3 The Braque Connection (5 page)

“Is that possible?” I asked.

“The shooter would’ve had to stand outside, behind the house and on a garden wall. So no, Doc, it’s not possible.”

“But how can the evidence be this contradictory?”

“Ah, and that is where the speculation comes in. The lab guys think it might be a homemade or a modified weapon of some kind that uses nine-millimetre bullets. There have been cases of bullets fired from a modified pipe with a firing pin of sorts.”

“I assume that to not be a smoking pipe.”

“It’s called a zip gun, Jen-girl,” Vinnie said. “To have a crude firearm, you need a barrel and a chamber. The barrel can be any kind of pipe. What the old man is talking about is something like that.”

“So it is nothing like the bore lapping we found in the first Kubanov case?” I asked. A cache of Eurocorps weapons had been stolen over a long period of time, all identifiable features removed. The numbers had been filed off the guns and the insides of the barrels smoothed by a method called bore lapping.

Manny shook his head. “It is unlikely. If shot from a normal handgun, the velocity of the bullet would have been much higher than the lab guys have estimated. When I spoke to them, they were all excited about the mystery. They re-checked their evidence and it confirmed the shooter was standing almost two metres from the victim. This was doubly confirmed by a slight void in the gunshot residue and blood splatter on the carpet. A void in the shape of two shoes.”

“What size?”

“Smart, Doc. You really want to prove your boyfriend’s innocence.” He looked at Colin, his
risorius
muscles turning his smile into a smirk. “It’s your birthday, pretty boy. Those were British size thirteen.”

“A large man.” My thoughts immediately went to the men who had broken into my apartment a year ago and attacked me. They had been big men. Colin was one point eight metres tall, but I was sure his feet were not that large. I looked at him. “What size shoe do you wear?”

He smiled. “Ask Millard. He should know.”

“Depending on his designer, he wears an eleven or eleven and a half. Never a twelve. He’s a tall criminal without big feet to brag about.” Manny looked proud that he knew that much detail about Colin. When he had investigated Colin, it had been much more in-depth than I had been led to believe. A slightly disturbing discovery, but upon consideration it made sense. Such information could help if ever there were footprints logged as evidence in an art crime. Despite knowing that Colin was working for Interpol and cooperating with him in the last year, Manny still wanted to see Colin incarcerated.

A stray thought took my attention away from Colin’s feet. “What about other cases?”

“What other cases, Doc?” As Manny asked the question, his eyes flashed with understanding. “You mean cases with similar ballistic evidence to this case?”

“Yes. Have you found any?”

“Doc, I’ve been a bit busy looking for you and bloody Frey.”

“I’m sure Genevieve is not criticising you, Manny.” Phillip laid both hands flat on the table. “We all know that finding them took priority.”

I sighed when Phillip looked at me, waiting. Tiptoeing around people’s emotions was exasperating. I looked at Manny, but he waved his hand at me. “Don’t apologise, Doc. That will really piss me off. You are right. I should’ve thought about this, but I was worried about your skinny arse. I will get onto this ASAP.”

“If we find more cases, we might find out what kind of weapon was used. That will bring us closer to finding out who killed the butler and then set it up so that all the evidence points to Colin.”

Colin turned to me. “Are you conceding that our kidnapping and this murder are connected?”

“Of course.” I frowned at the obviousness of it. “Why wouldn’t I? A murder committed while you were not conscious and while you have no proof that you were unconscious is convenient. Being forced into unconsciousness, taken to the country of the murder, and having all the evidence point to you is not convenient. It is suspicious.”

“Sometimes your logic isn’t my logic,” Francine muttered while tapping away on her tablet computer. She stopped and slowly looked up. “Did I just say that out loud?”

Vinnie chuckled. “Jen-girl knows that her logic is much better than our logic.”

“Speak for yourself, big guy.” She looked at me with an apologetic smile. “You know I didn’t mean it badly, right?”

“I don’t know why you are worried. Of course my logic differs from yours. My brain functions differently to yours.” I tilted my head. “Although your reasoning skills are superior to most. It must be the neuropaths created from your hacking work and imagining all those conspiracy theories.”

“Um. Thank you?” The humour in her voice lightened the atmosphere around the table. I assumed her question to have some positive nuance and didn’t pursue the rationale of it. There was something else in Francine’s demeanour that was more interesting.

“What are you hiding?” I leaned closer, narrowing my eyes when she shifted in her chair. “Your eyes just flashed to your tablet. What do you have there?”

