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assumed the girl had just stepped out of the ladies’ room when the attack took place. Perhaps there had been an earlier confrontation, but no one could say for sure.
    I opened the closet. Three nondescript suits hung alongside several Oxford business shirts and a number of ties no louder than an octogenarian’s whisper.
    “Whatever he was doing he wanted to remain inconspicuous,” I said.
    I poked around. Neither the suits nor the ties contained any tags.
    “And,” I added, “entirely untraceable should his wardrobe be searched.”
    “You think he was following her?”
    “I think he was following someone . It may have been her. It may have been someone she was with.”
    “Witnesses at the Stalemate said she was alone.”
    “Alone at the bar,” I said softly. “Maybe not alone in Dublin.”
    “She may live here for all we know.”
    “She may,” I said. “But then why do we have a John Doe as opposed to a John MacNamara or a Joe O’Malley?”
    “Bit of a jump, wouldn’t you say?”
    “With the girl on the run and the Guards on her tail, jumps are about all we have time for.” I stepped over to the nightstand and stared down at the phone. “Downstairs you looked over John Doe’s invoice. Any calls made?”
    “Not a one. None incoming either.”
    “And yet no one discovered a mobile phone,” I said. “Not on his person and not in the room.”
    “The girl might have taken it from him. I mean, who today walks round without a mobile?”
    “The same type of people who walk around with false identities, I suppose. The same type of people who cut the tags out of their suits.”
    Several seconds of silence were punctuated with a smirk. “What are you thinking, Simon? That this bloke was MI6?”
    “Would we necessarily know by now if he was?”
    Ashdown thought on it for a moment. “Not likely.”
    “Then we can’t rule it out,” I said. “On the other hand, if he was with SIS, I don’t think we’d be standing in this room right now. Do you?”
    Ashdown shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
    The hell you don’t, I thought .
    Since before its inception, the NCA had boasted about its intelligence hub, the so-called Organized Crime Coordination Centre, which amalgamated and analyzed intel not only from every other police force in Britain but from the Security Services, MI5 and MI6.
    At that moment I felt a vibration against my right leg. I removed my gloves, plucked my BlackBerry out of my right pants pocket, checked the screen, and pressed it against my ear.
    “Magda just opened the photo you sent me,” Kurt Ostermann said in his stiff German accent.
    “And?”
    “And your John Doe’s an international.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure. I’ve worked cases with him before. He’s a career private investigator. Takes jobs all over the world.”
    “British?”
    “As the Beatles. Main base of operations is in London. Whitehall to be specific.”
    “What types of jobs?”
    “Anything and everything so long as the money’s right. Missing persons, divorce, insurance fraud, the whole lot. He’s good. Damn good. And he’s expensive.”
    “His name?”
    “Legal name is Elijah Welker, but everyone knows him as Eli.”
    “Wife?” I said.
    “Four children. All still in the nest. Why?”
    “Christ,” I muttered with a sigh.
    I told Ostermann that Eli Welker had been murdered and provided him with a few of the pertinent details.
    Following a brief period of quiet he said, “So the Guards still have him down as a John Doe?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you keep it that way for twenty-four hours? I know his wife, Becky, rather well. I’d like to go to London and break the news myself. I can be there first thing in the morning.”
    “I assure you, if the Guards learn John Doe’s true identity, it won’t have come from me.”
    “If you don’t mind my asking, Simon, what are you doing in Dublin? Is this something you’re mixed up in?”
    “Maybe, maybe not.” I gave