A Time For Justice (10 page)

The bottle of brandy found its way back to his mouth. The
liquid gurgled down his gullet as though he were swigging back a
pint of milk.

He only stopped when he began to choke.

Still he shivered. His whole body shook, convulsed.

Still he couldn’t erase the vivid nightmare which had thrown
him violently awake. Faces. Fingers. Clawing. Water.

The brandy went to his mouth again. Empty. He let the bottle
slip out of his fingers onto the carpet and reached for the Bell’s.
The whisky went down neat on top of the brandy. Almost three
quarters of a bottle.

The room began a slow, sickening spin. Moving up, moving down,
all in one flowing, churning motion. The petrol taste flooded back.
He gulped it down again.

He slumped sideways on the sofa, breathing heavily, mind
reeling like a roller-coaster, everything going round and round,
him in the middle of it, unable to act, unable to stop it all and
get off; drunk, shivering ... then suddenly it all became ten times
worse.

The dream surged relentlessly back. Those frightened faces,
pressed against the glass. The rushing river. His failure. The
muted screams.
His failure.

Blackness came with a piercing, wailing sound and a bang-bang
banging from somewhere inside him.

The last blurred image he had before passing out was that of
his eldest daughter standing by the door in her night clothes, a
terrified expression on her uncomprehending face.

Chapter Seven

Joe Kovaks found the faxes from England wedged halfway down
the pile in his pigeon hole. Drinking bitter black coffee from a
plastic cup and grimacing with each mouthful, he looked at the
photos. They were not brilliant reproductions but were clear enough
to make an I.D. The prospect of sifting through thousands of
photographs of Corelli and his cronies wasn’t remotely
appealing.

He was about to fetch Corelli’s file when another fax was
slapped down on his desk. It was the set of dabs lifted from the
Posthouse Hotel room in Lancaster.

Kovaks scribbled a note marked
Urgent
and pinned it to the fax. He
hurried down to the Fingerprint Bureau.

The atmosphere here was quiet and scholarly. Rows of
computers, all logged into Printrak, filled the room. At each desk
sat a fingerprint expert, dressed in shirt, tie, slacks and
spectacles, the uniform of every fingerprint expert the world over,
including the women. No one was smoking, so Kovaks took a final
drag of his Marlboro and stamped it out on the corridor floor
before crossing the threshold.

As he entered the room he wondered why anyone in their right
mind would want to do this for a living.

He made his way over to a man peering at a magnified
fingerprint on his computer screen. Blown up, it looked like the
relief map of a mountain.

‘
Hi, Damian.’

The man spun round and squinted myopically at Kovaks. ‘Joe,
for heaven’s sake, don’t do that.’

‘
Oh, did I disturb you?’

‘
I was lost in a dreamworld of loops and whorls.’

‘
Sounds like a computer game.’

‘
But much more exciting,’ Damian said. ‘What can I do for you,
Agent Kovaks?’

‘
Need a favour. It’s urgent.’

‘
Always is with you. I suppose you want me to drop everything
else and do your bidding. ‘

‘
Absolutely.’

He sighed good-naturedly. ‘What the heck.’

‘
Thanks, Damian.’ Kovaks gave him the fax.

Back in the office, Kovaks was surprised to see his partner
from the previous night. Today she smelled quite sweet, but Kovaks
noted the damp patches already beginning to form in her
armpits.

‘
Hi, Sue,’ he said amicably.

‘
I phoned Chrissy. She said you’d come in early, so here I am
too.’

Kovaks groaned inwardly. This would mean trouble at home.
Although he’d described his temporary partner to Chrissy, she’d had
a look in her eyes which said, ‘I don’t believe you.’ She was
convinced Kovaks was working with a curvy blonde bombshell who was
a weapons expert, karate black belt and had the sexual appetite of
Pussy Galore. And now she’d heard her on the phone for the first
time, which would only confirm her suspicions - on the phone Sue
Mather sounded like a bimbo.

‘
I’m just doing something for Karl,’ he explained. ‘He phoned
me from England.’

‘
Can I help?’

A flash of inspiration.

‘
Yeah, you can actually. I need to check Corelli’s file but
I’ve got to go and see the SAC. Do you mind?’ He handed her the
faxes and explained the task. ‘Long-winded, I know. But very
important.’

‘
Sure, Joe, anything.’ She blinked clumsily at him in an
attempt to flutter her eyelashes, but thank Christ she didn’t pass
wind.

He left her to it.

Two hours later Kovaks found Sue sitting at his desk drinking
coffee and eating a doughnut. Eight cigarette stubs were in the
ashtray, and another smouldered on the edge of the desk,
threatening the woodwork.

She looked up, and waved. Kovaks stormed across the
office.

‘
I asked you to do a job for me,’ he hissed. ‘Not sit there
filling your fat face.’ The words tumbled out spontaneously and he
regretted them almost immediately.

Her good humour visibly evaporated. She had the look of a
puppy kicked by its master for no reason other than bad
temper.

Kovaks took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said
quickly.

Totally inadequate. ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’

‘
Yes, you did,’ she said petulantly. ‘I may be fat but I don’t
need reminding of it.’

This was ground Kovaks didn’t wish to cover.

‘
Forget it, huh? I’m sorry, honest.’ He shrugged his shoulders
and wore a suitably regretful look. ‘Can we get back to square one?
Pretty please?’

She sighed through her nose, her large shoulders rising and
falling.

A glimmer of a smile played on her lips. She nodded.
‘OK.’

‘
Good. I take it you made some progress.’

