Fifth Victim tcfs-9

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘I know who you are, and where you live, Ross,’ I promised in a husky murmur. ‘You try to screw me, and it won’t just be your car that gets crushed. I will find you, and I will hurt you in ways you cannot imagine. Just remember that I keep my promises, good and bad. Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he gabbled. ‘I hear you, man.’

  ‘One last thing, Ross,’ I said. ‘Don’t call me “man”, OK?’

  I walked out of the bar, across the dirty sidewalk, and popped the locks on the Navigator. Before I pulled out into traffic, I glanced back, expecting to see Ross still sitting on his stool. The window of the little bar was empty.

  I checked the street, but it looked like Ross had taken the back way out. A bar like that, in an area like this, it must have been a pretty well-worn route. I was aware of another twinge of guilt that I’d let him go, and hoped to hell that his rapid disappearance now was not an indicator of things to come.

  My cellphone started to buzz in my pocket. I fished it out, half expecting it might be Ross, but Parker’s number came up.

  ‘Hi, boss,’ I said. ‘That’s good timing. I’ve just had a long chat with one of the guys who tried for Dina, and I—’

  ‘Charlie.’ Parker’s voice cut raw through my explanation.

  ‘What?’ I demanded, drenched with a sudden cold fear. ‘What’s happened? Is it Sean?’

  ‘No,’ Parker said. I heard him take a breath. ‘It’s Dina. She’s been snatched.’

  ‘We got that she’d called the whole thing off …’

  Lying bastard!

  ‘No … no,’ I muttered. ‘I left McGregor looking after her. He should … What the fuck happened?’

  ‘He did his best, Charlie. They shot him.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  When Parker walked into Caroline Willner’s private sitting room at 1900 hours that evening, Dina had been gone nine hours with no word from the kidnappers. I took one look at his face and feared the worst.

  ‘How’s Joe?’ I demanded, not waiting for the social niceties. There were too many echoes of Sean with this one, too many shards. Inside, I bled deep from every one of them.

  ‘Out of surgery,’ Parker said, passing me a tired smile. ‘If he’s lucky, he’ll make it.’ His eyes flicked to Caroline Willner’s white face, wary of saying anything that might touch a nerve. ‘They obviously learnt from the attack on you, Charlie,’ he added quietly. ‘They fired low enough to go under a vest, even if he’d been wearing one. Pelvis.’

  Nothing else, short of a head shot, would put a man down faster. So many vital organs were cradled in the pelvis that a gunshot injury there was bound to do critical, immobilising damage. And, unlike the head, the pelvis was often the most static part of an otherwise fast-moving target. I couldn’t see McGregor, a veteran of the Iraqi conflict, making things easy for them.

  But he was alive – for the moment. That was something at least.

  I closed my eyes briefly, unwilling to show more relief than that. Parker nodded, understanding, and moved across to greet Caroline Willner. She had not reacted to his arrival, and remained sitting rigidly upright in her chair, eyes fixed on a point in the distance as if willing herself to hold together. Now, she seemed to notice him for the first time and allowed him limply to take her hand.

  ‘Mrs Willner, I’m very sorry,’ he said gravely. ‘We will get your daughter back for you.’

  ‘I believe you will try your hardest, Mr Armstrong,’ she said stiffly. It was not exactly a glowing declaration of confidence, and by the way Parker’s face turned instantly neutral, he recognised that fact.

  ‘Do we know how this happened?’

  He glanced across, not so much at me, but at Erik Landers, hovering discreetly across the far side of the room. Landers lived in north Brooklyn and had been first on scene after Dina’s abduction. He’d stayed at Caroline Willner’s side ever since. When I arrived, shortly afterwards, I’d been the one who’d talked to the staff and watched the CCTV footage, and pieced together what had taken place.

  I’d been through it over and over, looking for the exact point when the day turned from clear to dark. And each time, I fought a sick dread that sat high under my ribcage.

