The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (22 page)

       
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, trying to soothe her. ‘It’s OK, that’s the end of it. It’s over.’

       
‘I can’t hear you,’ she said through the crackling and buzzing. ‘Are you still there? Hello? Hello?’

       
‘It’s all right,’ I shouted, cupping my hand between the receiver and my mouth, trying to focus my voice and the reassurance in it. ‘It won’t go any further. It can’t. Nobody knows I was involved, Shona, and as far as anyone else is concerned the trail stops cold at Laing and Iwanek.

       
‘From what you’ve said, it looks as if they’ve got the cocaine back and that’s all they wanted. It’s over, Shona.’

       
‘I’m frightened, I didn’t realize it would end like this. Two people have been murdered, horribly murdered, and you’re to blame. What have you done? Was it worth it? Are you proud of yourself?’

       
She was becoming hysterical now, hyperventilating and I was too far away to help, to hold her until the panic left her. ‘Do you want me to come straight back?’ I asked. ‘I can probably get an earlier flight.’

       
‘No, stay where you are, you need the rest. I’ll be all right, I just worked myself up into a panic, that’s all. Be careful.’

       
‘There’s no need to be careful, don’t you understand?’ I said. ‘It’s over, finished. I’ll be back in a week anyway. How’s David?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.

       
‘He’s fine, but we’re both missing you. Take care.’

       
‘And you. And don’t worry, it is finished. I promise. I’ll see you soon.’

       
Then she was gone, my link with home broken, but I couldn’t stop smiling as I replaced the receiver because it was over, or at least it soon would be.

       
I walked down to the harbour and went along to one of the small bars with pretty white tables and blue and white striped umbrellas outside on the pavement. Inside it was cool and in semi-darkness, and I sat on a wooden stool at the corner of the bar furthest from the door and ordered a bottle of champagne. I filled a glass and raised it in front of me, towards the shaft of bright sunlight that sliced through the doorway, spearing the gloom and illuminating a black and white mongrel lying on the stone floor. The light had a religious look as it poured in, as if I was on hallowed ground, back in the church where I’d said goodbye to both my parents. I nodded towards the doorway.

       
‘Rest easy, Dad, I got the bastards.’ I drank to him, and to my mother, then I drank for drinking’s sake and then I ordered another bottle. Soon I was laughing out loud and drinking toasts to David, to Shona, to Sammy, to Tony, and to Ronnie Laing, missing believed tortured and killed. They’d catch up with him eventually, if they hadn’t already. They wouldn’t believe his protestations of innocence any more than they’d have trusted McKinley’s version of events. Laing couldn’t prove he’d been out of the country because passports aren’t stamped for visits to France, a bonus of being in the EEC. Sammy had taken the receipt from the carpark at Heathrow along with anything else that could show Laing had been in France, and Amanda Pearson had long ceased to exist.

       
His car had been seen near the drugs snatch and the hotel bills in Oban and Glasgow had been paid for with his American Express card, along with a hire car that had been dumped in the hotel carpark. Guilty as charged and sentenced to die by torture, screaming, crying and begging them to stop.

       
Then I drank to Jim Iwanek, who’d died in agony on a bed in Spain, begging them to leave him alone and telling them everything he knew.

       
He’d told them where the cocaine was, and he’d told them who I was except that the name I’d given him was Alan Kyle, and before long Kyle would be dead and then the circle would be well and truly closed.

The second week passed quickly. I worked on the tan and spent the afternoons skindiving and I even went waterskiing, the shoulder giving me no problems at all. I managed to get the FT and the
Wall Street Journal
at a local shop, usually two days late and costing five times the cover price, but I read them from front to back as I lay on the rocks, water lapping at my feet.

       
I was looking forward to getting back to work, to the technicalities of handling a takeover or a share issue, the high-level discussions with board members and bankers, raising capital and restructuring contracts. I loved the job and for the foreseeable future I was going to give Scottish Corporate Advisors, and Sammy, my undivided attention.

       
The memory of Laing and Kyle would soon fade, an episode that I’d keep locked away in the dark recesses of my mind, along with McKinley’s tortured corpse. It would return from time to time to haunt me, I knew that, and there would be times when I’d wake at night sweating and shaking after dreaming of burning cigarettes and scorched flesh, but in my heart of hearts I felt that my hands were clean and that it had been their own fault. It was behind me. It was over.

The plane touched down at Gatwick at eleven o’clock on a chilly autumn morning, the change in temperature a shock to my system after two weeks in Malta. I zipped up the linen bomber jacket that had been too warm to wear in the sun but which wasn’t thick enough for Surrey with Christmas only a few months away.

       
I went straight through the Nothing to Declare customs hall, I had just one battered leather suitcase and a duty free carrier bag with two bottles of Glenfiddich, and I was eager to get back to Edinburgh where Shona had promised to put me up until I was ready to move back into Stonehaven. On the way to the taxi rank I bought an early edition of the
Standard
and I opened it as the driver pulled away from the terminal building.

       
Her picture was on page five under the forty-two point headline ‘Police Hunt Call-Girl Killer’ and she was smiling. Her hair was longer than when I’d seen her rushing out of the door, and it wasn’t as curly. It was an old photograph but the pouting lips and large almond eyes were the same. It was Carol.

       
The story said she’d been found naked in a bath full of water with her arms tied behind her back, and that she hadn’t been raped but the police suspected it was a sex killing because of the cigarette burns on her breasts and thighs, and they were working their way through her client book which the
Standard
understood contained a host of top people including MPs, showbusiness and City names. Blood tests had shown that she’d taken a cocaine and heroin cocktail some time before she died and police were also investigating the drugs link.

       
Carol was dead and it was my fault and it was far from over because if they had found Carol they would find Sammy, and Sammy knew who I was because I’d told her everything and before they were through with her she’d tell them everything, too.

