Rules of Vengeance

5

“Hands in your pockets, ladies and gentlemen.”

Kate Ford opened the door to Lord Robert Russell’s flat, followed by Reg Cleak and several members of the forensics squad. She took one look at the high ceilings and the expansive living room with its view of Hyde Park and whistled. “Not bad for a starter flat.”

“Just a wee bit nicer than Lambeth Walk,” said Cleak with sarcasm.

“Touch anything and that’s where I’ll send you.” Kate examined the bolt locks embedded in the doorframe. One functioned vertically the other horizontally. A biometric sensor was built into the wall, below an alphanumeric keypad and a video screen to show the faces of whoever was coming to visit. “Who was he trying to keep out?” she asked Cleak. “I’d have thought that three doormen on call day and night and that medieval portcullis downstairs would be sufficient.”

Cleak pointed to the passive infrared sensor positioned high on one wall. “That’s not all. He has himself a state-of-the-art system inside, too.” Just then his phone rang and he stepped away to take the call. “That was the security company,” he said afterward. “Alarm was set at 1830. No activity reported until Russell returned from his parents’. He disarmed the system at 2:41:39 and turned it back on at 2:41:48.”

“And he fell before 2:45,” said Kate. “Whatever happened, it happened quickly.”

They walked into the living room. Kate opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the balcony. She observed that the railing was slim and metal, certainly too narrow for a man Russell’s size to sit on. With a downward gaze, she confirmed that there was nothing protruding from the building that he might have struck as he plummeted to his death. From her vantage point, it appeared as if the body had actually veered toward the building as it fell.

She stepped back inside. Robert Russell had shared his parents’ tastes as well as their money. The residence looked as if it had been furnished in 1909, not 2009. There was plenty of chintz and floral furniture, oriental rugs, and Louis XV chairs. There was a zebra-skin rug beneath the dining room table, a carved elephant tusk from the Raj, and even an oil of HMS Victory lying in wait for the French and Spanish fleet off Trafalgar. She’d stepped back in time. It was England at the height of the empire.

She walked into the kitchen, which was modern and up-to-date, with the Viking range she’d dreamed of and a Sub-Zero refrigerator big enough to hold a side of beef. A swinging door led into a formal dining room, which in turn gave onto a long hallway. Halfway along the corridor, they found Russell’s bedroom. It was more of the same: parquet wood floor, four-poster bed, curtains drawn, an oil of Russell as a teenager dressed in rugby kit, his cheeks rosy from exertion. The bed was neatly made, and a bouquet of fresh flowers stood in a vase on the side table. She opened the closet and peered in. A fleet of dark suits hung in perfect order, an inch separating each. A stack of pressed and laundered shirts sat on the dresser. Twenty-odd pairs of polished shoes were arrayed on custom-built shelves. “Look, Reg, he has a special place for his shoes. Got one of these at home, do you?”

Cleak stuck his head into the closet. “A regular Mrs. Marcos. Me? I’ve got my work shoes, a pair of te

Kate picked up a pair. A label inside read “Made by John Lobb, Ltd. for R. T Russell, Marquess of Henley.” She whistled softly. “Our lord has a title.”

Just then one of the forensics team rushed into the bedroom. “Come to the end of the hall,” he said. “We’ve found Russell’s command center.”

“What do you mean, command center?” Kate asked.

“You’ll see,” came the reply.

It was a room from the future. If the rest of the apartment lived in the nineteenth century, Russell’s office, or his “command center,” as it had been aptly nicknamed, came from the twenty-first. The floor was of sleek travertine. The walls were paneled in some kind of glossy white wood. A long stainless steel desk occupied the center of the room, and on it were three slim monitors. More impressive was the massive video screen built into the facing wall. The screen measured at least 2 meters diagonally. Lighting came from halogens built into the ceiling. Like the rest of Russell’s residence, the room was meticulously, even obsessively clean.

At either end of the desk stood neatly arranged trays piled high with papers. “Here’s a timetable for Victoria Station,” said Cleak, pointing to a brochure. “This one here’s called ‘Forecast of World Oil Production.’”

Kate leafed through several of the stacks. Some were Internet downloads from foreign news sites, others glossy company reports, and still others appeared to have been typed by Russell himself. The subjects ranged from weather patterns in Antarctica to something about a new military headquarters in Moscow to some mathematical sillyspeak about subatomic decay rates. She even found a copy of Constabulary, the monthly magazine “written by police for police.” She wondered who had given him that.

“Anyone know what he did for a living?” Kate asked.

“Some kind of analyst or researcher, if you ask me,” said Cleak.

“Yeah, but what kind?” She sat down at Russell’s desk and slid open the drawer. “Reg,” she said, her voice gone hard as flint. “Better have a look.”

Cleak gazed over her shoulder. “Very nice, indeed. And the latest model.”

Inside the drawer lay a gray steel semiautomatic pistol and next to it a box of bullets. “Beretta?” asked Kate.

“Browning,” said Cleak, who had served in the Queen’s Guard years ago. “Standard army issue. Ten bullets in the clip, one in the chamber. Not a lot of range, mind you, but plenty of punch if you use it close in.” He picked up the pistol by its nose and sniffed the barrel. “Hasn’t been fired in a while.”

“What do you suppose Russell needed one of those for?”

“Same thing he needed the bolts on the door and the Star Wars alarm system for. The man had enemies.”

“I want to review the apartment’s security videos for the past seventy-two hours. Both interior and exterior. Someone was in this apartment waiting for Russell when he arrived home last night. He didn’t get that bump on the noggin hitting his head on the doorway. There has to be footage of the killer somewhere inside the building.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Have the body transferred to the coroner’s office. Tell them I need a preliminary examination completed by lunch. I want to know just how seriously that blow to the head affected him.”

Cleak nodded, listing each instruction on his notepad. As he did so, he made a not-so-quiet sucking sound. He stopped abruptly, aware that Kate was looking at him. “Two impacted wisdom teeth. Six-month wait to see an NHS dentist, or I can cough up a thousand quid to visit a private doc on Harley Street.” He shook his head. “The wife has her heart set on Christmas in Bethlehem. I’ll have to wait, won’t I?”

“I can loan you the money. I’m flush. Got Billy’s insurance. Have to spend it on something.”

“Wouldn’t hear of it,” said Cleak, in a tone that said that was the end of that. He opened a package of chewing gum and folded two sticks into his mouth. “That’ll cure it for a while.”

Kate nodded, then turned back to Russell’s desk and pulled the keyboard close to her. She hit the return key, thinking that the PC was in slumber mode. No one turned computers off anymore. The screen remained dark. She tried again, then rebooted the CPU. Finally the screen came to life. Dozens of icons indicating various files appeared, but the titles were all gobbledygook: letters, symbols, wingdings. “What’s this, then?” she asked.