When Maria Slade showed her appointment letter at the reception area of the Cedar City General Hospital, she was directed to the Special Unit at the rear of the main building. Carrying her case, she walked through the cool blue and white painted corridors until she reached a door labelled ‘Special Unit – No Admittance Without Appointment.’
‘I’m Maria Slade,’ she said to the receptionist. ‘I have an appointment for some routine tests.’
‘Maria Slade,’ the girl murmured, running her pencil down a list on the desk in front of her. ‘Oh, yes, here we are. You’re to see Doctor Stevenson.’
She glanced at the wall clock and noted Maria’s arrival time in the correct column, then looked up. ‘Did you drive here, Miss Slade?’
‘Yes,’ Maria replied, slightly puzzled.
The receptionist smiled. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘I’ll just need your car’s license plate number for security purposes. We have to tell the security staff which cars belong to our patients.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Maria said.
The receptionist noted down the number that Maria gave her, then stood up and walked around the desk. ‘I’ll just show you to your room. Please follow me.’
The room Maria was given was light and airy, with the sun streaming in through the large window. The view from the window was disappointing: it just looked onto the parking lot.
‘Please get undressed and get into bed. Doctor Stevenson will be along to see you later this evening. We’ve already served dinner, but would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ Maria said, putting her case on a low table near the window. ‘That would be lovely.’
The receptionist left the room and walked down the corridor to a small kitchen. She unlocked a tiny steel wall cupboard, reached inside and took down a jar labeled ‘Coffee – Dr. Stevenson ONLY’ and spooned granules into a mug on a tray. Then she replaced the jar and re-locked the cupboard. She poured in boiling water, took a sealed individual container of cream from the refrigerator, added three wrapped sugar lumps and two small packets of biscuits, and took the tray to Maria’s room.
The girl was in bed, propped up on the pillows and flicking through a magazine she’d found in the bedside locker.
‘Here you are, Miss Slade,’ the receptionist said, and gave Maria the tray.
Back at her desk, the receptionist sat down and dialed a local number.
‘Miss Slade has arrived, Doctor Stevenson,’ she said, when the phone was answered. ‘She’s one of your special patients.’
The coffee was good, Maria decided, as she put the empty mug back on the bedside locker. She picked up the magazine again and began to read. After a few minutes she yawned, then yawned again. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on what she was reading. In fact, she was finding it difficult to even focus on the words. She put the magazine down, snuggled further down in the bed and closed her eyes. Three minutes later she was sound asleep.
Christy-Lee Kaufmann was silent for a couple of minutes, then spoke. ‘How do you know he was murdered? The state trooper thought he’d just fallen asleep at the wheel. How come you know different?’
‘I know different, as you put it,’ Hunter said, ‘because I know what to look for. The police find a car that’s run off a straight road and smashed into a tree. The driver’s dead. There are no witnesses, and no other vehicles are around. What other conclusion can they come to?’
‘Exactly. So what did you see that they didn’t?’
‘This,’ Hunter said, pulled a small clear plastic evidence envelope from his inside jacket pocket and passed it over to her. Kaufmann took it, switched on the map-reading light and peered at the contents curiously. It appeared to be a flake of very dark paint.
‘What is it?’ Christy-Lee asked.
‘What does it look like?’
‘Paint?’ she replied.
‘That’s what it is,’ Hunter said. ‘Black, I think, but it could be very dark blue. There were traces of it all the way along the left side of Parker’s car. I picked that fragment off the driver’s door.’
He glanced over at Kaufmann, then turned his attention back to the road.
‘The way I see it,’ he said, ‘somebody who knew what they were doing followed Parker and waited until there was no other traffic around. Then they pulled alongside his car, and pushed him over to the right side of the road until he drove off it. That’s the way a professional would do it – no dents, no broken glass, just match speed and then steer to the right. Parker’s car has very little panel damage on that side, but there are black paint marks all the way along it.’
‘It couldn’t be just a parking accident?’
‘No, Christy, it couldn’t. The damage would be completely different. And beside, I saw the skid marks back there. Parker was braking hard when he crossed the hard shoulder. His car’s tyre marks are quite clear, and so were two others, just to the left of where the Lincoln left the road.
