by Mari Hannah
She was wrong.
As the door closed behind Chavez, Kate leaned forward in her seat, clasping her hands together. For a moment, she stared at the girl. Saying nothing was often more effective than words. When the time was right, she asked, ‘Is Neena Gil your real name?’
Caught off guard, Neena’s brow creased. ‘Of course.’
‘So it’s not Maria Benitez then?’
‘Why should you think that?’
‘Ah, I’m beginning to understand.’ Kate paused for effect, chuckled to herself. ‘Maria is Brian’s real love, his soul mate. You’re his bit of fun, someone he can use and discard at will, like the others. You did know there were others? Women who’ve helped him construct a false identity in this country, ones who’ve put themselves and their careers on the line for him.’ Kate took in a breath and let it out in a long, loud, frustrated sigh. ‘Men are bastards, aren’t they?’
Neena avoided eye contact.
Kate could see she’d made an impact. The girl was mulling over her words. Hurting too. Time to put her under pressure. Time to ram home the truth. Time for Kate to show her that she wasn’t talking bollocks.
‘There’s no disgrace, Neena. You’re not the first woman to fall for a man like him. He made fools of all his women, one of whom is a respected doctor. She not only faked his death certificate, the silly bitch supplied him with the drugs to keep him alive. I think that makes her more valuable to him than you, no?’
There it was. A flash of recognition, so brief that Kate might’ve missed it. Neena knew about the doctor. Or if not, she knew of Brian’s need for insulin. She was fast realizing she had nowhere to go. She was weeping.
Time to turn the screw.
‘Neena, this doctor will not only be struck off, she’ll go to prison. Are you going to follow her? Brian won’t give a shit what happens to you, but I do. Believe me, I’ve met many men like him. Here, dry your eyes.’ Kate handed her a tissue. ‘That’s better. If you know where he is, you need to tell me now. I’ll be straight with you: if you don’t help us, the Comisario plans to put you before a court of law. He’s not going to be happy until your reputation is in shreds.’
‘He’s in La Manga,’ she said, her voice hardly audible.
‘I don’t believe you. I just came from there.’
‘He is! He stayed with me last night. He went this morning.’
Kate took a moment.
Neena might have lied to her before, but what she was now saying made sense when Kate put herself in Brian’s shoes. He was clever. He thrived on risk. With a manhunt underway, there was no better place for him to hide than somewhere he didn’t think the police would consider looking, somewhere they had already looked, the very hotel O’Kane daren’t visit. She pictured him there, practising his putting and drinking Pimms in the sunshine. He’d get a fright when Hank walked in.
The door opened.
Chavez entered, his face ashen.
‘There’s been a shooting,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. The news is very bad . . .’
68
Kate’s breathing wasn’t what it should be. It came in short, sharp bursts. She was hyperventilating, trying to push the unimaginable out of her mind as she rushed from the room. This was a nightmare. It had to be.
Details were sketchy. In the club’s lobby, Chavez told her what little he knew, then just stood there gawping at her. It seemed to take him for ever to pull out his phone and call the hospital in Cartagena. As he asked to be put through to someone in authority, Kate watched his mouth move but heard no sound above that of her own heartbeat. Her stomach heaved. She feared she might pass out. Hank was everything to her. She thought of his family, Julie and Ryan, at home in the UK, unaware he’d been injured. How badly, Kate had yet to discover. She thought of the Murder Investigation Team: Naylor, Robson, Brown, Maxwell and especially Carmichael, Hank’s protégé.
Lisa would be devastated . . .
As would Bright. What would Kate possibly say to him?
She knew she ought to contact Naylor right away but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Best to wait until she had more information, she reasoned. Besides, her team would be packing up, heading home for the weekend, no doubt wishing they were with her in sunnier climes. Kate wished she were anywhere but Spain.
She searched Chavez’s face.
It showed nothing.
She couldn’t read him. Panic set in as it occurred to her that he might deliberately be masking his emotions because of the gravity of the situation. She wanted to grab the phone off him, scream at the person on the other end to give her something, a shred of hope to cling to. She couldn’t accept anything less.
