Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 25

Bernice left the briefing room, returning two minutes later with a map of the UK. It was a pocket map, a flat sheet folded in a concertina pattern. She opened it and spread it out on the table, using embassy mugs to weigh down the sides. The table wasn’t big enough. Parts of Wales, parts of Devon and Cornwall, and all of Northern Ireland hung over the edges. Koenig didn’t care. Devon, Cornwall and Wales didn’t have major cities. You didn’t go there for a specialist handgun. And while Northern Ireland was certainly somewhere firearms were sold, Koenig doubted Jane Doe would risk buying one over there. Despite the Good Friday Agreement, Brit security services maintained a watching brief in Belfast and beyond.

‘If we discount London because of live facial recognition, there are only five cities our woman would have considered when it came to buying a black-market handgun,’ Koenig said. ‘Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield. There will be others, but you’d have to be in that life to know where. Jane Doe wasn’t.’

He flipped off the lid of a marker pen. Koenig circled the five cities, then rocked back on his heels and tried to think like a woman who’d faked her own death. Where would she have felt it was safe to live in the UK?

England was out. It had 85 per cent of the population but only half the land mass. It was one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Most people lived in London and the southeast, but almost everywhere was full. And the places that weren’t tended to be tourist traps. Northumberland and Beatrix Potter’s Lake District might look empty on paper, but the moment the sun came out, they were busier than Disneyland. He discounted Wales for similar reasons. Because of its proximity to London, it tended to fill up at weekends.

That left Scotland, and Koenig thought Scotland was perfect. It was the same size as South Carolina with the same size population. But whereas South Carolinians tended to be well spread out, most Scots lived in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Huge swathes had an Alaskan-like population density. And the Highlanders, Lowlanders and Islanders who made their homes there were fiercely independent. They kept themselves to themselves. They were self-sufficient. They hated gossip. And the single malt flowed like running water. If Koenig had to hide in the UK, he’d choose Scotland. No question.

He didn’t voice this. He didn’t feel like sharing what was inside his head. It was like he didn’t have permission. Telling Draper how Jane Doe thought would be a breach of trust. Instead, he took his marker and put a cross through Glasgow. Guns were for sale in Glasgow, but he didn’t think she’d have wanted to buy one so close to home. It wouldn’t have felt right. Like she was taking advantage of her adopted country’s inner-city drug problem.

Draper and Bernice watched in silence.

That left four cities: Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield. Liverpool and Manchester were in the north-west. Birmingham was in the Midlands, and Sheffield was on the other side of the country, in South Yorkshire. Koenig traced a line from Scotland coming down into England. Looked at the available routes. There were two north–south highways. The M6 serviced the west, and the A1 serviced the east. Neither was plumb-line straight. They both jigged about, connecting cities and bigger towns. On the map the highways looked like cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. The A1 began in Edinburgh, and the M6 began in Glasgow. Glasgow and Edinburgh were fifty miles from each other with good connecting roads. She could have taken either route into England without any difficulty.

In the end it came down to math. The M6 offered three chances, the A1 only one. Manchester and Liverpool were thirty miles apart, and the M6 bisected them. If you couldn’t find what you needed in Manchester, it was a thirty-minute car ride to Liverpool. And if you left Manchester and Liverpool empty-handed, you were already on the right road to the UK’s second largest city, Birmingham.

He crossed out Sheffield.

After that it was a simple case of logic. She would have tried the nearest city first. There was no point bypassing one in favour of another farther away. The longer she was in surveillance-happy England, the greater chance she would get picked up on some random camera.

Koenig circled Manchester.