Say You're Sorry: A Gripping Crime Thriller (A DCI Campbell McKenzie Detective Conspiracy Thriller No 1)
Page 34
Within minutes he was leaving the dirt track road and heading back towards Edinburgh.
After synching the phone to the car, he pressed the button on his steering wheel activating the voice command system and told his Bluetooth connected phone to call Caroline.
As the phone rang, Tommy willed her to answer it. He knew there was a strong likelihood that she wouldn’t, in which case he would drive straight round to her house, or wait for her discreetly outside the police station. Close enough to see her leave, but far enough away so he wouldn’t be spotted.
Luckily, she picked up after only the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
The sound of her voice caught him by surprise.
“Hi, it’s Tommy.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“What do you want?”
Her voice was cold and unemotional.
“I need to see you.”
“Why? I thought I’d made it pretty clear that we're over.”
‘You couldn’t have made it clearer, you bitch,’ Tommy thought to himself. ‘You slept with McKenzie!’
“You did. But there’s something that we need to discuss, urgently. Something really important. About your future career in the police.”
There was another long silence.
“What do you mean?”
“And I want to apologise for what I said to you.”
“You? Apologise? You’ve never apologised for anything in your life!” she replied, laughing.
“I will. To you. Will you meet me one last time? At the Seafront Inn in Joppa? Our usual room?”
“What did you mean just now, when you said something about my future career in the police?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Can you meet me there in fifty minutes? Yes or no? Afterwards, I promise you, if you still don’t want to see me, I’ll never call you again. I swear.”
Tommy could almost hear her thinking as she pondered whether to accept.
“Make it forty.” She replied suddenly. “The sooner I see you, the sooner you can say your piece, and I can leave and never see you again.”
“Thank you.” Tommy feigned gratitude. “I’ll see you there.”
Right clicking with his thumb on the steering wheel, he ended the phone conversation, pulled over to the side of the road, and took the SIM card out of the phone. Snapping the SIM card in half, he opened the car window and threw it outside. After replacing the SIM card with the old one from earlier that afternoon, he started driving again and got the phone to call Ramsay, the smarter of his two new bodyguards, both of whom were waiting for him in the Casino in Leith.
“It’s me, Tommy. Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes Boss. Where are you? Do want us to come to you now?”
“Yes. But I need you to do something for me first. Find Fraser. He should be in the bar downstairs somewhere. Tell him to get the sperm that he put in the fridge the other day and give it to you, but to put it in a cool bag container with lots of ice so that we can keep it frozen for as long as possible. He’ll know what I mean. I want you to bring it with you now when you come to meet me. Come to the Seafront Inn in Joppa.”
“Sperm?” Andy couldn’t help but reply.
“Yes, I said SPERM. We’re going to kill that bitch Caroline that I’ve wasted the past ten years of my life with, and stick the stuff right up inside her, so deep that she fucking regrets the day she ever set eyes on me! And make sure you bring a pack of plastic gloves from the supply cupboard. Put the gloves on before you touch the container with the sperm in it. And call me if you can’t find Fraser. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Meet me in the car park across the road from the hotel. Don’t be fucking late.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Andy agreed, without even flinching when he heard that they were going to kill Caroline. She was a copper, and as far as he was concerned, the more coppers that died, the better.
In Brazil, the latest conversation Tommy had had on his phone was spooled to a disk on the server, packaged up and made ready for Anand to listen to it as soon as he decided to access it remotely.
-------------------------
India
11.55 p.m.
Anand sat on the floor of his room, his head in his hands.
The world was spinning before him.
He was so dog tired that he was finding it difficult to maintain any focussed stream of thoughts for more than a few minutes, and his legs ached. He hadn't left the house or had any real exercise in weeks.
He knew that this couldn’t continue. He needed sleep. He needed rest. He needed fresh air.
But there was one unexpected element which was keeping him going. Something he had not expected.
Adrenaline.
Anand had realised that he was actually enjoying himself. He had always loved being a hacker… the power of being able to surf the internet, pass through network defences, do anything he wanted… But this was more. Far more.
He had discovered that he could use his skills to do things he could never have dreamed of. He could control lives.
Was this how God felt?
He immediately shook his head and tried to banish the thought from his mind. No, not God. He was not a god. But he was powerful. And just now he was using this power to do good.
Tommy McNunn was a monster. An evil, corrupt man and Anand had to stop him.
And soon, before he killed the accountant.
Anand knew that if he failed to prevent his death, the man’s blood would be on his hands.
The question was, how could he prevent it? Without being caught and ending up being put in prison himself?
There was an answer. The only problem was that it involved contacting the Scottish police directly.
Anand sat thinking, checking and rechecking in his mind the best way he should do this.
