Siren Song (Harrison Jones and Amy Bell Mystery Book 1)

by Rebecca McKinney

  Amy peered out the window. ‘Harri, look.’

  On the other side of the harbour, they could see the Coast Guard officer limping slowly along the quay, smoothing his hair. He didn’t appear to be in a hurry to catch the hydrofoil.

  ‘Glad I didn’t kill the bugger,’ he muttered.

  ‘That was a bloody perfect punch, by the way.’

  ‘Still think I can’t fight my way out of a paper bag?’ He massaged his knuckles.

  ‘I didn’t know about the black belt when I said that.’ Amy took his hand and examined it. ‘A bit bruised.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said, leaving his hand there longer than was necessary. Their eyes met for less than a second and he felt something like adoration for her. He might have kissed her now, if not for Lucy’s brittle presence. She was silent and dazed.

  ‘Lucy, you alright?’

  She nodded almost imperceptibly, hugging herself. She was shivering. ‘I don’t know.’

  Amy opened her rucksack and pulled out her spare jumper and leggings. ‘Here. Put these on.’

  ‘I’ll have to go to the toilet.’ She started to stand.

  ‘No.’ Harrison grasped her arm before she could escape. ‘Stay here. Just slip them on under your dress.’

  She sat heavily again, staring at him. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Kostas brought us here.’

  ‘How did you make him do that?’

  ‘Let’s just say we convinced him it would be in his best interests to help us.’

  ‘You came all the way from Edinburgh for me?’

  ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘Why?’ Confusion leaked from her like pus. She was like a soft creature on the beach, dying inside its beautiful shell, and he wondered if she was beyond saving. There was more pain in her than he could take away.

  He folded his hands under his armpits to avoid touching her again. ‘Like I said, your mum hired us.’

  ‘Does my dad know?’

  ‘No.’

  Her chest lifted and she began to cry silently, retreating inside and closing around herself. The hovercraft cruised away from the harbour, lifted itself and began to speed back in the direction of Athens.

  Amy turned away from the window and leaned in. ‘Victor’s on the move.’ She tapped the Perspex pane and Harrison glimpsed the Circe’s sleek, white prow cutting south, away from the island. They watched it glide toward the silver-lit horizon. ‘Into the wild blue yonder before anybody asks questions.’

  ‘That cop was working for Victor,’ Lucy said, swiping at her eyes and gathering herself back together.

  ‘We gathered that,’ Amy replied.

  ‘He gave me back to them when I jumped overboard. I wish you’d shot him.’

  ‘I was tempted, believe me.’

  ‘There were other girls on that boat. Victor transports them around and sells them on. He knows I know it.’

  ‘Lucy ...’ Harrison paused. It was difficult to know how she might react, but she deserved the truth. ‘They’re all part of it. Victor, Kostas, and your dad. Some of the girls end up in Britain. I found some of them working at a property your father co-owns with Kostas in Leith.’

  She leaned her head back against the seat cushion and smiled at the bitter knowledge. ‘My dad. Fucking depraved bastard.’

  ‘He may be that, but right now I think he’s the one who’s going to keep you safe. Victor doesn’t want to hurt the daughter of his associate. It would be bad for business.’

  ‘How do you know that? How did you even know they’ve met?’

  ‘It’s a long story. Just trust me.’

  ‘So why go through the whole I want to marry her routine?’

  ‘A face-saving exercise for Victor, to avoid bruising his ego. Unfortunately, that part didn’t quite go to plan.’

  ‘And he gets away with it as well? You’re going to let him go?’

  ‘I have contacts in the police. They’ll do their job. We’re here to get you back home, and that’s it.’

  ‘I don’t have a home,’ she said. ‘What about Tim? My boyfriend. Ex…’ She shook her head. ‘He probably never wants to see me again. Where is he, by the way? Do you know?’

  Harrison and Amy glanced at each other. ‘I’m afraid we don’t,’ Harrison said.

