Fourth Day

by Zoe Sharp

  The office straddled the north-west corner of the building, and had been furnished by an interior designer with a clean modern eye and very few budgetary restrictions. It smelt, as always, of furniture polish overlaid with good coffee.

  Parker was on his feet next to one of the large windows, talking on the phone when we barged in. He glanced across sharply and I saw him go still, but he smoothly continued his conversation, using the time to inspect the pair of us as though for imperfections. I resisted the urge to come to attention and saw Parker register that fact in the way his right eye narrowed.

  Eventually, he ended the call and moved across without hurry to slot the cordless handset back into its base station on the desk.

  ‘Sean, Charlie,’ he greeted us calmly. ‘You got back OK?’

  Sean’s head gave a tiny jerk of impatience, but when he spoke there was nothing in his voice.

  ‘After everything you said to Epps about keeping secrets,’ he said, ‘it was a bit of a shock to find out you’ve been hiding the biggest one of all.’

  Parker’s eyes flickered to me, a gesture Sean didn’t miss, I was sure of it. Then he said, ‘We’ll get to that. Tell me about this ambush.’

  I let Sean recount the story while I helped us to coffee from the pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain on the credenza. We sat in the comfortable client armchairs, facing each other across a low glass table. Parker leant back, slightly angled towards both of us, giving his utter attention to Sean’s verbal report. He didn’t fidget or interrupt, hardly blinked until it was done. I was suddenly reminded of Randall Bane.

  ‘I think we’ve smoothed things over a little with the LAPD, but I wouldn’t run any red lights in that town for a while, if I were you,’ Sean finished. ‘We still don’t know who those guys were and I’d guess we’re not going to find out, if Epps has anything to do with it.’

  ‘Epps already called this morning,’ Parker said dryly, surprising both of us. ‘The guys who tried to jump you are local talent, he says. Pros, but not high on the food chain. They reckon they were only recruited for the job two days ago and told they had to move fast.’

  Sean said, ‘Have they confirmed it was a snatch, not a hit?’

  Parker nodded. ‘They were given a reasonably accurate description of Chris Sagar and told just to grab whoever was with him. Their instructions were quite specific.’

  ‘But they weren’t told who this “whoever” might be?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Apparently, the guy driving, name of Delmondo, did the deal – and before you ask, a voice on a cellphone and a dead-letter drop for half of the money upfront. He said when they saw it was a woman, they thought they’d have it easy.’ Parker glanced across at me and smiled. ‘You kinda disabused them of that notion pretty quick.’

  ‘If they weren’t expecting resistance,’ Sean said, ‘why the body armour?’

  ‘Standard operating procedure these days, according to Delmondo. These guys wear Kevlar like the rich wear Prada and Armani.’

  ‘Good to know,’ Sean said, and the casual tone of his voice sent the hairs prickling along my arms, because I knew exactly what piece of information he was tucking away for future reference.

  Next time, head shots.

  ‘How did they know where to find us?’ I queried, and noted Parker’s frown.

  ‘They got a call to say you were leaving the house,’ he said carefully. ‘Picked you up from there.’

  My eyes flicked to Sean’s in dismay. I would have sworn the house was not under surveillance. We’d been automatically attentive. And, besides, the very fact that the whole estate in Calabasas was gated off, and had its own security, was what made it so ideal for us in the first place.

  ‘There was nobody watching the house,’ Sean said, before I could make the same statement. ‘Not unless they had half a dozen teams on it and they were bloody well trained.’ He shook his head. ‘And if they were using so many people that we didn’t make them, why not send more on the snatch itself, just to be sure?’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t say I agreed with Epps’s take on it,’ Parker said mildly. ‘I’m just telling you what he said.’

  ‘What were their orders, once they’d grabbed me?’

  ‘To call for instructions on where to deliver you,’ Parker said. ‘They were pretty insistent that they weren’t out to kill you.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ I said, mildly sarcastic, ‘which is why they took such trouble to hide their faces.’

  Parker raised an eyebrow at Sean, who shook his head. ‘They knew there wasn’t going to be any danger of Charlie identifying any of them afterwards,’ he said. ‘Even if they allegedly weren’t going to finish the job personally.’

