With the day they’d had, she threw him a bone. “When we’re done, you crash here with me. Plenty room in the fat man’s bed. You keep your hands to yourself.”
His face screwed up – not expecting that. “There’s floorspace in the office, or I could be watching over Sto.” Yet he lingered.
Leigh-Ann put her hands on her hips. He wanted to talk, or for her to talk to him, to let him know he was still good people, the way Reece did for her. But she wasn’t Reece and didn’t want to be. She said, “If you’re gonna sleep on any floor, might as well be here so you can keep watch over me. Now show me what the hell you cooked up.”
4
“Agent Tasker?” As he left the arrivals terminal, a woman in a dark suit approached. Short and mousy with the uncertainty of an intern. “Deputy Director Ward. Is that all your baggage?”
Tasker stopped. He was aware that Ordshaw’s new deputy director was young, but at least expected a go-getter arranging power meetings in central offices, not someone who’d pick up subordinates from the airport herself. How understaffed were they? She was keenly waiting for a response, making him look at the bag. “Yeah. I don’t need much more than a spare suit and toiletries.”
“Then we can get moving. I thought it best I come personally. I’ve got some bad news.” She turned her back on him and started marching before he could confront that bombshell. Ward led Tasker through scattered crowds and out into a car park, with occasional tosses of small talk: how was your flight? How was Tokyo? Did you have any problems with the Norwegian police? He dismissed it all with growing irritation that she had let him stew on the bad news.
“We’ve put you up in the Grand Hotel, in Central, I hope you’ll like it,” Ward said. Then added, a little graver, “The least we can do.”
He slowed down, now they were alone in a quiet alley of parked cars. “What’s happened?”
Ward scanned their surroundings, no one around. Over her shoulder, through the gap between floors, was the steel sky of cloudy England. Drab, disappointing England. She said, “Someone reached Parris before us.”
“Piss and hell,” Tasker huffed, looking away from her disappointed face. She didn’t comment, so he went on: “I’ve just come from a damn open graveyard. We had one lead. One pissing lead.” He took a breath, closed his eyes, and remembered this was not just another hapless escort. Even if she was ten or fifteen years younger than him. “Apologies, Deputy Director, I mean no disrespect.”
“I’m the one who should apologise, Agent Tasker. I sent an agent as soon as I got word from London, but it was already too late.”
“How bad?”
“Bad,” Ward admitted, then continued towards a little Honda Civic. Not a director’s car. “I’ve got a file for you.”
Tasker got in and checked the glove box as Ward started the engine. He took out a manila folder which would no doubt contain details of the featureless, traceless death of a corporation target. Duvcorp and the like were rumoured to have “fixers” on their payrolls, so good at hiding their crimes you’d never know they were there. It was why Tasker spent half his life checking surfaces for poisons and worrying about unattended vehicles, and he’d had more than a few arguments with Helen by shifting those fears onto her. But the photos inside were not what he expected.
Duvcorp’s researcher, Simon Parris, was captured slumped in a bathtub, one jaggedly cut arm hanging over the edge. Blood all around him, across the porcelain, sprayed up his face and across the tile floor. Tasker turned over one photo then another while Ward, eyes averted, started the car and pulled them out. As staged suicides went, it was crude.
“Don’t suppose he left a note?” Tasker asked dryly.
Wards took it seriously. “No. And it’s stranger than it looks.”
“He was pregnant?” That got a frown. “Sorry, gallows humour.”
Ward hummed, preferring to brood on it. Hell, they just lost a crucial contact, wasn’t he allowed some deflection. As Ward studied the traffic with exaggerated care, Tasker sat back and mused, “Someone got to him after he leaked information. Suggesting he wasn’t on their radar before he talked to us.”
That got an even more uncomfortable look from Ward. She put it off a second, pulling out into the flow of the motorway, and finally said, “I’ve considered that. The information passed through a lot of hands between me, you and Norway. There was discussion in London about it. Half a dozen people with all their assistants could’ve tipped someone off.”
“Great,” Tasker said. He tapped the folder. “So how’d this go down?”
“Our agent was the first on the scene,” Ward said. “He found the door open, with signs of a struggle in the living room. Take a look.”
The next photos showed a modern lounge, a blood smear by one door, a smashed glass. Parris had been forced into the bath but the attacker had fled without clearing up. “They leave anything to go on?”
“The security feed for the building was cut,” Ward said. “The neighbours haven’t reported anyone coming or going, but one heard shouts, something smashing. She thought it was the TV, at the time.”
“Of course she did.”
“We found fingerprints in the blood. No matches in the database. The police are taking over now, treating it as a home invasion.”
Tasker found a picture of a fingerprint. Part of a handprint, in the blood smear on the wall. If there were no matches, it was either someone with zero record or someone who’d been erased from the system. The former unlikely to be trusted with something like this, the latter unlikely to leave traces. What was the third option? “They sent in a pro to arrange a suicide, but they got interrupted.”
“Or wanted to send a message?” Ward suggested. “To show they didn’t care enough to pretend it wasn’t murder?”
Tasker gave her a look. “How’s your relationship with Duvcorp in Ordshaw?”
“Tenuous,” Ward admitted. “As far as rank and file are concerned, it doesn’t exist. But we’re on sharing terms in a needs-must situation. This isn’t the first time Simon Parris has been in touch, and last time it happened, Tycho Duvalier himself tried to have strong words with me.”
Tasker appreciated her use of tried to, imagining this small woman standing up to one of the world’s most powerful moguls. “What happened?”
“We borrowed some measuring equipment. Parris wanted to help, being ex-Ministry. You were aware of that? And of how their research intersects with ours?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t commonly known, but Duvcorp’s studies into a life energy the Ministry called novisan were always troubling Tasker. They had their own scanners and were definitely researching ways to exploit it. Possibly to weaponise it. He wasn’t aware it was being done right here in Ordshaw, but he could’ve assumed. With Rebecca just two hours down the road. “And Parris just handed over their tech?”
“Under some pressure,” Ward admitted. “This might have been his attempt to call in the favour. But all he sent me was the suggestion that was forwarded to you. ‘Investigate Laukstad.’ No explanation, no extra details. And the reality is, if they were sending a message, it’s received. My people aren’t used to tackling corporations, Agent Tasker.”