Fifth Victim

by Zoe Sharp

  Torquil cocked an eyebrow towards Dina. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Wanna go find a nightclub or something?’

  Dina, in the process of shifting forwards in her seat to rise, hesitated, glancing at me as if for advice. I kept my face professionally blank, even though I was willing her to make the right response.

  ‘I … um, I guess I’m pretty tired, so—’

  ‘No problem-o,’ Torquil said with insulting speed. He was still sprawled in his seat, making no moves to help her out. ‘I’ll call you,’ he added with a carelessness that meant the opposite.

  Dina flushed, eyes rigidly focused on him so she wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s embarrassed stares. He might show flashes of charm, but underneath Torquil was still a spoilt brat, I decided.

  ‘Fine,’ Dina snapped, and faced his father with some small measure of bravado. ‘Goodnight, Mr Eisenberg. Thanks so much for the ride.’

  Torquil coloured up himself at that, opened his mouth and shut it again just as fast, scowling. I ducked out of the limo and slammed the door after Dina before I allowed the smile to form on my face.

  ‘Nicely done,’ I murmured as we climbed the front steps behind her mother and Parker.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said stiffly.

  I let it go, but it was interesting that she had accurately pinpointed one of Torquil’s Achilles’ heels – that he was beholden to his father for everything, even down to transport for the evening.

  Needless to say, Torquil had not called the following day, nor the day after that, and Dina’s reaction was a difficult one to fathom out. At first, I thought it was her pride that had been hurt, but there seemed to be more to it. I couldn’t believe she’d fallen for him, but being dropped had clearly sent her into the doldrums more than I would have expected.

  And now, walking the horses side by side along the damp sand, there was still a trace of mournfulness about her.

  ‘He’s not worth it, Dina,’ I said quietly.

  For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me. Her eyes were fixed on a squadron of brown pelicans cruising the incoming wave crests in single file, ungainly birds on the ground who achieved an unexpected agile beauty as soon as they took to the air.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘O … K,’ I said slowly, twitching the reins as Geronimo ducked his head to snort at a wading bird who’d almost nipped between his front feet. ‘So, why have you spent the last couple of days looking like you’ve lost a million quid and found tuppence?’

  She twisted in her saddle. ‘Excuse me?’

  I sighed. ‘Why the long face?’

  She shrugged, turning away again, and when she spoke her voice had a brittle quality. ‘And how, exactly, is that relevant to your job?’

  That sent my eyebrows rising silently. It was the first time she’d played the ‘lowly employee’ card with me, although it tended to come with the territory on this kind of job. Back during the brief spell when I’d been assigned to the Dempsey family, I remembered suddenly, the young Amanda had reminded me on a regular basis that she considered me barely at a level with the gardeners. Still, at least she’d been consistent about it.

  ‘Look, Dina—’

  ‘Let it go, Charlie,’ she snapped, her tension making Cerdo break into an uneasy sidle. ‘For God’s sake! Do I have to fire you?’

  It would do me no good, I reasoned, to point out that it was actually her mother who had that privilege. Instead, I waited until she’d got the white horse to settle, and pushed Geronimo into a longer stride to catch up.

  ‘We think Torquil Eisenberg is in on the kidnaps,’ I said then, conversational.

  Cerdo bounced again, snatching at the bridle as he reacted to the slight contraction of her hands. It was as though Dina was sitting on a giant lie detector. Perhaps she realised that, because the abrupt way she grabbed at his mouth made him try to spring forward in response, and gave her an excuse to fuss for maybe half a minute persuading him to calm down to a walk again. Then she looked back at me.

  ‘How do you know?’

  It took me a moment to work out what was wrong about that – not just the question, but the way she asked it.

  For a start, where was the instant denial? Where was the protestation that surely nobody she knew could possibly have been responsible for any of it, and especially not chopping off a victim’s finger – albeit a largely redundant one? Where was the instinctive laughter, scorn even?

