Fifth Victim

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘Um, I guess,’ he said, so slowly I wanted to reach down the phone line and throttle him. ‘He definitely said about lending the horse, that I do recall. Or it mighta been horses.’

  I made frantic writing motions and Parker immediately dragged a notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket. I smiled briefly in thanks and scribbled down ‘lending/ Lennon?’ and ‘horse/s?’ Parker read the words over my shoulder and frowned.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well, I have to say I’m kinda hazy on the rest of it.’

  I reined in a scream. ‘But he said Florida, specifically?’

  ‘Yeah, Orlando – and next fall. Maybe he was planning on a vacation he never got to take, huh?’

  I ground my teeth for a moment, wrote down ‘Orlando’ and ‘fall’ below the other two words on the pad.

  ‘And he mentioned a casket?’ I persisted. That one got everyone’s attention and didn’t need much explanation, although I’d hardly dignify the rough-hewn box Torquil had been buried in by using such a term.

  ‘Casket, coffin – something like that. Yeah, I think so,’ O’Leary said.

  ‘Which was it?’

  ‘Hell, lady, I—’ He bit off whatever he was going to say, sighed again. ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Casket is American, coffin is English,’ I pointed out. There might be a big difference.

  ‘Listen, what’s going on here, ma’am?’ His voice was terse now. ‘This sounds kinda like something we should be aware of right now.’

  ‘It’s a federal case,’ I said, aware of sounding pompous. I softened it down by adding, ‘But you may just have given us a big break.’

  ‘For real?’ he said, all suspicion gone in the face of pride. ‘You be sure to tell that to my captain, huh?’

  ‘I will,’ I promised. ‘Oh, where was Martino found?’

  ‘Under the boardwalk down on Coney Island,’ O’Leary said. ‘He’d been worked over some, too, finished with a slug in the gut. I’d guess a thirty-eight or a nine. Kid was a mess all round.’

  Poor bastard. ‘Well, thank you for letting me know.’

  ‘I’d say “you’re welcome”, but I guess this is not the kinda news anyone wants to hear, huh?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but thank you anyway.’

  I thumbed the ‘End Call’ button and sat staring at the brief notes I’d made for a second, until Eisenberg cleared his throat impatiently.

  ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘Ross, the kidnapper I made contact with – the one who promised to help us catch whoever murdered your son,’ I said bleakly. ‘He’s just been shot dead.’

  So, you’ll never get your new set of wheels now, Ross. Sorry, kid …

  ‘Sounds like our boy is cleaning house,’ Parker said. ‘Tidying up the loose ends.’

  ‘But, if he was one of the kidnappers …?’ Caroline Willner trailed off, her throat moving convulsively as she fought to keep her voice calm. ‘What’s going to happen to Dina?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I added ‘casket/coffin’ to the list and read the apparently disconnected words, backwards and forwards, trying to get the gist. ‘But I think Ross was trying to tell us.’

  Why the hell couldn’t you have been more coherent? I cursed heartlessly, but I remembered all too clearly what it was like to be shot. To experience such intense pain that it totally consumes you, blanks out everything around you until there’s nothing in the world but you and the agony, and even the prospect of dying seems welcome, because then it will stop. I don’t recall I said much at the time that anyone could have understood clearly.

  But still, whatever internal sense of cruelty I might possess was squashed by the image of what Dina might be going through, right now. I thought of her terror at confined spaces.

  If he’s buried her …

  ‘Horses,’ Parker said, eyes on my face as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. ‘Dina’s horses?’

  ‘What about the riding club?’ Caroline Willner asked abruptly. ‘Clearly he knows that Raleigh now has Dina’s horses, or he would not have been able to lure her away with that message.’

  ‘Surely the place is too busy,’ Parker argued. ‘Horses have to be looked after full-time, don’t they? There would always be people around.’

  ‘But there’s acres of space out on the cross-country course,’ I realised. I grabbed my phone again, dialled the riding club office. After our visits there, it was already programmed in, as were numbers for everywhere Dina had visited on a regular basis. I fervently hoped I wouldn’t have cause to delete them all just yet.

