‘That’s a pity.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘It’s just that I’ve seen those pictures myself. Somebody showed me them.’
‘Really?’
I wondered who that had been, but didn’t ask. I waited but she didn’t add anything. I sensed that there was something she couldn’t bring herself to tell me. Well, I wasn’t going to force or cajole her.
‘Is there any chance at all that they are real?’
She chuckled. ‘Real Turners, you mean?’
There! She’d come out with the name I had been avoiding uttering, even to myself, and certainly not to Nancy.
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘I hate to disappoint you, Frank, but . . . no. I really don’t think so. Not unless you have been to California recently, and visited the Getty Museum.’
‘Is that where the originals are?’
‘Indeed. They’re worth millions.’
Oh, well. I hadn’t mentioned my thoughts to Nancy. So she couldn’t be disappointed now.
‘The third picture is a different matter,’ Jac added. ‘That could be an original. It probably is, in fact.’
‘Original what?’
‘An original Grimshaw.’
‘Oh, good! An original Grimshaw? Thank you very much for that, Jac.’
She laughed and rang off.
Possibly an original Grimshaw. I didn’t think I would bother Nancy with that bit of news either. She needed something to cheer her up.
The phone rang again. I picked it up.
‘I’m coming for you, Doy. I’m coming for you.’
It was a startling announcement, delivered in a strange, mechanical voice.
‘Who is this? The disguised voice doesn’t impress me, by the way.’
‘You won’t see me, but I’m here,’ the voice droned.
It was like listening to Stephen Hawking.
‘Give me a clue.’
‘You killed my partner. Now I’m coming for you.’
The phone went dead.
Sal? Was that the name Bill had mentioned?
I put the phone down and stared thoughtfully out of the kitchen window. Was he here already? Someone was, watching me and going through my house when I was out. Sal? It had to be.
What to do about it? I couldn’t just ignore the message. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to run around in a panic either. That would be what he wanted.
He would be armed. So I needed to be, too. I took out the old Glock pistol I kept hidden away. I cleaned it and made sure it was working smoothly. Only very occasionally did I have a use for it – usually when I went abroad – but there was no way I was going to risk coming up against another professional hitman without it.
Then it was time to hit the road. I had things to do. One of them was to recce the new PortPlus HQ. Somehow I had to go on the offensive, and I couldn’t think of a better place or way to start.
Sutton Castle was where PortPlus now had their corporate headquarters. It wasn’t a real castle; more a posh Victorian house at the centre of a big rural estate. It was on the edge of the Cleveland Hills, set in rolling parkland that spoke of a pre-industrial history.
PortPlus would have leased the place, no doubt for a bit longer than the week for which they had occupied Riverside House. From this location, they could see a lot of that which they aspired to own: the lower Tees valley, and all it contained.
I turned off the main road and drove up a narrow lane to the main entrance. The big, ornamental gates were open. I drove through, and on past a belt of dense rhododendron and huge pine trees. An impressive approach.
The access road terminated in a large car park to one side of the house. A few cars were parked there. A couple of Mercedes and BMWs, plus one or two lesser vehicles. The house itself was all turrets and fancy chimney stacks, a piece of elaborate Victoriana.
Not much was happening. In fact, nothing at all. So much for frantic financial manoeuvrings. Presumably all that was being done via conference calls and the World Wide Web.
As I turned the car round and headed back out, I wondered yet again where the money for the takeover was coming from. Borrowed, probably. So much, though? I wouldn’t want to be the one paying the interest charges. McCardle had plenty of nerve.
I slowed down, turned on to the track leading to Risky Point and began the careful negotiation of the potholes and craters that hindered the approach to the cottages. Ordinarily, in my old Land Rover, I wouldn’t have bothered being so careful, but this was Eric’s car, not mine. I didn’t want him complaining when I handed it back.
Halfway along the track, something whizzed through the open window. The windscreen suddenly became opaque as a myriad cracks raced across the glass. Then it collapsed in a shower of sparkling shards.
