by Zoe Sharp
Gardner gave a snort of laughter. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’ She paused. ‘But my friends call me Ritz.’
‘Ritz?’ I repeated. ‘As in the crackers?’
‘No, as in the snazzy hotel,’ she said, still smiling. ‘I like to think it’s ’cause I’m not a cheap date.’
Then, in the distance, I recognised the glow of the little roadside bar, the only sign of habitation near Fourth Day’s land.
Gardner tensed in her seat and the smile fell. ‘Looks like we’ve got company.’
Even in the gathering darkness, we could clearly make out the roadblock up ahead, next to the bar itself. Gardner lifted off the throttle and dropped her window as the Buick cruised to a halt. The sticky night air came tumbling into the car, humid as fevered breath after the air-con chill.
Alongside us, the bar’s neon signs for Bud Light and Miller Genuine Draft were the only lights showing, but the rough dirt parking area alongside was crammed with vehicles that had government drab written all over them, bristling with antennas. At the back, I could just make out the bulky outline of a mobile command unit, an articulated truck with a trailer so black it seemed to actively suck in light from the surrounding area. There were satellite dishes on the roof, but I had no illusions the occupants were using them to watch European porn.
Epps. He was so close I could feel him.
A man in SWAT black with an H&K MP5 pulled up tight into his shoulder stepped up to the driver’s side of the car, keeping in the safety zone behind the line of Gardner’s shoulder. I glanced round, casual, and could make out another standing off in the gloom, keeping him covered.
‘Sorry, ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to turn your vehicle around,’ the SWAT guy said, offering no explanation. ‘Find another route.’
‘I’m a cop,’ Gardner said, keeping her hands on the top of the steering wheel. ‘I’m gonna show you some ID and, just so’s you’re aware of it, I’m carrying, OK?’
She reached into her jacket, nice and slow, and brought out her badge. The SWAT guy took it without a word, retreating into the darkness. We waited without speaking until he passed the ID back through the open window.
‘Sorry, Detective, I’m still gonna have to ask you to turn around,’ he said, and there was a subtle undercurrent of threat in his voice now, like if he had to ask again it would count against us. ‘You hear me?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Gardner said. ‘You be careful now.’
She buzzed her window up as she put the car into reverse and carved a neat, economical turn. I tried to take in as much as possible without making it obvious. The manpower Epps commanded was impressive.
As we hit the darkness again and picked up speed, Gardner let out a low whistle. ‘When these guys decide to throw a party,’ she murmured, ‘they really decide to throw a party.’
‘Is that it?’ I demanded. ‘We just turn tail and run?’
Gardner’s expression in the dash lighting was neutral. ‘Bane’s a clever guy,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’ll figure it out.’
‘That’s not what worries me.’ I thought again of the two SWAT men who’d approached us, their technique and teamwork, and something unfolded with quiet menace inside my head.
Teamwork.
I must have gasped. Gardner’s glance was fast, speculative. ‘What you got?’
‘Thomas Witney knew the men who grabbed him,’ I said. ‘If they’d been strangers, they wouldn’t have risked taking the cuffs off him, and he would have fought them, but there wasn’t time. So, he went willingly.’ At first.
‘So?’
‘Men,’ I repeated. ‘Plural. Couldn’t have been Sagar, because he was still in the air and he doesn’t have the skills. So, who else would Nu take with him? Who would he trust?’
‘Shit,’ Gardner muttered. ‘There’s another inside man.’
CHAPTER FIFTY
I fumbled Parker’s cellphone out of my pocket, stabbed the power button, muttering, ‘Inside is the operative word.’
‘Here,’ Gardner said, handing her own phone across. ‘Main number for Fourth Day’s stored. Use mine.’
I took it gratefully, but realised even as the phone rang out at the other end that I had no idea what to say to Bane when I got through.
Eventually, it was Ann who answered with a cautious greeting.
‘Hey, it’s Charlie. I need to speak to Bane.’
There was a long pause at the other end of the line, what sounded like a shaky breath. ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?’ she asked.