What was taking so long?
Chavez stopped talking and pocketed his phone. Sombre-faced, he told her that his men had responded to a call from a witness who had seen Hank lying on the ground with a man standing over him, aiming a gun at his head. Several shots had been fired. Officers and paramedics had rushed to the scene, but sadly it had taken them a while to get to him. As far as Chavez was aware, Hank had only taken one bullet. He was in surgery . . .
Only . . .
Blood rushed through Kate’s ears, blotting out everything else. All her working life she’d dealt with death. She’d lost colleagues before, one or two in the line of duty, but this was different. This was Hank.
God! Please let him live.
Feeling her legs go, she put a hand out to steady herself, grabbing hold of Chavez with the other. He helped her into a chair and went to fetch his car.
A Traffic escort eased the way. The journey to the Santa Lucia Hospital in Cartagena seemed to take hours. Every kilometre they travelled was painful for Kate. Blue lights flashed and sirens screamed all around her, a reminder of the countless times she and Hank had rushed to a scene of carnage, swept along on the adrenalin rush of a new enquiry. This time there was no buzz of anticipation. She felt numb as the landscape flashed by.
A number of policemen were waiting at the entrance to A & E, evidence of the seriousness of the situation. The car door was pulled open. Before Kate knew it, she was being assisted from the vehicle. Chavez said something to her. She couldn’t move. She was stuck fast to the melting tarmac beneath her feet.
No one would look her in the eye.
‘What?’ she yelled. ‘Tell me, you bastards!’
A female officer stepped forward. Taking Kate by the arm, she propelled her inside, showing ID to the triage receptionist. Under fluorescent lighting, they were escorted along a corridor. Images loomed up and faded away: doctors, nurses, patients and hospital orderlies pushing trolleys. Wheelchairs. Sick faces staring up at her as she walked by in a daze. Suddenly they turned into a side ward, and through an observation window to their left there was a view of the bottom half of a hospital bed.
Hank.
The female officer stepped aside, gesturing for Kate to go in alone. Kate nodded her thanks. Reaching for the door, her hand hovered above the handle. She turned it slowly and walked inside. Hank was pale and motionless in the bed, hooked up to a monitor, his shoulder and chest heavily bandaged, his arms resting on the sheet covering him.
No head wound.
Kate covered her mouth, suppressing a scream. Tears streamed down her face, tasting hot and salty as she licked them away. She’d let Hank down, just as she’d let Towner down, Bright, Jo – her father. Full of self-loathing, she sucked in a deep breath and approached the bed, wiping her face dry with the back of her hand.
She pulled up a chair, reached for the hand resting on top of the blanket. It was cool to the touch.
Hank opened his eyes, his lids heavy with sedation.
‘I’m OK.’ He squeezed her fingers gently.
Her bottom lip quivered.
Then she lost it.
69
La Manga’s most prestigious hotel was now a crime scene. From a police point of view it was as well handled as any Kate had ever seen. Determined to do things right, Chavez had locked it down, taped off t
he car park, allowing no vehicles in or out, safeguarding forensic evidence. With the full cooperation of hotel management, he’d commandeered the reception area and deployed officers to take witness statements from all the guests.
In the ensuing hours, mobile phones had been collected. Guests who didn’t hand them over willingly were searched and had them confiscated. Images from those phones had been uploaded on to a computer hard drive so that detectives had access to all available data. Chavez had done a fabulous job. By studying those images, a major incident team had put together a comprehensive sequence of events that Kate herself would’ve been proud of.
By ten o’clock in the evening, her hotel room had been turned into a satellite of the incident room on the ground floor. Sitting at her computer, with only a desk lamp for company, she clicked on the file containing crime-scene images. She noticed there was also one video and she began with that.
What she saw chilled her to the bone.
