33

Once again, Black’s curiosity got the better of him. Towers drove, too fast, along the Embankment into the City where, at Moorgate, he turned right over London Bridge. The river sparkled in the late-evening sunlight. Off to their left a vast cruise liner was passing through the raised bascules of Tower Bridge. Ahead of them, the Shard rose like a two-pronged dagger. Black was able to view the modern additions to the central London skyline that had arisen in the new millennium either as hubristically dystopian or as striking parts of a harmonious continuum, depending on his state of mind. Tonight, his feeling was ambivalent. The gleaming glass skyscrapers reached for the clouds but gave no food to the soul. The spirit of the city was still to be found in the grimy bricks and blocks of stone set by human hands.

Towers seemed to read his mind. He nodded towards the Shard, which was now looming over them as they drew closer to Guy’s Hospital. ‘Looks like Stalin’s wet dream. Whoever gave it the OK ought to be shot. Can you imagine having to go to work in something like that? I’d sooner slit my wrists.’

‘I doubt the situation would arise, Freddy.’

‘Too bloody right.’

He shifted down into third and slammed his foot to the floor, eager to put the building behind them.

Professor Simon Wilkie was a tall, smiling man in his mid-sixties with a contagious, irrepressible energy. Due to the late hour Wilkie was alone in the mortuary and greeted them personally at the door dressed in green surgical scrubs.

‘Come in, come in.’ He ushered them inside like the genial host of a cocktail party.

‘Simon, this is my colleague, Major Leo Black.’

‘Delighted to meet you. We’re along here.’

He led them through a corridor that smelled of heavily perfumed disinfectant. Black hung back as Wilkie and Towers engaged in animated conversation. The two had a long association: Wilkie had made a specialism of conducting post-mortems on servicemen killed overseas. He and Towers had conducted a lot of business together.

They passed through a set of swing doors into the autopsy room, which was maintained at several degrees cooler than the corridor outside. Wilkie tugged two flexible paper face masks from a dispenser screwed to the wall and handed one each to Towers and Black. ‘Just to be on the safe side. I caught TB off a cadaver once. Not a pleasant experience.’ He gave a mischievous smile and strolled over to the large stainless-steel dissection table on which the body was laid out.

In the fullest extent of dismemberment it had been turned into a mere object. The torso had been opened from neck to navel and the ribs cut through and spread apart to allow removal of the principal internal organs. These had been weighed and sliced into sections for detailed inspection and were now sitting in a row of kidney dishes on a steel-topped counter at the side of the room. What remained of the face had been peeled backwards over the jagged remnants of the skull, leaving a single eye staring out from its bony socket. The portion of the brain that had not been blown out by the bullet had been removed, exposing the smooth inner surface of the cranium, which was the colour of clotted cream.

‘Right, well, there’s no question what killed him.’ Wilkie picked up a scalpel to use as a pointer. ‘Three entry wounds from nine-millimetre rounds on the right side of the skull and most of the left side missing. He’s approximately thirty years of age and seems to have been fit and strong. Not quite an athlete but getting on for one. You asked me to look for any clues to his origins, Freddy – you’ll be happy to know I found a number.’ He glanced up, smiling with twinkling eyes. ‘The most obvious are immediately visible.’ He pointed to a healed scar on the outside of the left upper arm. ‘This is a previous bullet wound. At least five years old, I’d say. A small arms round. X-ray doesn’t show any healed fractures, so we can assume he was lucky and it was just a flesh wound. Now, these are more interesting.’ He pointed to the back of the left hand, where there were three circular healed scars. ‘There’s another on his right hand and one on his right cheek. I’m pretty certain we’re looking at leishmaniasis. You might know it as Jericho Buttons.’

Black was all too familiar with the syndrome. He had experienced a minor dose in Libya. ‘Ulcers caused by bites from infected sandflies.’

‘Not always sandflies. Some jungle insects are vectors, too. These aren’t too bad, as they go. Probably had prompt medical attention. But that’s the ancient history; the more recent stuff is up here.’ He shifted his focus back to the head. ‘Chipped and cracked upper-right incisor. The sort of thing you’d get from a punch in the mouth.’

Towers shot Black a glance. They were both sharing the same thought.

‘Working on that assumption, I took an X-ray, and, indeed, I found what appears to be a recently healed hairline fracture to the right zygomatic bone.’ He pointed his scalpel to the bottom outer edge of the eye socket. ‘A blunt force injury consistent with the damaged tooth but not necessarily related. Is this useful?’

‘Extremely,’ Towers said. ‘The blood match I asked you to perform?’

‘I’ll have it tomorrow. Our colleagues in Paris seemed reluctant to exert themselves after office hours. I’ve yet to receive the three DNA profiles you requested.’

‘Bloody typical. I’ll put a rocket under them,’ Tower promised. ‘Any idea of his nationality?’

