Gone Cold

by Douglas Corleone

  The blast took out the first SUV’s front left tire and caught Maxwell’s men completely by surprise. They hadn’t been expecting incoming fire.

  Ashdown slammed on the accelerator as Alan took out the second SUV’s front left tire and a moment later we were out of the drive.

  Ashdown aimed the Ford Fiesta toward the city center just as the remaining two SUVs roared to life.

  One got its front right tire shot out as it attempted to turn around. The other made it out of Alan’s line of fire just in time to give chase.

  In the rearview I watched Alan Tucker duck indoors as a pair of Maxwell’s men ran up the front path after him. With Brenda upstairs phoning the police, I had a feeling they’d both be fine.

  We, on the other hand, had a tail.

  And it was coming up fast.

  * * *

  Though I knew much more about motorcycles than I did cars, I knew enough about the Ford Fiesta to fear that Maxwell’s men would catch up to us sooner rather than later. The Fiesta was an economy car, and unfortunately, fuel efficiency wasn’t a virtue when it came to car chases. At least not brief car chases. And I fully expected this one to be brief.

  The Fiesta boasted a four-cylinder engine with a five-speed manual transmission. Traveled zero to sixty in just under ten seconds. Not exactly the Bugatti Veyron that Edgar Trenton’s driver used to pick me up last year on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles after I watched the Dodge Charger I was chasing soar off a cliff.

  So even though Ashdown seemed to be a fine driver, we needed an edge, some significant advantage to counter the disadvantage of running from a Range Rover in an old couple’s early-model American hatchback. Something. Or we’d never make it back to Glasgow alive.

  So as Ashdown turned onto Regent Road, I lowered my window.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at me.

  “Whatever I can,” I said as I unhooked my seat belt.

  I tucked the HK into my front waistband and struggled to pull myself up with my single good hand.

  “Are you mad?” Ashdown shouted. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “You’re going to get us all killed if I don’t.”

  I turned my body, leaned out the window, the wind batting me hard in the back of the head.

  I removed the HK from my waistband. Steadied my hand as I aimed for the SUV’s engine, and fired.

  And missed.

  A moment later, the SUV’s passenger-side window glided down and a gun materialized, just as one had the previous night on Mollinsburn.

  I ducked back inside just as it fired.

  “I need a better angle,” I said to Ashdown.

  “Oh, right away, sir!” he yelled.

  “I’m serious!” I shouted.

  “You’re mental is what you are.”

  I turned and stared at him. “If we get out of this alive, you and I are going to have a grave conversation about cooperation.”

  He glanced at me, said, “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  “As death itself.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Let me ask you something, Simon. Do I rub you the wrong way?”

  I looked away from him. “Everybody does. Now get me that angle.”

  “And just how do I do that?”

  “A wide right turn. But first you need to slow down, let them come right up on us. Then accelerate roughly a hundred feet before the turn to put some distance between us and them. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Two minutes later, he said, “Right turn straight ahead.”

  I lowered the window, pulled myself up again as Ashdown slowed the Fiesta. Once I had purchase, I told him to punch it, and punch it he did, curling to the right toward a freeway on-ramp, giving me a sixty-degree angle to take my shot.

  Only we’d offered them a pretty decent shot ourselves.

  And they took it.

  The shot slammed into the passenger-side door, missing me by mere inches.

  I took a long, deep breath.

  Aimed at the SUV’s engine.

  And fired.

  Smoke immediately billowed from under the Range Rover’s hood on either side, effectively blinding them. The vehicle swerved one way then the other and finally began to slow.

  And continued to slow until it was just a solitary dot of light in our rearview mirror.

  I ducked back inside, glared at Ashdown.

  Grudgingly, he looked back at me and muttered, “Jolly good show.”

  Chapter 28

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  Our dining room is set up like a war room. Rendell had offered to set up his team a few miles away at a Hollywood Video that had recently gone out of business. But I’d insisted they set up here so that I could play some role in the investigation.

  Not that they have afforded me much of one.

  I sit in the laundry room leafing through my copy of the file, trying to make sense out of what I’m seeing. As a federal marshal this is new to me. I’ve never before worked an investigation like this.

  I’m certain they’re keeping some things from me. And I’m equally certain they have their reasons. To them I’m a civilian. A broken father with a wife rapidly spiraling toward a nervous breakdown.

  According to Rendell, eyewitness accounts have ruled out the possibility that Tasha willfully or negligently killed our daughter and disposed of the body. The forensics team has thoroughly searched the premises and found no traces of blood or signs of a struggle. Hailey was seen by a neighbor retrieving our Washington Post that very morning. That same neighbor confirmed that our Ford Explorer hadn’t moved from the driveway in the previous twenty-four hours. So although Tasha’s polygraph was inconclusive because of her deteriorated physiological state, her story, as she’s told it numerous times, checks out.

  Likewise they have been able to rule out all friends and family who attended Hailey’s sixth birthday party. Tasha’s parents were at home, one arguing with a neighbor, the other on the phone with Tasha. The parents of Hailey’s friends all happened to be at the school auditorium taking part in a bake sale, of which Tasha had bowed out. Of the neighbors who attended, two were at the mall (and caught on video camera), one was at work (confirmed by her boss), and two had taken a road trip to the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey (during which they had accumulated a hefty pile of receipts). Of my friends who attended, Jimmy the U.S. Marshal was in Bucharest with me, and Terry had opened his bar promptly at eleven A.M. as he does every Saturday morning. Thus, not a single fingerprint or fiber collected on our property has proven to be of use.

