The Blood Whisperer (50 page)

It’s not enough Ty. It will never be enough.

She heard another groan. Dmitry was showing signs of coming round. He rolled onto his hands and knees, spitting blood and what might have been a tooth onto the polished floor.

Kelly twisted out of McCarron’s grasp and booted the Russian solidly under the chin and then again in the ribs as he started to drop. She only realised afterwards that she’d done it in the wrong order.

Should have gone for the ribs first—made the bastard feel it.

Then the world settled and her narrowed-down field of vision widened out. The breeze was cool against her sweating skin and the commentary on the race that blared in from outside was growing in pitch and tension.

“Saved me the trouble,” Grogan said calmly moving past her.

“Yeah well,” Kelly said. “You didn’t have a shovel on you.”

Grogan didn’t reply. He stepped over Dmitry’s outstretched legs and went to the window, just close enough to the gap to look down onto the course.

“Christ Almighty,” he yelped. Kelly and McCarron hurried alongside him. “I’ve missed half the bloody race!”

Below them a close-grouped herd of thoroughbreds swept through the final turn and stretched for the finish, the combined thunder of their hooves rolled up from the turf like distant gunfire. Kelly could see the only grey in the race was two back from the leader and bunched in next to the rails. It was impossible not to watch the final stages of the battle unfold.

“Come on, come on,” Grogan growled beneath his breath. “Put your bloody foot down . . .”

As if hearing the command the crouching jockey began to wave his whip. The colt flattened, barging his way forwards. The finish line flashed nearer. The second horse fell away, drifting outwards, his burst of acceleration spent.

One remained. The colt went after him with furious pace, utterly focused. As they crossed the line Kelly could not have said which was in front.

“Bloody hell,” Grogan said, his voice a growl. “If he’s lost it on a photo I’ll skin that jockey—”

“I skin you all first!”

They whirled. Yana, forgotten in her injury, was back on her feet and clutching the gun dropped by Dmitry. She held it with the competent grip of someone who has handled firearms before and knows how. Her face was a mess of blood and venom.

The short harsh smack of the gunshot echoed high above the racecourse, audible even over the bellowed roars of the betting public, just as the last of twelve runners in the Lytton-Warwick Cup crossed the finish line.

A moment later the woman’s body fell from the open box above the stands. With such a nail-biting climax to the day’s big race, nobody saw the beginning of her fatal plunge but they heard her screaming all the way down.

There wasn’t time for her to reach terminal velocity nor for the weight of her head to invert her in flight to the classic head-down dive. So she was in an almost supine position, back arched and limbs trailing, when she hit the rail of the walkway above the parade ring in a clean line at the waist.

The nearest witnesses later claimed they heard her spine shatter like dry kindling in a fire.

The impact cut off her cries like a guillotine. Spectators who’d ventured back onto the walkway for a better view of the course, despite the crunch of glass fragments under foot, fled in renewed panic.

From there the woman cartwheeled limp and broken down into the parade ring itself. She landed not neat and together, the way such deaths are usually portrayed, but face down in a buckled nightmare of dislocation and distortion.

There was a brief pause then the screaming started again. And this time it came from many voices.

O’Neill arrived at the doorway to the private box out of breath, having just run up six flights of stairs from the basement level. Dempsey was at his elbow and the DI was vaguely irritated to note his skinny sidekick had not even broken a sweat.

O’Neill muscled through the doorway knowing that if he didn’t get in there fast after shots fired Cheever was liable to turn the whole thing into a long drawn-out negotiation.

Inside the room were three men, two of whom he recognised, and one who was lying face-down on the floor and not easy to place. O’Neill glanced at the inert form and decided there’d be time to get to him later.

The other two men were near the conference table in the centre of the box. Former CSI Ray McCarron was sitting down, his skin waxy and grey, as Harry Grogan tightened a belt that was doubling as a makeshift tourniquet around his upper arm.

As unlikely scenarios went, O’Neill considered this had to be right up there.

