She could see why this would be a developer’s dream – there were wide-planked wooden floors, high ceilings with graceful moldings, and beautifully proportioned rooms. You just had to look past the dust and the tumbledown walls and ceilings, not to mention the smell of garbage and damp. But the potential was there.
When she could get her bearings, Eulalie headed for the stairs. She didn’t want to risk using a torch in here because the moving light would be visible from the street. She picked her way up five flights of a Victorian service staircase. There were parts where the stairs were completely caved in, but she jumped lightly over them and continued on her way.
The roof was her target. Eulalie hauled herself up through a trapdoor onto the roof of the building precisely four minutes after she had entered it. The wind nearly knocked her off her feet. Rain fell heavily and steadily, punctuated by gusts of wind that drove it sideways into her face.
For the first time, she started to think of the weather as an adversary rather than a helper. Yes, it would conceal the noise of her rooftop entry, but if it prevented her from ever reaching that rooftop she would have a serious problem.
The rain had made the rooftop as slippery as an ice-rink, and the winds must be reaching gale force by now. She had to lean into the wind to stop herself from being blown over. It was time to rethink her strategy.
Her original plan had been to jump the gap from the building she was on now to a neighboring warehouse that stood next to Pier 19. A narrow canal of water separated the two buildings, leaving a gap of six feet for her to clear. Normally this would have been no problem, but tonight she would be trying to jump into the teeth of the gale. There was every chance that the wind would pluck her up and fling her five stories down into the canal. She didn’t fancy her chances of surviving that.
Eulalie walked the perimeter of the rooftop, considering her options.
There was another building she could try, but the jump would be more challenging. Its rooftop was only slightly lower than the one she was on now. The two buildings were separated by a narrow alleyway. Just measuring it by eye, she thought it was about ten feet. It was a jump she was confident of making in normal circumstances, but the rain-slick surfaces and crumbling parapets were a challenge. Only the wind was working in her favor. It was blowing steadily from a south-easterly direction, and would give her a much-needed assist to make the jump.
She checked the time. Another eight minutes had passed that she hadn’t bargained for. It was now or never.
She chose a solid part of the parapet as her jumping-off point and paced out her runup on the roof, removing loose obstacles from her path.
It was just like the long jump at school, she told herself. You paced out your runup. You made sure you jumped off your strong leg. You went high rather than straight, and you flung your upper body ahead of your legs.
Her heart pounded unpleasantly as she began her runup. Her feet left the parapet and she was flying through the air, not looking down at the drop below her. She felt a gust of wind pick her up and shove her onto the next building. Then she was tucking and rolling and staggering to her feet.
She stood up and took a few deep breaths. Her hands were shaking from the adrenalin, and that could be dangerous.
She followed the curve of the roof until she was looking down at her target – the roof of the warehouse at Pier 19. It was dark and there were no signs of life. A couple of cars were parked in the road, but they were all empty.
Eulalie stood and watched the warehouse. As the minutes ticked past, eight o’clock came and went. Nobody went in or out. For a moment, she thought she saw a glow of light through the windows. It was quickly extinguished. But there was so much lightning flashing in the sky that it could easily have been a reflection.
If anyone intended to keep this appointment, they were already inside, probably lying in wait for her to come in through one of the street-level entrances. It would help to know how many people she was facing.
The warehouse was a squat, low-ranging building that covered almost half a block. It had probably been used to store grain or sugar in the old days. The roof was curved, not flat, which would add an extra challenge to her jump. She hoped it wasn’t as slippery as it looked. The constant rolling of the thunder and drumming of the rain should cover the sound of her landing.
There was a small window high up under the eaves of the roof which looked as though it led into an attic space of some sort. She had spotted it on Google Street View and planned to use it as her point of entry.
It was eight-fifteen. The rain was so heavy that it was starting to penetrate the miracle fabric of her outfit.
The roof of the warehouse gave her no bad feelings, so she jumped down on to it, turning once in the air like a gymnast executing a dismount from a high bar. It was a drop of about fifteen feet. She landed hard, buckling her knees under her and shoulder-rolling to absorb the impact.
Then she stood up and listened. It was hard to believe that no one in the warehouse had heard her arrival. It had seemed to her as though the whole building had shaken under the impact. But her landing had coincided with a mighty crack of thunder, followed by several rolling afterclaps. She hoped that had been cover enough.
The window was on the northern point of the roof, so she made her way there quickly, treading lightly in a kind of crouch. The window was slightly open and wide enough for an agile person to slither through. Research had told her that the warehouse had no ceiling, but a series of crisscrossing wooden beams to provide support to the structure.
The window led into a narrow crawlspace which then led onto one of the beams.
Eulalie crawled to the end of the attic and looked down.
She was kneeling above a large open space that smelled of dust and damp wood. Everything was dark, but she could make out halos of light coming through the windows from the street outside. They cast strange shadows onto the warehouse floor. As Eulalie watched, she was able to distinguish three shapes that seemed to belong to human beings. The longer she watched, the more convinced she became that she was looking at people.
