‘I cannae.’
‘Why not? Are you stuck?’
‘Naw, but I’ve got nae shoes on, an’ I’m up tae my fuckin’ arse in glass.’
Vale appeared at the end of the hall and picked up the machine gun, then summoned Matt and Simone forward. They climbed through the shop’s ruined frontage together, guns raised, and found themselves standing over some old punter on his knees, wearing a camouflage-vest and, true enough, tartan pyjama trousers, which were wet through. Matt hoped this wasn’t because the bloke had peed himself, as they were clearly going to have to carry him over the debris until it was safe for him to put his bare feet down.
‘I’m Tim Vale, security consultant,’ Vale said, offering the man a helping hand. ‘This is Mr Matthew Black and Mrs Simone Hutchison.’
‘Hector McGregor. Lothian and Borders Police. Retired.’
‘How long?’ Vale enquired.
‘One day. Don’t ask.’
Vale returned the discarded Uzi and gestured to Simone to take the vanguard. He and Matt then picked McGregor up in a sitting position, one hand each under his thighs.
‘Left, Simone, then first right,’ Vale directed. Simone held open what was left of the shop’s front door until they were through it, then resumed her position in the lead, shotgun held at shoulder level each time she approached a corner.
‘How did you get here?’ Vale asked McGregor.
‘Rowin’ boat. They blew it up wi’ a rocket launcher. I had to swim the rest.’
‘A rocket launcher? Oh dear. Can’t say I like the sound of that. Do the authorities know about the situation, then? Someone must have seen the explosion.’
‘Not that I know of, I’m afraid. I live just over the water, but mine’s one of only three hooses in a five-mile radius. The only thing likely tae be payin’ any attention roon here is coos, sheep an’ fish. I was investigatin’ off my own back, based on a couple o’ suspicious incidents earlier in the day.’
‘In your pyjamas?’ Matt was compelled to ask.
The man just glared.
‘So what’s the score?’ he asked Vale.
‘Ehm, in short, hijackers. Not particularly competent, but extremely enthusiastic and very heavily armed. After money, we believe. Quelle surprise. Fifty or so civilians dispersed variously about the resort, at their mercy if not exactly under their control.’
‘Give us some money or we kill you?’ McGregor summarised.
‘Something like that.’
‘We were plannin’ to sneak ashore in one of their boats when we ran into you,’ Matt added. ‘Good job we didnae make it, I suppose, if that’s what they did to yours.’
‘There’s nae boats doon there,’ McGregor informed him. ‘Well, there were dinghies, but somebody’s knackered them.’
‘Somebody’s sabotaged their dinghies?’ Simone asked.
‘Well, whatever dinghies were doon there, aye. And the wan that was guardin’ the jetty’s deid, as well. That’s where I got this machine gun. He’d been shot right through the foreheid.’
‘Jackson’s work?’ Vale asked Matt.
‘Nah. Jackson’s been with the hostages the whole time. Wait a minute, though. This Dawson bloke left in a motor-boat – I heard the look-outs tellin’ Connor. But why would he sabotage the remainin’ dinghies? And why would he kill one of his own men?’
‘Never mind aw that shite,’ McGregor interrupted, putting his feet down again at last. ‘Whit aboot the bomb?’
Matt and Vale stopped dead and stared at each other.
‘What bomb?’ they both asked.
23:26 laguna laundry depot oh, that bomb
Vale and McGregor made it back to the laundry room less than five minutes behind the rest of them, both breathless and the former about as ruffled as Matt ever expected to see him, which was nonetheless not very. During the intervening time, the tight little room had played host to another reunion event that, in Matt’s opinion, more genuinely reflected the true spirit of such affairs than its grander predecessor. He and Davie Murdoch accounted for a frugally ameliorating dose of awkward but genuine amity amidst an oceanic deluge of bitterness and recrimination, all of which was ebbing and flowing around Gavin.
‘Long time no see, Davie, fancy meetin’ you here.’
‘Well, you know me, Matt, wouldnae miss a good barney.’ He looked down at the Uzi. ‘How’s the pacifism hangin’ these days?’
