are you going with this?'
'I'm not sure...' Carol stared at the wall opposite her, trying to put into words the idea that was lurking at the corner of her mind. 'If he sees himself as an instrument of vengeance, couldn't it be that he chooses to humiliate them further, using the tools of their trade? What if he's written to academic journals denouncing them or criticizing their work? It might be an idea to do an on-line trawl as well, given that he's apparently posing as an e-zine journalist.'
Tony nodded. 'It's possible. Worth looking at, anyway.' 'Or maybe writing to their departments complaining about their academic failings?' Carol had a faraway look in her eyes now. 'Maybe he sees their final encounter as a sort of therapeutic session?'
'You mean, he thinks they're the patients and he's the one with the cure?'
'Exactly. What do you think?'
'It's possible. And?' Tony added, pushing to see where Carol might take this idea.
She slid along the sofa and leaned into him. 'And nothing. Sorry, that's my lot.'
'Never mind. Inspiration^doesn't always arrive on cue. I'll suggest to Petra and Marijke mat they have a look for public or professional criticism of the victims' work.' He put his arm round her.
'Oh, this is so comfortable,' Carol sighed. 'I wish I didn't have to drag myself back upstairs.'
Tony swallowed hard. 'You don't have to.'
'I think I do. We've waited so long to get here. I don't want our first time to have the shadow of Radecki hanging over it.
I want it to be just you and me, to be special.' She turned her face up to his. 'I can wait a little bit longer.'
He leaned down and gave her a soft kiss on the lips. 'You're determined to give me no excuse for failure, huh?' he said, hiding his anxiety behind a jokey smile.
'Stop right there,' she said, putting a warning finger to his lips. 'I'm not worried, and neither should you be.' She disentangled herself. 'And now I'm going to bed. We both have too much responsibility to miss out on our sleep right now.' She got to her feet. Til see myself out. And I'll see you soon.'
He watched her walk across the room, amazed at the warm glow of contentment he felt. Maybe, just maybe they could make it work.
Krasic arrived at Tadeusz's apartment shortly after eight with a bag of fresh pastries from the Turkish bakery on the corner of Karl Marx Allee nearest to his apartment. While his boss brewed the coffee, he tipped the contents of the bag on to a plate and absently picked up the crumbs on the tip of a licked forefinger. 'She's a dark horse, this Caroline Jackson,' he said. 'Nobody seems to know much about her. They've heard the name, but not many people have ever met her face to face. I talked again to that dealer that Kramer put you on to. He says he met her first about six years ago, when she was doing some dodgy property dealing in Norwich.'
'What sort of dodgy property dealing?' Tadeusz poured the coffee into cups and carried them across to the table. 'Stop eating the crumbs, Darko, you're not a peasant any more,' he added affectionately.
Krasic sat down and took a gulp of the scalding coffee. The heat didn't seem to bother him. 'She got a tip about a planned supermarket development that involved knocking down some old houses. Some of the owners didn't want to sell to her at the rock-bottom prices she was offering, so she used the traditional methods to persuade them.'
'Violence?' Tadeusz asked, reaching for a crescent studded with toasted sesame seeds.
'Only as a last resort. More general domestic terrorism. You know. Break the car windows. Dogshit through the letter box. Funeral wreaths on the doorstep. Taxis arriving every twenty minutes all through the night. She was extremely imaginative, by all accounts. Anyway, they all sold in the end except for one old lady who was adamant that she'd been born there and she was going to die there. Well, she was adamant until she came home from the shops one day and found her cat nailed to the front door.'
Tadeusz sucked his breath in through his teeth. 'Ruthless. I like that in a woman,' he said, grinning. 'I take it she made a killing selling the land to the supermarket?'
'Kramer's mate reckons she must have cleared about a quarter of a mil. She used it as seed money for more property deals. She