Rules of Honour (27 page)

‘Get out of my way,’ Markus snapped.

‘You bastard! My mom had nothing to do with
his
death.’

Even in a dream state Nicolas’s words stung him anew, the ‘bastard’ word more than anything.

‘I said, “Get out of my way.” ’

‘
Leave her be.’

‘She deserves what she’s going to get. She’s as bad as the men that strung our father up. Her silence allowed them to get away with murder.’

‘Don’t you get it? He was a monster. He deserved everything that came to him.’

‘No. That’s a lie. You’re a liar just like your whore of a mother.’

Markus was in the bedroom now, and Michaela Douchard was already dying from the bullets Markus had fired into her. His half-brother, Nicolas, was slumped at the end of the bed.

Markus looked at the gun in his hand.

He didn’t regret killing them. They were liars and players in the conspiracy to blacken his father’s name. He only regretted killing them so quickly. He should have made them suffer the way his dad had. Drilling them full of bullets quick like that was too good for them.

Markus turned around.

The stranger was standing in the open doorway.

No. This was not what happened, Markus’s brain screamed.

He lifted his gun, but the stranger was faster.

A bullet punched Markus in the side.

He fell, spinning once again over the balcony of Hayes Tower.

The ground rushed up to meet him and this time he did not snag a hold of the balustrade.

Flames erupted around him, fed by the rushing wind to a blazing conflagration.

Markus fell screaming.

He jerked awake. He sat up quickly, blinking in confusion all around his living room, unable in that brief moment between nightmare and wakefulness to recognise his home. The memory of the gunshot still rang in his brain, a resounding echo. The imaginary flames left their prickling memory on his exposed skin. He grabbed at his side, fully expecting to find the wound fresh and pumping blood, but the hydrogen peroxide had done the trick and sealed the torn veins. His breathing was ragged, an effort that made his ribs ache. He looked around, searching for the stranger. He wasn’t there. He’d only been a figment of his feverish mind. But they would meet again. Next time Markus dreamed, he hoped it would be about the stranger’s violent death.

Chapter 31

Bridget Lanaghan’s living room put me in mind of a museum of the Flower Power movement, and I would have found it strange but for learning earlier that her daughter, Judith, made a living selling tie-dyed shirts and scarves, bangles and bead necklaces to the tourists at the historic Ferry Building market place on the Embarcadero. It was apparently market day tomorrow, because Judith had commandeered the sitting room to lay out and catalogue and order her wares. Her elderly mother was one of the ladies I’d met at Andrew’s funeral, and the friend that Yukiko had mostly turned to for support. They both sat side by side on a comfortable settee made slightly constrictive by the bundles of brightly coloured clothing draped over its arms. Looking at Yukiko I was also reminded of the literal translation of her name: Snow Child. She was very pale; almost as colourless as the white funeral garb she still clung to. With the backdrop of neon blue, shocking pink and fluorescent green, she was almost translucent in contrast. I could see that Rink was worried for her.

A year or so ago Yukiko had suffered a heart attack, but her strength of will and character had seen her through the dark times. Now, with her beloved husband gone, I wondered if she would survive a further episode, or if she would merely give in to the inevitable. I’d heard similar stories before, where a grieving spouse gave up their hold on the earth, wishing only to join their lost one in the afterlife. I’m not sure, but Yukiko never struck me as the quitting type, and while she had responsibility I didn’t think she’d allow herself to succumb to her broken heart. I watched as Rink crouched before her and took her slender fingers in his huge hands, but I had to turn away to allow them the moment of tenderness. I had an urge to jump on an airplane, to go home to the UK and tell my own mother, Anita, how much I loved her.

Things had been a little fractious between my mom and me – all my fault, I admit – after my dad died and she remarried. Once my brother John was born, to my young mind I was shunned, and it took me a long time to understand the truth. My mom’s aversion wasn’t because she couldn’t accept me as part of her new family, but quite the opposite. When she looked at me she saw my father, and she couldn’t bear the loss she suffered. Sometimes I thought that Bob Telfer, my stepfather, shared similar misgivings whenever I was around, but his were based upon the knowledge that he’d forever be second best in his wife’s affections.

