Whisper For The Reaper by Jack Gatland (best book series to read TXT) 📕

gave this information happily. And yes, Bayer Ingelhelm fired me. But the trial medicine wasn’t what you think. It was to do with my parentage.’

‘DS Kapoor mentioned that you’d spoken to her about that,’ Declan nodded. ‘That you found Karl was your real father.’

‘No,’ Ilse stated determinedly. ‘That’s incorrect. I said that I came to England to learn if he was. To arrange a paternity test. But I knew Rolfe couldn’t be told, and he’d learn through official channels if I did such a thing. I learned that my company had a drug that could detect the BRCA2 gene in DNA samples, and so I tried to pay off a technician to test Karl’s DNA. My bosses found out, and I was fired. And after that, Rolfe, learning everything, came to England. I agreed to work as his assistant, to stay close by and warn Karl. After all, he was possibly my father.’

‘Was he?’ Declan pulled out his phone, reading an email recently sent to him. ‘DCI Monroe emailed this afternoon, telling me he spoke to a man, a guard who worked with Karl and Wilhelm Müller.’

‘There were many guards.’

‘This one claimed to be there at the time, and said that Rolfe was the illegitimate child, not you.’

Ilse sat silently for a moment, her mouth opening and shutting.

‘I can’t—‘ she stopped, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It can’t be, I would never—‘

‘Doctor Marcos can organise a proper DNA test for you, to answer the question once and for all,’ Declan suggested, looking to the door of the canteen where Karl Schnitter now stood. ‘I’ll leave you alone now.’

‘Rolfe wasn’t an evil man, Mister Walsh,’ Ilse muttered as Declan rose from the chair. ‘Whatever he did at the end.’

Looking across the canteen, Declan nodded to Karl and left through the other door. There was something that wasn’t connecting here, and he still needed to find out what it was.

More importantly, if Rolfe was the illegitimate child, was he murdered by the real Wilhelm Müller?

23

Glitch In The Coding

There was something wrong with the note.

Billy couldn’t work out what it was, but there was something there, just out of reach, that he wasn’t seeing properly. It was like a line of code that had a mistake in it; he knew there was a mistake, and he could see how the code should have worked, but for some reason it wasn’t visible.

There was a motion at the door to the Library as Declan and Anjli entered the room. Anjli’s eyes widened when she saw Billy at the table.

‘I thought you’d be long gone by now,’ she said. ‘The case is over and you’re off the clock.’

‘Is it though?’ Billy shrugged. ‘I don’t think it is. And besides, I booked the room until tomorrow so I have until eleven to check out. Thought I’d make use of the spa for a change.’ He leaned back, stretching. ‘These chairs aren’t ergonomic, and I’ve been staring at a monitor for the last two days.’

‘Why do you think it isn’t over?’ Declan asked as he walked over to the screen, seeing a photo taken of Rolfe Müller’s suicide note. ‘You think it’s fake?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Billy admitted. ‘It’s not fake, but at the same time it feels it, yeah?’

‘Go on,’ Declan sat down beside him. ‘Work through it with me.’

‘The note, it’s off.’ Billy zoomed in on it, showing the handwritten letters on the page. ‘There’s a glitch here in the coding. Something that passes as right, but isn’t right.’

Declan stared at the screen as Billy continued, reaching to the side, where he had a sheet of photocopied paper.

‘I’ve examined Rolfe’s notebook and the handwriting and ink matches,’ he explained. ‘Well, I was told by PC Davey that the ink matches. The handwriting though, although similar, is different because it’s in German. I needed something better to compare it against.’ He held up the sheet of paper. ‘When they arrived in Hurley, Rolfe contacted Maidenhead nick to let them know he was here, and asked for copies of all data related to Patrick Walsh’s investigation of the Red Reaper. They never replied to him, but that’s irrelevant, as we now have an example of Rolfe writing in English.’

‘It’s pretty much identical,’ Anjli said, comparing the two pieces. ‘Are you sure these aren’t both written by him?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Billy admitted. ‘But as I said, There’s a glitch in the coding and it’s annoying the hell out of me.’

‘Say that again,’ Declan looked to Billy.

‘What?’

‘What you just said.’

‘There’s a glitch in the coding and it’s annoying the hell out of me?’

‘It’s annoying the hell. Not it is.’

‘I don’t get you,’ Billy looked to Anjli, to see if she understood where Declan was going with this. Declan, undeterred, carried on.

“Look,’ he pointed at the sheet sent to Maidenhead. ‘I am not taking no for an answer.’ Now compare that to the suicide note. ‘I wanted to honour my father, but I’m not the man he was’. And here, ‘But I’ve also had the urges’, while on the report he says ‘But I have decided to pursue.’ Even here, where on the note he says ‘I can’t go back now’, in the report he says ‘I cannot be stopped in my belief’. They’re contractions. It’s. I’ve. I’m. All the way through the suicide note, but not the request to Maidenhead.’

‘It’s because English is a second language,’ Anjli exclaimed. ‘You learn it correctly. Contractions like these are like slang. They’re corruptions of the language, something you pick up over the years.’

Declan thought back to his first conversation with Rolfe Müller, when he introduced his sister.

‘Ilse is here because she has a much better grasp of your language than I have. She is here to ensure I make no communication mistakes when talking to your police.’

‘Ilse was better at English than Rolfe was,’ he muttered.

‘And she always spoke in contractions,’ Billy nodded. ‘I remember that.’ He stopped as an idea came to him. Moving to the side of the