“I passed,” said Neeta Mahajan, with a radiant smile, two days later as she met Foy in the corridor by the lifts.
Foy looked blank for a moment, and she made a noise of mock exasperation with her tongue.
“My sergeant’s exams, sir,” she said, enunciating each word as though Foy were slightly deaf. “I told you, remember?”
To his chagrin, Foy realized he had forgotten it entirely. He began to fumble for words, but she let him off the hook.
“Never mind,” she said, in bubbling excitement. “I passed. I got the letter this morning.”
“Well done, Neeta,” he said, recovering himself and pumping her hand. “I knew you’d do it. I’d give you a hug, only I’d probably get done for sexual harassment.”
“Not by me, you won’t,” she answered, with another happy laugh, throwing her arms around his neck. She hugged him for what seemed a wonderfully long time, during which he found the feel of her young, strong body and the soft scent of her long hair utterly intoxicating.
Disengaging a trifle reluctantly, Foy grinned, congratulated her again, and then found himself struck by the realization of how many years it had been since he, himself, had opened that same letter and been similarly thrilled by its news. Resolutely, he pushed aside the gloomy thought.
“And I’ve something else to tell you, as well,” Neeta was saying almost breathlessly. “I got word from Interpol.”
“Yes?”
“I sent Weber’s prints off to them, as instructed, and they got a hit straight away. He was in their database because the police in Colombia had found his dabs at the scene of a murder. Some bigshot gangster, apparently. Interpol wasn’t brought into the investigation at the time, so they couldn’t give me any details. I contacted the coppers in Bogota, the Policía Nacional de Colombia. There’s my contribution to multiculturalism.”
“Very impressive,” said Foy, “but I’m more interested in what the Colombian coppers told you.”
“I asked them to send me whatever they could, so they sent Weber’s prints and I checked them out, just to be sure. All fine. But they also sent a second set of prints taken off a combine harvester delivered to the same place three months before the murder in question.”
“A combine harvester?” asked Foy, his eyebrows raised. “What on earth…?”
“It was a big farm of some kind,” said Neeta, “but that’s not the point, sir. Guess who belongs to those other prints.”
“This isn’t a game, Neeta,” he said, slight impatience in his voice. “Out with it.”
“They belong to none other than Mr. Michael Barrow.”
“What?” Foy burst out. “Seriously?”
“Very seriously,” said Neeta, nodding. “And that’s not all.”
“Go on, then,” he said. “This is all a bit hard to grasp.”
“The bloke who was murdered liked to collect fine art, and he’d been suspected of building his collection through what the case files described as other than legitimate means.”
“What a surprise,” said Foy. “How very prosaic of them.”
“The Colombians did over the house where the murder occurred and found all sorts of stolen stuff, and amongst the dead guy’s papers there was a reference to something called the syndicate.”
“What was the reference?” Foy asked. “What did it actually say?”
“It was a copy of a note to someone unnamed, but it instructed that person to postpone payment. His accountant, maybe.”
By this time, they had reached Foy’s office, and Neeta was seated in front of the desk, her long legs elegantly crossed, her familiar beauty heightened into sheer radiance by her excitement and happiness. Looking at her olive skin, her ebony hair, her fathomless dark eyes, and that wonderfully incongruous cockney accent, he sighed inwardly, then cleared his throat.
“Is there anything more in the files from Bogota?” he inquired, dragging himself back from nebulous realms to stark reality. Neeta shook her head.
“Nothing of any use. So, where do we go from here, Guv?”
“We go to pay a visit to Mr. Michael Barrow. We’ve enough to pull him in for questioning at the very least, but there’s something you don’t know. The French police were on the phone a couple of hours ago, and Barrow’s Paris alibi has gone to hell. He left Paris, and I’m pretty sure he went to meet Paul Ellis in Caen, but what I’m not sure of is how the oracle bone fits into all this…if it does, that is.”
