Scion (2 page)

“You may well be Rosie, but you ain’t like
no prostitute I ever met. Who are you really?”

As Rosie contemplated what Darius did or didn’t know
, the TV showed a video of a young man’s head thudding to the ground 3,000 miles away in England. Rosie’s worries about what Darius knew evaporated as she watched the footage play again.

Darius watched Rosie’s face change from
a smiling beauty to a face of sheer horror. She was transfixed by something behind him. Darius’ mind worked over-time. As he slowly turned to follow her gaze, he was relieved to see no masked gunmen or ghosts, the only two things he thought would cause Rosie’s reaction. He realised it was the TV and watched as the video of the young man played again, the banner at the bottom of the screen telling him that the unknown man had been arrested that morning in the UK.

“What? Do you know this guy or something?” asked Darius irritated.

Rosie just kept staring at the TV, answering almost trancelike.

“No.”

“So what the hell has got into you?” he asked. She was beginning to freak him out.

“I recognise him.”

“Who is he?”

“I
don’t know.”

“But you just said you recognised him?”

“I do.”

“So you don’t know him
but you recognise him. What the fuck is that all about?”

“I don’t know him because he’s not supposed to exist
,” replied Rosie shaking herself from the shock. “I’m sorry but I need to make a call, can I use your telephone?” she leaned forward and began to turn the phone towards her.

Darius was still trying to work out what the hell was going on when he suddenly realised what Rosie was doing. He grabbed the phone and yanked it from her grasp. Darius had had enough. He grabbed Rosie’s arm with his free hand and began to pull her towards him across the desk, raising the phone and swinging it back
. It would do the job as well as any other blunt instrument.

Rosie struggled against his grip but Darius proved far too powerful for her
. Lifting her out of her seat, she slowly slid across the wide desk towards him, her face flat against the surface. She couldn’t see what Darius was doing but she could sense a movement to her right where the phone had been. She had no doubt what was coming next. Her cover was obviously blown. Rosie the prostitute, at that moment, ceased to exist.

Ashley
Jones’s hand swung back and grabbed the small black plastic box from her rear pocket. As the phone continued its arch higher and higher, building momentum for its downward thrust, Ashley’s hand was already on its way back towards Darius. The black box pointing directly towards his chest. Darius’ attention was focussed entirely on the phone and he failed to notice the very deliberate motions of the woman struggling beneath him. Content the phone had enough height for deadly impact, it was time.. Ashley, noticing the change in direction, wasted no time and pressed the button on the small box. Compressed Nitrogen forced two small probes to shoot out of the end of the box and imbed themselves in Darius’ chest. He instantly let go of Ashley and desperately clawed at the two small probes. Before his hands could reach them, Ashley pressed a second button and watched as 50,000 volts of electricity overrode his central nervous system and sent his muscle tissue into uncontrollable contractions. After a few seconds his body slumped to the floor. Ashley placed the Taser electroshock gun on the desk and smiled as Darius’ body twitched as the system continued to deliver its charge. She picked up the phone and dialled the number she had tried to call earlier.

“Hello, Parkside Police Station.”

“Hi, I’m phoning about the young man  on TV, how is he please?”

“Can I ask who’s calling
?”

“Just a family friend
,” replied Ashley, watching another re-run of the day’s biggest news.

“I’m sorry but can you confirm his name to prove you’re a friend
,” asked the officer 3,000 miles away.

Darius’
body stopped twitching, the Taser’s charge had run out.

“I’m sorry I can’t talk now, I’ll be there in a day or two
. Can you just tell him I know who he is.” Ashley dropped the receiver and ran out of the office, leaving Rosie the prostitute behind forever.

Chapter 4

The moment the caller had acknowledged knowing the suspect, the officer on the call had raised his hand and waved it
around in the air frantically, only stopping when he received a tap on the shoulder from his supervisor confirming that the call was being recorded and a trace initiated.

“She’s gone.”

He removed his headset and turned to his supervisor disappointed not to have kept the caller on the line longer.

“S
orry.”

The supervisor turned towards the desk at the back of the communications room
. All calls to Parkside were being re-routed to the Cambridgeshire Police headquarters in Huntingdon where a specialist communications team was helping to track any potential leads as to the identity of their suspect. Being a Sunday, there was little chance of the DNA check being completed.

The officer operating the array of equipment at the desk to the rear of the room
was motionless. His headphones remained in place as he listened intently to the line the call had come in on. Catching the supervisor’s eye he pointed to the headphones. The line was not dead. As he listened, his fingers continued to tap at the keyboard in front of him, fine tuning the equipment in order to pick up even the faintest of voices at the other end.

Before the supervisor could place a headset on, the specialist jumped
from his seat and threw his headphones to the ground holding his ears.

“Jesus!”

“What happened?” shouted the supervisor running to the specialist’s side.

“I had the pick up set
to max and I think she just kicked him in the balls. After she stopped talking, I heard a noise like the phone being dropped, something being scraped along a surface and then footsteps. I heard the woman say something quietly, it may have been “prick” and then an almighty thud and a rough sounding guy screamed “YOU FUCKING BITCH.” I’ll just rewind, hold on.”