  What struck me most was the same sense of ruthless purpose that had characterised the ambush on me. I’d watched Dina sneak out onto the driveway, looking behind her as she came, furtive, eager. I’d seen the van pull up with its licence plate just beyond the reach of the cameras. Dina’s stride had faltered as she’d neared it and realised the unexpected danger. She’d begun to retreat – faster when two masked figures leapt from the van and came for her. One grabbed her immediately. The other stayed back, more warily. From the way he carried himself, I would guess he had to be the guy from the passenger seat of the Dodge.

  The one I’d winged. The one I now suspected might be Lennon.

  There was no audio on the house CCTV, but even without it I heard Dina start to scream. McGregor appeared so quickly from the direction of the house that I believed he’d already noticed her attempt at stealthy departure. He’d barely entered the picture when the man holding Dina yanked out a silvered semi-automatic and fired, three shots, as fast as the action would cycle.

  McGregor went down on the second. It hit low in his body and his instinct was to clamp both hands to the wound. He’d managed to draw his own weapon, but had no clear shot. It dropped unfired onto the gravel as he collapsed, writhing.

  With every repeat viewing, I willed him to move just that little bit faster, or the bad guy a little bit slower. The outcome was always the same.

  But it had been good to have a purpose, because it stopped me thinking too hard about the fact that while Ross might not have taken part in this, I’d still had one of Dina’s erstwhile kidnappers in my hands, and had let him go. Now, I prayed it would not turn out to be one of the worst mistakes I’d ever made.

  ‘How did they lure her out of the house?’ Parker asked.

  ‘She got a text, apparently from Orlando, saying she was at the riding club when Raleigh arrived back with the horses,’ I said. ‘According to the message, Cerdo slipped coming out of the trailer and was injured, and she should come at once,’ I said. Nothing would be more guaranteed to make Dina throw caution to the winds.

  ‘You’ve checked, of course.’ It was a comment rather than a question.

  I nodded anyway. ‘Raleigh says he hasn’t seen Orlando since the last time I was there with Dina, and the horses are fine.’

  ‘So, either Orlando’s complicit,’ Parker murmured, ‘or this was definitely a pro job.’

  ‘We know that whoever this guy Lennon’s hooked up with, he’s an expert when it comes to hacking technology – Dina’s email, the traffic light system, and Gleason’s comms network. I shouldn’t imagine Orlando’s cellphone would cause him much trouble.’

  Parker raised his eyebrow, just a fraction. I’d already briefed him fully over the phone on my conversation with Ross, and the agreement we’d reached. He agreed, even with the benefit of hindsight, that handing the college kid over to the authorities would probably have got us nowhere – certainly not as far as recovering Dina was concerned. For better or worse, we had to trust him to deliver his end of the deal and lead us to his former friend. It was a calculated risk. I just hoped my calculations weren’t way off.

  ‘What will happen now?’ It was Caroline Willner who spoke, her voice hoarse with strain.

  Parker turned back to her. ‘We wait, ma’am,’ he said. ‘No doubt they will be in contact with their demands. Until then, we just have to wait.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘I would very much like for you to negotiate for my daughter’s release,’ she said, eyes sliding away from his. ‘I regret that, if they ask for a substantial amount, I … may not have the money to pay.’

  ‘You mentioned yesterday that you had kidnap insurance,’ I said. ‘What about that?’

  Her face had hardened into a brittle mask, refusing to allow her fear and pain to break
surface. ‘If I make a claim, and then it comes out – as it is bound to – that my daughter and her … friends were in any way responsible for their own predicament, I would likely face prosecution for fraud,’ she said, selecting her words with care. ‘Besides, Brandon Eisenberg was prepared to pay in full for his son’s life, and much good it did him.’

  I heard the bitter thread, felt compelled to point out gently, ‘I know Dina told them she had changed her mind. Whatever’s happened to her now, it’s not of her choosing.’

  Caroline Willner nodded, very slightly, grateful. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I pray that we both get the chance to ask forgiveness.’

  We waited for the ransom demand most of the night.

  Parker had connected a recorder to the house phone. As soon as the line rang out, caller ID was displayed on the screen of his laptop, allowing Caroline Willner to take the call if she recognised the number, or let Parker handle it.