‘Ann, please—’
‘No,’ she said, firm in sadness rather than anger. ‘Leave us be, Charlie. Leave Randall be.’
And before I could react to that, she’d quietly cut the connection.
‘Shit,’ I murmured in unconscious echo of Gardner’s own response, glanced around. ‘Look, stop the car. I’ll hike in from here.’
‘In the dark, with no equipment?’ she said, not lifting off. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Gardner—’
‘Trust me,’ the detective said. ‘I ain’t been a cop around here for ten years without learning a few back roads that a bunch of out-of-town Feds know nothing about.’
Gardner’s alternative route took longer than the main gate would have done, but not nearly as long as tabbing in across rough, unsighted ground. She brought us around to an old service road that eventually joined up with the track Maria and I had taken into the wilderness.
Finally, we braked to a halt near the row of open garages where the Jeep and the quad bikes were sheltered. We’d barely climbed out of the car before the outline of another man in black, carrying another readied long gun, materialised from the darkness.
‘We’re here to see Bane,’ Gardner said, keeping her hands where he could see them.
The figure stepped forwards, looked at me.
‘The prodigal returns,’ Yancy said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Lucky for you, huh?’
He led us without comment in through the back door and along the corridor to Bane’s study. The room looked exactly the way I remembered it. I had to remind myself it was only yesterday since I was last there. It seemed like a lot had happened since then.
Bane was not alone. Clustered around his desk, looking at what appeared to be blueprints or architect’s plans, were Dexter and his thickset friend, Tony. The one I’d disabled with a can of Lorna Witney’s hairspray, back in Aberdeen. If I’d been hoping he’d already forgotten the incident, I was quickly disabused of the idea.
‘You’ve got a bloody nerve!’ He started round the desk, fists clenching as if to manually inflate his blood pressure as well as his muscles.
‘Tony.’ Bane’s voice was soft, but it halted the eco-warrior in mid stride. Then Bane’s gaze fell upon me and he smiled. I couldn’t help the way my nerve endings lit up at that smile, even if I had the nasty sneaky feeling that by coming back here I’d just done something altogether predictable.
‘Charlie,’ he said gravely, a hint of challenge in his stare. ‘We thought you had decided to leave us.’
‘That decision was made for me,’ I said, ‘and I wasn’t exactly consulted.’ Or fully conscious, for that matter.
‘I see.’
‘Don’t give her a hard time,’ Gardner broke in. ‘She’s probably landed herself the number one spot on the Most Wanted list for what she’s doing.’
And when Bane raised his eyebrow at that, I added, roughly, ‘Epps is on his way to take this place and he’s bringing all his biggest and best toys. Tonight, most likely.’
Bane paused, but we weren’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. ‘Thank you for the warning,’ he said at last. ‘Both of you.’
‘That’s not why I’m here – officially, at least,’ Gardner said easily. ‘I wanted to update you personally on the situation with John Nu.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dexter flex at the mention of Nu’s name, but my attention was more f
irmly on Yancy. The big ex-Marine showed no apparent emotion. His face was calm, almost placid, but I didn’t miss the subtle way he redistributed his weight onto the balls of his feet.
‘Maria will not be bringing charges aginst John,’ Bane said. ‘It’s enough that he’s gone from here. I will take out a restraining order, if necessary, to prevent him coming back onto the property.’ He glanced at me. ‘I cannot, of course, speak for Charlie.’
‘Things have kinda moved on a little from assault,’ Gardner said, voice dry. ‘We have evidence that places Mr Nu at the scene of Thomas Witney’s murder.’ She paused, let that cool cop’s stare circle the room. ‘And we have reason to believe he had an accomplice.’
‘Nu wasn’t good enough to take out two of Epps’s people single-handed,’ I said. Hell, he wasn’t good enough to take out two unarmed women, even when one of them was asleep in her tent. ‘Still think it’s in Maria’s best interests not to press charges?’
‘The docs haven’t exactly said when we’ll be able to speak with Nu,’ Gardner went on, casually lying through her teeth. ‘But, hypothetically, I daresay the DA might offer to cut a deal. The way things are looking right now, he’s got nothing to lose.’
