The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

She shrugged. “I doubt they do,” she said. “I’m with the Home Office. I was flown down by helicopter and arrived about an hour before you did.”

“From London?”

“Yes, I’m staying in Truro. And you?”

“Just flew into the airport at Newquay. I’m not in a hotel, I’ve got somewhere to stay,” King said, then asked, “And what do you do now?”

“I’ll get the autopsy started on Snell in the morning. I want to collate my findings first. It’s important to get this right. He’s the reason I’m here,” she paused. “Some people in some very secretive offices want everything they can get on his death.”

King nodded, but said nothing in reply. He had one of those secretive offices now.

She shrugged. “The Jameson family will be left to the pathologist and his team in Truro. They’re a first-class unit, so I gather.”

King took out a card. It had his mobile number on it, his email too. It was shiny and embossed. There was an emblem with gates and a crown, a portcullis and a lion on the other side. He handed it to her and she looked at it. “My contact details, should you discover anything helpful to the investigation.”

“MI5?” she asked. He nodded. He couldn’t get used to the name. He had spent his career in different departments, different corners of the intelligence community. Dark and shady corners. A shadow world. He couldn’t see a way out of the world he was occupying now, so had started to embrace it. It was a sight more honest work than he had been used to. “I thought you said you were with Interpol?”

“I’m on secondment,” he replied.

“Just with this case?”

“Yes.”

“Good luck,” she smiled. “Tough one.”

“That’s the truth.” King shook his head.

“So, are you any closer to catching them?”

“You tell me,” he said. “Tell me something, give me something to go on.”

“There it is!” she grinned. The two men were back. They wheeled the gurney in and went to Mr Jameson’s body. The bag had been zipped and sealed. A yellow tag on the zipper. “Finally, some cop-talk.”

“I watched CSI last night, if that counts. That’s how I knew you were the coroner.”

“Pathologist. I’m a Home Office pathologist. I’m not referred to as CSI either.”

“Right,” he said, then added, “You’re pretty young for such a senior position.” He regretted it when he saw a change in her expression.

“Innovators usually are,” she said coolly.

“And you’re an innovator?”

“Absolutely.”

“Ambitious?”

“I came out of university and medical college with a lot of debt. An obscene amount of debt,” she paused. “You either live with it forever, or you get to the top of your game pretty damn quickly.”

“And you’re at the top of your game?”

“Almost,” she said, her expression softening. “But not out of debt. That’s the price you pay for ambition, eh?”

“I suppose,” King said, but he didn’t know. He had taken a path different to most. His education had been a work in progress. He liked to think it was on-going.

“So, what skills are you bringing to this? You’re clearly not a detective.”

King looked past her, through the now open window and across the valley to the California house. “Not as such.” He looked at the sun terrace, a shade under two-thousand-five-hundred metres away. “But I have a skillset that the people at the top deem advantageous to the investigation.”

“Is that really it?” She grinned. “It’s not a case that you’ve pissed off enough people to be given the unenviable task of hunting down these killers?”

“You think I piss people off?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Have I pissed you off?”

“No, not yet” she replied. “But I don’t think you’re a man to be easily swayed. In those secretive offices, I imagine that wouldn’t bode well for you.”

King shrugged. She had a point. His eyes were still on the house. He imagined himself with the rifle. Knew deep down that he would have conceded and chosen a less tactical, but more achievable firing point. A range of fifteen-hundred metres or so. Maybe two-thousand if he’d spent a week and a thousand rounds of ammunition on the range beforehand.

“Why unenviable?” he asked, turning to look at her, study her expression. “Surely bringing these people down would be an achievement to be proud of?”

She nodded towards Mr Jameson’s body, the men now leaving the room. “For them, yes. For that ten-year-old boy, yes. For others caught up in this along the way, then yes. But you’ve read the social media, their posts. They were up to thirty-million likes and shares when they closed the group. The world is speaking. Billionaires are shedding their money to avoid being in the wealthiest five. Hospitals, schools, homeless centres, charities… they’ve all had vast sums of money donated to them, or now have trusts set up to hold the money side-lined for such projects. Eleven billionaires have lost billionaire status this week. And they weren’t even in the running for the five. They’re pre-empting. The world is finally on track to redress the balance. People are feeling the benefits already. There is food and water getting into some of the poorest regions of the world. Health and medical supplies are running out, such is the demand to distribute them. Pop stars rehash an old song and raise millions and the money sits dormant for years. Billionaires get threatened, shown that the threat is real, and the money is there, the assets bought and the distribution underway. Money talks.”

King knew this, but he also knew that much of the dumping of money and assets had been down to hastily formed shell companies. The billionaires would get their wealth back once the killers had been captured. They weren’t billionaires for nothing. “You sound like you support them,” he said, a little coldly.

“How dare you!” she