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  ‘No problem. And I’m sorry.’

  She ended the call.

  Logan looked from Cahill to Hardy and back again. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘She just told us that Tim was on the flight.’

  ‘That’s not what she said.’

  ‘What she said was, he was on the flight using an assumed name.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  Cahill didn’t reply.

  ‘It means that he’s dead,’ Hardy said.

  11

  Cahill stood and stretched.

  ‘Is that it?’ Logan asked.

  ‘It’s as much as she can tell us, and she shouldn’t even have said that. We can’t push it with her any further.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m going to make a very difficult phone call to Melanie Stark to tell her that her husband is dead. I need to do it alone.’

  Cahill left Logan and Hardy in the War Room and walked to his office at the south-west corner of the building. It was bigger than Logan’s office, but not ostentatious. He had a couch as well as a similar desk and shelving unit. His desk was covered with photographs of his wife and two girls.

  He sat at the desk and lifted his phone. After a moment, he dialled Melanie Stark’s number. A man answered.

  ‘I’m looking for Melanie Stark,’ Cahill said.

  ‘This is her son. Can I help?’

  Cahill thought: your mother will need your help shortly.

  ‘No, thanks. I need to speak to Melanie.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ He started to sound tense.

  Cahill heard a woman’s voice in the background asking who was on the phone.

  ‘My name is Alex Cahill and I’m a friend of your dad. Your mom will want to speak to me, son.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  The phone clattered down on a hard surface. Cahill pulled his own phone away from his ear at the noise. He couldn’t blame the boy for being upset — angry even. Cahill felt some of that himself.

  ‘Alex,’ Melanie Stark said, picking up the phone. ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘Does the name John Reece mean anything to you?’

  Pause. ‘No. I mean, I don’t think so. I never heard it before.’

  ‘Never seen that name written down anywhere in the house?’

  ‘Alex, what’s this about? Does this man Reece have anything to do with what Tim’s caught up in?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Alex…’ She knew that he was stalling.

  ‘Melanie…’

  Always the bad news is preceded by the name, spoken softly. Like it helps.

  ‘No…’

  ‘I can’t be totally certain, but the information I have makes me believe that Tim was on that flight out of Denver.’

  No sound this time.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Melanie. I really am.’

  He could hear the scream starting way down inside her, rising up from a place so deep inside that no person should ever have to know the pain it brought as it burst up and out. Cahill had heard it before. Too many times.

  ‘If it helps,’ Cahill said, ‘I can’t believe that Tim was involved in something illegal. That’s not the Tim I knew.’

  He knew he’d said it already today, but what else was there to say?

  ‘Are… you… sure?’ She was barely able to get the word out between sobs.

  ‘As sure as I can be. He was on that plane when it went down.’

  ‘I can’t…’

  The line disconnected.

  Cahill stood and went to the window, looking down at the people passing by outside.

  What were you doing on that plane, Tim?

  12

  Irvine found DS Ewen Cameron when she got back to Pitt Street from the riverside. She explained that she had to go to a briefing on a new case and that she didn’t know how long it would be. He didn’t seem too bothered, his head buried in a mountain of paperwork that was expanding on a daily basis.

  Kenny Armstrong headed off to find the senior SCDEA guys. They had called to say the briefing was already set up somewhere in the building.

  Irvine didn’t want to hold things up, but she was keen to get a head start on the inquiry: knew that the first couple of days were crucial in solving any murder. She called the mortuary to find out about the post-mortem and was told that it was scheduled for tomorrow.

  After that she called the CCTV ops room down at the Fruitmarket and spoke to someone about getting the recordings for the last few days sent over to see if they could track the girl’s movements in the city centre. They said they’d do what they could, but they were short staffed this week.

  Armstrong came into the room and waved at her to come over.

  ‘They’re all set upstairs,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Can we hold for another couple of minutes? I want to check in with DS Murphy, our crime scene guy.’

  ‘You go see him and I’ll tell my guys to wait. We’re on the second floor, last door on the left.’

  ‘I’ll walk up with you. Murphy’s on the same floor.’

  Jim Murphy stared at Irvine over rectangular glasses that had slipped down his nose, a heavy fringe flopping down on to his forehead. He reminded Irvine of her old history teacher, sitting there in his black V-neck with a white shirt and paisley-patterned tie.

  ‘The floater?’ he asked as she reached his desk.

  She nodded.

  ‘I got nothing for you yet. Still waiting for the lab geeks upstairs to let me know what they collected at the locus.’

  ‘Okay. Let me know when you do get anything.’

  Irvine knew that Murphy could be ponderous and sometimes needed a kick. Murphy preferred to think of it as being methodical and diligent.

  ‘I called the Fruitmarket,’ Irvine said as she turned to leave. ‘You know, for the CCTV.’

  He knew: nodded slowly.

  ‘And the pathologist. Post-mortem is tomorrow. Can you keep on top of all that for me?’

  His head retracted like a tortoise.

  Irvine took it as a ‘yes’.

