to do with the war, or the army.” He paused for breath again, and then went on.

“One day the Serbian army came through. It was 1991. Just before they went into Bosnia and before the worst of the atrocities against the Bosnians started. They came to the house looking for food and refreshments, but the family only had a few cattle and chickens - you can imagine the poverty. Anyway...they saw the little girl, and...”

He stopped again and Craig’s blood chilled, the hairs standing-up on his neck. He knew what was coming next. It was like some bad horror movie where the plot is inevitable, and you want to shout at the screen and warn the victim, but you’re powerless to help.

“The soldiers took it in turns to rape her, Marc. Grown men, five of them. The records said there were five of them. They raped a seven-year-old girl, in front of her parents and brother. When they’d finished, they stood the parents back to back and shot them through the head with a single bullet - they died instantly. Then they turned to do the same to the children. They stamped the baby to death first, presumably to keep it quiet, but the older boy managed to grab Kaisa and drag her off into the woods.

They managed to lose themselves. The soldiers shot after them but they missed, then the bastards torched the farm and the bodies and just walked away. Probably to do the same thing to the Bosnians. In fact, definitely to do the same.”

Craig started to ask him questions quickly. Mainly to take his mind off what John had said, because to dwell on it would have generated such a murderous rage in him that he’d have put his fist straight through his flimsy wardrobe door.

“What did the children do next, John?”

“The boy got her to a doctor and reported what had been done, brave little thing. He was able to identify the soldiers. He knew them, Marc. They were men from the next village, men that would have said hello to their family at local events. They were just animals who saw an opportunity to take something that they’d probably already seen and wanted, the little girl. The boy testified against them after the war. His name was Stevan.”

Craig nodded to himself. Of course. “He’s our shooter, John. They aren’t a romantic couple, they’re brother and sister. The war destroyed them and now they destroy other people.”

“You’re certain they’re both involved?”

Craig told him about the surveillance tapes.

“That makes sense. Look, I know what they did here was completely wrong, and there’s no excuse. But dear God, Marc, where does all that anger go if it’s not dealt with? And the girl, how much damage did they do to her?”

They were quiet for a moment, thinking. She was only seven. Craig thought about how he’d have reacted if it had been Lucia, and his parents. He’d love to believe that he’d have been as brave as Stevan the boy, and that he’d be better now than Stevan the man. But he couldn’t be sure of it. War created a lot of killers, and not just at the time.

The phone-call ended itself. There was nowhere else to go with it, just a quiet ‘thanks’ and ‘talk tomorrow’ and then, click. Each of them left trying to work out who the real victims were.

***

Craig paid the black taxi and stepped out into the cold night air on Shaftesbury Avenue .The faces of people walking past were dappled with light from the bright overhead signs, announcing that ‘Chariots of Fire’ was on at The Gielgud Theatre, and ‘Les Miserables’ at Queen’s.

He looked around, feeling the excitement of the West End, and smiling despite his tiredness. The three glasses of wine he’d drunk in the hotel bar helped. As John often said, ‘fatigue is directly soluble in alcohol’, and who was he to argue with a doctor.

A small group of teenagers walked past him on the narrow pavement, laughing. Young and unburdened. They reminded him of Davy, and he hoped that he’d stay that way; that Maggie Clarke was kind to him.

He picked his way past the pavement detritus, not remembering it as bad five years before, but still loving London anyway. For its noise and life and variety; and its rainbow of people. He hoped that Belfast would be as cosmopolitan too someday, on a smaller scale.

He reached his destination and gazed-up at the overhead sign. The red and green lights announced her loudly. Camille Kennedy, gifted actress. The lead in ‘The Cold Stone’ by Stephen Maray. The play that she’d performed in the festival in Belfast, now in the West End. The photograph on the billboard showed her as a 1930s siren, and he remembered watching her in the Grand Opera House. The role suited her.

He glanced at his watch. 9.25. The play ended in five minutes. He’d timed it perfectly. He walked quickly to the stage door and gave his name. It opened inwards immediately, the manager briefed to admit him and show him to her dressing room.

He entered the large warm room with the star on its door, impressed, and happy for her. For years she’d shared cold storage-cupboards with five others. He was pleased that she finally had the star status that her talent warranted. No matter what it had cost them both.

Craig looked around while he waited, at the flower-bouquets and good-luck cards, some from well-known names. And then he saw his own. Not one that he’d sent her for this show, because he hadn’t, but one from years before. Ten years before when she’d played Rosalie, the maid in an Oscar Wilde play called Lady Windermere’s Fan. She’d been so nervous that he remembered her shaking in the wings and gripping his hand tightly. He’d left the card and a present for her to find when she came off.

He picked it up, smiling at the words that he’d written all those years ago. He’d been a different man then, and they’d had a different relationship. He felt torn between leaving immediately, preserving the past as it was, and staying for five more minutes, to discover if they had a future.

Just then the door opened wide and she rushed in. Slight and blonde, red-lipped and Marcel-waved, in a sheath of gold lame, looking exactly like the screen siren she was supposed to be. She looked stunning, and he couldn’t breathe for a moment. She was even more beautiful than he remembered.

