The Blood Whisperer (42 page)

His voice trailed off as he registered the hard stare O’Neill lasered in his direction. The effect was spoilt only by the puffy bloodshot eyes.

“OK, OK,” Dempsey said quickly, suppressing a grin. “Basically, they upped the policy amounts, boss. Back end of last year it went up to ten million apiece.”

O’Neill stopped glaring and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. For a horrible moment Dempsey wondered if this was some kind of elaborate put-down.
Your information is so boring it has sent me to sleep.

But after a few seconds O’Neill straightened up. The glare was gone. “Who benefits?”

“Well, essentially—the company benefits.”

“Ah, but if anything happens to Lytton or Warwick themselves, who benefits then?”

“Well, we know from looking into the wills of both Lyttons after the wife’s death that if he’d died first she stood to inherit all his worldly goods,
including
a good chunk of his half of the company. But as she died before him—and Lytton doesn’t have any other relatives—the company goes lock, stock and two smoking barrels to the remaining director, Steve Warwick.”

“So it wouldn’t be out of the way to assume that the same arrangement is true for Steve Warwick and his wife—he dies, she gets the lot?”

“His wife?” Dempsey queried blankly. He looked up to catch O’Neill actually smiling. “Boss?”

“We’ve been looking at the wrong man,” O’Neill said. “We’ve been looking at Lytton when we should have been looking at Warwick.”

Mystified, Dempsey knew the DI was waiting for him to give in and ask so he gave in and asked, “Why? Looking at him for what?”

O’Neill made him wait a beat longer then said, “It was bugging me. I knew there had to be some connection but I couldn’t see what. You were the one who pointed me in the right direction, as it happens.”

Impress me later with the reasoning—just cut to the chase,
Dempsey thought savagely and wished he had the balls to say it out loud.

O’Neill nodded to the manila folder. “I was up half the night going over the files and I finally hit on the connection.”

Chastened, Dempsey reached for the folder, flipped it open to find photocopies of two passports. He recognised the first as Dmitry Lyzchko, a Ukrainian-born Russian employed by Harry Grogan.

The second face was unfamiliar to him but he read the details and it only took a moment for the implications to sink in.

“Holy hell,” he murmured. He glanced up. “What are they up to?”

“Well, we’ve got a shitload of explosives, family connections—or a lack of them—and a sudden increase in life cover. I could hazard a pretty good guess.”

Matthew Lytton stood on the balcony of the racecourse restaurant looking down at the gathering throng. Behind him was the same table where he’d sat with Kelly Jacks on the day he’d brought her here.

Lytton gripped the smooth polished rail in front of him. He wasn’t going to think about that—wasn’t going to think about Kelly. There were other things he needed to worry about today. Even if he
was
having trouble getting her out of his head.

Outwardly, he knew he presented a picture of the successful entrepreneur. He even had a buttonhole pinned to his lapel—a tight combination of lilac and blue rosebuds to remind people of his absent racing colours. Veronica’s idea, subtle but clever like the woman.

Behind him, the waitresses hurried efficiently between the tables, setting up. He ignored them. For the racecourse staff this was just another day. For him it was momentous.

And Steve Warwick was late.

Nothing entirely unusual in that, of course. Steve always did like to be a law unto himself but today of all days . . .

A voice from inside the restaurant filtered out to him. “Hey sweetheart, any chance of some fresh coffee down in the private boxes?” Lytton hadn’t heard that voice for quite a while but it was one he recognised immediately. “The amount you’re charging for them, I’d like a pot—make it hot and strong.”

He turned just as Harry Grogan stepped out on the balcony in an immaculate grey suit with a pale tan overcoat unbuttoned over the top. All he needed was a slanted trilby on his shaven head and he’d be the archetypal gangster.

“Matthew old son,” Grogan greeted him. “Not brought that nice little filly of yours today.”

“Grogan,” Lytton returned calmly. “I didn’t think it was sporting to enter her in a race where I’m the main sponsor.”