‘And there’s something else,’ Hunter added. ‘Doctor Parker said he was taking the skull and femur back for DNA examination in Helena. You probably didn’t notice, but the trunk of his car was open, and there was no sign of either the bones or his baggage in it.’
‘Maybe they flew out when the car left the road,’ Christy-Lee suggested.
‘No,’ Hunter shook his head. ‘I checked with the trooper. His team looked around the whole area when they arrived, just in case anybody else was lying injured in the woods, and they didn’t remove anything from the car.’
‘So somebody else must have removed them?’
‘That’s what I think,’ Hunter said.
Christy-Lee was silent for a few moments. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You saw the paint and the damage, and I didn’t, and you’ve obviously got far more experience in this kind of thing than me, so I guess you’re right. But why? Why kill a forensic pathologist?’
‘That,’ Hunter said, ‘is a very good question. And another very good question is the one you asked earlier. Why pull us off this case?’
‘You think they’re connected?’
‘I don’t know, and I hope not, but I’m getting a real bad feeling about all of this.’
Doctor Stevenson was a tall thin man of middle years, his face dominated by a large hooked nose that, together with his slightly hunched shoulders, gave him the appearance of a large predatory bird. He opened the door to Maria Slade’s room a little after ten that evening, and peered inside.
The girl was sleeping peacefully, the covers rising and falling slightly as she breathed, her long ash-blonde hair spread over the pillows. Stevenson walked over to her and gently lifted her left eyelid. She didn’t stir.
He left the room and returned a couple of minutes later with a dish containing two small syringes. He pulled Maria’s right arm out from under the covers, swabbed the crook of her elbow with a cotton wool swab, and deftly extracted two samples of blood. Then he folded her arm back to hold a clean swab in place and left the room.
Stevenson carried the dish to a laboratory on the other side of the corridor, switched on the lights and placed the first blood sample in a sophisticated analysis machine. Ten minutes later he repeated the process with the second sample. Then he took both sets of printed test results over to his desk and looked carefully at them. He nodded in satisfaction, and reached for the telephone.
A little over ninety minutes later an ambulance arrived at the rear entrance to the Special Unit. Two attendants got out, opened the rear doors, extracted a gurney and pushed it into the building. Five minutes later they re-appeared. On the gurney was a female figure, covered in a white sheet and red blanket. The attendants loaded her into the ambulance, then closed the rear doors. Both got into the front of the vehicle, and it drove quietly away into the silent streets of Cedar City.
A little later, a male figure walked out of the same entrance carrying a small suitcase. He walked about two hundred yards down the street until he came to a group of six trash bins by the roadside, opened one, threw the suitcase inside and then returned to the hospital.
Doctor Stevenson left the Special Unit an hour or so later, Maria Slade’s car keys in his pocket. He would drive the car out of the parking lot and leave it in some anonymous back-street, with the keys in the ignition. Somebody would notice it eventually and drive it away, and there was a good chance it would never be found. After all, nobody was going to be looking for it.
On his way out, Stevenson made a notation beside the name ‘Slade, Miss Maria’ on the receptionist’s admissions sheet. The notation read simply ‘Discharged.’
‘Where are you going, Steve?’ Christy-Lee Kaufmann asked. ‘This isn’t the way to my apartment.’
‘I know,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m not letting go of this, orders or not. I’m going to take a look at the Helena Airport radar tapes and see if I can identify the aircraft that dropped those bones.’
Eight minutes later Hunter pulled up at the gateway to the Helena Regional Airport technical site. Christy-Lee Kaufmann leaned across him and showed her FBI identification to the guard.
‘We need to speak to somebody about a radar tape replay,’ she said, as she signed the paper on the guard’s clipboard.
‘No problem. Just go straight ahead and park next to the control tower.’ He pointed at a tall building topped by a green-glazed visual control position directly in front of them. ‘I’ll give them a call and tell them you’re on your way.’
As they walked towards the building, a door opened and a short, rotund figure peered out, saw them and beckoned.
‘You’d be the FBI agents George called about?’ he asked.
Hunter nodded, and Kaufmann again showed her identification.
‘Maurice Moore, radar supervisor. Call me Morry. You were lucky to catch me – I was just about to leave for home. Now, how can I help the FBI?’