As if at a prearranged signal, the three shapes moved, and she could clearly see that they were men carrying assault rifles. They walked in a loose circle around the large warehouse floor, as though patrolling. There was no doubt in Eulalie’s mind that they were looking for her.
Did Emma’s murderer really intend to have her shot dead? Or was this level of rent-a-thug security just overkill on the part of someone who knew her reputation?
Eulalie knew there was no way she could deal with so much firepower. She decided to stay where she was for now. Eventually, they would realize that she wasn’t coming, and they would go home. She would follow one of the thugs and catch him by surprise. She would get him to tell her who had hired them. Yes, that felt like a solid plan.
She crawled further out of the attic onto the wide wooden beam. It gave her a better vantage point for watching the men below. She settled down to wait them out.
As she watched the men changing position again, all the blood seemed to drain out of her head, leaving it ringing and light and empty. Everything slowed down, even her heartbeat. She heard the sound of a crack coming from far away. Then a bullet was travelling towards her, not straight, but revolving in the air. It would hit her shoulder if she didn’t get out of the way.
The sound and color and air rushed into the room and everything went back to its normal speed. Eulalie pulled herself back into the crawlspace one second before the shot was fired. It pinged harmlessly off the wooden beam she had just been sitting on.
She took her pistol out of the soft nylon holster she had strapped to her hip. The shot had not come from the floor, but from one of the beams at her own level. She looked across the warehouse to where a dark figure sat on a wooden beam. She two-handed her pistol, sighted, and fired. The dark figure jerked, and she knew she had hit it. The figure didn’t fall, so it was probably roped onto the beam for safety.
The men on the ground were running around in circles and shouting. They had shouldered their weapons and were waving the barrels around, desperately looking for the source of the shooting.
Eulalie watched the figure on the roof beam for a moment. It wasn’t moving.
She stood up and ran lightly along the beams across the whole length of the warehouse. As she reached the dark figure, one of the men on the ground spotted her.
“There she is!”
A hail of gunfire peppered the roof above them. Eulalie crouched down next to the figure and whispered in his ear.
“Antoine, you idiot. Tell your thugs to stop shooting before they kill us both.”
“Stop!” His shout went unheeded.
“Stop, fools!” His voice rang out in a gap in the gunfire. “Stop!”
The shooting stopped.
“Hold your fire. You’ll hit me. If you idiots could hit the side of a barn, I’d already be dead. Hold your fire, I say.”
The men on the ground lowered their weapons.
Eulalie kept her pistol snuggled up against Antoine’s left temple.
“Where are you hit?” she asked.
“Right arm. You winged me.”
“Let me see.”
He shifted awkwardly. Eulalie was right. He had strapped himself to the beam with a body harness. As someone who had grown up in the village, he would be a good climber, but he was clearly not taking any chances.
Antoine removed his jacket with Eulalie’s help, moaning and groaning all the while. She shone her torch onto his upper arm where a flesh wound was bleeding sluggishly but steadily.
“In and out,” she said. “There’s no bullet in you, but we need to stop the bleeding.” She picked up his jacket and used a jagged nail to make a tear in it. Then she ripped a long strip off the arm and tied it tightly around his injury.
With his arm bound, his breathing became less ragged and he was able to sit up.
“Thank you.”
“You can thank me by telling me who hired you.”
“I don’t know. No, I really don’t!” he added in alarm as the muzzle of her pistol scraped against his temple. “The order came through electronically as an end-to-end encoded message. I was to meet you here with some of the boys and give you a fright. Put you off your investigation.”
“You shot at me.” Eulalie gave him a shove that nearly made him lose his balance. “You could have killed me. How was that giving me a fright?”
“I was just going to wing you, like you did me. I was expecting you to come in from the roof, and when I saw you coming out of that crawlspace, I lost my temper. You shouldn’t have hung me out the window like that.”
“You shouldn’t have killed a man,” she flashed back. “I’m still mad at you for that. You give the village a bad name when you go around doing stuff like that.”
“Well. we’re even now. I shot at you. You shot at me. And now you’ve patched me up. Help me down from here and we’ll call it quits.”
Eulalie was strongly tempted to leave him to his henchmen to sort out, but she was the one who had shot him, so she owed him.
“I’ll get you down in a minute. If you know anything – anything at all – that could help me figure out who hired you. I need to know it.”
“All I can tell you is that payment for the job came from off-island. And nowhere close either because it took days to clear. It wasn’t from anywhere that we have reciprocal banking arrangements with. So not Madagascar, not France, not England, and not South East Africa. I don’t know if that helps.”
Eulalie thought for a moment. “Actually, it does. It helps a lot.”
Chapter 23
Eulalie had just lowered Antoine to the ground and handed him over to his henchmen when the screaming of sirens became audible over the sounds of the storm.
“Now look what you’ve done.” Antoine rounded on the thug who was currently supporting him. “Shooting the whole place up. It must have sounded like someone was trying to start a war in here.”
“Let’s get out of here, boss.”
Antoine gave Eulalie an uneasy look. She shrugged.
