by Lin Anderson
McNab knew avoidance when he heard it, having played that tune many times himself. Ava was hiding something. And he thought it might, just might, have a link to her brother’s disappearance.
‘If there’s anything you’re not telling me?’
A pause, then . . .
‘Mark suspects people high up were using Go Wild’s services. Hence the reticence by the Met and the probability of a cover-up.’
‘Okay, I’ll find him and talk to him,’ he promised.
He felt her sense of relief, even over the phone.
When she rang off, he found the woman at the next table watching him. How much had she heard and did it matter?
The two businessmen had gone. They were alone now, apart from the hovering barman.
McNab thought of the made-up bunk, the chance for a sleep. But would he sleep?
She was smiling over at him, and the next thing he knew he’d ordered up another cocktail for her and a whisky for him.
Any doubts he’d had about such an encounter he blotted out with the image of the new boyfriend giving him the finger from Ellie’s front window.
33
He’d told Erling that the ship was haunting his life. That he wanted it to go.
‘It will soon,’ Erling had promised. ‘They’ll tow it down to the Central Belt where it’ll be scrapped.’
In Erling’s keenness to reassure Dougie, it had slipped out that there was no one aboard now that the bodies and evidence had been removed.
‘The coastguard are keeping an eye on it,’ had been his parting shot.
Dougie reached out now and grabbed the rusty ladder, tying the Fear Not to the bottom rung. Daylight almost gone, he’d already donned his head torch and fastened the climbing harness on Finn so that he could pull him up once he reached the deck himself.
If he reached the deck.
Ignoring the small voice of doubt, Dougie told Finn to wait, then grabbed for the ladder, hitching himself up and onto it.
He’d sent his drone out a few times, assuring himself that what Erling had said was true. The coastguard visited the surrounding waters or flew over intermittently. To all intents and purposes the Orlova had become a graveyard, without the resident dead.
Halfway up, he lost his nerve. What the hell was he doing, leaving Finn alone down there? And would he manage to pull him up even if he did get to the deck himself?
Concentrate on how you’re going to get Finn up and put one hand after the other. That’s all you have to do.
He’d been sheltered from the wind during the climb, but as he finally pitched himself over the railing and onto the deck, he realized the wind had dropped and a haar was rolling in.
Which was even better, he told himself, as the thick fog closed around him.
Dougie secured the rope and began to pull Finn up. Orkney wasn’t known for its mountains, but there were plenty of cliffs and stacks he’d climbed with the dog. Many caves they’d lowered themselves into.
Finn, he knew, would likely be less fazed than him by this latest adventure.
Safely now on deck, Dougie freed the collie, who immediately sniffed the air.
‘So where to, Finn?’
As though in answer to his question, Finn set off, Dougie following, his head torch focused on the waving white tail.
Dougie still wasn’t sure what he was looking for, except perhaps that he wanted to see if what he’d learned from the online gamers about the ghost ship was true.
Inside now, he stood for a moment, trying to get his bearings. According to the material he’d collected about the ship, the virtual games area was on a lower deck, so he needed to find the nearest stairs.
The emergency lights might be working, but the heating definitely wasn’t. He could see his breath condensing, the further he descended into the bowels of the ship.
Glancing into the staterooms and sleeping quarters, his headlamp picked out the black dusted surfaces where SOCOs had taken prints, the crime scene tape still strung across entrances or broken and trailing over the floor.
The lower he went, the more the cold smell of the upper decks began to change, subtly at first, then more swiftly and strongly as he descended. There had been talk about a fire death, as well as two deaths during a game.
Was that what he could smell?
Finn had caught the scent too and had taken off down the next set of steps, to halt on a landing outside an open door, his hair standing straight up.
Dougie joined him there.
This was the control room for the game, he thought, viewing the empty shelves where the equipment had been. The smell of burnt plastic and something else, which he realized might be burnt flesh, assaulted his senses, and he covered his face with his hand and retreated.
A turn in the metal stairs finally brought the games arena into view.
This time he stopped in awe at the maze laid out below, at the centre of which was an arena. Even from here he could make out a large dark mark, which might be blood.
Finn knew exactly what it was, and howled to indicate that.
Noting the complexity of the maze, Dougie shouted at the dog to wait for him, aware that without Finn he might take a while to reach the centre.
Finn did as bid, waiting at each turn until Dougie appeared behind him.
Reaching the arena, Dougie halted in shock at the now obvious bloodstains, imagining the bodies that had lain inside the markings. A male and a female, according to reports.
Above was the gallery, which, during the duel, would have been populated by a computer-generated screaming crowd, all baying for blood.
Despite his horror at the evidence of death, his skin prickled with excitement as he envisaged the real-life game being played out here. No wonder people were willing to pay large sums of money to take part. So much better than duelling with an imaginary enemy via a computer screen.
Finn’s bloodlust was waning, another scent taking its place. The collie was keen to leave the arena, and whining at Dougie to follow.
They were heading down another level, Finn definitely following a trail. Dougie wondered if the dog was simply after a rat. Any ship this size would have a resident rat population, and Dougie wasn’t keen to meet one, but his calls to heel were being ignored.
