Gone Cold (16 page)

And what did she do?

Fought to save her son’s killer from the death penalty, then devoted her life to ending the practice of capital punishment in the Western world entirely.

I looked up at Gerry Gilchrist. I knew who was right and who was wrong. But, staring into Gilchrist’s eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder which path I’d have followed had I found Hailey’s abductor here in the UK, and gotten him alone in a room with me.

What would I have done?

I shot a glance at Quigg and thought, now I’ll never know.

A
crash
emanated from upstairs. Then another. It suddenly sounded like we were seated below a bowling alley.

Gilchrist and I both rose from our chairs and started for the stairs.

As we neared the second-floor landing, the sounds became unmistakable. Human bodies smashing into hard wooden furniture.

When we hit the top of the stairs, a bedroom door swung open. In its frame appeared two of Gilchrist’s guards. Holding a battered Damon Ashdown, naked from the waist up, between them.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gilchrist demanded of his men.

The smaller of the two men spoke. “While this one was in the shower, I poked through his wallet and—”

“Why the hell would you do that?” Gilchrist said. “He’s a bloody guest in my house.”

The guy didn’t have an answer. But then, he didn’t need one.

He held up Ashdown’s badge instead.

“NCA?” Gilchrist said, incredulous.

“Naw just NCA,” the smaller one said as he reached into his pocket and held out Ashdown’s wallet.

The Chairman took the wallet in his hand, opened it, quickly scanned an identification card, then locked his eyes on Ashdown.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Fucking Interpol, are you?”

Chapter 30

With guns to our heads, we were led back downstairs.

In the dining room, one of Gilchrist’s goons slammed me face-first into a wall.

Gilchrist came up behind me, close enough that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. Close enough that I could taste the Scotch coming off him.

“You’d better have a good goddamn explanation, Fisk, or you and your lot are going to die so badly, it’ll make the deaths of Bobby Glover and Joe Bananas seem humane.”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. “Damon Ashdown is only here because of me,” I said quietly. “It has nothing at all to do with you. Nothing at all to do with the National Crime Agency or Interpol.”

“So it’s some bloody coincidence, is it? Just some bloody coincidence that an officer with the NCA—the British agency that investigates
organized crime
—is sitting in
my
home, drinking
my
whiskey, listening to
my
conversations. Well, let me tell you something, Fisk, I don’t
believe
in coincidences.”

“Then you should pay more attention, Mr. Chairman. Because the world’s fucking full of coincidences.”

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch—”

“Your son Kinny told you how we met, didn’t he? He told you what I wanted from him. You yourself arranged the goddamn meeting with Rob Roy Moffett at Shotts.”

“You
lied
. The detective here said he was a bloody
used car
salesman.”

I thought about my confrontation with Ashdown in Eli Welker’s room at the Dublin Radisson.

“Because we didn’t think you’d take too kindly to his official position,” I said. “And it appears we were right, weren’t we?” I turned to face him. “But we’re in Glasgow for one reason and one reason only. Because we were looking for the girl.”

“
Were
as in past tense?”

My eyes flicked over to Quigg, who seemed to be a known quantity to Gilchrist and therefore not a threat. Hence, no gun to his head.

“Turns out,” I said, “she’s not who we were looking for.”

“And just
who was it
you were looking for? Not Zoey’s strung-out mate from Essex, I presume.”

I sighed heavily. Said, “We were looking for my daughter.”

Then I told him all of it, just as I’d told Edie on the Aer Lingus flight to Dublin. Told him about the abduction, about the investigation, about Tasha’s suicide.

I told him about the past twelve years, went into some detail about the past eleven months. Then I told him about the e-mail I received from Kati back in D.C.

The conversation I had with Ashdown.

The tour of the Stalemate in Dublin.

The reunion with my sister Zoey at the Radisson.

The photos I received from Kurt Ostermann in London.

The question-and-answer session I had with Rob Roy Moffett at Shotts.

And finally ending with our brief stay at the Tucker Bed and Breakfast in Edinburgh.

“I can vouch for that last part,” Quigg said in the moments of silence that followed my story.