‘Ach, it’s more of a hobby than a lifestyle, you know?’ ‘And where the bloody hell have you been?’ Gavin was meanwhile demanding of Simone.
‘Where does it look like I’ve been?’ she fired back, indicating the shotgun, the cuts and the rip in her dress. The presence of armed hijackers and mortal danger had been about the only thing capable of stopping Matt trying to kiss the area of shoulder that the rip had tantalisingly exposed. He was already starting to resent his earlier good conscience.
‘The party got a wee bit out of control,’ Simone continued. ‘A few gatecrashers. Black attire, not quite dinner dress. Don’t know whether you caught any of that.’
‘I mean, where were you that you weren’t in the ballroom when the terrorists appeared?’
‘Would you rather I had been? Don’t answer that. And where, I might ask, were you? Again, don’t answer that. Hi, Catherine.’
‘Hi, Simone,’ Catherine mumbled, looking like she’d rather be facing the hijackers. Her eye kept straying to the shotgun.
‘And as for you, Mr Comedian,’ Gavin challenged, ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing with my wife?’
‘Ehm, tryin’ not to get shot, mainly.’
‘I saw you kissing her.’ He pointed to the laptop computer nearby, which was displaying surveillance images on its LCD screen. Very cute. Presumably secret agent Vale’s. It probably turned into a motorbike if you pressed the right button.
‘Well, that’s a sight more than you’ve done for a long time,’ Simone butted in. ‘Which is not a complaint I’d imagine she could level at you.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Gavin,’ Catherine chided. ‘Act your age. She knows. Probably always has. Sorry, Simone, I really am. It was just one of those—’
‘Oh, give us a break. You want him? Fine. You should just have asked. He was going spare anyway. Or at least he is now. Gavin, darling,I know this is not the best time, what with everything falling down around us, but … actually, on second thoughts, I’d say this actually is the best time. I’m leaving you. If we get out of this ridiculous, hellish bloody place alive, I’m leaving you, and I’m taking the girls. Do you remember them at all? Short, dark hair, passing resemblance to me, striking resemblance to each other!’
‘You’re … you … I …’
‘And, Catherine, if you’ve any regard for me or my children at all, I’ll be expecting your full cooperation when I name you in the divorce.’
‘You got it,’ she said, her eyes still hypnotised by the pump-action mistress-dispatcher.
‘God, Catherine, have you no loyalty?’ Gavin growled. ‘But then, of course, I now know you’ve been sneaking around behind my back, carrying on with Mr Psychopath there.’
Matt was momentarily impressed with Gavin. Not only was he ignoring his wife’s firepower, but he was now noising up Davie Murdoch. This was either bravery worthy of a VC or recklessness worthy of Ford Prefect. Matt was ‘Mr Comedian’. Davie was ‘Mr Psychopath’. Another thirty seconds of this and Gavin could easily be ‘Mr Bleedingslowlytodeath’.
It was a fortunate time for the two stragglers to make their appearance. During a hasty round of introductions, Vale tapped intently at his computer, then maximised one of the windows so that it took up the whole screen.
‘So what is it?’ Matt asked, though he knew the range of plausible answers was depressingly limited. The image on the screen was of a corridor in the shopping mall, one evidently not visited by himself and Simone as it didn’t look like a bomb had hit it. Yet.
&
nbsp; ‘It,’ Vale said gravely, ‘is approximately eighty to a hundred pounds of C4 plastic explosive, plus timer, detonators, the works. Our gratitude to Inspector McGregor here for discovering it. It’s sitting in a shop doorway on sub-level two, and it’s going to be making things very interesting for anyone in its vicinity in about seventy-two minutes from now.’
The collective intake of breath must have reduced the room’s atmospheric pressure enough to threaten implosion. Vale didn’t need to repeat himself. ‘Explosive’ was the only word in the English language not witheringly diminished when you preceded it with ‘plastic’.
‘Can you defuse it?’ Gavin asked him.
‘No. Can you?’
‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Well, I mean, what constitutes the vicinity? Can we get to a safe distance?’
