He makes his call and leaves a message for his man. “I have another commission,” he says. “Times three. Top level.”
Once his call is complete, he pours and downs a shot of vodka. He checks himself in the mirror, then goes to welcome his guests back from a successful day out on his charters.
Downstairs everything is in impeccable order. Champagne, oysters, and vodka are all on ice. Music is discreet in the background. A woman in her early nineties comes shuffling around the corner, carefully carrying a silver platter of finely sliced smoked salmon. She is dressed all in black, and she shakily sets the platter upon the table beside the oysters.
“Mama!” he says, opening his arms in a wide magnanimous gesture before clapping his big hands together. “It is marvelous, as usual.”
As he speaks, the dark-haired man from Dubai enters the room. He turns to face the man. “Ahmed! Come, come on in and meet my mother, Elena, the ever-gracious hostess.”
The old woman bows and then backs hurriedly away before Ahmed can address her.
“And your beautiful wife?” Ahmed says. “She is not here this time?”
“Irina is at our residence in the city. For her the remote luxury lodge life is fine enough, but only for a time—there is shopping to be done in the boutiques.” He laughs.
Ahmed laughs, too. The other males enter, smiling, chattering about their catch.
“Come, come, everyone. Let us go in and have a drink where the fire is warm.”
As he leads his guests through, he feels his burner cell vibrate in his pocket.
Message received.
CHAPTER 49
MONDAY, JANUARY 8
Kjel Holgersen slipped on the grassy incline that sloped down to Duck Lake. It was from the muddy waters of the lake that the little blue Yaris registered to the Russian interpreter had been pulled yesterday morning. Divers had been dragging the silt-filled lake since in search of her body. Kjel had gotten word they’d found it. In his effort not to land on Jack-O, who was nestled in the pouch under his jacket, he fell hard on his skinny ass in thick black mud.
“Fuck!” He struggled to push himself up, but his hands kept sinking almost a foot deep into slimy gunk. Rain pelted down. It made a slapping sound on the muck around him. Traffic sent a cloud of spray down from the highway above. Kjel managed to come upright and slip-slide the rest of his way down the slick long grass to where Leo stood with coroner Charlie Alphonse.
Leo had managed to arrive ahead of him and was smoking, flicking his ash onto the wet ground, which irritated Kjel, because it made him want one and because it was a fucking stupid thing to do at a crime scene. Maybe bringing a dog wasn’t so cool, either, but what was he to do on short notice? He nodded to Leo, then the coroner. “Alphonse,” he said.
“Detective. Nice weather we’re having, eh?” Alphonse looked up into the rain. “I’ve called O’Hagan. She’s on her way.”
“Evidence of foul play?” Kjel said, trying to wipe his muddy hands off on his soaked jeans as he looked out over the brown rain-pocked surface of Duck Lake.
“Dive captain called for homicide,” Leo said. “Not sure why yet—they located her at the far end over there.” He pointed his cigarette, which was going soggy in the rain. “Where the lake drains into a stream. That area is choked with reeds and bulrushes. Silt and shit at the bottom is like a meter deep. She was buried in it, which is why it took a while to locate her after her Yaris was found. Body must’ve floated out of the shattered window of the Yaris or something. Current at the lake bottom apparently flows that way.”
“There comes O’Hagan now.” Alphonse nodded up toward the highway.
Kjel turned in time to see the squat pathologist sliding down the bank on her ass, trying to hold her bag aloft. He laughed as she slid in.
“Oy there, Doc, nice entry. Glads to see I’ms not the only one with style.”
O’Hagan muttered a curse as Kjel offered her a muddy hand to help her to her feet.
She adjusted the bill of her cap marked CORONER after she came upright. “Where is she?”
“Bringing her up at the far end,” Alphonse said.
They watched in silence in the pelting rain as three divers broke the surface and began swimming the body of the Russian translator toward the bank. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered along the top near the road where the barrier was damaged and where tire treads gouged muddy earth and uprooted grass, showing where the Yaris had left the road.
“What’s that?” O’Hagan said.
“What?” said Kjel.
“Under your jacket.”
“Master Jack-O.” He grinned.
“Maddocks’s dog?”
“Yep.”
“Where’s Maddocks?” she said.
“Gots a big case in the big smoke.”
“Mainland?”
“Yup. Surrey. His old stomping grounds.”
The pathologist eyed him. “To do with the barcodes?”
Kjel nodded, his attention going back to their floater. “There she comes now.”
The divers brought their DB in floating facedown. She wore a tan-colored sweater and a tweedy skirt. Stockings. No coat. No shoes. Her hair drifted around her, brown like the water. Alphonse turned and waved up to the body removal guys to come down from the bank with their metal litter basket and body bag. Flashes popped as the crime scene photographer snapped images of the decedent being guided in.
The divers slipped and sloshed as they struggled to walk the body through the silt and reeds along the shore. A duck squawked and scattered from rushes, little wings flapping like crazy as it tried to lift its fat body off the water. Morning commuter traffic hissed along the wet highway up above. Life going on as normal. People heading to offices, kids to school.
They brought her up onto the slick grass, turned her over. Her mouth gaped. A black weed hung out of it. Her skin was garish white, covered in slime. Her eyes stared milky and sightless up into the drumming rain.
“Shit,” Kjel said. “That’s her all right—the Russian interpreter who helped us with Sophia Tarasov.” He squatted down next to the body alongside O’Hagan, taking care not to squash Master Jack under his jacket. The pathologist wiped her hands on a cloth from her bag and struggled to snap on her gloves in the rain. Gently, she moved wet hair off the woman’s face and neck. Kjel tensed.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Her throat’s been slit. Clean across.”
“Almost to the spinal column,” O’Hagan added. She moved the hem of the woman’s shirt aside, made a nick under the rib, and inserted her thermometer. She read the liver temperature. “Postmortem interval could be seventy-two hours or more. Hard to say without knowing the temps at the bottom of that lake. I’ll know more when I get her into my morgue.”