The Pirate Club: A Highlands and Islands Detective Thriller (Highlands & Islands Detective Book 6)

by G R Jordan

  ‘Just give me one of your bods, Jona,’ said Hope quietly. ‘You have plenty to do; I don’t want to keep you back.’ Jona looked torn but agreed and called over a man in his thirties with dark hair and a left eye that seemed to be only half opened. Peters was introduced to Hope and then led her to a small room at the rear of the hall.

  Before Hope was a small array of items including clothing and personal effects of the deceased found on Barra, along with a package of photographs of the items and clothing found on the Canna victim. In truth there was not a lot, with the majority of the effects belonging to the Gibbons. After donning the necessary gloves and protective clothing, Hope searched through dresses and suitcases trying to find anything that had been overlooked. Item by item she took them in hand and then discarded them back to their places when they seemed to be shedding no further information.

  A dress that spoke of a conservative woman, the colours simple and plain. A packet of condoms in Karen Gibbons’ suitcase that confirmed she was happily looking for someone to copulate with. There was always the question as to whether Karen had simply met Alasdair MacPhail, but the condoms gave the impression that her energetic meeting was with a sought-out partner rather than a wholly random occurrence. Or maybe she was just a careful planner. Placing the small plastic bag on the table, Hope picked up another containing a delicate bracelet with a number of charms on it. Karen had not been wearing the bracelet, it was just one of the items collected from her room.

  ‘Peters, has this been run against the items stolen in the Spanish job?’

  ‘Yes, there were no charm bracelets found on the list.’

  ‘Hope held the bracelet up, letting the items dangle from it. She saw an elephant, a silver kite-shaped object with a diamond in the end of it, a green emerald in a tiny carriage. As the items swung off simple silver connectors to the bracelet, Hope realised that they all dangled at slightly different lengths. Not one corresponded in length to the other as they swung. Yes, they all had silver elements to them, but Hope struggled to see the connection.

  ‘Is that normal, Peters?’ asked Hope. ‘Can you see how they all don’t line up. If I dangle them, they are all at different heights. Not one the same. Is that unusual?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say. But they are all on the same bracelet. Maybe they’re not meant to be.’

  ‘Bit strange to me. Can you tell me anything about the bracelet, if it matches the items hanging from it? I mean in composition. We could take it for an analysis but that would be a bit unusual to take parts of it and break them down for analysis. It is only a bracelet.

  Damn it, there’s got to be something here, thought Hope, but I can’t see anything else. ‘Can you get me Jona?’ Hope watched a startled expression come across Peters’ face. ‘Sorry, Miss Nakamura, can you get her for me?’

  Hope held the bracelet to the light as Jona entered the room. She saw Jona’s perplexed face and smiled at the woman in the open white lab coat.

  ‘Peters says you want to break some of my items apart for analysis.’

  Hope grinned. ‘Am I causing trouble?’

  ‘I think you are trouble but what can I do for you?’

  ‘Do you think this bracelet looks odd? None of the charms match in length if you hold the bracelet up. Is that not unusual?’

  Jona stepped closer and bent until she was in line with the bottom of the dangling objects. ‘Maybe, but all the connections are the same. ‘Except . . .’

  Hope watched Jona take the bracelet from her and begin to look at each charm individually. ‘Except what?’ asked Hope, starting to feel a glimmer of excitement.

  ‘Too easy to miss because it’s been done so well. If you look at the connections from the charms to the bracelet, the limbs connecting are all very standard and actually very plain. But where they hook onto the charms, that’s a great piece of work. Someone has crafted an opening, an eye for the limb to hook onto the charm. The bridge where the limb hooks into is actually an addition and not the original casting. You could miss that so easily.’

  Hope found herself bending closer to Jona and staring into her face. ‘So, what does that mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Jona turned to the open door and shouted, ‘Peters, can you bring my laptop in here?’

  While her device was brought in, Jona placed the bracelet on the table and slowly separated out each of the charms on it. ‘Do you think you would recognise something great from something cheap, Sergeant? I thought I would have but this is so clever. Because none of it was uniform, it looks like a cheap bracelet. If something’s not uniform then you assume it’s added a charm from here or there, like you would have with a cheap bracelet. But this is no cheap bracelet. Well, actually the bracelet is but the charms I believe are the real jewels here.’

  Hope leant over Jona’s shoulder as she started to work on her laptop. The woman was going through the itinerary of the items stolen in the Spanish job from years ago.

  ‘Look,’ said Jona pointing at the screen, ‘if you search for a charm bracelet there’s nothing there and someone has assumed that the other pieces are all part of this. But they’re not. Look at the elephant on the bracelet. And then look at the one on the screen.’

  ‘That’s a match,’ shouted Hope a little too loudly.

  Jona pulled her shoulders in and calmly pronounced, ‘Yes, that is a match, Detective. And there’s your emerald in the carriage. And there’s the kite shape with the diamond. But that hippo is not there. Nor the clover leaf. I reckon they must be cover for the others.’

  ‘There was the cross in the sand. You don’t think they buried it in sporadic areas, a small part at a time?’

  ‘Maybe. But you have many maps which don’t show something obvious, or do they? Or do they know a reference point we don’t?

  ‘Dusty’s bloody Harbour,’ murmured Hope.

  ‘I need to get back into this and sort out what item is what. You should take this to Macleod—might cheer him up.’

  Hope looked to the side and noted Peters had left the room. In a moment of euphoria, she threw her arms around Jona and kissed her on the side of the head before quickly releasing. ‘You did it, Jona,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’

  Jona turned her head and gave Hope a look she had not seen before. There seemed to be no emotion in the face, neither happy nor sad, no shock or delight. Maybe she had gone too far.

