The Reckless Engineer (16 page)

CHAPTER 20

Saturday, October 23 — Eight Days Later

GrayHounds offices were located above a greasy café close to the Fratton train station. Jeremy parked on a side street a few blocks down and walked to the address. The door next to the café was unlocked. He opened it cautiously and made his way up the narrow stairwell with slow and measured steps in keeping with the older, hairier, and heavier character that Otter had transformed him into the night before.

His knocks on the door at the top of the stairs having gone unanswered, Jeremy pushed the door open and stepped into a large reception room packed with an unmanned desk, two armchairs for visitors to the right of the entrance, a large printer-copier, a mineral water dispenser, and rows of metal filing cabinets of varying height stuck in every available space with piles of files stacked on top. The room was brightly sunlit through the large windows. The carpets were new, the furniture was comfortable, the décor had a hint of expensive taste, and the space was cluttered with piles of paperwork but clean. GrayHounds was very busy and was doing well with its business.

On the wall behind the desk two doors, each with an opaque glass etched with a pattern fitted into the wooden frame of the top half, led to two rooms, one of which smoked! The door on the right had what smelled like heavy-duty tobacco smoke, almost as thick as that from one of Otter’s on-stage smoke machines, escaping through the gap between the door and the carpet and filling out the whole office. GrayHounds obviously ignored the laws banning smoking in offices and, if the information Jeremy had thus far was anything to go by, probably many other laws.

The pungent smoke filled his lungs. He coughed and rang the bell on the desk.

Presently the door opened and a man emerged from the smoke like an angel through the clouds.

‘Mr. Brown? Kevin Cossack. My secretary does not work on Saturdays. Please come in. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?’

Kevin Cossack spoke with a nasal drawl through his teeth, which were biting (judging by the smell of the smoke) a good quality Cuban cigar jutting out from the right corner of his mouth. The question was clearly merely a gesture. The smoke already filling the office looked right out of Otter’s early music videos, and to clear it one needed something like a few powerful stage fans if not a Boeing jet engine Jeremy had worked on while at British Aerospace.

‘Not at all. Pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Cossack.’

Everything about Kevin Cossack was average and grey. He wore grey trousers and a white shirt slightly greying from use. He was of average height (about 5’ 9” tall), with an average frame, and he was of average weight. He had dark brown hair of a normal length and an average face that was neither unpleasant nor especially good looking. The only remarkable features about Kevin Cossack, not counting his unusual profession, were his somewhat unusual name and the fact that he smoked Cuban cigars.

It would be cruel of him to suppress one of them, Jeremy thought, as he shook the investigator’s hand and followed him into his office.

‘My clients generally call me K.C., Mr. Brown,’ Cossack said, suppressing the other.

‘Charles, please call me Charles.’

Jeremy took the comfortable leather chair across the desk from him, politely picking one of the top quality Cuban cigars offered in their wooden case and putting it away in his inner jacket pocket for later. Once again everything in the room was comfortable and expensive, but used with the carelessness and untidiness of a man of easy affluence who did not think it was particularly special and could easily replace it. Jeremy put Maggie’s photographs and a few papers with some basic details he had compiled on the dark green leather inset of the teak desk.

‘Do you get this sort of request often, relationship matters I mean?’ Jeremy probed, pushing the photographs
and
document towards him.

‘That’s the bread and butter of my business, Mr. Brown, mostly wives or girlfriends spying on their cheating husbands, but sometimes guys spying on their wives or girlfriends. Background checks; chasing alimony and child support. Only recently I had to find the father of a little girl who had long disappeared before she was born, for the mother.’

He shuffled through the photographs, briefly looking at each one.

Clearly Cossack liked to sell the services of his company hard, bragging about his past achievements. He could make use of this. Cossack had no reason to believe he could make any connection that identified who his clients were.

‘Maggie, that’s the girl I’ve been seeing, is a registrar at Southampton Hospital. The consultant I suspect she is involved with is a Geordie from the North. Maggie has mentioned to me that she may have to do about six months of specialization training at a hospital in Edinburgh under him as a step to becoming a consultant herself. I guess it would be too difficult for you to follow them up there, try and keep an eye on her?’

‘Don’t worry about that, Charles. The father I mentioned, I found for the mother from this big oil family in Scotland recently, I had to start the search for him in Aberdeen; eventually found him in Dundee where he had built a mechanical business repairing vehicles and oil & gas drilling machinery under an assumed name.’

