Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  “I think we need another bottle,” he decided, watching me speculatively, “And some dessert perhaps?” He jumped up again.

  I decided that it might be a good time to pop into the guest bathroom, and he pointed me in the right direction. I examined myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. My bloody pupils were a bit dilated, which meant that my autonomic nervous system was ramping up. But Mads? Seriously? I hardly even knew the guy, let alone trusted him. Besides, I couldn’t pretend there was anything in the least attractive about the way he’d chosen to spend his adult life, or the cavalier way he dealt with the few responsibilities he did have. Not that the bloody car seemed to care.

  Well, it wasn’t as if I had to do anything about it. I knew a few ways I could shut this down before it went any further. We could eat our dessert and chat politely for a bit longer, and then I could head back to the hotel if I wanted to. Why was I feeling in the slightest bit ambivalent about that? Come to think of it, why had I even worn this shirt? I had a couple of other tops that would have done alright, and I’d dismissed them very illogically. Still, it had been a while, even by my standards. Had my sneaky subconscious and my usually compliantly inactive libido been plotting behind my back?

  I took my seat again and noted the refilled glasses on the smart table as Mads came back bearing two plates.

  “I used agar powder instead of gelatine,” he assured me as he handed me mine.

  I’d been presented with a little work of art on a plate. He’d made us little oblong cheesecakes topped by a seed-loaded passion fruit puree, with a side of artfully arranged fruit slices, caramelised nuts and dark chocolate shavings. There was an extra, carefully shaped swirl of the creamy mascarpone mix too. Mads watched me expectantly as I lifted a first little forkful and deposited it on my tongue. A delicious citrus tang in the filling melted outwards to ally with the tartness of the passionfruit in subduing the sweetness of the baked base. The combined effect was a bone-melting combination of incredible flavours. I closed my eyes and held it there for a good long while before swallowing. He didn’t need to ask what I thought of it. I doubt he’d ever seen anyone react to his culinary offerings as enthusiastically as I did, or watched anyone eat one of his desserts so slowly.

  “I gather you found that satisfactory,” he remarked, partly amused, partly something else entirely as he relieved me of my plate.

  “That was the most amazing thing I’ve eaten for years. Would you mind?” I didn’t feel like sitting up again just yet. He helpfully passed me my glass, and I swished some wine around in my mouth to clean out the remaining crumbs, then took another couple of swallows for good measure.

  “I’m delighted to have given you so much pleasure.” He moved a little closer again. “I know I may well be mistaken, because honestly, I don’t know what to make of you, Shay Keane, but I think it is possible that you have decided to like me after all.” A tentative, testing hand came to rest lightly on my thigh. “If I’m wrong about this, please tell me so immediately, and I will regretfully say goodnight to you. I am ashamed to admit that, much as I have enjoyed merely admiring you until now, that little performance has utterly ruined me. I can’t look at you any longer without attempting to do far more.”

  His blazing blue eyes were burning holes in me, and I jumped a little as his hand moved up inquiringly. Maybe it was time to stop fighting the wheel and just let the damned car do as it pleased. I was too flooded with endorphins by then to worry about the advisability of doing so. Besides, Mads had been nothing but courteous and charming all evening. He snatched his hand away and froze as I flowed to my feet.

  “When are the others coming back?” I asked him. I didn’t like to rush these things, but I wanted to be long gone before any of them turned up again.

  He blinked, struggling to collect his thoughts and conceal his very real discomfort. Oh, right, he probably thought I’d just rejected his advances. Maybe he didn’t have a problem with the idea of messing around up here, but I certainly did. Anyone could just walk in.

  “They know to be aboard before eight.” he managed to say after taking a few, steadying breaths, “But they won’t be back tonight. I booked them rooms at the Royal, just in case it turned out that I was far luckier than I deserved to be.”

  That had been a smart gamble. I did like my privacy.

  “Good. Bring the bottle then, will you?” I headed for the stairs, glancing back at him over my shoulder and meeting his startled gaze with a questioning look. Was there a problem? Apparently not. Mads could move pretty quickly when he wanted to.