  The briefing room at the end of the hall was already busy with other officers and was set up conference-style with rows of chairs facing a long table that had three more chairs behind it. Everyone was in plain clothes except Eric Thomson and Bryan Fraser — the senior SCDEA officers Irvine had met at the scene that morning. They sat at the long table.

  She was glad to see that there was a coffee pot on a table at the side of the room. She filled two cardboard cups and sat next to Armstrong, handing him one of the cups. He gulped at it. The woman on the other side of Armstrong fidgeted with a thin blue folder which was open on her lap. Irvine had seen her around the building and guessed she was one of the force’s drug officers and not with the SCDEA.

  Paul Warren — the SCDEA Director General — came into the room and pushed the door closed before taking up position behind the empty third chair at the long table. There were seven people sitting in the chairs facing the table.

  ‘Everyone say hello to DC Irvine from the CID,’ Warren said.

  Irvine held her hand up. The others looked at her and nodded.

  ‘There should be packs under your seat with the briefing material,’ Warren said. ‘So grab one if you don’t have it already.’

  Irvine now saw that everyone except her and Armstrong had one of the blue folders with a sheaf of papers inside. She put her coffee down on the floor and reached under her seat to grab the folder there. Armstrong followed her lead and did the same.

  Irvine flicked through the papers quickly, seeing extracts from three post-mortem reports for the previous deaths and some jargon-heavy stuff about drug types. The drug references went over her head.

  ‘Eric is going to take you through this.’

  Warren sat down and his Director of Operations stood.

  ‘I’ll give you the basics,’ Eric Thomson said. ‘We had, as most of you know, a fourth death this morning. It’s a dif
ferent ball game now. Young girl. Teenager.’

  He paused to let this sink in.

  ‘The main substance found in the three previous victims was fentanyl. And there were also the same lower levels of heroin.’

  Someone spoke from the front row of seats.

  ‘Same levels in all the victims?’

  ‘No,’ Thomson replied. ‘Slight variations in each of the three. And we’ll have to wait for the post-mortem results from the victim today.’

  ‘Somebody experimenting?’

  ‘Too early to say definitively. But we’ve brought more people in to this task force because that’s how it looks. As of today we’re treating all the deaths as suspicious. I mean, beyond the fact that illegal drugs were involved. That’s why CID is here.’

  Thomson looked quickly at Irvine before scanning the room.

  ‘We’re treating them all as murders now,’ Warren said. ‘Someone knowingly sells bad gear, they deserve all they get.’

  ‘What we seem to be dealing with here,’ Thomson went on, ‘is a new product in the market. From what we’ve been able to find out so far it’s being distributed in the usual channels. There are no new dealers we know of and the deaths can be traced back to buys from different dealers.’

  ‘That’s why we think it’s probably a new wholesaler,’ Warren interrupted. ‘If all of a sudden it was a new retail crew on the scene there would be the usual territorial flare-ups. We’d have seen, and heard, something from our informants. A wholesale business can keep it under the radar more easily.’

  ‘Yeah,’ someone shouted from the other side of the room. ‘Four bodies. Way to keep it under the radar.’

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  ‘This is a relatively high level of organised crime,’ Thomson said. ‘It may be a foreign outfit because our usual sources don’t seem to know much about it.’

  ‘Any sign of increased smuggling into the country anywhere?’ someone asked.

  ‘Not that we’ve seen. But then, that doesn’t mean much. Could be the supply network is using entry points we don’t know about yet and, of course, that’s something we need to look into. Or they may just be smart. Or lucky.’

  ‘We are looking at increasing our resources on the smuggling front,’ Warren said. ‘We need to look at the budget first, though.’

  Irvine felt a little lost, decided to ask some basic questions.

  ‘For my benefit, can you say a little more about the drugs?’

  Warren looked at DI Fraser.

  ‘Of course,’ Fraser said as he stood, stretching above Thomson. ‘Fentanyl is not something that you hear much about but, in fact, it’s actually more potent than heroin. It’s similar in that it’s an opiate

  …’

  ‘What does that mean exactly?’ Irvine asked.

  ‘Okay, an opiate is a drug that affects the central nervous system and also breathing. Slows everything down. It’s used to manage pain, like in cancer patients.’

  ‘I thought they used morphine for that?’

  ‘Also an opiate. The effects of fentanyl are a little different from heroin. The high is not as pronounced and it also doesn’t last as long. So, because of the shortened period of the high, it can be even more addictive.’

  ‘Combine the two to get the best of both, so to speak?’

  Fraser smiled and nodded.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Irvine took a pen from her jacket pocket and scribbled notes on the back of one of the post-mortem extracts.

  ‘But why the deaths?’ someone else asked.

  ‘We think that whoever is supplying this hasn’t quite got the mix right yet. Which explains the different levels found in the first three victims. You see, the negative effect fentanyl has on the respiratory system is much more pronounced than with heroin and so if it’s sold as heroin to a user, he can OD on it without knowing. Basically, it stops him breathing.’

  Irvine wrote some more. At the top of the page she wrote the operation name, looked up at Fraser.