  And, more than that, the emphasis was wrong. If she’d stressed the ‘you’ part, it would have seemed more dismissive, but she didn’t. If anything, the taut little sentence was weighted towards the ‘how’. So instead of expressing doubt at my deductive powers, it became somehow almost an admission of her own guilt.

  If she’d been thinking coolly, logically, she would have asked a rake of questions I had no answers to. We had no proof other than an overheard phone call, a suspicion, a gut instinct.

  Instead, more than anything she sounded scared. As scared as she had done the day I’d taken her to see Sean and she’d refused to run away from danger. What did she have to prove?

  ‘Dina—’

  ‘Hey, there!’

  The voice came from up in the dunes to our right. I wheeled Geronimo round to put him between Dina’s horse and the shout, grateful for his quick responses.

  Dina leant past me for a better view, shading her eyes with her hand. She stared at the figure who was now approaching in long sliding steps through the ankle-deep sand, and her agitation communicated itself clearly to Cerdo who began to stamp and fidget.

  ‘Tor?’ Dina’s own voice was incredulous. ‘But … what are you doing here?’

  Torquil made a show of cupping a hand behind his ear until he was less than five metres away. Then he spread his hands wide and grinned at us both.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘C’mon, you’re acting like you’re surprised to see me, babe.’

  I assumed that question was aimed at Dina. She flushed as if he’d made an accusation.

  ‘I am,’ she said blankly. ‘What are you doing here, Tor?’

  ‘You asked me to come,’ he said, the big smile diminishing just a notch as the first trace of annoyance began to creep in. He checked both our faces, as if this was a practical joke at his expense that was being carried on just a little too far. But still he clung to the hope that, sooner or later, one of us would be unable to hold back the laughter and confess. All he saw was confusion. ‘You sent me an email … didn’t you?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t!’

  I checked up and down the beach quickly in both directions. There were the usual joggers and power-walkers carving a path along the harder packed sand just above the waterline, a couple of quad bikers in the distance, the sound of more in the dunes, but it wasn’t the kind of beach where you got crowds. It all looked quiet, normal.

  Nevertheless, something at the back of my scalp began to prickle.

  ‘What did it say, this supposed email?’ I asked.

  Torquil glanced at me with a knowing smile just flicking at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Oh, OK, I get it,’ he said. He sighed, as if being forced to go through the details when it was obvious that we all knew them. ‘The message said to meet Dina – here, this morning,’ he said, adding with a leer, ‘That she’d come alone and so should I.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Whaddya mean, why?’ He gave a splutter of full laughter that died when he realised that he was the only one laughing. His face twitched. ‘She knows what it said.’

  I glanced at Dina, found her white-faced. She met my eyes, mutely pleading.

  I don’t! I didn’t!

  I believed her. And from over the dunes I heard the sound of another engine approaching. Bigger than the higher-pitched quads that had masked it to this point, the note rising and falling as it ploughed across the soft ground.

  ‘Torquil,’ I said, aware that my own anxiety was making even the placid Geronimo start to skitter a little u
nderneath me, ‘where are your guys?’

  ‘My what?’

  I wanted to shake him. ‘Your bodyguards,’ I said, louder now. ‘Where are they?’

  He didn’t like my tone. It made him stubborn about replying, which wasted valuable time. ‘I told them to stay with the car,’ he said at last, grudging, jerking his head back the way he’d come.

  ‘Call them in.’

  ‘Why?’

  It was a good question, one I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to answer. Every instinct told me this set-up stank, and, in that case, I wanted witnesses. If Torquil’s bodyguards were in on whatever games he was playing, he wouldn’t have needed to ditch them before that phone call at the country club, and he wouldn’t have come alone now. They worked for his father, I recalled. Did that make a difference?

  ‘Charlie, what’s going on?’ If Dina was sounding worried before, it had stepped up a level.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ I said, eyes on the dunes, straining to get a bearing on direction. The acoustics of the sand made it hard to judge exactly where the vehicle was going to pop out. ‘Just be ready.’