  The number rang out twice, then the answering machine picked up with Raleigh’s cheery greeting that everyone was busy having a great time away from the phone right now, and anyone enquiring about livery or lessons should leave their name and number after the beep.

  I rang off without doing so. ‘Answer machine.’

  ‘It’s still worth checking out,’ Parker said.

  He had that closed-down look, I noticed, as if all his muscles had bunched in on themselves. It was a look I’d seen in Sean many times, when we were about to go into action. An economy of movement, a sureness of purpose, focus. Intent.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  I turned to find Caroline Willner had risen and was standing very still and straight by her chair.

  ‘Mrs Willner, that’s not—’ Parker began.

  ‘I know,’ she cut across him, imperious. ‘But nevertheless, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘You’ll slow us down,’ I said, making it cold because it was the only way to make it hit home.

  She flinched a little at that, but drew herself up to her full height and stared back at me. ‘The life of my daughter may be at grave risk because the man holding her believes I cannot pay the ransom,’ she said, hitting back on the point of a nerve with matchless precision. ‘I think you can trust me not to get in your way, but I will see this through. Now, we’re wasting time.’

  Eisenberg cast her an admiring glance. ‘I’m going, too,’ he said, thrusting his chin out. Gleason’s expression went from smug at our troublesome client, to consternation as the tables were turned on her.

  ‘Sir, I really don’t—’

  ‘Stow it,’ he told her. He retrieved a set of keys from his trouser pocket and jingled them with a grim smile. ‘Lucky I decided to give the new Aston a run-out today, huh?’ he said. He glanced at Gleason’s furious face, at Caroline Willner’s pale determination, and heaved a sigh.

  ‘OK,’ he said at last, lips twisting in a rueful grimace. ‘I guess I didn’t get where I am by sending the wrong guy out to do the job.’ He threw the keys across to Parker, who caught them one-handed, almost snatching them out of the air. ‘You driven paddle-shift before?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Parker said, and tossed the keys over to me instead. ‘But Charlie will be faster.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  If Brandon Eisenberg was a little twitchy at the thought of letting loose a six-litre V12, on damp roads, with a girl behind the wheel, he manfully constrained the bulk of his dismay. The car was a brand-spun four-door Aston Martin Rapide, with oodles of torque and a top speed in excess of 180 mph. About the same as an average sports bike, but at roughly twenty times the cost.

  Nevertheless, when I slid into the cream leather bucket seat and fired up that rasping great engine, I could entirely understand the appeal. The interior still had that fresh-offthe-cow, new-car smell.

  Parker had ordered Erik Landers to stay behind and man the phones, just in case the kidnappers did decide to call. But at this moment Landers was eyeing the gleaming dark-green Aston and not exactly looking overjoyed at the prospect of being left behind.

  ‘We’ll be right behind you,’ Eisenberg said, nodding to Caroline Willner. He leant into the open doorway and added more quietly, ‘Let’s go find this kid alive, huh?’

  ‘We don’t even know we’re on the right track,’ Parker warned from the passenger
seat. ‘This could all be a wild goose chase.’ He had argued against taking civilians along, as much as Gleason, but to no avail. The rich were too used to getting their own way.

  Eisenberg shrugged. ‘It’s better than waiting around here.’ He straightened, glanced across at his stony-faced bodyguard who was standing by the Navigator. ‘Quit whining and get your ass moving, Gleason.’

  I shut the heavy door on her furious scowl and snicked the gears into first. The transmission dropped in, firm and precise, and then we were rolling.

  I waited until we were out onto the road before I booted it, catching Parker in mid sentence. He went abruptly silent as the big car squatted down and wriggled its hips, wrestling to put all that grunt down through the fat rear tyres, while a giant hand punched us back in our seats.

  ‘I know I said you’d get us there fast, Charlie,’ Parker said when he could speak again, ‘but try to get us there alive, too.’

  I took my eyes off the road just long enough to flash him a small hard smile. ‘Just wanted to show you that all those driving courses you sent me on haven’t gone to waste.’

