Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021), A BATEMAN [urban books to read TXT] 📗

a soul. That was why she had interacted with him when he helped her with her equipment back in Oslo. And that was why she had bonded with Daniel on the flight, and with them both at the hotel. She wasn’t a naturally confident person and needed company and reassurance. King was in no doubt that he could have slept with her if he’d wanted to. Her confidence would have been bolstered by the bond between them. People like her craved company. And if it hadn’t been him, then it would have been someone else. Perhaps even Daniel. He could see now that the man had pulled her in, used her as a stalking horse to get closer to him.

“No problem,” King replied. He held her gently by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. More out of relief than anything else. He had suspected her to be working with Daniel, and he could well have killed her by association. “Go study your orcas and nail that thesis. Good luck!”

“Thank you,” she replied, her eyes still sparkling with excitement.

King released her and carried on down the corridor. He saw Grainger heading down the stairs and the man shrugged. “Anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Right, let’s try the next rig…”

Chapter Thirty-One

 

Geneva, Switzerland

 

“Admit it, you’d have done anything not to have kissed him,” Caroline teased.

“Yeah, probably,” Big Dave replied. “I’ve buggered things up good and proper, though.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Durand. He had lit a Gauloises Blondes cigarette and was sucking on the thing so hard that the tip glowed like the bright embers of a fire in a draught. Ramsay, normally an anti-smoking authoritarian hadn’t seemed to notice the smoke wafting around them.

“We call the police,” Thorpe said emphatically. “A man has been killed…”

“What, and hand ourselves in?” Caroline shook her head. “The Swiss take an extremely dim view of foreign intelligence agents operating on their soil without their express permission. They handed over to Interpol, not MI5.”

Thorpe frowned. “No more than a ticking off, surely? Dave on the other hand, will have to answer for what he did and if it was as he says it was, then he should be in the clear. It was self-defence.”

“No,” Ramsay replied quietly. “We’d all remain in custody either until they gathered enough evidence for a trial, or they came to an agreement with the British government. There’d likely be a few years of diplomatic wrangling, and we wouldn’t get bail while that was going on.”

“Indeed,” Durand agreed. “We’ve seen this with French agents. And we’re their neighbours. Nobody likes the British,” he added with a wry smile, trying to ease the tension.

“Want to quit?” Caroline asked, staring at her. “I wasn’t exactly sure what you were bringing to the party, anyway.”

“Now, now…” Ramsay said sharply. “We need to think what can be done to rectify the situation.”

“I could get a shovel?” Big Dave suggested. “Noventa ain’t that big, it won’t take me long to did a hole.”

“For crying out loud…” Thorpe shook her head in frustration and walked to the window. She stared out onto the quiet, tree-lined street below. She hadn’t spotted any surveillance on Noventa’s property earlier, and Durand had watched the area for twenty-minutes before circling the property. After a further twenty-minutes he had announced that he concurred with the former Metropolitan Police detective. Noventa was not being watched, and the all-clear was given for Caroline and Ramsay to proceed inside.

“Right, let’s keep it simple,” said Caroline, moving on. “We’ve got a single blow to the face, a broken neck and fractured skull would be my bet. So, there’s Dave’s DNA on Noventa from the punch.” She looked at Big Dave and asked, “Did you rough him up, hold him in any way?”

“No, the guy was compliant, right up until he wasn’t.” He stepped around Noventa’s twisted body on the parquet floor and held up his hands, re-enacting what had transpired. “He came at me with the knife, so I blocked…” Big Dave stepped forwards, swung his left arm out to the side, then twisted his hips and dropped his left knee a few inches as he drove through a straight punch from his hip, almost all the way out with his massively long and well-muscled arm until it was a few inches from fully extended, when he brought the punch upwards and rose to his full height. “Like that,” he said.

“Like a steam hammer, by the looks of it,” Durand commented flatly. “Noventa must have lifted into the air. I’m surprised you didn’t knock his head off…”

“Well, I imagine inside the skin, he did,” Ramsay said quietly.

“It’ll have to be made to look like a robbery gone wrong,” Thorpe said with her back to them. “Get some gloves on and take what valuables you can. Don’t ransack the place, just pull out some drawers. It needs to look like they’d just got started and Noventa disturbed them. The guy’s wearing a Breitling watch. Probably worth ten-thousand euros, maybe more. Take it off his wrist. Someone will have to throw it into the lake later.” She turned around and nodded to Durand. “We’ll need a household spray cleaner. The type with a trigger pump. Empty it and fill it with one third bleach, and two thirds water. Spray over everything that has been touched. In fact, get a light spray on everything in the room, then spray all over Noventa’s body. That will corrupt Dave’s DNA, and any trace elements from ourselves.” She paused. “Neil and Caroline, go wait in the car. I’ll supervise… and Dave, you need to get some gloves on. The spray bottle comes with us, and we need to cover our tracks with it all the way to the pavement outside.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

Beneath the Polar Icecap

500 miles North of Svalbard Archipelago

 

“Slow ahead, reduce speed