The maudlin thoughts were only fleeting. I wasn’t about to run away, not while the people here needed me most. I went and stood at Rink’s shoulder, so that I too could convey strength to the old lady. Rink had just come in from the kitchen where he’d informed Yukiko of our suspicions, out of earshot of Bridget and her family. In a show of pure friendship Bridget had allowed them privacy, but was there to hold Yukiko’s hand when she came back. It felt a little unfair that Bridget was not allowed into our ring of trust, but probably best that she knew nothing of what was going on, other than that Yukiko was in possible danger. To spare her and her family, we’d already decided to move Yukiko, and Rink was currently talking her into our line of thinking. The gravity of the situation was sinking in with Yukiko, and was what was most likely making her feel sick.

She couldn’t go home, and she would not be happy hiding out with Parnell and Faulks at Lake Chabot, not while the old men’s presence would force memories of what happened in the basement at Rohwer each time she looked at them. Rink had suggested taking her to a different hotel, but to do that would mean him staying with her, and halving our opportunity to take down Markus Colby. Briefly I’d wondered if, perhaps, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to take our suspicions to Detectives Jones and Tyler, and allow them to bring the murderer to justice, but we knew what that would mean to the three survivors and rejected the idea.

The solution was staring us in the face. We had the assistance of McTeer and Velasquez to fall back on. Yukiko didn’t have to stay in the same lodge as the old guys, but one close by. Spreading our forces between two locations would strain our friends’ system of round-the-clock protection, but hopefully this would end soon. All we needed now was for Harvey to get back to us, point us at Markus Colby, and we could get this over with.

I hadn’t really been eavesdropping their conversation, so didn’t hear exactly what swayed Yukiko, but finally she allowed Rink to help her to stand. Younger by ten years, and sprightlier, Bridget pushed out of the settee without assistance and the two friends hugged each other. While they were saying their goodbyes, Rink nodded me outside. I followed him out on to a stoop overlooking a sloping flower garden. The house was on the upper edge of a residential district dominated by three-storey houses laid to sequential rows. Rink had parked his father’s car at the kerb, the way the other residents did here. From our vantage I could see the headlights of vehicles crossing the double-decker Bay Bridge towards the heights of Yerba Buena Island and on towards Oakland. Some distance to our left spotlights picked out Coit Tower standing proud over Telegraph Hill. Way out on the bay was Alcatraz Island, the cliffs and abandoned penitentiary looking like a half-sunken battleship under the wan glow of floodlights.

We took in the sights in a moment of companionable silence, the flower-scented breeze warm on our faces. Then Rink took out his cell and rang a number from memory. All the way across country it would be late now, edging midnight, but it seemed that Harvey was still on the case. He answered immediately. After checking that no one was in earshot, Rink hit the speaker button so that we could share his phone.

‘You know, guys,’ Harvey said after we’d made our greetings, ‘sometimes it’s best to go way back to basics. Despite our triggerman taking a jaunt out to Arkansas, and another to South Dakota, it makes more sense that he lives in San Francisco – or near enough that he has a base from which he works that allows him easy access to the city. As you know, I told you Markus Colby dropped off the radar following high school, and we assumed to do that he’d have to have built himself a new identity. The most likely was to take his father’s surname and I’ve checked for Markus Peterson – with no luck. I’ve been searching records all over the Internet and getting nowhere, when I should’ve been concentrating on one thing: his goddamn social security number.’

‘Ain’t that the first thing you shoulda thought of, Harve? Man, you’re slipping.’ Rink winked at me.