Gilchrist’s phone began ringing. He walked over to the dining room table and answered it.

Meanwhile, Quigg stepped over to me. “You says before you had a gaffe in Virginia, didn’t you?”

“D.C.,” I said softly. “Georgetown area.”

“Basically same thing, innit?”

“Close.”

I was terse. Because I was in no mood to talk. After laying out my story again, this time with a gun to my head, I would have been content never saying another word. I just wanted it all to end.

“I mean, if I was to tell you that the lass in the photo—Shauna—that she told me that she done part of her primary schooling in Virginia, you might want to hear more, wouldn’t you?”

Something moved within my chest. “You said you’d known her since you were born.”

“Since we was wee bairns, true. But…”

“But what?”

“I actually only recall meeting her a couple years ago at a dance club in London.”

My pulse started pounding. “Why did you tell me you knew her since you were kids?”

“The night we met at the club, she says to me she grew up in Springburn, see? Then she asks me where I’m from. When I told her Springburn was
my
hometown too, she says, oh yeah, she ken me from way back when we were bairns. It was odd, like. But who’s gonna question a bonnie lass like Shauna, right?”

“Where does Virginia come in?”

“Well, we started seeing each other, right? While I was letting a flat in London. And we’d get to talking in bed.”

He shuddered, searched my eyes but I assured him it was all right.

“Just go ahead.”

“Anyway, Springburn starts sounding more like a cover, right? Then one night, we sees something on the telly, some spy show set in Virginia—or wherever those CIA blokes are located—and she talks about the area like she’s been there. When I ask, she lets slip that she’s done part of her primary schooling there. In Virginia, I mean. And…”

“And what?”

“And she told me something about her mother.”

“Tasha?”

“She didn’t tell me her mother’s name, right? She just told me that she offed herself.”

Chapter 31

They’d found Kinny Gilchrist.

“That was Gavin Kerr,” the Chairman said when he hung up the phone. “Kinny’s with him at our safe house in North Kelvinside. Badly beaten, but he’s alive.”

He stepped around the dining room table and approached me. Quigg moved off.

“My boy was set up,” Gilchrist said to me. “By his own best mate, Raymond Aiken.”

My eyes narrowed. “The kid from the pub?”

“The one you knocked unconscious with a Glasgow Kiss.” He placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “After some
enhanced
interrogation, Kerr got a full confession from the kid. He’d planned on killing Kinny last night, as soon as they left the Old Soak. The SUV you encountered was just backup in case Raymond botched the job.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you hadn’t intervened at the pub, there is naw question, my boy would have been killed last night.”

I bowed my head. Stared at his hand until he removed it from my shoulder.

“Well, he’s alive,” I said. “And according to Quigg here, there’s a chance my daughter is too.”

Ashdown lifted his head. He was in bad shape but nothing that appeared life threatening.

According to Quigg, Shauna had stopped by to see him just a couple of days ago on her way to Dublin. Said she was running an errand for her father. Something of vital importance. She was in a rush, only stayed with Quigg in Edinburgh the one night after hitting a pub called Bishop’s in Quigg’s hometown of Springburn.

Quigg knew little about her father. Only that he was a businessman. And that he was an older man. In Quigg’s own words, “More like a grandfather, right?”

“And how about her?” I asked with a lump in my throat. “How old is she?”

“I don’t ken. I have a ‘naw ask, naw tell’ policy, see.”

“But could she be eighteen?”

He considered this. “She’d have to be an auld soul, I think. Because she’s smart. Like, street smart, see. Worldly, I guess is the word I’m looking for.”

He hadn’t heard from her since she’d left Edinburgh. She’d had no phone and gave Quigg no contact number.

She’d told him that she only meant to stay in Dublin a night or two before returning home.

“Where’s home?” I’d asked.

“Liverpool.”

“Where in Liverpool?”

“I don’t ken exactly. I’ve never been there, have I?”

“Why not?”

“Because she lives with a fella.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Some bloke her auld man don’t approve of, right?”

“Why not?”