‘
Sure have,’ she said brightly. ‘Here.’ She rooted through
some papers on the desk and pulled out the faxes. Attached to them
was a black-and-white photograph. It was blurred, obviously taken
from a moving vehicle, but clearly showed Corelli sitting at a
table in a pavement cafe with another man -
the same one as in the faxes.
It was
dated four years previously. Around the border was written:
Corelli dining with unidentified male. Carmel,
Calif. No I.D. ever made.’

‘
Well done.’ Kovaks patted her fleshy shoulder.

‘
Found it within five minutes,’ she admitted. ‘Then I got
bored waiting for you, so I pigged out.’

‘
Of course, it doesn’t really get us anywhere,’ Kovaks brooded
out loud. ‘All it does is show us that Corelli once sat at a table
with this guy. Not proof of very much, is it?’

‘
What exactly are you trying to prove?’

‘
Something big.’ Kovaks picked up the photo and faxes and
said, ‘Come on, let’s go and see a man about a don.’

As they walked away from the desk the phone began to
ring.

Kovaks groaned, but snatched up the receiver. It was
Damian.

‘
Joe - got something for you. Haul your ass in
here.’

Kovaks chuckled at Damian’s dramatic turn of phrase as he
hurried to the Fingerprint Bureau. He’d never heard the other guy
say a bad word like ‘ass’ before.

As ever, Damian was sat at his station. His computer screen
showed a set of prints.

His tie, however, was discarded over the back of his
chair.

Heyyy,
this had to be big, Kovaks
thought. The guy had taken his tie off!

‘
What have you got for me?’ he said.

Damian looked round. His short-sighted eyes lingered for more
than a moment on Sue before returning to Kovaks.

‘
A match is what I’ve got. Several matches in fact,’ he
announced.

His voice quivered with an undercurrent of delight.

Kovaks pulled up a chair and indicated for Sue to do
likewise.

‘
You asked me to compare the fingerprints from England with
the partial prints we have from the mob killings you and Karl are
investigating. ‘

Kovaks nodded.

‘
I can confirm they match.’

‘
You certain?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Wow. I take it we still don’t know the guy’s
identity?’

‘
Whoever he is, he’s not on record.’

‘
Oh well, can’t have everything. Pity. Thanks, Damian. I owe
you.’ Kovaks shrugged and began to rise.

‘
There is something else, actually.’ Kovaks re-seated himself.
‘Go on.’

‘
Just out of professional interest I did a further search with
the prints from England and found some intriguing matches with
partial prints from other crime scenes. This guy’s been pretty
busy.’

‘
Damian, don’t keep me in suspense.’

‘
Well, I looked at the bombings, which as you know have
happened all over the States. Here, Memphis, LA ...’

‘
Yes, yes, I know,’ said Kovaks testily.

‘
So I wondered if there’s been any other crimes committed in
the same places, on or around the same dates, that could’ve been
perpetrated by the same man but weren’t linked because we only had
partial prints.’

‘
And I take it there were,’ said Kovaks.

‘
Yep.’ Damian smiled cheekily and raised his eyebrows at
Kovaks and Sue. The smile for Sue lasted a fraction longer than it
should. She giggled girlishly.

‘
Damian, just fucking tell me, OK?’

‘
Joe!’ Sue rebuked him. ‘There’s no need to talk like that!
He’s only trying to help. And you really must stop swearing.’ She
beamed at Damian, who beamed back.

‘
Sorry,’ Kovaks said contritely. ‘Damian, do go
on.’

‘
Thank you. You might be pleased to know that I’ve linked this
man to seven other murders. The victims are prostitutes. All left
with broken necks and killed at more or less the same time as the
bombings. As well as being a professional hit man, your guy kills
for fun too.’

‘
A serial killer,’ breathed Kovaks. ‘That’s all we
need.’

‘
The cops in England are on this guy’s tail, but unless I can
find out something more for them - and fast - they’ll lose him and
we’ll all be back to first base,’ Kovaks explained to Sue as they
ran down the steps to the ground floor.

‘
What’s the English angle?’ she enquired.

‘
Long story - no time to tell it now, but amongst other things
they think he killed all those people with that motorway
bomb.’

‘
Jeez,’ wheezed Sue, glad to reach the foot of the stairs. ‘So
what’re you going to do?’

This was asked as Kovaks pushed open the security door leading
to the public entrance foyer of the building. ‘Well, the time for
the subtle approach is long gone ... oh shit!’ He stopped in his
tracks.

He’d spotted Lisa Want, pacing the foyer like a tigress.
Fortunately, she hadn’t seen him yet.

Kovaks began to reverse through the door. In his haste, he
backed right into Sue, and trod heavily on her foot, crushing her
big toe under his shoe like stepping on a walnut. She yelled in
agony and pushed Kovaks away with such force that he lost his
balance and belly-flopped onto the shiny marble floor.

Winded, bruised, he looked helplessly from his prone position
all the way up the long, stunning, mini-skirted legs of Lisa
Want.

‘
Joe, I’m sorry,’ babbled Sue as she hobbled over to help him
up.

Kovaks shrugged himself ungratefully out of Sue’s meaty grasp
and glared into the smirking face of Lisa Want, chief crime
reporter on the
Miami Herald.

‘
Joe,’ she said, suppressing a giggle, ‘what a spectacular
entrance. You should be a stuntman.’

She was holding a voice-activated tape-recorder in one
hand.

‘
Whatever it is, Lisa, I’ve nothing to say to you. No
comment.’

She raised a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘I’ve not asked anything
yet.’

‘
Well, don’t, then you won’t be disappointed. Bye, Lisa.’ He
walked painfully away towards the exit, Sue limping
behind.

Lisa followed. ‘Do you have any comment to make about the
motorway bombing in England?’ she asked.

Stunned for a moment, he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re
talking about. ‘

‘
I have it on good authority there’s a stateside connection.
Can you confirm this?’ She thrust the tape-recorder under his
nose.