“About bloody time,” Grogan said glancing up. “Any chance one of you little Dutch boys could stick his finger in this particular dyke? I’ve got a horse to unsaddle.”

“Dempsey—you passed First-Aid a lot more recently than I did,” O’Neill said. “See what you can do.”

Dempsey threw his boss a dark look but hurried across. As soon as he loosened the tourniquet blood welled out of what looked suspiciously like a gunshot wound.

“Bugger it,” McCarron said through thinned lips. “I’d only got the one good arm left.”

Grogan straightened his cuffs and began to move past O’Neill.

“The horse can wait—this is a crime scene. I can’t let you leave until we have a statement.”

Grogan showed his teeth briefly. “Take more than you and the boy to stop me seeing if that bloody colt of mine is worth the money I’ve put into him,” he said. “Either arrest me right now or get out of my way.”

O’Neill knew clout when it was being brandished in front of him but he didn’t have to like it. “I’m sorry sir but I can’t let you leave.”

“Name a station and I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning with my team of lawyers. Try to delay me now and I’ll have ’em running rings round you for months.”

O’Neill hesitated a moment then stepped back with a curt nod.

Grogan had sense enough not to crow in victory. But in the doorway he paused, turned back and gave the room a final visual sweep. “Bloody shame she had to go like that,” he said, no emotion showing in his face, and went out.

O’Neill turned on McCarron. “‘She’?” he demanded. “And a shame she had to go like what?”

By way of answer McCarron flicked his eyes in the direction of the shattered window. It was only when O’Neill leaned out carefully over the long drop that he saw the corpse below. It was too far away and too badly mangled to identify. He wouldn’t even like to confirm the gender with any degree of certainty.

“Shit!” he said. “You were with the force long enough McCarron. Why didn’t you say something before I let Grogan waltz out of here?”

“He had nothing to do with it,” McCarron said quietly. “I—”

“Ray,” said a new voice, low with warning. “Shut up.”

O’Neill looked up and there was Kelly Jacks, dressed as a waitress, emerging from the bathroom with a towel torn into strips as an emergency dressing. Her face was scratched, hands beat up like a boxer after a tough bout but her eyes were clear and her gait was steady. O’Neill felt his shoulders come down without realising he’d tensed them.

A bloody survivor, that’s what she is.

Dempsey, on the other hand, jolted upright like he’d been cattle-prodded. “Kelly Jacks, I am arresting you for—”

“Oh can it Dempsey,” O’Neill snapped.

Kelly Jacks grinned at Dempsey’s hurt incomprehension. “A bit eager to get down to business isn’t he?” she said.

“These youngsters tend to get over-excited and go off at half-cock,” he agreed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dempsey blush to the roots of his hair. “No foreplay.”

“When my fingers have turned blue it means you need to slacken that thing off,” McCarron told him helpfully, nodding to the tourniquet.

“Don’t worry,” Kelly said, eyes still on O’Neill. “I’ll come quietly. It’s all over.”

“Not quite.” O’Neill nudged the man on the floor, rolling him onto his back to get a clear look at his face. “Ah. Dmitry Lyzchko I presume.”

“If you’re looking for his loopy sister, she’s down there,” Kelly said.

O’Neill took a long breath. It was a mess, no doubt about that. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Dmitry had a gun. We fought. He dropped it. Yana got hold of it, took a pot shot at Ray and went out the window.”

“Just like that, hmm?”

Kelly’s gaze was level. “I’m summarising.”

“It was my fault,” Ray McCarron said suddenly.

“Ray—”

“Now it’s your turn to shut up Kel,” McCarron said with a weary smile. “Like you said, Yana got hold of Dmitry’s gun and I tried to rush her.”

O’Neill raised an eyebrow at the cast arm. “In your condition?”

McCarron gave a tiny shrug, the most he could manage. “I was nearest,” he said. “She got a shot off, winged me, but we struggled and . . . she tripped and fell.” He took a deep breath, glared at Kelly when she would have spoken again. “It was
my
fault,” he repeated speaking slowly and distinctly so there would be no mistakes. “I was trying to stop her killing us all and I didn’t mean for it to happen but it was entirely down to me that she fell, OK?”

