The Black Art of Killing Read online

  Still mulling this not unpleasant thought, he made his way back out to the lobby and waited for Bellman to reappear. A minute passed. Then another. He stepped over to the doorway of the bar and glanced inside. There were only a few remaining patrons in the room and no sign of Dr Bellman. Reluctant to force his way into the ladies’, he brought out his phone and called up the tracker app that connected with the transmitter disguised as a brooch that he had insisted she wear at all times.

  The app took infuriating moments to load and synchronize. Finn cursed under his breath as he waited for the wheel on his screen to cease spinning. Finally, a distance reading and a direction arrow appeared. She was, according to the screen, fifteen feet away at ten o’clock to his current position. He lifted his gaze to the spot in the centre of the lobby. It was occupied by a circular marble-topped table decked with an elaborate floral display. Finn felt his heart pound against his ribs as he moved quickly towards it. He spotted the brooch lying beneath the foliage. He retrieved it and crossed immediately to the reception desk.

  ‘Excuse me. Did you notice a woman in a red dress pass through here in the last few minutes?’

  The receptionist, who resembled a Dior model, appeared puzzled. ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘Dr Sarah Bellman. Black hair. Red dress.’ He produced his security tag. ‘I’m looking after her.’

  She glanced at it and shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I was on the phone.’

  ‘She was in this lobby just now.’ He was met with a blank expression. ‘Forget it, I need to see the CCTV playback.’

  ‘CC–?’

  ‘The security monitors.’

  ‘I’ll call the night manager.’ She picked up the phone and unhurriedly tapped in an internal number.

  Finn’s patience snapped. He vaulted the counter and ignoring the receptionist’s cry of alarm slammed through the door behind the desk into the corridor beyond. He moved along it, trying several doors in turn, all of which opened on to deserted offices. He arrived at a fourth signed SÉCURITÉ.

  He burst in, surprising a dozing security guard. The musclebound hulk with a neck as thick as his skull objected noisily as Finn flashed his ID, dropped into a seat and took over the controls beneath a bank of monitors.

  Finn stared at the keyboard, unable to make head or tail of it. ‘How do you work this thing?’

  The guard hauled himself to his feet and growled something in French. Finn ignored him and scanned the monitors for any sign of Bellman. He felt a heavy fist close round his shoulder.

  ‘You can help out or fuck off,’ Finn said, glancing over his shoulder.

  The guard’s other hand reached for the telescopic baton attached to his belt.

  Finn responded instinctively, firing out a backfist that crushed the soft cartilage in his nose, provoking a roar of pain.

  ‘What is going on?’ A slightly built man with a neat moustache arrived with the receptionist in tow. He looked aghast at the guard, who was now dripping blood on to the carpet through fat, stubby fingers spread across his face.

  ‘Show me how to operate this,’ Finn demanded, recognizing him as the night manager. ‘I need to rewind. My client’s gone missing from the lobby. Dr Bellman. One of the delegates.’

  The manager’s expression changed from one of anger to alarm. He issued hurried instructions to the receptionist to take the guard out and get him cleaned up, then came alongside Finn and nervously tapped the keyboard. A badge on his lapel gave his name as Christian Deschamps.

  ‘The lobby. Go back through the last ten minutes,’ Finn ordered. ‘I’m looking for a young woman in a red dress.’

  Deschamps did as requested. The monitor covering the lobby began to spool backwards at four times normal speed.

  ‘Faster,’ Finn demanded.

  ‘Of course.’ Deschamps wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand. The image accelerated.

  ‘There. Stop. Go forward.’

  Finn stared hard at the screen. Dr Bellman and her new friend entered the ladies’ room followed closely by Finn, who went through the adjacent door. They emerged seconds later, giggling like schoolgirls and made for the lifts. While passing the table, Bellman casually reached out a hand as if to deposit something small beneath the fronds of overhanging ferns – the brooch, no doubt. As they stepped through the opening doors into the lift, they kissed, laughed, then kissed again.

  The manager glanced across at Finn. ‘Maybe not so serious?’

  Finn grunted. ‘Find out where they went.’

  The cameras picked them up again as they emerged on the third floor and walked hand in hand along the corridor. They went into a room at the far end: number 348. Finn grabbed the phone on the desk and dialled the room on an internal line. It rang four times before connecting to voicemail. He tried again with the same result.

  ‘The phone can be muted to prevent disturbance,’ Deschamps offered.

  ‘Get me her details.’

  Deschamps hesitated.

  ‘Tell me who the fuck she is.’

  Deschamps flinched. ‘Very well. But we have to go to reception.’ He hurried out through the door.

  Finn followed him to the front desk where the bookings system revealed that Dr Bellman’s companion was checked in under the name of Ms Carla Forenzi. She was a US national aged thirty and listed as a delegate to the conference representing MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her home address was an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Finn photographed the screen with his phone and thanked the manager for his trouble.

  ‘I am not the one who was hurt,’ Deschamps said.

  ‘Buy him a drink on me.’

  Finn let himself out through the gate at the end of the desk and made his way up to the third floor.

