by Roddy Murray
The driver thought he heard an American accent in there somewhere and hoped for a generous tip. He headed off towards the riverside, following signs for the SECC. He managed to fit in a few extra turns to beef up the fare but soon arrived at the hotel.
In the back of the taxi Frank gathered his thoughts as best he could. He decided the gun would be handier tucked into his waistband and moved it there from the pocket of the tweed jacket while the taxi drove through the thinning rush hour traffic.
"There we are sir," said the taxi driver turning round to face Frank. "That'll be three pounds fifty please."
Frank fumbled for the money in his pocket and as he did so the driver noticed the pistol tucked into his trousers. Taking the twenty pound note he was handed and told to keep all of, the taxi driver thanked his generous passenger without batting an eyelid and waited till he was safely out of the cab. As soon as he was though, the driver got straight on to his central office by radio and got them to inform the police that a passenger in a Tweed jacket had just headed into the Crowne Plaza hotel packing a pistol.
At the reception of the hotel a smartly groomed young Latvian lad looked up and greeted Frank as he arrived. "Can I help you, sir?" he inquired in perfect English.
"Hopefully," replied Frank. "I'm meeting friends for dinner and wondered if they'd checked in yet. Their name is Bartleman."
The receptionist turned to the screen of his computer and typed some details on the keyboard then waited for the information to come up. When he did he started reading from the screen and then turned to Frank.
Frank had moved round and had leaned over the desk while the man was typing and had just managed to read the number of the room before the receptionist looked up and scowled at him.
"Your friends have arrived. Would you like me to let them know that you are here?"
"No thanks I'm sure they'll be down soon. Just wanted to make sure they had arrived safely."
Frank straightened himself up till he was back in front of the desk but as he did so his jacket flapped open and the receptionist caught a brief glimpse of a gun tucked inside his waistband. Frank wandered off to towards the bar as casually as he could. As soon as he was out of earshot the receptionist phoned his duty manager who phoned the police.
Frank looked over towards the lifts and noticed a large, muscular man sitting very close to them watching all the comings and goings in the hotel. He looked over towards Frank who quickly ducked behind a pillar. He looked round and saw a door marked stairs. As quickly and as smoothly as he could he covered the distance from the pillar to the door and pushed his way through. He had no idea if the guard had spotted him. Either way he was committed now and started climbing to the Suites on the 15th floor.
Almost immediately he realised what a mistake this was. Maybe in his own fit body he could have coped with the climb with relative ease butin Blaine’s cast-off he was struggling from the outset. By the time he reached the fourth floor he was breathing hard and sweating like a pig. God he hated this body. But he had to keep going. Each flight of stairs took an eternity and made him feel worse than ever. By the tenth floor he had to stop and have a rest.
Recovery was slow but he knew he had to keep going. Digging deep for every drop of determination he could muster he pulled himself to his feet and set off again. Up and up he went, but the climb was taking its toll. The sweat was dripping down his back. His breathing was laboured and his heart was pounding inside his chest in a most worrying fashion. At last he reached the 15th floor and collapsed again onto the landing. He gasped for breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead, soaking the sleeve of his jacket as he did so. His shirt was sodden too and drops of liquid ran down his back, to his cords and then down his legs. He prayed it was only water but he was way past caring.
With gritted teeth he hauled his fat carcass to its feet and made for the door. He was too exhausted to think through what might be on the other side and brushed the door open with a struggle. As he entered the corridor on the other side he saw a large figure 40 feet away sitting outside a room. The man was holding his head which appeared to be bandaged.
Claude looked up at the same time as Frank recognised him. An evil grin formed on Claude's face as he rose to his feet and slowly walked towards Frank.
"Well well well, if it isn't my old friend McCoard," he said flexing the muscles on his neck and arms ready to swing. "I was hoping we might meet again and now my luck is in."
He felt less lucky and stopped smiling when Frank drew the pistol from his belt and pointed it straight at Claude's chest.
"Open the door and let's see who we have inside," said Frank. "No heroics please. I've had a shitty couple of days and would really like to take it out on someone. You'd be perfect."
Reluctantly Claude turned and slowly walked back to the door of Dan's suite. He opened it slowly and was about to rush in and slam the door shut again but felt the gun in the back of his neck. Frank had surprised even himself with how quickly he had moved there after the stairs.
"No tricks now, Claude. This is a bit more dangerous than a toilet roll holder and that must have hurt you enough at the time."
Claude moved slowly through the doorway with Frank shadowing his every step. Inside Frank was relieved to see both Bartlemans in the lounge area. He motioned Claude to lead the way. As they entered the lounge Frank stopped dead in his tracks. Standing beside the window was his old self with a glass of whisky in his hand.
The three Americans in the lounge stopped too and looked in amazement at what they recognised as Blaine’s body carrying a gun.
"You bastards," Frank shouted at them. "You absolute bastards. Who gave you the right to do this to me?" Claude was standing with his back to Frank and thought this outburst afforded an opportunity to redeem himself. He spun round and launched himself at Frank, reaching for the gun as he did so. But he had made his last error in what had been a bad, final 48 hours.