  ‘I think it’s safe to assume Epps’s people will have questioned them kinda…closely on that,’ Parker said gravely.

  ‘What about the cellphone number of this mystery employer?’ I said.

  ‘Dead end. Pay-as-you-go number, probably stripped and dumped in a storm drain, soon as the job went south.’

  ‘Does Epps think they’re the ones who grabbed Witney, too?’ I asked.

  ‘They claim that was nothing to do with them, but maybe they’re holding out because they know killing two federal agents will put all of them on Death Row for sure.’

  ‘And has Epps put his own house in order and found out who put the tracker on the van Witney was in?’

  ‘No,’ Parker said. His lips twisted briefly. ‘Or, if he has, he wasn’t willing to share that information with me,’ he amended.

  We sat for a moment in silence, then Sean put down his coffee cup and said flatly, ‘OK, Parker, what’s the real story with you and Thomas Witney?’

  Parker sighed and sat forwards with his forearms resting on his knees, shoulders hunched. I opened my mouth to hurry him along but Sean, catching my eye, shook his head slightly.

  Give him time.

  For what? To remember, or invent?

  Sean’s glance was reproachful. He waited without impatience, but his eyes never left Parker’s face. The coffee machine gurgled unexpectedly, like sudden indigestion. The siren of a fire engine ran the length of the street below us, echoing between the buildings.

  At last, Parker looked up, loosing a breath. ‘The Witneys came to me about Liam five years ago.’

  ‘After he was killed?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it was after he dropped out of college,’ Parker said, rubbing an absent forefinger along his temple. ‘They were worried he might have gotten involved in drugs, something like that, and they asked me to find out.’

  ‘Why you?’ Sean said. ‘Armstrong’s has never been a private investigation firm.’ He paused, head tilted. ‘You had a prior connection.’

  A faint trace of a smile appeared on Parker’s face. ‘Lorna Witney runs an oil exploration business,’ he said. ‘Family firm, I think, but she’s a smart lady. Lotta grit. Degree from Columbus. We provided security personnel for their ongoing overseas projects.’

  Sean said, ‘The name doesn’t ring any bells.’

  ‘It won’t. After she and Witney parted, she shifted her base of operations to Europe and I assume she now uses someone local.’ He shrugged aside that dent to his professional pride.

  ‘So, what did you find out about Liam?’

  ‘That he’d come into contact with Randall Bane and had joined Fourth Day,’ Parker said simply.

  ‘Just like that,’ I murmured. ‘Wow, Bane must be even more persuasive than I thought.’

  ‘Liam had been off the grid for six months,’ Parker said. ‘By the time we located him, Bane had him pretty much where he wanted.’

  I remembered Thomas Witney’s edge of regret over his son, asked, ‘Why did they wait so long before they went looking?’

  ‘Not the first time he’d pulled a stunt like that,’ Parker said. ‘The impression I got from his parents was they were not entirely surprised when he dropped out of college. They thought maybe it was some girl, but figured he’d be back when he needed money. It was only after the
y got his cutup bank and ATM cards in the mail, they realised he was serious this time.’

  ‘So they tried to get him out,’ Sean said. ‘Did they ask you to do an extraction?’

  ‘Only after they’d tried just about every other way to get to their son,’ Parker said tiredly. ‘Which gave Bane plenty of time to move the kid elsewhere. By the time we went in, he was long gone. Next thing we heard, he’d turned up dead during some sabotage attack against an oil exploration project in Alaska. Real blow for his mother, considering her line of work.’

  ‘Debacle, wasn’t it – the name of the group he joined?’ I said, remembering Detective Gardner’s interview with Bane.

  ‘Yeah,’ Parker said. ‘They claimed responsibility. Claimed Liam had been executed in cold blood and was a “martyr to the cause”, as I recall, but I saw the reports. The boy was caught planting explosives and apparently tried to shoot his way out. Even I would have judged it a good kill.’ There was bitterness in his tone. ‘Witney blamed Bane’s influence. He haunted the authorities, trying to get some action, became obsessed with bringing Fourth Day down, by whatever means. Eventually, he decided to go in himself.’ He looked up. ‘The rest you know, pretty much.’

