by Zoe Sharp
“How much has she?” Paxo threw in, jerking his head in my direction.
“More than you think,” Sean said mildly. “More than the rest of you put together, that’s for sure.”
They fell silent. For a long couple of seconds nobody spoke, then William said quietly, “We might not be as expert as you – and Charlie – at this kind of thing, but we can still help.” He took a deep breath, let it out through his nose, flaring his nostrils. “Let us help. We want to help. God knows, we’ve made a balls-up of things so far. Give us a chance to put things right.”
I saw Sean hesitate.
“What about the police?” I said.
“Don’t worry about the local fuzz. I’ll stay and tell ’em what happened.”
I turned, surprised, to see Gleet was awake again and sitting upright on the bed. He gripped his broken elbow a little tighter and gave us a wan excuse for a smile. “I don’t think I’d be much good to you for anythin’ else, like, would I? And I reckon you need all the help you can get . . .”
***
“OK,” Sean said. “You’re clear what we need?”
“Yeah,” Daz said, listing on his fingers as we hustled into the lift and headed downwards. “Glass bottles – preferably with screw caps – sticky tape, sugar, paint. Any preference on colour?”
“I hardly think it matters,” William said, rolling his eyes. “After all, we’re not planning on redecorating the place.”
“So, what is he planning on doing with that lot?” Paxo wanted to know. “It’s like something out of the fucking A-Team. Suddenly he’s turned into Hannibal Smith. Hey, Charlie could be that token chick, whatever her name was; Daz can be Faceman; I could be Howling Mad Murdoch and—”
“You can stop that right there,” William said sharply as we hit the ground floor and the lift slowed and stopped. “I absolutely refuse to be that tosser Mr T, all right?” He waited a beat, scowling as the doors opened, then muttered under his breath, “Fool.”
Sean didn’t join in the banter but that didn’t mean he disapproved, either. He understood, better than most, that it was just tension finding its own release.
In the foyer we split off in our prearranged directions, only too aware of the clock ticking. William stayed in the lift and headed for the maintenance area in the car park, while the others disappeared in the direction of the bar and kitchens.
I trotted over to the front desk and, using my best smile, managed to snaffle a roll of brown packing tape. The same guy who’d sorted Daz’s keycard out was still on duty and he was still feeling guilty enough to be accommodating.
By the time I’d got back to the lift, Daz and Paxo were already there, clutching half a dozen empty one-litre bottles between them. I looked at them in surprise and Paxo grinned at me.
“There was a big plastic skip of them near the bar, so we just helped ourselves,” he said. “We found three with lids on.”
“Good enough,” I said. “Where’s Sean?”
“Here,” Sean said, appearing. He had a one kilo bag of sugar in one hand and a small metal tube in the other which he held up and shook at me. “Remember those little short sparklers in the dessert last night?” he said.
“Fuses,” I said, smiling. “Perfect.”
***
Right before we left, I used the hotel phone to place an international call to Detective Superintendent MacMillan.
“Hi there, Superintendent,” I said, breezy and reckless, when the police switchboard put me through. “You remember you asked me to find out what that group of bikers were up to?”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line. I stood there, holding the phone to my ear while the Devil’s Bridge Club members stood around and tried not to look offended. Besides anything else, now they’d made their choice to go with us, they were mostly too apprehensive to react to my admission.
Gleet was still on the bed, propped up with pillows. We’d folded a bath towel into a makeshift sling around his arm. His eyelids were heavy again and he was fighting to keep them open.
Then MacMillan said in that familiar clipped voice, “Why do I get the distinct impression I’m going to regret saying ‘yes’ to that?”
“Well, make a choice,” I said, matching my tone to his. “I don’t have much time.”
There was another pause, shorter this time but, if silence could have a tartness to it, this one had much more of that.
“All right, Charlie,” he said eventually, with a heavy sigh. “I’m listening.”
“I’m in Ireland,” I began, baldly. “There are two people dead.”
I heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. “What is it with you?” he muttered tightly, then, louder: “All right. Tell me.”
“One we think is a diamond courier, murdered in the gents’ toilet of a petrol station just outside Naas. The other was Slick Grannell’s girlfriend, murdered in a hotel room nearby.”
“Grannell’s girlfriend?” he said sharply. “Wait.” And he hit the silence button at his end without waiting for my acquiescence.
I did as I was told, listening to the static. The boys waited with me, most of them so tense I don’t think they’d remembered to breathe. Only Sean looked at all relaxed and that, I knew, was deceptive. It seemed to take a long time before MacMillan came back on the line.
“Mr Grannell was doing some deals with some nasty people involved with smuggling gemstones out of Africa,” he said without preamble when he returned. “Since his death we’ve had a few enquiries in from other forces and from Interpol. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details with you, Charlie, but I would strongly advise you, for what it’s worth, to contact the local police, to cooperate with them fully, and leave it to them,” he said, spelling out each word very precisely as though someone else might be listening in. “I did try and warn you but, trust me, you do not want to get yourself any deeper involved with this one than I fear you have done already.”
