NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer 5) (12 page)

Palmer felt the
air around him crackle. Pell knew something. It could only mean he’d got a look
at Helen’s phone or email records.

‘Actually, she
emailed me something a few days ago,’ he admitted frankly. If he didn’t tell them,
they’d soon find out. ‘It was a photo, but there was no explanatory message. I
think it came to me by mistake.’

Pell glanced at
Palmer’s PC. ‘May I see it?’

Palmer nodded
and opened his email, then turned the monitor so that Pell could see the
screen. The detective leaned forward to peer at the photo, but other than that,
showed little reaction. ‘It’s an office block.’

‘Yes. I have no
idea why she sent it. It was probably a mistake.’

‘Do you know
the place?’

‘I’ve never
seen it before.’

Pell sat back
with a sigh.

‘Okay. What was
your initial reaction to her murder?’

‘Shocked.
Saddened. What do you expect?’

‘Angry?’

‘Of course.’

 ‘Weller
described you as being very laid-back.’

Palmer
shrugged. He wasn’t sure what Pell was leading up to, but he had a feeling it
could be something he might not like.

‘He also added
a ‘but’,’ Pell continued, and levered himself out of the chair. He looked down
at Palmer for a moment. ‘A big one. He said you were totally loyal to your
friends, and capable of doing anything on their behalf. I was wondering what
that meant.’

‘Like I said,
Weller mixes with the wrong crowd. It plays havoc with his imagination.’

Pell nodded. He
seemed to toy with something for a moment, then said, ‘Our database is quite
good these days. We get stuff turning up on it all the time; some of it’s
useful, some not. It sits there until someone decides it’s no longer relevant.
Or until something rings a bell. Literally, I mean. We have this little
electronic sound reserved for entries or cases with more than five points of
comparison – I forget what the techies call it. Anyway, whenever something
similar to an existing entry pops up, the bell rings. It rang this morning.’

‘How dinky for
you. So?’

Pell looked
deadly serious. ‘This isn’t for public consumption, so don’t repeat it outside
this office. But six weeks ago, the body of a young woman was discovered late
one night alongside the A12 in Essex. She’d been thrown from a moving vehicle.’

Palmer waited,
wondering why he’d been made privy to this bit of information. Weller, perhaps,
playing his old games of stir the pot to see what was in there?

‘She was a
German national, name of Annaliese Kellin. You ever heard the name?’

‘Never.’

‘Hardly
surprising. She had no family or friends here in the UK. Interestingly, she
shared three similar prime characteristics with Helen Bellamy.’

‘Such as?’
Palmer felt the breath catch in his throat. He suddenly knew with absolute
certainty what Pell was going to tell him next.

‘Annaliese
Kellin was a freelance reporter, specialising in business and commercial
matters. That was one. When she was found, her hands were tied together.’ He
gave Palmer a grim look, waiting for a reaction.

But Palmer
merely said, ‘Three. You said there were three similarities.’ Pell hadn’t
mentioned how Helen had died. This had to be it. He could feel it.

The policeman
let out a lengthy sigh that seemed to come from deep within him. ‘Early
indications,’ he said carefully, ‘and they haven’t yet confirmed which, is that
Helen Bellamy died the same way as Annaliese Kellin: of a broken neck and/or
strangulation.’

‘And/or? What
the hell does that mean?’ Palmer’s jaw clenched tight.

‘We think,’
Pell forged on carefully, ‘that the killer used a stranglehold method, placing
the arm round the neck from behind. There was bruising under the chin
consistent with someone standing in an elevated position behind and above the
victim.’ He sounded as if he was reading from an official report, and his face
showed he wasn’t enjoying it.

‘She was
sitting down?’

‘Or kneeling,
yes. I’m told the blood circulation would have been cut off, along with the air
supply. Then the neck was broken. One of my colleagues is ex-Special Forces. He
said it’s not as easy as it looks and takes considerable commitment.’ He
paused. ‘I know it’s no consolation, but it would have been quick.’

Palmer thought
about it. Killing someone like that was just about the most intimate way you
could think of ending someone’s life. You had to get right up close. And
killing a woman that way took a special kind of cold-bloodedness.