Gavin Hunter! Cossack had found Gavin Hunter for Caitlin, living in Dundee! According to the email exchanges Jeremy had from Caitlin’s laptop, Gavin was now staying at The Royal Atlantic located on the Portsmouth south seafront. Was that the only work Cossack had done for Caitlin? What else was in the files at BlackGold that needed to be hidden from the police in Levent’s garage, and what was in Caitlin’s company SUV that needed such a thorough clean-out?

Cossack proceeded to query Jeremy on what he needed. Jeremy made up requirements as he went along, pretending to be a rich suitor who had met and dated Maggie a few times in London wanting to take the relationship to the next level. He asked Cossack to find out what Maggie’s current romantic involvement with the Geordie was (who, in reality, was the real reason for Maggie’s “taking a break” from their relationship about two years ago to “be by herself”) and if it were serious. If she were involved with this guy could GrayHounds set a honey trap for him that would prompt Maggie to break off that relationship?

Cossack had finished studying the material Jeremy had given him and was now continuing his hard sell.

‘I am a former US Marine, Charles. I had to leave the service due to, let’s say, some life-threatening health problems. I got out of it because I didn’t want to go to war in Iraq. I ran into some financial problems in the US and came here to avoid the creditors some sixteen years ago when I met my wife. Never went back. We have a network of freelance investigators whom I call in whenever I need a job done, some of them ex-military men or ex-police force, and others whom I have trained myself. They are from all over the country. In fact, I have got men in North America, South America, Spain, and Portugal. Some of my investigators are female, so of course I can set a honey trap.’

A honey trap! What the hell was he doing getting ready to sink
that
low to get Maggie? Was he not just a step away from telling this guy to “get rid of” Gregory? A few grand slipped into this guy’s palm and it would be done for him, he was sure. He could see the logic in it, how anybody could do it. Jack, Caitlin, McAllen, Marianne, Peter . . . nobody was above it. One did not see the chasm between normal life and the state of abject insanity because one slipped a little bit at a time, and the next step was a small slip and almost a natural state of minor transgression from the present one.
Get a bloody grip,
he told himself.

‘The costs of the operation will be higher, however, if we have to venture far from the south of England. Can you afford it? I ask for the majority of the money up front.’

Cossack had raised his seat, sat up, and leaned forward on his elbows and forearms crossed flat on the desk, looking at Jeremy with sharp eagle eyes.

Ah, a third peculiar feature, when you got around to noticing it: Cossack had olive-green eyes with dark pupils that he seemed to be able to dilate at will, and which seemed to take in everything about you when he needed. The fourth, he just noticed, having previously passed the nasal drawl off as being due to the bite on his cigar, in this part of the world was the American accent.

‘Well, I can pay you for today’s consultation session now, K.C.’ Jeremy averted his gaze. ‘I’m going away on business from the Southampton airport tonight. We can get things started when I get back in a week or so. If you could email me a cost estimate for the job along with your bank account details, I shall arrange to have it paid on account by then. I think GrayHounds is good for this job. I really like Maggie, so money is not an objective.’

Jeremy gave him the address of a web email account he had created the day before. He was worried about starting off his “investigation” on Maggie immediately. There was a chance that Cossack could find his true identity through her and, in turn, his connection to Jack and the McAllens. Cossack would immediately inform Caitlin, his client. If the killer or killers were one or more of the McAllens they clearly had an army of unscrupulous men like Cossack at their disposal to unleash on anyone who stood in their way. If they had killed Michelle and framed Jack, what would they do if they knew Jeremy was on their tracks?

In fact, he could now be standing before the very man who had planned and executed the murders for her, or them!

In his peripheral vision Jeremy was suddenly aware of Cossack’s eagle eyes searching him with some puzzlement. The man obviously had good intuition. Had he smelt a rat? Jeremy shuddered, unable to suppress the mild fear that suddenly engulfed him.

‘It’s getting chilly out there now.’ Jeremy tried to cover it up with a nervous laugh.

He quickly gathered his things and got out of the building.

After leaving Cossack’s den Jeremy walked about for another twenty minutes or so through several lonely residential streets to make sure he was not being followed, before walking back to his car. He needed the walk in the crisp fresh air and the bright wintry sun to get his thoughts together also. These were dangerous men. Maybe he ought to hand over all the information he had to the police and let the professionals handle this. However, Cossack had men with police connections on his payroll. Was he not likely to have contacts or informants in the active police force also? If so, Jeremy’s approaching the police could result in their hastily covering their tracks. The truth may never be known and it might put
him
in danger.