“Are you going to tell Superintendent Stuart before we go, sir?” Neeta asked, and Foy gave her a grim smile.
Not bloody likely, he said to himself. He could readily imagine Stuart ordering him to stand off while he arrested Barrow himself, or, if nothing else, insisting he accompany Foy so the official report would show he commanded the operation as senior officer present.
Foy said, “No, I don’t think I’ll tell him.”
Neeta nodded, but said nothing.
“Get Sergeant Fielding and organize the backup,” he told Neeta, “and we’ll go as soon as everything’s in place.”
She was gone in a trice, but Foy remained standing behind his desk for a few moments. He had no direct evidence against Barrow, he knew that. Everything was purely circumstantial. Carl Weber was now unable to testify concerning Barrow’s stolen car. Even Barrow’s defunct alibi and the bizarre connection between Barrow and a combine harvester in Colombia, of all places, still did not add up to proof of murder. He would just have to hope something would turn up at Barrow’s flat, or that Barrow would incriminate himself somehow.
If I go arresting the wrong man now, he thought, Stuart will crucify me.
“But he’s not the wrong man,” he said aloud, as he left his office. “He just can’t be.”
Within an hour, just as darkness was enveloping London and the city was coming alive with streetlights and illuminated signs, the convoy drew up outside Barrow’s building. He answered their knock wearing a satin smoking jacket and felt slippers, looking to Foy like something out of Charles Dickens.
“What’s this all about?” he demanded, as Foy, Fielding, Neeta Mahajan, and two constables occupied his sitting room. “What’s going on?”
“Fielding, Neeta, have a look round,” said Foy, as the two constables took up station by the door.
“You can’t do that without a warrant,” said Barrow, angrily.
“Yes, we can,” said Foy, “but forget that for now. Tell me, Mr. Barrow, have you ever been to Colombia?”
“Colombia?” said Barrow. “No, I haven’t, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well, then, are you in the agricultural machinery business?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why were your fingerprints found on a combine harvester at a crime scene outside Bogota, the capital city of Colombia?”
“Obviously because someone made a stupid mistake,” snapped Barrow, but a wary look had come into his eyes.
“I doubt it,” said Foy, “but never mind. Tell me where you went when you left Paris for two days a year ago last February.”
“I didn’t leave Paris,” Barrow said, hotly. “I was staying with friends. The ones you set the Paris police onto.”
“Come off it, Barrow,” Foy said, his voice harsher. “We know you left. Your alibi’s blown. When your so-called friends heard there was a murder involved, they suddenly became a lot more cooperative.”
Barrow’s eyes narrowed momentarily at the mention of murder, but he maintained his façade of indignant aggression.
“All right,” he said, “I probably did leave for a day or two. So what? That’s not a crime, is it? I was very upset about Terry’s death, and being the last person to see him alive, and so on. That sort of thing’s a bit of a shock.”
“Try again,” said Foy. “We know you didn’t hear about Terry’s death until you came home. You said so yourself.”
Barrow stared at Foy, his expression now less defiant. Foy intensified the pace.
“Ever heard of something called the Athena Syndicate?”
“No.”
“Know a Carl Weber, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Sylvia Becker, maybe?”
“No.”
“Who’s Paul Ellis?”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
Barrow’s answers came too quickly. He was wilting under the onslaught. Foy heard desperation in his voice.
At that moment Fielding came in from the bedroom carrying a clear plastic evidence bag containing what looked like a short metal cylinder.
“There’s a silencer here, sir.”
“And you said you didn’t own a gun,” said Foy. “Why keep a silencer, then?”
Barrow had no time to answer before Neeta Mahajan appeared with a bag of her own.
“It’s all here, sir. Three passports. One’s legit, but the other two are forgeries. Damn good ones, though. One’s from the Netherlands in the name of Jan Vandermeer, and the other is from the UK in the name of Paul Ellis, complete with entry and exit stamps and a visa from Colombia.”