Moore’s face was round, eager and open. Hunter got the feeling that helping the FBI was the kind of thing he’d still be telling his grandchildren about in forty years time.
‘It’s very simple, Morry,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re investigating an incident that took place a little way north of here a few days ago, and we believe an aircraft may be involved. We’d like to see your radar tapes. You do keep radar tapes?’
‘You bet we do,’ Moore replied. ‘FAA – that’s the Federal Aviation Administration – rules. We hold them for a month, then recycle them unless there’s been some kind of an incident. Follow me.’
Moore led the way down a cream-painted corridor to a blue door. He reached into his pocket, took out a bunch of keys, selected one and turned it in the lock. The room he led them into had three huge tape decks, almost five feet tall and two feet wide, ranged along one wall. Each carried tape spools about a foot in diameter, carrying one inch recording tape. Only one of the machines was running, the spools rotating slowly.
‘That’s the in-use recorder,’ Moore said, pointing. ‘We run them in sequence, and the next one will start recording automatically as soon as the tape on the first one runs out.’
He walked to a table in the centre of the room and sat down. Hunter and Kaufmann followed him. The table was dominated by a computer screen and had both a conventional computer keyboard and what looked like a mixing console built in to its surface.
Moore punched letters on the keyboard, and the computer screen lit up. He gestured to Hunter and Kaufmann to draw up chairs and sit beside him. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘when did this incident take place, and what am I looking for?’
‘We’re not sure,’ Hunter replied.
‘About which?’
‘Both.’
Moore grinned at him. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Kinda vague on the details, I guess. Well, I have to have a date, because that’s how the tape data is stored.’
‘OK,’ Hunter replied, and took out his notebook. He looked over the dates and times he’d written down.
‘My guess is not earlier than last Saturday,’ Christy-Lee said, looking over Hunter’s shoulder, ‘bearing in mind what the pathologist told us.’
Hunter nodded. ‘Yes, that’s as good a starting point as anywhere.’
Moore input the date into the keyboard, and looked at the result on the screen. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘The in-use recorder started operating on Tuesday – yesterday – and the tape covering Saturday is still in number three. I’ll just wind it forward.’
He pointed at the third recorder, then pressed buttons on the console. The recorder’s tape drums began to rotate, slowly at first, then increasing speed to a blur.
Seven minutes later the three of them were looking intently at the computer screen, which was displaying the picture the airfield radar had seen immediately after midnight the previous Saturday. In the bottom right of the screen a small counter showed the date and time.
Kaufmann had expected to see a rotating time-base, just like in the movies, but the picture was clear and steady, more like a computer game, with symbols moving slowly around on it.
‘It’s a fully processed radar picture,’ Moore explained. ‘No time-base, no crap. Much easier to work with. Now, what should I be looking for?’
‘We don’t know,’ Hunter said, ‘but probably a fast-moving aircraft travelling east to west or vice versa.’
‘OK,’ Moore muttered, and moved a small lever on the console. Immediately the symbols on the picture began moving much faster, and Hunter noticed that the numbers on the counter were spinning rapidly.
‘What was that?’ Hunter asked, pointing at the screen. Moore reversed the direction of the lever, and the picture began playing backwards. ‘There,’ Hunter said.
At the top right hand side of the screen was a single unmarked radar return. Moore ran the tape forwards and backwards, but the return appeared only for a few seconds.
‘Probably just an angel,’ Moore said.
‘A what?’ Christy-Lee asked, smiling.
‘Anomalous propagation, a spurious return. You get things like that caused by temperature inversions and other atmospheric phenomena. Usually the processing takes them out, but occasionally they slip through.’
Ten minutes later, Moore sat back. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see anything, did you?’
Christy-Lee shook her head. Hunter didn’t. ‘Can I look at that angel again?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ Moore said, and rewound the tape.
The three of them studied the screen.
‘There,’ Moore said, pointing. He ran the tape forwards, but nothing else appeared anywhere near the return.
‘There’s another one,’ Christy-Lee said, ‘near the middle of the screen. And another.’
Where she was pointing, five unlabelled returns appeared, one after the other, apparently tracking due west. The first was about forty miles east of Helena, and the fifth and last about ten miles east.
‘Forget them,’ Moore said. ‘They’re just more angels.’