Harry had expressed surprise at the speed with which the police had moved to charge Jack on circumstantial evidence, however strong it may seem, even before the full toxicology report and before any detailed investigation on any of the other suspects with strong motives who had been engaging in very suspicious activities just before the murders. No, the only way to save Jack,
if
he were innocent, was for Harry and him to quietly continue the search for the truth.

The Royal Atlantic was only a few minutes’ drive towards the south seafront from where Jeremy was parked. It was 3:20 p.m. A quick call to the front desk confirmed that several of its famed double en-suite rooms were available for the night. Jeremy put his car into gear and headed towards the south Portsmouth beach. The sight and sounds of the sea lifted his spirits with every wave. He was looking forward to enjoying the acclaimed luxuries of The Royal Atlantic, where Caitlin McAllen had her lover hidden away, for a night or two.

CHAPTER 21

Many Years Ago

Gavin Hunter was born and brought up on the Aberdeen north-sea shores by his mother Agnes “Nessie” Munro and Grandma Munro, his father having abandoned them when he was five years old. Nessie worked two jobs to support her mother and her baby. She cleaned the McAllen Industries’ factory floors by day, and waited tables at a local nightclub by night. When Gavin’s grandma succumbed to pneumonia and went to heaven when he was just twelve years old, Nessie had to give up her night job to look after Gavin. Money was tight, but she had one less mouth to feed and care for now, and they managed with hardly any comforts but also without much hardship. Grandma Munro had left them her big old house set on two acres of old family land just across the road from the bay where the river met the sea. True, it was falling apart in places, but it gave Nessie enough security to give Gavin a happy childhood playing on the beaches, to keep him in school to finish his A-levels, and to support him through a two year Higher National Diploma in mechanics that would ensure he could get a skilled job on the offshore oil rigs.

When Gavin was twenty he got an entry-level job as a motorman assisting the chief mechanic to carry out the maintenance and the inspection of the mechanical equipment systems on board offshore rigs. It was an apprenticeship position and Gavin took no time in picking up the skills required to be a mechanic. The package offered to him was a four week rota such that Gavin had to work over fourteen hours a day offshore with no allowed visits off the rig for two weeks, and then he got two weeks off. Initially the total separation for two weeks was very difficult for both mother and son, but they soon adapted to it, looking forward to spending the time off together every fortnight.

One cold winter day Gavin returned home from the rig for his two week break to find part of the roof of their house fallen down with a pile of snow. Snow was falling in and it was impossible to keep any part of the house warm. He was terrified to find his mum cold with a painful cough and a chest infection. Gavin rushed Nessie to the hospital, images of Grandma Munro sick in bed and dying of pneumonia haunting his mind.

On the way home he walked into a local betting shop and put down the salary he had collected just the day before on a horse his mates on the rig had won a small fortune on. The winnings would give him just enough to get the roof fixed before Nessie had to come home and to last them until his next paycheque. He was not going to allow Nessie to go back to work in the factory until he was sure she was fully recovered.

The bet went wrong and Gavin lost everything. With a desperate and fearful heart Gavin walked the city from bank to bank trying to get a loan. It was the betting shop that eventually came to his rescue, giving him a loan for the full amount he needed. He left the shop relieved, unaware that he had just stepped into a slippery slope.

The betting shop piled on 25% interest. When they increased it to 35% on a whim a month later Gavin walked in and demanded to see the manager. The loan sharks who owned the shop threatened to beat up his sick mother and smash down the entire roof of his house in the middle of the bitter Aberdeen winter if the money demanded were not paid. The fight that ensued ended with Gavin in police custody. The crooked cop on the loan sharks’ payroll kept him locked up for two days and put him in front of a magistrate with false evidence exaggerating his part in the fight. This landed Gavin in jail for eight weeks, with two years of probation and eighty hours of community service to follow.

Trapped in prison Gavin broke down in despair, worrying about his sick mother in the middle of the bitterly cold winter. If the loan sharks had done the rest of what they had threatened, she would be dead by the time he got out. If anything happened to Mama he would kill the men responsible and jump in the North Sea, he swore to himself.

While her son was in jail Nessie had gone to Douglas McAllen, cold and ill with her chest infection, and begged her employer to help them get their life back from the loan sharks. McAllen had been enraged at the treatment of his employee and her boy. He had sent his loyal henchmen to deal with the loan sharks, and not with any finesse or further payments, Gavin had learned. It was McAllen’s main “trouble-shooter” Skull, a big bald Scott with a scorpion tattoo wound half way around the back of his neck and a tattoo of a human skull on his right hand, who turned up to pick him up from prison. Skull told him that the loan sharks’ debt had been wiped off, and his own men had fixed the roof and insulated it for them for further warmth.

