The Hunter

CHAPTER 7

09:15 CET

Less than a mile away Alvarez looked down at the corpse on the steel tray before him and sighed heavily. The wrinkled skin was pale, the eyes closed, the lips tinged with blue. A small red hole marked the skin of the left temple. Entry wound. The hole in the right temple was larger, rougher. Exit wound.

‘Yeah,’ he breathed. ‘That’s the poor bastard.’

The French assistant mortician responded with a brief nod. He stood a few feet away, on the other side of the table, a young man in his twenties, and despite the cool temperature Alvarez could see there was sweat on his brow. The mortician shifted his weight, fidgeted. Alvarez pretended not to notice.

The American realized he wasn’t helping calm the kid. Alvarez knew he had a face that seemed to be perpetually scowling and made people who didn’t know him better feel uncomfortable. Even smiling didn’t help, and his size only exacerbated the problem. Alvarez had a neck wider than his skull and shoulders that filled a door frame. When it came to confrontation his appearance gave him an edge, but the rest of the time it was simply a hindrance. He had to work twice as hard as anyone else just to get people to trust him.

He had the pathologist’s report in hand. He glanced over the details to where it described the bullet wounds. There were two more to the chest. He gestured.

‘Show me.’

The mortician looked around nervously before carefully gripping the white stain-proof sheet. He folded it backward from the body’s neck to reveal the torso.

Alvarez examined the two neat holes in the sternum. ‘They look small calibre to me. Twenty-twos?’

‘No,’ the mortician answered. ‘All three wounds. Two to the chest, one to the head. 5.7 mm rounds.’

‘Interesting.’ Alvarez leaned forward for a closer look. ‘What kind of range are we looking at?’

‘No powder burns so it wasn’t point blank, other than that I can’t tell you. Listen, I’m just an assistant here. I’m not a ballistics expert. I… I don’t know very much.’

No shit, Alvarez thought. He considered for a moment. That the rounds were 5.7 mm meant an FN Five-seveN, one of the world’s slickest and most expensive handguns. He pictured the scene in his head. Double-tap to the heart, then, as the victim was prone, head to one side, the killer put one extra through the frontal lobe. Not taking any chances. Alvarez was no stranger to professional killings, and this execution was about as thorough as they came. He blinked the image away.

‘Look,’ the mortician began, ‘my boss is going to be back soon.’

Alvarez could take a hint. He opened his wallet.

Outside the hospital he buttoned up his coat against the drizzle. Where the hell was Kennard? It took a couple of minutes before the dark sedan pulled up outside.

‘Sorry,’ Kennard said, as Alvarez climbed into the passenger seat.

Alvarez rubbed some of the rain from his buzz cut. ‘It’s Ozols,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Jesus,’ Kennard exhaled. ‘The package?’

Alvarez shook his head. He summarized what he’d seen.

‘What do we do?’ Kennard asked.

Alvarez chewed on his thumbnail for a moment. He reached into his jacket for his cell phone. ‘I’ve got to speak to Langley.’