She managed all this with a totally straight face and a vaguely weary air, as though it didn’t matter much to her one way or another if one murderer was exchanged for another. It was just another case in a procession of ones just like it, day in and day out. Not a bad act, but I had the feeling the ones that got away haunted Gardner’s dreams as well as her waking hours, for all the toughened outer shell.
‘Unless, of course,’ Gardner said into the silence that followed her last statement, ‘that accomplice decides to turn himself in before we can talk to Nu.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s kinda first come, first served.’
I turned my head, met Yancy’s eyes. ‘So, Tyrone,’ I said softly, ‘what’s it to be?’
Yancy’s eyes swivelled, saw the realisation on the faces ranged against him – especially in Dexter’s. But most of all Yancy saw the regret in Bane’s eyes. His expression twitched for the first time, as if he’d still been hoping, right to the last moment, to brazen this out.
He said, ‘What kinda evidence?’
‘Security cameras in the lobby of the building opposite,’ Gardner said. Her eyes were on Yancy’s hands, still resting on the stock of the M16, but she’d shifted a little, I noticed, putting her right hip forwards so she could better reach the gun on her left, bending slightly forwards from the waist. Pure cop stance.
Only trouble was, Yancy had been a soldier. Probably a very good soldier. I felt the familiar tightness in my chest, even as a weight seemed to lift from my mind. The only time I never had any doubts, it seemed, was when I faced the possibility of killing or being killed.
Yancy stepped back, smooth and fast, moving his feet into a wide base, knees bent, bringing the M16 up to ready position. I heard him flip the safety off as he slipped his finger inside the guard.
But as soon as I saw his hands begin to move, I moved, too. Even as he dropped his right hand down to the trigger, brought his left up to the stock, I was already closing the gap between us. I pivoted sideways and grabbed the barrel with my right hand as it came up, forcing it round and away from the room’s occupants, in the direction of his trigger hand.
At the same time, I snapped my right foot up and stamped down hard onto his leading knee, yanking sharply on the barrel to pull him off balance. He gave a grunt as his injured leg collapsed, tipping his upper body forwards and neatly presenting the back of his neck for an elbow strike that had him hitting the floor hard enough to bounce. He was a big guy, layered with muscle. There was no way I wanted to risk breaking a knuckle on him if I didn’t have to.
I peeled the M16 out of his hands as he went down, thumbed the release for the magazine and worked the action to eject the chambered round. When I looked up, breathing hard, it was to find Gardner watching me over the sights of her own weapon.
Tony, I noticed, was staring like he’d just eaten something unexpectedly sour. He was the first one to speak, just a faint profanity uttered under his breath.
A long time ago, back in the army when Sean had first taught me hand-to-hand, he’d pointed an Armalite at my stomach and coolly ordered me to try taking it away from him. Instinct tells you to shove the barrel to your right, so it doesn’t track across your body, but that pushes it away from your opponent’s trigger hand. Reflexive army training makes him simply accelerate through that arc to lash out at your head with the butt as it sweeps round, and Sean was nothing if not very well trained. Then he told me to get up and try again. It was a lesson I didn’t need to learn twice.
Now, as I stalked past Gardner, I said, ‘He’s all yours,’ and put the M16 and the magazine down on the desktop, which gave me a good opportunity to have a nosy at what they’d been studying when I came in.
The papers were indeed the architect’s drawings for the compound, with various buildings added at different stages. The majority of the main accommodation block and Bane’s own quarters were relatively new. And that probably meant Epps would have had little trouble accessing the same plans. That wasn’t all it meant.
I turned away from the desk, looked at Bane. ‘You already knew Epps was coming, didn’t you?’
Bane glanced at the man on the floor. Gardner had holstered her gun and pulled out a set of cuffs, was busy dragging Yancy’s wrists together behind his back, reeling off his rights as she did so.
‘Tyrone indicated this afternoon that there was some kind of obvious surveillance operation in progress,’ Bane said with a hooded gaze. ‘I thought it wise to take some basic precautions.’
