The Reckless Engineer (28 page)

Back in the living room Skull was starting to stir. He might have internal injuries and Jeremy had to call an ambulance soon. As he took his backpack and turned around to leave, Skull regained consciousness and tried to speak. On an impulse Jeremy pressed his right forefinger against his temple.

‘Tell me, Skull, when did that bird ye and yer boss tried to pay off reject ye offer. Think hard, when?’ Jeremy pulled out the tape across his mouth.

‘Please don’t shoot, Boyard. I will git yer money.’

‘Listen, Skull. When did that bird reject McAllen’s offer?’

‘Two weeks before she died. I have a wife and two kids, Boyard. Don’t shoot. I will git yer money. Lemme go.’

That was a few days after Caitlin’s letter was written with the divorce offer. But if he were Skull he, too, would deny any involvement in the murders that would give Boyard and Wilson a further hook into himself for blackmail, instead promising to get then the money they wanted. He had no time to get a backup of the disks to verify anything for this man could be seriously injured or his men could come up any minute. Harry would have to rely on the police findings with whatever Skull had in here.

‘Okay. You and your boys are safe, Skull. We are going now and we will send Heineken up. Sit still and stay quiet.’

Jeremy put the tape back on over his mouth. The police sketch from Edwards was still in his backpack with details of Edwards’ team on it, asking the public for information on the suspect. Jeremy wiped it clear of any prints, ripped another bit of duct tape, and stuck it on Skull’s lap. He looked around the living room and the study to make sure he had left nothing behind but the sketch and the duct tape.

Before exiting the flat, Jeremy texted Darren from the kitchen: “Come up to the hotel room immediately. Everything OK. Act cool. — Jeremy.”

He closed the kitchen door, called 999 on Skull’s mobile, and asked for the police.

‘There’s an injured man in the flat above The Rock & Oar pub at 21 Regent Quay. He needs an ambulance. He is also the murder suspect in the Michelle Williams murder that the police in Hampshire are looking for. The only entrance to the flat is from the ramp and stairs at the back. The key to the door is taped to the underside of the metal balcony. The suspect’s men are working in the pub below. You will have to send in plainclothesmen and take them by surprise. You will need to hurry.’

Jeremy paused for acknowledgement and repeated everything slowly and carefully a second and a third time, then hung up, wiped the phone, and left it on the kitchen counter. He closed and locked the bathroom window that had let him in.

He then stepped out to the metal balcony, closed and double locked the door with the key, and then taped the key to the underside of the balcony. The police had master keys for everything anyway. With secure PVC door and windows locked and the elevator disabled, no one would be able to get in until the police arrived.

Jeremy found it much harder to climb up than to come down; his sneakers kept slipping. In the end, he had to take his shoes and socks off and climb up barefoot, gripping the edges of the bricks with his toes. He should have practiced this or bought climbing shoes, he thought, forcing himself not to look down.

Darren was already in the room and gave Jeremy a hand up into the room. They had taken their luggage to the car earlier that day. All they had to do was put Jeremy’s shoes back on, take the backpack and the rope, and leave.

They left the two keys on the empty reception and walked out the front door of The Sugarhouse. As Darren and Jeremy took the long way around the block to the car, avoiding walking past The Rock & Oar, they could see several unmarked cars pulling up at the entrances to the pub and the hotel behind them, and as many as twenty men entering the two buildings. Further down the street, they could see marked police cars pulling up on the curb, out of site from the pub, and the distant flashing lights of an ambulance.

Jeremy got in the rental and threw his case in the back.

‘Get us back to the Marriott, Darren. We are getting out of here.’

They left Aberdeen by the early morning train to Edinburgh a few hours later. On the train Jeremy disposed of the reel of duct tape. Once in Edinburgh he printed out the report he had typed on the train in a small print shop detailing Skull and of McAllen’s close connections to the murder, but excluding anything that might reveal his own contact with Skull. He put it in the first class post to Inspector Edwards. They then took the connecting return flight Darren had rescheduled from Edinburgh under his real name in order to avoid the police or Skull’s men possibly waiting for two suspicious Sugarhouse guests at the Aberdeen airport.