‘Are you sure?’ Hunter asked.
‘Positive. First, it can’t be an aircraft, simply because of the speed it’s travelling.’
Moore paused and did some rapid calculations on a piece of paper.
‘Better than two thousand five hundred miles an hour – that’s close to Mach four, and we’ve got nothing that travels that fast. Second, it’s not radiating a secondary radar return, which is against the law. Third, where does it go after we see the fifth return? It vanishes into our radar overhead, where we can’t see anything, but unless it’s still up there it has to come back into cover sometime. Finally, it’s in the wrong place. You’re investigating an incident to the north of Helena – even if that return is an aircraft, which it isn’t, it’s much too far south.’
Hunter nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I guess you’re right,’ he said. ‘What’s the coverage of this radar?’
‘The radius is fifty miles. At the edge of cover the bottom of the lobe is five thousand feet and the top’s at about forty five thousand feet. Why?’
‘Just thinking aloud,’ Hunter said, and stood up. ‘Thank you, Morry, you’ve been very helpful. It’s just a shame we didn’t find what we were looking for.’
On the way out, Hunter asked Moore if there was a meteorologist on duty. Moore directed him up a flight of stairs, then escorted Kaufmann to the door.
Five minutes later, Hunter reappeared. The two of them shook hands with Moore and walked back to their car.
‘The meteorologist?’ Kaufmann said, inquiring.
Hunter turned the key in the ignition and looked at her. ‘He’s wrong about a few things,’ he said.
‘Who – Morry?’
‘Yes,’ Hunter nodded. ‘I’m sure that was an aircraft, going very high and very fast. I’m quite familiar with radar pictures, raw and processed, thanks to my previous employment with Her Majesty The Queen, and those returns looked good and solid to me. Angels usually stay in more or less the same place for a while, then vanish or dissipate slowly.
‘And, according to the meteorological officer, the wind on Saturday afternoon when those five radar returns were detected was strong and from almost due south. Anything dropped from the track those returns were following would have been blown well to the north.’
‘But Morry said it vanished in the radar overhead – whatever that is.’
Hunter nodded. ‘It’s the piece of sky directly above the radar antenna, where the radar signal isn’t transmitted. I don’t think he was exactly right. I don’t think it vanished in the radar overhead; I think it climbed above it. We were looking at an unidentified aircraft that passed through the lobe of the airfield radar, and then climbed above forty-five thousand feet and out of cover.’
‘But the speed,’ Christy-Lee said. ‘What the hell kind of an aircraft can travel at that speed and go that high?’
‘Morry was almost right about that,’ Hunter said, ‘but he’s a civilian controller. There aren’t any civil aircraft that can travel that quickly, not even Concorde could do that, but there are plenty of high-performance military aircraft around. The SR-71A Blackbird – that was a surveillance aircraft that first became operational in the nineteen sixties – had a cruising speed of Mach three and routinely operated at about ninety thousand feet, and most of the US Air Force’s air superiority fighters can climb to seventy or eighty thousand feet and exceed Mach three.’
‘Morry worked it out at Mach four,’ Christy-Lee pointed out.
Hunter shrugged. ‘He was working it out on a piece of paper. Maybe he got it wrong. The point is, there are military aircraft here in America that routinely operate above fifty thousand feet and which can travel at over Mach three, which is close enough to what the radar recorded.’
Christy-Lee looked at him. ‘Are you serious? You really think the military are dumping human bodies from jet fighters? What the hell for?’
‘That’s another question I don’t have the answer to, Christy,’ Hunter said, ‘but I’m sure as hell going to find out.’
The two black Buicks were parked side-by-side in the far corner of the mall parking lot. The four members of the Alert Team stood in a loose circle beside them. Harris glanced round to ensure nobody else was within earshot before he spoke.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘SITREP. The pathologist was no problem. I checked with his office in Helena and found out from them what time he expected to leave Beaver Creek. Then Rogers and I parked at a rest area on the Interstate a few miles north of Helena and waited for him to drive past. We were going to follow him back to Helena and take him out there, but there was an opportunity on the Interstate, so we drove him off the road. Just a freak accident.