  ‘Oh, I think there are still a few important blanks,’ Sean said softly. ‘Like, why did you leave him there, Parker? Weren’t you supposed to be his safety net?’

  Parker didn’t reply right away, just got to his feet and strolled over to the window, leaning against the deep reveal and staring sightlessly at the distant lanes of traffic. Another fire engine passed, then a couple of police cars. Must be quite a blaze.

  ‘Sounds kinda bad, doesn’t it?’ he said eventually, his tone wry. ‘What you gotta understand is how Witney was when he went into that cult. He was a man on the edge of reason. Lorna – Mrs Witney – was scared for his sanity. The doctors were talking about placing him in an asylum.’

  ‘Bane told Gardner you went to see Witney, before the first six months were up, and Witney convinced you not to retrieve him,’ I said baldly. ‘Why?’

  Parker turned away from the view, met my eyes. ‘Because he was almost back to normal. Rational, calm, reasoned. He told me he was at peace and, looking at him, I…believed it.’

  I let out a long breath. ‘How do you know it wasn’t some drug-induced torpor?’

  ‘Credit me with some intelligence, Charlie.’ Parker gave me a slightly old-fashioned look. ‘I can spot a junkie, and Witney even let us draw blood from him. We had a private forensics lab in LA run just about every test they could think of. It was clean.’

  ‘There are plenty of other ways to exert control over someone,’ Sean said. ‘You should know that.’

  Parker sighed. ‘Yeah, and maybe we should have ignored his wishes, got him out by force and put him through some kinda twelve-step programme, but ultimately, it was out of my hands.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mrs Witney made the choice to respect his wishes and leave him be.’

  ‘His wife?’ I demanded. ‘Hang on, Witney told me his marriage was crumbling before he ever set foot inside Fourth Day. How the hell do you know her decision wasn’t based on the fact that he’d gone fruit loop and she was delighted to see the back of him?’

  Parker’s gaze grew cool. ‘Well, Charlie, looks like you’ll have the opportunity to ask her. Mrs Witney is unable to travel, but she wants the full story on what happened. I’ve given her my word that someone from this agency will accompany her husband’s body over to her home in Scotland for burial and give it to her,’ he said, pronouncing ‘Scotland’ like it was two separate words, distinct and foreign. ‘She wants him treated with dignity and respect. Be sure to extend the lady herself that same courtesy, won’t you?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Two days later, I landed just outside Edinburgh on a Continental flight out of Newark. Having been through the formalities, I stood in the rain watching as Thomas Witney’s coffin was transferred, with deferential efficiency, into a sombre black Mercedes van belonging to the firm of funeral directors Lorna Witney had appointed.

  Then I climbed into the passenger seat of the accompanying E-class belonging to the funeral director himself, and soon we were heading north for the Forth Bridge. I was still not entirely sure why I was here.

  The funeral director was an elderly Scot called Graydon Meecham, tall and gaunt, his face was tailor-made for a black top hat and a wing collar. He also turned out to have a dry wit and a fund of stories about the funny side of the burial business. They made the two and a half hours it took to reach Aberdeen pass much faster than they might otherwise have done.

  I saw the coffin safely tucked away in Meecham’s cold storage. He offered a business card and told me, with a twinkle, that if ever I had a body to dispose of, I shouldn’t hesitate to call.

  ‘Can I run you up to your hotel, lassie?’ he asked. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘There you have me,’ I said, tucking the card away in my jacket pocket. ‘I believe Mrs Witney was sorting something out. Could I trouble you to give me a lift over to her offices?’

  He hesitated. ‘Ah, there might be a wee problem with that.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, a little coolly. ‘Is it far?’

  ‘It’s not that, lassie. It’s just, well, she’s been having a spot of bother lately.’ He squirmed like a schoolboy, glanced through his office window to the yard outside, where one of his lads was already washing the salt-streaked rain off the E-class, nestled amid the highly polished hearses. ‘Environmental protesters of some kind, you know the type. They’ve been picketing the place, trying to intimidate visitors.’

