To Catch A Storm

by Warren Slingsby

  She pushed the brake peddle and the car came to a stop. The engine purred as she sat for a moment looking at the men. The courtyard lit up red from the brake lights. They looked stunned and confused. Two of them jumped into the other car, a Mercedes, which seemed smaller than the one she was in and then they were shouting at each other, no doubt about the whereabouts of the keys. She held the key up to them and pointed to it with her free hand. She was focused on Carl.

  The expression of anger on his face actually changed from outright anger to a small smile and his head shook slightly as if to say ‘We weren’t good enough. Well done. You got one over on us’. But there was still menace in his face, this was her throwing down the gauntlet and him saying you got us this time, but you won’t be getting us again. Once we catch up with you again, that will be the last chance you get to turn over Joseph and the money.

  It was time to go. She turned the lights on and pulled the gear lever back to drive once again, turned the steering wheel and set off. As she flew off, she dropped one of her now signature winks at no one in particular. It was only going to aggravate them, but to be honest, they were about as mad as they were going to get. She looked down and remembered that she was just in her bra and felt her face flush hot. All cocky and yet only half dressed. That cockiness might just turn out to be my downfall she thought. How the hell was she going to get something to wear. She couldn’t very well walk into a shop in her bra and ask where the blouses were. No shops would be open at this time anyway. She didn’t really want to be doing too much driving around in just a bra as she’d probably get stopped and sectioned. Where could she find something to wear? On a clothes line? That’s how it would happen in a film, but more than likely clothes wouldn’t be out over night. How about a clothes bank? That’s where she sent her clothes that had sadly passed out of fashion. Where would she find a clothes bank? The one she used in London was at a shopping centre. Maybe she would see a shopping centre if she looked out.

  She continued driving in no particular direction and saw a pub with a Scottish flag hanging outside. An idea popped into her head. A long shot. She pulled over, had a look around. No cars about, no people about. She got out of the car, bold as brass climbed up on the wall and yanked the flag which tore off its pole, walked back to the car and drove off at speed. She pulled up a side street, got out, folded the flag so it was in a triangle and then wrapped it around herself in a sort of boob tube style, looped the ends around again and tied them at the front. It was probably the oddest thing she’d ever seen someone wear. ‘Style it out’ she told herself firmly, ‘carry it off with confidence and you’ll get away with it.’

  Now she needed to get back to the hotel as soon as possible as they had probably followed her back there from Glasgow. Although they didn’t have transport currently. They clearly didn’t know her hotel room or they would have taken her from her hotel room. The reason they’d done what they’d done was because she’d got out of the hotel and into the public and it was difficult to just nab someone in public view. Unless they looked blind drunk and like they needed a helping hand to get home. If she went straight away, she’d definitely beat them there. Then what? Well she needed some stuff, she’d lost her phone and bank cards in that bag they have. She needed to get back to the hotel room and either get the money and get out of town or lay low while she figured out what to do next.

  She drove to the side of the hotel and parked up on a double yellow line. Got out with both sets of the key clutched in her hands. Just in case. She walked toward the hotel and asked for a replacement key card from reception. They were very cool about the lost card. ‘These things happen Madam.’ ‘They certainly seemed to with me’ she thought standing in the reception in her patriotic boob tube. She felt pretty silly in it but looked outwardly as if she was super confident. She was a Lamborghini driving millionaire for christ’s sake, why wouldn’t she be confident.

  Back in her room, she laid back on the bed. Finally able to relax a little after yet another horrific night. Her headache still screamed from the Rohypnol. She took a few painkillers and shut her eyes. Losing her phone was not good, but it was locked at least and she could buy another and back it up from her computer. Actually, there was Joseph’s phone, she could just use that, put a new sim card in.

  Joseph’s phone started to vibrate again. Someone still thought he was alive. She sat up. Actually, she thought, how had they tracked her to Edinburgh? She had lost them in the car driving away from Glasgow. Definitely. She’d pulled over several times and they were not following her. But yet, Charlie had just managed to rock up in a bar she was having a drink in. So how did that happen? He can’t have just happened to be in that bar. It would be a miracle if they’d managed to find themselves in that same bar just out of chance. So if it wasn’t chance, then they must have some means of tracking Joseph. Did they have something in the bag? She went to the bag, there were no pockets, just the main compartment. She stuck her hand down the sides of all the cash, but couldn’t feel any gadgets. The phone dinged again, Joseph had another message. Lucky man. Was it the phone? She’d seen something on her computer about ‘Finding my phone’ or ‘Track my phone’. Was it an app? Or something in settings? There was definitely something she’d seen.

  They probably just tracked the phone here, as they had more than likely tracked it to the hotel in Glasgow. So if the phone wasn’t here, more than likely they would track it and follow it where it went. She could post it to London and they would probably follow it there. But how could she get out of the hotel to post it in the first place? They’d more than likely be at the hotel by now, in the lobby waiting for her to come down. Or the little one would be wandering around the corridors looking for her.