‘You’re wrong.’
His voice was soft but sure, cutting through the charged atmosphere in the room
like a blade. He looked right through Pell as if the policeman wasn’t there.
‘If you know it’s going to happen, how can it ever be quick?’

Outside on the
pavement, Pell breathed deeply and stood for a moment, glad to out in the fresh
air. He hadn’t enjoyed the visit, especially the bit when Palmer had looked at
him after his verbal blunder. It was like being skewered by the eye of a killer
shark.

He wondered at
the nature of the relationship between Palmer and Riley Gavin. Riley came
across as a hard-nosed reporter, yet with a softness he found intriguing – and
attractive. He thought the softness reflected the real person. At least, he hoped
so. Palmer, on the other hand, was harder in more ways than one, in spite of
his apparent easy going attitude. His background was clearly that of someone
not unaccustomed to death or violence, and therefore hardened to it, but it
hadn’t made him immune to its consequences.

The contrast
made him wonder if there was anything deeper between them; the attraction of
opposites, perhaps?

He walked over
to his car, where the uniformed officer was waiting, and tried telling himself
that he was not secretly hoping that the relationship was purely professional;
that he might have a reason to speak to Riley Gavin again.

********

Riley
scrubbed at her eyes. They felt gritty after staring at her screen and wading
through reams of paper, absorbing thousands of lines of type. Apart from the
folder Varley had given her, her own research was continuing to unearth further
material, all of which was emerging steadily like a paper fungus from the belly
of her printer.

She watched the
cat sprawl inelegantly across the carpet as if it had been tossed from a great
height, and envied it the lack of stress. What she would have given for a
complete reversal of circumstances, for none of the awful news she had been
given, and the ability to choose only nice subjects with pleasant endings to
work on. Then she told herself that she was daydreaming. If she had wanted
nice, she’d have taken up patchwork.

She got up and
made some tea. The cat stopped sprawling, its radar on ‘scan’, then followed
her, eyeing the fridge with an intensity which had Riley automatically reaching
for a fork.

While it ate,
she thought about what she had accomplished so far. With all the reading and
the paperwork, she had ended up with little more than fairly strong rumour and
a whole host of speculation about Al-Bashir’s intentions, and the so-called
lifestyle of his young wife. She was going to have to do some more digging.

She picked up
the copy of East European Trade Varley had given her, which had migrated out to
the kitchen on one of her earlier coffee runs. She flicked through it, still
undecided about what to do. She either went with the assignment and got her
name in this magazine, or she returned Varley’s cheque in spite of his
assurances that it was non-returnable, and got on with helping Palmer solve his
problem. Given the choice, she knew which she’d have opted for.

Then she
stopped. She was staring at the inside title page of the magazine, her face
suddenly as pale as the paper she was holding.

I don’t believe
it, she muttered softly, and snatched up the phone. She dialled Palmer’s
number. He answered on the second ring.

‘I need you to
confirm something,’ she told him. ‘Have you still got the postcard from the
stuff Helen’s friend sent you?’

‘Sure.’ She
heard his chair creak. ‘Okay, what about it?’

‘What’s the
place name on the back?’

He read it out.
‘Sokhumi, Georgia. Unusual place for a holiday, unless you’re Russian.’ He
paused. ‘Hang on, there’s something written alongside.’

‘I know,’ said
Riley. She could almost picture the words; they hadn’t impacted on her when
she’d first seen them. ‘Helen wrote Ercovoy, then Atcheveli 3-24.’

‘I don’t get
it.’ Palmer’s voice was sharp with interest. She heard the chair creak as he
got to his feet. ‘How did you know?’

‘The magazine I
got for my new assignment,’ she told him, ‘is published by a company called
Ercovoy. Their production office is at Atcheveli 3-24, Sokhumi, Republic of
Georgia. It’s on the Black Sea.’

She ran out of
words, trying to make sense of the information. How the hell could there be a
connection between Helen and her own new assignment? It was crazy.

‘She must have
gone out there for some reason.’ Palmer spoke softly. ‘But why – and why send
the postcard?’

‘Maybe it was a
genuine coincidence. She went out there for a break after getting the
assignment and stumbled on the office. Stranger things have happened.’

‘Yeah.’ Palmer
didn’t sound convinced.