  ‘Miss Bellman?’ There was no answer. He knocked again on the door of 348, this time more loudly. ‘Miss Bellman, I need to know that you are all right. If you don’t reply, I’ll be forced to let myself in.’

  Silence. He pressed his ear to the varnished oak. There were no sounds of movement from inside. No sounds of any sort.

  He was left with no choice. The protocols were strict and his duty to ensure her safety at all times was written into his contract. If he were to breach it, he risked losing his fee. A trip downstairs and back again to fetch a spare key card would take vital minutes and so was out of the question. He took a step back, drew the Beretta from the concealed holster beneath his left shoulder, flipped off the safety and aimed his right heel at the edge of the door several inches beneath the lock. It was a motion that during eight tours of Iraq had become second nature. The frame splintered along its length and the door burst open. Finn raised his pistol in a dual hand grip and moved inside.

  The lights were on, the bed still made, the large sash window wide open and the floor-length net curtains flapping in the warm breeze. Finn’s eyes flicked left through the open door to the bathroom. Empty. He scanned the room: no luggage or possessions. On the carpet at the side of the bed was a single red stiletto: Bellman’s.

  Only vaguely aware of the alarmed voices of other guests who had emerged into the corridor behind him, Finn moved to the window and tugged back the curtain to reveal two dangling climbing ropes secured somewhere on the floors above. He glanced out over the sill and saw that they descended into a narrow pedestrian alleyway that led along the side of the building towards a wider service alley that ran along its rear. He heard sounds of a scuffle and muffled female cries coming from around the corner.

  Finn holstered his pistol, reached for the nearest rope, pulled it towards him and stepped over it. He fed it around his right hip and across his left shoulder. Gripping it at head height with his left hand and below and to the side of him with his right, he climbed backwards out of the window and abseiled fifty feet to the ground in the space of four seconds, pushing off the wall with his feet only twice.

  The instant he touched the ground, two masked figures emerged from the shadows, both clutching Bowie knives. The long
blades glinted in the flickering light cast by a solitary streetlamp. Finn knew at once that they had been waiting for him. He reached for his pistol, but saw an explosion of stars as a blunt object wielded by a third, unseen assailant clubbed into the back of his skull. The impact sent him sprawling face first on to the cobbles. Rendered momentarily insensible, reflex took over. He rolled several times and reached again for his weapon. He heard the sound of metal on bone and lost all sensation in his right hand as a steel blade drove through his upper arm. Finn flailed with his left fist, connecting with the cheekbone of the man who had stabbed him, but even as he did so, a second blade thrust between his ribs.

  He tasted blood rising in his throat and heard air sucking through the puncture wound in his right lung, but continued to hurl his fists at the three attackers crowding over him.

  There was no more pain, only blind, demonic fury as he tried to swat them. He would crush their skulls with his bare hands.

  Their blows rained in, but as far as Finn was concerned they seemed to bounce off his impenetrable hide. He felt invincible, then suddenly electrified. His limbs coursed with liquid fire and he screamed like a wild man into the night.

  4

  The lamps in the small basement laboratory would take a full five minutes to rise from complete darkness to light. This was intended to mimic sunrise at the equator. Dr Lars Holst’s intrusion at four a.m. had brought dawn two hours early, thus disturbing the natural rhythm of the room’s inhabitants. Roused from the deepest cycle of sleep the five rhesus macaque monkeys, three male, two female, blinked awake, tired and confused. There was none of the usual immediate clamour to be fed as they yawned and stretched and rose stiffly to their feet.

  Holst deliberately kept his back to them as he hurriedly set up his equipment. In the still murky light the mind was prone to perceive their miniature features as unnervingly human. He retrieved the steel ball from a cupboard, set it on an insulated frame in the corner of an empty cage on the central workbench and connected it to the power supply. Next, he fetched a container of chopped fruit from the refrigerator and emptied it into the hopper of the remotely controlled feeder positioned to the side of the ball. The smell of their favourite treat raised the macaques from their torpor. Miniature hands reached out through the bars of the other cage accompanied by a chorus of hungry and demanding grunts and squeals.

  ‘OK, OK. Hold on a moment,’ Holst said, with the same tone of affectionate impatience he used with his own young children back in London.

  They refused to quieten.

  Doing his best to ignore them, Holst fetched a camera and mini tripod from the zip pocket of his case and experimented with several angles before finding the one that gave the most comprehensive view of the cage. Now came the difficult part. Which of the macaques would perform best? He didn’t have time to repeat the experiment more than once or twice. He had arranged to meet with Drecker at five a.m. and his flight out of Copenhagen Airport was at six forty-five. He would have commenced the procedure earlier, except that never having tested it on an animal that was less than fully rested, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that a tired brain might carry a slight but nevertheless unacceptable risk of failure.

  Willie, Merle, Dolly, June and Johnny. Holst had ill-advisedly named the macaques after his favourite country music singers, and over the course of three years had naturally attributed characteristics of his sentimental heroes to each of them. Willie was the quiet one, Merle was given to dark moods, Dolly was the extrovert, and June and Johnny were in love. If only he had stuck to M1, F1, M2, et cetera, it would have made this moment so much easier.

