The Blood Whisperer (48 page)

Yana gaped. She wasn’t the only one. She turned a beseeching gaze on McCarron but Kelly’s voice snapped her attention back again.

“Don’t look to him for help,” she said. “He might be a soft touch but he can read the evidence just as well as I can. Probably better—when he’s a mind to.” She paused. “You weren’t locked in the bathroom while Warwick was killed, Yana. You were out there with him, close by and unrestrained. Given time I could tell you exactly where you stood for each blow.”

McCarron cleared his throat. “Kelly love—”

“You heard us coming and you tried to clean up as quickly as you could and when that didn’t work you made sure the first thing you did was throw yourself weeping on the corpse, hoping the new blood would obscure the old.”

“She crazy!” Yana’s eyes skipped from one to the other in apparent bewilderment. “I no understand what she saying,” she protested, voice rising with distress.

“What I’m saying,” Kelly said helpfully, “is that there was a woman in that room all right and she definitely was ‘one cold bitch’ as you put it. But the evidence points to
you
and
she
being one and the same. And unlike people, the evidence doesn’t lie.”

Except when it’s made to.

McCarron couldn’t help the thought sliding through his mind. Yes he’d seen it all, the way it looked, but he vividly remembered working the scene of Kelly’s supposed crime all those years ago when she had also looked
so
guilty that nobody harboured any doubts. Nobody except him.

“What I don’t understand is why here and now?” Kelly went on. “Surely if you really wanted to get rid of your abusive spouse you could have dreamed up something less . . . public?”

He looked at the frightened woman cowering in front of them, the picture of innocence but all the time he kept getting strobe-like images of Steve Warwick’s body, of the blood sprayed around the walls of the room nearby and of the man who’d attacked him in the hallway at the office, beating home the message with each blow. McCarron stared harder and this time he thought he saw a desperate cunning under the show of emotion. He straightened his shoulders.

“Public’s better than private,” he said aware his voice sounded rusty in his throat. “More confusion, more foot traffic, more evidence to be interpreted. And there’s always the chance to cover it up with some other crime.” He forced himself to look at Yana with an impassionate eye. “Planning a nice fire are you love?”

Yana gave a gasp that became a howl and then turned to his amazement into laughter.

And as she laughed it was as though she threw off the timid personality like a cloak. Her shoulders lost their rounded outline, her neck lengthened, her chin lifted.

“Public is perfect,” she agreed. Even her voice had changed, become strong but with an underlying husky note, almost a purr. “He was
big man
in public who liked to play games and be spanked like
little boy
behind closed door. So—more public is better, yes?”

Dmitry flattened against the wall next to the doorway just in time to hear the laughter. He recognised it and cursed inside his head.

It was not the laugh of the submissive Yana but of Myshka at her bad boldest best.

What the
hell
does she think she’s playing at?

Dmitry reached inside his jacket and pulled out the Glock. It was the same gun Myshka had used to kill Viktor in the silent woods. He knew he should have buried it with the body but something had warned him to keep hold of it in case of trouble.

It was not
so
difficult to obtain guns in a country where nobody outside the police or military were supposed to have them but it would still have taken time. Time Dmitry suspected he would not have.

He checked there was a round in the chamber and slipped his trigger finger inside the guard, just taking up the pressure on the blade that formed the safety. Then he took a long deep breath.

He went into the room fast, hitting the door with his shoulder, kicking it shut behind him already bringing the gun up.

Myshka was sitting at the table like a
czaritsa
holding court. Not just the chattel of a Russian czar, but more like an empress in her own right. The other two whirled at his entrance but she just sat and smiled at him.

“You have met Dmitry, of course,” she said as if she’d stage-managed the whole thing.

“Of course,” the woman said, her voice low and bitter.

Kelly Jacks. It was hard looking at her now to balance her small stature with the trouble she had caused him. And despite the gun in his hand she was looking at him with more anger than fear. She was dressed as a waitress.
Clever,
he acknowledged. Who noticed waitresses?

