Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  He set his phone down and wrapped his arms around himself, biting his lip as he gave it some thought. “I still don’t like this plan, but that place sounds like it could work.”

  “Great!” I dug my phone out of my pocket and found the contact where I’d entered Carmichael’s number, then held the device out to Alec. “Give him a call.”

  “Right now?” Alec asked, rearing away from my phone like he thought it might bite him. “Shouldn’t we come up with a script? Plan a little more?”

  “We can’t really come up with the rest of the plan unless we know for sure that Carmichael’s on board to meet with you,” I pointed out as I wagged my phone in front of his face. “Just say that you heard he was in town, that the job he’d pulled had gone south, and that you can help him move the money. Ask if he wants to meet somewhere to discuss terms.”

  “And if he asks why the hell I want to meet at a bloody concert rather than somewhere more private like a hotel room or something?” Alec demanded.

  “Tell him it’ll be safer to meet in public,” I said. “Or that you don’t totally trust him, so you feel like it would be better to meet somewhere with witnesses so that neither of you tries to double-cross the other.”

  Alec opened his mouth to protest, but then he took a beat to think about my suggestion and closed his lips again. “That… could actually work. He’s not exactly trusting, so if I suggest we meet in public, then he won’t think I’m trying to make off with his cash.”

  I wiggled the phone at him again, trying to urge him to take it, and he finally sighed and plucked it from my hand, tapping Carmichael’s number into his own mobile.

  “Here we go,” he murmured, his finger hovering over the call button.

  “Put it on speaker so we can hear,” I insisted, and Fletcher nodded on the other side of the table.

  “Fine, but you can’t say a word,” he cautioned. “Don’t even breathe.”

  I ran my fingers across my lips and twisted them like I was turning a lock before chucking the imaginary key over my shoulder. Alec just gave me a look that said he didn’t think I was cute, and I grinned at him, partially to annoy him and partially to dispel some of the anxiety building up under my own skin.

  Alec, Fletcher, and I each sucked in a deep breath as Alec’s finger fell to press the green call button, though Fletcher and I held ours while Alec slowly expelled his, the phone ringing and ringing and ringing in his hand.

  With each successive tone, my worry mounted. Smyth had specifically said that Carmichael hadn’t picked up the phone when he called. It was more than likely that the robber had ditched the device as soon as he realised that we’d be questioning Smyth about Crane’s death.

  The answering machine picked up the call, an automated voice telling us that we could leave a message after the tone, and Alec glanced at me, wondering if he should. I gave him a nod and gestured for him to go one.

  He cleared his throat as the phone beeped and launched into his casual spiel, his entire demeanour shifting as he slid on his sly, confident thief mask.

  “Carmichael, hey. It’s Alec MacGowan,” he began, leaning back with one hand braced on the table as his posture changed to match his tone. “Listen, I heard you pulled a job in Inverness recently and that it didn’t exactly go as planned. I’m in town for about another week, and I’d be willing to help you clean your mess up, for a price at least. Call me back on this number if you’re interested.”

  He hung up the call and put his phone down, and only then did I spy a slight tremor in his fingers.

  “You didn’t mention the concert,” I said.

  “More plausible to mention specifics when we’re actually talking,” Alec told me. “It would be a bit weird to lay everything out in a message.”

  I nodded. That was fair. Probably better to keep the voicemail short, leave it slightly vague to catch Carmichael’s interest that way.

  “And now, we wait,” I said, though that was always my least favourite part of the job. “Hopefully, Carmichael will call back soon.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Fletcher asked.

  “Then we come up with a different plan,” I answered, forcing confidence that I didn’t necessarily feel into my voice.

  Fletcher clearly saw past my false tone, but she didn’t call me out on it. She nodded, flashing me a thumb’s up, then shut her laptop’s lid with a decisive click.

  “What do we do until then?” she wondered.