As the supervisor and the original officer donned
their headsets, the specialist rewound the feed to the point where the woman had dropped the phone and checking they were ready, played the tape at a less deafening volume. The three listened as the woman took something from the desk and apparently kicked a man as she fled from the room before slamming the door behind her. They then listened as the man screamed in fury at the fleeing woman he called “Rosie” vowing to kill her in a variety of unpleasant ways.

“He doesn’t seem to be moving
,” said the supervisor.

“
Neither would you if you got kicked as hard as he was. I’m surprised he can even talk.”

A shuffling
noise silenced the group as they listened carefully to events unfold thousands of miles away. The man was obviously pulling himself towards the phone. The sound of a click followed by a short conversation suggested an intercom system was being used.

“Did you get the bitch
?”

“Who?” asked a
nother male voice.

“Rosie, she just kicked me in the nuts and ran out of here.”

“Sorry, boss, she just left. She said you asked her to go see the doctor down at the clinic.”

“Fuck, well get after her and don’t come back ‘til you get her or she’s dead. You hear me?”

“Yes boss.”

“Fucking soundproofing
!” was the last the three heard as the man replaced the receiver of the phone.

“I’m not sure Rosie’s going to be much use to the investigation, sounds like her days
are numbered,” offered the specialist.

“Doesn’t sound good.
The quicker we get the location of the call, the sooner we can help her. Any ideas?”

“Washington D.C.
, here’s the address.”

He
handed a printout to the supervisor along with a copy of the recording.

The news of the breakthrough was immediately relayed to
DCI Harris and DS Kelly along with the imminent threat to their potential witness.

DCI Harris looked at the address
that had been passed to him. ‘The Palace, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.’

“That street s
ounds very familiar,” mused Harris.

“Sherlock wouldn’t have had a look in with you
around,” replied Kelly sarcastically. “It’s only the most famous address in the world… Pennsylvania Avenue…” Kelly paused giving Harris a final chance to redeem himself but with only a blank expression, she gave up. “It’s the same street The White House is on!”

“
Oh,” replied an embarrassed Harris, a feeling that was becoming all too familiar. Before he could impart any further evidence of his encyclopaedic knowledge, the door opened and the Chief Constable entered the office. Harris’s heart almost stopped beating.

“Good morning Sir,” said Kelly.

“Is it?” he responded. “Well?” he asked looking into Harris’s eyes.

Harris explained himself and ran through his version of events. He stopped a number of times to elicit some response but each time he stopped, the Chief just nodded for him to continue.

“So it’s all just a big misunderstanding?” asked the Chief Constable angrily.

“Actually yes. I genuinely believed he was making a break for it,” said Harris.

“In front of fifty officers and the worldwide press?!” shouted the Chief.

“I know Sir
but he head-butted me in the stomach and you know how it is, it was just automatic.”

The Chief looked at the ag
eing detective. He did know ‘how it was’. When he had joined the force at roughly the same time as Harris, police brutality towards criminals was not only tolerated but actively encouraged. Those days, however, were long gone and even looking at a criminal the wrong way could have you under investigation.

“We shouldn’t forget you caught the bad guy,” he pondered.

“Exactly. That guy is a scumbag rapist, it seems the press are forgetting that,” added Harris a little more forcefully.

“So who is he?”

“Absolutely no idea. He came to, gave us his first name, Scott, and claims not to have a surname.”

“What about the victim, how’s she doing?”

“I’m not sure, she’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared
? You have got to be fucking joking. She kicks off rumours of a Virginia Tech massacre and pulls a fucking Houdini?!” The Chief looked at Harris questioningly. “You sure you’ve got the right guy?” 

“Absolutely. Everything but the injuries
he inflicted on the previous victims match.”

T
he Chief wasn’t convinced. He had investigated enough cases to know something didn’t feel right.

“It’s him Sir, rest assured it’s him and the DNA will prove it outright.”

“How long?”

“The samples have just been sent and I’ve asked for a quick job, couple of days maybe.”

“I’ll call the boss at FSS and see if we can make it quicker than that.”

The FSS was the Forensic Science Service, the custodians of the UK’s National DNA Database.

“I’d appreciate that Sir,” replied Harris.

“I’m not doing it for you, you pillock. The only thing that’s going to take the heat off this case is
to confirm the bastard is our serial rapist.”

Kelly interrupted their conversation
.

“I’ve just got off the phone
from the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s D.C. office. The plot thickens.”

“It seems The Palace is a very popular destination for some of Washington’s more powerful individuals. As such
, they have some extremely influential friends and there is no way the D.C. police will be allowed anywhere near to help us find this Rosie woman.”

“So what is The Palace
?” asked Harris. He didn’t see Kelly’s eyes raise to the heavens.

“I would guess a brothel,” replied the Chief. “So, to summarise, we have a suspected rapist. Who, while being arrested, we abused on live TV. A serial rapist who no-one can identify. We have a first name, Scott, and have no idea whether it’s real or not. The victim who didn’t even give an accurate description of the suspect seems to have disappeared. And we get a call from a prostitute in Washington who appears to be the only person on the planet who knows who he is and who is now being chased across the city by a lawless pimp desperate to kill her. Does that sound about right?”

“Unfortunately yes,” replied
Kelly.

“We’ll clear it all up when we get to talk to the bastard tomorrow
Sir,” encouraged Harris.

“I hope so for your sake, Harris, I hope so
,” said the Chief, alarm bells ringing in his head. None of it made any sense, none of it.