by Rob Ashman
Lucas jumped into his car and drove in total silence to 1316 Ridgeway Crescent, not knowing what he was looking for. The other two headed off knowing exactly what they would encounter: the well-tailored delights of Trevor Wainwright.
33
Bassano and Jo Sells were travelling much too fast up the ornately bordered, tree-lined driveway of Brightwood Country Club. The large sandstone buildings came into view as they rounded a sharp bend, spitting gravel onto the immaculate lawn.
The parking lot was full but Bassano had no intention of driving around trying to locate a suitable space. He brought the car to a sliding stop right behind the cars parked in the designated bays. A member of staff scurried to the clubhouse door, but Bassano was already up the steps and into the reception before he could do or say anything.
Bassano spoke to the woman behind the desk. Her name badge said Lucy Prigg.
‘I need to speak with Trevor Wainwright, it’s urgent.’ He flashed his badge at her to stress the point. ‘What happened to Melody?’ She ignored his question.
‘Mr Wainwright is in a board meeting right now and it won’t be concluded for another hour or so. If you would like to take a seat,’ she waved an elegant hand toward the soft seating area, ‘I’m sure he will see you when he’s out.’
Jo reached the reception desk just as Bassano was about to get angry. ‘I’m not sure you quite get this, lady,’ she said in a raised voice.
Bassano continued, ‘I need to talk with Wainwright now. You can either tell him to come out and speak with me or I will have you arrested for obstruction and I will find the damn boardroom myself.’
Trying to maintain her poise, Lucy Prigg walked towards a pair of oak doors saying, ‘I’ll let him know you are here, Detective.’ She half looked over her shoulder and smiled with a well-practised falseness.
In the changing rooms, Sophie Barrock was sitting on a long wooden bench in front of the lockers with a huge white towel wrapped around her, feeling exceptionally pleased with herself. The last two hours had been fantastic. There was a new guy at the club who’d been coming on to her for weeks, well who could blame him. He was forever saying they needed to play tennis and he’d be gentle with her. He was ten years younger, good looking, had a ton of money and was a total flirt. She enjoyed the attention but, most of all, she enjoyed setting him up.
She played him along like the social pro that she was. The more he challenged her to a gentle game, the more she avoided it. This built up the expectation, and the more she gave the invitation the cold shoulder the more he upped the stakes. By the end, he had turned it into a showboat of a match, telling everyone he was going to teach her a thing or two. It was as if he considered the whole thing as foreplay, and Sophie was more than happy to allow a little club-house foreplay. This of course gave her a rich source of gossip, intrigue and innuendo for her hangers-on. The new guy was very interested in Sophie and consequently her female cronies were very interested in him.
‘Are you sure this is just about the tennis, Sophie?’ They would ask suggestively over a white wine spritzer by the pool. ‘Will you be showering on your own that day, Sophie?’ ‘You must let us know how big his forehand is, Sophie.’ The salacious comments and saucy suggestions spun the whole situation into a Sophie Barrock extravaganza. She was in her element.
When she judged the excitement had reached its peak she said yes. And, of course, the match attracted a large crowd of onlookers, mostly women, who were scrutinizing the new guy and speculating about what Sophie Barrock was going to be enjoying after the game. But that was never her primary goal.
She whooped his ass. She destroyed him on the court and beat him in straight sets. It was a hot day and she always played better in the heat. The hotter it got, the better she played. Under the blazing sun in thirty degrees heat she slaughtered him. He was outplayed in every aspect. She served better than him. She lobbed better than him. She volleyed better than him. She even hit the ball harder than him. She ran him around the court like a child chasing bubbles in the wind.
Sophie smiled as she walked over to the vanity mirrors, took a seat and dried her hair. She had been at her devastating best today, unstoppable.
Wainwright came marching through the large oak doors with Lucy Prigg in hot pursuit.
‘This is outrageous,’ he protested. ‘You threaten to have one of my staff arrested because she is merely doing her job. This is intolerable.’ Then he stopped and looked at Bassano and Jo Sells. ‘Oh Lord, not you two again. This is harassment.’
It was then that he recalled their last encounter and looked over Bassano’s shoulder to where the previous parking violations had taken place. He almost had a seizure.
‘That car is blocking three other vehicles. You will have to move it.’ He flapped his arms at the offending car. As he’d run up the steps, Bassano had noticed that the name on one of the blocked parking spaces said ‘Chairman’.
‘Mr Wainwright, we need to speak with your entire club membership. Can you provide us with a list of names?’
‘Certainly not,’ came the blunt reply. ‘Our members enjoy the strictest confidentiality and we are not in the habit of divulging personal details. It is out of the question.’ He was preoccupied with the car parking situation and kept looking outside.
‘We are conducting a very serious investigation which involves your club and it is imperative that we contact every one of your members,’ Bassano persisted.
‘And, as I have said before, we will not provide you with our membership listing because it is private. You will need a warrant or some such paperwork and, until I see that, the answer is no. Now if you don’t mind I have a board meeting to conduct.’
‘Mr Wainwright, your members may be in grave danger and we need to warn them. I need you to co-operate.’
