by Zoe Sharp
‘There’s no way I could have made it out here in thirty minutes, even on a bike,’ I said, remembering the kidnappers’ deadline. ‘They must have known that.’
Parker nodded. ‘In a perverse kinda way, that should make you feel a little better,’ he said. ‘Knowing this was a set-up from the start.’
It didn’t.
Eventually, we hit the dead-end loop at Montauk, marked by an old-fashioned white lighthouse with a strange brown band round the middle of it. Parker jerked the Navigator to a stop at the base of the shallow incline that led up to the lighthouse itself, ignoring the half-empty parking lot on the other side of the road.
‘What’s here?’ I demanded, aware of an elevated heart rate, a dry mouth. ‘What was I supposed to do when I got here?’
‘Maybe there was no afterward,’ Parker said, his voice grim. ‘Maybe this is where you were supposed to find Torquil.’
I snapped him a fierce glance. ‘Was that before or after I disentangled myself from what was left of my bike?’
He didn’t respond to that, just reached for the door. ‘There are two beaches on either side of the point,’ he said. ‘You want north or south?’
I shrugged, still unconvinced. ‘South.’
We parted company. I jogged back along the edge of the road to a path that led through a wooded area, where a sign promised I would find Turtle Cove. It sounded a lot more picturesque than it was, turning out to be a small crescent-shaped beach with a stony shoreline below golden sand.
I stood for a moment, shading my eyes with a hand. The breeze was brisk, crashing the ocean onto the rocks that surrounded the base of the lighthouse. There were a few hardy souls fishing from them, casting out into the surf like they were trying to whip back the sea. Apart from that, I had the beach to myself.
I tried to jog along the beach, but the sand was soft and heavy. I justified my lack of energy with the excuse that I’d crashed and been shot already today.
I only found the bucket because I was looking at the shoreline and I damn near tripped over it. A child’s red plastic bucket, like they use for sandcastles, upturned high above the tideline. It rattled against something when I kicked it, and when I bent and lifted it up, I found a length of grey pipe sticking out of the sand beneath.
‘Oh shit,’ I whispered, fumbling for my cellphone. Parker answered almost before it had time to ring out, and when I spoke, my lips seemed numb. ‘Parker, get over here. I think I’ve found something …’
I snapped the phone shut again without waiting for his reply, grabbed a piece of nearby driftwood, and began to dig.
It was just after six-fifteen, the evening warm but with a sharpening wind. Almost fifty-seven hours after Torquil had been kidnapped.
Dig, twist, throw …
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘Torquil’s dead,’ I said.
The words sounded curiously flat and emotionless, even to my own ears. I had just walked into the living area at the Willners’ house, soiled and ragged from hours spent with numerous cops and medics and crime scene techs. If the Eisenbergs had tried to avoid the authorities before, they were neck-deep in them now.
The local and state police had been quickly followed by men in aggressive suits with aggressive haircuts and equally aggressive personalities, who were probably FBI agents or something similar. They’d told me, no doubt, but after a while the IDs they waved under my nose all began to blur together.
Not for the first time, I was glad of Parker’s calm presence. When it came to dealing with people like that, he had played the game for a long time.
I needed a very long, very hot shower, and to crawl straight from there into bed, but by the looks of it I was a long way from either.
Now, a small collective intake of breath greeted my news, but by then they must have been expecting the worst. By the time I reached the Willners’ place, with every outside light blazing, it was dark – way on the wrong side of midnight and almost back round into morning again.
I confess I’d harboured a vain hope that the household would be safe asleep by the time I got in, and I could put off the whole wretched business of explanations until the morning. I was so tired my vision had started to shimmer around the edges, and it was easier to list the parts of my body that didn’t hurt, rather than those that did. I should have known I was onto a losing streak.
