Faces, cold and stern, stared out at her. Old men sitting in beach chairs on the sidewalk, lazy hoods on the stoops, crackheads and hobos. Everyone just looking for the next drama.

The sedan rolled past again. It turned and then followed her up the street. The windows were blacked out, but she knew the kind of people who were inside. It was the second time the same sedan had rolled by and in Brownsville, that wasn’t good news. In the projects it wasn’t going to be a welcome party.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

March 8, 7.56 p.m.

Three cars drove at speed through the streets towards an address in Brooklyn, a four-story public housing block on the edge of an Orthodox Jewish area. They had traced Leo Lukanov quickly. He wasn’t good at hiding his tracks, especially when he’d been claiming welfare.

Harper was feeling afraid, the adrenalin pumping through his blood, since they hadn’t been able to contact Denise Levene. He’d sent a squad car over to her building, but they’d come back with nothing. She wasn’t at home or at work, and Harper didn’t know enough about her to guess at where she would be.

In the car, the team were staring out, steely eyed and focused. Harper knew what was going on inside. Eddie kept making light, but he felt it too. Levene had been targeted before. It couldn’t happen again, could it?

They parked side-by-side in a deserted lot and all six detectives got out and walked towards Leo Lukanov’s apartment. Harper directed Swanson and Greco round the back of the building. The rest headed up the stairs.

Leo Lukanov lived along a dark brown corridor with a single window at the far end. His apartment was a small one-bedroom, three quarters of the way along the corridor. As Harper and the team walked towards the door, they could smell marijuana and hear distant voices — an argument, followed by a baby crying. Harper took out his Glock and knocked on the shabby door. Kasper and Garcia had their guns out too. Gerry Ratten leaned against the wall. Harper glanced at him.

‘I don’t always carry my gun,’ he said.

Harper raised an eyebrow.

‘He makes a good shield, though,’ said Garcia.

‘Then keep a watch,’ said Harper.

Harper listened. There was no reply. He knocked again. Shouted through the door: ‘NYPD, open up!’

Nothing.

They looked at each other for a moment. Harper tried the door, but it was locked. They hadn’t had time to get a warrant through.

‘He might have left already,’ said Eddie.

‘We need to find him, quick,’ said Harper as he put his shoulder to the door and leaned his weight on it.

‘You do that and anything we find is inadmissible,’ said Garcia. ‘We need a conviction on this, Harper.’

Harper held his shoulder a second. He let the thought go twice round his mind, then he barged his weight against the door and it flipped open. ‘It’s about saving lives. Now let’s see if we can do something.’

The apartment was a hell of a mess. The smell was bad but the pictures and symbols were worse. Every wall was covered in neo-Nazi slogans and images. There was a large red and black Nazi flag, several large black crosses and slogans: The triumph of the will. The final solution.

‘He’s not sane,’ said Harper.

‘He’s sane enough to have kept out of prison,’ said Garcia.

Harper started at the desk drawers, Garcia went for the small wardrobe and Eddie started pulling out boxes from under the bed.

A moment later, Ratten walked in, licked the sweat off his mustache and twiddled his stubby fingers. He watched the frenetic search, then calmly walked up to the desktop and switched it on.

He laughed to himself. Loud enough for Harper to hear. ‘What is it, Gerry?’

‘You lot, searching like some cops out of the Dark Ages. People don’t keep their secrets under the bed any more. They keep them online.’

Mary Greco looked around the room, flicked through his bookshelves.

‘What are you thinking, Mary?’ asked Harper.

‘History books,’ she said. ‘He’s interested in fascism and there’s a few seminal texts here in the demented white supremacist line.’

‘He’s one of them, for sure,’ said Harper.

Gerry connected to the Internet and opened Leo Lukanov’s browser history. ‘Little bastard wipes his history.’ A couple more clicks and he was looking at the systems files, the temporary Internet files and Internet cache. ‘Voilà!’ he said. ‘Look at that — Leo likes to paint on the White Wall. This is his last post. He even calls himself Goering. Nice to model yourself on a mass murderer, I always think.’

‘No delusions of grandeur, then,’ said Eddie from the bed.

Gerry brought up the White Wall and started to look for posts by Goering. He found the latest thread. ‘Look at this shit. Pretty vicious.’ He read down the threads. ‘Now look at this. As soon as they get interesting, it goes into runic fucking symbols. I’ve been working on this site for a day and a half and I can’t understand it all. They use code.’

Harper stood up. ‘It’s going to take too long. If he’s out there, he might not be coming back.’ He pulled a bank statement from a drawer and looked down the list of items. ‘Gerry, keep at it and I’ll stick to paper. There are basically four locations on this list. There’s a bar he hangs out in, a pool room, a shop he goes to. There’s an ATM he frequents. I’m going to take a look with Eddie.’

Harper stopped and looked down at the bin under the desk. He lifted it up on to the desk. ‘Wait up,’ he said.

Harper pulled out eight small pieces of black card and placed them on the desk. Eddie and the rest of the crew came in close. Harper moved the small squares of torn black card around, matching up the rips. In the top corner, the word Valiance formed. Harper moved the three pieces that crossed the middle line. Two words appeared in front of them. Harper and the team stared in silence. They weren’t just words. It was a name. A name they knew well. Denise Levene.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brownsville, Brooklyn

March 8, 8.19 p.m.

In Brownsville, the car slowed to a crawl as it passed her, then went straight up the street. She watched it, then she turned left into a smaller street, hoping to avoid a third sweep.

She continued running through the vacant lots and low-rise housing projects surrounded by wire fences. She glanced to her side. The sedan was right there, out of nowhere. Four guys in the car. Two guys hanging out of the window, tracking her. Not gangbangers. White guys. Two she recognized as Tommy Ocks and Leo Lukanov. She looked ahead. There were no other cars on the street. No people. This was a ghost town.

‘Hey, Jew, you want to make a complaint about us?’ shouted one of them, his hands drumming on the side of the car.

‘We found ourselves a stray kike bitch,’ called the other.

‘Come on, lady, you want to stop and talk about missing Jews?’ All four men in the car laughed.

Denise stared straight ahead, her pace increasing, her heart rate speeding up. Adrenalin starting to make her muscles feel weak. Condition red just around the corner.

A baseball bat appeared through the blacked-out window in the back seat. ‘You want me to take her Jew legs out? That’ll slow her.’

‘Not yet, fool, back off,’ said Lukanov.

‘Let me take her out, man. Let’s take the bitch home and keep her for a while.’ The drumming on the side of the car intensified.

Denise kept her eyes on the road ahead. She was so scared, her legs felt like Jello — so weak and tired that she couldn’t even coordinate her strides.

‘You talk about us again, Jew, and we’ll cut you to pieces.’

The sedan drove on ahead of Denise and then stopped. Denise slowed her pace. Two guys got out of the car. They were both over six two. Tommy Ocks was dark and mean. Leo Lukanov was pale and intense. They sneered, hitched their low-slung pants, jiggled their shoulders. Behind them, the background vocals from the sedan was a low persistent abuse.