by Andy Lucas
‘I thought they could do that with small, local wells,’ Pace dug a bit deeper. Keeping his expression neutral, he added. ‘I’m just curious that such a huge industrial project would get the go ahead in such an ecologically sensitive area.’
‘Isn’t it better to provide a more reliable source of water? The ocean is the obvious answer. Progress.’
‘I agree that what you have here is fantastic,’ Pace nodded. ‘I also imagine that you will want to recoup your money for the plant. I assume that local tribes and desert nomads won’t do that for you. That suggests you’ll be offering this water to large corporations. That will mean some lengthy pipework to get it anywhere meaningful, or large water ships.’
‘You seem to have given this a lot of thought,’ countered Josephine softly. ‘For someone just here to look at how we’re using McEntire technology.’
‘Let’s just say I have a keen interest in the environment. Running hundreds of miles of pipeline will be costly, and I’m guessing it will involve cutting right across more protected land, and wildlife habitat.’ He paused for effect. ‘But I’m sure you’ve got all of that covered already. Anyway, thank you for your time, Miss Roche.’
The cordial atmosphere had taken on a definite chill.
‘I think it’s time that we were going,’ agreed Hammond. ‘Perhaps we can come back another time?’
‘Yes, perhaps. I will take you back down.’
The party filed back to the lift and rode down. After a fairly abrupt farewell, a quick drive took them to the dock, where the launch returned them to the Sea Otter without incident. Once safely back aboard, the three of them convened in the saloon for coffee and a frank discussion.
Hammond had been around the McEntire Corporation for many years. Despite Pace being new to the covert unpleasantness that Britain’s secret security arm involved, he already trusted the man’s judgement and instincts. In his own mind, the security presence smelled all wrong. Something wasn’t right behind the corporate front they’d just witnessed.
‘Well,’ he opened as he poured a strong black coffee for himself, ‘I think it stinks.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ agreed Sarah. Now changed into a black bikini, hips and legs partially concealed by a white sarong, she poured herself and Pace a coffee too, handing Pace the steaming mug and settling down on a sumptuous sofa next to him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Pace, taking a sip of the familiar liquid. He had been mulling over what he knew and came to a conclusion. ‘We won’t to be able to get any information by direct action, at the plant, unless we go in there like we mean it.’
‘Sounds like we need Baker and his team.’
‘Exactly. But that would end up in a serious fire-fight, possibly for no reason. We need to get a lot more information about the company before we do anything else, so we know what we’re up against.’
‘What about the stiff in our freezer?’
Pace smiled, without humour. ‘Nobody knows about our guest at the moment, outside of the Corporation. If ARC was involved in his demise, when they find out we have the body, it may trigger some kind of reaction.’
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Sarah.
‘I think we report back to your father,’ replied Hammond.
‘Then we get some surveillance organised before letting it slip that we have found a body. We’ll suggest that it was discovered floating just a few miles out from the facility. Let’s kick the hornet’s nest.’ They agreed that they needed the support staff in place beforehand, so decided to change the subject. ‘Now, let’s forget about it for a while and get back to the mystery of the lost gold and what the submarine was trying to collect, in exchange for so much money.’
‘Great. I much prefer the idea of a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt to thinking about dead bodies and mercenaries,’ smiled Sarah.
‘They might all be linked,’ started Hammond but stopped tying any more sinister threads together after Pace shot him a warning look.
‘I doubt it,’ Pace breezed. ‘Let’s get back to the gold.’
14
The smell was worse than usual, coming from next door. The man who lived there was a real pig; bloated, pasty and alone. As a neighbour of nearly five years, Alison Weller had never bothered to get to know him. She was just shy of her thirtieth birthday and currently single, which was a rarity for her. Her neighbour was never in the running to be her next boyfriend, that was for sure.
Alison didn’t really know much about him. She knew he worked and that he seemed to keep the local pizza companies afloat with almost nightly orders. In fact, she realised, she didn’t even know his name. She was dreadfully drunk, having just finished a late night clubbing session with some girlfriends, and just wanted to go to sleep before the room span too much faster. An overpowering smell was coming in through her bedroom window, wafting over the fence from next door’s back garden.
‘Smells like something died over there,’ she muttered to herself, eventually opting to close the window, draw the curtains and leave challenging the stinky neighbour until she woke up again later on.
Irritation on her eyelids nearly woke her a few hours later. Blearily she started to rouse but her brain failed to recognise the annoyance as multiple blue flashing lights, blinking brightly beyond her bedroom curtains. Turning over, groaning as she did so, she fell back to sleep, unaware of the drama unfolding outside.
Although Alison had no time for Peter Wormly, the neighbour on the other side was more forgiving. Betty Arthur was an elderly lady, widowed for some years, she often watched his solitary life and felt sorry for him. She was sure that a few healthier meals, some exercise and a new wardrobe would change the man’s fortunes with the opposite sex. She didn’t speak to him much, though she always tried to catch his eye when she saw him and give a smile or little wave. With no children of her own, her maternal instincts and compassion came to the fore. Often, though, he would see her and just ignore her.