I flung the door open and threw myself out on to the track. I tumbled over into the shallow ditch that ran along beside the track and lay there for a few moments, while Eric’s car trundled along the track until it veered off into the ditch and came to a dead stop.
My breathing was fast from the shock of it. My chest was heaving. Sweat ran into my eyes. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, and lay still, listening.
Nothing happened. I could hear gulls squawking and the murmur of the sea, but not much else. A puff of air started the grass whispering and rustling. I waited, tense. I needed to know where the bullet had come from before I moved.
Then I experienced another shock as I realized the Glock was in the car. I was a dead duck, lying here. I had to move. All the shooter had to do was walk across from where he lay and stick his rifle in my face. I had to reach the car. Here, in this sheltering ditch, I was helpless, and not really safe at all.
There was no time to think about it. I steeled myself, leapt up and began a mad dash to the car, ducking and weaving as I went.
It was the longest twenty yards I had ever run, and probably the fastest. I heard nothing but I felt a couple of bullets sigh past me. I reached the car and dived behind it, and scrambled the passenger side door open. The Glock hadn’t moved. It was still under the driver’s seat. I pulled it out and rolled away.
The shooter probably guessed what I was doing. I had been so desperate to reach the car. He was now shooting into the car, using bullets heavy enough to pierce the skin of the side panels. I fired a couple of rounds back in his general direction, just to let him know I was armed now, and then pulled well back, using the cover of a patch of gorse bushes.
I felt better with a weapon in my hand. It wasn’t much good against a rifle at distance, but he knew and I knew that he couldn’t get up close now. He had lost the advantage of surprise.
I began to move in a wide circle, to see if I could get behind him. There wasn’t much chance but it was better for me to be moving than lying still doing nothing. The ground was pretty flat but it was rough ground, with plenty of undulations to provide cover for someone prepared to crawl.
I kept going for a few minutes. Then it became a waste of time. One of his bullets hit the petrol tank and brought the scene to an end with an explosion and a sheet of flame.
I grimaced but I was too far away for the explosion to harm me. When it was over I pulled out my mobile and speed-dialled Bill Peart. Then I cancelled the call and phoned Eric first instead.
‘Sorry, Eric. I need another car – unless the Land Rover’s ready?’
‘It is not! Another car? It’s going to cost you,’ he said with a heavy sigh.
‘It already has – believe me!’
While I waited for Eric’s lad to fetch me another vehicle, and for the police to arrive, I heard the sound of an engine starting up some distance away. I ran up a low mound, and was in time to see a Range Rover bounce across rough ground a few hundred yards away. When it hit the road it took off at speed. I wasn’t too worried about it getting away. At least I could relax now.
But only for the moment. Sal would be back. I knew that.
Bill Peart said, ‘They sent me again.’
&
nbsp; ‘Nice to see you, Bill.’
‘I’m bloody sick of this!’ He glowered at me. ‘Why can’t you stay out of trouble for five minutes?’
‘I thought I had! I’d been out all day. I was arriving home when all this kicked off. You’re lucky I’m still alive.’
He thought about that before he started to laugh. ‘Instead of having another murder to solve, you mean?’
‘Very funny.’
He shook his head and said, ‘So what happened this time? No, wait! Put the kettle on first.’
We sat around the table and I opened a new jar of coffee, while the uniforms combed the ground outside and went all over what was left of Eric’s car, looking for. . . .
I had no idea. Bullets, probably. Shell casings. Fingerprints. Footprints? I don’t know. I’m not up on crime-scene stuff and modern forensics. I don’t have the time, or the inclination, to watch all those TV series.
‘It’ll have been Sal,’ Bill said moodily after he had heard my account of recent events.
I nodded. ‘Probably.’
‘There’s no-one else, is there?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Thank Christ for that!’
I ignored the sarcasm.
‘Any chance of finding him?’ I asked.
‘Every chance. We’ve just not done it yet.’