The person holding the phone was shaking. His accent was American, his voice urgent and high-pitched: Carole, stay back. Jesus! Someone shot a guy right here in front of me. Call the cops! The image panned left towards the road. People were running from the scene, their heads held low. They ducked down to hide behind cars as best they could. The camera moved again, to the right this time, zooming in close. Hank was lying on the floor, motionless, blood seeping from a wound to his chest, his head lolled to one side. Kate could hear a woman’s frantic voice in the background begging for someone to help him. It was like a movie scene. On the screen, O’Kane calmly walked into shot. Fuck! He’s going to shoot him again. No, I can’t . . . believe . . . who is this guy? O’Kane was standing over Hank. Hey! the Yank with the video screamed. Leave him be, asshole! Although O’Kane didn’t look up, Kate detected a slight hesitation before he raised his gun calmly, aiming at Hank’s head.
A shot rang out.
Kate felt her whole body shudder and shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the image had shifted. For a few seconds, the footage bounced wildly. Kate saw the ground, the trees and deep blue sky as the man grabbed his wife and ran for cover. The woman’s distress was hard to listen to. A door slammed. We’re safe, Carole, we’re going to be OK.
The footage ended.
Kate’s fury stuck in her throat. The incredulity and anxiousness told its own story. The images made perfect sense, fitting exactly with what Hank had already told her.
He’d thought he was a goner. He’d seen the whites of O’Kane’s eyes and the wrong end of a gun barrel. Looking away, he’d braced himself. When the shot rang out, a gun fell to the ground a few feet away from him. He couldn’t move in time to pick it up. Turning his head, he’d seen his attacker being dragged away by two men. He didn’t know if O’Kane had been hit and dropped the gun, or if the gun had gone off as the men grabbed him. They’d bundled him into a waiting car, which was immediately driven away at speed. Hank had been unable to make out the registration through the plumes of dust thrown up by the tyres.
How they got past the security gate was anyone’s guess.
Kate re-ran the tape, freezing on the harrowing image of her DS lying on the deck with a Glasgow gangster preparing to finish him off. If she lived to a ripe old age, she would never forget this moment. Sitting back, she shut her eyes and took a slug of pure malt. It burned her throat as it went down.
A tap on the door startled her.
Still traumatized by what she’d seen, she rose heavily from her seat. She opened the door expecting Chavez. Hank was standing in the corridor, sweaty and pale. He’d discharged himself from hospital. When he got inside, she went ballistic, telling him not to make himself comfortable. He wasn’t staying.
‘You . . .’ she tried to inject a note of command into her shaking voice, ‘are going straight back to hospital!’
‘Don’t fuss,’ he said. ‘I’ve had worse cuts shaving.’
His words made her laugh, then cry.
‘You can’t joke your way out of this,’ she told him.
‘Kate man, it’s sweltering in there, bloody unbearable. I was sweating my bollocks off. What would you choose, hospital from hell or five-star La Manga treatment – an air-conditioned room and drinks on tap? I’ll take my chances here, thanks very much. Besides, you need my detective brain.’ He pointed at the bed. ‘If you insist, I’ll lie here and play Sherlock while you pretend you’re Florence Nightingale.’
Kate wasn’t laughing. The bullet designed to kill him had entered the left side of his chest, missing his heart by inches, and gone straight through. Fortunately, it hadn’t hit any major arteries or bones – a miraculous escape. ‘No chance.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t you take things seriously for once? Much as I’d like to play nursemaid, this is way beyond my first-aid skills. I won’t accept the responsibility, Hank. It’s not fair to ask me to. What if you suddenly take a turn for the worse?’
Hank didn’t reply. Oblivious to the question, the focus of his attention had shifted to her computer screen. The image shocked him, she could tell. ‘You put it all together?’ he asked, changing the subject.
Kate killed the image. ‘Pretty much.’
‘I saw Chavez’s handiwork on the way in. He did a good job.’
‘He’s got a hundred men searching for O’Kane.’
‘They’re wasting their time.’
