The Labyrinth of Osiris (9 page)

No one said anything. Resources at Kishle were always overstretched. It was a fact of life and they were used to it.

‘How are we doing with the security cameras?’ asked Moshe Peres.

There were over three hundred cameras bolted throughout the Old City, allowing the police to keep tabs on everything that was going on within the most hotly contested two square kilometres in the world. Whenever a crime was committed, any sort of crime, they were always the first port of call for any investigation.

‘The one above the tunnel on Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate picked up the victim just before seven,’ replied Pincas. ‘There’s someone behind her, but it’s crapping with rain and you can’t really see anything, even with blow-ups. Might be the killer, might not be.’

‘What about the eyes on the corner of Armenian Orthodox and Zion Gate?’ said Peres. ‘They should cover the compound entrance.’

‘Too far away,’ replied Pincas. ‘You can’t see anything, particularly with the rain. We’re trying to track the victim back, find out where and when she came into the Old City, but it’s going to take time.’

‘Compound cameras?’ asked Shalev.

‘They were still running off the footage when I left,’ said Ben-Roi. ‘Nava reckons it’s going to take another couple of hours.’

Shalev nodded, fiddling with the insignia strip on her blue police jumper.

‘OK, let’s divvy this up. Uri, get back on our screens, see what you can find. I want to know everything there is to know about the victim’s movements from the moment she entered the Old City. When the compound footage comes in, you and Schwartz can go through that as well. Who’s duty sergeant in surveillance?’

‘Talmon,’ said Pincas.

‘Tell him to give you a couple of his people. We need to get cracking on this.’

‘Already asked. He says he hasn’t got any spare bodies.’

‘Well, tell him to find some spare bodies. Or else he can drag his sorry arse in here and answer to me.’

Ben-Roi smiled. They all smiled. Leah Shalev was generally laidback, certainly compared to Yigal Dorfmann, the investigator on the
yeshiva
student murder, who was a Grade One interfering arsehole. When the mood took her, however, she could hard-nose with the best of them.

‘I need uniforms going door-to-door through the compound and the whole Armenian Quarter,’ she went on. ‘Lots of uniforms. Moshe?’

‘On it,’ said Peres.

‘Kletzmann’s printing off photos now so you can take those with. And, Uri, if you can get any halfway decent stills off the cameras, those would be useful as well.’

Pincas nodded.

‘Amos, you take old cases and cold cases. See if you can turn up anything similar. And get the word out among your informers.’

Namir nodded.

‘Are you running any Armenians?’

‘A couple.’

‘Talk to them as well. You never know, someone might have heard something.’

‘I just spoke with an Armenian guy I know,’ said Ben-Roi, sitting forward. ‘Owns the Tavern, got his ear to the ground. He said there’s absolutely no way anyone from his community would have done something like this.’

Shalev pondered a moment.

‘We still need to cover all the angles,’ she said eventually. ‘Even if there’s not a direct Armenian link, it happened in their quarter and someone must know something. But you’re right, we should keep an open mind.’

She lifted the cup of coffee sitting on her desk and sipped, her lipstick leaving a heavy red smudge around the Styrofoam rim. Normally Ben-Roi didn’t give Leah Shalev’s lipstick a second thought. This morning he couldn’t help but be reminded of the blood caked around the woman’s mouth.

‘I guess I’m taking the victim,’ he said, shaking his head to dispel the image.

‘You are,’ said Shalev. ‘I want to know who she is, where she’s from, what she was doing in the cathedral. Everything. And I want it an hour ago.’

She took another sip, looking around the room. Everyone was silent, ready to get going.

‘Me?’ asked Zisky. He was sitting forward like a dog waiting to be taken for a walk, his hands – soft, girl-like hands – clasped around his notebook.

‘Me?’ murmured Pincas, mimicking the young man’s effeminate voice. Shalev shot him a warning look.

‘For the moment, get over to the compound and ask some questions. Maybe talk with some of the priests. And have another go at the guy who was manning the gatehouse last night. He’s given a statement but it’s all pretty vague. When you’ve done that, you can come back here and partner Arieh.’

‘No kissing,’ murmured Pincas.

‘Fuck off,’ said Ben-Roi.

Behind the desk Shalev had come to her feet.

