by Chris Ewan
He was wrong. There’d been a lot he could have done. He could have questioned the story he’d been told. He could have sought justice for my sister. He could have looked into the circumstances surrounding my crash and Lena’s disappearance instead of burying his head in the sand.
‘So you lied,’ I said. ‘You hid the truth.’
‘I was trying to protect your family.’
‘You’re pathetic,’ I told him. ‘Laura should never have come to you.’
I was just warming up but I was interrupted by noise from downstairs. The sound of my front door opening. Cautious footsteps approaching.
Shimmin spoke to me in a rush. ‘You’re in a hole now, lad,’ he said. ‘A man dead in that cottage. Another one in your kitchen. And they’ll come snooping around. The security services, I mean. This guy and his pal weren’t acting alone. You can bet on that.’
Rebecca appeared at the top of the stairs. There was a white fabric dressing taped across her nose. Antiseptic cream smeared on her bruises. She was wearing a baggy, bright green T-shirt that Mum must have given her.
It was obvious to me that she’d heard what Shimmin had said. I saw her running calculations in her mind. She looked down at the corpse in my kitchen, then moved across to the coffee table. She opened the man’s ID. Scanned the details. She made a small noise in her throat, like she wasn’t entirely surprised by what she’d seen. Then she flipped the leather ID holder closed. Pressed the corner into her lip.
‘So what is it you propose?’ she asked Shimmin.
*
I hauled back the sliding door on my van and Lukas blinked hard against the sudden daylight. He was lying on his side with his head resting on the tangled dust sheets. The skin of his face had reddened and swollen around the swab of gaffer tape pasted across his mouth.
‘Get him out of there,’ Shimmin said. ‘And cut that tape off him.’
I climbed inside and grabbed one of my craft knives, sawing at his bindings with the blade. I started with his legs, then moved on to his hands. I finished by peeling the tape away from his mouth. There was some bleeding from his lips. Nothing serious.
I had him sit in the van doorway while he flexed his legs and shook some feeling into his arms. He didn’t speak, not even when Shimmin wrenched his arms behind his back again and snapped a pair of handcuffs over his wrists. His skin was colourless and wrinkled from where the tape had been.
Shimmin grabbed one arm and I caught hold of the other. We walked Lukas as far as Shimmin’s unmarked police car. Pushed his head down and guided him into the back. I shuffled in alongside him. Rebecca joined Shimmin in the front.
We drove down out of Onchan and along Douglas promenade in silence. Lukas stared through his window at the moving water and shifting tides, crouched forwards in his seat, his cuffed hands behind him. I tried to calm myself and prepare for what was to come. To clear my mind. I was a long way from successful.
Shimmin drove into the underground car park beneath the Sefton Hotel and reversed into a dimly lit space. He stepped out at the same time as Rebecca, then walked round to open my door. The garage was cold and smelled of petrol fumes and tyre rubber. We seized Lukas by his elbows and marched him across the echoing concrete, then through a rear entrance as far as the elevator bank. The hotel foyer was empty of guests and the reception counter pointed away from us. There was nobody to stare at the glum man in handcuffs, or the plainclothes detective with the menacing expression, or the guy with his arm in a sling, or the young woman with the battered face. We took the elevator to the top floor of the hotel and paced along the hushed corridor.
Rebecca rapped on the door to Erik’s suite with her knuckle. Then she stepped aside and Shimmin shoved Lukas’s face towards the peephole. A toilet flushed. Footsteps approached. There was a pause. Silence on the other side of the door. The turn of a well-greased lock.
The moment the door moved I kicked it fully open.
Erik Zeeger staggered backwards into his room. He was wearing a white linen shirt over dark jeans, and a panicked look on his face. He started to splutter. To protest.
‘We need to talk,’ I told him, and pointed an accusing finger.
Behind me, I heard the sound of Rebecca closing the door.
Then Shimmin snarled and flung Lukas hard across the room. Lukas’s leg gave out from under him and he crashed on to the carpet.