‘We pulled the femur and the skull out of the trunk of his car, and took his luggage as well. We got rid of the bones in a lake just off the road near Beaver Creek, and I’ll have his notes and other stuff incinerated.’
Harris stopped and nodded to Morgan.
‘Wilson and I went to the mortuary as soon as we arrived here,’ Morgan said. ‘The staff accepted the authorization for disposal of the body without question, and it should be in the oven right about now.’
‘That’s good,’ Harris said. ‘Right, next one on the list is Sheriff Reilly. He should have the notes the FBI agents left. I’ll go see him with Wilson, collect the stuff, and then the two of you –’ he pointed at Rogers and Wilson ‘– can take him later tonight. I’m thinking maybe a burglary that went wrong?’
The two men nodded at him.
‘As soon as that’s over, you head back to Helena. Morgan and I will leave for Helena as soon as we’re through here. First, we’re going to go through the notes and photos we’ll get from Reilly and make sure there’s nobody else that we need to take care of. Any questions?’
‘Yeah,’ Rogers said. ‘Don’t forget about the doctor, the mortician and the deputies here.’
‘They shouldn’t be a problem,’ Harris replied. ‘As far as I know, the only people who saw Dole’s body, and the skull, and who knew all the circumstances, are the pathologist, Sheriff Reilly and the two FBI agents, so those are the only ones we’ve been instructed to take care of. Unless the Fibbies’ notes tell a different story, once they’re eliminated, that’s it.’
Hunter drove the Ford to Christy-Lee’s apartment building along the side roads, and stopped on the street behind.
‘Why park here, Steve?’ Christy-Lee asked. ‘What’s wrong with the underground garage?’
Hunter looked across at her and smiled wryly. ‘Just a feeling. I don’t want anyone watching the front of the building to know we’re here.’
‘You really think somebody’s out there watching?’
‘Probably not, but until I’m sure nothing’s going on, I’m taking precautions, OK?’
‘Sure. Whatever you want.’
They both got out.
‘We’ll leave the bags for the moment, Christy,’ Hunter said, and led the way to the rear entrance of the building.
At the door to Kaufmann’s apartment Hunter stopped. He looked closely at the lock, but could see no evidence of picking or forced entry. Then he listened carefully, his ear pressed hard against the door. Finally, he stood back and nodded to Kaufmann.
Hunter drew his Glock automatic from his belt holster, worked the slide to chamber a round, and inserted Christy-Lee’s key in the door lock. Kaufmann stood on the other side of the doorway, drew her Colt revolver and cocked it, then signalled she was ready.
Carefully, Hunter turned the key and the handle, then eased the door open and slid inside, flattening himself against the wall to the right of the door.
Sheriff Richard Reilly looked up from his desk at his visitors, and didn’t particularly like what he saw. There were two of them, both big and solid men dressed in almost identical dark blue suits. They were smiling at him, but they were the kind of smiles that never reached their eyes.
‘Yes, gentlemen?’ Reilly said, with an affability he didn’t feel. ‘And what can I do for you?’
‘Good evening, sheriff,’ Harris said. ‘We’re members of the special investigation team that’s replaced the two regular FBI agents, Kaufmann and Hunter.’
Harris and Wilson flipped open perfectly genuine FBI identity cards and showed them to Reilly.
‘We understand that you’re holding the notes made by the Helena agents while they were investigating this case. We’d like those, please, and also any photographs that they, or your team here, took of the crime scene.’
Reilly got up and walked across to a filing cabinet. He opened the third drawer and took out a large brown envelope. ‘Here’s the notes,’ he said, passing it over. ‘The pictures they took are in there as well.’
‘And the photographs you had taken, sheriff?’ Harris prompted. ‘And the data card from the camera the photographer used.’
‘Got ’em right here,’ Reilly said, reaching into his desk drawer. ‘I’d like these back when you’re done with ’em,’ he added.
Harris took the second envelope and nodded briskly. ‘I’m sure that can be arranged, sheriff. Thank you for your time.’
‘How do I reach you?’ Reilly asked. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘We haven’t decided yet, sheriff,’ Harris said. ‘But we’ll be in touch with you, real soon.’
Reilly stared for a few seconds at the door Harris had closed behind him. Then he took a card out of his desk drawer, looked at it, reached for his desk phone and dialled a number.
