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By Root 976 0

is a working-class district in South London. He lived alone and worked as a day painter from job to job. His only relative is a sister living in Chicago but evidently they didn’t have much to do with each other. He disappeared two years ago next month. It was his landlady who reported it. Came to the authorities when she hadn’t seen him in several weeks and he was behind in his rent. She’d rented his flat but didn’t know what to do with his belongings. He’d got his skull smashed by a billiard cue in a pub fight. It’s our luck he also punched a bobby. Patching him up, they had to put a metal plate in his head; it was a matter of police record.”

“That means you’ve got his fingerprints.”

“You are absolutely correct, Detective McVey. We’ve got his fingerprints. Trouble is, all we’ve got of the rest of him now is his head.”

There was a buzz and McVey heard Noble pick up the line to his office.

“Yes, Elizabeth,” McVey heard him say. There was a pause and then he said, “Thank you,” and came back on the line. “Cadoux is calling from Lyon.”

“Is he on a secure phone?”

“No.”

“Ian,” McVey said quietly. “Before you pick up. Can you trust him? No reservations.”

“Yes,” Noble said.

“Ask him if he’s at headquarters. If he is, find a way to tell him to leave the building and call your private line from a public phone. When you get him, plug me in, make it a three-way call.”

Fifteen minutes later Noble’s private line rang through, and Noble quickly picked up. “Yves, McVey is on the line from Paris. I’m putting him on with us now.”

“Cadoux, it’s McVey. Lebrun is in London, we got him out for his own safety.”

“I presumed as much. Although I must tell you the hospital security people as well as the Lyon police are more than a little upset about how it was done. How is he?”

“He’ll make it.” McVey paused. “Cadoux, listen carefully. You have a mole at headquarters. His name is Doctor Hugo Klass.”

“Klass?” Cadoux was taken aback. “He’s one of our most brilliant scientists. The one who discovered the Albert Merriman fingerprint on the glass shard taken from the Jean Packard murder scene. Why would—?”

“We don’t know.” McVey could see Cadoux, his burly frame squeezed into a public phone booth somewhere in Lyon, twiddling his handlebar mustache, as understandably perplexed as they were. “But what we do know is that he requested the Merriman file from the NYPD, via Interpol, Washington, some fifteen hours before alerting Lebrun that he’d even come up with a print. Twenty-four hours later, Merriman vas dead. And very soon after that so were his girlfriend in Paris, and his wife and her entire family in Marseilles. Somehow Klass must have learned Lebrun had come to Lyon and traced the file request. So he had him shut up.”

“Now it starts to make sense.”

“What does?” Noble asked.

“Lebrun’s brother, Antoine, our supervisor of internal security. He was found shot in the head this morning. It appears to have been suicide, but maybe not.”

McVey cursed to himself. Lebrun was in bad enough shape himself without having to be told his brother was dead. “Cadoux, I doubt very much you’re looking at a suicide. Something’s going on that involved Merriman but reached a lot further. And whatever it is, whoever’s behind it, is now killing cops.”

“Yves, I think it’s best you take Klass into custody as soon as possible,” Noble said, directly.

“Excuse me, Ian. I don’t think so.” McVey was standing up, pacing behind Lebrun’s desk. “Cadoux, find somebody you can trust. Maybe even from some other city. Klass doesn’t suspect we’re on to him. Get a wire on his private line at home and put a tail on him. See where he goes, who he talks to. Then work backward from Antoine’s death. See if you can follow the line from the time he died until the time Sunday he met Lebrun. We don’t know which side he was on. Finally, and very judiciously, find out who Klass got at Interpol, Washington, to make the Merriman file request to the New York police.”

“I understand,” Cadoux said.

“Captain—watch yourself,” McVey warned.

“I shall. Merci. Au revoir.”

There was a click as