She put the tablet on the table and put both her hands over it, unconsciously covering whatever information she was withholding. Her gaze had turned serious. “Genevieve, this is one of those times when you should think of the bigger impact of revealing what you see.”

“Why? What illegal acts are you busy with now?” Manny tried to lift her hand to get to the tablet. She pressed down harder and caught him by surprise with a kiss on his cheek. Manny jerked away and glared at her. “Bloody hellfire, working with you people is making me old before my time.”

“You were old before you met us, old man.” Vinnie emphasised the last two words with a malicious smile. “And stop wrestling with Francine before I come over there and beat you senseless.”

With the exception of Phillip and myself, everyone got involved in an argument about Francine handing her tablet over to Manny. Phillip looked at me. “Is it always like this? How do you ever get anything done?”

“Antagonising each other serves as a form of relieving stress.” After six months of daily being exposed to this behaviour I was used to it. Phillip seldom spent time with the team, his experience of the inner dynamics limited. I lifted one hand loosely, palm up. “As long as I don’t hear them in my viewing room, I don’t care. Even while looking for Kubanov, we have solved more art fraud cases in the last six months than the FBI art crimes unit in the same period of time. We’re an effective team.”

Phillip blinked slowly at my last statement and looked at Francine and Manny threatening each other, almost nose to nose.

“It’s only a bloody list, you big British bully.” Francine lifted the tablet and shook it at Manny. “A shopping list.”

“Whose shopping list?” I asked into the sudden silence.

Francine glanced at Colin, guilt changing her body language. It was difficult to achieve mental and physical comfort while carrying and concealing distressing knowledge.

“Colin did not kill that man,” I said. Even with Phillip here, I found myself mediating. It was most wearisome. “Manny is being obtuse, but he will not send Colin to prison for something he didn’t do. The evidence is strong that Colin is being set up, so whatever information you have there will only help us find the person setting him up. It won’t give Manny power to arrest Colin.”

The slight relaxation of the
orbicularis oculi
muscles around her eyes proved that I had interpreted her concerns correctly. I ignored Phillip’s surprised inhalation and the speculation in his eyes. I had no desire to become more adept at negotiation and mediation.

“It’s a shopping list of goodies bought by one of Colin’s aliases,” Francine said.

“What did I buy?” Colin asked. “Wait, which credit card did they use?”

“Sydney Goddphin, but it wasn’t from your account. Someone opened a new account using your Sydney ID, address and other personal information. With that card you bought wood glue, a few wires, duct tape and seventeen pagers.” She winked at Manny. “I hacked that bank account to get this valuable information.”

“The same identity your safe house is registered under.” Vinnie whistled. “Dude, someone’s really got it in for you.”

“The things you bought make no sense.” Francine swiped the screen of her tablet computer. “It’s useless stuff. Pagers are so last century. You would never use these things for a heist.”

“What could it be used for?” I asked.

No one answered for a long while. I took the time to observe their nonverbal cues. Manny was angry, but as usual was using it to mask deeper emotions. Worry being the most apparent. Colin was not as worried as would be expected with evidence mounting against him. Whenever he was plotting out a strategy, his bottom jaw would move while he tilted his head slightly to the back. Right now he was staring at the ceiling, his jaw busy as if he was chewing gum.

Both Francine and Vinnie had expressions revealing that they had theories as to the use of the products bought with Sydney’s credit card. Most likely Francine’s theory involved government cover-ups, if not an invasion by extraterrestrial beings. I was surprised she had not brought up alien abduction as a theory about my and Colin’s recent experience.

“Only three people knew about my safe house. Myself, Vin and Jenny.” Colin dropped his chin and stared at Manny. “Did you know about my place in the UK?”

“You really think I didn’t do my homework on you, Frey?” Manny’s
risorius
muscles contracted in a micro-expression of a smirk. “I knew about your place in the UK, your place in Italy, and I know your parents’ place in Long Island.”

Anger flashed over Colin’s face at the mention of his parents’ residence before he marginally relaxed. When we had first met, Colin had given me the addresses to five of his homes across Europe. Manny had only mentioned two. I suspected Colin had a few more residences registered to other pseudonyms.

“How did you find out about my place in the UK?”

“When Doc found out about your use of seventeenth-century poets as false identities, I had myself a little look around. Turns out that Sydney Goddphin had bought his rustic home through a lawyer and the locals seldom saw him. The lady at the local grocer was most taken with the charming young man who had shopped only three times in her humble store. You had made quite an impression. But she preferred you without the beard. The photo I had was much more becoming, she told me.”