Vale sighed. ‘It’s been positioned pretty much bang in the centre of the installation. The explosion will smash through the sub-levels and cripple the platform from the middle. The whole place will begin to fold in on itself. But that’s only the start. The blast will hit the resort’s electricity generator. That’ll go up with another big bang, taking out whatever happens to be left of the eastern sub-levels and ripping through the hotel structures above. The destruction of the generator will ignite its oil supply, and that will burn all the way back to the reservoirs in two of the platform legs. Then, if they haven’t gone up already, the resulting conflagration will explode the two hundred bottles of cooking gas stored on the west side of sub-level three.’
‘And is there a down side to this?’ Matt asked.
‘Actually, yes, as a matter of fact, and it’s that this bomb was not designed for remote-detonation: it’s on a timer and the timer has been started. No surrender, no negotiation, no ransom is going to stop it. Unlikely as it sounds, it would be my contention that our unwelcome guests tonight don’t actually know it exists. Why else would they be wasting their time chasing around this place, trying to pin down hostages, when they could simply tell them to cooperate or the place goes sky-high?’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Gavin, before being cut off by Simone’s prediction that that would be his epitaph.
Matt understood, but that was because he’d been listening to the radio all night.
‘Dawson,’ he said.
Vale nodded.
‘Who?’ asked Davie.
‘They’ve been fucked over by their own man,’ Matt stated. ‘Somebody called Dawson was one of their heid-bummers. He took off earlier in a motor-boat – not according to plan, going by the reactions. We thought he’d just bailed out because the hijack had turned into Carry On Shooting. But Mr McGregor here says the bad guys’ getaway dinghies have all been sunk, and the guard they posted down on the jetty has been shot dead. It sounds like this Dawson character’s marooned everybody here with his surprise party-popper, and as a bomb’s not the kind o’ thing you’d just happen to have on you, we can assume levellin’ this place was his objective all along.’
‘Absolutely,’ Vale agreed. ‘He’s also done his homework extremely well, too – unless you believe it to be a coincidence that the bomb has been placed in the precise spot where it would trigger maximum damage to the rig. This is not a hijacking, this is a demolition.’
‘But why?’ Gavin whined, even more appalled now that he knew his true beloved was the real target. ‘Who would want to demolish this place?’
‘Anyone in their right mind,’ Matt muttered.
‘Is there anythin’ you’re not tellin’ us, Gavin?’ Davie enquired. ‘You’ve not been the subject of some grand-scale protection racket, have you?’
‘No,’ Gavin insisted.
‘Well, I hope you’re insured. Even if it’s your weans that are gaunny be cashin’ the cheque.’
‘He is insured,’ Simone stated, her tone suddenly very deliberate. ‘Or rather, this place is.’
Gavin nodded. ‘Against everything. The premiums are colossal. Fire, storm, earthquake, tidal waves, anything.’
‘Including war,’ Simone added, retaining the flat, analytic register. ‘The resort is covered against destruction through military conflict or terrorist action.’
‘Why?’ asked Matt. ‘Was it gaunny be a Club 18–30 joint?’
‘Oh ha-ha,’ Gavin snapped. ‘It’s because we’re locating off west Africa. A potentially volatile part of the world.’
‘No,’ Simone countered. ‘It’s because Delta insisted on it. That’s why Tim was brought in: the insurers wouldn’t underwrite unless you installed a state-of-the-art security set-up. And when did Delta insist upon it, Gavin?’
‘Two or three months back. But what’s that got to do with it? There’s a bomb ticking on this place, for God’s sake.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I’ve just worked out who planted it. Or who ordered it, anyway. Remind me, Mr Vale, when exactly were you brought in?’
‘I’ve been on the project since May.’
‘And what happened at the end of April, Gavin?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well I do. Delta announced their annual figures, that’s what. And with them up to their arse in debt from building this monstrosity, their stock nose-dived and the market smelled blood in the water. May was when the rumours of a hostile take-over started. The only way to fight that off was to come back after the next quarter waving massive bookings for this place, so that the stock would recover. But Delta weren’t confident of that happening, so they took out a little insurance. You never knew it, but I’d say you probably had until about the end of July to come up with good news. Instead all you had for them were more delays and bigger bills.’
