ROAD KILL: Charlie Fox book five

by Zoe Sharp

  “No!” Daz yelped. I gripped his fingers again and he took the hint to modify his voice before he went on, sounding less panicked, “I know who that was and there won’t be anything wrong. Honestly! There’s no need for security.”

  The man looked unconvinced. I leaned over the counter and lowered my voice confidentially. “It was almost undoubtedly one of our lot – he fancies himself as a bit of a practical joker,” I said, rolling my eyes to invite him in on the secret. I jerked my head towards Daz. “It’s Daz’s birthday, you see. Now if I know good old Jamie, he’ll have been in there and decked the place out with balloons, ready for us getting back.”

  The relief on the man’s face was almost comical. “Oh well, that’s all right then,” he said, his hand fluttering at his chest. “And here was I, imagining the worst . . .”

  ***

  The corridor was deserted when we got back up to the fifth floor but, as soon as Daz ran the new key card through the lock, the door across the hallway opened and the others piled out.

  The room was the same layout as the one Sean and I were sharing on the next floor up. The in-room safe where Daz had stowed the rest of the money for the diamonds was tucked away in the bottom of the little wardrobe area just as you went in, opposite the bathroom. It didn’t need a close inspection to spot that the door was standing open and the safe was empty.

  Daz stuck his hand in anyway, just in case, like that amount of cash in used fifties could somehow still be lurking out of sight at the back. When he’d finished his fruitless search he sat back on his heels with a groan.

  Paxo and William stood around watching him with slightly dumbstruck expressions on their faces. Sean, meanwhile, did a circuit of the room, giving it a fast check over, moving with intent economy. On the far side of the bed he bent down and lifted a helmet off the floor.

  Right away, I recognised it as Jamie’s.

  Sean nodded shortly to me. I was still standing by the entrance, and as I was nearest, I ducked my head into the bathroom.

  And froze.

  “Sean,” I said, my voice strangely flat. “I think you need to see this.”

  The others knew from my tone that something was very wrong but they seemed unable to react more than to stare blindly at me. Sean pushed them aside and stepped past me, opening the bathroom door wide.

  Tess was lying in the bath, fully clothed, with one leg folded back underneath her and both arms draped over the sides. She looked small and fragile and rather childlike. Her head was turned at an unlikely angle and her eyes were open. It didn’t take a genius to work out that her neck had been broken.

  “Ah . . . shit,” Sean murmured under his breath.

  “This wasn’t Jamie,” I said quickly, like I was abruptly short of breath. “It can’t have been. He would not have done something like this. Not to Tess.”

  Sean moved in and bent closer, eyes inspecting the body with cold precision. The others seemed to come out of their trance at that point. Daz took one step over the threshold and stopped with something approaching a whimper.

  Sean barely turned his head. “If you’re going to be sick, do it somewhere else,” he said shortly.

  I forced myself not to turn away from Tess, even though the sight of her made my heartbeat struggle painfully inside my constricted chest.

  “Her rings are gone,” I said, suddenly noticing her naked fingers dangling over the rim of the bath. “She was wearing them again at breakfast but they’re not there now.”

  “Her left arm’s broken just above the wrist, so she must have put up a fight,” Sean said quietly. “But this is what killed her, look – she was hit with something, hard, across the side of her neck here, under her ear. You can see the bruising. One blow,” he went on, a strange sympathy in his face now, velvet on stone. “I doubt she would have known much about it.”

  I glanced around. “Whatever it was they used, they must have taken it with them.”

  “Mm,” Sean said, straightening. “You got a bruise very like that across your arm, remember?”

  A fast picture of that wicked extendible baton unfolded in my memory. Sean saw from my anguished face that I’d connected the two. It seemed a bitter confirmation of my earlier fears.

  “Eamonn?”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” he said, turning grim.

  You should have let me finish him while I had the chance. Sean’s words came back to taunt me. It was a testament to his will power that he didn’t feel the need to repeat them himself.

  ***

  “So, what the fuck do we do now?”

  It was Paxo who spoke. He sounded somewhat subdued, defeated even. The most interesting thing was that the question was directed towards Sean.

  The Devil’s Bridge Club members had put themselves totally into his hands. William had retreated into a blank silence so that it was difficult to know what he was thinking, while Daz was clearly in shock.

  We’d shepherded the three of them back to Paxo and William’s room across the hallway, carefully hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on the door to Daz’s. It wouldn’t prevent Housekeeping from making their nasty discovery but it would delay them, at least.

  “I’m not entirely sure you can do anything other than call the gardai,” Sean said, leaning on the wall by the window and folding his arms across his chest. “Whether he was the driving force behind it or not, it would seem Jamie’s done the dirty on you. He took Tess to meet the courier, who’s now dead and minus the gems. He then brought her back here, and now she’s dead and the money’s gone as well. Face it – you’re in the shit. But it’ll make it ten times worse for you if you run.”

