Protection

by GJ Moffat

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Could you spot a killer? Logan Finch's life depends on his ability to do just that. He's a bodyguard whose clients rely on his talent to head off trouble before it even starts. Now he's got his toughest job yet - protecting American serial killer Chase Black who has been released from prison on a technicality and is in London promoting his memoirs. Colorado Homicide Detective Jake Hunter, the man who put Black in jail, thought that he could spot a killer. Now he's not so sure. And the more he investigates the more he wonders whether a miscarriage of justice really did occur. The trouble is: if Black is innocent the real killer must still be at large. Finch becomes convinced that someone is hunting Black, and as violence erupts on both sides of the Atlantic he finds himself caught between his duty to a client and the instinct to survive the increasingly deranged individual that wants him dead. Protection is a terrifying journey that reveals the true darkness residing in the human heart.

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

I carry a photograph everywhere I go. It’s a picture of me when I was four. It was taken with a Polaroid camera and has faded
with age and exposure to sunlight.


In the photograph I’m sitting on the floor and the carpet is heavily patterned. Behind me is a large chair in a style from
that time. It looks like a comfortable chair. I think it was, though I don’t have a strong memory of it. I’m not sure I even
remember exactly where the photograph was taken. We moved around a lot, my mum and me.


It’s not a typical photograph of a child, which is why I like it. I think.


I’m not looking directly at the camera but at my hand, which is raised in front of me. It looks like there’s some food at
the corner of my mouth; chocolate maybe. I seem to be staring at my hand, but there’s no apparent trace of chocolate on it.
I don’t remember why I was looking at my hand.


I don’t look happy. I don’t look sad. It’s just me, staring at my hand in a house that I don’t remember.


I like to use my hands when I kill someone. Get right up close and personal.


It’s not like I get off on it or anything. But I am fascinated by the final moments. I’ll often sit and watch as the last
breath hitches and leaves the body. I imagine that I look like my four-year-old self in those moments. The look in the photograph.


I’m not happy. I’m not sad. I just . . . am.


I took a Polaroid of myself once after the event. I sat in front of a mirror in the house of the dead and tried to replicate
the pose from the photograph. It’s not exactly the same, and you can see the body on the bed behind me – a reflection of a
life that used to be.


There’s no food on my mouth in this new photograph. The hand that I’m holding up is covered in blood and it looks like I’m
staring at the blood, fascinated.


I’m not.


Blood holds no interest for me.


Funny thing about the old photograph – the one of me as a child: there are punch holes seemingly at random on each of the
four corners. Not neat, single holes like it was once kept in a folder. There are four or five holes at each corner. I don’t
know how they got there.


Sometimes I put the two photographs side by side and I stare at them. I lost three hours doing that one time.


When I do that, I wonder what it would taste like if the new picture came to life and I licked the blood from my fingers.
I’ve never done that, you understand.


I’m not a monster.




Interpol Ref: 735F-27

Sir,

The suspected assassin designated subject ‘Eve’ has been located again after some months with no fresh leads. Her last known
location was Denmark where she is implicated in the murder of the industrialist Arend Rasmussen. He was on bail awaiting trial
for sexual offences relating to minors. The operation to track, trace and apprehend subject ‘Eve’ (‘Project Eden’) has been
re-activated.


Echelon Listening Station B-12 was triggered last night in regards to subject ‘Eve’ at 20.14 hours. The attached transcript
was relayed to me at 01.37. It is regrettable that such a delay occurred and I have requested a report from the station head.


Subject ‘Eve’ was mentioned in a telephone conversation. Trace was incomplete except that: (1) the outgoing male caller (unknown
subject, now designated ‘Mamba’) was engaging from the public telephone network within the United Kingdom; and (2) subject
‘Eve’ received the call via a mobile network connection in France. Call duration was not long enough to otherwise narrow the location of either subject. The mobile telephone number used by
subject ‘Eve’ was cloned. Domestic officers in the French police force have already interviewed the original owner of the
number. It has been determined that he is not connected to subject ‘Eve’.


The transcript discloses that subject ‘Eve’ is to be engaged by subject ‘Mamba’. Target of the engagement is unknown. Field
of operation is the United Kingdom. SOCA (UK’s domestic Serious Organised Crime Agency) has been notified and border controls
are in effect. Further reports to follow.


Call Transcript

(Echelon connection made)

(Call ends)

Denver, Colorado

He sees them when he closes his eyes.


The light bars on the patrol cars outside the house pop and flash, bathing the interior alternately in blue and red.


