and a man walked in. Tucker leapt up.
‘Jennifer – meet Bob Corbett; Bob – meet Jennifer Browne.’ All three of them stood motionless for a few seconds and Tucker’s eyes flicked anxiously to Jennifer’s, as if he was worried she might do or say the wrong thing.
They shook hands. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Here, take my seat.’ Tucker pointed eagerly at his chair before perching unsteadily on the edge of Jennifer’s desk. Corbett sat down. ‘Bob heads up the Major Theft and Transportation Crimes Unit here.’
‘We were introduced in the elevator once,’ Jennifer nodded with a curious smile. From the times she’d seen him around the building, she knew that Corbett always looked immaculate, from his smoothly shaved chin to his polished black shoes, thin laces neatly tied in a double knot. But now she immediately noticed that something was different. The knot on his woven silk tie was much smaller than usual, as if he had loosened it and then re-tightened it several times. As if he was worried.
Corbett frowned and looked at her quizzically before nodding slowly in sudden recollection.
‘Sure. I remember. Hi.’ He spoke in short, sharp bursts and there was something in the precise urgency of his machine-gunned words that suggested a military background. They shook hands again.
Corbett often passed for a man ten years younger than his forty-five years, although the deepening creases around his eyes and mouth suggested that time was at last beginning to catch up with him. Next to Tucker certainly, he looked fit and healthy although that was possibly an unfair comparison. There was something streamlined about him, from his slicked back steel-grey hair to the rounded contours of his chin and cheekbones that gave him the chromed elegance of one of those 1930s Art-Deco locomotives that look like they are powering along at two hundred miles an hour even when they are standing still. Above the sharp angle of his nose, the cold light of his close-set grey eyes suggested a very clever and very determined man. He reminded her, in a strange way, of her father. Hard but fair.
‘You know, Bob’s got the best clean-up rate in the Bureau?’ Tucker continued. ‘What is it now? Only five unsolved cases in twenty-five years? That’s outstanding work.’ He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with it.
‘Actually, Phil, it’s two. And I haven’t given up on them yet.’ Corbett smiled, but Jennifer could tell he wasn’t joking. He didn’t look like the sort of man who did.
‘Bob needs someone to work on a new case for him. I suggested you.’
Jennifer shrugged awkwardly, her face suddenly hot as two pairs of eyes focused in on her.
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best. What’s the case?’
Corbett slid a large manila envelope towards her and motioned with a wave that she should open it. Warily, Jennifer lifted the tab and pulled out a series of black-and-white photos.
‘The man in that photo is Father Gianluca Ranieri.’
She studied the picture carefully, taking in the man’s contorted face and the large gash in his chest.
‘They found him in Paris yesterday. River cops fished him out the Seine. As you can see, he didn’t drown.’
Jennifer flicked through the rest of the photos, her mind focused. Close-ups of Ranieri’s face and the knife wound flashed past her large hazel eyes. A quick scan through the translated autopsy report at the back confirmed what Corbett had just told her – stabbed and then presumably thrown in the river. A single blow through the xiphisternum, aimed up towards the left shoulder blade, had caused a massive, almost instant heart attack.
As she read, she flashed a quick look at Corbett. He was studying her office with a faint smile. She knew that some of her colleagues found it strange that she kept the stark green concrete walls bare. Truth was, she found the lack of clutter helped her keep her mind clear.
‘Any thoughts?’ Corbett asked, his eyes snapping back round to meet hers.
‘Judging from the injury, it looks like a professional job. Some sort of hit.’
‘Agreed.’ Corbett nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he was re-appraising Jennifer in the light of her quick diagnosis.
‘And it was public. The body dumped where they knew it would be quickly found.’
‘Meaning?’
‘That they’re not worried about getting caught. Or that maybe they wanted to send someone a message.’
Corbett nodded his agreement.
‘Perhaps both. Best guess is that he was killed round about midnight on the sixteenth of July, give or take three or four hours either way.’ He got up and padded noiselessly over to the filing cabinet, Jennifer noticing now that he seemingly kept his pockets empty of change and keys or anything else that might give away his position, like a cat who had had the bell on its collar removed so that it might be better able to stalk its unsuspecting prey. She continued to leaf through the file.
‘From what we know, Ranieri trained as a Catholic priest and then worked at the Vatican Institute for Religious Works.’
Jennifer looked up in surprise.
‘The Vatican Bank?’
‘As it’s also known, yes.’ Corbett raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed now. ‘He was there for about ten years before going missing about three years ago, along with a couple of million dollars from one of their Cayman Island accounts.’
Jennifer swivelled her chair round towards him, her forehead wrinkled in anticipation. She sensed that he was building up to something. Tucker, meanwhile, sat enthralled with his arms crossed and resting on his belly, his mouth slack and half open. Corbett ran his finger along the top of the filing cabinet as if checking for dust. She knew there wouldn’t be any. Not in her office.
‘He must have spent all the cash though, because he turned up in Paris last year. The French say he set himself up as a low-level fence. Nothing big. A painting here, a necklace there, but he was making a living; a good living, judging from the size of him.’
All three of them laughed and the tingle that Jennifer had felt slowly building inside her chest vanished like steam rising into warm air. Corbett moved back round to the chair and sat down again, Jennifer just getting a glimpse of the top of his shoes where over the years the constant rubbing of his suit trousers had buffed the leather to a slightly deeper shade of black than the rest of them.
‘I don’t get it.’ Jennifer replaced the file on the desk and sat back in her chair, confused. ‘Sounds to me like he got whacked by someone he ripped off. Or maybe he had some sort of deal go sour. Either way, it’s got nothing to do with us.’
Corbett locked eyes with her and the tingle reappeared and instantly sublimated into a cold, hard knot in the pit of her stomach.
‘Our angle, Agent Browne – and you won’t find this in the autopsy report – is that when they opened him up, they found something in his stomach. Something he’d swallowed just before he died. Something he clearly didn’t want his killers to find.’
Corbett reached into his pocket and, leaning forward, slid something sealed inside a small clear plastic