  He fetched another container of fruit and pushed it through the one-way steel flap into their cage. He watched them jostle as they selected their favourite morsels. Dolly, as always, grabbed a piece of apple in each hand. Merle and Willie disappeared to opposite corners of the cage to eat their slices of banana, leaving June and Johnny crouched side by side sucking on quartered oranges. To any observer other than Holst or the two lab technicians who assisted in his work, the macaques would have appeared entirely normal. Indeed, there was nothing in their behaviour – aside, perhaps, from their elevated capacity for concentration – that would have given any hint as to the nature of the therapy they had undergone.

  Holst’s first instinct was to select Willie or Merle. Being a rigorous scientist, he then questioned his motives and found them wanting. His choice, he suspected, was being influenced by the relative levels of affection he felt for each creature rather than by their ability to prove his concept. It would make little difference to Drecker and her associates which he chose, but he realized now that he needed concrete assurance of his technique as much, if not more, than they did. He needed to know that his years of work had not been in vain. In the early stages it had been Johnny who had been most difficult to train. Just like human beings, monkeys exhibited different traits. Some were wary, some adventurous, some compliant, others stubborn. Johnny had been the most innately cautious and obstinate and seemingly the most conscious of his own safety. On reflection, this made him the obvious choice. If it worked with Johnny, it would surely work with all of them.

  ‘Sorry, June,’ Holst heard himself saying as he pulled on a pair of thick leather gauntlets.

  He opened the door of the cage and fished Johnny out, pinning his arms to his sides.

  Johnny hissed and scrabbled at the air with his feet, objecting to being separated from his breakfast.

  ‘There’s plenty more in here, my boy. More than you can eat.’ Holst nudged the main cage closed with his elbow and transferred the complaining monkey to the far smaller cage on the bench.

  Johnny made a circuit of the floor as if searching for an escape route, then, resigned to his confinement, stood dejectedly, looking across at his companions, who ignored him, focused solely on their food.

  Holst removed the gauntlets and set the camera to record. He was ready.

  From a drawer beneath the bench he brought out a small remote-control unit and selected level one of twelve. He pressed the activate button and a short electronic bleep alerted Johnny to the start of the experiment. His head jerked round to face the steel ball, his eyes suddenly wide and alert. After no more than a second he took two steps across the cage and gingerly reached out with an extended finger to touch its reflective surface. His arm jerked sharply backwards with the force of the electric shock it administered. He squawked and ran a circuit of the cage, but within moments had taken up position again in front of the ball.

  ‘Don’t you want your banana?’ Holst said, half expecting the monkey to understand.

  Seemingly in response to Holst’s prompt, Johnny noticed the slice of fruit sitting at the bottom of the chute and reached for it. He ate it distractedly, his gaze never leaving the ball.

  Holst selected level three. The bleep sounded a second time. Johnny flicked out a hand. This time the increased voltage caused his whole body to spasm. Johnny jumped up and down and screeched, then grabbed the bars and shook them violently.

  ‘Johnny? Johnny, fruit?’

  The segment of orange that had appeared at the foot of the chute remained untouched. This meant that the dopamine coursing through the monkey’s brain was already outweighing any pleasure he might have derived from eating it.

  Holst selected level six.

  The bleep brought Johnny straight back to the ball, which he slapped almost casually with his palm. The force of the shock threw him off his feet. He lay on his side, twitching and shaking as if suffering a seizure, but after several seconds was upright again. He stood quivering in the centre of the cage, fixated on the metal sphere.

  Holst had never taken Johnny beyond level eight. There was a balance to be struck. If he progressed by gradual increments there was a danger that his subject’s dopamine receptors would become flooded and that he would descend into a temporary catatonic state, which was not the conclusion he was aiming for. He plumped for level ten.

  The monkey app
roached the ball and reached out a trembling hand. The violent impact hurled him to the far side of the cage. Johnny lay in the corner trembling and jerking. Holst thought for a moment that he had misjudged and would have to start again with another subject, but after a short while Johnny’s nervous system began to recover. Now the macaque’s usually expressive face was set in a dull stare. The eyes were empty. The brain too flooded with pleasure to comprehend or receive any stimulus other than the one it craved.

  Johnny hauled himself to his feet at the sound of the bleep and staggered drunkenly towards the sphere. Holst had selected level twelve. He glanced away as his subject received a shock of 2,000 milliamperes, double that which he had just received.

  The bitter smell of singed fur reached Holst’s nostrils. He looked back and saw the monkey lying motionless, the right arm scorched as far as the shoulder. There were burns, too, on both feet where they had been in contact with the metal floor.

  Holst switched off the power supply to the equipment, reached a stethoscope from a drawer and for the benefit of the camera confirmed the time of death as 4.18 a.m.

  As he had hoped, the experiment had been an unqualified success. His fleeting sadness at Johnny’s passing was quickly superseded by his excitement at the implications of the result. He was going to be a wealthy man. Buoyed by this thought, he took the dead monkey from the cage and carried it across the lab to the incinerator with no trace of remorse. What was life, after all, if not a commodity like any other that could be bought, sold, squandered, relished or, in this case, invested for the good of others?