by Zoe Sharp
I nodded, scrolling through the mobile phone menu until I found the list of received calls and hitting the dial key. It connected and rang out four times before Eamonn answered the call.
“So, changed your mind, have you?” he said slyly, by way of greeting. “Thought you might.”
“We’re prepared to make an exchange,” I said, clipped. “When and where?”
“Engine room,” Eamonn said. “I get the gems, you get Isobel and that brat of hers, and we all walk away happy.”
“As simple as that,” I said, not bothering to hide the scepticism. “What guarantees do we have that you haven’t already pushed them over the side?”
“Oh, don’t tempt me,” Eamonn said, almost jovial again. “Here.”
There was a pause, then Jamie’s voice came on the line, high in his distress. “Charlie! I’m sorry, I—”
“OK, that’s enough,” Eamonn said, cutting in. “They’re both fine – for the moment. It’s up to you how long they stay that way. Engine room, Charlie. You’ve got four minutes.”
I stabbed my thumb on the End key even though Eamonn had already finished the call.
I swore under my breath. “How the hell does he think he’s going to get away with this?” I muttered. “He must know that we’ll ring ahead and as soon as the boat docks in Troon the police will be all over him.”
“So we plan for the worst,” Sean said, grim. He picked up his helmet and ripped the ear-piece and microphone for his radio out of the lining, reattaching it to the rest of the unit inside his jacket and draping it round his collar. William, Daz and I quickly followed suit.
“OK, William, I want you to stay on the outside, in case this all goes pear-shaped,” Sean said to him. “Eamonn’s got to be planning a double-cross, but at the moment we don’t know what. You’re known to the crew. If it all sounds like it’s going bad you’re probably the best person to get us some help. Daz, you’re with us. OK?”
They nodded, faces tight with apprehension. They must have thought, after the strike on the van, their brush with danger on this trip was over.
We were all wrong.
We pushed the outer door open and went out. The outer deck smelled of salt and diesel and chip fat from the extractor vents out of the restaurant kitchen. It was driven into our faces by the fierce wind whipping up off the Irish Sea and I was glad I was still wearing my leathers.
The sea was lumpy and getting worse. There were only a couple of the hardier passengers braving the elements and we kept an eye on them as William led us through a low gate that was clearly marked as Off Limits. From there we broke into a half-jog, half-stagger towards the stern, trying to compensate for the lurching of the deck under our feet.
Gouts of spray were being thrown up over the railing. I glanced at the increasingly rough dark green swell and hoped that, whatever Eamonn had planned, it didn’t involve any of us ending up in the water.
On a day like today, anybody going over the side wouldn’t stand a chance in hell.
Twenty-nine
William led us confidently to a heavy steel door in the superstructure that opened into a steep stairwell. The inside was never intended for passenger eyes. It was industrial in its construction, lined with padding to prevent injury in rough seas like these were increasingly becoming. The ferry’s stabilisers were working hard to compensate for the motion but we held on tight to the handrail all the way down, nevertheless.
At the bottom William indicated another doorway into the engine control room. It was loud down there, and hot enough to break me out in a sweat under my leathers. William opened the door slightly and peered cautiously through the crack. He glanced back, frowning.
“There should be at least a couple of crew down here,” he said, keeping his voice low as he pushed the door wide. “I don’t know where—”
As the door swung open we caught sight of two men in ferry company uniform, slumped on the floor.
“Well, it looks like we’re heading the right way,” Sean muttered, derisive. “You want to know where Eamonn is, just follow the trail of bodies.”
He crouched by the two men, checking for pulses. One of them stirred at his touch, groaning.
“The engine room’s through there,” William said, jerking his head. “The lever operates the door.”
“OK,” Sean said, straightening. “Do what you can for these two and then get topside. I’ve a feeling we might need you up there.”
William nodded, eyes sliding over us from an impassive face. “I take it all back, what I said earlier,” he said, stony. “If you get the chance to kill that bastard, take it.”
If the engine control room was hot and noisy, that was nothing compared to the engine room itself. The place was crowded with pipes and wires and the steel grate flooring vibrated hard under our feet. Huge cooling fans were fighting a losing battle to circulate the sweltering stale air and the stink of engine oil overlaid everything, thick enough to taste.
We found ourselves on a mezzanine walkway overlooking one of the massive diesel engines that drove the ferry. The top of the engine casing itself must have been three or four metres in length. There was no sign of any crew, or of Eamonn.
Sean nudged my arm and indicated we should go forward and keep our eyes peeled. I jerked my head to Daz and we moved off. There was little point in trying for stealth. The racket of the engines running covered any sounds we might have made.
“Ah, there you are now. I was beginning to think you’d decided these two weren’t worth giving up a small fortune in diamonds for,” Eamonn’s voice called out above the clamour. “Not that I’d have blamed you, after the trouble they’ve caused.”
We stepped forward to the railing to see Eamonn down on the engine room floor below us, previously hidden by the bulk of the engine itself. He had forsaken the suit he’d worn during our last encounter for jeans and a flying jacket.
