Tear of the Gods by Alex Archer Page A

clothes and returned with them to the sink, scrubbing them in cold water. A few minutes of effort got most of the bloodstains out. There were a couple of small spots here and there, but she’d didn’t think they’d be noticeable. She’d buy something new the first chance she got, anyway.
    Her chores done, she collapsed onto the bed, pulling the sheet up over her. Within moments sleep had claimed her for the night.

15
     
    As Annja was falling into bed in a London hotel room, Detective Inspector Ian Beresford was arriving at the dig site outside Arkholme. The local authorities had just completed the difficult task of freeing the bodies of the deceased from the waters of the bog and transporting them back to the main camp for examination. The mess tent had been commandeered for the task; large tarps had been laid out across the dirt floor and the bodies carefully placed on the tarps in neat, orderly rows. Standing just inside the entrance, Beresford watched as teams of forensic personnel moved among the dead, photographing the bodies, cataloging personal belongings and trying to identify just who it was they were dealing with. This was complicated by both the predations of the local wildlife and the fact that some of the bodies had been in the water for more than twenty-four hours.
    A twenty-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Beresford had transferred to the Counter Terrorism Command inside Special Operations just a few years before. In that short time he’d made a name for himself, cracking some high-profile cases and making the department look good, despite the fact that he had little to no interest in personal aggrandizement or celebrity. Beresford liked the intellectual challenge of solving high-profile crimes and he was good at it; that was all he needed to be a reasonably happy man.
    That was why Home Office had roused him in the middle of the night and sent him to supervise the investigation when the Territorial Police hollered for help.
    There was only one problem.
    As far as he could tell, this had absolutely nothing to do with his primary mission, namely bringing to justice those engaged in terrorism, acts of domestic extremism and other related offenses.
    He’d had a chance to review the initial report filed by his sister agency and recognized that it was more than likely going to be a political nightmare for the department. Among the presumed dead were a well-respected professor from Oxford, a dozen or more graduate students from the same university, a handful of foreign nationals and the host of a widely popular cable television show from the United States. It would be a three-ring circus for whoever had to coordinate all of the inquiries from the foreign police departments, but just because there were foreign nationals involved didn’t necessitate calling in CT Command. So far, it was still just a homicide case.
    A homicide with multiple and, in some cases, high-profile victims, but a homicide just the same.
    Stop whining and get to work, Beresford, he told himself.
    Knowing the techs had at least another hour, maybe more, before they could give him anything worthwhile, Beresford left them to their work and stepped back out into the night air. His assistant, Clements, was waiting.
    “Well? What are the locals saying?” Beresford asked.
    “To be frank, no one really has a clue. A million different theories, but nothing worth hanging our hat on.”
    Beresford grunted. That was to be expected. If they knew what had happened, they wouldn’t have called him in in the first place.
    “Give me the most likely scenario as you see it.”
    “Right,” Clements said, and took a moment to gather his thoughts. The two had only been working together for a few short weeks and Clements was constantly, but unnecessarily, trying to prove himself to Beresford.
    “Majority vote among the first responders, as well as our own people, is that it started out as a robbery and went wrong somehow. Rather than