  Twenty-One

  It was just after half-past nine when I woke up on Saturday morning, six hours after creeping quietly to bed. I hadn’t wanted to disturb any of the other guests staying at our hotel, and I especially hadn’t wanted to wake Shay up.

  I smiled to myself as I got up and headed for the bathroom. Last night had done me a world of good, and I felt great. Annie and I had talked for hours, and neither of us had had any complaints about the highly enjoyable, leisurely finale to our evening either. Maybe she’d even take me up on my invitation and come over to Inverness for a fun little weekend break sometimes? I hoped so.

  Once I’d showered, dressed and put the kettle on, I carefully eased the connecting door to Shay’s room open in case he was still sleeping. He wasn’t. The room was empty. I tapped on the bathroom door before opening it to find that empty too. He must have gotten fed up with waiting for me to wake up and gone out to get some breakfast.

  I went back to my room and made myself a coffee before picking up my phone and buzzing him. No answer. He probably had it on silent again; I wished he’d stop doing that. I fired off a text to let him know I was nipping out too and asking him to call me when he saw it. A second quick coffee, and I was good to go.

  It was yet another clear and lovely morning out there. Trish was at her desk when I got up to her office, but it looked like she was just settling in. An almost full, steaming travel mug was sitting by her elbow.

  “Good morning,” she greeted me brightly. “This is our fifth nice day in a row! Just look at that sky. I think the weather’s trying for a record this week. Did you have a good time last night?”

  “Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I didn’t stick around for the third set, though. The heat, the noise and the beer all got a bit much, and I needed to clear my head a bit.”

  “Aye, it can get a bit muggy in there. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, though. By the way, while I remember, you might want to let your cousin know that Anderson’s agreed to have Aaron Whitaker sent over to Inverness on Monday. He’ll be tagged and placed in a council flat until his trial date comes up.” I was pleased to hear it.

  “I’ll let Shay know,” I promised, superfluous as that would be. He’d appreciate the fact that Trish had thought to mention it. “They told me downstairs that our samples all went out to the airport nice and early. You have a really good bunch of people here, Trish. I wanted to thank you for all your help before we left. I couldn’t have asked for a friendlier or more collaborative group of officers to work with.”

  She smiled at me indulgently. “That’s very sweet of you, Conall, but I think we both know how much time and trouble you’ve saved us all on this one. I won’t say that I hope we need you again any time soon, but if another major case did come up, I’d move heaven and earth to persuade Anderson to let us borrow you again. And you’re always welcome to pop in and visit.”

  “We plan to,” I assured her. “Next May or June, hopefully. My da’s very keen on the idea.”

  “Oh? I’d love to meet the man who raised you two! You’ll let me know when you have a date set? I’d like to at least sit down with you all for a dinner.”

  “We’d like that.”

  She stood up to shake my hand on it, and I left her to her paperwork.

  Shay hadn’t called in at our cafe that morning, I found when I went there to get a bite of breakfast. Still no reply to my text either. Maybe he’d gone to The Crown a
gain, or decided to give somewhere else a try. Back at the hotel, feeling oddly uneasy, I looked at Shay’s bed, trying to figure out if it had been slept in or not. It looked neat enough, but he could have straightened it out when he got up. I didn’t know what he’d decided to wear last night, so I didn’t know if he’d changed clothes either. I had no idea what he’d packed, apart from the things I’d already seen him use, and those were all here. Did the fact that he hadn’t opened the curtains in there this morning mean anything?

  I went back to my room and got my laptop up and running. Shay had installed a tracker for his mobile on there for me. I opened it up. No signal. So his phone wasn’t just silenced, it was turned off. My mild anxiety increased significantly. When did he ever turn his phone off?

  I pulled up the contacts file we’d compiled for the group on the yacht, because now I really did want to know what time Shay had left there. There was no response from Nielsen’s phone, or any of the students’ mobile numbers. They were all currently unavailable too. I decided to go down and pay the Kværnen a visit. After all, it wasn’t impossible that things had gone so well that Shay had decided to stay the night.