‘I know, it’s freaking private eye one-o-one, but I got caught up in all the fancy searches at my fingertips. But, hey, I’ve still come through. I went back to the records and discovered something interesting. Colby’s social security number hasn’t been recorded anywhere since his disappearance, but . . . wait for it . . . his father’s has. As you know, Charles was never reported missing, and with no record of his death, his social security number was still active in the system. It looks like our bad boy has been living off his daddy’s identity for the last twenty-odd years.’

‘Sounds like he’s been planning something for years, brother,’ Rink said.

‘Looks like it,’ Harvey said. ‘I just didn’t get why he waited so long until going to Michaela Douchard for answers. I guessed there had to be a catalyst, something that got his blood boiling. Hunter, you still there?’

‘Yeah, I’m listening.’

‘You remember that guy you asked Rink to get me to look at, the extra name on the cops’ list.’

‘Mitchell Forbeck.’

‘That’s him. I checked him out, and you’re correct in thinking he was another victim. He was killed only a few days before Tennant, and – judging by how long they’ve laid out there – Michaela Douchard and Nick Peterson. Ballistics show that the gun used on Forbeck is the same as that used in the subsequent shootings . . . uh, sorry, Rink, but it was also used on your dad.’

Rink didn’t respond one way or the other, but I could tell his mind was working furiously.

Taking the silence as his hint to carry on, Harvey said, ‘You’re probably wondering what the hell Mitchell Forbeck has to do with the other victims? Well, I found the link. Forbeck and Tennant were cellmates. They shared prison time together.’

‘You think that Tennant told Forbeck what he’d done all those years earlier?’ I asked.

‘You know what inmates are like; they share all their dirty little secrets with their buddies. If you listen to them speak there are only two types of guys in prison: innocent men and hard cases. The first type cry about the miscarriage of justice that put them away, while the second big themselves up so that nobody thinks of them as an easy target.’

I was jumping ahead, stealing Harvey’s glory, but I couldn’t wait. ‘So Tennant made himself the big guy by bragging about his exploits to Forbeck? Are you telling us that Markus was in the system at the same time and heard what had happened?’

‘Not
in
the system, guys,’ Harvey crowed. ‘He was working
for
the system.’

‘A fucking prison guard!’ I felt like kicking myself. The jacket and baseball cap Markus was wearing when he shot at my car had lodged in my memory, and I saw it now. Not unlike a police uniform, but with enough to differentiate one from the other. At the time I’d mused that it might have been a security guard’s uniform but had decided that it was too easy to get hold of one to be important. For all I’d known then, Markus could have snatched the uniform from a pile of laundry or a washing line as he’d fled the scene of the house blaze.

‘He’s not a corrections officer in the sense that he works from any single location. He’s a subcontractor, tasked with prisoner transportation.’ There were some indistinct noises, as if Harvey was searching through some papers. ‘I printed off some work schedules: our boy
Charles Peterson
was on transport duty when Mitchell Forbeck was taken to a parole hearing shortly before his release. Is it such a leap that the two could have got talking, and Forbeck mentioned his buddy Tennant’s claim to fame to him?’

Rink interjected, ‘So, as soon as Forbeck was released, Peterson sought him out for more detail, and that led him to Tennant?’

Admittedly I had to agree it was a plausible scenario. ‘Where he tortured the details of everyone involved out of him,’ I chipped in. ‘Not only does Tennant give up the names of the lynch party, but also why they went after his father in the first place. My bet is that he visited Michaela Douchard to learn if the accusations were true. Maybe that’s why he killed her and Nicolas . . . when he discovered his father wasn’t the pillar of virtue he believed. Before that he was only out for vengeance, but when Michaela told him the truth about his “dear daddy” it threw him over the edge. It would explain why he escalated the violence so soon afterwards: he’s trying to clean shop, guys, to get rid of anyone who knows what his father was
really
like.’

‘That means he’s definitely gonna try for my mom again,’ Rink said. ‘And more important that we get her away now.’

I shook my head. ‘Your mom’s safest here, Rink. If we take the bastard now.’