  “What about the diamonds?” Daz said, his voice plaintive now. The three of them were sitting on one of the beds, slumped and dejected.

  Sean shrugged. “Forget them,” he said, brutal. “If they were nicked we could try and drop Jamie in it with the authorities. I know a guy in Amsterdam who loves to track down and recover stolen gems. There might even have been a reward. But, even though I can’t believe they’re entirely legit, I’ve already run some checks and they don’t show up as stolen.”

  Daz shifted uncomfortably. “They’re not stolen, exactly,” he admitted. “They just didn’t get here through the usual channels.”

  Sean stared at him for a moment, face bleak. He’d taken on that stillness I recognised. He only wore it when things were raging all around him, or he was trying to contain it within. “As soon as I found out they weren’t stolen, there was really only one logical explanation,” he said quietly. “You bought blood diamonds, didn’t you?”

  Daz flushed. “At the time, I didn’t know that’s what they were,” he protested.

  “Not at first, maybe,” Sean said, and there was a dangerous softness to his voice now. “But it didn’t take you long to find out, did it?”

  “Wait a minute, what the fuck are blood diamonds?” Paxo demanded.

  “They’re also called conflict diamonds,” Sean told him but his eyes were still on Daz. “They’re smuggled out of the mines in places like Botswana and Sierra Leone by the workers – who’ll be shot if they’re caught, incidentally. The rough stones are traded on the black market, cut in the backstreets of India, and peddled into Europe usually to finance the drugs trade,” he said, glacial. “Good job there was ‘no way you’d have anything to do with shit like that’, right Daz?”

  Daz wouldn’t meet his eyes as Sean threw his own earlier disavowal back in his face.

  “We trusted you!” Paxo jumped to his feet and rounded on Daz. “You promised us a good laugh and a double-your-money deal. It was supposed to be a ‘victimless crime’ right?” he spat. “Now look at it – all gone to fuck.”

  “I don’t like it any better than you do, Pax,” Daz said, voice rising. “And I had a hell of a lot more cash at stake!”

  “Fuck that!” Paxo shouted. “Christ. You don’t get it, do you? Two people are dead! We could all go to fucking jail because of you. And getting fucked i
n the showers every morning by some hairy-arsed armed robber and his mates might be your idea of fun, mate, but it fucking isn’t mine, all right?”

  “Hey, back off,” William said, without heat or volume. “OK, so he’s been a bloody fool, but having a slanging match now isn’t helping. The question is, what can we do about it?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘do about it’?” Sean said. “Our best plan is to contact the local police. We’ve already delayed longer than they’re going to like but I think we can explain some of that away. Leave it much longer and it starts to smack of conspiracy.”

  “There’s always Superintendent MacMillan,” I suggested. “I know it’s way out of his jurisdiction but he might be persuaded to intervene on our behalf. And he did ask me to look into this in the first place.”

  “What?” Paxo squawked. “You were going to sell us out to the filth? You little cow!”

  “No, actually,” I said coldly. “He asked, and I told him to go take a running jump.”

  “So what good’s he going to do us now?”

  “Well,” I said, still smarting enough to be harsh about it, “he might make the difference between a couple of years for smuggling, and life for murder.”

  “The other thing to consider is that even if these diamonds don’t show up on the official stolen list, they’ve almost undoubtedly been siphoned off by somebody,” Sean said, cutting in then. “If I drop the word in enough of the right ears your pal Jamie might find life suddenly gets very . . . difficult.”

  “Don’t,” I said immediately, even though I could still see Tess’s lifeless face staring out of that bathtub at me. The trouble was, I could see Jacob and Clare’s faces, too, back in the hospital in Lancaster, pleading with me to keep Jamie out of trouble. I didn’t think I could have failed at that in any more spectacular fashion.

  I became aware that everyone was watching me. “We don’t know if Jamie’s on his own in this, or if he’s having his strings pulled by Eamonn,” I said quickly. “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to find out before we feed him to the sharks?”

  “Sharks are too fucking good for him,” Paxo muttered. “I want to feed him to something with really blunt teeth so it hurts like fuck when he’s being ripped in bits.”

  “What do you suggest?” William asked me, ignoring Paxo.

  “Well, for a start, where’s his bike?” I said. “He would never have left his helmet if he was planning on riding out of here, so how else did he leave? Maybe you’ve got it all wrong and he and Tess were ambushed on their way to meet the courier. Maybe he’s not to blame for this.”

  Nobody looked convinced but Sean was frowning. “We need to see if the bike’s down in the car park,” he said. “We should go and do a search now, before we call anyone.” He checked his watch. “Another ten minutes isn’t going to make much difference, one way or the other.”

  Everybody stood, started heading for the door. As I made to follow them Sean tapped me on the shoulder and I paused, waiting until they’d gone on ahead.

  “You do realise,” he said gently, “that if Jamie isn’t a willing participant in this enterprise, then once they’d got the diamonds and the money they might not have had any further use for him?”