‘He’s of mixed race – as you guessed. Partly African or West Indian and partly Hispanic. If I were pushed, I’d say the facial structure suggests South American rather than European.’

‘Any idea which part of South America? It’s rather a big place.’

‘From his body I couldn’t tell you. But this might give you some clue.’ He reached beneath the table and brought out a hand-held lamp. ‘Would you mind turning off the lights, Major?’

Black stepped over to the bank of switches and plunged the room into darkness. Relishing his moment of theatre, Wilkie switched on the ultraviolet lamp, casting a purple glow over the body. ‘Step closer.’

They shuffled forward.

Wilkie concentrated the light on the left upper forearm. ‘Look carefully, you’ll see the outline of a tattoo. It’s been lasered, and really rather well – it’s quite invisible in normal light.’

Black leaned in further and made out the ghost of a design beneath the outer layers of the smooth, pale-coffee-coloured skin. It appeared indistinct at first, but as he accustomed his eyes it came into focus. The background shape was that of an anchor. Crossed in front of it were what appeared to be a sword or cutlass and a lightning bolt.

‘Recognize it?’ Wilkie said.

Towers shook his head.

Black had seen it before, a long time ago. In 2003 he had been sent on a covert reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence on the connection between the Chinese Special Forces, the Quantou Budui, and those of Venezuela, which at the time was under the presidency of the arch socialist and antagonist of the West, Hugo Chavez. It had been one of the few assignments in which Towers, caught up in Iraq at the time, had played no part. Operating entirely alone, Black had observed joint exercises deep in the jungle that had revealed a high degree of skill and expertise from both parties. The symbol tattooed on to the dead man’s arm was the badge of the Venezuelan naval Special Forces.

‘Venezuela? You’re sure?’ Towers seemed reluctant to accept his word on the matter.

‘Certain.’ Black was already searching for the symbol on his phone’s web browser. There it was. Identical. He showed it to Towers and Wilkie.

‘Mystery solved,’ Wilkie said.

‘Venezuelan …’ Towers said, as if nonplussed by the idea. He gave a short exclamation of surprise.

Black kept his thoughts to himself.

Still mulling over the implications of this discovery, Towers thanked Wilkie for his swift work and arranged to speak later the following day, when DNA comparisons had been made between the blood spatters recovered from Finn’s body and that of the Venezuelan former special serviceman. With a promise of lunch at his club by way of thanks, he bade the professor goodbye.

They had got only as far as the top of the staircase at ground-floor level when Towers’ phone rang. The caller was Eleanor Grant. He held her at bay for a moment and gestured Black to follow him through the nearby door into the multi-faith prayer room. They entered a quiet, soothing space containing only a few chairs, some kneelers and prayer mats. Towers switched to speakerphone.

‘Sorry about that, Eleanor. Fire away.’

‘We’ve got a positive ID on your suspect.’ Grant’s confident, purposeful voice betrayed no doubt. ‘You’ve caused quite a stir.’

Black, who until now had spent the evening in a state of unnatural calm, felt his nerves tingle.

‘She was on the CIA’s files. Her name is Irma Stein. A captain in the US Army Intelligence Corps. She was stationed in Baghdad during late 2004 and early 2005. In February 2005 she went missing going about routine business inside the Green Zone. She was twenty-four at the time. It was presumed she was kidnapped by enemy insurgents but no ransom demands were received and she was never found. She’s still officially unaccounted for. The CIA is obviously intrigued to know more.’

‘Email me your contact’s details and I’ll be happy to fill them in,’ Towers said. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been most helpful.’

He rang off and met Black’s gaze. ‘It was her, wasn’t it – the woman you engaged in the firefight?’

‘Quite possibly,’ Black said.

‘Intelligence Corps. She must have jumped ship and joined one of our friends in the private sector. She probably had the inside track on some of Saddam’s hidden billions.’

‘You should let them arrest her at Miami,’ Black said. ‘Use your information to negotiate access to her interrogation.’

‘And have the Americans take the whole thing over? Our science is our national property, Leo. Finn was murdered defending it.’

‘I can’t see you’ve any option. Her cover’s been blown. If you don’t have her picked up now, she’ll disappear.’

They remained staring at one another as they had over so many difficult and unpalatable decisions in the past. Neither said a word. They didn’t have to. Black knew precisely what Towers was asking him to do and Towers knew with equal certainty what the answer would be.

Black glanced at the clock on the prayer-room wall. It was past ten. It would be midnight before he got back to Oxford. ‘I should be going.’

Towers nodded. ‘I can give you a lift to the Tube.’

‘I think I’ll walk. Thanks all the same. Goodnight, Freddy.’

‘Goodnight, Leo.’

He let himself out and made his way briskly across the hospital’s lobby with Towers’ parting words ringing in his ears: ‘I’ll leave it with you, then. Safe home.’