  ‘OK! I’m convinced.’

  It took a couple of miles of three-figure speed and slingshot overtaking manoeuvres before he began to relax, I noticed. Parker had not driven much in Europe, whereas I’d experienced the German autobahns at full throttle. And the Aston had the kind of road-holding and handling characteristics – not to mention the sheer power delivery – that made driving gods out of men.

  ‘Even if the riding club is the right place,’ he said then, ‘where do we start looking?’

  ‘We take a ride round the cross-country course and look for disturbed earth,’ I said.

  If he’s buried her …

  I clung to the thought that Dina was not yet dead, that we stood a chance of getting to her in time. But burying her alive, when she had a phobia of enclosed spaces, and was horrifyingly aware of what had happened to the last victim, might be enough to send her over the edge.

  The guilt was a solid mass, pressing down on me, threatening to crush my chest until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, for the weight of it on top of me.

  I pressed my right foot down a little harder and was rewarded by another surge of speed. The chasing Navigator, with Gleason behind the wheel, was already nowhere to be seen. Parker had all the company vehicles chipped for additional power and torque, but against this kind of supercar engineering, she may as well have been pedalling it.

  ‘So, what’s with the mention of Orlando, and the fall?’ Parker asked, unconsciously bracing himself against the centre transmission tunnel.

  The half of my brain that wasn’t occupied with controlling the Aston flipped back to the day of the abortive kidnap attempt on Dina at the riding club, when I’d used Cerdo to kick out at Ross. If I’d known then that the one with the PlastiCuffs – the one I’d put on the ground first – was Lennon, the ringleader, I would have made sure he stayed down. Permanently.

  Hunt had been there, as had Orlando. She’d been out on the cross-country course with that fine-boned little Arab horse of hers. It didn’t look robust enough to survive a round with fixed timber fences and, indeed, the horse had come back with a swollen knee from clattering against something solid …

  ‘It could be that we’re looking at this wrong,’ I said quickly. ‘It may not be the fall, but just a fall. Orlando had a fall, the last time she did the course. I wonder where?’

  ‘You’re reaching, Charlie,’ Parker said, doubtful.

  ‘Ross gave us this practically with his last breath, and for all we know, finding it out was what got him killed,’ I said, blasting past a slow-moving RV and just managing to dart back into my lane through a disappearing gap between that and an oncoming Kenworth. ‘If you can suggest a better place to start looking, I’m all bloody ears.’

  The Navigator stood no chance of catching up with us now. Well, good. It was one less thing to worry about – two less things, if I counted Eisenberg as well as Caroline Willner.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Parker said, and I realised he’d gone quiet again during the last manoeuvre. ‘But for the moment, please, just drive.’

  I totally ignored the signs welcoming careful drivers on the driveway leading to the riding club, spraying the verges with gravel on every turn. It certainly didn’t make for a stealthy approach.

  So much so, that when I pulled up close to the stable yard, the Aussie instructor, Raleigh, was waiting for us by the gate, arm in a black sling, looking highly pissed off.

  ‘Hey, Pom!’ he shouted as soon as we climbed out of the car. ‘What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing, driving up here like that, mate? You trying to scare half the horses to death or what?’

  ‘Where’s Hunt?’ Parker demanded, and though he didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t need to. He had an innate air of natural command that had Raleigh’s attention instantly diverted.

  ‘W-what?’ He jerked the thumb of his unbroken arm over his shoulder. ‘He’s out on the cross-country course. Said as he knew the course was out of use for a few days while the new sod beds in, he’d come to fix up one of the fences that Orlando busted last time she went round. I told him he didn’t need to, but he’d brought his mate over with a ute and all the gear.’

  I felt the jolt of it go through Parker. It must have done, because it hit me hard enough to make my nape prickle.

  ‘How long ago?’ My turn to fire off a question. I clearly didn’t have Parker’s touch, though, because Raleigh just gaped at me. I reached under my jacket and pulled out the SIG. That seemed to get his notice. I felt my voice rising. ‘How long ago did he go out on the course?’

