Rules of Vengeance

Kate shook her head. “I drink mine warm, or with a couple of ice cubes if I’m lucky.”

“Go ahead, you can hold it.” Cleak handed over the bottle. “There were two. Evidence took the weapon.”

“The weapon? You mean he hit Russell over the head with a bottle of Russian vodka?”

“Not Russian, Polish. Anyway we found no fewer than three blond hairs embedded in the ice. They’re off to the lab for DNA testing, but I reckon we’ll have a match.”

Kate replaced the bottle in the freezer and closed the door. “Not the first place I’d look for a weapon,” she admitted. “He knew his way around, didn’t he?”

With a nod, Cleak motioned for her to follow. “That isn’t the half of it. The chute was used for laundry back when the building was a hotel,” he explained. “Made of Manchester steel. Hasn’t rusted a bit since it was built a hundred years ago. There’s an access door on every floor. When the new owners renovated the place, they walled over the chute and patched up the doors.”

The two police officers were kneeling inside Robert Russell’s walk-in closet, staring down the beam of a flashlight into a gaping square cut out of the wall. The missing piece of drywall was en route to the lab for fingerprinting and analysis.

“He came up from the basement,” said Cleak. “Did a nifty job of patching up the wall down there, too. Took his time.”

“You’re telling me he managed to climb five stories inside this steel coffin?”

“A regular Spiderman.”

Kate peered into the bottomless chute, wondering what kind of person had the skill, or the guts, to climb up something so narrow and so dark. It seemed to drop forever. Suddenly her breath left her and she grew dizzy. Yanking her head clear, she stalked out of the closet.

“You okay?” asked Cleak, following close behind.

“Fine,” she managed. “It’s nothing. Don’t like tight spaces. That’s all.” She bit her lip until the pain forced her fears back where they belonged, then she said in a stronger voice, “So the killer started here and made his way to Russell’s office. Let’s see how he did it, shall we?”

Methodically they retraced the steps the murderer had taken eighteen hours earlier. In every room Cleak pointed out the location of the various security devices: motion sensors, thermal detectors, pressure pads. They ended up in Russell’s clean room of an office ten minutes later.

“How long do you reckon it took him to neutralize this system?” Kate asked.

“Never mind how long,” said Cleak. “We’re still working on how. The setup is supposed to be undefeatable.”

“Aren’t they all?”

Once in Russell’s office, Kate’s eyes jumped to the plasma screen. “What about her? Any luck tracking down our mystery woman?”

“None, I’m afraid,” said Cleak. “We’ve flagged the cable provider, but they want a warrant from the Home Office before even starting to look at who sent that message. Even then it’s an uphill battle. If Russell took measures to hide his tracks, it will be nigh impossible to track her down. At least in the short run.”

“Dammit,” said Kate. “We’ve got to find her. She’s all we’ve got. Lord knows, she may be in danger herself. Russell might not be the only one on their hit list. Pros, Reg. We’re up against some very nasty individuals. Government-trained thugs.”

“Individuals? I thought we were looking for just one.”

“Hardly.” Kate left the office and headed down the hall at her usual breakneck pace. As she walked, she explained what she’d learned about Russell’s work at Oxford Analytica. “He was poking his nose where he shouldn’t have been, little Lord Russell was. This operation was pla

Cleak stopped at the front door, breathing hard. “Would you slow down a sec? You’re giving me a coronary. Where are you going in such a rush?”

“Building security,” called Kate over her shoulder.

“But we already looked at the tapes,” protested Cleak. “We came up empty-handed.”

Kate was waiting inside the elevator as Cleak managed to sneak past the closing doors. “We didn’t look closely enough,” she said.

Building security was located on the second floor of One Park. It was a cramped room dominated by a multiplex of video monitors built into one wall and, despite the ordinance prohibiting smoking, reeking of tobacco. Kate stood with her back pressed to the rear wall, her eyes dancing between the sixteen live feeds. Reg Cleak stood to one side. To the other stood the building manager and the chief of security.

“The reason we missed him earlier is that he was already here,” said Kate as they waited for the first of the disks to be loaded and synched.

“I’m afraid there’s no camera in the basement,” said the chief of security. He was a former infantry officer with a bristly mustache and a slight limp, which he made sure everyone knew he’d acquired at Goose Green in the Falklands. “We never thought there was a need. There’s no access to it from the street. The only way in is via the elevator or the stairs, which are already covered.”

“Precisely,” said Kate. “I’d like to start with the disks monitoring the elevators and stairwells. Let’s have a look at the last loop prior to Russell’s murder, begi

The chief of security found the corresponding DVDs and slid them into the machine. A wide-angle view of the elevators filled the main screen. A time code ran on the bottom left-hand corner. Kate asked that they sync the disks with cameras in the lobby and the carpark. In this ma

At that time of night, most traffic involved residents returning to the building after an evening out. The residents could be seen crossing the garage or lobby, then appearing in one of the elevators. At each sighting, the building manager called out the person’s name. “That’s Sir Bernard,” or “That’s Mr. Gupta.”

The flow of traffic slowed after one a.m. They ran the DVD at accelerated speed, pausing only when a figure appeared onscreen. When the time code showed 0225, the time of Russell’s death, and every individual viewed onscreen had been accounted for, the chief of security asked if they’d like to take a break.

“Keep it ru

They continued viewing the disks. To her consternation, there was no sighting of a man entering the elevator on any floor, basement through eleven, from 2:20 in the morning until Detective Ken Laxton’s arrival at 3:15. At 3:17, they watched as the well-coifed detective entered the elevator and stood beside a woman with auburn hair. It took Kate a moment to realize that something was out of whack.

“Hold on,” she said sharply. “Who’s she?”

“You mean Pretty Ke

“I mean who’s the lady accompanying him in the lift?”

“Don’t know,” said the security chief. “Not a resident, I can tell you that much. I’d have remembered.”

Kate exchanged glances with Cleak. “Where in heaven’s name did she come from at three-seventeen in the morning?”

“I imagine she must have driven into the garage,” said the security chief.

“I didn’t see anyone drive in, did you, Reg? Rewind it.”

The security chief froze all screens, then rewound the loop showing the parking garage. Kate was right. No automobile had entered the garage. “Go back to the elevator. We must have missed her getting on.”

They backed up the disk and watched as Ken Laxton walked backward out of the elevator. The unknown woman remained inside, which meant that she was there when Laxton had gotten on. The frames went back further. Eleven seconds earlier, at 3:16:45, the door opened again and the woman retreated. “She got on in the basement,” said Kate.