The man, McCarron, seemed more shaken. It could have been the gun or simply the fact that they were face to face again for the first time since Dmitry beat him into unconsciousness. Either way the old man had almost shut down, curled in on himself. He would be no threat.

“Steve Warwick I can understand—almost,” Kelly Jacks said. “But did you have to kick Elvis into a brain-damaged coma?”

For a second an image of a quiffed and sneering distant pop star gyrated into his mind. “Who?”

She shook her head. “You didn’t even know his name did you? The kid in the flat in Brixton. He tried his best to give me to you. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t succeed.”

Dmitry stared at her with a lack of emotion that was not an act.
Why do you care?

“The race is about to start,” he said to Myshka, not taking his eyes off Kelly Jacks. “Everything is ready. We need to finish this.”

“Of course,” Myshka said. She rose, graceful. “Any last requests?”

“Yes,” Jacks said. “Why did you kill Veronica Lytton and make it look like it was connected to that old murder I investigated?”

Myshka pursed her lips. “Such an ego,” she murmured. “There
was
no connection except in your own mind.
Lady
Lytton, she see too much, hear too much and she begin to suspect poor little Yana is not what she seemed, so—” an elegant shrug “—she have to go.”

She made it sound so easy Dmitry thought, when it was not Myshka who had to see it through. But he remembered the way she’d murdered her inconvenient husband. She had not taken the easy way then . . .

“A coincidence?” Kelly Jacks’s face was blank with shock.

“They happen,” Myshka agreed, obviously enjoying her discomfort. “She did not believe in pills, but her husband he shoots and I knew she would
so
hate to have that lovely face . . . spoiled.”

“But . . . then you killed Tyrone—the same as . . .” Her voice petered out. She took a couple of tottering paces sideways, steadied herself with hands braced on the back of a chair.

“You were pain in ass by then.” Myshka smiled at her again. “You can thank Matthew for that.”

“What?”

“You did not know? He ask Steve to find out about you on Internet and
he
delegate to me. Perfect way to deal with you was with your own past.”

“Myshka,” Dmitry warned. “We do not have time for this.”

“No,” she agreed. She checked the time. “He will be back soon.” Her eyes drifted over the two of them, the old man and the waitress, as if they were of no account. “Put them with the others.”

Your word is my command.
“Dead or alive?”

She raised a disinterested eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

Dmitry considered for a moment then brought the Glock up double-handed and lined up the sights on the centre of the old man’s chest. McCarron caught the movement and his head jerked up, finally coming out of stasis.

“Wait—”

“What?” Dmitry asked over the gun. “You think you can persuade me to sit down and talk about it?” As he began to take up the pressure on the trigger a blur of light and dark hit his peripheral vision as Kelly Jacks heaved up the chair she’d been gripping.

“Take a seat,” she growled and sent it spinning for his head.

Dmitry swung the gun blindly in her direction and pulled the trigger.

DI Vince O’Neill was outside on the lower walkway overlooking the parade ring when he heard the shot. He’d been waiting, not patiently, for the head of racecourse security to authorise someone to release him a set of keys for the storerooms when the sound cracked out overhead.

O’Neill had heard enough gunfire in his time to duck instinctively. He knew there was no mistake even before the glass began to fall around him like deadly shards of rain.

The panic was instant, blossoming outwards as people scattered. The fear transferred itself to the horses in the parade ring—highly strung at the best of times and already snapped tight with pre-race nerves. They shied and skittered as the people bellied outwards away from the building.

It was only when the building didn’t follow the glass down—when the rain became a shower rather than a deluge and no bodies fell—that the crowd’s rush ebbed and a morbid curiosity took over. They stopped, began to stare and point.

O’Neill shifted his gaze upwards too. He saw a blank emptiness at the window of one of the private boxes where he should have been able to see only reflection of sky.