  ‘I dunno. About an hour, maybe. I’ve been busy in the yard,’ he gabbled. ‘Now look here, Pom, what the bloody hell’s this all about?’

  ‘Where?’ I snapped instead. ‘Which fence?’

  I saw his colour start to rise in temper, and was close to losing my own when Parker stepped between us.

  ‘Dina’s been kidnapped and we believe Hunt may have her,’ he said, the tone of his voice leaving no room for not taking this seriously. ‘We need to find him, and we need to find him now.’

  Raleigh’s colour ebbed away. ‘Jeez, mate. I dunno. He said it was over on the far side somewhere. I wasn’t really taking note. Look, there’s a map in the tack room.’ He wheeled away. ‘Come have a look for yourself.’

  We hurried after him and found that, in keeping with the riding club’s upscale facilities, the map was actually a large framed satellite image, with the track of the course plotted and the obstacles clearly identified at every point. I was impressed and dismayed in equal measure.

  ‘Wow, I didn’t realise it was this big.’

  ‘Yeah, I spent a couple of years in the UK, studying course design – Badminton, Burghley, Gatcombe,’ Raleigh said, justifiably proud. ‘If you take the difficult route, it’s well up to international standard.’

  ‘My God,’ Parker murmured. ‘Where do we start?’

  But one fence caught my eye. Leapt out at me in stark clarity. I stabbed a finger on the course map.

  ‘That one!’

  ‘You’re reaching again, Charlie,’ Parker warned tightly.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said, already starting to move. ‘Look at the name of it.’

  As soon as I’d seen it, Ross’s cryptic dying warning made perfect sense.

  The fence was called The Coffin.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The Aston Martin may have been an utterly brilliant car on the road, but it wouldn’t have gone more than a few metres off it. Last night’s rain had turned the ground slick. The grass was so soft in places that just to walk on it broke through to liquid mud underneath.

  Raleigh insisted we take the club runabout – the GMC pickup he’d used as a tow vehicle to collect Dina’s horses. It was sitting on the yard with half a dozen fence posts and a bale of straw stacked in the back. We drove out of the yard making a beeline for the far side of the
course, and The Coffin. If the size of some of the other fences we passed on the way were anything to go by, it was going to be just as scary as its name suggested.

  Back when I’d had horses of my own as a teenager in Cheshire, I’d never ridden beyond inter-county level, with the fences smaller and less well nailed together than these. But even so, coffins had never been my favourite.

  They were a three-part obstacle with a straightforward rail in that tricked you into approaching too boldly, but the landing surface dropped away unexpectedly. At the bottom of the slope was the lined ditch that gave the fence its name, then usually a single stride back uphill to another rail.

  Get the first element wrong and there was very little chance of recovery. It was a test of rhythm and control on the part of the rider, and bravery and fitness on the part of the horse.

  The Coffin on the riding club course was possibly at the furthest point away from the stable yard and any chance of disturbance or discovery. Without Ross’s garbled warning, we would never have had any reason to look for it.

  The natural landscape had that slightly too-perfect look about it that made it certainly artificial. The whole place had been reshaped to provide changes in elevation, and planted with trees to make the approaches to obstacles sudden and surprising. When Raleigh had been let loose to design this course, it seemed they’d given him an open chequebook and he’d taken full advantage of the fact.

  Now, we bumped over the rough ground, slithering despite the four-wheel drive, following a set of similar tracks to our own.

  ‘Should be just past that next bunch of trees up on the left,’ Parker said, tense, reading from the pocket version of the map, which Raleigh had given us. ‘Stop here, Charlie, and we’ll go in on foot. We don’t want to spook him.’

  I pulled the pickup a little closer to the shelter of the trees and cut the engine. The sudden silence was broken as Parker pulled out the Glock he carried and racked a round into the chamber.

  He glanced across, a question in his eyes, and I realised that this was the first time I’d been into a situation alone with him. On a rational level he completely understood that I was up to the job, but purely on an emotional level, that was another matter.