‘Look after ye mother, me lad.’ Skull patted him on his back. ‘And ye owe me boss McAllen like. If he ever need ye it be only fair that ye step up and pay yer debt boy.’

‘Thank you for looking out for Mama, Mr. Skull.’ Gavin almost fell onto his knees with gratitude. ‘If Mr. McAllen or you need anything that I can do please do not waste a moment before coming to me. There’s nothing I would not do for him.’

Caitlin was the love of Gavin’s life. He loved her from the moment he first laid eyes on her, he was sure, standing on the test-bed platform in the shallows off the Aberdeen shores anxiously urging her three technicians struggling to assemble the newest sonic drill out of the McAllen Industries’ factories to get it right.

The three lads were clearly used to doing this onshore and in factory conditions. He watched them for over fifteen minutes while the roaring north seas below them and a raging north-west wind in their faces had taunted them with defeat after defeat, doing nature’s best to resist giving up the treasures it had hidden and guarded deep below for eons to another massive shining metal machine still in pieces. Gavin remembered his debt to McAllen and stepped in and took the job off the hands of the amateur technicians. He set up the drill and lodged it into place in no time, taking off his shirt and using it for friction. He had worked McAllen machines on actual rigs in deep sea in the most hostile of weather conditions and this was child’s play for him.

After a successful demo of the equipment, the sale clinched, they went out for a drink at his favourite pub to celebrate. He remembered well the exact moment they had first connected when Caitlin lost her balance getting down the ramp to the boat that was to take them back to shore. He had caught Caitlin, breaking her fall, and lifted her down as their eyes met and locked. She had smiled shyly, her cheeks suddenly flushing. They had been drawn to each other from that moment on by something pure, deep, and invisible.

Gavin and Caitlin managed to keep their relationship secret from her family for nearly three years. Nessie welcomed Caitlin into their home and the old house by the beach was their sanctuary. Gavin loved sitting on the porch with Caitlin and watching the north seas roar and lash at the rocks during storms, and send milky ripples towards them at other times while Mutt rolled over on the pebbles and let the warm sun stroke his tummy. He found Caitlin lovingly repairing unused parts of the big house and redecorating the old rooms with some new comforts for them. Days passed filled with bliss though the inevitable day that Caitlin’s family eventually found out lurked like a distant storm cloud at the back of his mind.

The first message from Douglas McAllen came in the form of an old enemy. The loan sharks from the betting shop, two men, turned up banging on Gavin’s door one Friday evening. Alarmed, Gavin opened the door and stepped out only to be handed a credit note for £5000 for his old debt.

‘But I was told that the debt has been wiped off,’ Gavin protested. ‘Besides, I owed you only £4200 in total, even with your outrageous interest.’

‘We did a favour for an old friend at the time, but me boss’ old friend ain’t yer friend anymore, ye fuckin’ idiot.’

The older man roared and brought down the bat in his hand on Grandma Munro’s rocking chair on the patio. Mutt got out of the way and crawled under the deck chair, his tail tucked away, whining and barking in a high-pitched tone.

‘The rest is for the interest ye accumulated over all this time. If it ain’t paid in full in a week we will be back again next Friday evening. Ye don’t want us back here next Friday boy, an’ if we have to come here again we will be bringing the roof down, literally.’

The man hurled back the bat for a second onslaught on his mother’s beloved chair.

‘Please, wait a minute. Give me the time. I will pay. I will pay,’ Gavin held onto his hand and appeased the men.

The man brought his free hand around curled into a fist and connected with Gavin’s left cheekbone, knocking him back onto the floor against the patio wall. His heart filled with fear when Nessie ran out at this point and kneeled down to protect him. The men threw down the bat and the credit note at Gavin, now holding his bleeding nose, and turned around and left.

‘A message from me boss’s ole friend. This is a warning and, believe me, ye don’t want the second one,’ the biggest thug shouted as they left.

Caitlin drove over to Gavin’s in a panic later that night.

‘Papa knows, Gavin. He says you are a criminal, an alcoholic, and a gambler and that you are corrupting me. He asked me what kind of life I would have with “an oil-rig labourer” out at sea for weeks. He’s told me to never see or speak to you again. Oh god, what happened here?’