CHAPTER 38

Monday, November 1 — Seventeen Days Later

Their plane flew a brilliant sunny sky, descended through layers of bright silver clouds, and touched down at the Southampton airport a few minutes before two in the afternoon.

Maggie picked them up at the airport.

After avoiding three of her calls over the weekend, Jeremy had given in to his sense of guilt and picked up the fourth. He had to talk to Maggie about the Cossack matter anyway.

‘Hello, Maggie. Sorry I missed your calls, but I’ve been up to my ears bailing my new business partner, Jack, out of his problems. Harry’s handling his defence, you know, and I’m doing some investigations to help him?’

‘Yes, I heard. How’s Jack holding up? Harry called and asked me if I could pick up his investigator and you at the airport tomorrow. I have a week off work right now. It would be good to see ya. I haven’t seen you in ages.’

Harry liked Maggie. He thought she was good and “grounding” for him, unlike Jack who had told him to “get out of it cold turkey” a long time ago. That was only because Jeremy had hidden the problems in their relationship from Harry, hidden them from everyone but Jack, and Caitlin who had been there with Jack. Jeremy could see Harry trying his hand at some subtle “matchmaking”, suspecting he had been with another girl who had got him drunk last week.

‘Are we still in a relationship?’ he’d joked. Or rather he had put the serious question nagging him at the back of his mind as a joke.

‘You are the one who never bothered to call or stop by even though you’ve been in the area for weeks,’ she’d said, a hint of injured feeling creeping into her voice. He resented her sense of entitlement to his time.

‘Anyway, Jack’s a nervous wreck, though he’s pulled himself together a little now. I’ve had to take over his projects at Marine, and I have also had to pick up some slack for him at McAllen BlackGold. I’ve been tied up with all that, Maggie. Besides you are the one who moved out on us. By the way, how is your boss, Gregory? Has he made you a consultant yet?’

Maggie had kept silent but stayed on the line the way she liked to do when she wanted to avoid an argument, but still wanted to continue the contact.
No hint of where I stand with her,
Jeremy had thought with a sigh.

‘Anyway, I need to talk to you about something. So yes, please could you pick us up at the airport, Maggie?’

Maggie met them near the entrance to the arrivals concourse dressed in black fitted chinos, a dark blue denim jacket thrown over a white T-shirt, and Asics running shoes, and greeted Jeremy with a warm hug.

She looked and felt good. Did she really hold their hug a few seconds longer? He caught a whiff of lavender in her hair.

‘Maggie this is Harry’s investigator Darren Skipper. Darren, Maggie Harris. You wouldn’t mind dropping Darren at the train station, would you? He’s taking the train back to London.’

‘Not at all. Did you guys have a good time in Aberdeen?’

‘Can’t complain.’ Darren smiled and shook her hand politely.

Back at her place Maggie made sandwiches while Jeremy took a shower; bacon and tomato for him, cheese and tomato for her. His things were still laying around the house, but he also found man’s shorts, jumper, and jeans in her cupboard he was sure did not belong to him. He took a pair of fresh blue jeans and a white T-shirt out of the left hand half of the second drawer of her dresser, deciding against going bare-chested the way he would have done if he had been trying to get her into bed. They needed to talk.

In the living room Maggie had set the sandwiches on the coffee table by the hearth and was opening a bottle of white wine. It was a hint she wanted more than to talk, or she would have made tea—tea for her, coffee for him.

‘So how come you are not a consultant yet? Who do you have to sleep with to get there? And how’s your boss?’ Jeremy persisted, more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Maggie pretended to ignore it.

‘Greg’s in Edinburgh. I still have to do a year of specialization, Jeremy.’

‘In Edinburgh with Gregory?’

‘Part of it, eight months starting January. You can come and visit me if some of your work is going to be up in Aberdeen. Harry mentioned you had some new contracts for Radio Silicon.’

It was Jeremy’s turn to say nothing. They ate sandwiches in silence sitting at the opposite ends of the three-seat couch.

The
re might as well be a big block of ice in the middle seat
. He got up and put the coffee maker on in the open plan kitchen, avoiding the wine. He felt exhausted by the tug on her heart, back and forth, with Greg.

‘What are we doing here, Maggie?’ Jeremy took the bull by the horn, stubbornly demanding clarity.

