The Blood Whisperer (29 page)

Kelly sat opposite the detective at a little corner café only a few hundred yards away from where he’d intercepted her. They were outside at one of the small tables squeezed under an awning between the violently pink outer wall of the building and the busy road junction. The noise and the continuing drizzle were enough to ensure they were alone and uninterrupted.

O’Neill had kept her close while he ordered two cups of hot chocolate and a couple of toasted sandwiches from the counter inside, not giving her the chance to make a run for it even if she’d been inclined to do so.

Kelly’s instinct and experience told her this was not how arresting officers behaved if they were following the rule book. That O’Neill had another agenda was obvious. What that agenda might contain, on the other hand, was harder to anticipate.

So for the moment she was prepared to go along with this irregular interrogation. She had nothing to lose and no real choice in the matter.

And besides, as he’d pointed out, she hadn’t eaten since the night before. Better by far to let him feed her before making a break for it, if it came to that. She snuck a sideways look at him without turning her head. He was a big guy who clearly spent enough time out of the office to keep a paunch at bay. A decent weekend footballer rather than a rugby player, she judged, despite the broken nose. She had no doubt that he could have made good on his promise to chase her down if she’d tried to bolt.

They moved outside with their hot chocolate. It was loud out there with the rumble of the railway line crossing a low bridge behind them, the constant traffic drone and the intermittent buzz of an air-wrench at the tyre place next door. To complete the set, a police helicopter hovered high overhead.

The songs of the city,
Kelly thought wryly.
I’ll miss them.

“You’ve led us quite a dance,” O’Neill said then. His voice was cool enough that she could glean nothing from it.

She held out both hands, wrists handcuffs’ width apart. “So what’s stopping you?” she prodded. She gestured towards her hot chocolate, the café in general. “Has the Met introduced a felon service-charter I don’t know about?”

“Let’s talk,” he said, needlessly stirring his drink. But he didn’t seem in any hurry to start a conversation.

Eventually Kelly sighed. “So how
did
you know where to find me?” she asked, then hesitated. “Someone from the lab?”

“No—your former colleagues were very tight-lipped,” he said. “Although having Matthew Lytton pay for the tests gave them a plausible deniability if they’d needed it. Nice touch.”

He’d done his research before he’d laid in wait for her. Somehow the thought made her feel better—that she hadn’t been caught on an off chance.

“Not intentional,” she said with a faint smile. “I simply didn’t have the money.”

He nodded, accepting the candour. “Your friend Tina, on the other hand, is pretty upset about her toy boy.”

Kelly thought again of the slim blade, saw it slicing the air as Elvis slashed at her. “I’m upset about it too, but the little sod pulled a knife on me. He had it coming.”

“Really?”

Kelly heard the dry doubt in his voice and realised she was going to have a hard time proving any of it. Even if she could retrace her steps and find the alleyway in Camberwell, the chances of the knife still being lodged in the drain were minuscule. And all practical forensic trace would be long washed away.

“I don’t think he’ll be pulling a knife on anyone for a while,” O’Neill went on. “But overreacting the way you did is hardly going to help your case.”

“Overreacting?” She heard the acidic note and throttled it back. “Is that what he told you?”

“Broken nose, cheekbone, right arm, four fingers, most of his ribs, punctured lung, severe concussion and a dislocated thumb. With your previous, Kelly, they could easily bump it up from GBH to attempted murder.”

Even though she noted his use of
they
instead of
we
Kelly felt her heart step up. “Wait a minute,” she snapped. “Broken ribs? What the hell are you talking about?”

The café door opened and the girl from behind the counter brought out their toasties, molten cheese and ham in a deceptively harmless-looking package. O’Neill waited until she’d gone back inside.

“I’m talking about the fact that having inflicted a catalogue of injuries you’re not going to be able to claim self-defence here. Not by anyone’s standards.”

“I didn’t . . .”

Kelly’s voice trailed away as her brain caught up. She tightened her focus on him, said dully, “It’s hardly worth wasting my breath to say I didn’t do it, is it?”