‘What are they at risk from, detective? Dodgy counselling perhaps? This whole thing is a pantomime and now, if you don’t mind …’ He turned and walked back to the oak doors to rejoin the board meeting.
‘It turns out you lied to us, sir,’ Jo said in an authoritative voice. ‘You do provide counselling services here.’ She removed the poster from her bag and held it up for him to read.
He snatched the paper from her hand, put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and read the document.
‘This means nothing,’ he said dismissively. ‘This does not concern us.’
‘It was found on your premises, so you do offer a counselling service. You lied.’
‘I repeat,’ Wainwright said as if he was talking to an idiot, ‘this means nothing. Where did you get it from?’
‘Melody gave it to us when we were last here. She found it here, at the club,’ said Jo.
‘Well that explains it,’ said Wainwright laughing. ‘We had to part company with Melody because she was, let’s say, getting above herself.’ He flashed a knowing look at Lucy Prigg who smiled back compliantly. ‘This is nothing more than the work of a disgruntled ex-employee, someone with a grudge.’
‘But that doesn’t figure. We turned up unannounced so Melody would not have known we had this as a line of enquiry. No, Mr Wainwright, this was found on your property. You do offer a counselling service and you need to co-operate. You lied.’
Sophie Barrock had finished drying her hair and was applying her make-up. All eyes would be on her when she made her entrance into the restaurant to join her loyal band of followers and she was going to look stunning. She packed her kit away in her bag and dressed in her newest country club attire which she’d bought for the occasion.
By now, Bassano had had enough of this prick giving them the brush off. Jo’s reasoning had stopped Wainwright in his tracks and he was staring at the poster, wondering what his next move should be. He decided dismissal was the best course of action.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said in his best schoolmaster style. ‘Lucy, would you show these …’ he searched for the right word, ‘… people out.’ He put the poster on the desk and once again turned
to leave.
‘Jo, when the officers arrive can you instruct them to arrest Mr Wainwright for a breach of the peace,’ Bassano said.
‘Er yes,’ Jo looked bemused.
‘Breach of the peace?’ said Wainwright. ‘You really are in fantasy land, Detective. I have a witness here in Miss Prigg who can testify to my good conduct and you are overstepping your authority.’
Bassano picked up the counselling poster and walked back to the front entrance.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I am going to speak with your membership.’ And with that he swung his elbow and smashed the glass out of the square red box on the wall. A chorus of fire alarms screeched into action from every part of the complex. Bassano walked out of reception and down the steps to find the assembly points, behind him the breach of the peace was in full swing.
Sophie Barrock was putting the finishing touches to her victory look when the alarm above her head burst into life. The synthetic two-tone wailing was deafening and she cupped her hands over her ears.
‘Damn,’ she said, though in the closed environment of the changing rooms she couldn’t hear her own voice. That was definitely not in the plan. She cursed, grabbed her bag and headed for the exit. ‘Damn it,’ she said again.
Her crowning glory for today was always going to be her triumphant walk into the dining hall, soaking up the adoration of her friends. A fire alarm meant that was not going to happen. The last time they had a false alarm people were kept outside at the assembly points for fifty minutes while the fire department swept the buildings and reset the system. She was not going to wait all that time. Sophie reluctantly made her way to her car, put her kit in the back and started the engine. Her triumph would have to keep till tomorrow.
As she drove through the parking lot, she heard a man with a megaphone saying, ‘Can I have your attention please,’ and holding a piece of paper in front of him. She didn’t recognize him as being one of the stewards from the club and he wasn’t wearing his regulation fluorescent tabard.
Wainwright will be furious, she thought. As she got a little closer, he was also saying something about the police, which seemed a little odd because it was quite obviously the fire alarm that had gone off.
Sophie Barrock drove down the driveway and saw the chaos behind her disappear in the rear-view mirror. She tried to concentrate on her fantastic win rather than her missed lunch opportunity with her girls. She wasn’t to know that it would be her last.
34
Lucas sat on the hood of his car looking at the Mason property. To the left he could see the McKee house was still cordoned off with bright yellow tape. The front door of number 1316 was clearly visible. He had found what he was looking for.
He was about two hundred yards away, on a broken tarmac road which led to nowhere. He was parked at a higher elevation than the house and had a clear line of sight of the entire plot. Lucas was convinced this was where Mechanic had been when he’d opened the front door that day. He was also convinced that Mechanic had used this as a vantage point to carry out his reconnaissance prior to the killings. With half-decent binoculars the spot offered a perfect view.
It felt odd to think that days earlier Mechanic had been in the very same location. Lucas cursed under his breath.
The other reason he needed to get out of the office was that he needed time to think away from the team. When he’d worked out what the note meant, his immediate reaction was that Jo Sells had been with him that day and the note was her work. She knew there was a moment when Lucas realized the real target was next door. Lucas considered this long and hard but then discarded it. Jo Sells was not in a position to know what had happened at the front door, she’d been in the living room. There must have been another person able to see the front of the house. It must have been Mechanic.
