Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 23

‘What threat?’ Draper said. ‘There was no threat. This was an execution, plain and simple. And while, on the face of it, it does look as though the Romanians chose Margaret Wexmore over easier targets, there could be myriad reasons for that. They could have been stealing to order and Louis Vuitton was on their list. They might have seen her earlier with an expensive cell phone. Or maybe they were assholes who got their kicks from beating on old ladies. My point is, Jane Doe had no way of gauging their intentions. She could have waited. She had a gun. She could have intervened before things got nasty. But she didn’t. She went from not doing anything to . . . I’m sorry, Koenig, but that’s murder. There’s no other way to describe it. It was cold-blooded murder.’

‘I agree,’ Koenig said.

‘You do?’

‘Yes. It’s irrational. To an observer it seems like the act of a crazy person. It’s why the mental health angle played so well with the British press. Whatever the Romanians’ intentions, this was, on the face of it, a staggering overreaction.’

‘But?’

‘But the woman I met ten years ago wasn’t irrational. She wasn’t crazy. She was anything but. She was logical, measured, and very much in control of her thoughts and actions. There’s a disconnect between the woman I knew then, albeit briefly, and the woman in that footage. So, when you say there was no threat, I say that’s an assumption. I say there was no threat that we could see .’

‘We need to find her then,’ Draper said. ‘Fast.’

‘But how?’ Bernice asked. ‘Scotland Yard had this for a week before we shut it down. They got nowhere.’

Koenig walked up to the wall monitor and tapped Jane Doe’s hand.

‘That’s how,’ he said.