Eventually the dog, way ahead now, fell silent. This seemed scarier than when he had been whining with excitement. Dougie upped his speed, skirting round some containers, until he almost fell over the collie scratching furiously at what looked like a low metal door.
‘What is it, boy? What’s in there?’
Finn answered with a bark, indicating that he had no intention of moving until his master opened the door.
Dougie imagined what might be in there. Another body, missed in the search of the ship? Or a family of rats that hadn’t eaten for some time?
Finn was staring up at his master, intelligent eyes willing him on.
‘Stay,’ Dougie ordered the dog before reaching for the handle.
The screech as the metal freed itself a little set his heart racing.
The smell escaping through the narrow opening was like his bedroom when he hadn’t opened the window in a while.
He waited, listening. Nothing.
Intrigued now to know what lay beyond, he dipped his head and the bouncing beam from his torch alighted on what looked like tins and bundled bedding.
So someone had been in here.
Behind him, Finn whined, keen to enter.
‘Wait, boy,’ he ordered. The last thing he wanted was the collie wrecking the place before he examined it properly.
Moving towards the far wall, he noted a partially drunk bottle of vodka and some eating utensils. Then a pile of what looked like clothes.
As he crouched to pick up an item to see if he might identify it as male or female, the door suddenly clanged shut behind him.
In that moment he knew someone was in there with him. Someone intent on keeping the dog out.
He tried to rise, but it w
as already too late, as something hard and heavy met the back of his head.
Dougie registered Finn barking his distress as he slumped to the floor.
34
Rhona sniffed the air. The aroma of shower gel it was not. Sean was cooking and it smelt like a fry-up. She found her mouth watering at the prospect.
He was at the cooker in his boxer shorts, humming a tune she recognized, which meant it wasn’t jazz. When he heard her enter, he turned.
‘Slice sausage and eggs all right?’ he offered.
‘You trying to do Chrissy out of a job?’ Rhona said, eyebrows raised. ‘My assistant always brings in our breakfast in the shape of filled rolls. Usually with three offerings on each.’
He checked out the contents of the frying pan. ‘I can probably manage all of this myself – after the busy night I had,’ he added with a smile. ‘Coffee’s on the table.’
Rhona poured herself a cup and sat for a moment to drink it, or maybe to admire Sean from afar.
The evening had gone well, although she wasn’t sure she had been given the entire story of the club’s debt level and what Sean planned to do about it. Her mind went back to seeing Sean and McNab huddled together at the bar. Sean wasn’t keeping McNab company until Chrissy arrived. That hadn’t rung true then, and it didn’t now.
She suspected Sean was asking for advice, which suggested the trouble the club was in might involve the law.
None of which had been discussed last night.
Sean’s easy Irish attitude to life’s complexities and troubles had been one of the reasons she’d been drawn to him in the first place. It was enticing to be with someone as laid-back as he was. Especially considering the nature of her own work.
‘Okay, I’m off,’ she said.
Sean followed her into the hall. ‘I’ll see you later?’
She smiled a yes.
‘I hope for your sake Chrissy isn’t back on the porridge,’ he shouted as the door shut behind her.
The sausage aroma followed her down the stairs. Rhona tried not to picture the scenario Sean had just pitched her. No, she thought. We’re over the porridge phase. Please God.
Crossing the park in spring sunshine, she noted that the devastation of Storm Birka had almost totally disappeared, council teams busy loading the remains of the debris onto pickups.
She found herself looking for the ancient yew tree, a player in an earlier case, wondering if it too had survived the storm. She almost veered off the walkway to check, but stopped herself in time.
There were some memories better not stirred.
‘Yay, you’re here,’ Chrissy called when Rhona arrived. ‘How did it go with Sean last night?’ she said with a big smile. When Rhona didn’t answer, Chrissy added, ‘Look, I’m not getting any at the moment and I can’t ask Mum about her love life, so I’m left with you.’ She assumed a crestfallen expression.
Rhona succumbed. ‘He wanted to serve me breakfast, but I declined because I didn’t want to do you out of a job.’ She looked around, realizing to her dismay that there was no sign of the paper bag, nor the smell of breakfast.
Chrissy gave her a studied look. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘Chrissy,’ Rhona said threateningly.
Her assistant’s adopted innocence should have warned her.
‘Sean called me. Said you were keen to get back on the porridge.’
‘I’ll kill him.’
Chrissy sighed. ‘That voice of his would persuade me to do anything.’
‘Find your own Irishman, then,’ Rhona said.
‘He’s offered to introduce me to his cousin when he’s next over from Dublin.’
Rhona wondered what else they’d been plotting behind her back, but the only thing she was worried about at the moment . . .
‘The rolls are in the microwave,’ Chrissy informed her. ‘For a forensic scientist, you’re very easily fooled, Dr MacLeod.’
Over breakfast, Rhona gave a brief update on the previous day’s autopsies and Dr Sissons’s conclusions on the deaths.