  The Kværnen wasn’t there. You couldn’t miss the absence of seventy-five feet of sleek, expensive engineering the moment you reached that end of the waterfront. I belatedly remembered Shay mentioning, back at Angus MacLeod’s distillery on Thursday, that she was due to sail on Saturday.

  I called the harbour master's office and identified myself. Yes, I was told, Kværnen had left on schedule at eight, to head up to the Faroe Islands. All the Border Force paperwork had been in order, and her mooring fees had all been booked and paid in advance. Well, the boat might be in a dead zone. If none of them could get reception out there, that would explain why nobody was picking up.

  Somehow, I doubted it. Surely the yacht would be kitted out with both the radio antennas and the satellite link required to never be out of contact range.

  Not for a second did it cross my mind that Shay might still be on board. He wouldn’t go off like that without telling me, and Nielsen wasn’t insane. No matter how much of a fancy he’d taken to my cousin, he wouldn’t try anything as crazy as abducting him. If I wanted to find out what time Shay had left, I’d need the coastguard to set me up with a radio link. No, it was far too soon to start kicking up that sort of fuss.

  I didn’t know what I should do. Had something gone horribly and unexpectedly wrong with Nielsen last night? If it had, Shay would probably have wanted a little time alone to process and bury it, the way he always did. Both da and I knew, from bitter experience, how bad an idea it was to get him to talk about ‘unpleasant’ incidents of the kind I was beginning to imagine. But no, surely not. I’d have confidently bet a year’s salary that my cousin had nothing to worry about there. There was no way in hell I’d have let him go if I’d thought otherwise.

  Should I do a round of the local cafes and see if I could find him? No, that was pointless. He might just have easily gone over to the castle grounds again for all I knew, and that would really be a needle in a haystack job, especially if he was moving. That estate was enormous. I checked my phone again to make sure I hadn’t missed any ‘new mail’ alerts. Nothing in my work or private accounts.

  Well, Shay might have run his phone battery down or turned it off accidentally. Granted, that wasn’t normal, but it was far likelier than some of the things I was beginning to worry about. I doubted anyone could have grabbed him off the street on his way back last night without being seen, and besides, Shay wasn’t exactly an easy target.

  The best thing I could do, I decided, was to go back to the hotel and wait. It was far too soon to think of doing anything as drastic as calling the Ids. Maybe, if he hadn’t turned up by twelve, I’d have to resort to that, but I was really hoping to avoid it. God alone knew what kind of new restrictions they’d try to impose if they found out that I’d lost him.

  I could check the hospital, just in case. Back in my room, I tapped my laptop awake again to pull up the number and then dropped into the chair disbelievingly. A new download had opened up on my screen while I’d been out. My cousin had sent me some still images, all from the Kværnen.

  I clicked on the first image to enlarge it. It was a camera view of Mads Nielsen at the helm. He was sporting a cut, swollen lip and a darkly bruised cheek. Cory Phelps was sitting a few feet behind him, only his head and upper body visible from that angle. The time and date stamp told me it had been taken only minutes before.

  The second image showed the four students, slumped on a long couch beneath a curving, room-length window. Their hands and ankles were bound, and none of them looked conscious. Daniels and Verity had been left awake, but they were even better secured, and they’d been gagged too. Brian Jordan was lounging against a stack of pillows on the enormous bed, watching them all. There was a pistol resting on more pillows by his hand, alongside a hand radio and a tablet. The main stateroom?

  The next image was a screenshot of the GPS chart plotter with a note typed over it.

  ‘Hijackers both armed. They don’t know I’m on board. Managed to access the control room after we left harbour. Can kill engines. Can feed false info to helm. Try to join us, quietly, at 13:00, 60°00'00.0"N, 6°00'00.0"W. Can’t use phones, Jordan is monitoring.’

  I checked the GPS chart again. If he wasn’t discovered before then and could nudge their speed and direction a bit without anyone noticing, Shay could certainly manage that rendezvous.