He was reasonably sure that he could do it without being caught. Everything that Anand did on the internet was anonymised by the technology he was using. Thanks to the TOR system which was incredibly and stupidly publicly available, anyone could do almost anything they wanted on the web without leaving any trace of who and where they were.
Users of the TOR system were untraceable.
Anand knew that, but he still took extra precautions on top of it, directing and redirecting everything he did through false email accounts and servers across the world. Anand was a ghost. Tracking him and finding him would be impossible.
Anand knew that. But still, going directly to the police in the UK…? Some would say that was stupidity.
However, the truth was he had no other choice. Time was not on his side.
He had to contact DCI McKenzie as soon as he could and tell him what was going on, and the best way to do that was to package up all the emails, the data files and the voice recordings which he had copied from Tommy McNunn’s accounts and devices and then dump them on a server somewhere so that McKenzie could access them. And he had to call him directly to tell him about the accountant.
Thanks to the mapping app on McNunn’s phone, Anand had been able to record exactly where McNunn was when he was threatening the accountant.
Perhaps the best thing was to call the D.C.I., get his email address and then send him the WAV file of the voice recording so that the police inspector could listen to it himself. Once he’d heard it and had the coordinates of where the accountant was, then surely they would be able to get to him in time to save him?
Time was of the essence and Anand had to work fast.
The decision made, Anand got to work.
-------------------------
Joppa
Edinburgh
7.00 P.M.
Tommy McNunn sat in his car, several hundred metres from the entrance to the Seafront Inn, scanning the door and street in front of the hotel with his binoculars.
Resting his hand on the cool-bag on the passenger seat, full of ice and containing the condom full of sperm, he watched as Caroline drove up to the entrance, parked h
er car out front and then walked into the reception.
The hotel was ideal for what was going to happen next. The reason they had chosen it as one of many that they had used for their secret dalliances was because there were hardly any CCTV cameras in the hotel, and those that were there, didn’t work.
The hotel was often used by businessmen and people who didn’t want to be noticed by anyone when conducting their business, and by women who were keen to entertain clients without drawing unwelcome attention.
The hotel turned a blind-eye and welcomed the trade.
Unless you talked to the receptionist when you walked in, they mostly always ignored you and carried on reading their paper or playing a game on their mobile phone.
That was, IF you used the entrance. Tommy normally let himself in through the fire-escape at the back. It had always been broken and in two years, no one had ever fixed it.
In other words, Tommy could come and go in the hotel as he pleased, without being noticed.
He looked at his watch. Ten minutes past seven. It was time.
Picking up the cool bag, he slipped out of the car, and walked down an alleyway, turning right into the cobbled street that ran along the back of the hotel, parallel to the main road.
When he got to the back of the hotel, he let himself into the hotel through the fire-escape as planned and made his way to Room 28, the room they always used. Tommy knew that Caroline would already be there.
Standing outside the door, he knocked twice, waited three seconds then knocked three more times in quick succession. Their secret knock.
The door opened in front of him and Tommy slipped inside, hiding the cool bag behind him.
When he left the room fifteen minutes later, the cool bag was empty, and Tommy was in a hurry.
-------------------------
India
Friday
00.30 A.M.
Anand took a deep breath and waited nervously while the woman police officer at the front desk of St Leonards Police Station transferred his call.
This was it. There was no going back.
After successfully setting up a VoIP call which would bounce off several voice gateways around the world before making its way through to Scotland, Anand was confident that nobody would ever be able to trace it back to him, especially since he was making the VoIP-call via the Darknet.
He had the email with the voice recording of Tommy and the accountant all ready, along with directions to where the accountant had been taken, which from a quick search of the internet had turned out to be a farmhouse.
He had also dumped everything he had collected on McNunn and his illegal activities into an encrypted file on a server in Sweden, including the photograph taken by the camera on Tommy’s laptop showing Tommy massaging his cheek with the gun. Anand had bundled up all the information on how to download, access and unencrypt the file and he'd put that into another email, which he had decided to send later, depending upon what happened in the next hour. This had all started with trying to get McNunn to say he was sorry and Anand was going to give McNunn one last chance to redeem himself before he destroyed him once and for all.
One more chance to say he was sorry.
In the meantime, Anand waited for DCI McKenzie to pick up the ringing phone on his desk in Edinburgh…
-------------------------
St Leonards Police Station
Edinburgh
Thursday
Later that day
DCI McKenzie’s Office
7.31 p.m. G.M.T.
DCI McKenzie heard the phone ringing as he was walking back to his office from the coffee machine.
He was avoiding going home and wanted to work as late as possible. The revelations about Wessex were damming. That she was involved with McNunn was indisputable. The photographs told a story that left little to the imagination. There would be an investigation and rightly so. She had not declared her relationship with McNunn to anyone, and the fact that she was meeting privately with the main suspect in an ongoing murder investigation in which she was a senior officer was not only unethical, it may also contravene several laws. The bottom line was that unless she could provide some good reasons for what was going on, her career would probably come to an end. Abruptly.
