‘What the hell are you doing here, Marcus?’ said Huss, her breath steaming in the cold, wintery night.
‘Trying to get proof that I didn’t kill anyone,’ Hinds said irritably. He added, plaintively, ‘Can we sit in your car, I’m freezing out here.’
Huss shook her head and pressed the key fob. They both got in the VW and she felt a momentary desire to just cuff him to the steering wheel and have done with it. Then call it in. She might well have done if her back hadn’t been hurting so much. The last thing she wanted was a struggle in the cramped space of a car. What she really wanted was to go to bed, pull the sheets over her head and sleep.
‘Go on then, talk!’ Huss switched the heating on and Hinds rubbed his hands theatrically.
‘I know that Eleuthera are planning something for tonight. I know a girl there and she’s reliable. There’s something big scheduled for Schneider. If we go there now, to the lodge, we’ll be able to stop it, and I’ll be vindicated. I’ll get my story and then some.’
‘You mean you think the charges against you will be dropped and you’ll make a fortune selling your story.’ Huss’s tone was sarcastic.
‘God, yes!’ Hinds’s tone was fervent.
‘Well, I’d better give Diplomatic Protection a call,’ she said. ‘They’ve still got a team up here at the Rosemount, or should have, I’ll let them decide what to do.’
Hinds grew agitated. ‘Are you crazy! You’ll have half a dozen guys in hi-vis clothes waving sub-machine guns, two or three marked police cars, a ’copter with thermal imaging thundering overhead.’
‘And a couple of dog handlers, probably,’ agreed Huss. ‘They love their dogs, Diplomatic Protection. All those woods.’
‘Well, Eleuthera aren’t going to do anything are they, then,’ protested Hinds.
‘Good.’
‘But what about me?’ wailed Hinds. Huss looked at his face, so close to hers in the front of the car. It was certainly not an act. Hinds plainly wanted to establish his innocence. ‘It’s not all about you,’ said Huss. ‘Innocent lives are at stake.’
Hinds was growing increasingly agitated. ‘Think of Justice! Look, Melinda, I mean DI Huss, this is your big chance to nail the murderers of that old lady, Hübler and that bell-end Kettering. If you catch them here and now, they might well confess to the other killings.’ He paused, changing his tack. ‘Think how pleased your boss will be.’
Huss thought Templeman would not be pleased at all to be proven wrong. But as the idea sank in that Eleuthera would be put to bed and that smug bitch Georgie Adams would be facing jail time, the bait dangled by Hinds started to gain traction.
‘What kind of thing are they planning?’
Hinds shook his head. ‘I don’t know exactly. I have a source in Eleuthera who has tipped me off.’
‘Who?’ asked Huss sceptically.
Hinds shook his head in exasperation. ‘A girl called Rowenna, she knew Elsa from the soup kitchen. Mark Spencer strong-armed her into revealing Elsa’s whereabouts. She didn’t know so she gave Spencer the name of an old boy, Harry someone.’ He paused. ‘She hasn’t seen him since.’
Huss’s heat sank. ‘That’s three days ago, Marcus, maybe four. He could be dead.’
‘That’s not my fault, is it?’ said Marcus, sulkily. ‘I’ve been on the run accused of murders I never committed. Perhaps he’s fine, just lying low.’
‘I’ll deal with it later,’ said Huss grimly. ‘What did Rowenna tell you is going down?’
Hinds said, ‘She doesn’t know herself, but she does know it involves Arzu and Georgie. They’re the two major players, after all.’
Assassination, presumably, thought Huss. Well, if she could move Schneider and Kellner out, she could move the protection team in via the entrance that Hanlon had used. Frank Muller and Wotan could fend for themselves. She could always, if worst came to the worst, stick the Germans in a cell at Summertown.
Three murders solved, a terrorist cell, maybe two, bust open. Ancillary arrests. Maybe too the chance for someone to take responsibility for the death of Elsa.
She saw Georgie Adams’s smug face, gloating in her cleverness. Hinds carrying the can for her activities.
Huss decided to spare Hinds.
‘OK, I’m going to go and fetch Schneider, get him out of harm’s way. When that’s done, I’ll sneak the Protection boys in and I’ll get a Divisional Support Team Group in. Schneider out, cops in. You stay here but, Marcus, you’re coming in with me back to the station, OK? That has to be part of the deal. I can’t let you go again. The meeting at the York Hall was off the record, this is very much on the record, have you understood that?’
‘Sure, I knew you’d say that, I’ve come prepared for the nick. Uncle Cliff has arranged a brief for me who’ll go out to wherever I’m held. It’s all good.’
He was quite resigned now, it seemed, to spend some time locked up on remand.
‘Fine.’
She got out of the car and gasped with pain from her back, paused to lean on the bonnet and straighten up. Using her palms to push her spine upright.
