To the Death

She punched it into the machine, for a ruinous amount of money, more than six thousand dollars. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” asked the girl.

“I wonder if you could book me a room in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and tell them I’ll be arriving quite late?”

“Will you require them to meet you off the flight?”

“No. I’ll take a cab,” said Shakira, ever alert for the necessity of anonymity whenever possible.

She picked up her bag and walked to the first-class desk. One hour later, Shakira took off for southern Ireland. The Aer Lingus Airbus was climbing steeply out over Boston Harbor just as, six hundred miles to the south, Detective Segel was preparing to return to the police station.

By any standards, the Estuary Killer had well and truly flown the coop.

1430 Same Day Brockhurst Police Station

Detective Joe Segel had little to go on. Someone in the hour before midnight had plunged a dagger into Matt Barker’s heart, and, according to the doctor, killed him instantly.

The police search of his body had revealed a wad of twenty-dollar bills, adding up to over $300. His credit card wallet was intact, no one had taken his cell phone, and there was no sign of a fight save for a nasty bruise on the left-hand side of his face, which could have happened when he slid, face forward, down the wall.

And yet. someone had wanted to kill Matt Barker very badly. Detective Segel spoke to his close friends, particularly those who had been in the bar with him the previous evening. None of them had the slightest idea what could possibly have happened to him. They were obviously all extremely upset. Herb and Rick were both in tears at the death of their lifelong friend.

Which, essentially, left the Virginia detective holding the dagger. He sat in his office, wearing white linen gloves and handling it carefully. There was no maker’s mark on it, which was unsurprising since it did look as if it had been manufactured somewhere in the Middle East.

And those jewels in the handle — Jesus! If they were real, the darned thing was worth a fortune. And yet it had been abandoned, jutting out of Matt Barker’s body, in the manner of a true professional, someone who knew the blood would not flow immediately if the weapon was left jammed in the wound.

This was someone who knew how to make an escape unscathed by the detritus of the crime. The forensic boys had already made a thorough search, and the dagger bore not one trace of a fingerprint.

In the next twenty minutes, he expected to see the local jeweler, who would tell him, one way or another, whether or not the murder weapon was worth several thousand dollars. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. The jeweler turned up right on time and told Joe Segel the stones were just colored glass set into brass. Pretty, but worth no more than $50.

The biggest concern for Detective Segel was Matt Barker’s cock. What the hell was that doing, sticking out into the morning light? There’s only one reason for that — sexual passion. And whoever Matt had intended to stick that cock into had obviously had second thoughts. Male or female? Friend or stranger? Who had taken such an elementary dislike to Matt Barker that, instead of fucking him, they had stabbed him to death?

It beat the hell out of Joe Segel. But one thought was uppermost in his mind. The killer could not possibly have been a girl. At least, no ordinary girl. That death blow to Matt Barker’s ribs had been delivered with terrific strength, an upward thrust into precisely the correct place to inflict death.

Hell, thought Joe Segel, was old Matt some kind of a faggot? All these years, and no one’s ever known that. No one I ever met. I’ll be real interested to hear the opinions of Miss Carla Martin when she turns up for work.

According to Jim Caborn, that would be another hour.

Joe was sitting in the front hall of the hotel as the old grandfather clock struck five times. He waited patiently for five more minutes. Then ten. Then he stood up and walked to the desk and said, “Jim, old buddy, you said she was never late.”

“Joe, old buddy,” replied the manager, “she never was. Not ’til today.”

“I’m gonna sit here for another twenty minutes,” said the detective. “Then I have to go find her. This Carla may have been the last person not only to talk to him, but also to see him.

“His three guys all thought he spoke to her, then drank his beer and left. Said something about going to Washington early in the morning. That was around 10:30. And before eleven o’clock, Miss Martin had packed up and left the hotel. Out the back door, directly into the parking lot where Matt’s body was found.”

“Is she a suspect?” asked Jim.