The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sherrill resumed with a battery of technical questions, most of which seemed to centre on ballistics. He and the pathologist were now trading in a technical dialect Tom didn't speak, all calibres and contusions, and that was when he noticed, lying casually on the top of a small cabinet of drawers, several clear, ziplocked plastic bags, the kind airport security hand out for valuables. One of these contained a plain white plastic card that looked like a hotel room key, another a clunky, outdated mobile phone. These had to be the possessions of the deceased, removed from his pockets prior to the post-mortem and carefully bagged up. Tom remembered Sherrill's scolding of the security chief over the passport.

As casually as he could, Tom picked up the first plastic bag. Sure enough, the card inside bore the imprint of the Tudor Hotel, suggesting once again that this poor old buffer was no suicide bomber: he probably planned to go back to his room after his ‘mission’ to UN Plaza, no doubt to have a nice cup of tea and a lie-down. There was Merton's passport, a few dollar bills, a crumpled tourist information leaflet, probably taken from the hotel lobby: Getting to Know… UN Plaza.

Sherrill's stream of technicalia was still flowing when a head popped round the door, summoning the pathologist outside. Tom seized the moment to beckon the detective over and show him the bag containing the phone. Through the plastic he reached for the power button, then brought up the last set of numbers dialled, recognizing the familiar 011-44 of a British number and then, below that, a New York cellphone, beginning 1-917. Instantly Sherrill pulled out a notebook and scribbled down both numbers. Tom did the same. He was about to bring up the Received Calls list, and then take a look at the messages, when a ‘Battery Empty’ sign flashed up and the screen went blank.

Sherrill waited for the pathologist to return, peppered her with a few more questions before making arrangements for a full set of results to be couriered over to him later that afternoon. Then he and Tom went back to the UN, to the security department on the first floor where, on a couch and armed with a cup of sweet tea, sat a pale and trembling Felipe Tavares.

Despite himself, Tom had to admit, Sherrill was a class act. He spoke to the Portuguese officer quietly and patiently, asking him to run through the events of that morning, nodding throughout, punctuating the conversation with ‘of course’ and ‘naturally’, as if they were simply chatting, cop to cop. Unsaid, but hinted at, was the assumption that if Sherrill had his way no police officer was going to be in trouble simply for doing his job. All Felipe – can I call you Felipe? – had to do was tell Jay everything that happened.

The part of the narrative that interested Sherrill most seemed to be the moment Tavares had received the alert from the Watch Commander supplying the description of the potential terror suspect: black coat, woollen hat and the rest. Sherrill pressed the officer for an exact time; Tavares protested that he had not checked his watch. What about the precise wording? Felipe said it was difficult to remember; the rain had been coming down so hard he had struggled to hear properly. Other officers must have heard it too: it was a ‘broadcast’ message to all those on duty. ‘That's right,’ said Sherrill. ‘I'll be checking with them, too.’

The detective did his best to sound casual asking what was clearly, at least to Tom's legal ears, the key question. It came once Felipe described the moment he pulled the trigger.

‘At that instant, did you reasonably believe your life was in danger?’

‘Yes. I thought he was suicide bomber. Not just my life in danger. Everyone's life.’

‘And you thought that because you saw some kind of bomb?’

‘No! I told you already. I thought it because of the message we had, the warning about a man who look like this. And because of the faces of those men I saw. The way they looked so shocked, and the black man screaming “No!” like he was desperate.’

‘And you now think they were screaming because they could see the man was, in fact, very old. Not a terrorist at all. They were shouting “No!” not to him, but to you, urging you not to shoot.’

Felipe Tavares' head sank onto his chest. Quietly he replied, ‘Yes.’

‘Yet that black man, and the man with him, when you looked later, you say there was no sign of them?’

‘No sign.’

‘Isn't that a little strange? Two men watching what happens close enough to see the old man's face, involved enough to urge you not to shoot, just vanishing into thin air?’

‘It is strange, sir. But that what happen.’

Tom watched carefully. He noticed that Sherrill was writing nothing down. The detective continued.

‘And, just to conclude, Felipe, you have no idea why the Watch Commander gave his warning then? At that particular time?’

‘No. I just heard the message and then I saw the man they describe.’ Tavares looked down at his feet again. ‘Well, I thought I saw the man.’

Tom could see the cogs in Sherrill's mind turning, as if he was getting what he needed. Quite what that was, Tom had not yet worked out.