  All delivery personnel—FedEx, UPS, U.S. Mail—who have been in the neighborhood over the past ninety days are being questioned, as are employees of our gas, electric, water, cable, and phone companies and the local sanitation department.

  A map in the file shows that there are 903 sex offenders in the D.C. area, plus ninety-six “non-mappable” offenders for a total just shy of one thousand. I’ve been assured that each and every offender who meet the criteria will be questioned by local law enforcement. A list of the most likely candidates will then be passed on to the FBI for further investigation.

  Meanwhile, I’ve downloaded a recent New York Times article that attempts to profile a child abductor and now that I’m alone I can finally read it without worrying its contents will cause Tasha to go into shock.

  Ninety-five percent of child abductors, the article says, are men. They tend to be unmarried with few friends. Unlike the great majority of child molesters, who coerce their victims by winning over their trust, child abductors rarely have contact with children in their daily lives.

  They have poor social skills.

  Use child pornography.

  And are willing to use violence.

  Roughly forty percent of the time, men who abduct children for sex kill their victims.

  I suddenly feel sick. I’m sweating and my head is swimming. I set the file folder on the floor and try to take deep breaths.

&nb
sp; Think of something else, something positive.

  With the aid of Tasha’s parents, we’ve offered a reward of a quarter of a million dollars for Hailey’s safe return.

  It’s no use.

  I jump off my chair, scramble to the washing machine, open the lid, and vomit into it violently.

  Chapter 29

  Back at Gerry Gilchrist’s house in Glasgow, the adrenaline wore off, and it felt as though I’d lost Hailey all over again. Sitting at the dining room table, I wanted nothing more than to close myself off in a room with a handful of Zoey’s pills and a bottle of Dalmore. But the flurry of activity made that impossible, since I still felt responsible, not only for Zoey and Ashdown but for Kinny Gilchrist as well.

  And Kinny Gilchrist was missing.

  “He’s not at the Old Soak,” the Chairman said, slamming down the phone. “I have Kerr checking all the hospitals and listening in on his scanner. But if someone in Maxwell’s pocket picked him up, we can expect nothing but radio silence.”

  “Kerr?” Ashdown said.

  “Detective Chief Constable Gavin Kerr. He’s one of mine.”

  Ashdown nodded but said nothing.

  Meanwhile, Doc Lochhead dropped to his haunches in front of me. “Give me that paw,” he said. “I’ll need to change the dressings, won’t I?”

  “Forget it,” I told him. “I’m fine.”

  Zoey stood a few feet away, her arms crossed over her chest. “Let him do it, Simon. Please.”

  I bowed my head, held out my injured left, and Doc Lochhead went to work.

  Gilchrist finally took his usual seat at the table. One of his bodyguards set a glass of whiskey in front of him and he pushed it away, then thought twice and put it to his lips.

  Ashdown asked, “Mind if I take a quick shower? It’s been a rough seventy-two hours.”

  “Help yourself,” Gilchrist said.

  Zoey moved to a corner of the room where Angus Quigg was chatting with one of Gilchrist’s men. Since our arrival Quigg had made fast friends in the Gilchrist household.

  “If Tavis Maxwell harms one hair on that boy’s head…” Gilchrist said to no one in particular. He took a pull of whiskey and turned to me. “I never finished telling you about Arthur Thompson, did I?”

  I shook my head. Doc finished his handiwork and moved off in the direction of the kitchen, no doubt for a drink of his own.

  Gilchrist said, “I told you how Junior—Fat Boy, they called him—was finally gunned down outside his residence, the Ponderosa.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, two of the hard men thought responsible for the killing were Bobby Glover and Joe ‘Bananas’ Hanlon.”

  I flexed my fingers as best I could, thought I felt a bit of life returning to them.

  “A few hours after Junior’s funeral, young Bobby and Joe Bananas were found outside a pub in east Glasgow. Each of the boys had a bullet in the back of his head. Plus an extra one fired up his fucking anus for good measure.”

  “Christ,” I muttered.

  Gilchrist shook his head. “There are naw saviors in Glasgow, Mr. Fisk. Not when someone brings harm to your boy. Naw, in fact, that wasn’t even the full extent of their injuries.”

  As I listened I couldn’t take my eyes off Angus Quigg and what might have been.

  Gilchrist leaned back in his chair and took a drink. “Earlier that day, Bobby and Joe Bananas had been stuffed in the trunk of a car. One of the cars that took part in Junior’s funeral procession, in fact.”

  “Dead or alive?” I asked.

  “Alive, but barely.” He emptied his drink, said, “In the middle of the procession, that car came to a complete halt. Four men exited the car and removed young Bobby Glover and Joe Bananas from the trunk. Laid them side by side in the middle of the road.”

  I didn’t want to hear the rest. But Gilchrist was going to tell it.

  He said, “When the procession resumed, Junior’s hearse—driven by none other than Arthur Thompson, Sr. himself—ran the bloody fuck over his son’s assassins.” Gilchrist smiled. “Slowly,” he added. “So as not to kill them.”

  In that moment I thought of the old woman, Edie, from my Aer Lingus flight from D.C. to Dublin. Her number was still in my wallet. Her boy had been killed too, shot dead in a Baltimore Burger King for a couple hundred dollars.

  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 flick
ed 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?”