‘Develin?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. Thought you’d like to know, Maggie O’Shea just told me he’s dead.’
Yakinchuk blinked. ‘What?’
‘Natural causes apparently. She’s got a copy of the obit so why don’t you go and have a chat with her. Be in for a surprise though when you mention the name because according to Maggie, Develin’s old man murdered her brother.’
*****
Yakinchuk watched as Maggie O’Shea pushed the last slice of pie into place behind the glass doors. ‘Neil said you might be popping in Victor.’ She turned and offered him a ghost of a smile set in a face that had known more sadness than anything else in her fifty-eight years. Slowly she pulled the obituary out from inside the pocket of a cheap cotton import of a dress almost lost behind a starched white apron. ‘He’s dead and I’m not one bit sorry for the hearing of it.’
‘Did you know him Maggie?’ Yakinchuk asked, bewildered by the depth of her enmity.
‘Aye, when he was a lad but already showin’ the signs.’
‘Signs; what signs?’
‘Of the curse and the evil that circles it, generation after generation.’ Quickly Yakinchuk scanned the obituary. ‘If you’re looking for heirs,’ she hissed, ‘they’ll not be spoken of though they exist, close to their mother’s breast; protected by the she-wolf what birthed them.’
‘Maggie look, I understand that maybe you…’
‘You understand nothing, not while you are here in this part of the world. But there … there it is different. There where my brother Drover lies in an unmarked grave in unhallowed ground. There where my sister Maureen lived out her days in a world of her own imagining. He is gone but in time two will take his place.’
‘Two?’
‘Sure there’ll be two. Brothers so close in age to be like twins with at least one with pale, pale eyes sharp as death itself.’ She cupped her hand then swept it across his chest. ‘Sharp enough to cut a soul clean of its body.’
Yakinchuk swallowed hard as he remembered Develin’s eyes. ‘Maggie, ah … it says he died quietly at his home. Where is that?’
‘Houses aplenty he has but home, there is only one - Cavendish Hall.’
Yakinchuk reeled back as if hit violently in the face. ‘But that’s where … holy shit!
‘Maggie, the mother of these kids; who might she be?’
‘You will know her if you should see her. Wild she’ll be with raging green eyes and hair the colour of fire. She will bear his name though their union is of the devil. Beware of her for it is very like she has killed once already and will do so again if needs must.’
‘Tell me about the curse,’ he urged, but she shook her head slowly.
‘It can’t be spoken of, but come to me here tomorrow and I will give you the words of Peter the Anchorite, written just before he was burned alive with the church around him.’
*****
Yakinchuk thought about returning to his office after talking with Maggie but instead he wandered outside too amazed by what he had heard to be able to concentrate on anything.
… the curse and the evil that circles it, generation after generation.
… burned alive with the church around him.
… home, there is only one - Cavendish Hall.
‘Where Capritzo died,’ he muttered, appalled by what had to be more than a mere coincidence.
‘Beware of her for it is very like she has killed once already and will do so again if needs must.’
Yakinchuk leapt up from the picnic bench where he had come to rest. Minutes later he was in a taxi heading into the very heart of Boston.
Try as he might he couldn’t stop remembering that day – was it really only three years ago – and the investigation into the death of Susan Kojak. The memory rose, took hold and solidified. The traffic, the buildings, the people beyond the taxi’s window disappeared to be replaced in his mind’s eye with the image of Richard Develin.
He was standing near the booking desk waiting for Carl Emery to be released. In his hand was a brown envelope containing Emery’s personal affects. Yakinchuk stared at him through the glass panel which separated his office from the more general area; an area not normally available to the public.
Develin was immaculately dressed in a three piece suit. His shoes looked right out of the box. Yakinchuk judged him to be six feel tall; mid-forties. His hair was jet black, drawn straight back and lightly oiled. He had about him that aristocratic bearing one would associate with royalty; wealth, privilege, class. As casual as his manner seemed, he was taking in everything around him; of that Yakinchuk was certain. As certain as he was when Develin’s eyes shifted suddenly to focus directly on him. Yakinchuk felt his heart constrict as Develin’s eyes seemed to narrow like a predator’s might when it has selected its prey.
‘Here’s that report you wanted Vic.’
Yakinchuk pulled himself away from the window to concentrate on the report which had been left on his desk. After twelve years with the police force Vic Yakinchuk was quite proficient at translating the codes sent down the line from the various crime control agencies both domestic and international.
‘What the hell is this shit?’ he growled, not understanding any of it.
Perry leaned over and pointed at the bottom row. ‘That translated means, hands off.’
‘Who the hell is this guy?’
‘Lets just say that he’s about as close as you or I will ever get to a Double-O-Seven.’
Yakinchuk threw the sheet across his desk in disgust. ‘Yeah well the James Bond I know doesn’t fuck his women to death.’
‘For Christ sake Vic, give it a rest or you’ll find yourself on the carpet.’
‘Carl Emery didn’t kill that girl; Develin did, goddamn it!’
‘Susan Kojak died of a heart attack; got that? Natural causes and if you don’t let this go right here, right now then I’ll have no recourse but to … Where the hell are you going?’
Yakinchuk was half way out of the office door. ‘Maybe if you had seen the body like I did, you might …’
‘She was a whore and whores get knocked