The smell not only wafted into Alison’s bedroom; it found its way into Betty’s. A light sleeper, it was four in the morning when she woke, the stench creeping in through her open window as it had done with Alison.
Unlike Alison, it had sent chills down Betty’s spine. She had smelled something like it before; a nauseating sweetness that sent her mind scuttling back to the terrible day she had returned from a two week holiday on the Isle of Wight to find her beloved husband dead on the sofa.
She had been to spend time with her sister, who was ill with depression. Burt had not wanted to come, instead preferring to stay at home and potter in the garden. A bit of peace and quiet, he had joked to her as she had climbed into the taxi. It was one of the hottest summers on record and she had been pleased to be heading to the coast.
She never saw him alive again. The police report said that Burt had been dead for at least a week before she found him. Fierce daytime heat, and open windows that allowed free access to flies and bugs, had created a sight that she would take with her to her own grave.
So Betty picked up the phone, despite the very early hour, and rang the police. To their credit, both police cars and an ambulance pulled up outside within ten minutes, lights flashing but sirens silent. After a quick conversation with her, two police officers tried to rouse Peter Wormly, banging on the door and calling his name. The back door was shut up tightly, as was the front. No windows offered the chance of easy access either. The street was still sleeping, as it was a Sunday morning, so there was no risk of drawing a curious crowd.
PC Bristow and PC Wilson had been on duty all night and were exhausted from making multiple arrests, giving cautions and generally keeping the peace on a rowdy Saturday night in town. Both were young officers, in their mid-twenties. Bristow was married with a young daughter while his partner often ribbed him about the carefree bachelor life that he was now missing. Despite their youth, they made a strong, professional team and had already dealt with some terrible incidents since teaming up the year before. The sme
ll rankled their nostrils with a dreaded familiarity.
‘Not what I want to smell before knocking off and grabbing some breakfast,’ muttered Bristow quietly to Wilson. ‘How many times have we smelled that, eh?’
‘Too many,’ agreed Wilson sombrely. ‘We’re not getting in there, Dave. Tight as a drum. And the doors are solid. No glass.’
‘Yep, we’re going to have to break it down.’
While Wilson hurried back to the car to retrieve the door ram from the boot of the police car, Bristow called in an update on his radio. He quickly got agreement for a forced entry.
Wilson returned with a heavy metal bar, fitted with hand grips, which the police usually used to pop open locked doors when they conducted early morning drug raids. One swing and the front door lock easily gave way, allowing a poisonous wave of concentrated stench to escape gleefully from the confines of the hallway behind.
Peter Wormly had been dead for three days and the heating was on, which hadn’t helped matters. Not that he looked like a murder victim. In fact, he looked peaceful in death, hanging from a rope made of bed sheets from the top banister, his feet dangling a metre above the hall carpet. Clad only in a pair of dark blue boxer shorts, the body was even more bloated than normal by the gases that continued to expand inside his corpse. Pale blue skin was marked more darkly beneath the rope that cut deeply into Peter Wormly’s neck.
‘Poor sod,’ said Wilson. ‘He must have died in agony, choking for breath.’
‘That’s what happens when you hang yourself, I guess,’ replied his partner.
‘Not if you do it right. The whole idea is to jump and break your neck. Quick, clean. Nobody wants to be strangled to death. It takes much longer.’
A quick check around turned up no sign of forced entry or foul play. There was no suicide note but that was common. People who felt low enough to take their own lives very often didn’t bother to find a pen and paper. The place was fairly tidy although the kitchen sink was filled to overflowing with dirty plates and cups, and the bin was stuffed with pizza boxes, fish and chip papers and foil takeaway cartons.
‘Right then,’ frowned Wilson. ‘Let’s get this mess sorted out.’ After such a busy shift already, the paperwork for this one was going to keep them both on duty until lunchtime.
Playing out as planned, the appearance of a tragic suicide had passed the initial scrutiny. Nobody could have imagined the terror and violence with which Peter Wormly actually met his death a few days before.
It had been early evening when the knock on the door sounded the arrival of yet another pizza dinner for one. Wormly had no reason to be suspicious of anything. He was riding high on his recent good fortune and still dizzy with the amount of hard cash he had squirrelled away under a loose floorboard in the spare bedroom.
He opened the door to two men, both dressed in the uniform of the delivery company. One carried his dinner. The other carried a clipboard.
‘Mr Wormly?’ asked the clipboard carrier.
‘Yes, that’s me. Two delivery drivers seems a bit over the top.’
‘Good evening, sir. I am accompanying some of the deliveries this evening, to our most valued customers. I wondered if you would mind answering a few quick questions on a customer satisfaction survey we’re running. Won’t take a moment.’
This wasn’t what Wormly wanted to get into. He was hungry and just wanted to tuck into his large pepperoni and ham pizza.
‘Well, I really don’t have time at the mom….’
‘Please, sir. We want to make sure our best customers are happy. You are one of our best. Your views matter to us.’