In an unconscious reflex, I extended my arm in front of Colin, preventing him from getting out of his chair. He frowned at my arm for a second, then looked at me, one eyebrow lifted.

“Manny wouldn’t have kidnapped us and set you up for murder. You know this.”

“I don’t know this, Jenny. The arsehole’s been after me for decades. Who’s to say he hasn’t been planning this all along?” He leaned back in his chair, his glare at Manny filled with malevolence. “If you knew about my safe house, why did you ask for the GPS co-ordinates to send your Scotland Yard friend?”

“I wasn’t going to take a chance that my intel was faulty. Not when Doctor Face-reader’s life was on the line. Why the bleeding hell am I explaining this to you, cretin?”

I looked at Phillip, irritation tightening my voice. “Why aren’t you calming everyone down and mediating as usual?”

He lifted both hands in surrender. “I don’t want to interfere. You are doing exceptionally well.”

“No, I’m not. They’re not using logic.” I realised my arm was still in front of Colin. I pulled it against my torso and turned to him. “You are far too intelligent to assume that Manny would murder someone to accumulate evidence to have you imprisoned. Murder, Colin. Murder!”

That was it. I stood up and grabbed my handbag.

“I think I have been handling the last few hours extremely well. Your need to lash out at each other, and Phillip, your lack of intervening is exasperating. I’m going to my viewing room. Don’t even consider entering unless you have started using real logic and not immature, fearful verbal attacks on each other.”

I slung my handbag over my shoulder and walked to the door, ignoring the shocked looks. The control I conducted myself with was slipping and noticeably surprising everyone. On an intellectual level, I understood the need people had to attack. It created a false sense of proactive behaviour, a reflex reaction to counteract the feeling of powerlessness. On a personal level, I found such behaviour to be counter-productive.

After waking up in a strange country and expending copious quantities of energy on holding black panic at bay, I did not have the mental wherewithal to tolerate neurotypical reactions to fear. I needed to analyse, process and focus on work, on data. I needed to watch footage. I needed to be alone
.

Chapter FIVE

“Jenny?”

A warm hand squeezed my forearm, bringing me back to my viewing room. I opened my eyes to find myself huddled on my large office chair, clutching my knees to my chest. Colin had swivelled my chair and was sitting across from me, watching me with great intensity.

“What time is it?” My voice sounded far away. I had worked through a few files on my computer before mentally writing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major to put some order to my thoughts. The strain in my muscles indicated that I had been in this position for a lengthy period.

“Just after three.” Gently, Colin uncurled my fists and held my hands in his. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. Once I had started writing Mozart, the full impact of what had taken place, of what I had seen on the monitors must have overpowered me. I had been in my head for four hours. If I were sitting with my feet on the chair, curled up in a protective position, it was safe to assume that I had also been keening. I cringed.

“No one else has been around.” Colin must have seen some nonverbal cue to my thoughts. “It’s only us.”

He nodded towards the thick glass doors. In the team room, Manny was sitting at his desk, Francine and Vinnie at the square table with two computers open in front of them. All three were looking at me. Were it not for the sincere concern dominating their expressions, I might have been much more ashamed of my show of weakness.

“Is this from being kidnapped or something else?”

I assumed he was referring to my shutdown. With a grimace, I dropped my feet to the floor and pulled my shoulders back to stretch my back muscles. It was a mistake. Stretching made me feel the bruising on my stomach. I hunched my shoulders. “Both. I think you had better call the others.”

No sooner had Colin turned to the glass doors and gestured with a nod than everyone got up and hurried across the team room. Manny entered the code in the keypad to open the doors and came through first. He pulled closer the third chair in my viewing room, placing it on my other side. For once he didn’t need reminding to keep at least fifty centimetres between us. Francine pressed a button to keep the doors open, preventing my room from feeling crowded. She stayed close to the door, Vinnie next to her.

“Have you got something for us, Doc?”

“Emails.”

“What emails?” Colin kept his attention on me. “Who sent you emails?”

“I did.” I turned to my desk, control over the internal turmoil returning to me in increments. “At some point during our abduction, I must have managed to get a hold of a device with internet connection and send myself a few emails.”

“And you remember this?” Manny moved so close I felt his body heat against my arm. “Does this mean you remember more? Do you remember who took you?”

Too sensitive to stimuli and no longer willing to be an altruistic friend, I leaned away, my shoulder touching Colin. “Move back. Please.”