  It was nearly dark and growing colder by the time they disembarked at Piraeus. They huddled for safety among the crowd of passengers, moving as quickly as they could away from the quay and in the direction of the taxi rank. Kostas walked alone ahead of them, steadfastly refusing to look back at Lucy. Harrison could feel her silently cursing him and crying out for him at the same time, echoes of the same rage he had first sensed when he picked up the photograph of her in North Berwick. It was betrayal and poison: love turned inside out.

  Kostas’s Range Rover was waiting for him on the other side of the road. He climbed into the passenger seat, and it did a U-turn and barrelled toward them. They kept walking but the vehicle rolled alongside them and the door swung open.

  ‘Get in,’ Kostas said pleasantly. ‘I will give you a lift to the airport.’

  ‘Keep walking,’ Harrison muttered, but his words had no impact on Lucy. He reached for the cloth of her jumper as she turned toward the door. ‘Lucy, don’t.’

  She moved robotically, pulled away from his grasp and got in, leaving Harrison and Amy no choice except to go with her. Harrison heard Amy cursing inwardly.

  ‘You are not safe on the streets,’ Kostas said as they drove away from the port.

  The air inside the car was heavy with threat. In the rear-view mirror, Harrison looked up and caught the eyes of the driver flicking back at him: it was the young man from the co-operative. Kostas and his man had no intention of taking them to the airport.

  What now, he heard Amy thinking. He let his hand slip over hers. She was afraid, but still rational, trying to solve the problem.

  I don’t know, he thought back. Nobody spoke. Harrison closed his eyes and tried to listen to the internal traffic. Lucy, whose shoulder was squeezed against his, was entertaining delusional notions of going back to Kostas’s country house to be pampered and worshipped. It was hard to tell whether she believed this would happen, or simply couldn’t bear to consider any alternative. Kostas’s mind was preoccupied with a dark, rocky cove at the edge of his estate, where the land crumbled away into the sea. There were men there, with a small boat. The driver was praying for the strength to do what he was going to have to do, now for the second time.

  And then, very clearly, Harrison saw Tim, dressed in an anonymous grey tracksuit, his shaggy head shaved and his eyes open and staring blindly at the pricks of starlight in the half-clouded sky. He was lying at the bottom of a dinghy.

  Harrison’s eyes popped open. They had left the port and were winding their way through seedy backstreets. He remembered from this morning’s drive that the motorway leading out of Athens was close by. If they got onto it, there would be no chance of getting out of this car.

  Squeezing Amy’s hand, he thought, Knife. Her fingers slid out of his, and very slowly moved around her back, under her coat. As she did, he took a deep breath and focused all of his concentration on Kostas. He gathered the pain and despair he had taken from Rima at the Western Harbour apartment, and Lucy’s betrayal, and the terror of poor blundering Tim’s final hours, and directed it all into the skull of the man sitting in front of him. Kostas fidgeted in his seat. He slipped a finger inside the collar of his shirt as if it was choking him, twisted his neck left and right. Harrison summoned the hungry blackness he had witnessed inside the Cerro Rico, and a winter sea fouled with rotting corpses, and the great circling condor that would come to clean the flesh from the bones. He prayed for Tomas to stay with him.

  Kostas coughed and brought his hands to his chest.

  The driver glanced at him and spoke in Greek. Kostas whispered something, his breath barely moving past his swollen lips.

  ‘Kostas?’ Lucy asked, leaning forward. ‘Kostas, what’s hap
pening? Are you alright? Oh my God, stop! There’s something wrong with him. He can’t breathe.’

  Amy raised the knife and pressed it into the side of the driver’s neck. ‘Pull in,’ she growled. ‘Keep both hands on the wheel.’

  The driver’s eyes flicked to Kostas, who was slumped against the door, barely conscious, before he pulled into a narrow lane between high-rise apartment blocks. The tip of Amy’s knife just punctured the skin of his throat. A trickle of blood ran down to his collar.