  I stifled a yawn and got up to move over to the counter to start the kettle. “We’ve got a couple of options. We can check back in with Martin and see if he’s pulled anything up on the various bits and bobs of info that we’ve given him, or we could start scoping out the concert hall. If we study it some now, before Carmichael even knows about it, then we won’t have to worry about him also staking out the joint and spotting us along the way.”

  “I like that plan,” Fletcher said. “I say we go with that for the moment. That way, we can bring Alec with us while we wait for Carmichael to call back.”

  “What do you think, Alec?” I asked, shifting my gaze over to the thief.

  “Better than leaving me in the car while you go into the station,” he said, a small note of sarcasm in his voice.

  The water finished boiling, and I took down three mugs and my giant metal tin of assorted tea bags. Fletcher got up to help me, bringing the tin back to the table while I carried the mugs and the kettle. Once everyone had selected their tea, I carefully poured the hot water into each mug, steam wafting up over the rims as colour seeped from the dried leaves. Then the three of us sat at the table and quietly sipped at our tea. I wanted just a brief moment to breathe before we launched right back into the investigation, and I also had a call I needed to make; I just needed to steady my nerves a smidge before I did so.

  “I’ll be right back,” I murmured when I was halfway through my mug, and then I rose and took my phone with me, heading to my bedroom where I could close the door and get a smidge of privacy. I stood by the window and dialled my mother’s number, peeking through the mostly closed blinds to make sure no one was watching me.

  She picked up quickly, unlike Carmichael. “Callum, is everything alright?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I assured her. “I was calling to check in with you. How’s everything going with the Kraken? Has she said anything useful yet?”

  “She’s a very annoying woman,” Eleanor sighed. “And no, she won’t tell me anything. She says she’ll only talk to you, and she keeps trying to tell me how to tend my own garden. I’m going to strangle her, Callum, I really am.”

  “Well, please don’t,” I said. “We need her. I might have a bit of time to come down in the next two days, depending on how much work our budding plan needs to get it off the ground. You haven’t seen anyone weird snooping around the house, have you?” I peeked out through my blinds again, not that anything had changed since a minute ago.

  “No, but I’m keeping watch,” my mother said. “Your hacker’s even set up a surveillance system for me, although she had to cannibalize the television to do it, so I’m not terribly happy about that.”

  The Kraken’s voice sounded in the background of the call, though it was too muffled for me to make out her exact words.

  “Yeah, sure, you’ll put it back the way you found it!” Eleanor yelled at her, and I found myself grinning faintly at the annoyance in her voice. “What are we going to tell your sister, Callum? She’s supposed to come over for dinner this weekend, and I don’t really have a good lie for why there’s a strange old woman in my house other than the fact that I’ve become a lesbian, which if I had, she definitely would not be my type, so that’s not going to work.”

  “I don’t think we want to bring her in on this yet,” I said. “She’s not like us. She’s in enough danger just being related to us. I don’t want to add to it unless we have to.”

  “He’s her father, too,” Eleanor reminded me softly. “She deserves to know.”

 
“And we’ll tell her. After the Kraken gives us something we can work with, and we send her on her way.”

  “I’ll beg off from dinner,” she decided. “Claim I’m sick or something.”

  “Wait, why wasn’t I invited to this dinner?” I asked.

  “I was going to text you. I just hadn’t gotten around to it before you showed up on my doorstep with a blood-soaked woman, and I got distracted.”

  The Kraken said something else in the background, and my mother scoffed.

  “What? No, I didn’t get distracted by your good looks,” she replied. “I just said you aren’t my type. And no, you can’t change the solution in my feeders. The birds like it the way it is.” Eleanor sighed deeply, exasperation writ plain into every facet of the sound. “I have to go, darling, before someone takes my toaster apart. What do you even need that for?”

  “Bye, Mum,” I said, laughing slightly as I heard her footsteps move through the house, no doubt off to stop the Kraken from dismantling more electronics.