Saddened, sickened, I shook my head. ‘Epps will almost undoubtedly see anything you’ve done to prepare a defence as a sign you’re escalating the situation,’ I said, as Gardner rolled Yancy onto his side and sat him up. ‘Which was, no doubt, the object of the exercise.’
Dexter came forwards then, white-faced, the cords in his neck standing out as his shoulders flexed. ‘Give me half an hour alone with him,’ he muttered. ‘He’ll tell us what the game is.’
‘Nobody’s getting any time alone with him,’ Gardner said, stony. ‘This man’s now my prisoner.’ She looked down at Yancy. ‘That deal I mentioned. Either you or Nu takes the rap for Witney. If I can’t get one, I’ll settle for the other – up to you. Just don’t insult me by telling me it was all Nu’s idea, huh?’
Yancy manoeuvred himself to a sitting position, shook his head a little and winced. I could tell by the way he was hunched forwards that the knee was hurting like a bastard, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. They’d done far worse to Thomas Witney.
‘No, I recruited him, when Bane started having all that trouble, a while back.’ The sly emphasis made me suddenly realise that Yancy probably knew a lot more about Thomas Witney’s car accident than he was prepared to admit. He lifted his head, proud. ‘We both knew what we was signing on for.’
‘So, you created the demand for extra security, then got yourselves taken on to provide it,’ I said. ‘Clever. What did Sagar promise you for all this effort?’
‘Plenty.’ He started to shake his head again, stopped abruptly. ‘Man, he was talking telephone numbers. Chance to make more money than I ever seen in my life.’
‘And what were you expected to do for this spectacular reward?’ Gardner asked, keeping her voice bland.
Yancy scowled nevertheless. ‘Keep the field clear,’ he said. ‘Take care of problems.’
‘And Thomas was just one of the problems you took care of, was he?’ I put in, icy.
‘Sagar was still here when Thomas first came, but nobody knew Thomas was Liam’s old man. He didn’t exactly shout about that, huh? Sagar told me he approached the guy, thought he could confirm the oil shale find. I mean, he was a geologist – what better qualification, huh? But Thomas strung him along for a while, then said there was nothing there. The land was worthless.’
�
��Thomas came to me,’ Bane said quietly. We turned, found him frowning. ‘He told me about Chris’s offer and asked how I squared my conscience with encouraging young people to go and risk their lives in the name of the environment, when one of my own was aiming to exploit the resources on my own land. It was at that time I came to the decision that Chris could no longer remain with us.’
He looked down at Yancy, nothing in his face, but it still made the big ex-Marine shift uncomfortably on the floor. Maybe it was the pain from his knee, or maybe from his own conscience, I wasn’t sure which.
‘Wait a minute,’ Gardner said. ‘Is there oil under Fourth Day or not?’
‘Liam discovered it, quite by chance, and Thomas confirmed it,’ Bane said. ‘But this is supposed to be a place of retreat, of sanctuary and quiet contemplation, not of heavy industry and pollution and greed.’
‘You could have moved someplace else,’ Gardner said with hardly a flicker.
‘Why should I?’ Bane barely glanced at her. ‘I don’t need the money. And I understand this latest method of oil shale extraction is entirely unproven. It could be decades before the removal of whatever lies here becomes a viable proposition.’
‘Is that why you tortured Thomas Witney?’ I asked Yancy. ‘To find out the truth about the oil shale?’
‘Partly,’ Yancy admitted. ‘Partly to find out what he told you about Sagar.’
‘Nothing at all,’ I said bitterly. ‘As you now well know.’
Yancy had the grace to look ashamed. ‘He looked relieved when we hijacked the van, poor bastard,’ he murmured.
‘Then he saw what we’d done to…he saw what we’d done.’ ‘There were easier ways to get the truth out of him than beating him to death,’ I pointed out, thinking of Parker and Epps, and the drugs they’d employed.
‘Sagar told us to make it look good, but the Feds still wouldn’t play ball.’
‘Is that why Sagar hired those no-hopers to make a run at me – to try and goad Parker into taking independent action?’