The extendible baton he’d used to kill Paxo was in his hand, the lethal metal tip resting lightly on his shoulder. Another like the one Sean had taken away from him at Jacob and Clare’s, and the one I’d taken away from the man in the Merc van. I wished I’d kept hold of it.
Jamie and Isobel had been handcuffed to each other’s wrists, face to face, around a steel support pillar. Jamie was on his knees, hugging the metalwork, his eyes closed and his face drenched with sweat. For a moment I wondered what the hell Eamonn had done to him, then I remembered his acute queasiness on the outward voyage, when the sea had been almost glassy compared to this. The plunging of the ship and the lack of a visible horizon was making even me feel unbalanced, and I didn’t suffer from seasickness.
“I hardly think they’re the troublemakers round here, do you?” Sean said, his voice loud enough to carry but icily controlled. “They haven’t quite extended their range to common murder.”
Eamonn smiled nastily at us from beneath the plaster that stretched across his nose, partly obscuring his face. He took a step sideways and circled the shackled mother and son like a shark.
“Oh but now that’s not true,” Eamonn declared. He stopped, pushed the edge of the baton under Isobel’s chin and forced her head back with it. “Is it now, Isobel my darlin’?”
Isobel stayed stubbornly mute, pressing her lips together into a thin line and glaring at him with pure hatred in her face. Eamonn studied her dispassionately for a moment, then lowered the baton and moved round to Jamie, grasping his hair to lift his slack head up and wedge the baton across his throat. Jamie’s eyes flew open as he began to choke.
“Tell them,” Eamonn goaded, gaze locked on Isobel.
Up on the walkway we saw Jamie begin to struggle in Eamonn’s hands and moved forward instinctively. Eamonn’s head jerked round towards us.
“Hold off or I’ll snap his neck in a heartbeat and there won’t be a thing you can do to stop me,” he commanded. We stopped. He turned his attention back to Isobel. “Tell them, or your lying face will be the last thing your little boy sees.”
“
All right,” Isobel said from between clenched teeth. “I killed him, is that what you want to hear? Well, I admit it and to hell with you!”
“Not good enough,” Eamonn said, tightening his grip. Jamie was panicking now, hands jerking so that Isobel was forced hard up against the other side of the pillar. “Tell them, Isobel,” Eamonn taunted her. “Tell them the kind of woman you really are. They’re prepared to die for you and this worthless brat of yours. Don’t you think they’re entitled to know?”
“I-I killed Slick Grannell,” she said, her voice wobbling. “It was an accident. I wasn’t aiming for him. I just wanted to stop that scrawny bitch from giving Jamie the money.” Her scornful gaze swept over her former lover. “I was trying to keep my son out of all this. To protect him from you.”
“You were trying to kill Clare?” I couldn’t stop the shocked question bursting out. All the time the Devil’s Bridge Club had been slyly trying to point the blame for the accident that had claimed Slick’s life towards Clare, and they’d been right. I remembered my last phone call with MacMillan. The van that had hit Slick had been registered to Isobel and I’d ridden right over that fact and jumped straight to the conclusion it must have been Eamonn or one of his men driving it instead.
Eamonn took one look at the shock in our faces and released his grip on Jamie, who slumped forwards, coughing. When he could speak again he stared up at his mother with a kind of horrified disgust on his face.
“So that’s why you wouldn’t loan me the money in the first place,” Jamie said and there was no mistaking the sneer in his voice. “You live with this crooked bastard but you wanted to keep me out of it?”
“Oh she would have been in there like a shot if she’d had the chance, wouldn’t you, Isobel?” Eamonn mocked. “Truth is, though, she’s broke. Wasn’t that your real reason for trying to run Jacob’s blonde bimbo down? No imminent wedding means no divorce and you wouldn’t have had to pay the old man off, now would you? A nice little side benefit.”
“So why did you go along with all this?” Sean slung at him. “What was in it for you?”
“Oh I found out about the little deal your man there was putting together,” Eamonn said, nodding to a white-faced Daz. “It sounded too good to be true, so I thought I’d cut myself a slice by staking young Jamie. I must admit it was a bit of a surprise when his father’s jail-bait threw a spanner in the works by giving him the cash to try and pay me off.”
“Her name is Clare,” I said with a brittle precision that hurt my jaw. “And she’s twenty-seven. Hardly jail-bait.”
“She’s still young enough to be his daughter,” Eamonn returned. “She was a thorn in my side, I know that much. That ‘accident’ was a mixed blessing. When Isobel admitted to me what she’d done I thought she’d blown the whole deal by killing Slick. I thought he was the only link, but Tess had the same contacts, so all was not lost.”
“So why try and run Tess down on Friday night?” I said, although even as I spoke I knew the answer.
“Oh that was Isobel’s boys again. Getting inventive, weren’t we, my darlin’? Getting desperate, too. Thought that if you lost your contact, you’d give it up.”