By now he had done what Henning had requested: he had overseen day one of the investigation. It was time to say his goodbyes if he was to make the overnight flight to London. Tom briefed the lawyer Munchau had chosen to take his place at Sherrill's side – a Greek woman specializing in human rights – and then introduced her to Sherrill. To Tom's surprise, the detective did not shake him off, but promised to keep him up to date, to let him know whatever the forensics guys and the medical examiner turned up. He took Tom's cellphone number then insisted Tom take his – at which point the nature of Sherrill's collegiate generosity made itself apparent. With no men of his own in London, he wanted Tom to pass on whatever he discovered about the victim.

In a cab on the way back to his apartment – it would take just a couple of minutes to pack a bag before dashing off for the airport – Tom made the last call he needed, as arranged, to get briefed by Harold Allen on the details he would need in London.

‘How are things, Harold?’

‘Not great, Tom, I'll be straight with you.’ He sounded rough, like a man whose career is flashing before his eyes.

‘Have the family now been notified?’

‘USG made the call nearly an hour ago.’

‘Widow?’

‘No widow. Just one daughter apparently. I'll email the co-ordinates.’

‘Press?’

‘They haven't got the name yet. Just confirmation of a Caucasian male.’

‘Has his age been announced?’

Allen sighed. ‘Not yet.’

Tom felt sorry for the guy. Depending on how nuclear the media went on this, Allen was shaping up to be the obvious fall-guy. Just senior enough to be culpable, but not so senior his sacrifice would actually cost the high command. Tom knew the battle cry always raised when trouble hit the UN: ‘Deputy heads must roll!’

He offered some bland words of reassurance and hung up. As he looked out of the window at the late-afternoon mothers pushing buggies, picking up their kids from day-care, he wondered who he should phone. No need to speak to the Fantonis: BlackBerry and cellphone contact would be fine for them, no matter where he was. He thought of the guys from his five-a-side team, all Brits, most of them former City boys trousering a squillion a week on Wall Street. He should tell them he'd be missing the Wednesday game. Otherwise, he had no one else to call.

The afternoon traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway was heavy. Tom pushed back into the worn, fake-leather seat of the cab and closed his eyes. He reached into his pocket to check his passport when he felt the hard cover of his notebook. He probably ought to call Sherrill, tell him that the family had just been informed, which meant the press would soon get the dead man's name.

He flicked through the pages looking for the detective's number but instead came across the scribbled note he had made at the medical examiner's office.

Now, in his other hand, he fired up his BlackBerry. A message from Allen's office, as promised. A name, a London address and two phone numbers, the second clearly recognizable as a mobile. Rebecca Merton, it said. Tom glanced at the long UK number he had seen on the phone in the Ziploc bag. Sure enough, they matched. Gerald Merton's last telephone call had been to his daughter.

Without thinking, Tom tapped out the digits of the second number he had found on the dead man's cellphone, beginning 1-917. The number sat there, lighting up the display for several seconds. He knew that he ought to leave this to Sherrill; that the NYPD would, as a matter of routine, check out the numbers on the victim's phone. There was no reason for Tom to do it himself. Tom looked out of the window, weighed it up – and then pushed the little green button to activate the call.

It would probably just be the number for a taxi service the old guy had used to collect him from the airport. Or perhaps some relative he had been planning to visit.

Tom put the phone to his ear, hearing it connect and then the long tone of a first ring. A silence and then one more ring. And then a male voice.

At first Tom assumed it was a wrong number. Either the old man had dialled it incorrectly or Tom had scrawled the digits down too fast, both eminently possible. He was about to apologize for his mistake when instinct silenced him. He heard the voice again, first speaking to someone else, as if winding up another conversation, then calling out hello, hello – and a shudder passed through him, making even his scalp turn cold.

It wasn't the accent, though that was what had first alerted him, nor even that tell-tale half sentence Tom had heard, spoken in a language Tom had studied back in his university days. No, it was the tone, the brusque hardness. Tom disconnected before saying a word and held the phone tight in his hand. With relief, he remembered that these new BlackBerries came with an automatic block on Caller ID. That man would not be calling back.

A quick call to Allen – and from him to a friend in the NYPD Intelligence Division who took pity on a former comrade clearly in the wringer – confirmed Tom's hunch. He had Allen read out the number his NYPD source had passed on twice over. When Allen asked why Tom needed it, he deployed an old party trick, speaking a few apparently broken words, and then hung up. It would sound to Allen as if Tom had disappeared into a tunnel and lost signal.

The choked roads gave Tom Byrne some time as the car crawled the final few miles to John F Kennedy Airport. He knew he should relay his discovery to Jay Sherrill immediately, but he hesitated. He wanted to think this through. Besides, Sherrill would get there soon enough; just a matter of dialling the number they had both written down.

If he did that he would hear what Tom had heard. He would be able to confirm that the man whose number had been in the late Gerald Merton's telephone was the arms supplier the New York Police Department had branded long ago as ‘the Russian’.