  ‘Why Operation Red Square?’ she asked.

  ‘There are stories out there that the Russians used a fentanyl-heroin derivative against some terrorists, kidnappers, in Moscow a while back.’

  ‘You think these guys are Russian?’

  ‘We don’t know. Haven’t ruled anything out as yet.’

  Warren stood, taking control of the meeting.

  ‘This fourth death is the one we want to focus on for now. Young girl found like that will get lots of ink in the press. Let’s see if we can get any better leads on it than we have from the others. I’ve asked for CID input not just because the deaths are unlawful, but also to give us a different perspective on the investigation.’

  He looked at Irvine.

  ‘If you and DS Armstrong could wait behind after we break up, DC Irvine, we’ll take you through how we want to do this.’

  Irvine nodded, feeling a little surge of excitement now — the buzz of the job.

  13

  When the meeting finished, Irvine and Armstrong waited while the room cleared, then went to the front of the room.

  Warren came around the table and stood in front of them, leaning back against the table edge.

  ‘Now you know what we’re dealing with,’ Warren said to Irvine. ‘Kenny’s been immersed in this for a while and doesn’t think that we’re going to get anywhere by focusing on our usual sources.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Armstrong said.

  Warren smiled, like a parent dealing with an irascible child. Irvine wondered if there was tension in the relationship between the two men.

  ‘My view’, Warren said, ‘is that we need to look at this from all angles. Leave no stone unturned, if you know what I mean.’

  Irvine didn’t want to get stuck on the wrong side of a fight.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I want Kenny to brief you on the local drugs scene, the supply chain and the like. Give you a feel for what we’re dealing with. Then he’ll take you on a tour of the earlier crime scenes. How does that sound?’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘Good,’ Warren said, straightening up.

  Warren left the room and Irvine followed Armstrong to the table where the coffee was, picking up a shortbread biscuit and taking a bite.

  ‘You don’t like the DG?’ Irvine asked.

  Armstrong looked sideways at her.

  ‘He’s all right for a boss. I mean he’s a purist, you know. A bad bastard, if you’re a criminal. And he didn’t take the DG job for political reasons.’

  Irvine had always assumed a job like DG of the SCDEA was a way to make a career splash. A politician’s job, not a real cop.

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘Because he wants to do something about the shit that flows through this country. The drugs, I mean. He’s about as straight a cop as you’ll find anywhere.’

  ‘How did this thing start?’

  ‘I flagged it up to my syndicate leader, DI Fraser, and from there it went up the chain fast. The DG likes to keep his hand in on operational matters. Doesn’t like sitting behind a desk all day.’

  ‘He came up with the name of the op?’

  Armstrong nodded. ‘He wants people to think he has all the big ideas. Fine with me.’

  Irvine took another bite from her biscuit and put the remains back on the plate. She liked shortbread but this stuff was cheap and not particularly good.

  ‘What about your DI?’ she asked. ‘What’s he like?’

  Armstrong picked up her half-biscuit and put it all in his mouth. Irvine didn’t know what to make of that.

  ‘Now, he is a politician. More concerned about his next promotion than anything else.’

  Armstrong scrunched his cup before throwing it into the bin.

  ‘Look, never mind me. I’m crabby today because I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in about a week and we’re getting exactly nowhere with this investigation. And then the girl this morning…’


  He didn’t finish that thought.

  ‘I’m not normally like this,’ he told her.

  He tried to smile, but it wasn’t convincing.

  Irvine didn’t mind crabby, so long as there was good reason. She kind of liked him, in spite of his poorly developed social skills.

  ‘Where to now?’ she asked.

  ‘Want a tour of my nightmare?’

  Part Two:

  Soldiers

  1

  Denver, Colorado

  Monday morning

  Seth Raines went to the kitchen in his apartment on Capitol Hill, poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it in one go. He switched on the coffee machine and sat at the table rubbing sleep from his eyes. The images from a dream ran through his head: a dream of war and death. The details precise and the sounds and smells resonating like it was only yesterday.

  Back in another life, Raines had served in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan as Staff Sergeant for Third Platoon, Charlie Company, First Reconnaissance Division of the US Marines. That was before a simple mission two years ago to monitor the eradication of an opium poppy field. Before his convoy was ambushed on the trip back from the field to the British camp outside the city of Lashkar Gah — brigade headquarters for Four-Two Commando, the Royal Marines.

  In his dream, he saw only brief, fractured images of that day: the ragged stump of a severed leg and blood soaking into desert sand. But now that he was awake, the memory of it all rushed back, hitting him like a physical blow.

  Raines was sitting next to one of his men — Private First Class Matthew Horn. They were sweating heavily under body armour listening to a briefing by the commanding officer of the British Marine brigade. He was a very British soldier, immaculately uniformed with a neatly clipped moustache and a deeply tanned face.

  The door of the room was open and Raines saw a Union flag fluttering outside in the low wind. Two marines were standing at the base of the flagpole taking custody of the now deposed Stars and Stripes from their British counterparts. Raines nudged Horn and nodded for him to look at the exchange taking place outside.