She curled her lip at him but Eamonn just grinned back at her.
“And that bunch who jumped us in the pub at Portaferry,” I said. “Isobel again, I assume?”
“Oh yes,” Eamonn said cheerfully. “You see the kind of mother she is – prepared to have her own son beaten up to keep him away from the thick of it?” He tutted and shook his head. “Evil and vicious. My kind of woman.”
“So she knew you were planning on hijacking the diamonds as soon as the exchange was made,” Sean said. He’d gone very still, his only movement an unconscious counterbalance against the crashing of the ship. “Why wait until then?”
Eamonn shrugged. “Because without Tess, and the boy wonder here, we couldn’t flush out the courier. All we had to do was keep tabs on you until the rendezvous and we’d get the diamonds without having to lay out a cent. And all I had to do was promise Isobel my lads would get her little boy out of there before the shit started flying,” he said, smiling broadly like it was all so simple.
“You two were the only possible fly in the ointment, but their own greed made them keep you out of it, otherwise we might have had more of a fight on our hands,” he went on, darkly now. “And it turned out I was right about that, wasn’t I? I knew you were trouble right from the start.” He touched a tentative hand to the plaster on his nose. “My lads did their best to get rid of you, Charlie, but it seems you’ve a habit of surviving.”
A brief and graphic snapshot of the van that had chased me from Slick’s wake, and Sam’s accident sprang into my mind. I doused it quickly.
“You must know that as soon as we reach Scotland they’ll be waiting for you, don’t you, Eamonn?” I said instead.
Eamonn’s smile blinked out to turn his face cold again. “I’m tired of listening to your yacking,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I have a schedule to keep to. Hand over those gems.”
Sean unzipped his pocket with a show of reluctance and produced the pouch. Eamonn’s eyes locked greedily onto the prize.
Sean paused, nodding to Isobel and Jamie. “Release them first,” he said.
“You’re in no position to dictate terms to me.”
“Neither are you,” Sean said.
Eamonn’s face was murderous, then he smiled again. “Why not?” he said. He produced a set of keys from his jacket pocket, held them up for a moment, then deliberately let them fall. The keys hit the grating at his feet and slithered through into the dark void below.
“There you go, now,” he said. “It won’t take you more than – what? Two minutes to reach those? And I can’t take them back either. Fair’s fair. Now give me those stones.” He stepped closer to Jamie again. “I can still kill the boy, if that’s what you’re after?”
Sean sighed and started to move towards the nearest stairwell. As he passed me his eyes slid sideways, little more than a flicker. I followed his gaze and saw a set of tools on the wall behind us, each clipped into its own place. Right in the middle was a large pair of bolt-cutters. I blinked at him, just once, to show I’d got the message.
“I don’t think so,” Eamonn’s voice called out. We both froze, as though Eamonn had caught the gesture and divined its meaning.
Eamonn was shaking his head. “Not you,” he said, eyes narrowed on Sean. “You must be joking if you think I’d want to be getting close to you again for a while. And she’s just as bad. Give the stones to the wee faggot. He can bring them.”
Daz flushed at the insult but said nothing as Sean handed over the bag of diamonds to him. He made his way down the steep open-tread steps and approached Eamonn warily, fiddling with the pouch in his hands.
Eamonn held out his hand for the stones, his expression as arrogant as a man with his nose plastered all over his face can manage.
“Charlie! Sean! Can you hear me?” William’s voice sounded tinnily from my collar. “Erm, I think we might have a problem up here.”
“What is it?” I muttered, lifting the mic nearer my mouth as casually as I could manage.
“A big nasty-looking guy’s just come through the Off Limits gate and broken the lock off the fire control room,” William said.
“The what—?” I began, just as Daz reached out to give the diamonds to Eamonn.
At the last moment Daz flipped the untied bag upside down and the stones showered down onto the metal grating like hail, disappearing into the same dark space that had swallowed up the handcuff keys.
“You want the diamonds,” Daz cried wildly. “Here, take them. It won’t take you more than a couple of hours to get to them!”
“You stupid bastard,” Eamonn roared, bringing the baton slashing down towards Daz’s head.
Even as Daz blocked the blow with his forearm, Sean had jumped for the stairs, sliding down the handrails rather than bothering with the narrow treads.
&
nbsp; Before he could reach the bottom Eamonn had lifted a small walkie-talkie to his mouth and shouted, “Are you in position, Michael? Hit the bastards! Hit them now!”
There was a delay of perhaps three seconds, during which time I’d started to dive for the board that held the bolt-cutters. Sean had landed at the bottom of the stairs and taken a stride for Eamonn. Daz had fallen and was rolling out of the way, hugging his injured arm to his chest.
I’d almost begun to believe that whatever nasty surprise Eamonn had planned had backfired on him when the big cooling fan next to me suddenly lost impetus and started to spin down. A piercing alarm siren wailed into life, backed by a blinding flashing light.
The engine room lights all went out, leaving only the warning light strobing in the darkness. Then the emergency lighting clicked in.