Never able to resist flattery, Wormly nodded. He expected to answer the questions on the doorstep but before he could speak, both men had entered and headed down the hall, then out into the kitchen. Closing the front door, Wormly hurried after them, the delicious smell of fresh pizza addling his mind to any sense of alarm.
The next few seconds slowed to a crawl as Wormly’s brain tried to reconcile what his eyes were seeing with what they expected to see. The men put the pizza and clipboard down on the kitchen table, turned around and stepped towards him, smiles fading to be replaced by purposeful looks. An arm raised in a blur and the nerve spray barked into his face, dosing him heavily with a fast-acting paralysis agent. It worked so rapidly that he only managed to open his mouth halfway to protest before he felt his legs turn to jelly, pitching him headlong onto the black and white tiled floor of his kitchen.
He could still see and hear everything that was going on around him but he could not move a muscle. Only his diaphragm was working, his breathing laboured. He felt himself being rolled over onto his back and watched, helplessly, as one of the men simply sat down on his chest. The horrifying reality of not being able to breathe crashed into his consciousness at the same moment that his lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen.
It all happened so fast. One minute he was waiting for his dinner, now he was suffocating.
With seconds left before he passed out, Wormly became mercifully light-headed. His final thought in this world was one of confusion as the blackness closed in.
The two men checked their watches until, after five minutes, they knew their victim was brain-dead and beyond help. The seated man stood up off of Wormley’s body and they both then set about carefully setting the scene. They had observed their victim for a few days and knew his lack of friends would give them as much time as they needed, undisturbed.
It ended up taking over an hour to carefully locate the sheets, knot the rope, strip the victim’s body and manhandle it up into its final, hanging position. Both men were sweating profusely by the time they finished.
‘I wonder what he did to end up with us knocking on his door?’ The clipboard carrier didn’t really care but was often curious about the people he was sent to silence.
‘I just wish he’d taken better care of himself and didn’t give me a damned hernia humping his fat carcass around,’ grumbled his accomplice. ‘Is everything checked?’
The clipboard carrier nodded. All surfaces had been wiped clean. ‘No traces of us will ever be found and I’ve pumped up the central heating so that he starts to rot quickly. It will stop people digging too deeply if he’s all rancid and stinking.’
Their final job was to try and recover any of the cash that the deceased had in his possession. All they had been told was that a sizeable sum of cash might still be somewhere inside Wormley’s home. Neither man was stupid enough to try and line their own pockets with it, even if they found it. They were also aware that any delay increased their chances of being discovered, so they did not look too hard. Unable to find it, a knowing nod passed between them and they left, one after another, 5 minutes apart. The street was quiet and nobody noticed anything.
Job done.
15
Josephine Roche was not angry, she was unsettled; perturbed even. What should have been a very routine meeting had turned into something else. Her keen intuition clamoured that all was not well so she had summoned her most trusted advisor to discuss matters.
Fiona Chambers had been enjoying an afternoon workout in the extensively-equipped gym when a security guard relayed the message that her boss wanted to see her immediately. She wasn’t surprised but finished off her routine before showering quickly and hurrying to Josephine’s office. Knocking once, she was told to enter, which she did, crossing the large room to stand in front of Josephine’s desk.
‘This James Pace,’ Josephine opened quietly. ‘What do we know about him?’
Fiona had been expecting the question. Before her workout, she had done a bit of internet searching. It had revealed all about Pace’s adventures in the Amazon, as well as a comprehensive background that the media had dug up at the time he was gunned down by a child, in broad daylight. There was information on how he was recruited as a video diarist for a charity challenge race; Race Amazon, organised and funded by the McEntire Corporation.
Fiona recalled a lot of the in
formation anyway, having had her memory jogged by the articles. It was only a few months previously that the race athletes had been caught up in a failed coup attempt, with mercenaries hunting them down and murdering many in the depths of the jungle. The re-run had raised a small fortune in donations, passing off without a hitch the previous month.
James Pace had survived the carnage of the first race without much more than his wits, tenacity and no small amount of courage to call upon. That made him good, which also made him dangerous. Now employed by the McEntire Corporation, and romantically linked to Doyle McEntire’s only daughter, he was clearly someone to watch. As an ex-RAF helicopter pilot, his military experience also heightened her concern.
Fiona explained what she had discovered. Josephine listened carefully. Ah, so this was the man who had worked such miracles in the jungle, she thought. She well remembered the media frenzy. Too busy to follow the story herself at the time, she had caught fleeting glimpses of newspapers and heard snippets of interviews Pace had given. Now she had met the man himself and it did little to ease her mind.
‘I want to know everything there is to know about him,’ she decided. ‘Not just what the public already know. There might be more to his visit than just a professional interest by the McEntire Corporation.’ She had no idea of the true nature of the Corporation’s activities; very few people did, but the last thing she needed at the moment was for her plans to be discovered.
‘Of course. I will get on it right away,’ replied Fiona.
‘And the other matter?’
‘That little issue has been dealt with.’
Josephine allowed herself a brief smile. Wormly had been useful in obtaining the diary pages but she could never leave him alive. She felt no remorse. He was just a tool who had outlived his usefulness.