“Probably best—not enough bone,” Grogan dismissed. “Wouldn’t stay the distance.” A glimmer of something that might have been humour flickered in those flat grey depths. “Should have thought of that when you were setting up this race of yours.”

“A mile and four furlongs is the same as the Derby.”

“Got your sights set on the classics have you?” Grogan pursed his lips. “Ambitious. I like that in a man.”

“You should know.” He looked over into the man’s eyes and could read nothing there.

“Oh, I think between you and your partner there’s more ambition than I’d want to have.” Grogan stepped forwards to the railing and looked down at the massing crowds. “Going to be an interesting day,” he said. “Let’s hope we all come out of it winners, eh?”

With that he turned and walked away leaving Lytton with the feeling he’d just been given a message—a warning.

He pulled out his cellphone and punched in Warwick’s number. It rang without reply, eventually clicking over to voicemail.

“Come on Steve,” he muttered under his breath. “What the hell are you playing at?”

“I don’t know what you’re planning, Kelly love, but it had better be good.”

Ray McCarron was staring out of the side-glass of one of the works’ vans at what seemed to be an inordinately large number of coppers patrolling the area immediately surrounding the racecourse.

“When I think of something,” she murmured from behind the wheel, “I’m sure it will be.”

She was wearing logoed coveralls that were far too large and had a company baseball cap pulled down low over her face. The hat didn’t do a bad job of disguising both her features and the bruises she’d picked up over the past few days. They were just blooming to full glory. McCarron was sure she was only too aware that the marks on her face alone would cause people to take a second glance. A second glance that might make them realise who she was.

Between the two of us we look like we’ve been worked over by professionals.

Sometimes, it seemed, appearances were not deceptive after all.

He eased himself in the seat and recalled the parting advice of the doctors at the hospital when he’d prematurely discharged himself.
“Get plenty of rest Mr McCarron—nothing too strenuous.”

He wondered how this ranked.

“Head for the service entrance,” he said. “It’s just behind the stands.”

Kelly put the van into gear. “You’ve been here before,” she said.

“Once or twice,” he admitted. “A few times as a punter and then we got called in to deal with a vermin problem a couple of years ago.”

“You mean rats?”

“Well rats and horses tend to go together, what with the feedstuffs and all that.” He smiled. “Some bright spark put down poison and when they came in a couple of days later, the rats had not only trailed the poison everywhere, they’d corpsed it all over the place. Must have been fifty—big buggers some of them. We had to sanitise the whole lot.”

“Does that mean you have friends in high places?”

McCarron shook his head somewhat sadly. “The manager got the boot as soon as it was dealt with,” he said. “Shame really, I would have enjoyed a season ticket for our trouble.”

Kelly swung the van towards a gate. “So apart from the fact you know the layout, how does that help us?” she asked, eyes fixed on the security guard who stepped out to meet them.

“We’ll see,” McCarron said, winding down his window as the guard approached. “Morning mate,” he called in a booming cheery voice. “Where do you want us?”

The guard looked about twenty, with a prominent Adam’s apple above the pinched knot of his collar and tie. He trailed down his clipboard with a forefinger, frowning.

“You sure you got the right place?”

McCarron looked up at the stands looming over them. “Only one racecourse round here isn’t there?”

“Yeah I guess,” the guard said. He squinted at the name on the side of the van. “Cleaning? I thought all the cleaning was done last night.”

“Normal cleaning, yes,” McCarron said not letting his cheerful demeanour slip. “We’re more in the nature of an emergency crew. For your unexpected nasty stuff.”

The guard almost took a step back. “Like what?”

“Don’t know until we get in there. We were just told it was bubbling or something, giving off some noxious fumes.” He smiled. “You should be all right down here though. Unless the wind changes direction.”

“I dunno.” The guard hovered, looking round as if hopeful of more senior intervention. “You’re not on my list, see.”

“Won’t be—nobody expects an emergency do they?” McCarron said. “Tell you what, don’t you worry.” He patted the van door casually and didn’t miss the way the guard’s eyes were drawn to the bold-font list of services written there. “We’ll stick this in the public car park and take the gear in the front door. We’ll be suited up of course but it shouldn’t cause too much of a panic.”

