Chapter Thirty-Eight

David opened the letter from Andy. It was good news, as far as news went.

After carefully sifting through the images made by the working cameras in the neighborhoods where Georgette and Jane used to live, Fortham had managed to locate a vehicle, which could be that of the killer, and what looked like the killer himself.

Probably. Hopefully.

The figure was with its back to the camera the whole time. Did it look like Mister Greenpants? Could be.

Dave’s phone rang.

“Andy. What’s up?”

“Lots of things,” said Andy in a strange voice, “want me to take you out to lunch?”

“Er...okay. Is anything wrong?”

“I’ll tell you over lunch. I’ll come and get you in ten minutes.”

“Jeez, you’re scaring me.”

“That’s nothing. You just wait until we sit down somewhere.”

“Heh, okay,” Dave said with an uncertain smile, “I’m here.”

“Okay, bye.”

Now what? Dave massaged his neck for a while, got dressed, and went outside his office building. He looked at the pedestrians, exchanged a few promising glances with a hurrying MILF and two teens who walked past him arm in arm.

The curse of the eternal puberty.

After two more minutes Andy popped up, making his way through a group of white-collar men with shiny black shoes. “Let’s go to the Ham Hamlet,” he said without any preliminaries, his gaze furtive.

* * * *

“I’ll have the chicken soup and a green salad,” Andy told the hovering waiter.

Dave raised an eyebrow. “Are you on a diet?”

“No, just not very hungry you know. The stomach is a bit tightened right now.” This explanation was given through a rather tensed mouth.

“Hmm,” Dave said and felt a flash of indecision about the greasy bacon he was just about to order.

A premonition of something appetite-killing was summoned by Andy’s demeanor. Dave looked up at the waiter’s face, “I’ll have the same. Soup, salad, and a Heineken.”

The waiter nodded and strutted off. Dave looked at Andy.

His friend was obviously wound up tight, and at the same time trying not to show it too much. However, his cheekbones were frozen, betraying the tension in the jaw muscles, and there was a slight slouch in his shoulders; even as he sat there he was slightly stooping as a man does when unconsciously expecting an imminent physical attack.

Andy’s broad shoulders looked thin for some reason, as if his red pullover was pulled over his bare bones.

He doesn’t get enough exercise, Dave thought. Such a nice figure should be easily filled up with muscle mass and he’s letting it go to waste.

“So, Mister Fartham,” he asked. “Why are we here?”

Andy chewed on a lip, “Because I have a paranoia of being bugged.”

“Really? Even in my office?”

“Even in your office.”

Things were that serious. Dave pondered for a second, “Then I suppose we should switch off our phones as well. I heard they can be used for bugging people.”

“Good idea,” Andy reached into his jacket pocket, took out his phone and with a sorrowful bleep it went to sleep.

Dave did the same. He made eye contact with Andy. Andy let out a huff of air as in ‘right, let’s begin’, but didn’t.

“Right, let’s begin,” Dave said.

“I’ll start rather from faraway, if you don’t mind,” said Andy watching something out of the corner of his eye.

It was the waiter. He left the beers, putting the wrong bottle in front of each of the two servants of the law. They exchanged bottles and Andy had a quick drink from the neck of the bottle, as was his custom, before pouring it into his glass. He didn’t mind the beer foam, so his manner of pouring was straight down.

Unlike him, Dave held his glass tilted at forty degrees and poured his Heineken slowly. He didn’t like froth.

“So,” Andy said, “I tracked down the car seen in the camera.”

“Good.”

“Not good. It was reported stolen three months ago. I had a brain flash and cross-checked with the vandalized cars list.”

“And?”

“It was found two days ago, burnt out at the edge of town. Near the old dairy.”

“Never heard of it. Whatever; sucks about the car. Sounded like a lead.”

“You don’t say. I got my assistant to look through what the cameras at the other crime scenes have caught, and we found another car,” Andy continued to no exhibit any happiness at this list of successes, “A Magma. Also reported stolen half a year ago. Also found burnt out about a week ago.”

“Are you telling me our man buys stolen cars, and gets rid of them after each crime?” Dave screwed up his face in dislike and slight envy. “That’s a lot of money he’s blowing on his evil hobby.”

“Right, that’s what I thought as well,” agreed Andy immediately, “the guy has a lot of money and doesn’t mind throwing it away.”

“Ah, the soups,” Dave said. The waiter put down the two chicken soups. Andy reached for the black pepper, and Dave reached for the salt. While they were exchanging the spices, the salads arrived as well.

Andy swirled the soup with his spoon, releasing a pleasant smell, and tasted it. “Not bad, not bad at all, actually,” he said. “Anyway. Today we got the report back from the forensic boys at Bayer’s.”

“They found something?”

“Yes. Only one thing, and only at the very last crime scene. Jane, if you remember.”

“Yes, of course I remember. What did they find?”

“They found a human hair. An eyelash to be exact. There was nothing else, not even normal dust, the bastard cleans thoroughly before leaving, but they found the eyelash. A male eyelash.”

This last bit did not faze Dave in the least. He had expected the perp to be male. “And?”

“I ran it through the DNA data base and found a match.”

Dave studied Andy, “You don’t seem to be euphoric about it though.”

“You’re right, I’m not.”

Andy leaned forward, darting glances left and right, “The DNA match is with Joshua Eysenck.”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“We’ll see if this rings a bell. His father is Roderik Eysenck.”

Dave choked on his soup, “Minister Eysenck?.”

“Not so loud, for Christ’s sake,” Andy hissed. “Yes, exactly, Minister Eysenck. He ain’t a minister for four years—he’s a senator now.”

“Yeah, I remember him. He was the one who pushed through the last outsourcing of the police, wasn’t he?”

“That’s the man.”

“Shit. Well, where do we stand then?”

“We stand in shit up to our necks, Dave. He’s got a terrific pull. He could squash us. No, he won’t even squash us, he’ll squish us. Like bugs.”

Dave saw that Andy meant every word. “We have evidence, don’t we?”

“First of all, I don’t know how strong his connections are. Maybe if he gives the word the evidence and the correspondence concerning it will disappear tomorrow and everyone will swear it never existed.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, wow. Second, even if the evidence is still there—we still don’t have anything. Out of three cases that we know of, we only found one eyelash at one place. This is far from enough. You know what will happen. He’ll say that this is all a clumsy attempt at framing his son. He’ll say that the police are playing a political game. He’ll ask questions in the Senate.”

Andy clutched his spoon with sudden savagery, “You can bet that Daddy will give his son an iron cast alibi for each of the days we are looking for. No one will want to touch this case with only one eyelash to go on.”

A moment of silence ensued. The sounds of the Ham Hamlet flooded back in.

“Then we must find more evidence,” Dave said.

“Yes, we must find more evidence. We have to be very careful about it.”

Now David was grateful for the soup. His own stomach was also now capable only of absorbing unobtrusive warm greasy water without outright mutiny.