I glared at Erik. I wanted answers. I was ready for them now.
Chapter Fifty-seven
‘Where is Anderson?’ Erik asked.
‘He’s dead,’ I told him.
His reaction was controlled. Contained. There was barely any movement in his face. Just the merest tightening of the muscles around his eyes.
I realised then that I’d underestimated him. He dressed and talked like a professional. Like a lawyer or a banker on his day off. But he was tougher than that. I’d told him his top security man was dead and he’d calmly absorbed the information and run it through his brain and already asked himself what it might mean for him.
He swept the room with his arresting blue eyes. Assessing the situation. Counting the number of people involved. A minimum of two against him, possibly three, depending on Shimmin’s exact role. Just one on his side. But that one was Lukas. The guy on the floor. Cowering in handcuffs.
Erik asked, ‘How did he die?’
‘Badly,’ Rebecca said, her voice thick and nasal. ‘He was trying to beat some information out of us. It didn’t turn out the way he expected.’
Erik contemplated her disfigured face. The padding on her nose. ‘What was the information?’ he asked, his glittering eyes fixed solely on her.
‘A code,’ I said.
‘For what?’
‘A password.’
He sighed. Confronted me directly. ‘And what was the password for?’
I shook my head. ‘Tell me about my sister. Tell me why she was helping you to hide Lena.’
Erik smiled flatly. He inclined his head towards Shimmin. ‘Who is this man?’
Shimmin folded his arms across his chest. ‘Detective Inspector Shimmin,’ he said, in a voice that made it clear he didn’t appreciate the way Erik was trying to talk around him.
‘I told you no police.’
‘And we took that on board,’ I told Erik. ‘But the way you had us abducted and nearly killed sort of changed our mind.’
‘I won’t talk with him here.’
‘You’ll talk,’ Shimmin grunted.
Erik snapped his head around. ‘Let me ask you a question, Mr Policeman. Why haven’t you arrested these people for the murder of my employee?’
Shimmin sucked air through his teeth. Rose up on his toes and summoned his full height. ‘That’s not the question you should be asking,’ he said. ‘The question you should be asking is: How much are you prepared to lose? How much are you willing to sacrifice?’
‘You make no sense.’
‘This is the Isle of Man, Mr Zeeger. We have our own police force here. Our own laws. Conspiracy to kidnap and kill are serious crimes in the eyes of the Manx judiciary. You could spend plenty of time in custody awaiting trial. And your sentence would tend to be on the heavy side.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
Shimmin squinted at me. ‘Was I not clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ I told him.
‘Thought so.’ He rocked on his heels. ‘Mr Zeeger, you have one employee dead. You have another employee with a nasty gunshot wound to the leg.’ Shimmin motioned towards Lukas. He still hadn’t got up from the floor. He was looking up at us all with big, wet eyes. ‘And he’s not the toughest lad I’ve ever seen. I reckon he’d give evidence against you readily enough. I don’t reckon I’d have to ask more than twice.’
‘You plan to arrest me?’
‘I don’t plan, full stop. It’s not the Manx way. We’re mostly a relaxed bunch, as it goes. There’s a saying here – traa dy liooar. It means time enough. It’s a philosophy of wait-and-see. I’m prepared to apply
it today. So you can think of me as an impartial observer.’
‘And what do you expect to observe?’
‘A trade,’ I said, and watched Erik’s eyes swing back towards me. ‘You tell me the truth about my sister and I’ll give you this.’ I stuck my hand in the pocket of my tracksuit bottoms, removed the memory stick and held it in the air between my finger and thumb. ‘It contains a video file. The footage proves that Lena didn’t kill Alex Tyler. It shows the two men who really murdered him. They were British Intelligence officers. I want to know why they framed your daughter. I want to know what that had to do with my sister.’
Erik was silent. Thinking. Rethinking. Plotting a way forward in his mind. Testing it to see if there were any traps lying in wait for him.