‘There’s
something else I found.’ Riley hesitated, then plunged in. ‘Some of the
research notes for this job I’m looking at.’

‘What about
them?’

‘A lot of the
notes have been put together at random – as if someone went through a bunch of
files and dragged out anything of interest. But some of it has been collated
and written up by someone who knew what they were doing. A professional.’

The line hissed
between them, then Palmer said, ‘A journalist?’

‘It feels like
it. There was discussion about Al-Bashir’s bid for the telecoms licence in
Eastern Europe, most of it very general. But one small entry, like a note to be
added later, said his main opposition might come from wealthy Russian émigrés.’

There was a
longer silence, and Riley wondered if she’d done the wrong thing telling him.
It was mere speculation on her part; an attempt to join up dots which might not
be connected.

‘For émigrés,’
he said finally, ‘read oligarchs.’

‘That word was
in the file. It’s thin, but… ‘ She sighed, struggling to argue convincingly
against her own thoughts and suspicions, and not liking what she was thinking.

‘I still don’t
get it,’ said Palmer. ‘If she was worried about something, why didn’t she
contact me?’ He sounded frustrated.

‘Maybe she was
going to but never got round to it.’ Riley wanted to drag the words back as
soon as she uttered them. Palmer was already feeling bad enough about Helen’s
death; he didn’t need the additional burden of knowing she had been scared
enough to consider asking an old boyfriend for help, but had been prevented at
the last minute. He appeared not to have noticed, so she continued, ‘There’s
something about Helen that struck me.’ She told him about her earlier research
into Helen’s publishing history via the Internet. ‘Helen had a steady work
rate, with regular jobs going back three or more years, here and overseas.
That’s good going for a freelance. Some were fillers, where she was probably
asked to stand in for staff writers. Others were normal, freelance assignments,
which was her bread and butter.’

‘Like the jobs
she did for Johnson.’

‘That’s right.
There were probably a few I didn’t find, but there were no huge gaps.’

‘Go on.’

‘Suddenly, for
the last six weeks, nothing. It was like she’d dropped off the map. It was
unusual.’

The silence
lengthened, then Palmer said, ‘Are you at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, stay
there and I’ll come to you. Oh, one more thing,’ he added sombrely. ‘I just had
a visit from Pell.’

‘What did he
say?’

‘He said Helen
wasn’t the first female freelance found dead recently.’

In his Finchley
base, one of Donald Brask’s phones purred softly. He reached out to switch it
to loudspeaker. The display told him it was Tony Nemeth, a reporter based in
Ankara, Turkey. Donald had tracked him down the previous day with an urgent
task, on the promise of further work if he came up with anything useful.

‘Anthony, dear
boy,’ he breathed softly. ‘What have you got for me?’ He had been disturbed by
Riley’s information about the magazine East European Trade. He had never come
across it before, and one thing Brask prided himself on was knowing about all
the potential paying markets out there waiting for him and his clients. The
other source of disturbance was that he had a bad feeling about it which
wouldn’t go away.

‘It’s difficult
to say, Mr Brask,’ Nemeth’s voice sounded furred, probably by too many
cigarettes and strong brandy. Now it held a tone of regret, even puzzlement. ‘I
went to the address you told me. I had to hire a sea-plane taxi to save some
time - I hope you’re okay for the fare? I got a good deal, though, from my
cousin, Mehmet.’

‘Of course I’m
good. What did you find?’

‘It’s a big
apartment block. But not a nice place, you know? Shit plumbing, rotting
concrete, lousy Soviet design – I’m surprised it didn’t come down in the last
earthquake.’

‘The devil
looks after his own. What else?’

‘If there’s a
publishing company there, nobody knows about it,’ Nemeth replied succinctly. ‘It’s
residential only – and I’m not saying high class, you know? Half the tenants
are illegals, the electricity and water don’t work every day, the sewers are
more often blocked than not… you know the kind of place I mean.’

‘Actually, dear
boy, I’m relieved to say I don’t.’ Donald stared at the ceiling. He’d had a
feeling about this from the moment Riley had first mentioned it. Publishing
companies weren’t in the habit of splashing money around on spec, least of all
those in Eastern Europe. Not, at least, the legitimate ones with nothing to
hide. He’d decided to check out the place after receiving Riley’s text message.