  I choked back a mouthful of bile. This mess was a fucking nightmare. We’d all been too quick to conclude that Jordan and Phelps would have been long gone, once we realised they’d taken the Jeanie’s RIB tender, but I should have known better than to assume any such thing. Considering how careless they’d been up until then, I hadn’t had the least suspicion that our suspects wouldn’t head for the mainland as fast as they could.

  All things considered, stealing a ride up to the Faroes was a far better move for them to make. There was no alert out for them anywhere outside the UK, yet, and from Tórshavn they could fly out to several European destinations. For all I knew, they might have already disposed of anything they’d been carrying. Or they might be planning to switch to another boat. Why hadn’t I even considered the idea that they might come back and try this? I’d known that Jordan was familiar with the Kværnen.

  I didn’t like that ‘Try to join us…’ either. What the hell was Shay planning to do? I had less than two hours. I’d better get moving.

  “Aye, we can kit you out with the drysuit and other gear you’ve asked for and fly you up there alright.” Jack Morrison assured me, “but are you sure this is a good idea, Conall?” Jack had arrived within ten minutes of Trish’s call, and he didn’t look at all happy with my provisional scheme, such as it was.

  “If Shay cuts their engines as planned and I’m already in the water waiting, that’s our best chance of covertly slipping anyone onto Kværnen.”

  “I don’t like it,” Trish disagreed. “You’re pretty much asking Jack to break every safety rule in the book, Conall. I know your main aim here is to make sure none of the hostages is hurt, but wouldn’t it be better to wait until they reach Tórshavn and have Jordan and Phelps picked up there?”

  “Shay must have thought of that himself, before deciding to risk this, and we have no idea what he may have heard them planning. Once the hostages are no longer needed, Jordan and Phelps won’t want to risk them getting loose and raising the alarm. And they’ve already killed once, probably twice, depending on what caused Butler’s death.”

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  “Look, Jordan’s worked on that yacht. He’ll head for the engine room as soon as they realise there’s a problem. That gets him away from the group in the stateroom. But what if Shay fails to neutralise him, or gets injured and can’t go after Phelps? I might be able to make all the difference if that happens.” The clock was ticking. “Call Anderson if you think you need to, but is there any re
ason that Jack and I can’t get moving in the meantime?”

  There wasn’t, and she knew it.

  “Alright then, get going. Just bear in mind that if Anderson orders me to turn you around, I’ll have no choice but to do it.”

  “Don’t expect him to thank you for the call,” I warned her. “This is definitely something he’d rather not know about until after the fact.” Maybe she’d take that warning seriously and think things over properly before she picked up that phone.

  Jack was already making his own call as we headed out to where he’d parked. He tossed me the keys, and I slipped into the driver’s seat. Once he’d buckled up, I pulled out and turned on the emergency lights before whisking us out of town and gunning it for the airport.

  “They’ll be waiting at the ready for us when we get there,” he told me after putting his phone away. “I just hope your cousin is as capable as you say he is.”

  I wasn’t at all worried about Shay bringing Kværnen to a stop dead on target. He could calculate mass, velocity, and loss of momentum easily enough. And Jack’s Sikorsky could easily stay up long enough to loop around out of sight until it was time to come back. It had a maximum range of over six hundred miles, enough to fly out there and back twice over before needing to refuel.

  Once we were on the helicopter, Jack introduced me to the winchman and winch operator and slapped my arm wordlessly before heading forward to take up his seat next to the captain. Nobody expected me to be in any mood to chat, thankfully, and they were only waiting for me to get ready before taking off.

  I moved down to the aft end of the long, utilitarian cabin to check through my gear and change. I’d need a good few minutes under the water to avoid the very slight risk of being spotted from any of the decks, but a full scuba tank set up was out of the question. I needed to move quickly and quietly once I was out of the water. The little mini dive tank I’d asked for held less than a litre of compressed gases, but it was small, light and good for up to twenty minutes. It could simply hang clipped to my chest as I swam. I stripped down to boxers and a t-shirt and pulled the thermally insulated undersuit and booted drysuit on up to my waist. Everything else could wait until we were almost in position. I’d boil in that suit if I fastened it up now.