  ‘But, why?’ she demanded, the timbre of her voice high and cracked. ‘Charlie, talk to me! What’s happening?’

  But at that moment an old Jeep Wrangler, its red body streaked with dust, came bowling over the top of the nearest dune and hurtled down the beach towards the three of us, kicking up a plume of sand and spray.

  I yanked Geronimo in a tight circle, crowding Dina and Cerdo into the same urgent manoeuvre. I don’t know what made me flick my eyes towards Torquil as I did so. And I don’t know what I was expecting to see there in return. Reproach, regret, resentment – who knows? Maybe anger, like last time, or even some sense of growing alarm.

  But what I wasn’t expecting was a gleeful, wanton excitement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Go! GO!’ I yelled at Dina, but Cerdo was way ahead of her. The white horse catapulted forwards with such violence that she was left scrabbling to stay with him. The two animals stretched into a full gallop, their eager rivalry compounded by the fact we were heading for home.

  I kept Geronimo as close alongside as I could, holding back slightly into the line of fire as the red Jeep swerved down onto the flat sand behind us.

  And in my head, the calculations swirled and formed like ice. A fit horse can gallop flat out at twenty-five to thirty miles an hour for maybe a mile before it’s blown – two miles at the most. It was a shame Cerdo wasn’t a Quarter Horse, too, because that particular breed has been clocked at closer to fifty-five over its namesake distance.

  An off-road vehicle, on the other hand, can keep going until it runs out of fuel in the tank. The beach was firm, the ridged sand even enough to make fifty or sixty miles an hour feasible if the occupants didn’t mind losing a few fillings in the process.

  There was no escaping the fact we were not going to be able to run from this one. I was wearing the SIG on my right hip. This time, regardless of whether the horses were gun-shy or not, I knew I might have to use it.

  As I urged Geronimo on, I checked back over my shoulder, fully expecting to see the Jeep gaining on us with every stride. To my intense surprise, it did not even seem to be giving chase. I yelled to Dina and sat up abruptly, managing to slow Geronimo’s headlong flight. Fortunately, the initial burst of speed had taken enough out of him for the old Quarter Horse to be glad of the excuse to drop back to a shambling trot, head low. Dina went for the easy way of stopping, which was simply to steer Cerdo into the sea and let the water act as a drogue chute.

  And without the jostling vibration, I could see the Jeep had never come after us at all. It had bounced down onto the sand and carved a sweeping turn around Torquil. Just for a moment, I thought it must be some friend of his, and that would explain his reaction when the Jeep had first appeared.

  But the Jeep continued to circle, tightening in until it was literally kicking sand into the boy’s face. Still he stood his ground, hand up to shield his eyes, not realising that the Jeep had neatly cut off his escape route back towards the car where his bodyguards waited, out of sight and earshot, oblivious.

  ‘Run,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Run, dammit.’

  But Torquil didn’t run, didn’t move at all until the Jeep swerved towards him suddenly, as though intending to mow him down. Only then did he take a couple of fast steps back, stumbled and went sprawling. The Jeep slewed to a halt just ahead of him.

  As I pulled up, I saw a dark-clad figure jump out, pointing something at Torquil with his arm outstretched. I saw the boy paddle backwards, panic in every line of him now as he tried to scrabble away on all fours. The man – the outline was definitely male – stood his ground easily. He maybe even took a moment so the full import of what was about to happen to his victim really hit home.

  Then the weapon in his hand jerked and Torquil lurched backwards into the sand, his body convulsing.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Dina cried, urging Cerdo back out of the surf, fighting for control. ‘They shot him! Torquil’s shot.’

  I barged Geronimo in front of her when she would have gone barrelling back towards the Jeep, blocking her path.

  ‘It’s a Taser,’ I said, earning a furious look. I’d been hit with them enough to know.

  ‘So what?’ She pulled at her reins, trying to disentangle the two horses, and only succeeded in flustering the pair of them. I grabbed Cerdo’s bridle and held on for grim death.