There was another reason the note bothered him. Not in the same way it bothered Harper, he wasn’t going to crack up. This was a high stakes game to Mechanic and he kept doing the unexpected with the specific intention of making them look like fools. And that’s what bothered him most, it made him look a fool. And then of course there was the GAI Circles name which also made them look like fools. The raid on Ellis Baker’s apartment made them look like fools. This was a game and Mechanic was winning.
He slid into the driver’s seat and reached for the radio mike.
‘Get a message to Bassano. Tell him not to cut the phone line, he’ll know what I mean.’ Lucas stared into the middle distance. I have a better idea, he thought.
The rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity. The interviews and briefings at Brightwood Country Club had been productive. The members were falling over themselves to be helpful. They were forthcoming with information in the absence of Trevor Wainwright who was protesting wrongful arrest and police harassment as he was bundled into the back of a squad car. Back at the station he continued protesting but only a drunk and a small-time drug dealer could hear him from the adjacent cells.
The picture emerging at the club was polarized along strict lines of gender. The men knew nothing of the existence of the counselling poster while the majority of women confirmed they had seen it. The reason for this split became obvious when they discovered it had been stuck behind the cubicle doors in the ladies’ restrooms. Bassano and Jo Sells exchanged knowing glances. This again lent weight to the theory that Mechanic had a female helper.
Lucas had swept the vantage point for anything which could yield a fragment of evidence about Mechanic’s presence. He came up with nothing, no tyre marks, no shoe prints, no litter, no nothing. It was surgically clean, Mechanic had made damn sure of it.
They met at the end of the day in the incident room. It was late and everyone was exhausted.
‘We got a stack of intel from the club,’ said Bassano, still smarting from Jo’s comment about his inadequate training scores. ‘They were keen to help and wanted to know how the club was involved. Loads of woman had seen the poster but no one we talked to had called the number. We have a list of the remaining people we still have to interview and we need to follow them up. And that phone line tracking you wanted me to check out with the techy guys, they said it should be possible. If it works it will be in place by mid-morning.’
‘Good,’ said Lucas, gathering up his papers and packing them into his briefcase. ‘Well I sure found the place where the bastard watched me at the front door talking to that guy, but there was nothing to connect it to Mechanic.’ He was sounding more in control. ‘It’s late,’ he continued, ‘let’s make a fresh start on those numbers in the morning. But before we go, haven’t you left something in the cells?’
‘Yeah, I suppose I have,’ said Bassano reluctantly. ‘I’ll drop by and see if Wainwright has been a good boy. I suggest we just drop the charges.’
‘Sounds okay to me,’ Jo agreed.
Bassano was relieved his boss wasn’t going to suggest another all-nighter. He was in need of sleep and some alone-time to mend his dented ego.
‘See you both tomorrow,’ said Bassano. ‘It feels like the balance is shifting in our favour at last. We’ve been on the front foot today and taking the fight to him.’
Eight hours later, when all three were sound asleep, the balance was about to shift away from them once more.
35
Mechanic looked at the illuminated watch dial. It was 3.15am. The air was still but for the faint sea breeze blowing across the beach, while a watery half-moon spilled a silver glow onto the property
The point of the scalpel cut easily into the mesh, creating a slit in the netting against the frame. Mechanic slid the blade along the edge, watching the black material gape open as it became detached. There was a soft buzzing noise as the sharp knife severed the individual strands. At the corner of the frame Mechanic twisted the scalpel and cut downwards against the metal support.
The flap of netting peeled away and Mechanic eased through the gap. Once on the other side, Mechanic reached into a small pocket, withdrew a roll of
black insulating tape and wound off about two feet. Then ran the tape along the top part of the severed netting, sticking it back in place against the framework.
Mechanic crossed the decking and stood at the side of the double sliding doors, out of sight of anyone who might be inside the house, and waited. Listening for anything unusual, anything which could suggest the occupants were not soundly asleep. Nothing. The house was silent.
From another pocket Mechanic slid out two metal bars about an inch and a half round. Each bar had been flattened at one end to form a chiseled edge which curved upwards. The chisels were inserted into the runners at the bottom of the right-hand door until they stood proud like levers. Pushing downwards and pivoting them to the right the patio door lifted from the runners and released the locked catch on the door There was a soft metallic click. Mechanic pushed the levers down further and the whole door eased out. It was suspended in the air on the points of the metal bars.
This was the tricky part.
Mechanic shifted position and brought a well-worn toe cap under the base of the suspended door, supporting it so the levers could be removed. Placing them on the ground, Mechanic grasped the sides of the patio door and lowered the base down, leaning it against the other frame. Mechanic stepped inside and slid the door along the patio decking to an almost closed position. To the outside world nothing was amiss.
Standing in the living room Mechanic couldn’t help but compare it to the previous visit. Someone had been tidying up. The long pile rug near the fire place had the telltale signs of being freshly raked, magazines were stacked neatly under the coffee table and the coasters were all packed away in their ornate box. Even the oversized cushions were puffed up and placed at the ends of the sofas. Maybe today was the day the maid came.