  “Goodbye, Callum. Please come take this walking natural disaster off my hands soon.”

  We hung up after that, and I made a face as I put the phone away. I felt a little bad for dumping the Kraken on my mum, especially since the hacker seemed to be getting on her last nerve, but there wasn’t much I could do about it just then. And I had to admit, it was slightly funny listening to my mum complain like that.

  I returned to the kitchen to find Fletcher and Alec finishing up their tea and eating all my grapes straight out of the bag. Fletcher looked up as I entered the room.

  “All good?” she asked, glancing at Alec once as if checking that I could answer her in front of him.

  “Just some family business,” I answered. “Are we ready to head to the concert hall?”

  “Yes. I’ll just put these away.” Fletcher stood and took the grapes back to the fridge, sticking them back where she found them. Once she was done with that, I led the way out of my flat, locking the door up tight once everyone was in the hallway, and as we headed for the car, I looked up and down the street once again. Just as I did, a small white car slid out of its parking spot and drove away, its windows too dark to see through. I didn’t recognise it as one of the cars that were usually parked around here. I told myself its driver was probably just visiting someone in the area. There was no reason to get so damn worked up over nothing.

  I shook myself and climbed into the driver’s seat as Fletcher plugged the theatre’s address into her phone, the electronic voice helpfully directing us back toward the city centre. In the backseat, Alec had his phone out and was constantly checking it for any messages, waiting to hear back from Carmichael, but the device remained still and silent for the entire drive. As I pulled into the theatre’s small car park, he sighed and stuffed his phone back into his pocket after he made sure the ringer was on and the volume up one last time.

  I studied the building’s facade as I climbed out of the car. It was mostly brick, though its foundation was made out of a darker, slightly more uneven rock, and several of its windows had stained glass in them, the colours dark and dull given the lack of natural light. It was only one storey, and it had a vaguely squat appearance. A short flight of concrete steps led up to the front doors, which were covered in posters and advertisements.

  “Let’s do a loop,” I said. “I want to see all the entrances.”

  Fletcher, Alec, and I started to walk around the building, our pace casual as if we were simply out for a perfectly normal stroll. The double doors at the front were the most obvious entry point, although they would no doubt be crowded with concert-goers, especially at the start and end of the night. There was an emergency exit on the left side of the building. The theatre sat right on the corner of a busy road, so that door led directly to the pavement, which then opened up to several different avenues of escape. The performer’s entrance, on the other hand, was tucked down an alley that would be barely wide enough for a van to drive down and offload equipment.

  Our circuit took about ten minutes, and we soon found ourselves back in the car park beside my car, and I leant against one of the doors as I crossed my arms and stared at the theatre.

  “It’ll be pretty easy to post people at the front doors and emergency exit without them getting noticed, though we’ll have to make sure they’re still close enough to spot any activity in and out of them,” I began, turning a 3D model of the building and surrounding streets over in my head in an effort to pinpoint where we should drop our backup. “The back alley is far more confined, and it’s going to be a lot more obvious if someone’s loitering there.”

  “We could set them up as homeless,” Fletcher suggested. “Or theatre workers out for a smoke.”

  “Yeah, that could work,” I agreed, though we’d have to be very careful about how we went about placing their disguises. I checked the time on my phone then glanced at the front doors, which were just barely visible from this angle. “Do you think we can get inside right now?”

  “Worth a shot,” Fletcher said, so the three of us ambled back out of the car park and up the steps toward the door. With my fingers wrapped around the handle, I craned my neck around to look directly behind me, checking out the lines of sight. The doors would be visible from just about any part of the pavement, as well as the other side of the street, but that also meant that all those spots would be visible from the door, too.

  I pulled the door open and held it for Fletcher and Alec before I slipped into the cool room behind them. The theatre’s lobby doubled as a small art gallery, so it was open to the public, and there were a couple of other people wandering around, looking at the watercolour paintings. The ticket booth was closed and dark. A sign hung out front that said it would open at five or we could reserve our tickets online.