She saw immediately what was running through his mind, looking up into his dark eyes while he looked down into hers. She stepped slowly towards him, lifting her hand to his cheek. He didn’t retreat and she moved nearer, so that his breath stopped still, making the air between them silent.

They were so close now that only the colours that they wore said where she began and he ended. She reached her other hand to his hair stroking its thick dark strands seductively, rhythmically. Until he pulled her to his chest, his arms around her waist and his thighs tight against hers, and their lips met, for the first time in years.

Softly and tentatively at first, exploring each other gently. Then he pressed down harder and her lips parted in submission, opening to his taste and feel. She sank into his arms so entirely, that she felt as if she was falling backwards and him with her. He whispered her name softly. “Camille,” as if all the years had fallen away, back to when they first met. They were young again, when they would make love for hours and then name the stars from the balcony of their small flat.

He moved swiftly to the door and locked it, cutting off the light outside and leaving only the faint glow of the table-lamp to highlight her beauty. In one smooth movement he lifted her onto the couch and caressed her lips with his, forgetting time, until she begged him hoarsely to make love to her. In a memory and movement as natural as breathing he slipped her dress straps down one by one. Until her lame sheath fell to the floor, and her bare, tanned perfection lay in front of him, unchanged and just as he remembered her.

He stood, pulling off his jacket, and knelt down before her, reaching forward to stroke her smooth thighs gently. Her skin was like gossamer, even softer than he remembered and she moaned quietly and went to speak. He placed a finger on her lips, stilling all conversation, and started to kiss her slowly, from her feet, through her thighs and beyond. Taking time and patience, never hurrying, never stopping. Bringing her gently to ecstasy once, and then turning her over and caressing her again. Using first his tongue and then his hands, losing himself in her scents and sighs. Then stronger strokes, arousing her again, until she cried out for mercy.

He stood for a moment, looking down at her, watching her gentle, quick recovery. He looked at her shining eyes and at the sweat dripping off her sleek, tanned skin. And more than anything, at her longing. Her parted lips and languid eyes begged him for more and he drew her firmly to her feet, and to him. Then he lifted her further, and entered her with one hard thrust, to give them both what they had wanted for hours.

He stopped and looked lovingly into her eyes, and then thrust again and watched as she submitted to him. Stroking her hair and nipples unhurriedly, and tenderly caressing her skin, he moved rhythmically, again and again, until finally they thrust in time with each other.

He finally felt her body tense and arch, signalling his own longed-for release, in a fire of warmth and sensation between their thighs that neither had ever felt before. He held her close for minutes, as if she was fragile and could break, until finally her breathing slowed and his own matched hers, and finally, their bodies pulled apart. Then without a word, they dressed and left, walking slowly to her apartment, and a night that neither of them would ever forget.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I have no idea why you bring me here. I say nothing without my lawyer.”

Craig was in a much brighter interview room than the C.C.U.’s; London obviously had better interior design than they could afford. The table had no scorch marks from abandoned or stubbed cigarettes, and the sign on the wall, bearing testament to ‘no smoking or mobile phones’ hadn’t been defaced at all. Even the tape-machine was more high-tech than he’d used before. But none of that altered the facts - he was looking at a criminal, and they were the same whatever the decor.

True, Ershov hadn’t been caught with stolen goods, or bloody hands. And no one was waiting on the other side of the wall to identify him. They didn’t even have a charge. But he knew a criminal when he saw one. No matter how hard they scrubbed, and covered their bodies in expensive cologne, they couldn’t wash away the stench of what they’d done. It was always there, like some indefinable shadow, darkening the room.

He much preferred the street villain, the obvious crook. Who ‘f’ed and blinded’ when you arrested them, called you a pig and took a swing. There was a kind of honesty about that approach. In your face. It was this type that he couldn’t stomach, the type who never got their own hands bloody.

He wanted to reach across the table and grab Ershov by his scrawny, be-jewelled throat. But they had to deal with this filth to get to the ones who did the killing. They all knew it. But it still made him want to throw up.

The lawyer was taking his time in appearing, so they left Ershov alone in the room, with a cup of coffee and his requested newspaper. The Financial Times - ever the respectable businessman. Then they headed back upstairs, where Rajiv Chandak was waiting for them at his office door.

“What’s happening down there?”

“Nothing yet, sir. He’s lawyered-up and saying nothing until they get here.”

Chandak shrugged, too long in the tooth to let it bother him. Just the games people played.

“Right. Marc, something has come through from Belfast, Rita has it. RITA...”

The round, comfortable figure of Rita came ambling into the office with a transparent plastic folder in her hand. She followed it with a ready-prepared tray of coffee and biscuits. Chandak smiled down at her warmly. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear my mother had moved down from Birmingham to take care of me. Thank you, Rita.”

Yemi needed a quick word on another case, so Craig drank his black coffee pulling out the sheets of A4 that Annette had faxed over. She’d done just as he’d asked, and she’d got a result. He punched the air. Yes!

Yemi caught his friend’s familiar gesture, and looked over at him, smiling. “You’ve got leverage on Ershov?”

“We have. Annette’s worked the oracle. We haven’t got the money trail yet, but we do have something that’ll make him pretty damn uncomfortable.”