  ‘Ah,’ I echoed, thinking of his obvious pride in his vehicles, and waited a beat. ‘How about if you dropped me off just round the corner, out of sight?’

  We drove in silence through the city centre. I think he might have been giving me the scenic tour by way of recompense.

  The architecture was largely cold granite grey, which lent the city an air of hard-bitten dignity, of being hunkered down with its teeth gritted against the bitter wind coming up off the North Sea, all the way from frozen Scandinavia.

  Even so, I got an impression of tenacious prosperity, whatever was happening to the rest of the UK economy. I’d been keeping tabs on the news from home. ‘Hell in a handcart’ seemed to be the best general description.

  The oil exploration company run by Thomas Witney’s ex-wife was located in one of the industrial areas towards the east of the city. Here, the buildings were no-nonsense functional units, streaked with grey and no glitz. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave a vehicle parked unattended for longer than I could help it. Graydon Meecham wasn’t even keen on stopping. He swung the big car round in the mouth of a junction about a hundred and fifty metres from where I could see a small group of demonstrators, around fifteen or twenty of them with placards, gathered around a pair of closed gates set into the galvanised fencing.

  ‘Good luck, lassie,’ Meecham said as I climbed out, lifting the rucksack that was my only luggage from the footwell.

  He was already driving away as I slung the rucksack over my shoulder and walked towards the gates, watching for patterns as the protesters moved and interacted as a group, pinpointing the natural ringleaders.

  Not everybody at a demo wants to fight, and some will run if anything more serious than a scuffle breaks out. Others will join in once things have kicked off, but won’t instigate. And then there’s the aggressive subspecies for whom the prospect of violence is their only reason to turn out in the first place. Identifying such people in a crowd quickly, and then isolating and neutralising them, was part of the job.

  In my estimation, there were two likely candidates here. One was a short squat guy, maybe in his mid thirties, with ginger hair and a close-trimmed beard. The other was taller, thinner, younger and blonder, and had the kind of tan you don’t get by sitting out in your garden in the north of Scotland in January.

  I reached the gate. At one side was a securit
y intercom with a call button and a speaker, in a vandal-resistant metal box. I ‘excuse-me’d’ my way through to it and pressed the call button, waited for a response.

  Although I couldn’t see water, I got the impression we were near the harbour from the intermingling smells of fish and diesel and salt in the air. The sky overhead was filled with the raucous squabble of a thousand seagulls. It had stopped raining just north of Perth, and an uncertain sun had broken through the clouds. On the whole, it didn’t make the place look any more welcoming.

  ‘You don’t wanna be going in there, kiddo,’ said a voice close by my shoulder.

  I wasn’t surprised to find one of the potential troublemakers crowding in on me. The tall blond one. He had an American accent and a nice smile and bad breath, and was casually holding his placard face down over his left shoulder.

  The placard consisted of foamboard nailed to a lump of two-by-two, which seemed excessive as a support unless he also planned to use it as a weapon. For that reason alone, I stayed close to him instead of stepping away, as he expected me to. If he decided to take a swing at me, better not to let him build momentum.

  ‘Oh?’ I said cheerfully. ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Why?’ It was one of the girls who spoke. She had much more of a local accent, her voice intense and bitter. ‘Because they’re raping the planet, that’s why. Not that people like you care – arriving in that gas-guzzling monstrosity!’

  ‘And you all got here on bicycles or in nice hybrid electric cars, did you?’ I asked pleasantly, nodding to the assortment of battered old vehicles parked along the opposite side of the road. Her only answer was a scowl. ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’

  The intercom buzzed and I pressed the button to speak, not taking my eyes off the blond guy with the placard. He had a real surfer dude look about him. If only he flossed. ‘I’m here to see Mrs Witney,’ I said into the microphone. I hesitated a moment, then added carefully. ‘Tell her Parker Armstrong sent me.’

  The speaker emitted a brief garbled message, something about someone being on their way, and went silent.