He didn’t answer. “We’ll put you ashore in the next 20 minutes. From there, you need to find her. Here’s my number.”
He handed me a piece of paper with a number scribbled on it. “Call me once you’ve done your job. And, while you’re doing it, you do a little bit more digging about Michael Connelly. That’s your other job. Make sure you find out some good information.”
Chapter 9
Discovery
I decided to start with what I knew, and the closest place for fried food, carbs, and a free internet connection was the McDonald’s down by the Europort roundabout. I cracked open the packaging around my Big Mac, wiped my greasy hands on my pants and opened my laptop. There had to be something here, something I was missing, a connection between the Joneses and Connelly. I took a bite, swished some Coke around in my mouth and washed it down. Ah, that was better. Now, where to start digging?
I went to the Wikipedia entry on Connelly. There wasn’t much—mining magnate, oil magnate, shipping magnate. That was about it. A few bits of information about his private life, but very little. The only things I found out were that he was married, that he had three children and that he got seasick, which seemed ironic for someone who ran a shipping company.
The fries here weren’t as good as back home, but the whiskey I’d surreptitiously mixed in with my Coke certainly helped.
I tried to find out some more information on the wife, dug a little deeper. Nothing much, just a name—Rebecca. Apparently, they were divorced. I dug up the court records; didn’t look pretty.
That was when I noticed the movement outside. Flashing blue lights. Car doors opened and slammed shut. A man with a Glock 17 came into view. He wore a uniform, had one of those badges on his lapels. Another Glock came into sight. That made two—two Blocks—and then a Sig Sauer shotgun joined them. They crouched down, proceeding in standard police formation, one of them moving towards the door, the other one fixing the business end of his Glock in the general direction of my head. No doubt they had people around the back. I could hear movement there.
The other diners couldn’t help but notice. A teenaged girl looked at the drama developing around her and tapped her boyfriend on the shoulder. He was too busy looking at something on his phone. When he finally looked up, his face froze. “Oh, shit.”
Oh, shit, alright. Most of the others in the McDonald’s were pubescent—failed beards and weeping zits. None of them seemed an obvious target for the police, although with drugs around you never know.
I played it nonchalant, cramming the rest of the burger in my mouth, chewed slowly, pushed it around with my tongue, added some of my whiskeyed-up Coke, and swished it around in my mouth. Still hard to swallow.
The Sig dude pushed his way through the door; its barrel turned to me. The two Glock guys came in next, and then another Sig joined them via the back door.
Clearly, they were after me. My fingers skipped along the keyboard. I had to get something on Rebecca Connelly before this all erupted.
And then, it popped up, her email address, or at least what I hoped was her email address amidst all the other find-my-number, know-my-email kind of websites. I opened Gmail. Sig One was shouting something now. I ignored him, hoping he wouldn’t be annoyed into shooting my ass off during the few seconds it took to send a quick email.
Glock One and Glock Two were shouting now, too. They shuffled forward and people hit the deck around me. I typed fast.
Ray Hammer here. I’m an investigator with the local court. I’ve been going over old cases, noticed you should’ve got more for your settlement. Call me.
More yelling.
I added my number, signed off. The email whooshed out of my inbox.
“Put your fucking hands where I can see them or I’ll blow them off!”
Oh, were they talking to me? I closed the lid of my laptop, put my hands down on top of it.
“That’s right, you motherfucker. Stand up now!”
“How am I supposed to stand with my hands on my laptop?”
“Just fucking do as I say!”
Glock One was getting shitty. Sig One moved forward, the picture of calm. His face betrayed no emotion. “Put your hands up in the air, thank you.” His British accent was clipped, polite, controlled. “That’s it. Now step away from the table.”
That’s easier to say than do in a McDonald’s. The chairs are bolted into the ground and stepping back gets you nowhere. I shuffled out awkwardly, sideways, crablike.
“Raymond Hammer?” asked Sig One.