Parker had tried to convince me to go back to Manhattan with him for what remained of the night, make the return trip out to Long Island when I’d had a few hours’ sleep – maybe even take a day to myself. Reading between the lines, I knew he was trying to save me from having to be the one who broke it to Dina, and though I appreciated the gesture, I couldn’t shirk that responsibility.
As it was, I ended up with everyone else’s share of it, too.
Dina wasn’t alone in the living room. She was sitting in the chair her mother favoured with its back to the view. After today, I might be joining her in not wanting to face that expanse of sandy beach.
Opposite Dina, on the leather sofa Parker and I had shared during our first visit, was Manda Dempsey, with Benedict sprawled alongside her. Hunt and Orlando were together on another sofa, which had been arranged at rightangles to make chatting easier. They didn’t look like they’d been doing much of that.
So, the gang’s all here.
As soon as I came in, everybody got to their feet and watched me approach with varying degrees of apprehension. Perhaps there was a little disgust thrown in there, too. I was filthy and I stank, and I recognised that I was not likely to be at my tactful best. Hence my opening statement, and their reaction to it.
Maybe I should have taken Parker’s advice after all.
Nevertheless, I skimmed their faces out of habit, seeing expressions of shock and surprise, but there was something just a little off about them. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so bloody tired, I might have worked out what that was.
The security personnel who habitually accompanied the various members of this group had positioned themselves in the outer reaches of the room, maintaining a perimeter. They eyed me, coldly assessing, judging my abilities purely on the results I had obviously failed to achieve.
Over in the far corner by the edge of the windows, Joe McGregor stood quietly, inconspicuous and self-contained. He appeared to be taking absolutely no notice of whatever stilted conversation had been going on in that room before I turned up, but I knew I’d get the full rundown from him later. He made eye contact and gave me a fractional nod – of condolence or support, I wasn’t sure which.
Right now, I’d take whatever I could get.
‘Did he—?’ Dina began, and swallowed, hands to her face. ‘I mean … what did they do to him, Charlie?’
I glanced down at my sweat-stained, dirty clothing. ‘They buried him.’
Dina’s face spiked in horror. ‘Alive?’
I hesitated. From what I’d been able to glean by the line of questioning I’d faced, there was some doubt about the time and manner of Torquil’s death. That could just have been me projecting my own fears onto it.
If Torquil was alive when he went into that box, then if I’d been quicker, or we’d put it together faster, he might still be alive. But the moment Parker and I had wrenched that lid loose, had seen the boy’s arms slack by his sides and no sign that he’d tried to scrape his way out through the timber that encased him, I hadn’t needed to wait for a pathologist’s report.
He might have been drugged, I supposed, but in my heart I knew that he’d been dead when they put him into the ground. The plastic pipe – the one I’d mistakenly thought was to provide an air supply – turned out to be little more than a marker post, unconnected to the inside of the box. With a bitter anger, I remembered the care I’d taken digging round it.
But the bottom line was that the sole purpose of this morning’s exercise had been to ambush me for the Eisenberg Rainbow, at a point where the chase teams would be able to do damn all about it. It had taken timing that was military in both conception
and execution, and although none of these rich kids had seen service, they were surrounded by people who had.
So, why had it been such a pair of amateurs who’d tried to ambush Dina at the riding club? I recalled again, from the CCTV footage Gleason had shown us, the way the passenger from the Dodge – the one who’d grabbed the rucksack – had flinched when the driver shot me. Had they realised their past mistakes and recruited a real pro in time to snatch Torquil?
And if he was such a professional, why had he killed his victim instead of returning him in exchange for the necklace?
I glanced at the faces again, realised I didn’t trust any of them with these speculations, but wasn’t sure why. I shrugged, said dully, ‘Who knows if he was alive or dead when he went into the ground?’
Dina sank back into her chair as if her legs had suddenly ceased to support her weight. Manda threw me a dark look and moved across to perch on the arm to put a comforting arm across Dina’s shoulders.
