Operation:UNITY (John Steel series Book 2)

by syron-jones, p s

  McCall sensed that Mrs Major suspected her husband’s death wasn’t the result of an accident.

  Stephanie leaned forwards, her expression one of mistrust. “Detective, my man worked twenty-five years and he never once even blew a fuse. So you tell me. Was it an accident?”

  McCall had to agree that it was looking increasingly unlikely that such a man would have died because of his own blunder: a twenty-five-year, blemish-free career told its own story. Her gut churned, and that, for her, was a bad sign. An indication that the picture was getting way bigger than she had anticipated.

  However, McCall had good instincts, and right now they were saying: ‘You’ve got enough for today’. She could see that the whole ordeal had been a strain on Stephanie and the child. She picked up the recorder and switched it off, and as she put it away in her jacket pocket she stood up to leave, Thompson following her lead.

  “Mrs Major, if you think of anything else please call me.” McCall took a small business card from her notebook wallet and handed it over.

  Stephanie Major gave her a curious look.

  “I know that I should say sorry for your loss but I guess you’ve heard it enough times from people who said it out of politeness. I will say it when we have answers for you, and you can put this to rest.”

  A tear rolled down Stephanie Major’s pale face. She knew in that moment that someone would find out the truth, and wouldn’t merely write off his death as an accident. Now she had hope.

  SEVEN

  Steel had returned to the internet café and resumed his search for the people at last night’s dinner table. If they all showed up to be who they claimed to be, then so be it, but that would mean that he would have to search again and time was running out. However, his gut told him that some of them, if not all, had something to hide, and he had to find their secrets.

  What’s more, all the previous evening at the dining table, he hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling that his choice of company was more than coincidence.

  After hours of searching and several cappuccinos later, he had a large pile of information, and he sat back in the chair and finished the rest of his cold coffee. He had printed off the volumes of information to look at later in the comfort of his cabin. If something did not add up, he would find out what it was.

  Gathering his notes, John Steel made for the exit. But as he did so, in a reflection in one of the monitors, he caught an image of a man rushing for the terminal he had just used; he smiled at the predictability of it all. Naturally, he had cleared his search log, deleting all the history and even then looked up all sorts of other junk before he closed it down, expecting the possibility of someone trying to snoop: his gut feeling, as always, had been spot on. As he stepped out into the bustling crowds, a woman with arms laden with bags of shopping collided with him, sending their armfuls of items crashing to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he helped her gather up her belongings.

  “Yes, I am fine,” her voice was flustered by the incident. “Sorry, it was all my fault.”

  As he stood there with her bags in his hands he watched as she gathered up the large amount of paperwork that was strewn across the polished floor.

  “Here, let me pick up your papers.” She had gathered them into her arms, and they exchanged items. As she stood up he was able to get a better look at her. She was tall with a long light-blue wrap-around dress that tied up at her left side; darkened sunglasses with overly large lenses covered her eyes and almost half her face. A large wicker summer hat was angled slightly to one side of her face.

  “Are you sure you are okay?” His words were sincere but his thoughts were suspicious. He knew she had arranged the incident as a ploy to find out what he had been researching. As she gathered up her belongings she quickly scurried away.

  He looked down at the mass of paperwork in his hand and, as he flicked through the articles on diving, prices of hotels and of flights to exotic corners of the globe, he scratched his back, where the real paperwork he’d been trawling for was rammed behind his shirt, and tickling the bare flesh.

  Steel headed back to his room, feeling that he needed the solace of his cabin to think. As he looked down at his watch, the luminous hands on his Tag Heuer read ten to five in the afternoon. Dinner was at seven so he knew he had time.

  As he entered his room, he made a quick study of his surroundings. Everything seemed normal, possibly too normal, given the past circumstances. He reached into his inside pocket and found the small blue fingerprint light, then thought better of it. If someone had bugged his room he had no intention of letting them know what he suspected.