I nodded, said nothing.
“Get on the fucking ground!” said Glock Two. They made a good, intimidating team.
I bent down and put one knee onto the ground, felt the pain shooting up from my ankle. I had to do something about that. Just when? I didn’t have a whole lot of time, and I didn’t even know if my health insurance covered doctor’s visits here. Fingers and metal scraped on my wrists, and I heard the click of handcuffs, felt a knee in my back, felt a jolt down my spine.
“Raymond Hammer?” said Sig One, the guy in charge, still calm, still collected. “We’re arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Andy Duffy.”
Bile rose up in my throat and I saw again Andy’s broken body, smashing down onto the floor of the casino, the camera the only thing identifying him, the strap wrapped around his neck. I felt my burger churning in my stomach, and then it came up and out and over my teeth, along with the whisky-Coke medley I’d washed it down with. Again, I was sober . . . too sober. The two Glocks picked me up, one by each arm, and held me out at arm’s length, disgusted.
“Jesus! He’s covered in vomit.”
“Oh, keep that away from me,” said the other.
“Just put him in the back, boys,” said the Sig One.
Sig Two covered me—as if I could do anything with a gimp leg and post-consumer whiskey dripping down my chest. They walked me out the entrance, pushed me into the back of the van and closed the door. It’s hard to sit with your hands cuffed behind you.
A Perspex panel separated me from the drivers. Sig One, Glock One, they slid into the seats in the front, and closed the door.
“He’s shit out of luck, boss,” said Glock One.
“He’s entitled to the due process,” said the Sig. “Let’s get him down the station. The boss can work it out. You alright back there?”
I didn’t answer. There was something about the divorce case between Rebecca and Michael Connelly that had my brain running in circles. A single note, small, nothing really. So, why had it struck me as odd? Three tiny words: missing persons report.
Chapter 10
Tourist Trap
They pulled in around the back. There were no two ways about it; as soon as you got a couple blocks away from the glitzy tourist traps on the beachfront, Gibraltar was a shithole. The bins overflowed with garbage that stank like someone had thrown prawn heads in.
Sig One hopped out of the car, opened the back door, pulled me down. Glock One held my other arm, and they walked me in, down a long hallway, through the back door and into the station proper. A glimpse of the waiting room: just a water cooler, a desk clerk, and an old hobo sitting on a chair and drinking a bottle of wine. He looked happy enough. I wished I was in his spot.
A door opened and Glock elbowed me heavily into the room. He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me into a chair, undid my handcuffs, and let me stretch my fingers. Sig One sat opposite. “Can I confirm your rights were read to you at the McDonald’s?”
I nodded.
He continued. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself before. I’m Senior Sergeant Liam Hathaway. You know why you’re here?”
I nodded again. There was a chirp in my pocket. My phone. Hathaway’s eyebrows shot up. Shit. They’d forgotten to take my personal effects when I came in here.
Hathaway motioned for me to stand up, put my arms out. He patted me down, took out my phone, the hotel key, a small knife, and my wallet, which contained very little besides Dan Bran
son’s business card, and the photo taken by Andy Duffy just before he died, featuring Sarah and her mother.
Frustration rose within me. I should be out there finding her now, not sitting in here, waiting, stuffing around with a murder investigation that I have nothing to do with, for a crime I didn’t commit, that I have no idea who did, but who I want to bring to justice just as much as the next person...
I thought about all these things, but I kept my mouth shut. I don’t like cops on the best of days, but Hathaway was alright. He seemed pretty in control, calm, collected. He let me sit back down.
“What’s your relationship with Andy Duffy?”
“I don’t have a relationship with him. He’s dead.”
His face said, so, it’s gonna be like that, eh? “Before he was dead. Before he died. What was your relationship?”
“He was my photographer. We were sent here to do a job.”
“And what job would that be?”
“We were looking into Michael Connelly, finding out about the possibility of oil spills in the Strait.”
