“I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something.”
“Thank you. I’ll get my people working on his Rome connections. Keep me apprised.”
“Will do.” Mike punched off and said to Phyllis, “I need everything you know about Dr. Bruce, especially where he might stay when he’s in London, and we need to get with your security folks and get a visual on him if at all possible.”
“Give me a moment.”
Phyllis picked up her phone, said, “Charlie? We have an emergency. We need all the video pulled from two o’clock to three o’clock Tuesday afternoon for the third-floor corridors and my office. Thank you. We’re on our way down.”
“Phyllis, where is your boss?”
“He was, well, honestly, he was distraught. I encouraged him to go home, or we would have been sobbing together all afternoon.”
“I see. Oh, and Phyllis, can I see the pages Isabella found? We will need to photograph them for evidence.”
“Of course. Let’s get them. It will give Charlie a moment to pull together the video.”
She led Mike down the hall. “Isabella’s office is small and cramped, but at least she has one. Many of our people share or are in cubicles upstairs. It’s a requirement that I have access to all the associates’ safes.” She consulted her notepad, then knelt down and inputted the combination, following with a key. The door opened, and she reached inside. Mike watch her riff through the papers inside, then she frowned. “They aren’t here. Surely she didn’t simply file them.”
Mike started going through the paperwork on Isabella’s desk while Phyllis checked the filing cabinets.
“Perhaps they’re in Persy’s safe. I have the combination. Let’s check, shall we?”
They hurried back to Dr. Wynn-Jones’s office. She unlocked the safe hidden behind a beautiful Renaissance nude statue. She spun the dial, opened the safe. The pages weren’t there. “But this doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t take them with her. They are far too valuable.”
Phyllis looked at Mike. “But she must have. Now that I think about it, I thought something was wrong with Isabella after her conversation with Dr. Bruce. Do you think he took Isabella? Do you think he might have the lost quires, too?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Scotland Yard: The name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance to the police station, and over time the street and the Metropolitan Police became synonymous.
—Wikipedia
New Scotland Yard
4 Whitehall Place
Westminster, London
Armed with the videotapes Charlie had recorded for her at the British Museum and a trove of Laurence Bruce’s scholarly papers Phyllis had printed out for them, Mike took a taxi to Scotland Yard.
She called Nicholas to fill him in on what had happened. “I’m meeting with Gareth and his team. Can you make it?”
“Sorry, Mike. Remember when Adam and I accidently hit the kill switch and all the systems fried? Some are still on the fritz. Keep me posted.”
She stood under the rotating silver sign for a moment, then headed in. Gareth Scott was waiting for her in the lobby, as promised. He got her signed in and through the extremely tight security, then took her upstairs, walking her through a crowded bullpen that made her feel right at home. She relaxed. Cops were cops regardless of the locale. Where, she wondered, were the doughnuts and bad coffee? Not a whiff of either. People were on Mike’s heels, ready to be briefed.
Gareth showed everyone into his office, standing room only for most of them. She saw files stacked everywhere and a whiteboard organized by case numbers and dates. Gareth said, “No word yet on from our friends in Rome. They’re tracking down everything they can find about Laurence Bruce.”
Mike said, “Phyllis called while I was on my way over. She thinks Bruce stays at the Savoy when he’s in town. Said he likes their afternoon tea. We should get an officer over there right away to see if perhaps he was stupid enough to take her there.”
“On it.” He pointed a finger, and a female officer peeled off. Gareth’s mobile rang, and he picked it up. He punched off a moment later, and Mike dropped the rest on him. “Bad news, the lost quires are apparently lost again. They weren’t in either Isabella’s or her boss’s safe. You didn’t see anything related to the museum in Isabella’s apartment, did you?”
“No, but I wouldn’t know what to look for. There were a ton of pages on her desk, but she’s a scholar. I will call and have them cataloged. The last thing we need is losing something stolen from the British Museum.”
The female cop stuck her head back in. “No one by that name at the Savoy, but I’ll take a run over and have a look at their registration, show his photo around. Also, nothing remotely ancient on the desk at the crime scene. Everything was basic correspondence, pay stubs, and notes. Nothing relating to the Voynich.”
“Thanks, Ingrid. Keep us informed.” And to the rest of them, “You’ve all met Special Agent Michaela Caine. For those who might not know, she inherited Drummond from us, so we all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.”
Laughs all around, and she relaxed a little more.
Mike said, “Yes, it’s as bad as you think. He’s insufferably good at being an FBI agent.”
Gareth raised a hand. “Moving right along. Here’s what we know. Dr. Laurence Bruce came to the British Museum Tuesday to see the lost quires of the Voynich manuscript that Isabella Marin discovered. We’ll have to track down his movements once he left the museum. Did he look up her address before he left Wynn-Jones’s office or do research on her afterward? I don’t know, but it might help us discover if this is a crime of passion or one of motivation. The killing of Gil Brooks might have been an end goal, he might have been an impediment, or he could have been the target all along. Though my instinct says Isabella was the target and Gil was an unfortunate bystander, we need to look at all angles.
“The second issue is the quires the museum announced are now missing, as well. Logic says the two are related, since Dr. Marin is the one who discovered the quires and did the press conference. Since both are now missing, we’re going to work from the premise that they’re tied together.
“A bit of background. The Voynich manuscript was stolen from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University last year. At the end of her press conference, Isabella Marin made a plea for the thief to return the manuscript so it could be reunited with the lost pages. I believe Dr. Bruce stole the manuscript and decided he wanted these papers, too. Why did he graduate to murder and kidnapping? We don’t know yet.”
Gareth paused a moment. “As you already know, there was a very strange signature at the crime scene—the dual holes in the victim’s neck, directly into the jugular vein. It matches a number of European murders by someone Interpol calls the Vampire Killer or Dracula. All the victims were exsanguinated. However, in this instance, Gil Brooks wasn’t. Didn’t the killer have time? We don’t know. Dr. Bruce is now our leading suspect for these crimes, as well.”
Mike said, “Gareth, do you have access to a facial recognition system? I’d like to run the photograph of Bruce through and see if anything pops. Something about him feels familiar to me.”
Gareth nodded. “We do, but our Police National Database is more limited than yours in the FBI. Though if I have a direct match, I can certainly use it as confirmation. That said, I’d be happy to let you send the photo to your folks if you’d like.”
“I would, Gareth, thank you. The NGI database is cutting-edge and can work with a profile shot. I’ll send it in immediately if you have a computer I can use.”
“Use mine.” He unlocked the machine, and Mike got to work. The photo was uploaded into the system in a matter of minutes.
She said, “And now we wait.”
* * *