  Thinking for a second, he decided what to do as he walked calmly into the relatively spacious bathroom. He looked in the mirror and ran some water to quickly splash over his face. The water felt cool and refreshing as it met his warm skin, and reaching over, he found a towel on the heated rail and dabbed the water away. Again looking into the mirror his gaze fell upon the reflection of the shower unit. Reaching across, he turned the dial until it was on to the full heat setting, and he left the shower spray running. The sound of the water hammering against the safety glass was like a severe rainstorm, but it faded as he closed the bathroom door behind him.

  Steel stripped the clothes from his muscular body, deciding that if they wanted a show, he would give them one. Taking a bathrobe from the back of the door, he covered himself with a grin, feeling his observers’ eyes on him. He needed to freshen up before dinner, and he hoped that there would be fresh faces at his table, though he didn’t actually know which table he’d be seated at.

  First things first, he thought to himself. He needed to find the surveillance bugs and hopefully discover who had installed them. He poured himself a large whisky from the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. The smell of mixed malts and spices tantalised him and prepared him for the smooth taste. Taking a small mouthful Steel just let it linger, allowing his mouth to warm the golden liquid before slowly swallowing the rich tasting liquor. As he raised the glass to take another heavenly shot he noticed that the fire alarm had a small hole opposite the small red LED light. That’s one! he noted, making a swift scan of the rest of the room. There would be others, of that he had no doubt.

  John put down his glass and opened the door to the bathroom. As he’d planned, a plume of steam flooded out of the enclosed space, for a brief period filling the living area with steam, long enough to see the small dot of light from dressing table’s mirror. He entered the bathroom and, sure enough, there was another small light spot on the bathroom mirror, which the steam’s presence highlighted.

  He smiled as he ran the water into the sink ready to get rid of his twelve o’clock shadow, part of him wanting to put shaving foam over the small camera lens, but he resisted the urge. Instead he swept away the condensation from the mirror and lathered up.

  After the cool shower he sat on the small couch that was against the room’s left wall. The soft bathrobe felt good against his hard naked body. Reaching for the paperwork that lay on the seat next to him, Steel studied the portfolios of two of the people in the group he had encountered the night before.

  He looked over to the clock on the bedside cabinet, and the electronic counter told him he had around thirty minutes before dinner started. He stood, and then walked to the small wardrobe; on the door was a full-length mirror. He dropped his robe and stared at the fake tattoos that covered his upper body. The elaborate art work covered the six entry and exit wounds from where he had been shot so many years ago. His fingers running over the small markings stirred faint flashbacks of that day at his family’s ancestral home, the day he had lost everything. The day he had died.

  As he dressed he used the long mirror to chance a gaze at the fire alarm. He congratulated himself on his progress so far as he tied the bow tie, then he stood still and inspected his appearance. He wore a black golf-ball shirt underneath his black tuxedo; using both hands he pulled his tie tight and brushed down the ar
ms of his jacket.

  McCall and Thompson returned to the station to find Tooms and Tony had already set up their own murder boards for their first victim: one John Barr. The man had been a dockworker—specifically a crane driver until his apparent ‘accident’ a couple of days ago. The file had crossed to homicide just in case something wasn’t in order.

  Sam McCall stood in front of the murder board, her hands rested on her hips as she took in the details.

  “So what have you got?” Her eyes never left the board as Tooms ran through the information on his notepad.

  “John Barr, aged forty-three years old,” Tooms read out.

  “Ex-wife Helen now lives in Queens with their two boys John Jr. and Sam.”

  The female detective nodded as she took in the information. “So what happened to Mr Barr?” Her voice was calm, her words slow and indistinct, as though she had a million other things on her mind.

  “Well, poor Mr Barr took a tumble at work,” Tony interjected, taking an interest in the conversation, and talking as if his words held an unspoken accusation.

  McCall shrugged.

  “So? People trip and fall off things every day.” Her words sounded tired.