O’Neill tried an experimental bite of his food that was hopelessly premature. Kelly watched the steam escape. He grimaced and put the toastie aside to cool.

“I’m all ears.”

Kelly took a deep breath, tried to let it out slow and steady. “OK, I
did
break his nose,” she admitted. “Probably the wrist too. Like I said—he tried to stop me leaving the flat, pulled a knife on me. I did what I had to, to take it away from him, and then I left.”

“And he didn’t try to stop you again?”

“He wasn’t saying much at that point.”

“So the intercranial bleed is on you as well is it?”

Kelly flushed. “I checked his airways and put him into the recovery position with some support under his head,” she said, defensive. “
Then
I left, OK?”

He nodded slowly. Kelly couldn’t tell if he believed her or was just playing along, trying to give her enough rope for a noose.

“So who finished the job for you?”

Kelly’s recall presented her with a snapshot of Ray McCarron, lying weak and suddenly old in his hospital bed. She pushed for objectivity, risked a bite of her own toasted sandwich while she tried to obtain it.

McCarron’s assault had been cold, calculated, professional. This was amateur to the point of childishness. Did that mean two separate hands were at work? Or the same with differing motives. The first beating had clearly been a warning. The second, by the sound of it, a punishment.

She looked up, found O’Neill watching her closely.

“Why don’t you ask Elvis who did it?” she countered.

“If he ever comes round maybe I will.”

Kelly fell silent again, eyes on the traffic. An amphibious yellow duck-tour bus came past on its way to the river, filled with goggling tourists in wet-weather gear.

“It seems somebody’s put a price on my head—a kind of bounty,” she said without any colour in her voice. “Elvis was trying to collect on it.”

“From who?”

She shrugged, unwilling to lay out all her cards. O’Neill leaned forwards.

“I can make this official if you like, Kelly and maybe—just maybe—you’ll see daylight again before you’re a very old lady.” He waited a beat. “But somehow I doubt it.”

“So why the cosy little chat? What’s there to talk about?” she demanded, provoked beyond sense, hearing the anguish break through when she’d been so desperate to hide it. “If you think I’m so obviously guilty what the hell are we doing here?”

O’Neill didn’t answer immediately partly because he
wasn’t
sure why he was doing things this way.

Maybe because there isn’t another way to do them.

“Just tell me who you think offered the reward, Kelly,” he said in that quiet almost kind voice he utilised to convince the most hardened criminal they’d feel
so
much better if only they confessed.

“A man called Grogan,” she said baldly as if expecting him to know the name.

He did, but that didn’t mean it was the one he’d been expecting. “
Harry
Grogan?”

“That was my information, yes,” she admitted stiffly. “From what I’ve been able to find out his veneer of respectability is so thin you could practically read newsprint through it.”

O’Neill smiled in spite of himself. “Well that fits I suppose, in a warped kind of way.”

“What does?”

“You were dosed with ketamine,” he said. “You must have come across it in your time. The trendy young things take it for a real out-of-body experience. It has considerable hallucinogenic properties.”

“Well I can vouch for that first hand,” she muttered, staring at the scratched aluminium tabletop without seeing it. She frowned then looked up sharply. “Grogan has racehorses. And ketamine is—”

“A veterinary anaesthetic,” O’Neill finished for her.

“I don’t suppose he has a tame vet on call for his animals does he?”

O’Neill smiled. “One who happens to have a bit of an addiction problem and is therefore open to . . . suggestion, shall we say.”

“Drugs?”

“No, good old-fashioned drink.”

“Ah.” Her mouth twisted thoughtfully. “Ketamine,” she murmured. “No wonder I had a bitch of a headache when I came to.”

“Mm, it was probably a lot stronger than whatever you were dosed with last time,” he agreed taking a swig of hot chocolate. He picked up his toastie again—the outside seemed almost cold—and began to eat, watching her while he chewed.