“But you’re touching
him
.” Manny’s lip curled in disgust and he shook his head. With a glare at Colin, he pushed his chair away. “Talk, missy.”

I brought my email inbox up on one of the large monitors in front of us. “I don’t know how or where I was able to send emails, but I did.”

“To which email account?” The disbelief in Francine’s voice caught my attention. “I checked all your accounts while you were away, hoping to catch something that might help us find you guys.”

It took me a moment to answer. “I don’t know why I’m feeling apologetic. I really shouldn’t. I have a right to my privacy.”

“Jenny?”

I caught myself crossing my arms and immediately lowered them. “I lost my privacy when all of you entered my life. After the last fiasco and all the hacking, I knew I had zero privacy online. None of my observations, analyses, article outlines were private thoughts anymore. I need my privacy. I need to have something that belongs only to me.”

“So you opened a private email account.” Francine’s smile held pride. “Good for you, girl. I had no idea.”

I knew this was high praise. Francine was far superior to anyone, including me, in acquiring hidden data and information online. I didn’t feel complimented. It was rather resentment at my need for subterfuge to maintain minimal privacy which dominated my emotions. I pushed it back, focussing on the case.

“The effects of being drugged are clear in my emails. Most of this doesn’t make sense. If I had the context within which I had written these emails, it would be much easier to interpret.”

“Just show us, Doc.”

I opened the first email. “This was sent on Thursday evening twelve minutes past eleven.”

An image filled the monitors. Two large shapes separated by a dark gap were badly out of focus. The photo was dark, any images beyond the blurred shapes impossible to identify.

“I have no idea what this is supposed to be. The second email is more telling, but still nonsensical.” I clicked and the next email opened. “I sent this email on Friday afternoon at twenty past five. There are only these words: ‘hypertrophic’, ‘hexahedron’, ‘
Homme a la’
, ‘halo die’.”

“You were creating quite the rhyme there, Doc.”

“Not a rhyme. An alliteration. Without the context it is difficult to interpret my reasoning for any of these words.”

“What do you think it means?” Francine moved closer, staring at the monitor.

“I don’t know,” I said. I hated speculating. “‘Hypertrophic’ usually refers to an abnormal enlargement or excessive growth. It could be of an organ, it could be scarring that is red and raised above the skin.”

“Maybe you described one of the kidnappers.”

“I really don’t know.” I didn’t like this feeling. “The second word, ‘hexahedron’, is a solid figure with six faces, and the next looks like the beginning of a phrase. It is in French, a language in which I would never write notes to myself. It could be the title of a painting or a book, or maybe I overheard someone say this.”

“What’s ‘halo die’?” A small smile lifted the corners of Vinnie’s mouth. “It sounds like you’re predicting the death of an angel.”

For a few seconds no one spoke. I didn’t have any theories to put forward on the last entry.

“Yup, that email makes no sense.” Vinnie lifted both shoulders. “You are difficult enough to understand when you are not drugged, Jen-girl. Who knows what your mind was doing while high. What other emails did you send?”

“The third email makes even less sense. I sent it on Friday just after six in the afternoon.” It was extremely frustrating that I couldn’t make sense of my reasoning when I had sent this to myself. I opened the second email.

Manny chuckled. “‘Big boom’? Were you thinking about evolution, Doc?”

“I keep telling you I have no idea what I was thinking. Clearly, my neurological paths were impaired by the drugs. Everything is pure speculation. It could be evolution, it could be a volcano.”

“Or an explosion, a bomb.” There was no more laughter in Manny’s voice. “I hope we’re not going have a repeat of the last time. Bloody hell. What do the other emails say?”

I was a bit embarrassed to open the next one. I looked at the words, finding it difficult to believe I had written it.

“Oh, you were high, girl.” Francine laughed softly. “‘Frame… of reference. Hahahahahaha.’ How many ha’s did you write?”

“Too many.”

“Again this could be that you overheard a conversation,” Colin said. “You knew they were trying to set me up for that murder, to frame me.”

“Which then leads me to ask if ‘reference’ has any relevance. Whether the written laughter has any relevance. Whether the ellipses have any relevance. Even worse, if these emails have any relevance.”

“I’m sure it does, Jenny. You wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to send something to yourself if you didn’t think it would help.”

“Is there more?” Manny asked.

“Only one more and this one is the biggest mystery.” I opened the email. “I sent this photo at ten to five, Saturday morning.”

Everyone leaned towards the monitor. I clicked on the photo to open it up in full screen.