“You say you were sent. Who sent you?”
“My editor.”
“Your editor have a name?”
“I just call him Ed.”
“So his name’s Ed?
I shrugged. “His name’s Al Ronson. But I call him Ed.”
Hathaway frowned. “Why?”
“You know, it’s how they sign off on those notes at the bottom of your article: ‘Too wordy—Ed.’ ‘Lacks cohesion—Ed.’ So I call him Ed.”
“He must love that,” Hathaway said.
“He hates that. But it’s better than the other name I call him.”
“Which is . . .?”
“Asshole.”
Hathaway grinned.
I pointed to one of the cards that he’d pulled out of my pocket.
“That’s him.”
Hathaway picked it up, studied it.
“You work for a newspaper?”
“I said I was sent here by my editor, didn’t I?”
“I think if we’re talking semantics, you were sent here by an asshole.” A smile hovered at the corners of his lips.
My kind of guy, I thought. Under different circumstances, I’d have bought him a beer.
“So, why were you looking into Connelly?”
“As I said, the oil ships out on the bay. They’re an ecological disaster waiting to happen. Ed wanted me to look into it, said there was something dodgy going on. Seems that Connelly owns a lot of the ships around here. Most of the ones that he owns have had a leak of some sort in the past.”
“Connelly’s a respectable man,” said Hathaway. His face took on the stone features of someone who wants to be believed but isn’t entirely sure of what they’re saying.
“If you want to find Andy Duffy’s killer, it would be worth keeping your options open, maybe have a look at Donnelly yourself.”
“Connelly,” he corrected.
“Donnelly, Connelly, what’s the difference? It’s the same scumbag either way.”
He gave me a sour look. “So, let me get this straight. You and your photographer, Andy Duffy, come here. You investigate Connelly and Duffy ends up dead.”
“That about sums it up.” I nodded. “Yeah.”
He looked me up and down. “So, what happened to your foot?”
“Can I smoke in here?” I asked.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette case, flipped it open, held it out to me. I took one. “Your foot,” he said again.
I made the clicking motion of a lighter in my left hand. He ignored me. I could see how this was going to play. “I fell down the stairs.”
“We searched your motel room. You’re on the ground floor.”
Right. “The stairs at the casino.”
“A little bit like how Andy Duffy fell through the skylight, hey?” he asked.
Something like that, I thought, but said nothing. Hathaway sighed, picked up the photo from the table and leaned back. He examined it closely. Time for a different tack. I tried to suck in some of the tobacco even though the cigarette wasn’t lit. Unsurprisingly, nothing came of it.
“What’s this?” asked Hathaway, leaning forward, holding the photo out for me to see.
I took it in slowly, carefully, and noticed for the first time that in the bottom corner there was a timestamp the same day Andy Duffy had tumbled to his death, before his head had exploded in front of me. Hathaway leaned forward so his face was close to mine. It was still impassive, immovable.
“You know, we searched Duffy’s body carefully. The camera had no SD card in it, but it had your prints all over it.”
“How do you know they’re my prints?”
“We fingerprinted you on the way into the territory, remember? We’re not that stupid.”
I decided it would behoove me not to argue that point. Instead, I said, “Right. And now I turn up here with a photo taken with that camera before the SD card had been removed.’
He nodded soberly.
I contemplated my predicament aloud. “It doesn’t look good.”
“No,” said Hathaway, sliding a sheet of loose-leaf paper over to me. “You might want a lawyer.”
He was right, of course, but I couldn’t afford one. My year of law school might help me out, though. “I don’t need one.”
“Fine by me,” he said, “but I expect a full confession on that sheet within the hour.”
I picked up the pen, put one hand to my head as if I was thinking, considering, deliberating, and I put the tip of the pen to the paper. I motioned again for a lighter. Hathaway reached forward, lit the cigarette. I sucked in a plume of smoke and let it out in his face. “Thanks.”