  One thing was for sure and that was she needed to be rid of Joseph’s phone. There was no reason to keep hold of it now. They might still not be at the hotel yet, so perhaps she could get out. But she was so tired. She put her head back to rest for a moment. ‘Come on Janet!’ She forced herself to get up and grab Joseph’s phone. There was a message from Carl.

  U just sined your death warrent janet

  She shouldn’t reply, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Original Carl x

  She peered around the door into the corridor. She could see no one there. She meandered down toward the lifts area. A porter’s trolley stood alone in the corridor. The porter was in the room and she heard a man telling a women they were going to miss their train if they were much longer. She sensed an opportunity and quickly opened a pocket up on a wheel-able suitcase, pushed Joseph’s phone deep into it, closed it back up and continued walking. She got to the lifts and did a loop and walked back to her room. She walked past the couple and the porter, their bags (and Joseph’s phone) now on their way to the lifts. Good riddance. The phone was charged, hopefully, the men would track it and follow it.

  Shortly after Joseph’s phone started its journey on the 12:30 from Edinburgh Waverley station to London King’s Cross, followed by Carl and Jim, she’d sneaked out one of the hotel’s rear fire exits. Her very helpful concierge had ordered her a taxi and met her there. He protested but eventually accepted a thick wad of cash in an envelope as payment accepting the story that ‘some bad people were after her.’ The wad would cover her stay at the hotel and give the Concierge a very nice tip. She got back to her old hotel. Her plan now was to lay low. Super low for a good few days. She caught up with friends and family and let them know she was fine but was taking a short break from work. That was her story, but the reality was she did not plan to return to work. At least, not to her previous work. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could go back to her previous life at all.

  . . .

  The Glasgow hotel made several oversights in the discovery of Joseph Bainbridge’s body. The cleaner should have alerted the cleaning co-ordinator that the room had not been cleaned for several days. The duty manager was supposed to find out what was happening with the room, but after one call to the room ph
one and one to Joseph’s phone where a message was left, he forgot to make any further calls amidst a pile of other jobs and duties. All their systems failed. In the end, the hotel staff were alerted that there may be a problem by one of the window cleaners. He saw Joseph on the bed and, even from a distance, immediately knew there was a major problem.

  The manager poked his head around the door and the smell hit him like a smack to the face. He swiftly retreated to the safety of the corridor where he immediately called 999 from his mobile phone.

  Thirty minutes later, an ambulance crew decided they didn’t want to touch anything and that the police should be involved. Caution was the best approach now. Shortly after that, Inspector Casey arrived. He spoke with the manager on the way from reception to the room and on the basis of what he heard, he called in the crime scene team. If the guy had just been on his own and had died, then fair enough, these thing happen. But this guy wasn’t on his own, he’d been with a woman and now she was gone. It had foul play written in large print all over it.

  With his handkerchief over his nose and mouth, he stood calmly in the corner of the room watching the crime scene officers do their work. They dusted for prints, photographed the room and the corpse and tagged evidence. So far, nothing much to go on. No phone. No car keys. No bag. Just a wallet and a suit. He tried to take in the whole room and get a sense of what had happened. There were two empty and knocked over bottles of champagne, along with an empty bottle of red, evidence of cocaine use, there was a used condom floating in the toilet.

  When Janet had fled the room, she had left a good looking corpse. Now, after a week of Joseph’s body consuming itself from the inside out, along with all the chemical processes and reactions that entailed; his body was a shade of sage green with purplish patches. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and his lips were parted by his tongue which protruded slightly. A reaction to the pressure increase in his diaphragm from a build up of gases. Where he previously had a flat and defined stomach, it now bloated to the point he looked several months pregnant.

  Casey left the room for the corridor and closed the door behind him. “Tell me everything you know once more please.” He asked the manager. “The time they arrived. What they ate in your restaurant. How much they spent. What they ordered on room service. How much they tipped.”

  “Okay. The problem here is that they checked in a week ago. So I’ll tell you what I know and if you have questions which I don’t have answers for, I’ll do my best to find answers.” Casey nodded understandably. “They arrived mid evening, around 8pm and ate in the restaurant. They had booked by telephone. Ate two courses and drank two full bottles of red wine. Mr Bainbridge was a very generous tipper from what my staff have told me.” He handed over a receipt for the restaurant bill. “Then after the meal, they booked into a room. That is the last dealing we had with them. With him.”

  “So you just left them for a week? What about room service? Meals? Cleaners?”

  The manager was bright red now. “Yes, there have been several breakdowns in our systems which we will be working to ensure don’t happen again.”

  Casey raised his eyebrows. They said everything that needed to be said about this.

  “A cleaner saw the girl on the day after they checked in. She was attempting to clean the room but the woman asked her to come back another time. Apparently, she had a blackened eye and she acted strange.”

  “Strange in what way.”

  “Shifty and nervous. She first asked the cleaner to come back later and then she said no much, much later. My staff did not see her again after that.”

  “CCTV?” Casey enquired expectantly.

  “I have my duty manager going through it now and he will report to me shortly what footage we have. I’m sure we’ll have some of the pair of them passing through reception.”

  “I’m especially interested in getting a face shot of the dead man’s companion.”

