Road Kill (48 page)

Even the poor reproduction of the phone system couldn’t hide the gasp my words provoked, although I couldn’t have told you which of Jamie’s parents it came from. But it was Jacob who said, hesitantly, “Can you . . . do anything?”

“We can try,” I said. I looked up, met Sean’s gaze and took what I needed from it. I shut my eyes briefly. Maybe there were times when Sean was in danger of being close to the monster my father claimed, but who else would be so willing to walk with me into situations like this without balking? “We need to know where they’re taking him.”

“I don’t know,” Isobel said, faltering. “Eamonn didn’t tell me exactly what he had planned. Just that he was going to take the diamonds after the courier had handed them over.”

“Well, the poor bloke didn’t exactly hand them over. They had to cut his throat first,” I snapped, infuriated by her vagueness. “Come on, think, Isobel! You know the man. Where is Eamonn likely to have taken Jamie?”

“Erm, well, he has an industrial unit at a place just north of Newry. Used to be a farm,” she said. There was a reluctance to her, as though she was still loathe to sell Eamonn out, in spite of everything. But once she’d begun the words seemed to pick up their own momentum and she gave me detailed directions on how to find it. “But you wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of getting in there unannounced,” she added, more like her old brisk self. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere, isolated. You can see anyone approaching over a mile away. And he won’t be alone.”

I thought of the men we’d seen following us from the ferry. Were they the same ones Gleet had encountered, or did Eamonn have more muscle at his disposal?

I covered the receiver and relayed the information to Sean. He shook his head.

“We haven’t got the time or the equipment to mount an assault,” he said. “Our best chance is to take them on the road.” He checked his watch. “They’ve nearly an hour head start on us but if they’ve any sense they won’t want to risk getting stopped for speeding.” He flashed me a quick hard grin. “If we don’t hang about we should be able to catch them before they hit the border.”

I lifted the receiver back up to my mouth. “Jacob?” I said, my eyes still on Sean. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Thank you,” he said, heartfelt, like he knew we were his last chance.

“Just one more thing,” I said, hearing Isobel start to speak and deliberately cutting across her. “Don’t let Isobel make any phone calls.” And I hung up on her outraged squawk.

“Hell of a time to get caught without a gun on me,” Sean said, rueful. “I didn’t think I’d need one for this trip.”

“Can you get hold of one round here?”

He laughed shortly. “You can buy anything just about anywhere if you know where to go,” he said, then shook his head. “But not without wasting time we haven’t got. We’ll just have to improvise.”

Almost in step, we started for the door.

“Hey, just hold on a minute, guys!” Daz’s voice halted us. We turned back to find the Devil’s Bridge Club members eyeing us in varying stages of dismay. “What about us?”

“What about you?” Sean echoed, cold. “You’ll have to stay here and say your bit to the Irish police.”

“While you two go and try to ambush a moving van from two motorbikes?” William asked calmly. “Not very good odds, are they?”

Sean shrugged. “We’ve had worse,” he said.

“Why go at all? Why not let the little sod get what’s coming to him?” Paxo said bitterly. He’d began to shiver like he was freezing, his thin frame vibrating with delayed shock.

“Can’t do that,” Sean said. “Besides anything else, we’ve given our word to his father that we’ll get him out of this.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Daz demanded, his voice low.

Sean didn’t reply to that one, just stared the other man down. He didn’t need to spell it out that Daz and the others had lied to us, if only by omission. That, if they’d come clean earlier, two ugly deaths might have been avoided.

Daz dropped his eyes and looked away.

“What about the cops?” Paxo demanded. “You said yourself that running would only make things worse.”

“For you, yes.”

“You need us,” Daz said, intensity holding him still now. “Let us go with you.”

“Why?” Sean said, folding his arms and allowing that obsidian gaze to slide over them in turn. “How much experience have you had at ambush techniques?”

“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 sphinx 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.”