I said, ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Anderson asked me if Lena had given me anything. Well, she had. And you can have it. You need it. You want to clear her name, right?’
‘You know about Lena?’ Erik asked, his suspicions aroused.
‘We knew when we met you,’ Rebecca told him. ‘It was in the press that a warrant had been issued for Lena’s arrest. You didn’t think we’d check something like that?’
‘So then you know who has taken her.’
‘We assume it’s the British security services,’ I said.
‘Then your assumption is incomplete.’
He scowled at Shimmin again. He was still having trouble coming to terms with his presence.
‘Can we trust this man?’
‘You can trust him.’
Strange. Just an hour ago I wouldn’t have vouched for Shimmin. I wouldn’t have felt confident that I had even the vaguest understanding of his motives. Now all that had changed. I hated him for what he’d told me. For the ways he’d let my sister and my family down. But I trusted him, too. I trusted him because he was compromised. He stood to lose a lot from what he’d told me, not to mention the things he had and hadn’t done back at my apartment. He could have played it by the book when we’d shown him the body in my kitchen. But instead he’d suggested an alternative approach. One that might allow him to make amends for what had happened up at Marine Drive and the impact it had had on my family and Jackie Teare.
Erik looked from Shimmin to Rebecca and back at me again. He was standing just inside the kitchen area of his suite and we were arranged around him in a rough semicircle. Crowding him. Penning him in.
He shot a look at Lukas. The muscles bunched in his jaw. ‘Get up,’ he snapped. ‘Are you a dog? Get up and shut yourself in the bathroom. Turn on the taps. The shower. I don’t want you to hear any of this. Understand?’
Lukas used his chin and knees to push himself to his feet. He leaned his weight on his good leg, a perplexed expression on his face.
‘The bathroom,’ Erik said. ‘Go. Now. Lock the door behind you.’
Lukas hobbled across the vast carpet and through a door that was set into the wall behind an imposing dining table. He closed and bolted the door. A moment later, there was the squeak of a tap. The noise of running water. The hissing and creaking and banging of the pipes running through the walls in the room.
‘We should sit down,’ Erik said, gesturing to an extensive collection of sofas and armchairs. ‘It is more civilised, yes?’
‘You sit. We’ll stand. I prefer it that way.’
Erik considered my words, then brushed by me and dropped heavily on to a leather couch. He propped his elbows on his knees and clutched his head in his hands, his fingers clawing into his sandy hair. The water hissed and gurgled in the room behind him.
Now I knew why he’d told Lukas to leave. He hadn’t wanted his subordinate to see him like this.
‘Do you know the work your sister was involved in?’ Erik asked, once he’d decided where to begin.
I walked closer, until I was standing over him. Rebecca and Shimmin followed, keeping a little more distance.
‘She worked for the security services,’ I said.
‘I mean specifically.’
I shook my head.
‘She was proficient in close protection. Or so I was told. Six months ago she was assigned to protect Lena.’
‘Protect her from what?’
‘From threats to her life.’ He cleared his long fringe from his eyes. Smoothed it back over his head. ‘We were approached by representatives of British Intelligence. They told us that Lena was living in London. We knew this already, naturally. But they claimed her life was in danger.’
‘From who?’
‘From certain elements in Alex Tyler’s campaign group. Disaffected people. People who did not approve of Tyler’s relationship with my daughter. Your sister was to live with Lena on a temporary basis. Lena agreed to this. But only because she did not know I had been told.’
‘But Lena’s not British,’ I said. ‘Why was she given that level of help?’
‘I told you once that I am a rich man. You remember? I said that there are people who wish to hurt me. People who would prefer to take what I have rather than build something of their own.’
‘I remember.’
‘This is true of governments, too. I am a powerful man.’ He didn’t look it right now. Slumped on the soft leather cushion. Tugging at the roots of his hair. ‘I have oil. I am oil. This is a desirable commodity, yes? Essential to a country like the United Kingdom.’
