Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

‘I still can’t see why York would bother targeting me. Tom and Irving were both well known. Why go from high-profile targets to a stranger no one here’s heard of? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It might to him.’ She spoke flatly, her gaze on the road. ‘He saw you working with Dr Lieberman, don’t forget. And you’re British, a guest at the facility. York might feel that someone like you might make a bigger splash than someone local.’

That was something I hadn’t considered. ‘I suppose I should be flattered,’ I said, trying to make a joke of it.

I wasn’t rewarded with a smile. ‘I don’t think you should take it lightly.’

Believe me, I’m not. ‘Can I ask something?’ I said, wanting to change the subject. ‘Have you heard anything from the lab about the blood samples from the cabin?’

There was a beat before she answered. ‘A full DNA analysis takes weeks.’

That wasn’t what I’d asked, but her evasion told me I was on the right track. ‘No, but they should have found out by now if the blood was human or not.’

At any other time I might have enjoyed her surprise. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Call it an educated guess. So it was from an animal, then?’

The darkened profile gave a nod. ‘We only got the results this afternoon, but even before then we knew there was something not right about it. Forensics weren’t convinced by the spatter patterns in the cabin, although York made a good job of faking them. So the lab ran a preliminary test which suggested the blood was non-human. But we still had to wait until they’d extracted the DNA before we could be sure.’

‘What was it? Pig’s blood?’

I could see the white of her teeth in the darkness as she smiled. ‘Now you’re just showing off.’

Well, perhaps a little. ‘It isn’t as clever as it sounds,’ I admitted. ‘Once we’d confirmed that Terry Loomis had been strangled, then the blood obviously couldn’t have been his. So the cuts on his body had to be post mortem, in which case most of the blood in the cabin had to have come from somewhere else.’

‘I still don’t see how you could know it was pig’s blood…’ she began, then answered herself. ‘Oh, I get it. The teeth we found with Willis Dexter’s body.’

‘I’d wondered if the blood could be animal before then. But once I saw those I guessed it was probably from a pig as well,’ I told her. ‘Seems to be the sort of game York enjoys.’

Jacobsen fell silent. Her face was marbled by the rain running down the windows. In the slanting planes of yellow from the streetlights, her profile looked like a Grecian sculpture.

‘I shouldn’t really tell you this,’ she said slowly. ‘The blood samples from the cabin aren’t the only results we’ve had. Noah Harper tested positive for Hepatitis C.’

God. Poor Kyle. Unlike the A and B strains, there was no vaccine for Hepatitis C. The virus wasn’t necessarily fatal, but the treatment was time-consuming and unpleasant. And even then, there were no guarantees.

‘Does Kyle know?’ I asked, uncomfortably aware that it could easily have been me instead.

‘Not yet. It’ll be a while before he gets his own results from the hospital, and Dan didn’t think there was any point worrying him.’ She gave me a quick look. ‘You understand this is strictly in confidence?’

‘Of course.’ For once I agreed with Gardner. There was still a chance Kyle might escape infection, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stake my own life on so slim a bet.

We’d arrived at the hotel. Jacobsen found a parking space near the entrance. As she pulled in I saw her glance in the rearview mirror, checking the cars behind us.

‘I’ll see you up to your room,’ she said, reaching into the back seat for the manila envelope that Gardner had given her.

‘There’s no need.’

But she was already climbing out of the car. There was a new alertness about her as we went inside. Her eyes were constantly moving, flicking over the faces around us, checking for potential threats, and I saw how she walked with her right hand held close to where her gun was concealed under her jacket. Part of me felt unable to take any of this seriously.

Then I remembered what had been left on my windscreen.

An elderly woman gave us a twinkling smile as she stepped out of the lift, and I could guess what she was thinking. Just another young couple, on their way to bed after a day in the city. It was so far removed from the truth it was almost funny.

Jacobsen and I stood side by side in the lift. We were the only passengers, and the tension between us seemed to increase with every floor. Our shoulders brushed lightly at one point, causing a quiet snap of static. She swayed away, just far enough to break the contact. When the doors opened she stepped out first, her hand slipping under her jacket to rest on the gun at her hip as she checked that the corridor was empty. My room was at the far end. I swiped my key card through the slot and opened the door.

‘Thanks for escorting me.’

I was smiling as I said it, but she was all efficiency now. The barriers that had briefly come down in the car had gone back up.

‘May I take a look in your room?’

I was going to tell her again there was no need, but I could see I’d be wasting my time. I stepped aside to let her in.

‘Feel free.’

I stood by the bed while she searched. It wasn’t a big room, so it didn’t take her long to satisfy herself that York wasn’t hiding in it. She was still carrying the manila envelope from Gardner, and when she’d finished she brought it over to where I waited. She stopped a few feet away, her face a perfect mask.

‘One more thing. Dan wanted me to show you these.’ She busied herself opening the envelope. ‘There was a security camera over the road from the hospital payphone. We pulled the footage from the time the call was made to Dr Lieberman.’

She handed me a thin sheaf of photographs. They were stills from a CCTV camera: low quality and grainy, with the date and time printed at the bottom. I recognized the stretch of road where the phone booth was situated. One or two cars and the boxy white shape of an ambulance were partially visible in the foreground, blurred and out of focus.

But I was more concerned with the dark figure that was caught turning away from the payphone. The image quality was so poor it was impossible to make out its features. The head was bowed, the face no more than a white crescent that was all but hidden by a dark, peaked cap.

The other photographs showed more of the same, the figure hurrying across the road, shoulders hunched and head down. If anything it was even less clear in those.

‘The lab’s trying to clean up the images,’ Jacobsen told me. ‘We can’t say for sure that it’s York, but the height and build look about right.’

‘You aren’t just showing me these out of courtesy, are you?’

‘No.’ She looked at me unflinchingly. ‘If you’re York’s next target Dan felt you ought to know what he might do to try to get near you. The dark clothes and cap could be some kind of uniform. And if you look on his hip there’s something that looks like a flashlight. It’s possible he tries to pass himself off as a police officer or some other authority figure who—Dr Hunter? What is it?’

I was staring at the photograph as the memory fell loose. Flashlight…

‘A security guard,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry?’

I told her about being stopped in the car park a few nights earlier. ‘It’s probably nothing. He just wanted to know what I was doing there.’

Jacobsen was frowning. ‘When was this?’

I had to think back. ‘The night before Irving was abducted.’

‘Did you get a good look at him?’