Frank turned the gun slightly and fired an unaimed shot at Claude. It hit him in the stomach and only slowed him slightly. Frank took a quick step back and fired a second shot aimed this time directly at Claude's heart. The big American crumpled and lay dead on the floor.
Frank turned to the other three who had all turned quite pale. Only Dan seemed to have retained any form of composure.
"Let's not get carried away here. I'm sure we can work something out. Name your price," he said.
Frank stared at him in disbelief. Blaine was also starring at Dan in disbelief.
"He didn't know, did he?" Blaine said. "You lied to us both."
Frank started to look at his old body as it spoke and suddenly realised they had both been duped.
He looked back at Dan and at his nephew Bobby who was the whitest of them all and looked as if he might throw up. He had obviously been aware of the deception too. Frank was still sweating profusely and his heart had not slowed down since his efforts on the stairs. He felt faint but was determined to see this through to the end.
"I want you to reverse the process. I want to get my body back. Today! Can you do that?" he shouted.
Frank's question was directed at Bobby but it was Dan who answered.
"I'm afraid not, Frank. You see we scrubbed the recordings after the process was finished. They take up such a lot of computer space that it would have delayed other projects if we hadn't. We didn't expect to need them again. So it really would be better to negotiate a figure. We can be ridiculously generous with our compensation, all things considered."
"Scrubbed," Frank thought to himself. They had just scrubbed every detail of his personality. There was no way back. Even if he frog-marched them back to Edinburgh they would have to start the whole process from scratch. There was no way he could make them do that at gun point. Even if he could persuade Paddy to help, which was very doubtful, the ball would be in their court. They could sabotage his return at any time and nobody else would know. The bastards.
A strange smile spread over his face. If they couldn't
undo what they had done he sure as hell could make them pay for it. Yes he was going to die soon but he would make sure they died sooner. The Bartlemans at least. This McCoard guy had some explaining to do but it looked as if he'd been suckered too, albeit with a better outcome for him.
Frank walked towards Dan and Bobby with the gun pointing straight at Dan's face. Frank could still feel sweat running down his back and his forehead. He felt ill as never before and dizzy but he fought it. He wanted to see a look of fear in these bastards faces before he shot them. He stared at Dan.
"I'm going to shoot you now," he said. His dizziness made it sound detached and added to the menace of the threat.
Dan was about to enter into further negotiations when Frank pulled the trigger. A loud bang marked the passing of Nebus Holding's main shareholder. Dan slumped to a kneeling position and then slowly sank sideways to the floor.
"What are you going to do?" asked Bobby.
"That is the most stupid question I have ever been asked," said Frank. "I thought you were supposed to be really clever."
He pulled the trigger again and this time Bobby shot backwards and hit the floor head first. Frank found himself losing focus. He could no longer keep himself conscious. He looked at his old body standing at the other end of the room. Maybe this Blaine character could sort something out. Either way Frank knew he was no longer able to fight the nausea and dizziness and he passed out on the carpet at the front of one of the two large sofas in the lounge area of the suite. The gun slipped from his hand onto the floor beside him. Instinctively Blaine walked over and picked it up. He wasn't sure exactly why but he didn't want to give Frank a chance of getting hold of it again. Blaine stood there shocked and stunned with the gun in his hand.
Chapter Twenty Five
Scott McDougall had been a policeman for nine years now. He had risen to the rank of sergeant quickly and was respected by his colleagues. He liked being a policeman. He liked being a sergeant. But most of all he liked being part of an armed response team. Carrying guns and knowing how to use them was about as good as it got. He was a great shot. If they had them, he could have shot the whiskers off a fly from fifty feet. The only drawback was that, as yet, he had not had the chance to shoot someone. He had been called out many a time and discovered kids with toy guns, people carrying suspicious parcels and on two wonderful occasions drug dealers with the real thing. Unfortunately they had dropped their weapons when ordered to do so and so, as yet, Scott had not fired a shot in anger.
The call that came in that evening however, sounded more promising. A big guy in a tweed jacket had been hiding a gun down his cords. Not just one overimaginative member of the public had called it in but two sober and reliable sources. A cabby who had seen guns before in his taxi, had phoned first. Then a science graduate from Latvia working in a hotel had confirmed the details. Scott had scrambled with his team to the Crowne Plaza and got some brief details from both witnesses. As they did so they heard a muffled gunshot from above and a guest on the 15th floor phoned down to say she had heard gunfire.
Now Scott found himself with half his team at the top of the stairs. The other half were covering the lift and exits. It had been a long hard slog, but he and his team were fit and fueled on adrenalin. This was it. This was the real McCoy. Gunfire from a room and no negotiators here yet. One more shot and he could smash through the door and shoot whoever was doing the shooting. The guest’s report suggested it had all happened in a suite towards the middle of the corridor he was now staring at. Halfway along there was a chair out in the corridor and the door beside it was slightly open. It had swung shut behind someone but not all the way. That looked the most likely location for the gunman.
Scott motioned silently for his colleague Brian Cameron to follow him towards the suite and for the other two members of the team to stay at the stair door in case he was heading for the wrong set of rooms.