For some reason he always remembers the dog first – not the kids. He doesn’t know why. It’s been eviscerated: cut open from
the neck to the belly. The floor in the entrance hall is slick with its blood.


The Crime Lab techs are there already. He saw the van outside and hears the hushed murmur of voices up the stairs. Usually
there’s black humour to lighten the mood. It’s how cops handle the horror of what they see.


Not this time. Everyone is real quiet this time.


He nods at the two uniformed officers shuffling from foot to foot in the hall – the first to respond to the call. Then he
heads upstairs.


Detective Jake Hunter pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose, hoping to squeeze the memories until they were gone. A child’s
face floated in a red haze. Hunter opened his eyes and the after-image of the face remained for a second before fading in
the hot sun.


Hunter was sitting on a bench in a tastefully landscaped plaza outside the Alfred A. Arraj Courthouse on the northwest edge
of Downtown Denver. Two raised areas planted with shrubbery that seemed to stay green all year round flanked a narrow, winding
river of water cut out of the stone in the centre of the plaza. The artificial river burbled slowly down to a pool at the
steps leading up to the plaza. Hunter had always felt that the pleasant space was at odds with the business ordinarily transacted
inside.


Especially today.

The courthouse was a modern building with a two-storey glass-fronted pavilion that formed the public entrance and also housed
the Special Proceedings Courtroom. The main ten-storey building, clad in glass and stone, stretched into the air behind Hunter.


It was just before 10 a.m. and the plaza was crowded with journalists, photographers, uniformed cops and lawyers in dark suits.
The uniforms had taped off the steps leading up to the plaza to keep the massed hordes of the general public back and to maintain
some kind of order. There was a constant, loud hum of noise.


Hunter squinted as a photographer hunkered down in front of him and shot a few frames, the flash popping even in the stark
February sun. He’d been sitting there for ten minutes and had ignored the journalists who had tried to engage him in conversation. They had all given up as he stared back blankly. It was a mild day given the time of year, but
Hunter still wore his wool overcoat.


A man five years younger than thirty-four-year-old Hunter ducked under the tape, patted one of the uniforms on a shoulder
and mounted the steps lightly, taking two at a time. Danny Collins, Hunter’s partner in the Denver PD Homicide Unit, was a
full two inches shorter than Hunter at five-ten and had a mop of blond hair that he was constantly tousling with his hands.
Collins, unlike Hunter, was still very much single with looks good enough to exploit his status: something he was never slow
to talk about. Sometimes Hunter thought that his partner, the youngest detective in the Unit, still believed he was seventeen
and living it large in high school.


Collins stopped in front of Hunter and put his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in a grey suit with a blue shirt and brown
tie. No overcoat. Hunter’s coat felt too warm in the sun. He pulled at the collar of his shirt, feeling like it was too tight
and wanting to loosen the top button. Department regulations would not allow it. Ordinarily, he was a man who lived by rules.
There wasn’t much else if you didn’t, was how he looked at it. If the cops don’t follow the rules, what hope for the rest?


‘Mornin’, chief,’ Collins said.

Hunter nodded.

‘Not in the mood for idle banter?’

‘What do you think?’ Hunter asked, standing and walking towards the court entrance.

The title given to the Special Proceedings Courtroom described succinctly what it was used for. It was the last place Hunter
wanted to be today. He and Collins walked along a bright corridor with light streaming in from floor-to-ceiling windows. The
clack-clack of their footfalls echoed from the tiled floor.


Ed Bowman, the detective sergeant in charge of the team of six detectives that Hunter and Collins belonged to, was standing
at the door to the courtroom beside a smaller black man. Both of them were neatly dressed in suits with white shirts and plain
ties. Bowman was a tall man, light of foot and with a bushy moustache. The other man, the Unit’s administrative head, Lieutenant
Art Morris, was of medium height, about five-nine, and slim, but his reputation as a man not to mess with, mentally and physically,
had followed him throughout his career from uniformed patrol to his current position. He was a good boss, working his detectives
hard but protecting them from the worst excesses of his own superiors.


‘You don’t need to be here today, Jake,’ Morris said, shaking Hunter’s hand.

‘I’ll see it through to the end.’ Hunter shrugged.

‘If it is the end.’

‘Everyone knows what’s going to happen. Chase Black will be a free man today.’

Bowman huffed out a breath – his way of showing displeasure. He was an overly officious man who always looked over the shoulders
of his detectives rather than trusting their instincts. The Homicide Unit was the best in the Detective Bureau – it was where
all the good detectives wanted to work. The elite. Which meant that the cops in it were mostly good enough to be allowed to investigate cases with
minimal supervision. Bowman saw it differently.