I started writing.
“Did Duffy give you all those bruises?” he asked. “Did he fight back?”
I just shook my head, sucked in another puff of smoke and let it out. Three seconds later, I turned the paper around to him, pushed it across the desk. It read: I’ve never seen that photo before. Period.
Hathaway clenched his jaw. His face remained impassive otherwise. I didn’t see his fist coming, but I felt it as I was knocked off my chair.
Clearly we wouldn’t be sharing a beer, then.
Chapter 11
Rendezvous
When Hathaway finally let me out, my opinion of him had changed substantially. He was not calm, collected or in control. He was a megalomaniac, and I had the bruises to prove it, all nicely layered on top of the ones John had given me. I felt all of the hurt from yesterday coming back, all of the pain in my joints.
I decided to take a cab down to the La Roca marina. That’s where Rebecca Connelly had emailed me she’d be. I didn’t know what was in store for me there, but maybe I’d get to the bottom of something. Maybe I’d get to the bottom of Connelly and whatever the hell all this was about.
I had an argument with the kiosk attendants, two losers in white shirts and burgundy waistcoats with shitty dispositions. The entrance fee, they tried to explain, was much, much higher than I was given to understand, based on what was on the board outside. “That’s not the price,” I argued.
They said that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t from around here, so I didn’t matter. I grudgingly handed over a handful of crumpled-up bills, giving them the stink-eye as I did so. I didn’t have much money left. Gemma Jones had disappeared. The 200 pounds a day wasn’t coming into my account nor my wallet, and my strict whiskey regime was getting gradually heavier on my pocket.
I took another sip from my flask, which had been all but emptied at the police station—more because the bastards enjoyed doing it than for any security protocol I could discern. There was precious little left; just a few drops. They tickled the back of my throat.
From my vantage point at the top of the wooden steps leading down to the rows of sparkling white, neatly moored boats, I scanned the area near the water’s edge, looked around for a woman with a large-brimmed, floppy, black hat. That’s what she
said she’d be wearing in her email. I was early. A few fishermen sat languidly along the pier, fishing line in the water, gazing off into the mid-distance while they waited for a tug on the line.
It was a warm Mediterranean day and pacing around in this heat wasn’t going to do me any good. I decided to take a seat, dangling my legs over the edge. I looked down into the depths. Fish swam below me. I pondered my next move. Hathaway had made it clear that I shouldn’t leave, that I’d be watched, that I’d be tailed every second, and that if I tried to get off the Rock, if I tried to leave Gibraltar, I’d be back in a cell so fast it would make me seasick.
I didn’t like the sound of that . . . But on the other hand, I didn’t like the sound of getting caught up with Dan Branson again. I needed to have some info for him, make some progress on this and, fuck, I’d read enough crime novels to know what happens to little kids who got abducted and I didn’t want Sarah Jones’s body to be on my conscience. The fact that a toe had already been sent was scary enough. It meant the time was limited.
The man next to me tossed some old bait into the deep azure water. Fish bubbled up to the surface, their mini feeding frenzy turning it into foam, and then disappeared back below. He threw some more. Same thing happened. I looked into the depths and then wondered what the fuck I was doing here. A hand tapped me on the back of the shoulder.
“Are you Mr. Hammer?”
I turned around and looked up into the face of a woman who I pegged to probably be in her fifties. She’d obviously attempted to cover up her flyaway grays with a home color kit, but she’d done a shitty job of it. Her eyes were a little crazy around the edges, and there was a tremor of fear in the way she’d touched me, as if she was worried I’d take a swing at her. I struggled to my feet, busted ankle protesting all the way. “Mrs. Connelly.”
She squinted at me, searchingly. “I don’t go by that name anymore,” she said abruptly, as if I should have known better. “Rebecca Lancaster.”
The Spill: The Beach Never Looked So Deadly (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 1) Page 5