  Tony placed a picture on the information board of a large pool of blood and the corpse of a man.

  “Sure they do. But unfortunately our Mr. Barr was a crane operator at the docks.”

  Everyone moved in for a closer look, as their morbid curiosity was aroused.

  “So the poor son of a bitch came out of the cab under the unit, tripped or something and fell,” McCall concluded. For some reason she had that bad feeling thing again.

  “OK,” she went on. “We interview the family, check financials.” She looked over to Jenny, who was getting their murder board ready.

  “You mean do all the usual things?” Tooms joked. He could see that McCall was a million miles away and he hoped she wasn’t still thinking about her abortive relationship with the English detective, John Steel. “Are you okay?” His words were meant to be comforting.

  McCall turned to him and nodded, coming back down to earth with a smile. “Sure, sure, I’m fine. It’s just that all this after the last case, it just seems...”

  Tooms smiled in sympathy. “Mundane? Yeah I guess it does a little bit. But, hey, be careful what you wish for.” He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  “Anyway,” Tony butted in. “We already did some digging on our skydiver and it appears he had a bit of money trouble.”

  Sam’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Apparently after his divorce he was up to his neck in debt, until he borrowed some money.” Tony took a picture from the file and placed a colour photograph on the section of board marked SUSPECTS.

  The man in the photograph was in his late forties, his black hair greased back over a pointy head. His elongated pale face was dominated by a long thin nose. The man’s top lip was also thin, and his two large front teeth crowded his face, so that his mouth couldn’t close properly. His eyes were dark and bottomless, and so deep set they almost disappeared.

  McCall’s jaw dropped and her gaze moved from the ugly face in the picture to Tony.

  “Oh boy! He looks just like a.....”

  “Weasel, sure he does, I thought that as well,” Tony almost laughed. “Freaky, isn’t it?”

  McCall nodded, tightening her mouth so as not to laugh.

  “Meet Joshua Newton, aka, The Rat,” Tony announced.

  Now McCall was struggling to keep a straight face. She turned away from the photograph and composed herself.

  “OK, bring him in. Let’s find out what he knows.” Her gaze went to the empty chair.

  Jenny looked back at her boss, proud of her arrangement of the pictures on the glossy white board.

  Sam joined her and looked once more at the crime scene photos, studying the close-up shot of the victim: his eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. Almost as if he was calling out to someone. He lay on his back with his arms outstretched, as if he had been trying to grab hold of something just prior to his tumble. McCall could not get his expression of pain out of her head.

  The other photographs had been shot from different angles, but all centred on to one point: the victim. His body was next to a self-supporting stepladder, which lay on its side. Two cables stretched down from the ceiling, almost as if they had been yanked down with force.

  Sam’s concentration was broken as Jenny brought her a fresh cup of coffee; she thanked her as she took the mug. The smell of the coffee was acrid and powerful. “What the hell is this?” she barked, slamming the cup down on her desk.

  “We ran out of the other stuff and Steel forgot to mention where he got the nicer coffee,” Jenny apologized.

  McCall shrugged and took a sip. However awful it tasted, hell, it was coffee and she needed the caffeine hit.

  “The coroner’s report said it was ‘Death by electrocution’,” Jenny told her, sitting on the edge of the desk next to her boss.

  “What are you thinking?” Jenny Thompson had come to recognize that familiar look on McCall’s face when she thought that something did not add up.

  “Did CSU dust for prints?”

  Jenny picked up the beige-coloured file and flicked through the notes.

  “Yes. They got a couple of partials, but those belonged to the manager. Why?”

  The senior detective frowned. “We need to see the crime scene. Has it been opened yet?”

  Thompson shook her head. “No, it’s still locked down.”

  Sam smiled. “Come on, Jenny. We’ve got some hunting to do.”

  The store was a large 7-Eleven, the police tape stuck tightly on to the doorframe preventing any unauthorized entry.

