Tracers

TWENTY-SIX

‘Who the hell are you two?’ The pistol was held unwaveringly at shoulder height. Behind it stood a young woman wearing a bomber jacket and jeans, with the nylon straps of a rucksack over each shoulder. She looked fit and toned, with cropped, dyed-blonde hair and nice skin. Her mouth was tight with tension and her gaze said both men would be in trouble if they made a wrong move.

She glanced down at the dead woman, then up at the two men. There was no sign of emotion and the pistol didn’t move.

Harry broke the tension. ‘I’m Harry, he’s Rik. We didn’t do this.’ He wasn’t sure why he thought she would believe him. ‘Who are you?’

The woman ignored him and moved sideways, gesturing with her free hand. ‘The bed. Sit. Both of you. Hands away from your bodies.’ Her voice brooked no argument.

‘Hang on a sec-’ Rik began to protest, but she cut him short.

‘I said, sit.’

Harry sat down and motioned Rik to do the same. From the way in which the woman had positioned herself, she was just beyond their reach and it was obvious that if they made a move towards her, they wouldn’t get more than a few inches.

‘Unusual weapon,’ Harry commented, nodding at the gun, although he thought the only unusual feature about it was that she had it and they didn’t. It looked workmanlike; anonymous, small calibre, no markings and disposable. ‘You got a licence for it?’

She barely gave him a glance and looked disturbingly at ease with the gun. Distracting her evidently wasn’t on the cards.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked. She moved to the chest of drawers and rested her gun on it, the barrel still pointing between the two men. Harry kept very still. He knew that resting her arm was not a sign of weakness. Guns are heavy pieces of equipment designed to stand fierce pressures and handling. But the weight can play havoc with the wrists and arm muscles, whether held by a man or a woman.

‘We were looking for her,’ Rik explained, nodding towards the body. ‘Joanne Archer,’ Harry let him speak. Since the woman had the upper hand and neither of them was about to get within six feet of her without being popped, there was little point in using delaying tactics. ‘We thought she might be in some sort of trouble,’ Rik added. ‘Looks like we were right.’

‘How do you know Joanne Archer?’ The question came back instinctively, but with a momentary hesitation in uttering the name.

‘We don’t,’ said Harry, deliberately drawing her eyes towards him. He smiled, aiming to get her to relax. ‘We’re paid to find people. It’s what we do.’

‘Paid? By who?’

Neither of them replied. Instead, Harry said quietly, ‘That’s not her on the floor, is it?’

He was holding the photo frame and looking down at the faces, his finger on one of the women. Although the cap and brown hair was enough to fudge the picture slightly and throw them off, it was now obvious that the woman he was looking at wasn’t the one lying here.

She was actually standing right in front of them.

‘She was staying with me overnight.’ The comment was matter-of-fact. ‘Her name was Cath Barbour; we were in the same unit. She just got out.’

‘What kind of trouble are you in, Miss Archer?’ queried Harry.

She blinked rapidly, then surprised both men by kneeling down by the body. If she saw either of them as a threat, she no longer seemed to care.

‘It would help if you put the gun away,’ Harry suggested. He was careful not to move, however; this woman was too full of surprises and might have a miniature Uzi tucked inside her bra.

‘I heard you talking,’ she said vaguely. She touched her fingers to the dead woman’s face, then sat back on her heels. ‘What are you — army?’ Her voice was dull, lifeless.

‘Used to be,’ said Harry. He left it at that. She wouldn’t be impressed by their background in the security services.

‘Recently?’

‘No. Not recently.’

‘Then you won’t be able to help.’ Her voice was soft, almost regretful, as if they were not what she had been hoping for. ‘You won’t be used to this.’

‘Death, you mean?’ Harry gave a shrug when she looked up at him. ‘Actually, we’re more accustomed to it than you might think.’

‘How?’

He told her briefly about the past couple of days, how death seemed to be following them around; about Silverman and the events at South Acres, and the trail they had followed to this flat. Something told him she wasn’t about to go screaming to the police about Param and Matuq, and she clearly had a connection of sorts to Silverman, which made her a person of interest.

She took it in without comment, then stood up. She studied the gun as if making a decision and clicked on the safety, switching her gaze squarely back to the two men. ‘I don’t see how any of this concerns me. I don’t know anyone called Silverman and I’ve no idea how he came to have my number or — ’ she looked down at the body of her friend — ‘why anyone would kill Cath. She was just passing through. . she didn’t have anything to steal, either. It’s. . crazy.’

Harry studied her face. There was a flat quality to her voice which made her sound robotic. Yet she seemed almost too controlled, given the circumstances. Unless she had an unusually low panic threshold. Whoever or whatever she was, unusual seemed a fair description.

‘So why are you here?’ he asked, changing the direction of the conversation. ‘You’ve got a flat in north London, you train there, you have friends. . you’ve got a routine. When you’re not travelling, that is.’ He gestured around them. ‘Why this place?’

Archer didn’t reply. Her attention seemed to have drifted off somewhere far away.

‘We might be able to help,’ Rik offered gently. But there was still no reaction.

‘I’m going to reach into my pocket,’ Harry told her. ‘There’s something I want you to look at. You OK with that?’ She didn’t respond. ‘Joanne?’

The sound of her name seemed to bring her back. She nodded assent, watching warily as Harry reached inside his jacket and pulled out the shot of Samuel Silverman from the airport camera. He flipped it the right way up and handed it to her. ‘This is the man we’re following. The one who had your phone number.’

Neither of them knew quite what to expect. Logic suggested that there was little likelihood that Joanne Archer had ever set eyes on Silverman before. The fact that he had been in possession of her phone number and initials might have been one of those inexplicable convergences of detail that sometimes pops up, in the same way that siblings who have never met occasionally discover a brother or sister living in the next street, unknown and unknowing neighbours for decades.

But Archer’s reaction on seeing the face in the photograph took them both by surprise. First came a look of intense shock, then her knees buckled and almost gave way, her face draining of colour. She stared at each man in turn, her lips working soundlessly.

‘This can’t be,’ she whispered finally, shaking her head. ‘He’s dead. He was blown to pieces three weeks ago!’