‘B-but … that’s insane. Jack Mills is a friend. He was the only one who truly understood my vision.’
‘Jack Mills is a scumfuck, Gavin, and I’ve just understood his vision: this is an insurance fraud, plain and simple. Except they couldn’t just torch the place. With the resort gobbling up money and showing no sign of making it back, the insurers wouldn’t believe something so convenient didn’t happen deliberately. But no-one’s going to suggest it was an inside job if the place blows up while the man behind the whole project is onboard, hosting his school reunion party, surrounded by his wife and dozens of friends. We’re supposed to die for added plausibility.’
‘But what about the hijackers?’
‘Unwitting accomplices in the scam,’ Matt ventured, hoping that if he could speed up the whodunnit discussion, they might more quickly proceed to the how are-we getting out of it one. ‘It went by me at the time because I’d other things on my mind, but one of them described the party guests as being “venture capitalists”. My guess is this guy Dawson is workin’ for Delta. He hires a bunch of semi-competent, expendable eejits and convinces them this is a party for serious movers and shakers here tonight. They go in, thinkin’ they’re there to demand money, and they play their role to the full: takin’ hostages, wavin’ guns, the full song-and-dance number. Then Dawson exits stage-right an’ the place goes up, takin’ everyone with it except maybe a couple of survivors, who live to tell a hazy tale of hijackers an’ extortion. The disaster investigators find a few machine guns an’ dead guys in ski-masks among the rubble, and conclude that it was a shake-down that went wrong. Delta gets their cheque. Ploy explained. Can we get back to that bomb now?’
23:30 laguna laundry depot cometh the hour
‘How long before detonation?’ Gavin asked dejectedly. The feeling of abject loss was beginning to dull that of terror. Previously, Gavin had been in fear for his life. Now he knew that if he survived, his life wouldn’t be worth living anyway. Vale had laid it down unequivocally, never a man to unnecessarily alarm or exaggerate: this bomb was going off, end of story. The Floating Island Paradise Resort was about to be destroyed.
Even if Gavin didn’t, his dream would die tonight, snuffed out by the man who had helped him nurture it: a brutal, bloody, late-term abortion. And even if he survived, he’d be left with nothing. Now that Mills’ cro
oked intentions had been uncovered, there would be no insurance settlement, no compensatory cheque winging Gavin’s way to allow him to start over again. Pursuing Mills or Delta would be so futile as to be absurd. This Dawson swine had already disappeared, and even if he was captured, proving a conspiracy would be impossible, especially via the American legal system.
Vale looked at his watch. ‘Sixty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds,’ he announced.
‘Well, surely this changes everything,’ Catherine reflected. ‘The hijackers have been stitched up – we’re all in the same predicament now. Surely we can come to a deal with them?’
Airhead. This was why the shiny, smiley, presentational side of business was Catherine’s natural habitat, rather than the hard-nosed, back-biting reality. What, did she think they could all close their eyes and give the baddies ten to get away later, in exchange for them helping everyone safely back to dry land? Probably. She was already under the impression that her new hero, the allegedly reformed Neanderthal, was capable of saving them all with a single headbutt.
‘Unless they relish the prospect of a long spell in jail, it is in the hijackers’ best interests that we all die here tonight,’ Vale explained, far more tactfully than Gavin could have managed. ‘If we tell them about the bomb, they will cease trying to recapture their errant hostages, and dedicate their energies to two things: getting themselves off this place, and ensuring that everyone else is still onboard when it blows up. Our energies should be dedicated to one thing: contacting the authorities on the mainland, which will of course be tricky, as the hijackers have taken out all our means of communication.’
‘Taken out, but not destroyed,’ Matt Black corrected.
The so-called comedian was no doubt disappointed that there wasn’t a mirror nearby, to admire his own coolness as he posed around with that machine gun, talking like he was the only one who knew what was going on.
One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Page 31