She stayed silent for a few minutes as he made coffee.

‘It’s complicated, Jeremy. But we are good friends, aren’t we?’

That he had heard before.

‘Sure.’ He finally shrugged, thinking:
More like your backup, your insurance policy
.

Jeremy changed the subject and told her the story behind his dealings with Cossack as succinctly as possible.

‘I was trying to come up with an excuse for calling Cossack on the fly and your name was the only one that came to mind, Maggie,’ he explained apologetically.

She looked annoyed at first, pursing her lips and shaking a forefinger at him.

‘He will just do a standard background check on you. You know, finances, criminal records . . . that sort of thing,’ he said, trying to put her mind at ease.

She eventually shrugged.

‘No harm done, as long as you don’t take it too far. And be careful. He could be a killer.’

Maggie came up from behind and put her arms around him. They made hesitant, tense, resentful, and familiar love. Maggie suddenly felt weird after Annie. A bit too heavy on him, a bit too long under him, a bit too dark against him.

Afterwards, sated and confused, Jeremy touched base with Harry and they decided against playing with fire by setting Cossack, a possible agent of murder, after Maggie. Cossack was a hardcore professional with eyes and senses as sharp as an eagle’s. Jeremy could not think of another strategy short of covertly bugging his office by which he could get more information out of him; and Harry refused to allow him to do that without a warrant.

‘Let’s put what we have already got, sanitized enough to hide our involvement, in a report to Detective Chief Inspector Edwards. He has been on the news asking for information from the public about the three unknown men seen near the scene of the crime—Skull, Cossack, and Gavin Hunter. It will get to him tomorrow, just in time to make Jack’s pre-trial hearing in two days’ time very interesting.’

Accordingly Jeremy typed up his second anonymous report on Cossack, Caitlin, and Gavin Hunter, outlining what they knew about Cossack’s work commissioned by Caitlin, his home and office addresses, Levent and his connection, Levent’s address, the pile of evidence from BlackGold lying hidden in the garage at Levent’s address, the copy of Caitlin’s letters to Michelle taken from the scene of the crime by Cossack; and about Gavin Hunter, and his nest in The Royal Atlantic with Caitlin. Jeremy printed out the report and an address label from the local library as he had done for the first report, and put it in the first-class post to Edwards. Now they had to sit back and wait for their second time bomb to explode.

Jeremy stayed the night with Maggie as he was expected. The atmosphere in the house was the same as it had been since they kind of wandered back together, on and off, after Maggie first broke up and moved out nearly two years ago—familiar, but not entirely comfortable. And on his part resentful from the years of effort to forge the relationship back together and to keep it from falling apart; a halfway relationship in which Jeremy had learned to accept and turn a blind eye to Gregory’s presence in it.
Love should be easier than this
. Had all that been in vain? A slow pull on the plaster off the raw wound?

Jack came to pick up Jeremy around mid-day on Tuesday and stayed for lunch in Jeremy’s Audi, coughing violently from the chill he had caught developing into a chest infection.

‘Have you heard the news? Skull, MacAllen’s henchman, has been arrested. The police turned up at our gates again this morning to take Douglas McAllen away for further questioning under arrest, with Laird in tow. Leana, Caitlin’s mother, rang to say that her house, the McAllen factories, and Skull’s pub, hotel, house and other buildings he owned have also all been part of a massive on-going search. Laird’s partner McKinley is there with them.’

Jeremy nodded. The first time bomb had exploded.

Jeremy drove them back to the BlackGold offices where he dropped Jack off, still coughing violently from his chest infection. He then drove to keep his appointment with Alan at AirWater Marine.

On his way to Marine, Jeremy pulled up to the Portsmouth Marriott which was only a few blocks away and across the road from the Marine offices. He checked himself in for two nights. He had a busy day ahead the next day, attending Jack’s pre-trail hearing in the morning and Sally’s Section 2 appeal for discharge in the afternoon. With the upheaval at the McAllen mansion that had already happened and with more commotion to come, staying with Jack was not a good idea.

On the way out Jeremy stopped in the hotel lobby and called Annie on a whim. He invited her to dinner at the Marriott with him. He would pick her up after work by the pier near The Royal Atlantic at 5:00 p.m.