I shook my head. A useless act since he couldn’t see me do it. “It’s not as easy as that,” I said. “After they killed Tess they grabbed one of the lads – Jacob Nash’s son, Jamie.”
“Ah,” MacMillan said, not needing to be told about the strong bond I had with Jacob and Clare.
“We think we might know where they’re taking Jamie, and we’re going to see if we can catch up with them,” I said, deliberately cagey. The last thing I wanted was for MacMillan to try and intercept or divert us. Or, for that matter, ask too many questions about how we intended to go about our task.
As if he could read my mind MacMillan paused again and then said, “Is Meyer with you?”
“Yes.”
He made a humph of sound. “So, why are you telling me this – apart from to make me a possible accessory to whatever it is you’re going to do?” he said, the sarcasm sharp in his voice now.
“We’ve a man injured,” I said, eyes trailing over Gleet where he lay against the pillows, his face still partly clotted with old blood. He’d lost his battle with sleep again, his head lolling sideways in a way that echoed starkly how Tess’s had been. “He tried to stop them taking Jamie and they laid into him. When the police get here, it would help if there was someone who could vouch for him, otherwise I think they’re going to give him a pretty hard time of it.”
“And why can’t you vouch for him yourselves? No, on second thoughts don’t answer that,” he interrupted quickly before I had chance to speak. “I really don’t want to know.” He sighed again, an annoyed release of pent-up breath. “All right, Charlie. If they call me I’ll put in a good word for your friend. What’s his name?”
“Officially he’s Reginald Post, but he’s known as Gleet,” I said.
“Ah, that wouldn’t be the same Gleet who runs a custom bike workshop from his sister’s farm near Wray, would it?” the policeman asked.
It was my turn to pause, taken aback. “Yes, it is. How do you know that?”
“We wondered where he’d got to, and that sister of his is doing s
phinx impersonations – or should that be gargoyle?” MacMillan muttered. “We raided his place yesterday and discovered the remains of Slick Grannell’s bike there. I could do with a word with the mysterious Mr Post myself.”
“I’m sure if you can get him away from the gardai unscathed, he’ll talk to you all you want,” I said.
“Hmm,” was MacMillan’s only reaction to that. “Oh, there is one thing you might be interested to learn,” he went on. “Once we’d recovered Grannell’s motorcycle we were able to compare paint traces we found on a Transit van abandoned the day after the accident. Of course, we’ll have to wait for the lab to do their stuff for it to be definitive, but our lads are pretty sure they’ll be a match.”
He paused again, as though carrying out some internal debate on how much more to tell me. Eventually, when I didn’t interrupt him, he sighed and said, “The van was reported stolen, as you would expect. But, interestingly enough, the registered owner is a property company based in Northern Ireland – the director of which is one Isobel Nash. In light of what you’ve just told me I think we might well be having a word with Mrs Nash in due course.”
“I think the person you should really be aiming to talk to is her boyfriend, Eamonn Garroway,” I said. “And watch your step when you do. His idea of a conversation tends to hurt.”
Sean tapped his watch and I nodded to show I understood.
“Sorry, Superintendent,” I said, brusque, “but we need to get moving.”
“All right, Charlie,” MacMillan said, resigned. “I should know by now that trying to talk you out of whatever it is you’re going to do is a pointless exercise so I’ll save my breath, but . . . good luck.”
“Thank you, John,” I said gravely. “We’re going to need it.”
Twenty-seven
We were just on the outskirts of Dundalk, less than ten klicks from the border, when we finally caught up with the van that had taken Jamie. If it hadn’t been for Isobel’s information, I would have begun to believe we were heading in totally the wrong direction long before then.
As it was, William and Daz voiced their doubts several times during the frantic ride north. When they had the breath to do it, that is. It made no difference to the pace Sean set. He’d abandoned his previous laid back style and was going like a lunatic. I tried to work out where the rustiness had worn off his riding abilities. Somewhere between the ferry to Belfast, and here, Sean had shed his inhibitions like a second skin.
Now he went for hairline gaps in traffic that made me wince, surviving on gut instinct and sheer brass neck. The rest of us followed him with a kind of reckless faith that where he could get through, so could we.
Nevertheless, all I could hear in my ear-piece was Daz swearing as he missed yet another collision by fractions. Paxo was probably being quite vocal with his opinion, too, but nobody could hear him. He’d given Sean his headset and radio before we set off.
“You’re going to need this more than I am,” he’d said, dumping the whole lot onto the seat of the Blackbird. Jamie’s headset had been still in his helmet, but the radio itself was missing, otherwise we would have had a spare.