‘So what, your daughter gets protection in return for oil contracts?’
He pursed his lips. ‘It is not really like this. It is more of an accommodation. An incentive. My company has a lot of oil. It sells some to the UK. They wish for us to continue to do this.’
‘OK.’
‘And so they wish to help me.’
‘Right,’ I said, and glanced towards Rebecca and Shimmin. Shimmin’s brow was furrowed. He was concentrating hard. Rebecca was more relaxed, standing with her hands in her pockets. Like none of this was particularly new or surprising to her. ‘So then what happened?’
‘Two months ago, your sister contacted me. She did it directly. This was unusual. Normally, I would receive information through her superiors.’ Erik clasped his hands together in front of his chest. ‘She said that she’d received orders to drug Alex Tyler and my daughter. She’d been told that new threats had been made against Lena, and that Tyler was suspected of being involved. British Intelligence wished to extract Tyler to question him. Your sister was to facilitate this. But Lena and Alex were inseparable. They had not left Lena’s apartment in many days. So your sister was told to drug them in order that Tyler might be extracted cleanly. Once they were sedated, she was to leave them alone in the apartment.’
Erik lowered his face. He watched his fingers knotting themselves together.
‘Your sister was suspicious of this,’ he said. ‘She did not understand why she was supposed to leave. So once she had carried out her instructions, she pretended to walk away, but in fact she doubled back and remained close by. Because of this, she saw two men exit Lena’s apartment. The men left without Alex Tyler. This is when she returned to the apartment and found that Tyler had been killed. She said she knew what had happened. She claimed that Tyler had been murdered in such a way as to make it appear that Lena was the real killer.’
I thought of the video footage. If Laura had been suspicious, then I supposed it was possible that she’d set up a hidden camera to record events after she left the apartment. Later, when she reviewed the footage, she would have seen everything.
‘Your sister believed that the men who killed Tyler worked for the security services. She could not explain this. She could not understand. But she was scared for Lena. And for herself. She decided to take Lena away, to hide her. Once they were safe, she would contact me again.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Three days later.’
‘Long wait.’
He nodded eagerly. As if it had been much too long. ‘During this time, I was contacted by somebody else. A man.’
‘Who?’
&nb
sp; ‘He would not give me his name. He told me that Alex Tyler’s body had been found. He said that the police suspected my daughter of killing him. He said that unless I agreed to pay him twenty million euros, he would make sure that Lena was found and arrested and convicted. But he said that if I paid him, he could prove that Lena was innocent. He would show that Tyler was killed by somebody else.’
‘Did he say who that somebody else was?’
‘He did.’ Erik pinned me with his eyes. ‘Your sister.’
I felt the ground go soft beneath me. It took everything I had to stay on my feet.
‘He said that she had purchased the vodka that was used to drug Lena and Alex. She paid for it in a local shop. They had CCTV footage of this. They would claim that your sister had taken the tape from the shop, and that this was why it was not available right away. They said that they had records of your sister obtaining a sedative and cyanide. They also had two drinking glasses from Lena’s apartment that were marked with the fingerprints of your sister, Lena and Alex. They would say that your sister abducted Lena and attempted to make it look as if Lena had killed Alex so that she could extort money from me.’
I thought I was beginning to understand what Laura had been afraid of. And why she’d come up with a solution of her own.
‘Of course,’ Erik said, ‘I knew something this man did not. I knew what your sister had told me and that she would call me again. I knew she wanted to help us and that Lena trusted her. I told the man I would contact him once I’d had time to think.’
‘And meanwhile Laura got in touch?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Yes.’ Erik shrugged. ‘Although to me she was Melanie Fleming. She called me and I told her what had happened. Anderson was on the call, too. Your sister was very clear. She said that we were being extorted by a rogue element in British Intelligence. The killing of Alex Tyler was not a government-sanctioned execution. She said that she did not know who she could trust, but she wished to help us. She wished to work with us to find out who was trying to harm my family.’