  “Yes, of course. Anything else I can help with?”

  “Not for now.” Casey dismissed him and returned to the dead man’s room. He would need to speak to the woman. There was no doubt. He okayed the coroner to take the body away for autopsy. He’d be glad to get the body out of the room. After the body had been zipped into a body bag and removed, Casey pushed the windows as wide as they’d go to allow some air into the room. The stench was distracting. The thing that struck him as being odd in this room was there was no bag or suitcase. They had checked in on the spur of the moment it seemed, but no bag at all seemed wrong.

  “Sir.” A call came from the bathroom.

  Casey walked to the door to see who was calling. It was Diane, the oldest woman on the team and the most experienced.

  “This panel was loose on the side of the bath and I found this inside.” She held up a black gun with a pencil though the trigger.

  Casey would spend the next two weeks on and off the investigation. He managed to get the CCTV into some local TV news and the stills of the woman into Scottish papers. Unfortunately, none of this made the national media. It infuriated him. This lack of interest south of the border was what held the investigation back to his mind. It was typical.

  His commanding officer told him to bring the investigation to a conclusion, one way or another. And yet, something niggled at him about what he found in that room. Something was really wrong with it all. The fact that there was no bag. Who travels without a bag? Even just a small overnight bag. Or work bag. Something.

  He filed his report. Secretly however, he vowed to keep the investigation going.

  PART 2

  SIX

  Two hundred and twelve days after

  Janet was awoken by the sunlight streaming through the light cream curtains in her bedroom. Another sunny day. ‘You could never get too much sun’ was her first thought of the day. It was pleasantly warm and she had slept with just a sheet and a throw. She was in her new house. After renting for five months, it was good to be more settled.

  Her place in London was now rented out. Furnished with her stuff. It felt pretty odd to have other people sitting on her sofa, sleeping in her bed and using her pots and pans but it had been the simplest way to do it. Fleeing Edinburgh, she had been worried they may still track her somehow, so she’d allowed herself just one day in London to tie up all her loose ends. She met an estate agent at her Clapham flat and gave them the keys. She handed the whole thing over to them and so far they’d done a pretty good job. It was rented out within 2 weeks and since then, she’d not heard a peep. Just seen the rent money going into her UK bank account each month minus their fees of 13%. Well worth it she thought.

  She’d then booked a suite at the Mercer in Barcelona and called ahead to explain she would be expecting a large parcel. She wrapped the bag full of money in several layers of bubble wrap, then placed it in a cardboard box and repeated the process twice. She parcel taped all the edges and googled ‘courier a parcel London to Barcelona'.

  She’d packed her large wheel-able suitcase (to the brim) and taken a taxi to St Pancras. A ticket to Perpignan was purchased and she took the next Eurostar via Paris. As she sped first class across France, she set about stamping out the digital footprints that would eventually lead the unwanted to her. She logged into Facebook on her iPad, went to her account settings and eventually after a little searching found the button - PERMANENTLY DELETE ACCOUNT and without much of a thought, she killed it. Dead. Yes she had photos and messages she’d have preferred to keep but she had to take steps now to make sure no one was able to trace where she was. She also deleted her Twitter account. She only had 41 tweets, so it wasn’t the end of the world. The twitter-sphere would not implode on itself with the lack of her content. There were also accounts on MySpace, LastFM and Pinterest (no pins). Her phone, which the gang had, was locked but with a little help from a tutorial she found on Google, she was able to figure out how to completely wipe all her information from the phone. She couldn’t resist sending a message just before sh
e wiped it saying ‘bye bye boys’. She had no idea whether they would see it not, but still it felt good. She would have to get phone numbers for friends by emailing them. Just like the social media accounts she had which were barely used, she had more than two hundred contacts in her phone, but she probably only really wanted to contact a handful, twenty at most. It would be a pain, but she’d get their details back. She’d got to the point where she had people in her contacts who she didn’t really know. Possibly business contacts or friends or acquaintances who’s details she had swapped on drunken nights out.

  Did she need to change her name? She seemed to recall telling Charlie what her name was. Definitely her first name, she wasn’t sure about her surname. Would that be normal to tell someone you were having a drink with what your full name was? Probably not. Janet was not a very common name among women her age. That was not a good thing. What else did they know that they could use to track her? Profession. She had said roughly what she did for a living although, based on what she usually told people, she would not have mentioned her employer. Charlie knew she lived in London. What else? Did she mention her age? Probably. She seemed to know how old Charlie was, so it figured they had discussed her age and it wasn’t something she was concerned about, so why would she not tell him. That was quite a bit to go on, but so long as she didn’t blast her whereabouts to all and sundry online, she would more than likely be ok. She’d worked out she was putting 1,300 miles between them. As well as the whole of France. Surely that had to be enough.

  From Perpignan, she’d taken a cab to Coulliere. This was pretty much the last town on the French Riviera before reaching the Spanish border. The plan had been to go all the way through to Barcelona, but it was just too much in one go. Ten or so hours on trains. Plus the Edinburgh to London journey with a short stop over. It had been better than a plane (she hated flying), but the whole point was you could jump on and off trains.