“Go. I’m not in any position to stop you. And I’d just as soon you didn’t start a shoot-out with the cops.”
They turned and ran out the back way. A moment later, Chief Macgregor and his men burst into the warehouse. He looked startled to see Eulalie.
“What’s going on? We got reports of shots coming from this warehouse. Either shots or thunder, the caller wasn’t sure.”
“It was gunfire.”
“Are you okay?” He switched on a torch and shone it over her body, looking for injuries.
“I’m fine. It was Antoine and three thugs. They were carrying R4 rifles. I’ve never seen those on the island before. We need to find out where they’re getting them. They’ve gone now.”
“You let them get away?”
Eulalie held up the little pistol she was carrying. “I wasn’t in any position to stop them. Did you hear the part about the R4 rifles?”
A frown was gathering on Chief Macgregor’s brow. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I got a message to come here. I told Fleur to give me an hour and then to call you.” She slapped her forehead. “Fleur! What time is it?”
“Just gone nine o’clock.”
“I must text her that I’m okay. She’s probably phoning the police station right now.”
While Eulalie texted her friend, Chief Macgregor directed his officers to fan out and search the warehouse. He pointed out a roof beam that was so riddled with bullet holes it looked moth-eaten.
“You should come back to the police station with me to get a hot drink. Maybe get out of those wet clothes too. You must be freezing.”
The wind had lowered Prince William Island’s usually balmy temperature to the mid-50s.
“My clothes will be dry in a minute, but I could use some coffee.”
“Is there any point in our searching the area for Antoine and his friends?”
“Not unless you have a motor launch with you. I’m pretty sure I heard a speedboat start up. I think they escaped along the canal.”
Chief Macgregor seemed resigned. “Give me a minute to finish up here and I’ll take you back to the station. I feel as though I don’t even have half the story of what went on tonight. Stand by to be debriefed, Ms. Park.”
“Anything for you, Chief Macgregor,” she said under her breath as he turned away to give instructions to his officers. “Well, almost.”
He took her back to the police station in the unmarked car he used for responding to active situations. It was about a thousand times more comfortable than the E-Type. As he blasted the heating, she felt herself starting to thaw out.
“You’re steaming.”
“What?” She looked down at herself. “Oh, you mean literally. Yes, this fabric repels water. It got a bit overwhelmed in this storm, but it’s doing the job now.” As she watched, wisps of steam rose from her clothes.
The rain was still falling in a continuous sheet of water that was being blown sideways by the gale.
“I’ve mobilized a disaster management team to start clearing the roads tonight when the rain lets up, so people can get to work in the morning. They were surprisingly ungracious about being asked to do their jobs.”
“You’re shaking things up, Chief. They are used to responding to storms after days have passed, not hours. You are going to have to apply your boot to several asses before they get used to responding quicker.”
Chief Macgregor nodded. “That can be arranged.”
When they got to the police station, Chief Macgregor wrapped her in the blanket they reserved for hypothermia cases and handed her a hot mug. She took a sip and choked.
“What is this?”
“Sweet tea.”
“That’s not all it is.”
“I may have put a shot of Scottish whiskey in there too. The combination is good for shock.”
“I’m
not in shock.”
“You are a bit. I can see it in your pupil size and the way your hands are shaking.”
“Getting shot at can do that to you.”
He sat opposite her and rested his gaze calmly on her face. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Eulalie took another sip of the doctored tea. It burned its way down her throat and settled in her belly where little fingers of warmth began to spread to her limbs. She was beginning to realize that a Scotsman’s idea of a shot of whisky was more generous than most.
“I got an anonymous tip-off to come here tonight. It was a phone-call,” she added as he opened his mouth to ask. “It came to the office and Mrs. Belfast picked it up. It was a recorded message with an electronically distorted voice, telling me to be at the warehouse on Pier 19 at eight tonight if I wanted to find out more about Emma’s murder.”
“And you didn’t tell me about this because …?”
“I wanted to find out who was behind it, and I knew that a police presence would scare them off. I arranged with Fleur to contact you if she hadn’t heard from me after an hour.”
“Which was still plenty of time to get yourself killed.”
“I know. But I’m not easy to kill. I needed to do my job, Chief, and this seemed like the best way.”
Chief Macgregor’s nodded, but he looked worried.
“I came in from the roof. There’s a window under the eaves that leads into a small crawlspace. Antoine was expecting me. He had strapped himself to one of the roof beams and he took a shot at me. I ducked, and he missed, and I fired back at him. I got him in the fleshy part of the arm. At that stage I didn’t know who I was shooting at.”
“Do you think he was trying to kill you?”
“He says he only wanted to wing me, but who knows?”
“What happened then?”
“His thugs on the ground started shooting up at the roof. They couldn’t see anything, so they were firing wildly. When Antoine managed to make himself heard, he got them to stop. I tore strips off his jacket and bound up his wound.”
“Did he tell you who hired him?”
“He says he doesn’t know. The job was booked electronically and anonymously through an end-to-end encrypted message. All he knows is that the payment came from overseas, and not from one of the countries that has reciprocal banking services with us.”
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 42