Lying propped up on the bed in the room of his small hotel near Earls Court, Frank Allardice watched events at the racecourse unfold on the TV news.

The cameras had lingered on the tall screens they’d erected around the woman’s body in the parade ring. They were usually brought out to protect the public from seeing fallen horses being put to the bolt but they were just as useful for this kind of eventuality. They’d needed a lot of them though. She’d managed to spread herself over a pretty wide area, poor cow.

When Allardice had seen Lytton’s name connected with the event he’d wondered, just briefly, if Kelly Jacks might show up there. And ever since the news had broken that a woman had fallen—jumped or been pushed, take your pick—from a private box high above the stands, he’d wondered about that too.

Well, hoped, more than wondered.

Having Kelly Jacks as the one splattered all over the parade ring would certainly tie up a few annoying loose ends.

Allardice reached into the ice bucket on the bedside table and dragged out a can of lager he’d bought from the open-all-hours place down the road. He wiped the outside of the can on the duvet, cracked open the ring pull and took a swig.

The news cameraman had finally realised that a set of dark green screens were not exactly photogenic and was panning across the mass of police and emergency services and bomb-disposal personnel. If they’d all paid to get in, Allardice reflected, the racecourse would have doubled their gate.

And then he caught a glimpse of a face he knew.

DI Vincent O’Neill, looking grim-faced and like a right hard bastard.

O’Neill was walking away from the stands, his hand on the shoulder of one of the waitresses. It was only when the girl turned slightly towards him, looked up, that Allardice realised he knew her too.

He reared upright, slopping lager onto his shirt, and stared narrow-eyed at the TV. “Well, well, Kelly bloody Jacks.” He toasted the image on screen. “You got her Vince old son.”

In that case he had no idea who the dead woman was, but if Jacks had been found at the scene of another violent death that wasn’t going to look good for her in court was it? No, the body count was high enough on this one for Kelly Jacks to be locked away until she was a very old lady.

All in all, not a bad outcome.

But as the camera stayed with the detective and his charge a niggle of doubt crept in. If Jacks had been arrested why wasn’t she cuffed? O’Neill wasn’t a soft touch as far as female prisoners were concerned—unless she wasn’t actually a prisoner. Because, now he looked closer, that hand on the shoulder seemed more solicitous than custodial.

Oh shit . . .

Allardice shoved the lager aside and rolled off the bed. Within half an hour he had packed, checked out and was on the Piccadilly line heading for Heathrow.

Dmitry came round not in the public First-Aid post but in the Jockeys’ Medical Room reserved for more serious injury, with two uniformed cops standing over him.

“Where is Myshka?” was all he wanted to know. He said the words over and over through clenched teeth.

Eventually, in his best soothing bedside manner, the duty Racecourse Medical Officer broke the bad news.

Despite his injuries, which included a fractured jaw, broken collarbone and cracked ribs, Dmitry went berserk.

One of the constables was later treated for concussion, the other for dislocated fingers. The reinforcements, who quickly arrived, piled in with gusto.

Even so, they had to taser him twice before they could get him under control.

Kelly sat in the back of an unmarked police Mondeo, alone and apparently forgotten.

O’Neill had put her into the car with a not unkind command to, ‘Stay there.’ She did not have the energy to do much else.

She knew what came next—a succession of interview rooms and holding cells, having her clothing taken away and replaced with prison garb that always smelled the same and felt the same. Duty solicitors who were overtired and overstressed and didn’t care one way or another if you were guilty or innocent, providing the case was put away neatly.

Prison gates, bars, locks, keys and the smell of sweat and fear and desperation. Years of it.

I don’t know if I can go through all that again.

She thought of Ray McCarron who was on his way back to hospital complaining bitterly but still adamant that he was responsible for Yana Warwick’s death. And if he was feeling guilty enough to take the fall, a part of her
so
wanted to let him.