Sean had looked up from carefully packing the bottles we’d prepared into his tank bag. We’d loosely wrapped them in more towels filched from the hotel bathroom to stop them clashing together.
“You’ll need this, too,” Paxo had said and handed over his Zippo lighter. “And it’s my favourite, so don’t lose it, all right?”
“Thank you,” Sean had said, and meant it. “I won’t.”
Paxo had nodded and rammed on his helmet, cutting short any further talk. He’d slotted the Ducati in behind me as we roared out of the car park. I’d glanced up at the hotel just once as we’d ridden away past the front of it.
Gleet had said he’d give us a half-hour head start before he called the cops. As we howled round the outside of Dublin and headed north, that time seemed to be trickling away. And the further we went without any sign of the Merc van, the faster the minutes seemed to be running out on us.
Unless you wanted to go the scenic route, the only clear way from Dublin up to Newry was the N1, the same road we’d taken on the way down. It was largely fast and open and what little traffic there was on a Sunday was moving quickly on it.
“That’s the one!” Sean’s voice sounded loud in my ear, edged with triumph as he recognised the registration number Gleet had given us. “Just overtake and don’t look at it too much,” he warned. “We need to get ahead of him and we don’t want to tip him off.”
The Merc driver was doing a steady sixty-five and not looking as though he was pushing hard to keep that up. We slipped past trying not to give the van more than casual attention and accelerated away hard afterwards, putting some distance between us.
I couldn’t resist a brief glance sideways into the cab as I drew alongside, taking in an almost subliminal flash of three figures spread across the front seats. None of them were Jamie.
The driver was in short sleeves and had a chunky gold bracelet around the hairy wrist nearest to the window. He had the glass wound halfway down and he was smoking. He didn’t look at all like a man who’s just been part of kidnapping, theft and murder.
We’d already been cruising in bursts over a hundred but Sean stepped it up for the next few miles, then eased off as we passed the signs for a lay-by coming up.
“That should do it,” he said. “We’ll stop up ahead.”
We all backed off accordingly. Paxo overshot me before he got the idea, braking hard to make it into the lay-by itself.
The road was almost straight at this point, slightly raised up on an embankment that dropped away sharply at either side to a stout post-and-rail fence and then into grassland. For our purposes, it couldn’t have been better.
The only worrying factor was the wind. There was no sign of the rain that had dogged us at Mondello, but the wind had picked up and was gusty, particularly over the exposed piece of road. It was going to make things that bit more tricky.
There were no other vehicles parked up but, even so, Sean checked round before he unzipped the tank bag and handed out the three bottles containing the gloss paint William had found in the hotel basement. They were the bottles without lids, so we’d smothered the top of the necks with packing tape.
“Now, you all know what you’re doing?” he said in that calm, almost soothing voice he’d always used to inspire confidence in terrified new recruits on their first live-firing exercise. The Devil’s Bridge Club members nodded, keyed up and anxious. “Switch your lights off so you don’t attract his attention as you’re coming up behind him. You’re going to have to fling these things pretty hard to get them to break, all right? Glass is amazingly tough stuff. It’s not like you see it in the movies. Aim for the windscreen if you can. The gloss will smear better than emulsion and they won’t be able to clear it, OK?”
“What then?” Daz said, giving up trying to wedge his bottle somewhere into the Aprilia’s fairing and carefully stuffing it down the front of his leathers instead. Paxo and William did the same.
“You get the hell out of Dodge,” Sean said sharply. “Trust me, Charlie and I will be right behind you.” He handed one of the other bottles across to me. I stood it in the top of my tank bag, making sure it was packed upright so as not to spill, but accessible enough to retrieve easily when the time came.
“What about afterwards, if – when – the van stops?” Daz said.
Sean flicked his eyes to me and I saw the question in them. Are you ready for this? I nodded, just once. As I’ll ever be.
“I think you’d better let us worry about that,” he said. “Just get far enough ahead not to get caught up in anything, then pull over and wait for us there. You’ve got Jamie’s helmet? Good. With any luck, he’ll need it soon.”
Paxo had been staring back over his shoulder, waiting for the van to catch us up.
“Here they come!” he said now, his voice high and strangled. “Let’s do it, yeah?”
As soon as the van flashed past our position, the three of them launched out of the lay-by, gunning the bikes up to speed in seconds. A moment later, Sean and I followed.
We hung back behind the others, keeping station while we waited for the boys to do their stuff. If they failed there was still a chance we could stop the van but Eamonn’s men would be ready for us and things would be so much more difficult.
I felt the nerves knotting my stomach into a tight hard ball. I swallowed, tried to breathe evenly, but that only seemed to make things worse. Reacting to circumstances was one thing, I realised. I could do that without a qualm. But actually instigating an attack was something different again. And especially with such untrained troops. I felt the enormous weight of the responsibility for their safety lying on me.