“No, no!” Alarm flared in the guard’s face. “Don’t do that. They’ll have my guts for garters. Come in this way. Just park it somewhere out of sight will you?”

“’Course we will,” McCarron said, smiling more broadly now. “Discretion is my middle name.”

“Thanks,” the guard said. “Oh, what happened to your face?”

“Mugged—just round the corner from here as it happens,” McCarron lied just for the hell of it. “Not safe anywhere nowadays is it?” He gave the guard a wave. Kelly drove the van through the gate and threaded it across a car park filled with exhibitors’ vehicles.

“You’re a dark horse Ray,” she said, parking up near the rear of the building. “That rather nice piece of bluff might have got us past the gate guard but I have a feeling it may not get us much further.”

“Didn’t expect it to,” McCarron said. “I’m going to pay my money at the turnstiles like a good little punter.”

“And what about me?”

He smiled again. “You, Kelly love, are going to do one of the many things you do best.”

O’Neill let Dempsey drive again. The way the kid sliced through traffic anybody would think he spent all his spare time playing
Grand Theft Auto.

O’Neill wedged himself between door handle and centre tunnel and spent most of the journey on his cellphone trying fruitlessly to reach someone higher up the food chain. Chief Superintendent Quinlan was taking a weekend off and nobody else wanted to handle this particular hot potato.

“There’s no guarantee anything’s actually going to kick off at this race meeting, is there boss?” Dempsey asked, taking his eyes off the road for a second, during which time it seemed to O’Neill that about half a mile of scenery zipped past.

“We’ve got all the players in one place and a quantity of unaccounted-for explosives,” O’Neill snapped back. “You think?”

“Even so, we could cause a panic for nothing—”

“But if it turns out to be
something
and it comes out that we knew about it beforehand, we’re going to get our arses handed to us,” O’Neill said. “Can’t this crate go any faster?”

“Come on, come on!” Kelly grumbled as she jogged around the outside of the main building, aware this was all taking far too long.

She’d abandoned her coveralls in the van and left McCarron to make his own more legitimate way inside. Now she had to find an opening herself.

The ground floor yielded nothing accessible, nor did the floor above. It was only when she lifted her gaze up to the high second level that she spotted a small window slanted open.

“Oh you have to be kidding me . . .”

But the main stand was a striking modern design, its outside walls constructed of a composite material that could have been metal or plastic. Either way, it was smooth to the touch, each panel measuring roughly one metre by two, but the fixing system left a sizeable recess between one panel and the next. The gap was big enough to hook her fingers into and the narrow toes of her Red Chili shoes.

Despite herself and the situation she was in, Kelly smiled. She shifted the backpack more securely onto her shoulders and went for the first hold.

Once she got off the ground her biggest fear was being spotted. There was no way she could explain away climbing up the outside of the building. Not for any legal purpose.

As if I wasn’t in enough trouble.

She kept moving smooth and slow but making deceptive progress, always maintaining three points of contact, always reaching for the next gap for fingers or toes.

After a minute or so all her attention was focused on what she was doing so that even if anyone had called out from the ground she would barely have heard them, but her luck held. Nobody called out.

Nevertheless, by the time she reached the window her limbs were tight with the effort. The open pane was unlatched but the aperture was much smaller than it had appeared from the ground. Kelly realised that, still wearing the backpack, there was no way she could fit through. She had dangled perilously while she struggled to remove it, thrusting it inside first.

She squeezed herself through after the pack and just caught a glimpse of a cloakroom of some kind before dropping hands-down onto a bench in semi-controlled descent.

Kelly forward-rolled onto her back on the floor, staring up at the utilitarian lighting in the ceiling while her chest stopped heaving and her pulse rate slowed to something approaching normal.

After maybe a minute she sat up. Her initial impression of the cloakroom was confirmed but this had the look of a staff sanctuary and—judging from the clothing hanging on pegs on the wall in front of her and the scattering of shoes—she’d had the luck to land in a female domain.