Hunter stared at Bowman but said nothing.

‘Let’s get inside and find a seat,’ Collins said, pulling at the heavy wooden entrance door to the public gallery of the courtroom.

Hunter felt an immense weight settle on his shoulders and it was all he could do to stay upright. He looked out of the window
behind Bowman and saw a bird land next to a flower bed. It stooped, paused and burrowed into the earth before pulling out
a worm and flying off again with breakfast still dangling from its beak.


Collins held the door open, waiting for his partner. Hunter looked past him into the carpeted hush of the court. He glanced
at Morris.


‘Let’s go watch a serial killer let loose again in our city,’ he said.

The courtroom was wider than it was long with a raised podium and an imposing wooden desk for the panel of three judges who
would preside over the appeal. The room was double height and a square skylight in the centre of the ceiling allowed natural
light to flood the space. Two tables faced the judges’ bench at floor level, one each for the prosecution and defence teams.
Behind them, five rows of seats made up the public gallery. A woman in the front row of the gallery turned her head at the
sound of the door being opened and her eyes locked on Hunter. She stood and walked to the end of the line of seats before
turning towards him.


Alice Dale was attractive in a cultured kind of way: high cheekbones and short, dark hair framing a narrow face. She had done
her best with make-up this morning but had been unable to completely hide the bruised crescents beneath her eyes and the hollowed-out
look of her cheeks. Hunter thought that she must have lost a lot of weight during the course of the three-week appeal hearing. She looked worn out.


‘Mrs Dale,’ he said, nodding at her.

Her bottom lip trembled and a vertical crease formed in the skin between her eyes. Hunter wondered if she was going to break
down, but she drew in a long breath and held it together.


‘He’s getting out, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘The man who killed my babies.’

Hunter tried to remember seeing the photographs of her two children around the living room of her house in Cherry Creek. He
and Collins had gone to see her there before the appeal started. Instead, images of their lifeless bodies from the scene of
their murder scratched at the edge of his consciousness.


Hunter blinked hard.

‘Yes, I think he’s going to win,’ he told Alice Dale.

He didn’t see any point in sugar-coating it for her.

She swallowed and a tear slipped from her left eye and down her cheek. She must have felt it but made no move to wipe it away.
Hunter was aware of others in the public gallery turning to watch them. He felt like a child again, lost and helpless in an
adult world; unable to function properly.


‘I watched him on the TV this morning,’ she said. ‘Black, I mean. He walked out of the jail in that orange jumpsuit and handcuffs
so confident, like he always knew it was only temporary. Laughing and smiling with the reporters. It never touched his eyes,
though. The emotion, I mean. Did you notice that? I don’t think he’s capable of a genuine emotion. Except maybe when he’s
. . .’


A group of three lawyers led by a thirty-something man came into the court from a side entrance and started laying out papers
on the defence table. Hunter knew this meant that the judges were about to come on to the bench and start the day’s proceedings.
It meant that Chase Black would be here soon as well.


Wiping the tear from her cheek and smudging her makeup, Alice Dale turned and looked at the defence lawyers. The dark circles
under her eyes became more pronounced and Hunter felt a surge of anger course through his bloodstream, the air thickening
around him.


Alice Dale shook her head at Hunter as if physically unable to speak any more. She walked back to her seat without saying
anything further and Hunter thought that he saw her stride falter as she turned the corner. He was in awe of her strength.


Morris and Bowman passed Hunter to find seats that had been kept free for them by the Sheriff’s deputies who handled security
in the court. A tall, broad-shouldered man came into the court and sat alone at the prosecution table in front of the judges’
bench. The man nodded at Morris. Robert Angel was the senior Assistant District Attorney who had handled both the original
prosecution and now the appeal in the Chase Black case. He was nearing forty and had no intention of seeking better-paying
work in the private sector. He loved his job. Loved putting the bad guys away. He was Hunter’s favourite lawyer.


Hunter remembered the first time he’d met Angel: on a gang-related attempted murder. A sixteen-year-old boy had been caught
in the middle of a turf war and had been badly injured – stabbed five times in the back and neck. He was lucky to have survived.


The attacker, a seventeen-year-old, had hired an inexperienced lawyer. Hunter was in the hallway outside the court when Angel,
all six feet five, and two hundred and twenty pounds of him, came barrelling down the hall looking for a fight. The other
lawyer never had a chance. Angel literally cornered the guy by a window, stepped right into his personal space and loomed
over him until a very favourable plea bargain (for the prosecution anyway) was agreed.