“The whole pane’s gone,” said the man next to him. “Damn lucky nobody was killed, eh?”

But O’Neill didn’t share his relief. He knew what he’d heard.

Nobody killed? That remains to be seen.

“Boss!”

O’Neill turned, saw Dempsey approaching at a run. “Did I hear—?”

“Yes.” O’Neill grabbed his arm. “Keep your voice down and come with me.” They headed for the nearest entrance, pushing against the flow. “What did Cheever say?”

“He was a bit less combative this time round,” Dempsey said hurrying to keep up. “No more helpful, mind you, but not as rude with it.”

“Yeah, well maybe this will change his mind.” O’Neill shouldered open the door and punched the call button for the lift. He glanced at the floor indicators, found them both stuck at the upper levels and headed for the stairs with a frustrated grunt.

When he saw the man half a flight above them—staggering and barely upright, clinging to the banister with blood coating his head and one shoulder—O’Neill’s first thought was that he’d been shot. Putting it all together on the fly it was a logical assumption. He took the intervening steps three at a time and caught the man under the armpits just as he would have fallen.

It wasn’t until he’d propped the injured man against the wall that he realised he knew the face under all that gore.

“Lytton? What the hell happened?” he demanded. “Where are you hit?”

“Over the head,” Lytton said sounding blurry but remarkably calm. “That bitch . . .”

“Jacks?”

“Hmm? What? No, not her—that bitch Steve’s married to,” he mumbled. “Who would have thought it?”

Dempsey leaned in. “Mr Lytton we just heard a shot—”

“No he wasn’t shot.”

O’Neill straightened, exchanged a worried look with his DC and asked carefully, “Who?”

“Steve,” Lytton said. “I think she beat him to death, poor bastard.”

“Where is she now—Yana Warwick?”

“Don’t know.” He tried to stand, swaying precariously. “Probably far away if she’s any sense. Where we should be.”

O’Neill jerked his head. “Get hold of Cheever again,” he told Dempsey. “Tell him we need back-up. Never mind a possible bomb scare—this has just become a murder scene.”

He started up again but Lytton’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “You said ‘possible’ bomb scare?” he queried. “You might want to re-think that one just a little . . .”

Grogan was still in the parade ring with his trainer when he saw the window fall. Like O’Neill he had no problem identifying the gunshot for what it was.

His immediate concern was for his horse. The grey colt took any excuse to spook when he was race-fit. At the onset of the commotion he reared up, trying to yank away from his lad.

The prospect of such a valuable animal running amok on a crowded racecourse made Grogan abandon his dignity and grab hold. Eventually, between them—he, the lad, and the trainer—they managed to calm the colt down. As much as he’d allow himself to be calmed.

This could have cost us the race.

By the time he could step away, straightening his tie and wiping his hands, the panic was largely over. Grogan saw a couple of men hurrying for the entrance to the stands and clocked them as police even in civvies. He followed the gazes upwards and saw at once the shattered window in the private box at the top of the stand.

It only took another moment to realise whose box it was.

With a final nod to the trainer he walked briskly across the grass. The entrance to the building was being guarded by a member of racecourse security who stepped into his path.

“Sorry sir, there’s been an incident upstairs. If you wouldn’t mind—”

“Yes I would mind,” Grogan said going toe to toe. “And bearing in mind the amount of money I’ve paid to enjoy watching my horse run from up there, unless you want to be hearing from my brief, you’ll let me through.”

The security man quailed under Grogan’s stare and jerked his head without a word. As if not actually inviting him to pass would be an excuse later, Grogan thought savagely.
If you were one of mine sonny, I’d sack you on the spot.

He was still simmering as he summoned the lift.

Inside the private box only two people were still on their feet.

Kelly Jacks was one of them.

She’d seen McCarron go down in response to Dmitry’s gunshot but not as a direct result of it. He’d clearly thought the Russian was going to kill him, had risen clumsily, unbalanced in his panic, tripped over his own feet and fallen.