Хилари Боннер - Deadly Dance

Vogel just hoped he had done the right thing, in attempting to quietly recall Saslow and Willis. But perhaps he should have had Saslow’s phone tracked and sent an armed response unit straightaway to intercept the two officers. He had chosen what he had considered to be the course of action least likely to bring about a violent outcome. If Willis had been confronted by armed officers, he would have known at once that he was a suspect. Dawn Saslow was with him and if he really were Aeolus, which was beginning to seem more and more likely, then God knows what he might do to her before he was apprehended.

Aeolus was totally ruthless.

He was supremely arrogant, too. The manner of his killings made that quite clear. Aeolus believed he was cleverer than anyone else and that he could do just what he wanted, that he was untouchable.

He was also totally mad.

Was Willis mad? Vogel couldn’t get his head around it. Could he be that mad and none of them aware of it? He remembered how closed up Willis had always been, how he’d rarely smiled or engaged in conversation about anything other than police business. Willis made Vogel look outgoing and open.

Professor Freda Heath had told him about people suffering from multiple personality disorders being totally convincing, but could anyone be that convincing? Vogel was still clinging to the hope that nobody could, that his suspicions were unfounded and that Willis was the socially awkward but professionally excellent copper he had always been, nothing more or less.

That could still be, yet Vogel’s every instinct was beginning to tell him it wasn’t and that, however extraordinary, Willis was Aeolus.

He checked his watch as he walked along the corridor towards Hemmings’s office. When he’d asked her and Willis to return to base, Saslow had said they’d been nearly at Avonmouth. They could not possibly have got back yet, but there was increasingly less and less doubt in his mind that Dawn Saslow was in very great danger. He was going to be right on edge, until she and Willis returned. If they returned. He preferred not to think about that.

All he could do was to continue to hope that his decision to make a softly, softly approach had been the right one and that Willis/Aeolus was arrogant enough not to be alerted to impending danger.

How dare they insult my intelligence like this? Did David Vogel really think for a moment that I wouldn’t realise what his urgent new development was? Did he really think I wouldn’t act to protect myself? I have always had a contingency plan. A number of contingency plans, actually. I have always been ready to deal with any eventuality. After all, I am Aeolus.

People like Vogel and the Saslow girl are just minor inconveniences to me. I knew what I had to do as soon as Saslow received that call. It wasn’t going to be difficult for me. I, more than anybody, know how to make myself disappear.

First, I had to deal with the Saslow girl. Then, I would give my orders to Vogel. He would have no choice but to obey me. The wind obeyed me. I am the ruler of the wind. I have the power of the wind. I can raise a hurricane with a blink of an eyelid. Saslow was still unconscious from the second blow I dealt her. I made sure she would be under my control when she came around. Her upper body was restrained by the seat belt. Her wrists were still cuffed. I used her own handcuffs on her legs, clamping them around her ankles. She would not kick me again.

Saslow was a small girl. Nonetheless the cuffs were not quite big enough, when I pressed them shut they dug into her flesh. I didn’t care about that. I never deliberately set out to hurt anybody. But when people challenge me, I must eliminate them. I always triumph. I am Aeolus. I must never allow such paltry outside forces to try and threaten me.

I let Saslow’s head fall onto my shoulder. Anyone we passed, who might glance into the car, would almost certainly think she was sleeping.

The girl was now the key to my survival. She would make it possible for me to move on to the next stage of my life.

I needed to get away. I needed to go to another country. I knew what my choice was. I needed to be somewhere where cooperation with the United Kingdom was rarely an option. Somewhere I already had contacts in organisations which would welcome my special abilities. I had money. Not a lot, but enough to keep myself while I rebuilt my existence.

And I had my people, many more than Saul, Al and Leo. I could not always summon them at will, nor could I always deny them when they came to me. Sometimes I could make them wait. Other times I had to allow them to take me over at once. When they come to me and I become them, sometimes it is I, Aeolus, who has summoned them. Called them up at will. But sometimes it is as if they summon me and I have answered their call. They are my people.

As for Willis, poor Willis, he was never more than the cloak within which I wrapped my real selves.

If he disappears for ever, he will be no loss.

I am Aeolus.

Hemmings stared at Vogel.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

‘Well I can’t be sure, sir…’

‘I think you are, Vogel, you know it in your gut, don’t you, man?’

‘I feel it, that’s for certain, sir,’ said Vogel.

‘What about DNA and fingerprints? Willis’s will be on record like every serving police officer in the UK. If he’s our killer then his DNA would have come up as a match on the national data base straight away, wouldn’t it?’

‘Apparently not and I can’t explain that, sir. Not yet. We’ll have to look into it. Meanwhile, I think we need to take every precaution. All being well, Willis and Saslow should be back within fifteen minutes or so.’

Involuntarily, he glanced at his watch again. If they are coming back, he thought. If Willis was still sticking to his reliable copper personae and hadn’t totally transformed himself into Aeolus. It didn’t bear thinking about. If anything happened to Saslow, Vogel would hold himself responsible for the rest of his life.

Hemmings was speaking. Vogel heard him from afar. He made himself listen properly. He and Hemmings could only deal with the situation as it now was.

‘So let’s get an armed response presence here, right away,’ Hemmings was saying. ‘Low profile, keep them out of sight. Then as soon as Willis and Saslow are in the building we separate them. Get Saslow out of the firing line, before the armed response boys do the arrest. Got it?’

Vogel had it.

‘I’ll call them in,’ said Hemmings.

He did so at once on his desk phone.

‘They’ll be here within twenty,’ he said. ‘We may have to play a holding game for a bit, if Willis and Saslow get here first. Keep Willis sweet. String him along a bit.’

Vogel stared at Hemmings in silence for a moment.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he thought the detective chief inspector was from another planet. Keep him sweet? String him along a bit? This could be a man who had killed three times in cold blood and those were only the killings they knew about. This could be a man who did not know who he was from one day to the next, and who, if Vogel had correctly understood Professor Freda Heath, could swing in and out of his various murderous identities almost by the minute. Vogel felt totally out of his depth and that had never happened to him before.

‘You know what sir, I’m not sure if that’s going to be possible…’ he began.

‘If he comes back here with Saslow, then surely it will be,’ said Hemmings.

Vogel did not entirely agree, but saw Hemmings’s logic.

‘It’s if he doesn’t come back with Saslow that we need to really worry,’ the DCI continued.

Vogel didn’t need telling that. He was already desperately worried.