  McCall took out a key from a small clear bag and inserted it into the lock. Once the door was open, the beams of the police flashlights cut through the darkness of the store. The large room was filled with empty shelving and cardboard boxes stacked up on and around the counter along the back wall. The room was square with windows on the entrance wall; the shelving ran down sideways, affording the shopkeeper a perfect view of all the aisles.

  At the far left-hand side in the corner was a door leading to the upper floor, there was a backdoor and under the stairs was the electrical breaker box. As McCall moved slowly towards the white printed outline of a man on the floor, she stopped and knelt, her tight backside resting on the back of her boots. Using the flashlight, she mapped out the scene in her head.

  “Seems like an accident, don’t you think?” Jenny commented.

  McCall looked up at her as she stood up. “Things are not always as they appear, Detective.” Her tone was sombre, and Jenny knew she was due for ‘lesson time’.

  “Okay, Jenny, tell me what you see?”

  Jenny paused for a moment as her eyes gathered information. “The cables there suggest that was where the current came from.” McCall nodded in agreement.

  “So why was there power in the cables? Surely a veteran electrician would have turned the power off and tested whether it was live before working on it?” McCall walked towards the breaker box under the stairs. Here it looked as if everything had a thousand years’ worth of dust on it, with the exception of the handle to the circuit breaker, which she pointed to. “Did CSU check this for prints?”

  Thompson opened the file and, with the small Maglite in her mouth, she flicked to the CSU report. “Yes, but they came up empty.”

  “What? No prints on the breaker switch handle?” Jenny shook her head grimly. “Okay, Detective, so is this accident or murder?”

  “I will go for M for Murder, please, Bob.” Jenny replied decisively as though she was on a game show.

  EIGHT

  Steel had studied the plans of the vessel so much that his head had begun to hurt.

  This ship truly was a city. He walked to the balcony of his room to get some fresh air. The cool breeze felt good on his warm skin as it penetrated his black golf-ball shirt.

  Takin
g a deep breath he could smell the fresh saltiness of the ocean, and then he ventured back to his room, all the while feeling those eyes on him. This trip was starting to be more tantalizing than he had expected: hidden cameras, strange rich people that were eminently noticeable. No, the breaks he’d had so far were more than he could have hoped for, and he had to use them, as he had a job to do and not much time to do it.

  Checking his appearance once more in the full-length mirror he smiled confidently to himself. Okay, let’s do this, he thought. He knew tonight he’d be seated at a different table, with different people. He was running out of time and had far too many suspects to choose from. He prayed something would happen to flush the guilty ones out into the open.

  As he made his way down the well-lit corridor, the polished framework of the wall in front gave a reflection of something: he caught a glimpse of a man in blue overalls entering his room using a card key. John Steel reflected grimly that he knew the people who were bugging him were near. But until now he had not known just how near.

  The dining room was full of people dressed in tuxedos and gowns. This was the chance for the rich to parade like peacocks and flaunt their wealth and power.

  Steel found a quiet place at the bar and quickly snatched a glass of champagne from the waiter’s tray as he strolled by, the silver salver balanced on the palm of his hand as he held it aloft. The whole place smelt of money, and it was intoxicating. Couples strutted round as if they were royalty, tittering with affected laughter, greeting one another with false platitudes. As John stood at the bar he looked round, his eyes searching for someone new, someone whom he had not yet laid eyes on, but who might set off the alarm bells, as much as the group from the previous night had.

  As he took a sip from the fluted glass, he looked round and thought how familiar this scene was, recognizing many of the same faces he’d seen the previous evening. He felt a wave of disappointment. His theory was that if someone was going to do something they would do it in plain sight and they would not stand out in this room, but an everyday Joe! Steel knew the little guy, the guy in the lower decks. If there was a finger of suspicion being pointed it would be at him. Who would suspect a millionaire? The police would not give the idea a second thought, and Steel just hoped that his theory proved to be correct.