  ‘If you move, you die,’ Harrison heard her say, and he knew that she meant it. She might be a lifesaver, but she had been trained to kill. He also knew this would cost her as much as it would cost him.

  ‘Let me out,’ he said to Lucy, shoving her out of the car. He slid out after her, and then dragged Kostas out onto the pavement. Lucy immediately squatted over him. ‘Leave him,’ Harrison barked, running around to the driver’s door. ‘Get back in the car.’ To the driver, he said, ‘Leave the keys and get out. Sit down there on the pavement with Kostas. Keep your hands away from your pockets.’

  With his hands open in front of him, the driver did as he was told. Harrison took his place behind the wheel, slammed the door and put his foot down.

  ‘Kostas is dying,’ Lucy bellowed as they sped away. ‘You can’t just leave him! Turn around, for Christ’s sake!’

  The pain behind Harrison’s eyes was threatening to blind him. It was hard enough to stay on the right side of these unknown streets without Lucy shouting in his ear, begging to return to her would-be killer. ‘He’s not dying, and they were planning to kill us,’ he said, through clenched teeth.

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  ‘Lucy,’ Amy snapped, ‘would you shut the fuck up and let him drive? We need to get away from here.’

  Lucy ignored her demands. ‘Did you poison him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t poison him,’ Harrison muttered, ‘I hexed him, and he fucking deserves it.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  After a long wait in the airport, which Amy had spent watching for trouble in a state of twitchy hyper-alertness, they boarded a red-eye flight to Heathrow. The extra stop seemed preferable to waiting in Athens for the next day’s flight to Edinburgh. Only after the plane strained up into the clear, starlit night did she dare herself to believe they were safe.

  She knew from experience that it would take her a long time to come back from this, to learn to stop jumping at every little creak of the floorboards. The past year of work with her therapist might just have gone overboard and she’d have to start over again.

  Or maybe the time had come to accept that she needed an altogether different kind of therapy. She had so much to learn about the capabilities of her mind. What she had seen Harrison do to Kostas was terrifying, but it also gave her the same perverse thrill as combat. She never imagined it was possible to have such power, at least not without a rifle in her hands.

  Lucy huddled defensively against the window, staring out, just like a soldier looking back down at the hell from which she had escaped. Across the aisle, Harrison popped a couple of paracetamol tablets and leaned his head back.

  Amy watched him pretending to sleep and wondered what would come next. They would both have to go back to their ordinary lives and make out that they were the same people they had been before this whirlwind hit. It was like coming home from Afghanistan, except you could talk about this even less.

  What about us, she asked him silently. Where do we go from here? Their relationship had so quickly come to occupy every corner of her life that she couldn’t imagine what it would be like without him.

  ‘What’s his deal?’ Lucy asked, twisting the hem of her cardigan around a finger.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Harrison.’ She nodded in his direction.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s a strange one. Going on about hexes. What’s that about? He really just gave Kostas something to make him sick, right?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that. He’s kind of into all that occult stuff.’

  ‘He’s one of a kind, that’s for sure.’

  So are you, Bell.

  ‘Are you two, like ... together?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Amy smiled and looked at him. ‘And he’s not sleeping, by the way.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Harrison sighed. He extracted himself from the seat. ‘Can I have a word, Amy?’

  She followed him to the back of the plane, and they squeezed into the alcove in front of the lavatories.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you in front of her,’ he whispered. ‘I’m pretty sure Tim is dead. They dumped him out at sea early this morning. I saw it as soon as we got in the car with that guy. You were right. I’ll tell Colin Muir when we get back, and let him deal with the Greek police.’

  Amy took a deep breath and waited for the shock to hit her. It came as confirmation rather than surprise. ‘I knew,’ she said. ‘I think I knew all along, even when he was with us in Athens. Maybe that’s why I let him have the room on his own. You can’t rewrite fate.’

  ‘Just ask Oedipus,’ Harrison replied.

  ‘I’m going to have to read that. God, his poor mum. They might not find him for months.’