‘Yeah, I know. Chances are he’s gone the same way as his brother.’ Kate shrugged. ‘Some you win, some you lose. I’ve run out of sympathy, Hank. Whatever Brian Allen is doing to him, I hope it hurts like fuck!’ She held up her hand, pinched forefinger and thumb together. She was filling up. ‘You came that close. You’ll never be that lucky again.’
‘Lucky? I’ve got Brian to thank for it,’ he reminded her.
Kate had no answer, but she knew he was right.
70
Kate was exhausted when she went to bed at midnight, more so when she woke suddenly a few hours later. She couldn’t see anyone. She didn’t need to. The strong smell of a cigar had disturbed her sleep and caused her to wake. The Scot was massive. He was standing in the shadows at the bottom of her bed, holding a handgun, a pensive expression on his handsome face.
She scrambled up the bed, drawing her knees to her chest. Naked and unarmed, she’d never felt more vulnerable. ‘How the fuck did you get in here?’
Brian rebuked her by waggling his gun around from side to side. ‘That’s no way to greet a guest, is it? I have my methods.’
‘So what happens now?’
Taking a couple of heavy-duty cable ties from his pocket, he proceeded to secure her tightly to the bed, his face almost touching hers. He wasn’t rough with her. Neither did she struggle for fear that the gun in his right hand might go off accidentally.
‘Your days of freedom are numbered,’ she said.
‘You’re the one tied to the bed.’ The irony made him chuckle. ‘They told me you had balls. They weren’t wrong. You must take after your guv’nor, Mr Bright. How is the old sod, anyhow? He and I go back a long way. Did he tell you that?’
‘He told me.’
‘I used to get a real kick out of taunting him. He didn’t like me crossing the border, wreaking havoc in Newcastle. It was good sport until Dougie O’Kane tried to get in on the act.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I never wanted a turf war, Kate. That’s why I made it my business to get acquainted with Bright. It pays to know who you’re up against – I did the same job on you.’
‘You know nothing about me!’
‘You’d be surprised what I know.’ He was enjoying himself. ‘I know your mum is dead, you don’t dig your old man, and you have a friend you’d rather not talk about. How’s that for starters?’
Kate’s stomach churned at the veiled threat to her family – to Jo.
‘Relax . . . all I’m saying is, my snouts are better than yours. I pay them more than you do. Worth their weight in gold, informants – wouldn’t you say?’
Was he talking about Towner? Was it p
ossible that there was more to his death than a tragic accident? Had he seen something – someone – that made him bolt from the bench and run into the road? Towner hated the Allens, he’d always blamed John for getting Margie hooked on drugs; tipping off the O’Kanes that Brian was still alive would be one way of having his revenge.
No, this was just Allen mouthing off, Kate told herself. She was letting her imagination run away with her. It was running in other directions too: images of Brian’s handiwork in a garage on the outskirts of Glasgow flooded her mind. Did he have something similar in mind for her? But then, why go to the trouble of tying her to the bed?
This is just a warning. He has nothing to gain by killing me.
‘I haven’t come here to hurt you.’ It was as if Brian had read her mind. ‘I just want you off my back. Neena gave you guys a starter for ten. Soon as O’Kane turned up at the club, she rang me. If I could’ve got there, I’d have killed the bastard, but I knew he wouldn’t hang around long enough for that. So I told her to ring you. I’m a patient man, Kate. I was hoping you’d lift him and fuck off home, but you blew it. Not only did you let him slip through your fingers, you decided to come after me instead. So I put my boys on the job of tracking him down. Good thing I did, under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?’
Kate said nothing.
He laid his gun down on the bed, took a photo from his pocket and held it up in front of her face. It featured Kate and Hank and the expat couple, Shelley and Tony, on the promenade at Mar de Cristal. All four had their eyes turned skyward.
The parakeets.
‘I knew then you had me.’ Brian’s eyes were smiley. ‘A clever deduction. However, you made a fatal mistake. You were following me when all the time I was following you. Not once did you look over your shoulder. Even you must see the funny side of that.’ He put away the photo, pocketed the gun. ‘Right then, I’m out of here. You’ll never find me, so don’t bother trying.’