I thought I was more likely to find Sal than the Cleveland Police were. But I might not live long enough afterwards to tell anyone.
‘Whatever happened to crime prevention?’ I asked with exasperation. ‘All I seem to hear about is crime solving. Picking up the pieces.’
‘We’re your friends, Frank,’ Bill said sternly. ‘Probably the only ones you have.’
My phone rang just then, stopping me responding in a way I thought appropriate.
‘It’s Henry, Frank. I’ve got something interesting for you.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘I know where McCardle is getting the money from for the takeover.’
‘Where?’
‘Not over the phone. Come and see me, the sooner the better.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
I was surprised to find Kenny Douglas, as well as Henry, waiting for me.
‘Kenny has an interest,’ Henry explained.
‘I want to protect my pension,’ Kenny said with a grin. ‘How are you, Frank?’
‘Surviving,’ I told him. ‘What’s all this about McCardle, Henry?’
I wasn’t troubled by Kenny’s presence. As far as I was concerned, the more on the anti-PortPlus band wagon, the better.
‘I told you he was skint, got cleaned out in Africa?’
‘You did, yes.’
Henry nodded. Then he considered. He was enjoying this.
‘Come on, Henry! Get on with it.’
‘It’s a good story,’ Kenny cautioned. ‘Well worth waiting for.’
I flopped down into a chair. ‘I’m listening.’
Henry grinned and started.
‘McCardle remained well-connected, of course. He might have been down to his last million. . . .’
‘I thought you said he was skint?’
‘A figure of speech. Relatively skint. Anyway, he went back to the Gulf, where a lot of his investment capital had always come from. Abu Dhabi, specifically. He has good friends there.’
‘I would like friends there,’ Kenny confessed. ‘I really would.’
‘Henry?’ I said impatiently.
‘In a nutshell, he got the financial backing he wanted from their sovereign wealth fund.’
‘That’s where they store their spare cash from the oil and gas sales?’
‘Something like that. Right. They use their spare cash to buy into investment opportunities around the world. They’re all at it, the oil and gas producers. Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai – even Norway. Not only them either. China does the same thing with its earnings from being the world’s workshop.’
So this was the answer to the question that had long bothered me. You don’t fund big takeovers from the money in your building society savings account. Abu Dhabi, eh?
‘How does it work, Henry?’
‘Their sovereign wealth fund is split into a number of divisions – property, equities, etc. Managers break it down even further, into different parcels. Some of the investment vehicles are very adventurous. Not for them small, safe returns on government bonds. They go for high risk, high profit schemes. Football clubs, for instance!’
That brought a smile out of all of us.
‘Why haven’t they thought of Middlesbrough?’ I wondered.
‘Too high a risk even for them!’ Kenny said.
‘So,’ Henry continued, ‘McCardle talked to one of his good friends there, a sheik with a bundle of cash to invest, and persuaded him that Teesport was a wonderful opportunity.’
‘A port, though?’ I pointed out. ‘I know there’s land as well but, basically, a port?’
‘They’re into ports,’ Kenny said firmly.
‘Really? McCardle?’
‘Abu Dhabi. They bought the P&O port operation in the US a few years ago.’
Of course! I remembered that now.
‘There was a big political fuss over it, wasn’t there?’
‘There was.’ Kenny nodded. ‘But, subject to political safeguards and concessions to Congress, the deal went through.’
‘So is that where Mike Rogers came from?’
Henry said, ‘That’s my thinking. He’ll have been a P&O man. McCardle is the man with the ideas and the money, but he needed a man with port expertise.’
It was coming together nicely now. The answers to so many questions. This project was a very big deal, especially for McCardle. His reputation on the line. He was trusted to come up with the goods. And he had. So the money he needed was available. Everything going well – until his brother turned against him. No way could he let that happen.
‘You do realize,’ I said slowly, ‘that this is why James Campbell was shot and dumped in the sea?’
Kenny said, ‘I wondered about that.’
Henry just looked at me.