He hesitated. “Well, ’cause he’s a Yardie an’ all.”

“A Yardie? Part of a Jamaican gang?”

“British Afro-Caribbean is the politically correct term, innit?”

“A drug gang?”

He shrugged. “Few years back they were selling crack, right? But the Liverpool Yardies have moved on since then.”

“Moved on to what?”

He lowered his voice. “Gun-trafficking, far as I ken.”

*   *   *

“You’re gonna need assistance getting out of Glasgow,” Gilchrist said when I told him I was leaving for Liverpool.

“I can make it out,” I said. “I’m just going to need transportation.”

He nodded. “I own a dealership next town over.”

“You have bikes?”

“Dozens of them.”

Chapter 32

Twenty minutes later Gilchrist, his men, and I were standing in his pitch-black showroom. Outside there was little wind and it had stopped snowing. Still, a three-hour motorcycle drive would be risky. I needed a solid bike with exceptional handling.

My eyes immediately fell on fifteen-hundred pounds of perfection.

“She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Gilchrist said.

“But a half-million-dollar beaut,” I said.

“My boy’s life is worth at least that much, I think.”

I looked at him. “I couldn’t.”

“You could. And you will. Otherwise, I’d be insulted. And the one thing you’ll learn about Scotland, you
never
insult your host.”

Especially one who’s good with a shotgun,
I thought.

“Is she street legal?” I said.

“Do you care?”

“No.”

“With a top speed of over four hundred kilometers an hour, the filth won’t be able to come near you anyway.”

As we circled the machine, he said, “The Dodge Tomahawk was built as a concept vehicle. Dodge called them ‘rolling sculptures’ never meant to be ridden. But who the hell are they to tell us what to do, right?”

“Right.”

The five-hundred horsepower, 8.3-liter, V10 SRT10 engine, he said, was borrowed from the Dodge Viper.

“Zero to sixty?” I asked.

“From a standing start, two and a half seconds. At least in theory.”

The bike had two front wheels, two back wheels pressed together for extra stability.

“I may not be able to return her to you,” I said.

“I should hope not, Simon.” He rested a hand on my shoulder again. “You find your daughter, I trust you’ll throw her on the back of this beast and blow the bloody hell out of Great Britain for good.”

*   *   *

A half dozen of Gilchrist’s boys were straddling lesser bikes, ready to ride out of the dealership’s massive garage as decoys.

“I’ll get your sister and Mr. Ashdown safely back to London in the morning,” the Chairman assured me.

The garage door started to open, letting in the cold.

I zipped up the black biker armor jacket Gilchrist had given me, adjusted the gloves, and lowered the helmet onto my head.

“And you’ll have Kerr check in on the Tuckers in Edinburgh, right?”

“You have my word as a Scotsman.”

I thanked him.

“Thank
you
for saving my boy.”

I started the engine.

“And remember, Simon,” he said over the roar, “be vigilant. Tavis Maxwell’s reach extends far south of Glasgow. Perhaps even far south of London.”

I lowered the face shield.

Nodded my head.

Then rode out of Glasgow as though my little girl’s life depended on it.

Part Three

THE LOVERS OF LIVERPOOL

Chapter 33

“His name is Lennox Sterling,” I said into the phone.

It was dawn. I’d reached Liverpool less than an hour ago and hidden the Dodge Tomahawk in an abandoned three-story car park on the outskirts of the city.

On the other end of the phone, I could hear Kurt Ostermann trying to kick the sleep from his voice. “And the girl’s name again?”

“Shauna Adair.” I spelled the surname for him.

As he tapped away at a keyboard, I took in my surroundings. Although the port city was steeped in eight hundred years of history and boasted one of England’s more diverse populations, Liverpool remained best known for its title as the birthplace of the Beatles. I’d always been more of a Stones fan myself, but Tasha absolutely adored the lads from Liverpool, and by her sixth year of life, Hailey had come to love them too, especially the song about the yellow submarine. On road trips, she’d have me play it on a loop for hours on end. Drove me absolutely nuts.

But damned if I ever even considered refusing her request.