Christy-Lee Kaufmann’s apartment looked just it had when she had left it the previous morning, but she and Hunter went through it room by room, pistols drawn, until they was certain it was safe.
‘Good thing the neighbours weren’t watching,’ Kaufmann said as she holstered her Colt. ‘We must have looked like a couple of real dipsy doodles.’
‘Yes,’ Hunter agreed with a grin. ‘It’s better to be safe, though. OK, I’ll go and get your bag.’
He was almost at the door when his mobile phone rang.
‘Hunter,’ he said.
‘Mr. Hunter,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Just thought you’d like to know your special investigation buddies have arrived and picked up your notes and stuff.’
‘Hullo, sheriff,’ Hunter replied. ‘Glad to hear that. Were they FBI agents or what?’
‘Accordin’ to their cards they was from the Bureau,’ Reilly said. ‘Names was Harris and Wilson, as I recall. Mean-lookin’ sons of bitches, I thought.’
Hunter covered the mouthpiece of the telephone and called out the names to Kaufmann. She shook her head.
‘Christy-Lee doesn’t think she knows them,’ Hunter said.
‘I tried callin’ your apartment a while ago,’ Reilly said, ‘but I got no reply. You get held up on the way back?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ Hunter said. ‘There was a road accident. Doctor Parker’s dead.’
There was a long silence on the line.
‘Dead?’ Reilly said, finally. ‘How?’
‘The state troopers think he fell asleep at the wheel,’ Hunter said, ‘but I’m not so sure.’
‘Are you tryin’ to tell me somethin’ here, Mr. Hunter?’ Reilly asked.
‘I don’t know, sheriff,’ Hunter said, and sat down in the chair next to the desk. ‘Look, there’s just something about this whole thing that smells bad to me. The impossible murder of Billy Dole; us getting pulled off the case for no reason; Doctor Parker dying in a car crash, and now this special investigation unit turning up. I mean, I know I’m a new boy, but Christy-Lee’s been in the Bureau for seven years, and she’s never even heard of a unit like that.’
‘So what are you sayin’ to me?’
‘I’m not saying anything – yet. Just be really careful in dealing with those men, sheriff. OK?’
When Reilly had rung off, Hunter collected Kaufmann’s cases from the Ford and brought them up to the apartment. Christy-Lee took them through to the bedroom to unpack, and Hunter headed for the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Only then did he notice that the answering machine light was flashing.
‘Christy,’ the slightly tinny female voice said, ‘It’s Wednesday afternoon and I guessed you’d be at work. Now don’t try to call me for the next couple of days, because I’ll be in the hospital. Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. In fact, it’s rather good news. There’s a new health insurance company operating here and they’re offering very low rates for people who join this year. All I have to do is go along and have some routine tests done, and as long as those are OK, I’ll be able to join the scheme. Great, eh? Anyway, if you do need to talk to me, or just send me chocolates and flowers and stuff, I’ll be at the Cedar City General Hospital, OK? Bye.’
Christy-Lee switched off the machine and stood up.
‘Who was that?’ Hunter asked, walking back into the room.
‘My sister, Maria,’ Kaufmann said. ‘She’s in the hospital having tests for some new medical insurance company thing. I think I’ll just give her a call.’
She picked up the phone and dialled the operator.
‘That’s strange,’ Kaufmann said twenty minutes later.
‘What is?’ Hunter asked. He was sitting on the couch drinking coffee and flicking through a copy of a gun magazine.
‘I’ve just had the run-around at Cedar City General Hospital,’ Kaufmann said. ‘Maria was supposed to be admitted this afternoon, and she was, but not to the hospital itself. Seems they’ve got a special testing unit of some sort attached, and she went there.’
‘So?’
‘So first they didn’t have a number for it, then when they found it and I rang, the number didn’t answer, and when somebody finally picked up the phone, they said Maria had already been discharged.’
Hunter put the magazine down. ‘And?’
‘Maria said on the phone that she was going to be there for a couple of days. I’m going to ring her at home.’
Hunter glanced at his watch. ‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’ he asked.
Kaufmann shook her head. ‘No. Maria’s always been a bit of a night owl.’
Two minutes later she put the phone down. ‘There’s no reply,’ she said. ‘Where the hell is she?’