Gavin explained everything to Caitlin. It was true that it was he who had taught teetotaller Caitlin to smoke and had made her acquire a taste for bitter beer.

‘Maybe there is something in what your old man says,’ he said, his eyes tearing. ‘Perhaps it is best that we part and that you return to your world.’

‘I don’t care,’ Caitlin cried. ‘I was a robot. You brought me alive.’

By now Gavin was a highly skilled mechanic earning over £62,000 annually on the rigs. He said he could pay off the debt by selling his truck because he had to get the money at short notice.

Caitlin would not hear of it. She gave Nessie £5000 in cash, asking her to wipe off Gavin’s debt with it. She stayed the night with him, their first night together, telling him how she had told her father that she did not care; that she loved him and she was keeping him.

The second message from Douglas McAllen came a few weeks later, this time delivered to the oil rig Gavin was working on by Skull in person. Gavin was called into the main office of Georgie the Operations Manager. His heart sank the moment he saw Skull, bald with a tattoo of a scorpion wound half way around the back of his neck, a skull on his right hand, standing next to Georgie. After a few ominous introductions Georgie put the papers of his criminal record before him and announced he was dismissing Gavin with immediate effect.

‘Wait a minute,’ Gavin pleaded and tried to explain the events that had led to his arrest years ago.

It was then that Skull put photographs of his mother on the table. Indecent photographs of her dancing topless on a bar.

‘Did ye think that she was waiting tables all those nights at the nightclub like? Well this is the kind of club it was, and this was what she was doing. Yer mother is a whore and she does not even know who or what kind of scumbag yer dad is. We have just now fired that whore from the McAllen factories and it is me duty to bring this sort of background to the attention of me fellaw employers,’ Skull taunted him.

Gavin tore the photographs into bits and lunged at the man in a rage, only to be held back by two other men. Gavin was a big lad, but so were Skull’s entourage and most other men on the rig.

‘You are to leave the rig with me friend, McAllen’s man here, on his boat immediately, Gavin. I will have yer things delivered to yer house. Me hands are tied here and I have to wish ye all the best.’ Georgie patted him on the back and spoke kindly.

Skull and his two men drove Gavin to the shore on a McAllen boat and then in a truck to an office in a big warehouse and sat him down before Douglas McAllen.

‘Come in, come in, son. I am sorry if this is very traumatizing for you. I have a headstrong daughter who is as stubborn and as her dad. So I can understand that what happened might not have been entirely your fault.’

It was the first time he had seen his mother’s powerful employer. Something about him made Gavin sit quietly and listen.

‘I am sorry, sir,’ Gavin heard himself say, in spite of himself.

‘You have two options here, son. I think you understand that neither you nor your mother will ever work here in Aberdeen again. Also if you see or speak to my daughter again your foreman will testify to your assault at the rig today. With your previous conviction you will be thrown in jail for at least a year, maybe more. I want you to consider very carefully how your mother will survive with no income while you are in prison. And you never know what might happen to you in prison.’

McAllen paused and looked at Gavin with a menacing expression.

Gavin wanted to lunge forward and shake him by the neck, but he held his tongue and remained motionless, staring at the floor.

‘I can help you, however, if you let me. I am told that your old house is a prime piece of property. It is a listed building in fact and it is quite charming. I want to buy it and renovate it. I need a mooring dock for my boats and your land is ideally placed near the delta of the river for me to build one. I’m going to offer you two million pounds to take it off your hands, son. Your service record at the rig has been excellent. So I shall also speak to your manager and make sure that you and your mother both get glowing references.’

Gavin remained quiet. He believed that the actual worth of the property was no more than 500 grand, maybe 600 grand with the land and the antique furniture; but to him and Mama the old house was priceless. His mother’s family had lived in that house and loved it as far back as they knew; and memories of Caitlin were everywhere around it.

‘The only condition is that you must leave Aberdeen at once and you must not initiate any contact with my daughter, not even to say goodbye. Look at it this way, son. When you are in jail you will not speak to or see my daughter again anyway. So there is no option in relation to her here. You either do it voluntarily, or have it enforced upon you. Do you understand?’

Gavin kept looking down and eventually nodded quietly.

‘It isn’t true,’ Nessie protested, showing him pictures of his dad with their young family. ‘It is true that I had to do some exotic dancing at the bar when the money was tight, but only about a couple dozen times, that was all. Your dad worked the oil rigs and loved you when you were a baby.’