Vendetta by Dreda Say Mitchell

draining away; he was watching the screen with growing interest. It was five minutes before Calum finally pulled the plug from the phone and spun it back across the desk.
    ‘No can do, this phone’s been wiped by someone who knows how to cover his tracks.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    Calum pursed his lips together as his bitterness piled back in the room. ‘You could check with your friends in the police and ask them to check it for you if you don’t believe me. Oh – but you can’t do that, can you . . . ?’
    Mac thrust himself up. Picked up the phone. Pushed it into his pocket and turned at the same time.
    ‘You’re nuts, Mac,’ Calum sighed. ‘You go and get yourself shot at Reuben’s – and use the stairs this time please, there’s a good boy.’
    As Mac opened the door to leave, Calum called him back. ‘There are a couple of other things you don’t seem to have considered.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘This body in the bath – how do you know it was Elena?’
    Mac froze. ‘Of course it was Elena.’
    ‘The state you’re in, you wouldn’t recognise your own mother – face or no face.’
    ‘Don’t you think I want to believe that she’s still alive?’ Mac growled back. His palm shot into his pocket.
    ‘This is hers.’ He waved Elena’s bracelet at Calum, the bunny rabbit swinging in the painful motion of a lynching. ‘She never took it off. It was on the body. And she has a tattoo.’
    Calum looked back at him before sighing with sarcasm. ‘Bracelet and tattoo? Maybe . . . too bad you can’t get in touch with Rio. She’ll get an ID on the victim before too long. Of course, that’s not the only ID she’ll be getting. If your DNA is in the room, it won’t be too long before she knows you were at the scene of the killing. Your DNA is on the database, isn’t it? All undercover cops have their fingerprints logged. When she finds that out, you really will have a problem.’
    Mac massaged his temples.
    ‘Be honest Mac – how do you know it wasn’t you who shot her?’
    Mac’s fingers dropped from his head. ‘Me?’
    ‘Yeah – after all, you don’t remember anything, do you? Don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind? Or what’s left of it . . .’
    The other man’s words planted the seeds of doubt back in his throbbing head. In pursuing Elena’s butcher, was he actually pursuing himself? Was it that, instead of not remembering the night before, he just didn’t want to remember? He’d seen it before in his career plenty of times. The murderer of a loved one who couldn’t accept what they had done and who then went into denial before finally that denial turned into insanity or suicide.
    But he had had no reason to kill her. He opened his mouth and told Calum the biggest reason he couldn’t have done it.
    ‘You’ll be telling me next that I shot myself in the head.’ He shook his head. ‘There was someone else in that hotel room. Whoever the fucker was took Elena’s face off and thought they’d left me for dead. But you know what, I’m standing tall and alive and I’m going to make it my business to find her killer. And when I find him, that’s when you can call me a murderer. In the meantime, don’t stand in my way if Reuben is that man.’
    Calum smiled at him and shrugged his shoulders.
    Mac left, still clutching a dead woman’s bracelet in his hand. The pain was back, see-sawing in his head, as he took his former friend’s advice and used the stairs. He knew he had to get his wound sorted before he did anything else. And maybe Calum was right; he had no evidence that Reuben was behind the shooting. None at all. All the more reason to go to his kid’s party. Even if Reuben hadn’t killed Elena, maybe he could find out from the big Russian what mysterious event happening tonight at eleven had driven Elena into a blind panic.
    How long did he have before his superiors came looking for him? They probably were already. How long before Rio discovered from the DNA