‘I like it when we’re right,’ Chrissy said. ‘Oh, I almost forgot, a preliminary report’s back on the vomit we sampled at the second locus. It doesn’t look like a match to the stomach contents of any of the victims.’
Might it have come from the perpetrator? Rhona mused on that briefly.
It wasn’t unknown for someone to kill on the spur of the moment, only to be so shocked at what they’d done that they were sick. The killings in the arena had been premeditated, so that seemed unlikely.
Chrissy was thinking, her brows knitted. ‘We’ve judged the deaths to be around three to five days before the ship was boarded and we know that you can’t officially judge the age of vomit, only what it contains.’ She halted there to look at Rhona. ‘Might it be more recent than that?’
If it was, then someone may still have been alive before the Orlova hit the rocks.
35
The shunting of the train woke him. It shuddered then began to move again, clicking and clacking, gaining speed, eventually streamlining its sounds. A chink of light crept round the blind.
McNab, coming to properly, realized he was alone again. A waft of memories from the previous night’s encounter swept over him, all of them pleasant. He tested himself for guilt, and found none.
Ellie had wanted to be free to choose her sexual partners. He hadn’t wanted her to. Yet here he was among the bedclothes that smelt of another woman. A woman he would never see again. A woman he had no desire to see again.
But he did want to be with Ellie. That much he did know.
Up and dressed, he was ready when breakfast was delivered to his door. He’d roughly formulated a plan the previous evening before Ava’s phone call, then shelved it for an hour or two as he focused on other more pleasurable activities.
He revisited it now, deciding he would check out Olivia’s flat first, then see if he could locate Mark Sylvester. According to Ava, the Met were currently displeased with Mark and his investigation into Go Wild, which made him a man McNab wanted to meet.
Crossing the railway concourse, McNab recalled that the last time he’d been in this particular railway station, he’d still had a dressing over the bullet hole in his back.
Having escaped the safe house, he’d gone looking for lodgings, thinking he might stay in London for a while, and had eventually found a place run by a Mrs Morrison. She’d been the one to help him re-dress the open wound and she’d never asked how he had come by the injury in the first place. Older than him, with a son in the army whom she doted on and whose father was never mentioned, McNab remembered her now with affection. In fact, staying there had reminded him of his own home life, where his mum had also never spoken of his father.
He briefly thought that if he needed to stay in London longer, he could always check up on Jean Morrison, then dismissed the idea. He would definitely get the job done here as quickly as possible and be on the night train back to Glasgow.
Seated upstairs at a terrace cafe, he had another coffee and reworked his plan. After thinking over Ava’s phone call, he decided it might be better to check out Mark’s flat first, to put her mind at ease. Mark being out of touch didn’t strike McNab as that unusual. He often went off the radar himself when on a job.
Ava’s increased anxiety probably came from the antics of her brother and the worry about the farm. McNab couldn’t see why the dead animals should have anything to do with her investigation into Go Wild. More likely someone wanted her to sell the farm and was exerting a bit of pressure to make that happen.
Or maybe the brother was trying to keep his sister there, and the attack on the animals was part of that? McNab had never met the boy, so couldn’t say. What he did know was that he’d been a prize arse at seventeen, with a desire to have his own way whatever it took.
Of course, he hadn’t suggested that possibility during the call, keen as he was to keep Ava onside.
Rising, he made his way down the escalator and threade
d through the crowds on the concourse, heading for the Underground sign.
Emerging at Victoria to follow Ava’s directions, he found Mark’s place easily enough. The red-brick mansion flats she’d described were only a short walk from the station, tucked down a side street.
With no answer from the buzzer, he awaited the next entrant and slipped in behind them. Ava had indicated that the flat was on the third floor, number 309.
Ignoring the lift, McNab took the stairs two at a time and made his way along the corridor, still nursing the hope that Mark might be home and just unwilling to advertise that fact.
After three attempts at knocking, with no sound or response from inside, he decided it was time for his lock pick.
Closing the door quietly behind him, McNab stood for a moment, breathing in the smell of the place and the silence. Instinct told him the flat was empty, plus the scent wasn’t of death but of spilt blood and sweat.
He followed it into the kitchen where it was clear that a fight had taken place. The blood was mostly splattered lightly across the walls and surfaces, with no pools present. He hoped that meant serious damage hadn’t been done, to Mark at least. Ava had told him Mark’s face had been much like his own, so had the altercation happened here? If Mark had been attacked on his home turf, it didn’t look as though he’d come back to clear up the mess.
Returning to the hall, he retrieved the couple of letters he’d spotted lying behind the door. Both were dated after Ava had said Mark had visited her, which suggested he may not have returned home at all in the interim.
Moving into the bedroom, he found the wardrobe and drawers lying open, discarded clothes scattered about. Either Mark had been packing in a hurry or someone had been searching the place, and perhaps been disturbed by Mark’s arrival.
With the bathroom remarkably empty of everyday toiletries, and the study minus a laptop or any evidence of work currently going on in there, McNab came to the studied conclusion that Mark Sylvester had taken up residence elsewhere.