“What is that?” Vinnie squinted and walked closer. “Jen-girl, you need to work on your photography skills.”

“What do you think that is, Doc?”

“Blueprints,” Colin said softly. I looked at him in surprise. When I had opened my email account earlier and this photo had been there, I would never have guessed it to be a blueprint. I had stared at the monitor for a long time, trying to figure out what image I had attempted to capture. All I still saw were some out-of-focus lines on white. The confidence in his knowledge was clear on Colin’s face.

“How can you be so sure?”

“He’s a thief, Doc.” For once Manny didn’t look at Colin with intense dislike. “Of course he’s going to know what a blueprint looks like. He would need those to plan all his heists.”

“Is this for a building?” I asked Colin.

“There’s no way to tell. The photo is badly out of focus, which hides whatever detail there is to clue me in on what this plan is for.”

“I’ll clean up the image,” Francine said. “Forward it to me. I promise I won’t go into your system to retrieve it.”

I studied Francine’s nonverbal cues for a few seconds. My need for privacy was not borne out of a distrust of the people in this room. It was a simple desire to have something exclusively to myself. In this current situation, it would be unwise to cling on to that. “I think it is better if you get into my system and into this email. Not only to see if you can get a clearer image of this photo, but also to find whatever other clues you can from my emails.”

“Done.” Her facial muscles relaxed, softening her expression. “Thank you.”

Manny sat up and looked at Francine, his eyes bright with intent. “Find us a smoking gun, supermodel. I want to know who these idiots are who dared kidnap Doctor Face-Reader.”

“But it’s okay for them to kidnap me?” Colin asked. “I’m deeply hurt, Millard. Deeply hurt.”

I saw a goading response form on Manny’s lips. I wanted to stay on topic, not mediate between them. There were too many things that still needed to be explored. “There’s something else.”

Everyone turned to me, the change in my tone drawing their attention. I pushed up my sleeve to reveal the tattoo. My breath caught again at the violation of my skin.

“Oh my God.” Francine stepped closer and looked between my arm and my face. “You refused to get a sexy little tat with me. When and why did you get this?”

“I didn’t get this.” I desperately wanted to pull my sleeve down and remove this desecration from my sight. “This was done to me while I was drugged.”

“What is it, Doc?”

Manny had known about the tattoo. It would have been on the photos he had received from Ben. I wanted to declare my gratitude to him for not pushing me about this earlier. Uncomfortable with displays of emotion, I chose to not thank him. “I don’t know. Looking at it like this, it seems to only be twirls and whorls, but I’m sure there is more.”

I decided that everyone had had a long enough look at my arm. I pushed my sleeve down and felt a small measure of relief. The door to the hallway whooshed open and Phillip walked in, his eyes widening when he saw everyone gathered in my viewing room. “Is everything all right? Genevieve?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

He lowered his chin, giving me a stare filled with scepticism. The only way I could convince him I was managing was by focussing on work. I did that. Ten minutes later, Phillip was up to date with my emails and my tattoo.

“I sent you an email earlier, Doc.” Manny shifted closer, but quickly leaned back when he saw my expression. He scowled. “Just open the bloody email.”

I wasn’t surprised by his annoyance. Manny was an interesting example of the male psyche. One day I was going to delve deeper. At the moment I didn’t want to risk his ire. I opened his email and scanned through the content.

“Eight cases?”

“That I could find while you were faffing about.” Manny waved an impatient hand at Phillip when my boss inhaled to comment. “She’s not offended. Right, Doc?”

“Offended about what?” I didn’t understand his triumphant smile following my question, and didn’t want to ask. “Tell me about the cases.”

“All eight are unsolved cases with similar ballistic profiles as the murdered butler. Some of these could very possibly be false positives, but as far as I could see from the ballistic reports, none of the retrieved bullets had any striae. In most cases there were disparities between the evidence from the stippling and the velocity of the bullet when it entered the body.”

“Is there anything connecting these victims?”

“Not much.” Manny shook his head. “I managed to get twelve of the twenty-eight EU countries’ cooperation. The others will get back to me. The eight cases come from six of these countries. I’m sure there are more such cases, but I don’t know if they are connected at all. The victims have varied profiles.”

“No similarities in social standing, economic position, career or any other field?” Phillip asked.

“Not enough to establish a pattern,” Manny said. “There are working-class victims, two rather wealthy victims, men, women, killed at home, killed in a park, killed on the street. Nope, nothing to say that there is one killer targeting specific people.”