Angel looked from Morris to Hunter and set his lips in a thin line before turning back to the pile of papers on the desk.

‘Take it easy, partner,’ Collins whispered, sensing Hunter’s fury. ‘I don’t want to have to pull you off of that bastard.’

A loud clunk sounded as the door from the cells beneath the courtroom was unlocked. Another deputy sheriff walked in leading a man in
a linen suit with an open-necked white shirt. Chase Black had been allowed to change from his prison-issue jumpsuit to attend
court.


He looked like a man who was about to know freedom again.

Black looked as casually powerful as always – wide shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. He had dark hair that was short enough
to require no real styling and green eyes. He had a face like a big cat. The camera loved him. Hunter had read somewhere that
he’d received close to a thousand letters from female fans during his two-year stay in jail. This man convicted of the murder
of five families over a six-week span of time. It made no sense to Hunter.


Black saw Hunter standing beside the public gallery and inclined his head in greeting before walking to the defence table
and shaking hands with his main lawyer, John Preston. The other two members of the legal team were young associates not long
out of law school. Preston, on the other hand, was fast gaining a reputation as one of the best criminal lawyers in town.


Hunter followed his partner to spare seats at the far end of the second row in the gallery. A man sitting three seats along in the front row turned and looked at Hunter before quickly
facing the front again. Hunter recognised him. Jay Drayton was the husband and father of two more of Black’s victims.


The Drayton family lived in London, England and had been vacationing in Colorado when Black went on his killing spree. They
had rented an apartment in the town of Dillon – a short drive west across the Continental Divide through the Eisenhower Tunnel.
Jay Drayton’s wife had driven into Denver for some shopping with their teenage daughter and they had got cut off from making
the return journey the same day by a heavy snowstorm.


Their bodies were found the next day in a motel on I-70.

Like most of the surviving family members, Drayton was a shadow of the man he used to be. He was still a big man with a face
that looked like it had seen action on the rugby field or in the boxing ring – a broken nose with thick ears – but had become
a near recluse. A property developer who got out before the market crashed, he was wealthy enough not to have to work again
if he didn’t want to.


But the look Drayton had given Hunter was not that of a defeated man. He looked agitated, his neck flushing red under the
collar of his shirt.


‘Keep an eye on Drayton,’ he said in a low voice, nudging Collins. ‘He looks ready for something.’

Collins glanced at the back of Drayton’s head and nodded.

Black pulled out a chair from the table and looked back at Hunter, something like a smile passing across his face. Hunter thought about the dog again, how he had found it gutted in the hallway. Images from that night flooded into his head.


He was upstairs in the house. Steve Ames, the lead Crime Lab investigator, was standing in the hallway with his second in
command, Molly August. They wore thin, blue windcheaters with department badges. Both looked shaken. Ames was a stocky, twenty-year-veteran
detective sergeant. Fifteen of those years had been spent with the Crime Lab and the lines on his face spoke of a thousand
crime scenes. Molly was taller than Steve and still fairly new to the department. She was sometimes brusque but maybe she
felt she had to be tough to make it. Whatever, Hunter liked her. You had to be tough in a male-dominated world.


Flashbulbs popped in two of the bedrooms off the hall.


Ames turned to look at Hunter as he came up the stairs.


‘I’m guessing the dog is the least of our concerns,’ Hunter said, looking back down the stairs.


Ames nodded.


‘Two kids and the father up here,’ August said, her voice sounding thick.


‘No mother?’

‘Separated. She’s at her sister’s house.’

‘Someone will have to go over there. Tell her.’

August looked at Hunter – knew that it was his responsibility.


‘Want to show me the bodies?’ Hunter asked.


‘Not really.’

Hunter smiled grimly and followed August as she went into the first bedroom. It was decorated in pale blues and greys, a sophisticated
room in a big house. The parents’ room.


Correction – the father’s room.


No one’s room now.


A man lay on the bed. Blood had soaked through the covers underneath the body, turning them almost entirely red.


Hunter did his best to suppress his gag reflex.


‘The photographer done in here?’

‘No,’ August said, tying her dark hair back in a ponytail and putting on a pair of safety glasses. ‘He’s in the other room
right now. The kids’ room.’

‘But somebody checked for a pulse?’

She turned her head to look at him. Couldn’t tell if he was serious.


‘Yeah, we did that, Jake.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .’

Two Crime Lab team techs waited inside the room in full body overalls, leaning against the wal. . .