Simon Toyne - The Tower

‘That true, do you think?’ Franklin addressed the question to Pierce.

‘Who can say? What Dr Kinderman did in his own time is nothing to do with me. He certainly spent a whole lot of time here. He was always around – he practically lived here.’

‘Did he seem particularly concerned or surprised when this letter arrived?’

‘Like Merriweather said, Dr Kinderman wasn’t what you would call the conventional type. He didn’t seem scared or anything like that. He listened to what the State Trooper had to say about being careful then got straight back to work.’

‘What about religion – is Kinderman a man of faith?’

‘No, at least not that I’m aware of.’

‘And how many other people are working on this project?’

‘About forty or so.’

‘Yet they only targeted him.’

‘Dr Kinderman is the most high-profile and generally these kinds of stunts are for publicity, which is exactly why we try and play them down.’

Franklin nodded. ‘We’re going to take these away with us and run them through our labs, see if the paper or the ink talk to us at all. The guys in Kinderman’s office are also going to have to remove his hard drive so we can go through it and see if there’s anything there. Any security codes you know of that will make it easier for us to gain access would be much appreciated.’

‘Of course.’

‘You said Dr Kinderman spent most of his time here. Does he have an apartment on site?’

‘No, but he has the next best thing. He has a house in Presley Park, just the other side of the road you came in on. You could walk it in less than five minutes.’

Franklin glanced through the window at the rain-whipped night. ‘Thanks, Chief, but if it’s all the same to you I think we’ll take the car.’

Shepherd drove. Franklin stared ahead, facing down the stormy night and saying nothing.

Since voicing his suspicions about Shepherd’s missing two years he had barely spoken to him at all. Shepherd guessed he was sore at him for butting in on his interrogation of Merriweather too. The silence had become an almost tangible thing between them, taking on presence and weight.

When he had applied to the FBI he had counted on the gap in his record not being a problem. He had not been arrested or done anything in those missing years to put him on any of the databases they checked when screening new candidates. As far as the standard computer searches were concerned he was clean. But Franklin was a duty-hardened agent with instincts honed by years of dealing with people in all their broken forms. He’d sniffed out the shadows in his story immediately. But trust worked both ways and he didn’t know nearly enough about Franklin to risk telling him the truth.

Ahead – Turn left.

The flat voice from the sat nav punctured the silence. Shepherd reached out and tapped the screen, broadening the scale of the map until the Space Center appeared directly North of them. Proximity to Goddard had obviously been way up on Dr Kinderman’s wish list and the usual status symbols of cars and big grand houses didn’t really matter to him. As Pierce had suggested, you could probably cut through the woods and walk to Presley Park faster than Shepherd had just driven it.

Turn right in twenty metres, then you will have reached your destination.

Shepherd turned into a narrower road and headlamps swept across a row of evenly spaced houses, slightly smaller than those on the main drag.

‘There!’ Franklin pointed at a one-storey, brick-built rambler set back a little from the road. Shepherd pulled into the empty drive next to it and cut the engine.

The Kinderman residence was entirely unassuming. There was a small patch of grass in front, a tree planted in the centre and neat borders filled with utility plants that would pretty much look after themselves. There was nothing modern about it, no additions, no carport or garage. It still had the original steel and glass porch over the front door. Behind the low building a wall of tall trees surged and flowed in the wind. There were no lights on inside.

‘Let’s see if the good doctor is home.’ Franklin popped open his door and stepped into the rain. Shepherd killed the headlights and followed.

The distance from the car to the house was barely ten metres but Shepherd was more or less soaked by the time he made it to the porch. Franklin was already leaning on the doorbell, listening to its chimes echoing inside the house through the loud drumming of rain on the glass overhead. He pressed it again and they listened out, standing uncomfortably close in the slender shelter of the porch as they waited for movement inside or a light to come on behind the pebbled glass surrounding the front door.

‘Nobody home,’ Franklin said after a suitable wait. ‘Watch the street.’

He dropped down, stuck his Maglite between his teeth and started probing the lock with a pick he had taken from his pocket.

‘Shouldn’t we get a warrant first?’

‘And wake up some poor old judge on a night like this?’ The lock clicked and Franklin stood up. ‘If we find anything we’ll get a warrant, then we can find it all over again: no harm no foul.’ He swapped the pick for his gun and held the Maglite in a fist-grip so the beam shone where the barrel was pointing. Shepherd automatically did the same, months of simulations on Hogan’s Alley kicking in as adrenalin and muscle memory took over and the words of Agent Williams whispered in his head: try not to put yourself in any situation where you may have to draw this weapon.

So much for that.

Franklin took up a position by the door and gestured for Shepherd to take the other side. ‘Remember this is not a drill, Agent Shepherd. This is the house of a suspected terrorist we are entering and, though I don’t think we’ll find anyone inside, I’d rather be prepared than dead. So nice and slow, just like you were taught and do not move until you are covered.’

Shepherd got in position. Franklin reached forward, turned the handle and threw open the door in a single smooth movement.

Time stretched slow as the door swung wide revealing a yawning darkness beyond. Shepherd tensed, his pupils full wide, watching for movement. Franklin moved forward, gun first, the beam of his Maglite probing the dark in a sweep from left to right. Shepherd followed, keeping close, going right to left until the beam of his torch crossed Franklin’s in the centre of the hallway.

No one there.

They moved quickly and silently through the rest of the house – cover and move, cover and move – until they had satisfied themselves that Dr Kinderman was not here and neither was anyone else. It didn’t take them long. The house was not that big.

Franklin hit the lights and they stood in the middle of the modest living-room-slash-kitchen-slash-dining-room taking in what they had previously only glimpsed by torchlight.

If anything, the inside of Dr Kinderman’s home was even less impressive than the outside. A small oak-floored hallway led away from the front door to three others: a small bathroom, a bedroom, and some wooden stairs leading down to the basement. ‘Tell me, Agent Shepherd,’ Franklin said, ‘you ever seen inside a safe house or a terrorist cell?’

‘No, sir, I have not.’

‘Well, look around, they look exactly like this. Functional, clean, unlived in.’

‘We don’t know that he’s a terrorist.’

‘No, but the evidence is stacking up wouldn’t you say?’ He nodded at the large picture of Christ the Redeemer hanging above the fireplace, arms outstretched and looking down at the sprawling city of Rio de Janeiro. ‘Pierce didn’t think Kinderman was religious.’

‘Maybe he just likes big statues, or Brazil.’