‘You might show a little compassion, Charlie,’ she said, eyes filled with reproach. ‘You must know how claustrophobic Dina is.’
There was no right way to answer that, especially to admit I hadn’t known. She’d never mentioned it, and the subject of phobias had not come up. When I thought back, I realised that she’d always taken the stairs or escalator in the department stores we’d visited, if there was a choice, but I’d assumed that was more about personal fitness than fear.
‘Oh, poor Tor,’ Orlando murmured, turning her face into Hunt’s shoulder. He put his arms around her and favoured me a mildly reproving look, also.
So, suddenly he’s your best friend …?
It was left to Benedict to voice my cynical thoughts out loud. He made a gesture of bored annoyance and flung himself back onto the sofa.
‘Oh, come on, Orlando, don’t go soft on us now,’ he said, almost jeering. ‘It’s not as if you ever liked the guy.’ But there was a little too much studied bravado in his tone. I wondered who he was trying to convince.
Orlando yanked herself out of Hunt’s embrace and whirled on Benedict, tilted forwards, arms rigid and her tiny hands clenched into fists.
‘How could you?’ she shouted. ‘He might not have been our friend, but he’s still dead, isn’t he? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
Benedict looked momentarily shocked at her outburst, but he recovered his sullen poise quickly enough. ‘No,’ he said with an arrogant stare. ‘It doesn’t. People die every day. That’s life.’
I thought Orlando was going to fly at him, all claws and fury, and was glad it wasn’t my job to intervene. Fortunately, it was Hunt who gently took hold of her arms, turned her so he was between the two of them with his back to Benedict, as if preventing them seeing each other would dispel the anger. If the way Orlando wilted in his grasp was anything to go by, he was right.
He spent a moment simply holding her. When he seemed to be sure she wasn’t going to let rip again, he put her away from him and nudged her chin up with his curled forefinger, smiling into her eyes.
‘This isn’t just “people”, is it, Benedict?’ Hunt said quietly then, over his shoulder. ‘Torquil may not have been someone you liked, but he was someone you knew, and he’s died going through an experience that you’ve been through personally. That alone should have given you both some kind of connection, so show a little humanity for once. There but for the grace of God, eh?’
I silently applauded, keeping my face neutral. I knew if I’d said half that, Manda would have jumped straight down my throat, but she just looked grateful – if not a little admiring – that Hunt had headed off a possible slanging match.
Fed up with the lot of them, I started to turn away. ‘Look, it’s been a hell of a day. I’m tired and dirty and I’m going to bed. If you want to ask anything else, you’ll have to come back in the morning.’ I paused, turned back. ‘Speaking of which, how come you’re all here in the first place?’
They glanced at each other, not quite furtive but not far off it.
Eventually, it was Manda who admitted, ‘Ben-Ben ran into Mrs Eisenberg at the tennis club and asked if there was any news.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry, but she kinda mentioned you were … helping them, so we thought Dina might know something.’
So much for security.
Dina gave me a defiant stare, but I was too weary to get into it with her right now. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t. Go home.’
It was only ten minutes later, standing with my hands braced against the tiles in the shower, letting the spray pound onto my back, that I realised all the things I should have asked.
Like why had Benedict bothered to ask Nicola Eisenberg for news of her kidnapped son, when he claimed to hold Torquil in such contempt? And, for that matter, why had Manda bothered to explain his actions, when she’d never given a damn in the past what I might think of her, let alone apologised to me?
I shook the water out of my eyes and, with marked reluctance, shut off the water, grabbing a towel off the rack as I stepped out of the cubicle. If there was one upside to looking after wealthy people, at least they always had nice bathrooms with constant hot water and plenty of fluffy towels.
I quickly blotted the water away from my body, wrapped one towel around me and was roughly drying my hair with another as I moved through into the bedroom that had been allocated to me.
Dina was sitting on the corner of the queen-sized double bed, facing the bathroom door and waiting for me to emerge. She was nervously plaiting her fingers in her lap. My heart sank.