‘OK, gentlemen, let’s get to work. The press are going to go to town on this, so I want results. And quick.’

She clapped her hands and they all stood, chairs scraping on the linoleum floor. As they trooped out into the corridor, she called Ben-Roi back, indicating he should close the door.

‘Thanks for the girlfriend,’ he said, sitting down again.

Leah Shalev had a particular way of balling her fist when she was pissed off, and she did it now.

‘Zip it, Arieh. I expect that sort of thing from Neanderthals like Pincas and Namir, but I was hoping for a bit better from you.’

‘Oh come on, Leah. The guy’s a raging nancy-boy. What the fuck’s he doing in a front-line station like Kishle?’

‘I seem to remember a few people asking the same question about me when I first came here,’ said Shalev, thumping herself down in her chair.

It was true. The appointment of a female investigator at Kishle – the only female investigator in the whole of Jerusalem – had raised more than a few eyebrows, Ben-Roi’s among them. ‘Window-dressing,’ he’d called her. ‘A sop to the equal opportunities brigade.’

‘That’s different,’ he said.

‘Oh really?’

‘This is a tough place dealing with tough people.
You
can hack it.’

‘And he can’t?’

‘Look at him, for God’s sake! He’s a screaming—’

Shalev brought her fist down on the desk.

‘Zip it!’ she repeated. ‘I’ve got a dead woman in the middle of a holy site, a psycho roaming the streets, no manpower, Commander Gal breathing down my neck – that’s enough to deal with without a homophobic harassment suit landing on my desk as well. We don’t even know if he is . . .’

‘A
noshech kariot
?’

‘Oh get a fucking life, Arieh. What he does or doesn’t do outside the station is none of our business. Right now I need you people to work together on this one. All of you.’

Ben-Roi mumbled something.

‘What?’

‘Point taken.’

‘I hope so, Arieh. I really hope so. Because we’re seriously bloody stretched here.’

Ben-Roi resisted a quip about the same probably being true of Zisky’s butthole.

‘He’s got good references from Lod,’ Shalev continued, ‘
and
the academy. Some of the best references I’ve ever read. And he’s keen – specifically requested a transfer up here so he could work at the sharp end. Given that Kishle doesn’t exactly have a reputation for social broad-mindedness, that took some bottle.’

She primped her hair, swivelling back and forth in her chair.

‘He also specifically requested the chance to work with you.’

Ben-Roi looked up.

‘What the hell’s that about?’

‘Come on, Arieh. He’s read about the Shamir case, the Mauristan fire when you saved that Arab girl. He admires you. God alone knows why, but he admires you. Give the kid a break, eh? Give him a bit of encouragement.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Ben-Roi, holding up his hands. ‘We’re bosom buddies.’

A pause, then: ‘Although not in
that
sense.’

Despite herself, Shalev smiled. ‘Get out of here, you
schmuck
. And get me some results.’

Ben-Roi stood and headed out of the office.

‘And for your information,’ she called after him, ‘according to the academy, he was one of the best Krav Maga students they’ve ever had. He’s a tough boy. And make sure you call Sarah! You can spare a couple of minutes, even on a murder case.’

He was already striding away down the corridor, and if he heard her he didn’t acknowledge it.

V
ANCOUVER
, C
ANADA

Whenever he got drunk, Dewey McCabe thought about Denise Sanders in HR. And whenever he thought about Denise Sanders in HR he got sad and angry about her not wanting to go out with him. And whenever he got sad and angry he felt an irrational need for revenge.

This morning – it was past 2 a.m. – he was very drunk, and very sad and angry, and feeling particularly vengeful. Which is why, as he weaved his way back along Burrard Street after a seven-hour drinking session in Doonins Irish Pub on Nelson, he decided to stop by the office and do a shit on Denise Sanders’ desk.

The plan started to unravel from the outset. He reached the concrete tower of the Deepwell Gas and Petroleum building OK. When he pushed at the revolving doors, however, they were locked, which of course he should have known they would be at 2 a.m. That meant he had to wave over one of the night guards to let him in, and although Dewey had a security pass, the guard was clearly suspicious, which he also should have expected, given that he was pissed as a skunk. For a moment he thought he had salvaged the situation by spinning the guard a line about how he needed to send an urgent e-mail, but when the guard took it upon himself to accompany Dewey into the lift, he accepted that on this particular occasion Denise Sanders’ work station was going to remain disappointingly turd-free.