  There were a lot of rubberneckers, of one form or another. People who thought they might have heard a rumour and wanted to check it out. Caroline Willner rebuffed them all equally, telling them Dina had caught a chill and was resting in her room. They obviously came from a stratum of society where such a minor ailment was a viable excuse for bed rest. Either way, it seemed to satisfy them. If I hadn’t been able to see the sorrow in her face as she spoke, I would have believed her, too.

  And when Manda called, just before midnight, pushing to speak with Dina, Caroline Willner dismissed the girl’s apparent concerns and told her, in a slightly obstreperous tone, that Dina was simply not available to come to the phone.

  The kidnappers finally called a little after 6.00 a.m., no doubt aware of our sleepless night. Dina was twenty hours gone. Even though it wore the same mechanical disguise, I knew the voice belonged to the same man I’d spoken to, yesterday morning at the Eisenberg’s house.

  And I knew, without a single shred of physical evidence to back it up, that this was also the same man who’d shot me.

  Parker saw the unrecognised number and took the call. Caroline Willner had gone to lie down and rest in her own room, so he put it on speaker. The kidnapper did not seem surprised to find him on the other end of the line.

  ‘You want Dina back alive,’ the voice said flatly, ‘this time it’s going to cost you ten million dollars.’

  ‘Ten million?’ Parker allowed his incredulity to come through. He would have shown surprise regardless of the amount asked for, as a stalling technique. But this time there was little acting required. He paused, then pointed out calmly, ‘That’s double what you asked for Torquil Eisenberg.’

  ‘Yeah, and if his old man hadn’t tried to screw us over, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, but he did. Get over it.’

  Parker’s eyes narrowed and his voice turned soft and deadly. ‘How, exactly, did Eisenberg screw you over?’

  ‘That worthless pile of coloured glass. How long did you think it would take us to spot you’d given us a replica of the Rainbow instead of the real thing?’

  I sucked in a quiet breath, remembered Nicola Eisenberg’s certainty that her husband might not have her son’s best interests at heart. She had collapsed after the failed ransom drop, I recalled. Did she know what he’d tried to pull?

  ‘That’s a huge amount of money. The kind that can’t be raised overnight,’ Parker said. ‘Mrs Willner is not rich. She doesn’t have the same sway with banks—’

  ‘Not rich?’ the voice cut in, distortion or disgust making it screech. ‘She lives in that fucking great palace on the beach, with servants and horses and all the rest of that privileged shit, and you try to tell me she’s not rich?’

  ‘Having assets is not the same thing as having available cash,’ Parker said, and his tone stayed easy even as his eyes burnt cold. ‘Not the kind of available cash you’re talking about.’

  ‘Dina was going out with Eisenberg’s kid, so tap up his father. He’s rich enough and he owes us, big time. Either way, you got a day and a half to put it all together. We’ll call you 4.00 p.m. the day after tomorrow with when and where to make the drop. No bargaining. No second chances. After that, the old lady starts getting her daughter back a piece at a time, you hear me? Dina’s a good-looking girl. Would be a shame if anything happened to that pretty face, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘How do we know you’ll keep your word?’ This time.

  ‘You don’t.’ Another short, rough laugh. ‘Guess we’ll just have to trust to luck that nobody’s going to be stupid enough to try screwing anybody else this time.’

  The connection severed and the line went dead. An electrified silence remained for several seconds afterwards. Parker reached out and killed the speaker slowly, as if his limbs suddenly weighed very heavy.

  ‘I don’t trust him as far as I could spit him, never mind throw him,’ I said bluntly. ‘Even if it’s true about the necklace being a fake, we know Torquil was dead long before they could have discovered that fact.’

  ‘We could play along and set a counter-ambush,’ Landers suggested. ‘Grab him before he gets to the ransom drop – like they pulled with Charlie last time.’

  ‘What then?’ Parker asked. ‘Subject him to extraordinary rendition until he talks? If he puts Dina in the ground someplace before he arranges to collect the ransom, he’ll know time will not be on our side. She could easily die before we get her location from him.’