  I crossed the tile floor and surreptitiously checked if the doors into the theatre proper were locked. They weren’t, which I found a little bit surprising given the ticket booth was shut, but I still waved Fletcher and Alec forward, and we moved into the dark space without a single one of the gallery-goers paying us any mind.

  We didn’t turn on any lights, but I still brought out the torch on my phone, and that, combined with the muted light coming in through the stained glass windows, provided us with enough illumination to take a look around. It was a nice space, even in a city absolutely chock full of other theatres and concert halls. As Fletcher had said, there were the rows of standard theatre seats, all upholstered in red, and then there was an open stretch of floor between them and the raised stage, no doubt so people could dance. Leather booths and a couple of small tables lined the walls, and there was even a small bar crammed in between a couple of them, its shelves lined with glass bottles.

  Fletcher immediately went and climbed up onto the stage, spreading her arms wide and spinning in a circle as she grinned before she took a deep and dramatic bow. I clapped for her quietly, grinning as I watched, and for the moment, Fletcher seemed content to stand up there and stare out at the theatre, no doubt imagining something in her mind’s eye.

  As she daydreamed, I went to find the emergency exit since I hadn’t seen it out in the lobby. It sat at the very back of the room, behind all the velvet seats, though I didn’t push it open to look out on the street beyond, not wanting to set off any kinds of alarms. It was cramped back there and didn’t actually seem like a very good spot for an emergency exit, but if we put someone in the chair in the top corner of the elevated block of seats, then they’d be in a pretty good spot to keep an eye on the door.

  I scooted back down the narrow aisle that separated the block of upholstered chairs from the walls to find Alec snooping behind the bar while Fletcher still stood on the stage, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the room.

  I snapped my fingers at Alec. “Hey, we’re on the job.”

  He poked his head back above the bar and rolled his eyes at me. “I was just looking.”

  “Sure you were. Come on. Get out of there.”

  Po
uting just slightly, Alec came out from behind the bar and followed me as I crossed the stage and mounted its three steps to join Fletcher in the centre. I stood beside her and faced the rest of the room, the upholstered chairs staring up at us like two dozen reddened eyes just waiting to judge us and find us wanting.

  “Pretty cool, right?” Fletcher said as she clicked her heels together and spun in a tight circle, finishing the move out with some jazz hands.

  “I guess so,” I replied. The truth was, I’d never really felt the performance bug. I’d never wanted to stand in the limelight or be the centre of attention, though I had to admit that the number of dramatic speeches I gave while on a case certainly seemed to contradict that. But I’d never wanted to stand in front of a large crowd of strangers and put my skills on display. As a kid, especially, I’d been too much of a perfectionist, and in the plays and what not my schools had forced us into, I’d always refused to perform unless I was absolutely sure I’d be able to get it right.

  “We should check the back,” I said, pulling Fletcher out of her little, imaginary act.

  She nodded as she tugged at the hem of her leather jacket, popping herself back into the task at hand with that one, simple gesture.

  We searched the curtain at the back of the stage until we found the parting, and then we pushed through into the cramped hall that ran to our left and right, leading to a couple of dressing rooms and staging areas. There was a bunch of sound equipment stacked in the different corners, waiting to be pulled out and used, and the theatre definitely needed to get their wiring up to code as there were several strands dangling willy-nilly from the ceiling.

  As members of the public, we definitely weren’t supposed to be back there, so we’d have to get in and out quick and hope there were no theatre workers around making sure everything was ready for the upcoming concert.

  Fletcher was at the front now, so she led the way down the passageway to the right, past a dressing room until the hall opened into a slightly larger space that held several empty racks and some worn looking armchairs. The corridor continued on the other side of the room, so we followed it further into the building, and it eventually ended at the back door, which had a keypad beside it, the little light red to indicate that it was locked.