‘Where are the others?’
A minor shrug. ‘They’ve gone home, like you said.’
‘And McGregor?’
She nodded to the doorway leading out into the corridor. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, I know you just want to go to bed and I promise I won’t stay long, but I just won’t be able to sleep unless I know what really happened to Tor,’ she said all in a rush, eyes suddenly jittery with a fear she had almost managed to hide while she was upstairs. ‘Please. I … really need to know.’
I leant against the door-frame, aware that being wrapped in a bath towel that only covers you from armpit to mid thigh is not the best way to retain any authority over a situation. Ah well, at least I wasn’t naked.
‘Why?’ I demanded.
She blinked at the staccato question, looking small and lost as she fumbled her way into speech.
‘Because, it’s all my fault,’ she said mournfully, tears gathering in her eyes.
Give me strength!
I sighed, dragged a hand across my gritty eyes and tried for a gentler tone. ‘How is any of this your fault, Dina?’
It seemed that sympathy was her undoing. The tears fell freely then. ‘Because I know who arranged for Tor to be kidnapped.’
That woke me up better than a pint of espresso. I moved forward and crouched in front of her, trying not to lose the towel in the process.
‘Dina, listen to me. If you know who these people are, you’ve got to tell the police. You can’t let them get away with murder.’
‘I kn-know,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’
‘Then what’s stopping you—?’
‘It was us!’ The words burst out of her, a wailing cry full of rage and pain and utter remorse. ‘Don’t you understand? We did it!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘You better start at the beginning, Dina,’ I said heavily. ‘Tell me everything, and don’t skimp on the details.’
I was dressed again, and we were sitting in the silent kitchen, drinking coffee. It was very much a staff environment rather than a family room. The kitchen was set on the side of the house that didn’t get any direct sun, and was clean and uncluttered rather than stylish, its appliances picked for utility and not just because they bore the right badge.
Dina hadn’t really seemed to know where to find the ingredients for coffee, and had dithered a little over putting them together in the right order. Considering the state she was in, I su
ppose I couldn’t hold that against her.
‘You must think I’m a really horrible person,’ she said now, flicking her eyes sideways at me, as if hoping for an instant knee-jerk denial. As if hoping for my approval even.
I had just been hit by a car, shot in the chest, had my bike trashed, dug up a corpse, and come as close to having my fingernails pulled out under interrogation as the Feds thought they could get away with. I had nothing approving to say to her.
As if realising that fact, Dina flushed, cradling her coffee mug with both hands and staring miserably into the creamy liquid. After a moment, she lifted her head briefly to mutter the age-old excuse so often trotted out by those who find themselves sucked into violence and suddenly way out of their depth.
‘Nobody was supposed to get hurt!’
I managed to suppress a snort of outright disbelief at her naivety, and shook my head wearily instead. Not hard under the circumstances.
We sat in a pool of subdued light from the fitting that hung low over the kitchen table. The rest of the room was in shadow. I thought it might encourage Dina to spill her secrets if the atmosphere was less bright and harsh, and I had positioned myself across the corner of the table from her rather than directly opposite, keeping it less adversarial. All friendly – for now.
‘Dina, even before what happened to Torquil today, Benedict lost a finger. Was that part of the plan?’ I asked, trying for coaxing rather than exasperated. ‘And what about Raleigh? Your poor old riding instructor will be left with an arm he can use to predict changes in the weather. If it knits well enough for him ever to work again to full capacity. Did he sign on for that?’
I’d once had my arm broken in a similar way, I reflected, and could now use it as my own personal barometer.
‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice genuinely wretched. ‘It’s just that I never—’
‘—thought anyone would get hurt. Yeah. You said.’
She glanced at me, dropped her eyes again. ‘They told me it was like … a game,’ she said eventually, choosing her words with care now. ‘That’s all. Just a game.’