  “I know,” I said, trying to suppress a shiver. “I’m trying not to think about what we might find down there.”

  ***

  Once we hit the underground car park we split up to cover the ground faster. I found myself automatically checking underneath and in front of all the parked cars. The kind of spaces where you might conceivably dump a body.

  I was just peering into one of the big industrial waste bins near the service entrance when I heard a deep shout from William. I let the lid clang shut and spun round.

  I must have been furthest away because by the time I arrived the others were already gathering next to a shiny black pickup truck just across from the exit ramp. As I rounded the front of the truck I saw Sean crouched by the body of a man lying sprawled alongside it and my skin shrank instantly at the sight of him. Sean glanced up.

  “It’s not Jamie,” he said immediately, reading my fear, although the logical side of my brain had already processed that information. The man was too big and his leathers were plain black rather than Jamie’s more garish colour scheme.

  Now I looked more closely I could see his dark hair was shorter, too, but it was difficult to tell under the blood that was matting the back of it. A small pool had formed around his head like a halo, staining the dusty concrete almost black. Sean slipped two fingers against the man’s neck, just under his ear.

  “Is he—?” Daz asked, his voice hesitant.

  As if in answer, the man lurched like Sean’s touch had burned him, starting to thresh. Sean put his hands on the man’s shoulders and braced against him.

  “Hold still,” he said sharply. “We’re here to help.”

  He had to say it several times before the man quieted down. By the way he was moving it was clear the blow to the head hadn’t done him any serious damage, so we rolled him fully over.

  “Bloody hell,” William said in surprise, almost his first sign of emotion since we’d found the courier’s body. “Gleet?”

  It was hard to recognise the man who’d hosted Slick’s wake in the field behind the farm in Wray. It seemed a long time ago. One side of his face was coated in dried blood where it had rested on the ground, giving him the wild-eyed look of a tribal warrior.

  Sean got an arm under Gleet’s shoulders and helped him to sit up. He did so with a groan, suddenly clutching at his right elbow with his left hand and cradling it across his body. From the way his right hand drooped, his arm was pretty badly busted.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?” Paxo demanded of no one in particular.

  “Let me guess,” I said when Gleet himself didn’t respond. I had a brief flashback of Daz in the hotel room at Portaferry when we’d told him about the Lucky Strike Suzuki. He’d known exactly who the rider was and hadn’t seen him as a threat. Now I knew why. “The name on your driver’s licence wouldn’t be Reginald Post would it, by any chance?”

  Gleet looked up briefly with eyes that struggled to centre but I thought I saw a sliver of recognition in them.

  An engine started up somewhere behind us and moved off. We instinctively gathered round Gleet, obscuring him, as a car went past and disappeared up the exit ramp.

  “We need to move him away from here,” Sean said, tense. “Gleet! Come on, man, stick with me! Can you stand up?”

  With Sean and William supporting him, we managed to get the big biker on his feet and steer him a slightly staggered course across the car park towards the lifts. On the way we passed the Suzuki that Gleet had been riding to follow us through Ireland. It was parked at a haphazard angle, like he’d stopped suddenly and just jumped off.

  Daz rushed ahead of us, jabbing at the call button for the lift. I held my breath as I watched the floor indicator dropping towards us and the doors opened, but nobody was inside. I reckoned we might have difficulty finding an explanation for Gleet’s macabre appearance if we did bump into another guest, but our luck held.

  I went to fetch my first-aid kit from Sean’s and my room. By the time I returned to Paxo’s room they had Gleet sitting down on the closed loo seat in the bathroom and had mopped the worst of the blood away from the wound on his head. It turned out to be little more than a tear in his scalp that had bled more alarmingly than its severity warranted. Nevertheless, it had been enough to knock him cold and, even now, it was taking him a while to come round fully.

  When William let me back in, though, Gleet at least looked up and more or less focused on me. Daz had the kettle on and Gleet blinked rather than nodded his thanks when he was handed a mug of sugary tea. They’d got his jacket off him somehow and his right arm was resting across his lap, lifeless apart from the unconscious twitching of his swollen fingers.

  “You must have the skull of an ox,” Sean said to him. “I don’t kno
w many people who could have taken such a belt across the back of the head like that and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Yeah well, shame I ain’t got bones to match,” Gleet said, lifting the shoulder of his injured arm with a wry smile that didn’t hide the pain he was in.

  “What the fuck happened?” The question burst out of Paxo like he’d been doing his best to contain it until now but it had finally got away from him.

  “Where do I start?” Gleet murmured, closing his eyes for a moment. He opened them again. “OK, Tess asked me to come over and keep tabs on you lot. Where is she, by the way?”

  The casual question took us by surprise so that no one had a chance to prepare a face against it. Gleet took a sip of his tea, eyes darting round us. He caught our dismayed expressions and lowered the mug very slowly, his face going through phases of denial, shock and anger before finally settling on a deep abiding sorrow.