  Harrison didn't want to think about that. He slipped his hands around her and pulled her toward him. ‘I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said into his chest, feeling small and cold and very close to tears. She waited until they passed before looking up, unsure why it should be embarrassing for him to see her cry. He would know, anyway.

  Still, she was grateful that he didn’t say anything. ‘Should we tell Lucy?’

  ‘She’s close enough to the edge, and she won’t understand.’

  ‘I can’t say I really understand either. What did you do to Kostas back there?’

  ‘Like I said, I hexed him. You’ve heard of the evil eye, right? It’s a powerful belief, and apparently, it works.’

  ‘Have you done that before?’

  ‘No, never. I didn’t know if I could or not. I just…didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Indiana Jones, eat your heart out. What did it feel like?’

  ‘Awful.’ He paused. ‘And kind of good.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Amy snorted. ‘Well don’t make a habit of it, please, it’s fucking scary.’

  ‘Tell me about it. My head’s bloody killing me now.’

  Back at the seat, Lucy was twisting her hair into a flaxen rope, letting it go and starting again, as though the feel of it gave her comfort. She was ghostly pale and her eyes were rimmed with red. She gave Amy a flickering smile. ‘You probably think I’m a stupid bitch for getting myself involved in all of that.’

  ‘You didn’t know, Lucy.’

  ‘I did really think Kostas loved me. I wanted to believe he was different from the rest, you know?’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘Maybe the only one who ever loved me at all was Tim, not that I’m worthy of it.’

  ‘You are,’ Amy said, trying not to think about Tim. Lucy radiated the same self-loathing Amy saw in every abuse victim she encountered. Ricky had given her a big enough dose of it, and she knew its black lies and tricks.

  ‘When we get back to Edinburgh, do you have somewhere to go that you’ll feel safe?’

  Lucy took a long, shaky breath and continued brushing and twisting. ‘I have friends in Portobello, a house I used to live in. I could go there, I guess, until I figure out what to do.’

  ‘You don’t want to see your mum? You know, she’s a victim in all this too.’

  ‘No fucking way. If Victor wants to send someone after me, that’s the first place he’ll look.’

  ‘The police will protect you. Both of you.’

  ‘My mum did nothing to help me.’ Lucy stared at her nails and bit at a cuticle. ‘She’s only ever thought about herself.’

  ‘She was as scared as you were.’

  ‘If I had a daughter, I’d give my life to protect her. That’s wh
at you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Amy allowed herself to think about her mother for no more than a couple of seconds. ‘I really wouldn’t.’

  The journey seemed to have taken days, but at last, they made a turbulent descent through the thick cloud that blanketed Edinburgh. Rain lashed the windows as they landed. Shuffling through the crowded terminal, Lucy veered suddenly toward a newspaper stand.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said quietly, showing Amy and Harrison the tabloid, she had picked up. The front page featured a picture of Quentin, thick-necked and florid, beneath the headline, CAPITAL SEX SLAVERY RING BROKEN, PROPERTY MAGNATE DETAINED. They stood together and read the first few sentences of the article. Lucy took in the details without flinching and dropped the paper back onto the rack.

  ‘Take me to my mother’s,’ she said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Elizabeth Merriweather, as Harrison stepped off the train and pulled up his collar against the North Sea wind. He’d been besieged for over a week by a particularly vindictive flu, shuffling between bed and sofa, swallowing paracetamol tablets like sweeties. The fever and aches had subsided now, but he’d lost his voice and still hadn’t got back to teaching.

  ‘I’ve been under the weather,’ he croaked.

  ‘And you sound terrible.’ She was wrapped heavily in black wool, with dark sunglasses and a furry hat. ‘I am so sorry for asking you to come all the way here. I should have come to Edinburgh.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, although he didn’t feel it. The curse he’d summoned for Kostas had sucked him dry. Psychic karma, he supposed; there was always some kind of fall-out. He hadn’t felt up to driving and after the effort of a taxi and a train, he felt ragged and limp as an old sock. ‘Better, at least.’