Not good.
She walked round to the front of the hotel and made her way step by painful step, walking exaggeratedly straight, as though she was on parade, to the front terrace, the mock Palladian frontage of the hotel lit up brilliantly like the front of the National Gallery transported to the middle of Oxfordshire.
She hobbled down the steps towards the lights of the lodge and followed the path to the main gate.
From behind it she heard savage barking and some curt command in German.
I wonder who that is? thought Huss to herself, sarcastically.
‘Wer ist das?’ Muller’s gruff voice. ‘It’s DI Huss to see Herr Schneider.’
There was silence, then the gate swung open. The Presa, on a choke chain, strained forward, eager to get at her, its massive muscles ridged under the short fur. Its lips were drawn back from its teeth.
Muller leaned back to control the animal, putting his full weight behind restraining it. Huss kept a wary distance. Despite his great bulk, Huss could see he could barely hold back the beast. If it came at me, she thought, I’d be dead.
Muller jerked his head in the direction of the lodge and Huss walked up to the front door and banged on it.
Dr Florian Kellner let her in and closed the door behind her. Huss suddenly felt an enormous sense of relief that the solid oak lay between her and the Presa. The dog was seriously out of order.
Dr Kellner said pleasantly, ‘And how may we help you tonight, DI Huss?’
Huss chose her words carefully. ‘I have received information, credible information, that an attempt may be made to breach security here at the lodge tonight, and I would like to suggest that you and Herr Schneider come with me and we’ll make alternative arrangements for your accommodation.’
Kellner frowned. With his bald head, fat face and rather blubbery lips, he looked a little like a petulant baby. Right now like a petulant baby that was somehow being denied a treat.
‘Look, we’ve got visitors at the moment. Can I take you downstairs to the treatment room to wait while we finish? It really won’t take long, but it is confidential.’ He smiled. ‘That’s politics for you, I’m afraid.’
‘Of course,’ said Huss. ‘It’s down here, isn’t it?’ She pointed to where a spiral stair disappeared down to the basement. It was very spa-like, a slim, curved metal handrail with thin metal hawsers running in parallel underneath, like you might get on a ship, and stone and glass steps with recessed lights leading down to the room below.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Kellner, ‘make sure you are comfortable.’
His eyes bulged behind his glasses. God, he’s creepy, thought Huss.
He led the way into the treatment room and indicated the sofa that Enver had slept on. ‘Please have a seat.’ She did so, gasping as she sat down.
‘Back problems?’ asked Kellner sympathetically. Huss nodded.
‘Me too,’ he said.
The room was very bright and Huss saw that although it was essentially a reclaimed basement, it had long narrow windows just under its ceiling so it would get some natural light during the day.
‘We’ll be about twenty minutes,’ said Kellner. ‘I’ll come and fetch you. But don’t worry, nobody will get past Frank and Wotan.’
Huss watched him go back up the stairs and closed her eyes, feeling the pain in her lower spine.
The sofa was extraordinarily uncomfortable to sit on. Standing up proved problematic. It was so sore she ended up in a kind of undignified twist with both hands on the sofa’s arms, levering herself up, hissing with pain through her clenched teeth as she moved.
She stood there for a moment and took a couple of steps until she was leaning on the treatment bench. For a moment she considered lying on it, but she would have felt ridiculous to be found by Kellner like a crusader on a tomb or a corpse on a slab, and decided against it. Then her eye fell on the cryosauna. The red LED display lights said ‘-40’. And this was the device that Czerwinski hoped to inveigle her into? He had to be crazy. She walked over to it and tried the handle. It was locked and there to the right of the door she saw the keypad.
I wonder what it’s like? Couldn’t hurt to try.
All the twos, thought Huss. She keyed the numbers in and heard a click. There was a red light and it changed to green to indicate occupancy as she opened the door.
She was curious to experience what forty degrees below zero would feel like. Perhaps it would numb the pain in her back. She was already uncomfortably over the recommended dosage of the ibuprofen she had in her handbag. Here was her chance.
The door swung fully open and Huss gasped aloud in shock and disgust at what was inside. It was horrible. She stared for a moment to make sure it was what she thought it was, not that there could be any doubt. And then she closed the door.
She heard a low growl behind her. She turned around slowly.
Muller and the Presa were at the top of the stairs, looking down at her.
‘Du liebe Zeit!’ said Muller softly.
Huss gasped, but it wasn’t the bodyguard and the dog that caused it.
Georgie Adams’s face appeared from behind Muller’s body as she arrogantly emerged from behind her gigantic colleague.
‘In English that means, “Dearie, dearie me!”’ She shook her head sorrowfully, her eyes narrowed with triumphant dislike. ‘Oh dearie, dearie me, DI Huss.’