  ‘And she’s claustrophobic,’ I said, suddenly recalling her admission. ‘She freaked out when she found out what had been done to Torquil.’

  Parker paused, frowning. ‘Do the kidnappers know that?’

  ‘I don’t see why not – they seem to know everything else.’ I stood, suddenly restless. ‘Look, I can’t just sit here and wait for this guy to torment us. I’m going to go and pay a visit on the previous “victims” – see what I can shake loose.’

  ‘You rattle the wrong cages, and you may provoke the kidnappers into acting prematurely,’ Parker pointed out.

  But I was already shrugging into my jacket. ‘Whereas they’ve behaved so impeccably up ’til now.’ I favoured him with a cynical smile. ‘If I can find out which of them hired Lennon, it may give us another line on finding her before he buries her.’

  I snatched up the keys to the Navigator and headed for the hallway, only to find Parker on my heels. He touched my arm just before I reached the front door.

  ‘Charlie, wait. I’ll come with you.’ There was something close to anguish in his voice that was enough to stop me, turn me back towards him.

  ‘You’re needed here, Parker,’ I said, almost gently. ‘What if they call again?’

  He sighed. ‘Take Landers then. Don’t go alone.’

  ‘No offence, but Erik looks too threatening. I’m trying to coax them into talking rather than scare them.’ Not true, but it sounded halfway convincing at least. ‘I really think I’ll get more out of them if I’m on my own.’ That much was true. ‘And you need him here to look after Mrs Willner.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, and I realised he was only too aware that it was Landers’ sense of fair play I was trying to avoid, for what I might need to do. ‘Sean once told me your courage was the thing that terrified him most – that you never flinch, never hesitate,’ he said then, with a smile as twisted as my own. ‘Now I think I see what he meant.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss … Fox, did you say your name was?’ Orlando’s father said with the offhand snub perfected by the ultra-rich towards people who are clearly not their social equal. ‘But as our housekeeper, Jasna, explained to you, I’m afraid our daughter is not here at present. And as for your … suggestion that you will go to the police, I’ve already spoken to their chief today – he’s a friend of the family – regarding the Eisenbergs’ tragic loss. So, you see, I really can’t help you.’

  For ‘can’t’, I read ‘won’t’. In big letters.

  Orlando’s family didn’t so much have a house as an estate. A sprawling
place with manicured lawns and clumps of trees that were too artistically grouped to possibly be natural.

  The house was weathered red-brick, with gothic pointed arches, turrets, and an intricate series of what looked like blocked-up windows decorating the front facade. I dredged my distant education and recalled it was called something like ‘blind arcading’. The whole place was traditional and imposing, and must have cost more in window cleaning and gardening bills than I earned in a year.

  I got my first glimpse of all this from the wrought iron gateway at the end of a long drive when I arrived. I pressed the intercom and waited, staring up into the lens of the CCTV camera, which was supposed to be hidden in the beak of a stone griffin.

  It was just after eight in the morning. Two hours since the kidnappers’ call. Twenty-two since Dina had been taken.

  When the intercom buzzed, I explained I was a friend of Dina’s, here to see Orlando. There was a long pause, then a woman’s voice said, ‘She not here. She go away.’

  ‘In that case, I’d like to speak to her parents.’

  ‘They busy. You go now.’ The accent was eastern European of some description, although it was difficult to be more accurate through the distortion of the tinny speaker. I was suddenly reminded of the kidnapper’s mechanical voice.

  ‘No, I not go now,’ I said with pleasant precision. ‘Tell them Dina has been kidnapped, and I need to speak with them before I go to the police, OK? Police, cops, FBI – they’ll all be down here, asking questions. You understand me?’

  There was a long pause. So long, in fact, that I feared the woman had simply gone away herself and left me to stew with my veiled threats. But a minute or so later the gates began to swing open and I nosed the Navigator through.

  There was a motor court around the side of the house, where there was undoubtedly also a tradesman’s entrance. I parked at a jaunty angle on the stone setts outside the front door, just for badness.