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

breaking the sound barrier, if not the sound of the gunshot itself. Snell would have heard. No doubt about it. That would mean he would have moved. Even if it was just looking up at the direction of the noise. So, it would have been less likely for the third shot to be on target, not more likely. Now, I pulled his medical records and discovered that Sir Ian Snell was a diabetic,” King said. “Type one. He was on meds, which he controlled. He’d had to control it for most of his life, so he would have been good at it. Known what he was doing. When the autopsy was performed, I was hoping there would be a spike in insulin in his system. I believe that someone coated the cups with pure, concentrated glucose and allowed it to dry to a residue. Undetectable by taste, but it is what caused his diabetic coma. Snell was out cold when the shots were taken. And whoever the sniper was, they needed two sighting rounds, because the sniper who killed Snell was not the same sniper who killed the other three men on the list.”

“But Amanda Cunningham did not detect anything untoward.” Amherst turned over some pages in front of him. “Here, toxicology report - negative for barbiturates or substances of any kind.”

“Interesting,” said King. “Because the insulin that he injected daily to control his diabetes would have shown up. Had Amanda had his medical records, she would have seen that.”

“But surely she had his records?” Amherst asked.

King smiled. “Ramsay?”

Ramsey sat up in his seat. “Right, okay. So, at King’s request, I arranged for Snell’s records to omit certain, details.”

“Why would you think to request that?” Caroline asked incredulously.

“Why wouldn’t I?” King countered. “I wanted a clean slate. I wanted an autopsy without doubt. And I had my doubts.”

“Which were?” Mereweather asked.

“Nobody stopped to ask why Amanda Cunningham was assigned the case. She’s twenty-years younger than most lead pathologists, this was her biggest case by far and she is a Home Office employee, with little outstanding professional accomplishments behind her. She was chosen for this, for a reason. And the directive came from the Home Secretary’s office. She was requested.”

“By Sir Hugo Hollandrake?” Caroline asked, disbelievingly.

“I was already investigating Sir Hugo. Too much of a coincidence in my book,” replied King. “Simon, I text messaged you during Snell’s autopsy. You arranged for another autopsy to be performed after we left?”

“I did,” he said. He picked up a manila envelope from beside his chair. He tipped out the sheaf of papers, sorted through them and started to read. “Raised insulin levels, significantly raised, in fact. Indicating hyperosmolar nonketotic coma. Cause of death was combined organ failure, leading to a cardiac arrest. But I am told his body would have shut down, so he would have been unable to react.”

Amherst leaned back in his chair, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, Alex, it turns out you’re not such a bad investigator after all.” He stood up and walked to the window, looked out on the brown waters of the Thames.

Caroline watched him, shivered involuntarily. She had seen a man do that in this room a year ago. That man had brought death and destruction to her service.

Amherst turned and looked back at them. “Well, I think we have people of interest. We need to discover the depth of Sir Hugo Hollandrake’s involvement. His position within government is certainly untenable. What we need to find out is to what lengths he has gone. Whether blood is on his hands. Helena Snell and her bodyguard, Viktor Bukov, are in the frame for Sir Ian Snell’s death.”

“They were in London at the time of Snell’s death,” Mereweather said. “We have CCTV, debit card transactions and eye witnesses who could be called. Their alibis are cast iron.”

“Suspiciously so,” Ramsay commented.

“And they could have laced those cups at any time,” said Caroline.

“When I revisited the scene with Amanda Cunningham, the dishwasher was running a cycle with just a set of fancy coffee cups in it,” King said. “They didn’t offer believable explanations, and Amanda did not appear to think it significant.”

“We still need a shooter,” added Ramsey. “Snell was still shot and within that time-frame Helena Snell and Bukov were not there. And then there’s the murder of the family at the house where the shooter fired from.”

“What about his bodyguards?” Amherst asked. “They raised the alarm, could they have been paid off to coat the cups in glucose, take the shot even? Kill the family and the farmhouse. Bodyguards are usually nothing more than private mercenaries anyway.”

“They were fingerprinted, DNA sampled and checked for powder residue,” said King.

“Cordite?” said Mereweather.

“About forty years ago or in a bad detective novel,” King smiled. “There are various smokeless propellants used today; strands, flakes or spheres, and they all burn at different rates to suite the type of firearm. Fast burning for pistols, slower for rifles. Many are nitro-based, but they still produce residue when fired. You can’t use a firearm without becoming contaminated. His bodyguards were checked, no results back yet.”

“None at all?” Amherst asked.

Ramsay shook his head. “The DNA results came back clear. Nothing at the farmhouse, at least. One of them is wanted by the police in a historical rape allegation. I guess that’s a result, of sorts.”

Amherst nodded. “Ramsay, I want you to push forensics for results. I want you to look deeper into Ivan Kerchenko and see if you can find out his movements prior to turning up at King’s cottage.” He turned to Mereweather. “Simon, I want you to dig into Sir Hugo Hollandrake’s affairs. Liaise with the forensic accountants and the SASS, find out the chain of command, the events leading up to the attempts on Caroline’s life.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mereweather said.

“Caroline, I want you to get