Not wanting to lose face he took the lift up to IT on the sixth floor and, with the guard still in tow, went over to his desk and switched on his computer.

‘Sure must be an urgent e-mail,’ said the guard, who wore a turban and was even fatter than Dewey.

‘Un-huh,’ replied Dewey, anxious to keep conversation to a minimum because he was slurring so badly.

There was a pause as the machine booted, then the screen went blue and his log-in box appeared. He entered his username and password – deweysbigcock69 – all the while trying to think of someone he could e-mail. For some reason the system wouldn’t accept his details. Assuming he must have entered them wrong, he tried again. Same result.

‘Problem, sir?’ asked the guard, standing annoyingly close.

‘No problem,’ mumbled Dewey, trying, and failing, to get in for a third time.

He pondered, then shunted his chair and leant forward so as to block as much of the screen as he could. Typing quickly, he entered Denise Sanders’ username and password, which he knew because he was one of the three people in the office with system administration rights and went into her account every day to see if she was e-mailing that cunt Kevin Speznik. He got in immediately.

Dewey was starting to sober up. Logging out of Sanders’ account, he tried his own again. Still no joy. He typed in Kevin Speznik’s details, which he also knew. Speznik’s account was blocked as well, which was interesting because Speznik was one of the three administrators.

‘Could you move back a bit?’ he said, flapping a hand at the guard, who smelt of some kind of spice and was really starting to piss him off. ‘There’s something going on here and I need to . . .’

He tailed off, scratching his head and staring at the row of clocks on the opposite wall, each of which showed the time in one of the company’s sixteen offices around the world. It was 2.22 in San Diego, 4.22 in Houston, 5.22 in New York. Way too early for anyone to be in. Or late, depending on which way you looked at it. 10.22 in London, though. Better. He paused, then picked up the phone and dialled, asking the London switchboard to put him through to Rishi Taverner in IT. Voicemail. Bollocks.

‘Is there a problem, sir?’ repeated the guard, whose spicy smell was still clearly detectable even though he had backed off a few paces. Dewey didn’t answer. He called Frankfurt, where he also got a voicemail, and then, working eastwards, Tel-Aviv. Their system administrator was on lunch.

‘Does no one fucking work any more,’ he muttered, checking his extensions list and tapping in the number for Delhi. Here he got through to a guy called Parvind, who spoke like someone out of one of those old black-and-white movies and told him that they too were experiencing administrator problems. Three further calls revealed a similar story in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Adelaide. Dewey’s head was really starting to clear. He pulled out his mobile and scrolled through its contacts list to the number he wanted, then hit dial. His boss, Dale Springer. Home landline. It took eleven rings before Springer picked up.

‘Yeah.’

The voice was thick and bleary, like it was coming from underwater.

‘Dale, it’s Dewey. I’ve been locked out.’

‘Unh. What?’

‘I’ve been locked out.’

A befuddled pause, then: ‘Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? Go sleep on a park bench. Jesus, what the hell—’

‘Locked out of the system,’ said Dewey, cutting him off. ‘I’m in the office and I’ve been locked out of the system. So has Speznik. And so have the administrators in our other offices. Normal accounts seem to be OK. It’s just those with admin rights.’

There was a silence, then a sound of sheets rustling as if someone was getting out of bed. When Springer spoke again he sounded much more awake.

‘Diagnostic.’

His boss was always using dickhead words like that. He’d been watching too much
Star Trek
.

‘Diagnostic,’ said Springer, louder. And then, before Dewey could answer: ‘We’re being hacked.’

‘Certainly looks like it.’

‘Oh fuck.’

After that everything started moving fast. Very fast. Springer was in the office within twenty minutes – his pyjama bottoms sticking out from beneath his jeans – followed by a steady stream of management, including Alan Cummins, Deepwell’s CEO. Dewey had been with the company eight years and had never got within a room’s length of Cummins. Now, suddenly, he was leaning right over his shoulder.

‘Get them out,’ he snarled. ‘Get them out now.’

‘It’s not as easy as that, sir,’ said Springer. ‘They seem to have got sole administration rights to the domain controller.’