“What the hell was she thinking?” McKenzie had been asking himself all afternoon.
“And what the hell have I done?” He had rebuked himself continuously. He had betrayed his wife, and to be honest, he felt that Wessex had betrayed him. She had also played him for a fool.
But why?
Was the whole thing a scam? What happened last night… what was that all about?
He’d been such a bloody fool. Why had he let it happen!
McKenzie knew that if he went home feeling like this that he’d end up somehow taking out his frustration on his wife and she didn’t deserve it.
She didn’t deserve any of this.
“Bloody hell…”
Closing the door to his office he sat down in his chair and was just reaching for the ringing desk phone when his mobile on his desk began to shake.
With his hand hovering in mid-air above the desk phone he looked at the display on his mobile and saw the words ‘DI Wessex’ appear. She’d just sent him a text message.
“Shit!” he swore to himself, and redirected his hand above the desk phone to his mobile.
He picked it up and flicked open the message.
“Campbell. Come quick. I need to see you now. Urgently. This can’t wait. I’m in Room 28 of the Seafront Inn in Joppa. I have to tell you something within the next ten minutes. Please come. NOW!”
Chapter 42
The Seafront Inn
Joppa
Edinburgh
Thursday
7.38 p.m. G.M.T.
Tommy McNunn sat in the car once again watching the front of the hotel, his eyes peeled for any sign of DCI McKenzie.
He didn’t have long to wait.
He knew that if anyone caught him in the driving seat of a car, he would be in big trouble, but he couldn’t afford to have anyone else with him just now. This was something he had to do himself, and he needed the car to do it.
A car drove up to the entrance, parking outside the hotel on the main street. A man jumped out. It was McKenzie, but in his private car. He’d obviously chosen not to respond to Caroline’s text in an official capacity, which was good for Tommy in terms of what would happen next.
As soon as Tommy saw McKenzie step out of the car, having already inserted another brand-new SIM card and dialled the digits in preparation, he hit the green button on his smartphone, calling ‘999’.
A woman answered immediately, enquiring what emergency service Tommy was wanting.
Putting on a distressed woman’s voice, he asked for the Police. He waited a few seconds and then performed the best acting of his life: “Hello, help, HELP, I think someone's being murdered! I can hear screaming. I’m standing outside Room 28 of the Seafront Inn in Joppa. Come quickly,… oh dear… she's screaming loudly. Asking for help. Should I go in?”
“No, madam. The police are on their way. Stay where you are. Do not get involved.”
“I’m scared. What if someone comes out the room and sees me? I’m not staying…Bye…”
Tommy hung up.
Taking the SIM card out of the phone he quickly snapped it in half, and opening the door to his car slightly, he dropped the broken pieces of plastic down the entrance to a nearby drain.
Closing the door, he turned his car around and started to drive slowly along Portobello High Street towards the police station, from where Tommy knew the police response unit would be sent.
In fact, it was only one minute before the first of three police cars with flashing lights sped past him towards Joppa.
-------------------------
Room 28
The Seafront Inn
Joppa
Edinburgh
Thursday
7.41 p.m. G.M.T.
Campbell had knocked on the door several times but there was no answer. On the second knock, he realised the door was slightly ajar, so he pushed it gently.
“Danielle?” he enquired, putting one foot inside the door.
Even from where he was he could smell her perfume. It filled the air and drew an immediate physical and emotional response from Campbell.
“Danielle?” he enquired again, moving into the short corridor inside the door.
From where he stood he could see the end of the bed, and a television in the corner of the room.
Draped over the end of the bed he could see a hand, its palm open and its fingers spread out and pointing upwards.
Almost simultaneously, Campbell saw the reflection in the dark television screen: a naked woman lying on the bed around the corner.
“Danielle?” Campbell said loudly, launching himself into the room towards the bed and recognizing her immediately.
She was naked, spread-eagled across the mattress, one foot on one of the pillows, and the other hanging over the edge of the bed. Her arms were raised above her head, lying flat on ruffled bed sheets. She was lying on her back, her legs open. There was a scarf around her neck.
She had been strangled.
“Danielle!” he shouted, diving towards her, loosening the grip of the scarf and feeling for a pulse.
There was none. Her body was still warm. She could only have been dead for minutes. He’d got here just too late.
“Shit!” he swore. “Fuck!”
He stood up, both hands pulling at his hair, his eyes scanning the room, then quickly moving cautiously back towards the bathroom which he had passed on the way in, to double check there was no one hiding in it.
The door was still closed, and upon opening it, there was no one there.
Hurrying back to Danielle, he slumped on the floor beside her, leaning against the wall underneath the window.
“Shit!” he swore one more time, his heart pounding in his chest and a wave of dizziness passing over him.