Kelly sat very still, the frown locked in. Only her eyes moved, flicking back and forth as if reading some internal document. Eventually she looked at him with narrowed eyes. According to her official description they were brown but he noted that in reality they were hazel flecked with all kinds of greens and copper and gold.

“‘Last time’” she repeated flatly. It was more a challenge than a question.

He nodded, swallowing the last of his food. Hers was barely touched. He didn’t think temperature had anything to do with that.

“You didn’t need to cut yourself open to prove it Kelly,” he said gently. “Traces of ketamine would have been detectable in your hair for months.”

Her head dipped suddenly so the peak of the cap hid her face. O’Neill wiped his fingers, reached out and flipped the hat off her head. She flinched but didn’t otherwise move.

Under the hat he found her features clenched, eyes tight shut. She looked even paler than when he’d first seen her and more fragile.

O’Neill let it pass over her. He’d seen this kind of reaction from suspects before. Not when they were accused but when they were exonerated. The near-collapse of relief when they realised that finally somebody believed them.

“Why is Grogan after you?” he asked then.

It seemed to take a long time for the question to penetrate. When it did she raised her head slowly.

“I may be wrong and it’s not him at all,” she said with a weary smile. “There was some youngish guy who tried to grab me yesterday when I was in . . . south-west London. And I’m sure I remember him from the warehouse. Not how he looked but his aftershave. And the accent.”

“Accent?”

“He sounded Russian, maybe Ukrainian, something like that.”

O’Neill felt something spark in the back of his mind, dredged through his memory for the cause and remembered the triple-nine caller who’d reported Douet’s murder.
A Russian accent.
He kept the connection from showing on his face.

“What have you done to possibly tread on Harry Grogan’s toes?”

“If I knew that . . .”

“But you’ve been trying to find out.”

“What else can I do?” She shrugged helplessly. “It’s all a bit academic now though isn’t it?”

O’Neill studied her for a long time but when he came to a decision he made it fast, on instinct. Call it a hunch.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

“Tell me everything Kelly, right from the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.”

And because she was too weary to argue, she did—almost. When it came to Matthew Lytton she felt the need to be slightly more reticent and she wasn’t sure why. She still couldn’t quite decide what she felt about him and because she would struggle to explain that to the detective, she left it out.

Throughout, O’Neill sat without fidgeting, without interruption and let her tell the story in her own way.

At the end of it she picked up half the toastie, now completely cold and finished her lukewarm chocolate. The rain had petered out into indifference leaving behind dirty grey clouds like a sulk.

“I want to offer you a deal Kelly,” O’Neill said. His voice was terse as if a part of him disapproved of what he was about to do even as he did it. “All unofficial and off the record. I can take care of the CCTV outside the lab so neither of us was ever there. If you’re caught I’ll deny this conversation ever took place.”

“You make it sound so tempting,” she shot back. “What do I get out of this?”

“The chance to prove your innocence—and not just for Tyrone Douet’s murder.”

Kelly eyed him with mistrust. “OK, let me rephrase that. What do
you
get out of this?”

O’Neill shook his head. “Let’s just say I have my reasons and leave it at that. I don’t think you’re in a strong bargaining position here.”

“Why me?”

He shrugged. “Why not? With you on the loose certain people might come out of the woodwork and show themselves.”

Kelly gave a short bitter laugh. “You want me to act as bait.”

“In a way,” he agreed. “But I have to act on evidence as much as instinct. You have a free hand. No restrictions, no rules.”

“Not to mention no retreat, no resources and every copper in London on the lookout for me.”

“We’ve taken the watch off your flat,” he said casually. “Can’t justify tying up the manpower when you’d be an idiot to go back there.” He smiled. “At least you’ll have a bolt-hole. And transport—if that heap of rust you own actually runs.”

Kelly knew this was a trap of some sort but right now she was short on options. And it was better than the alternative which offered no choice at all. Absently she broke a corner off the remaining half of her toastie then let it fall. Her appetite had deserted her.

“I don’t know where to start,” she admitted at last.