‘Killed,’ I said, ‘because he had turned against the project. McCardle couldn’t have that. Too much was at stake.’
‘Then it went wrong,’ Henry said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with one finger.
I nodded. ‘It did. Campbell’s body didn’t disappear.’
We knew the whole thing now. The picture was clear.
‘Well done, Henry!’ I said. ‘You’ve got to the bottom of it.’
Henry shrugged modestly. ‘Have I?’ he said.
‘Now we have to think about what to do next. How are we going to stop them?’
I looked round in anticipation.
Henry said, ‘How about a coffee?’
‘What we need to do,’ I said over coffee, ‘is to find a way of making McCardle’s funding disappear. How can we get Abu Dhabi to put its money back in the petty cash box?’
‘We?’ Henry said.
‘All right, all right! I’ll do it myself, then.’
Henry was right to object. He couldn’t expose himself to the kind of trouble I had encountered. He wouldn’t last five minutes if he did.
‘Just so’s you know,’ Henry said.
‘I understand. You’re a background guy, the man with the brains. Not like me.’
‘And I’m too old,’ Kenny Douglas said with a grin.
I shook my head with disgust. What a pair!
‘Bad publicity,’ Henry said.
‘What?’
‘That’s what will make Abu Dhabi run for cover. Bad publicity. They don’t like it.’
‘Associate them in the public mind with some of these shenanigans,’ Kenny contributed. ‘They can’t afford to be seen in a bad light.’
I nodded. It made sense.
‘PortPlus have not said where the money is coming from,’ Henry pointed out. ‘So ask the question publicly. Insist on it. Get a
s much as possible out in the open. And then put it alongside questions about the death of James Campbell. See what happens.’
‘Get your head blown off?’ Kenny suggested.
‘Oh, I’m a candidate for that already!’ I told him.
I thought about it. PortPlus wouldn’t be the only outfit that didn’t appreciate an approach like that. The politicians wouldn’t either. Nor would the Chief Constable – not to mention Bill Peart!
Chapter Thirty-Five
Nancy was intrigued; intrigued and incensed.
‘So that’s where the money’s coming from! Maybe James knew?’
‘I’m sure he did. But so what? Sovereign wealth funds are legitimate investors.’
‘Not if they’re behaving immorally!’
I shrugged. I wasn’t getting into that. Money, especially big money, seldom behaves with moral purpose from what I can see. Profit is the driver, preferably profit free from legal complications. It always has been. We had to be realistic.
‘What I’m thinking,’ I told her, ‘is that we need to go public with what we have against PortPlus, and then link it with Abu Dhabi. Henry’s view – and I think he’s right – is that the fund managers will shy away from bad publicity. They can’t afford it.’
‘So they’ll dump McCardle?’
‘Let’s hope so.’ I grinned. ‘You really are bloodthirsty!’
We got to work and sketched out a report that identified all the concerns about the PortPlus project, having first acknowledged that some saw it as an engine of economic recovery and transformation.
Teesport already operated successfully, we argued. Was a takeover going to make it more efficient? Or was it to be, as some feared, an asset stripping exercise that aimed to take value out of land for housing and then pull out?
Then there was the threat to the fishermen’s huts at the South Gare to consider, and the future of the seals and other wildlife. The long-term future of the steelworks came into it. And the concern that another nuclear power station would be built, this one right next to Redcar.
We paused to consider.
‘It’s not enough, is it?’ Nancy said.
I shook my head. It wasn’t. Yet. We had to do better than this.
‘Now we bring James into it,’ I said. ‘The much-loved, and much-respected, local MP. Half-brother to Donovan McCardle, the Chairman of PortPlus. Initially, James encouraged PortPlus, and supported them. Then he realized there was more to it than he had thought. He had made a mistake. Overall, the project was not in the area’s interest. He changed his mind, and prepared to campaign against it. At that point he was murdered, and his body tossed into the sea. Coincidence, or what?’
A Death at South Gare Page 15