Brian was a constable with 12 years’ service who had been authorised to carry firearms for eight. He too had never fired a shot in anger and he too thought tonight might just be the chance to change all that. The two men edged towards the door. They knew the gunman was about six foot one and was wearing a tweed jacket and brown cords. He had a strange accent which was half Scottish, half American, and by the sound of it he might even be holding a smoking gun.
Just before they reached the door they heard a gunshot coming from the suite. "Bingo," Scott thought to himself. They couldn't wait for any university trained negotiator now. This was a live situation probably with dead bodies and that put him in charge. He motioned for the other two members of his team to catch up with him and signalled for them to cover himself and Brian.
A second shot rang out and he turned to Brian. They stared at each other and nodded. Scott rushed through the door first and pointed his gun to the right while Brian rushed through just behind him aiming to the left. Nothing and nobody. They moved silently towards the bathroom door and did the same again. Nothing and nobody. Moving quickly they made for the lounge area attached to the suite and took in a scene of carnage.
Where the rooms connected lay a huge bruiser of a man with a bandage on his head. He was lying in a large pool of his own blood and was clearly dead from the angle of his neck. On the floor of the lounge lay two men, one elderly, the other a generation younger, but both equally dead from single bullet wounds in the head. A pair of legs in brown cords protruded from the end of a sofa suggesting a fourth corpse hidden there. At the far end of the room, however, near to the windows, stood a tall man in a tweed jacket and brown cords. A hard looking bastard, Scott thought. The tall man was holding a gun which still had smoke coming out of the barrel and was staring at the gun with a look of confusion on his face. As the two policemen entered the room and levelled their rifles at him he turned and looked at them.
"Drop it!" shouted Scott.
The tall man continued to turn and the gun turned with him.
Scott and Brian both loosed off two shots in quick succession and the man rocketed backwards in a shower of blood. As he did so his face still had the same look of utter confusion on it.
The policemen moved swiftly forward and checked the gunman was dead. They looked round and, seeing no blood on the body beside the sofa, checked it for a pulse. To their surprise they found one and Scott called for the rest of his team to secure the crime scene while he radioed for an ambulance. The paramedics had been called out as part of the standard procedure when the armed response unit was mobilised so they were waiting on the ground floor with the other half of Scott's team.
As the paramedics attended to the only survivor of the slaughter which had taken place, Scott noticed a strange thing. The man they had found lying and still breathing beside the sofa was also wearing a tweed jacket and brown cords. A quick inspection showed powder marks on his hands from the recent firing of a handgun.
"Shit," thought Scott to himself. "That's a detail we don't want to go public." He turned to the paramedics and asked them to get the casualty to the hospital quickly, as he was the only witness. Whether it made any difference or not, they soon had Frank on the stretcher and had rushed him off to A&E before the Police investigations team arrived to check out what had happened.
Their investigation was as thorough as ever and concluded that one Frank Chisholm, former soldier and reformed alcoholic, had resumed his old habits and consumed a large quantity of alcohol. Specifically four times the legal limit for driving. A fact corroborated by another former soldier and ex-colleague who had received a rambling phone call earlier in the day. Deciding to redress some grievance with the staff of an American bioscience company for which he had recently been working, he arrived at the Crowne Plaza hotel carrying an illegal firearm believed to have been smuggled back from one of his tours in the Middle East whilst serving with The Parachute Regiment. On arrival at the suite occupied by the Americans and a member of their security staff whom he had previously assaulted, he had proceeded to shoot three of them whilst still und
er the influence of drink. The sole survivor of the rampage, American business man Blaine McCoard, appeared to have fainted during the attack and was therefore not in the assailant’s line of fire before he was challenged and then shot by the armed response unit. This unit had been mobilised from Pitt Street after the gunman had been spotted by two members of the public who were to be commended for their alertness and prompt response in reporting their suspicions. The armed response unit themselves had followed all procedures correctly and, showing no concern for their own safety had entered the hotel suite after hearing further shots and shot the gunman after giving him a chance to surrender with a correctly delivered challenge. For their bravery and professionalism both Sergeant Scott McDougall and Constable Brian Cameron were to be put forward for consideration of award of the Police Medal. The survivor recovered consciousness but due to underlying health problems was unable to give any detailed statement before being rushed to the USA for specialist medical treatment.
Chapter Twenty Six
Frank Chisholm's funeral was a strange affair to say the least. Press from both sides of the Atlantic had camped outside the crematorium for days before in order to get the best angles. A large police presence had helped keep things in order till the funeral started, then reporters had started scrambling and squabbling for space with microphones and handbags becoming lethal weapons in the fight for ratings.
As ever, the organisation of the funeral had fallen to Paddy Dickman. He had spread the word round Frank's old contempories in The Parachute Regiment and placed adverts in the local papers for his fitness clientele. A more challenging task was keeping Frank's ex-wives apart. His first wife had signed a deal with a tabloid newspaper and arrived in a car they had provided flanked by minders. His second wife hadn't thought of that in time and eyed daggers at the first wife throughout. His third wide seemed genuinely upset. So much so, that the newspaper offered her a deal too outside the crematorium which she readily accepted, “for the sake of Frank’s children".