       
My mouth was dry and my hands were shaking and I felt like I was falling, a sick emptiness in the pit of my stomach and all I could hear in my head was Shona’s voice saying ‘What have you done?’ over and over again, and all I could see was Sammy’s face and her eyes as she held me and told me it was going to be OK. The empty feeling became a cold hardness inside, and gradually my hands stopped trembling and I breathed deeply and locked her out of my mind and tried to work out what the hell I was going to do.

       
I rapped on the glass partition behind the cab driver’s head and asked him to drive back to the airport, and he shrugged and hauled the cab round with a screech of tyres against the tarmac.

       
Back at the terminal I ran to the bank of payphones, rummaging through my pockets for change, sorting out the ten and fifty-pence coins.

       
I called Sammy first. There had been no mention of her in the
Standard
and there was an outside chance that she wasn’t involved. Sure. And maybe pigs might fly. As it happened she wasn’t in the flat and I did speak to a flying pig.

       
‘She’s in the bathroom, who shall I say is calling?’ asked a male voice which was obviously more used to cautioning suspects than taking telephone messages.

       
‘Just a friend,’ I said.

       
‘Actually, she’s busy at the moment. Give me your name and number and I’ll have her call you back.’ At least he hadn’t called me Sir.

       
‘Good afternoon, inspector,’ I said, taking a pot shot at his rank, and slammed the phone down. Damn. Sammy was missing, and the chances were that she’d been there when Carol had been tortured. Tell us what you know, look what we’re doing to your friend. Listen to her scream. Tell us everything about this man, Sammy. Where does he live? What does he do? Tell us about his family, Sammy. Oh my God, no. David. David?

       
I could feel the clammy fingers of panic clutching at my heart as I rang Shankland Hall, closing my eyes and praying until the sister came to the phone.

       
I fought to keep my voice steady as I asked: ‘Is David all right?’

‘Yes of course,’ she said. ‘You’ve just missed him. Miss Darvell was here to collect him earlier this morning.’

       
The sense of relief was overwhelming and I leant forward and rested my forehead against the cool plaster of the wall, allowing the tension to escape in a long drawn-out sigh. Sammy had got away, maybe she hadn’t even been there when Carol was killed. And she’d gone up to Scotland to get David out of harm’s way.

       
‘They said you’d be ringing,’ continued the sister.

       
They? They? The panic was back now, a hundred times worse than before. I took a deep breath but my lungs still felt empty and hollow. It was as if my brain had been starved of oxygen, going under for the third time, drowning.

       
‘Who was with Sammy?’ I asked eventually.

       
‘I rather assumed he was a friend of the family, or a relative of Miss Darvell. He seemed very close and took her by the arm several times.’ She paused and I could almost hear her thinking. ‘There’s nothing wrong is there?’ she asked.

       
‘No, no, nothing’s wrong,’ I managed. ‘I’m just back from a holiday and I’d forgotten that Sammy was taking David out. And the man will have been her brother. Did they say when they’d be back?’

       
I was sweating, the trembling had returned and I closed my eyes tightly. Please God let them be all right.

       
‘No they didn’t, I’m sorry. But it won’t be tonight for certain, that I do know. They were going on a trip, I seem to remember Miss Darvell saying. She did say I was to give you a message, though. It was about work, I think. Let me see, I have it written down somewhere. Yes, here it is. She said you were to arrange the transfer of the funds and that she would call you at your home at seven o’clock with the details.’

       
I thanked her and hung up but God knows how I kept the despair out of my voice, because now they had Sammy and David and I thought about the cigarette burns and this I couldn’t bury in my subconscious. My eyes stung with tears because it was all going wrong and I’d lost control, and I could still hear Shona saying ‘What have you done? All hell’s broken loose here.’

       
I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to, and I wanted to hide but I couldn’t because I was the only hope that Sammy and David had, without me they were dead and please God don’t let them be dead already.

       
I was to arrange the transfer of the funds, Sammy had said, which meant that whether or not they’d got their hands on the drugs they wanted their money as well, all £250,000 of it.

       
I didn’t have the cash, but if push came to shove I would be able to get hold of quarter of a million pounds by seven o’clock. It would mean pulling a few strings and twisting a few arms but I was in the money business so it wasn’t a major problem. But I was under no illusions about the message Sammy had left. There was no way on earth that the men who had killed McKinley, Iwanek and Carol, and probably Laing and Kyle too, were going to swap a suitcase of money for Sammy and David and let us all ride off into the sunset.

       
The money was secondary, what they really wanted was revenge and a warning to others that there had to be honour among thieves. They wanted me dead and that meant killing Sammy and David, too. Please God don’t let them be dead already.

       
I rang Tony’s office. His secretary said he was in a meeting and wouldn’t be available until late in the afternoon, but when I told her who I was she said that yes, Tony had been expecting my call and that if I would hold the line she’d go into his office and get him.

       
Tony was on the phone within seconds, and if I’d expected tea and sympathy then he soon put me right. This wasn’t the friendly back-slapping Tony I knew, he was bitter and angry and for a moment I was glad he was on the end of the phone and not standing in front of me.

       
‘You’ve seen the
Standard
?’ he roared.

       
‘I’m sorry, Tony, I’m really sorry. If I’d—-’

       
‘It’s too late for sorry,’ he interrupted. ‘Christ, did you read how she died? And it’s all your fault. You stupid, stupid bastard. Do you have any idea at all where this is going to end?’

       
‘Tony, listen to me. We don’t have time for this. Argue with me later, hit me if you want, ignore me, hate me, but first help me. I need your help now more than ever before. Just do this one thing for me.’ There was silence, and I closed my eyes and willed him not to hang up on me.