  A hundred metres away, the driver of the Jeep had jumped out and helped his passenger load a largely insensible Torquil into the back of the vehicle. They took an end each and more or less threw him in, the way you’d toss a long heavy bag over the edge of a cliff. I heard the thump of his body landing, even from there. The two men jumped back into the front.

  ‘Charlie, for God’s sake, let go,’ Dina wailed, close to tears now. ‘Do something!’

  ‘Leave it, Dina!’ I snapped and, more quietly as the Jeep picked up speed and revved out of sight into the dunes, ‘Don’t you understand? There’s nothing I can do.’

  But there was one thing – the only thing. I checked my watch out of habit. It was 09.23. I grabbed my cellphone out of my pocket, started to punch in the emergency number.

  ‘Don’t!’ If anything, Dina’s voice was more stricken than before.

  ‘What? Dina, I have to call this in, right now.’

  ‘No,’ she said, pale, her lips bloodless as a corpse, eyes huge. ‘Please. If it’s the same people … you’re the one who doesn’t understand. You can’t go to the police.’

  I eyed her for a moment in exasperation, then remembered the conversation I’d had with Manda at Torquil’s birthday party. How she’d told me they’d threatened to kill her, slowly and painfully, if the authorities were called in. And Benedict, too. Despite the threats to their son, Benedict’s parents had hesitated, and they’d mutilated him. I snapped my phone shut and shoved it back in my jacket.

  ‘Let’s go find his protection team,’ I said shortly. ‘After that, it’s up to them who they call.’

  I didn’t wait for her to answer, just nudged Geronimo forwards, heading for the spot where Torquil had been abducted. The horse seemed reluctant to approach, acting spooked as if he could sense that something bad had happened. Or maybe he just didn’t like the whiff of exhaust smoke that still hung in the air.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dina asked suddenly from behind me, pointing into the churned-up sand. I followed her arm and spotted something gleaming darkly. Jumping down, I discovered Torquil’s expensive PDA. It must have dropped out of his pocket when he fell. So much for the thought that Torquil might be able to call for help.

  I picked it up automatically, shoved it in my pocket, and climbed back into the saddle.

  The two of us rode up into the dunes until we spotted Torquil’s big gold Bentley, with his two bodyguards sitting inside. They got out as soon as they saw us, alerted by something that all was not well with their absen
t principal. I saw a familiar dread in the way they carried themselves.

  The shit, I reasoned, was just about to hit the fan in a very big way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘As soon as I’d informed Eisenberg’s team of the situation, I got Dina out of there,’ I said.

  Parker nodded. ‘Good work, Charlie.’ He paused. ‘How’s she taking it?’

  ‘Badly,’ I said flatly. ‘I think she blames me for not stepping in and saving him.’

  He put his hand on my arm, gave it a quick squeeze. ‘You did your job and protected your principal without distraction,’ he said. ‘Nobody can argue with that.’

  ‘I know.’ I shrugged, gave him a weary smile. ‘It’s not much compensation somehow.’

  We were back at the Willners’ house, which was more or less on a security lockdown. Dina had held it together until we’d got the horses back into the stable yard below the house, then had just about collapsed, weeping. The cynical part of me wondered if her fit of the vapours was a convenient way of avoiding the questions she must have known I was about to ask.

  She was currently lying down in her room with the blinds drawn, being tended by her mother and their family doctor, with another of Parker’s guys, Joe McGregor, on guard outside her door.

  Parker and I stood in the living area, staring out at the relentless ocean, muted by the glass. I was still in my riding clothes and smelt distinctly of sweaty horse. Parker contrasted sharply in a dark business suit and sober tie. It was half past noon. Almost exactly three hours since Torquil’s abduction.

  ‘What the hell is going on with this kid, Charlie?’ he murmured, eyes narrowed.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ I said. ‘The other night, at the country club, I would have sworn Torquil was in on the attempt made to grab Dina, but in that case, today’s developments don’t make any sense. If he’s involved, why have himself kidnapped?’