  ‘Macleod, Hope,’ whispered Jona, ‘take it to Macleod. And you did it. Happy to help but don’t do that here.’

  Hope reddened and nodded before striding off to Macleod. She said not here, said nothing about elsewhere.

  Chapter 18

  The night had fallen when Hope made her way back to the police station to look for Macleod. Inside she was bubbling, half excited by the case and half by her developing friendship with Jona. There was a confidence back in her stride and she breezed in through the door of the compact station and immediately sought Macleod out in his back office only to find the door locked.

  ‘Does anyone know where the Inspector is?’ she asked the room in a controlled but loud voice.

  ‘Back at the hotel, Sergeant. I believe he’s eating. At least that’s what he said.’

  Thanking the officer for this information, Hope turned on her heel and strode the short distance to the hotel, ignoring the drizzle that was beginning to fall. Although there were some streetlights, it was hard to see much along the road until a car passed by. Castlebay was similar in many ways to many of the towns and villages she encountered in the islands but the road through it was undulating and when the sun was up, you looked out onto a glorious bay and the iconic castle in the middle of it. But the night gave the place more of an edge. Maybe before when there were no murders committed in the area it would have seemed a quaint if wintry setting but now the shadows held possible menace.

  The hotel was busy, an influx of visitors due to the sudden notoriety of the island in the current case and Hope did not see her boss at the first time of looking arou
nd the dining room. Taking a second look, she saw him in a far corner with a mobile phone attached to his ear. His face looked sullen. Before him was a half-eaten plate of beef which looked positively delicious to Hope. It had been a while since she had eaten, and the hunger pangs were beginning in her stomach.

  ‘Sir—’

  Macleod held up a hand to Hope and turned in his chair so his mouth was out of view. He was speaking in a whisper and Hope struggled to hear what he was saying. It was not that she wanted to eavesdrop but when your number one arrives with purpose what could be detaining him on the phone.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Call me anytime.’ Macleod turned back to Hope looking almost shell shocked. His face was white as if he had been passed by a ghost. At first, he did not look at Hope but instead took his coffee in his hand and drank from the cup in quick gulps. Hope swore his hand almost trembled.

  ‘Are you okay, sir?’

  ‘What? Yes, I’m okay, McGrath; just an old friend has had some bad news. Just poor timing, really, I guess.’ He seemed slow, as if his mind were not fully in the moment. ‘You just go along and then, wham, it blindsides you, Hope. Makes your view of people change when you see them for what they really are.’

  Hope did not understand what her boss was talking about and tried to wait for an explanation, to allow him to engage her in his moment of difficulty but her earlier find was too much to hold back.

  ‘Sir, Karen Gibbons, she had a charm bracelet which we decided was nothing when we looked at her effects recently but having had a closer look some of the charms are from that Spanish robbery. It’s making me wonder just how this loot is all spread out. Is it in one place or do these maps give a number of locations because that is how they have spread out the stolen items? Maybe there isn’t one single stash.’

  ‘Slow down. And not here. Let’s go through to the bar and get a quiet corner.’

  Hope hopped from one foot to the other trying to contain her excitement. He had put her on search organisation and yet she was still coming up with the goods with regard to investigation of the recovered items. He’d know who his Sergeant was now. And then Hope watched Macleod simply leave half of his dinner on the plate and step away to the bar.

  ‘Do you want anything from the bar?’

  ‘Coffee, if you’re having one, sir.’

  ‘Okay, always good to have coffee with people.’

  Hope stared at Macleod as he shuffled away. His shoulders were down, and he seemed morbid. Looking at the plate he had left behind, she saw the long slice of roast beef and looked around her quickly. Oh, sod it. With a fast hand she grabbed the slice and stuffed it in her mouth chewing in a rush to make the evidence vanish. After a quick wipe of her mouth and hands with a napkin, Hope strode into the bar after Macleod.

  Macleod was sitting at a table in the far corner and there was only one table close to him where a dark-haired, older man was enjoying a pint of Guinness with a whiskey chaser beside it. He had dark, thick-rimmed glasses on that reminded Hope of Stewart, the new star of the team and she felt a little shock at how she felt a touch of spite. Was it Allinson that had made her lose her confidence, or was it disappearing already after leaving her Glasgow home? Heck, she was starting to imagine feelings to a woman who could not feel the same inclination towards her. But Jona was good for her, and she just wished she could be good for Jona too.

  Hope slid in beside Macleod as two coffees arrived. He turned and tried to give Hope a smile, but it was as if the energy was not available for him to complete the task. Reaching inside his pocket, he took out some folded sheets of A4 and held them up so only Hope and himself could see them. On the sheet were various snapshots of the maps they had gathered so far.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve discovered then,’ said Macleod, sounding flat.

  ‘I was going through the belongings of our victims again and came across a charm bracelet owned by Karen Gibbons. On closer inspection, it did not seem to have been put together right so I had Jona—sorry, Miss Nakamura look at it. She said that about half the charms are actually from the Spanish heist the cross is from. Because they looked like they were correctly attached to the charm bracelet, no one clocked them as individual items.’

  ‘All right,’ said Macleod, sipping his coffee and focusing in more, ‘what does that help us with?’

  ‘Just a hunch, but maybe the whole of the loot is spread about, here, there, and everywhere. Maybe that’s why there’s different positions on the map.

  Macleod sat back and Hope could see he was in deep thought. For all that he was an older man stuck fighting to break free from earlier times and conventions, one thing he did have was a knack for spotting what was really going on. She had learnt to give him space to think because he was able to grasp the reality of the situation with a fuller understanding than she did. After a few minutes, he shook his head.

  ‘No. Not spread out, there’s too much of it. Why just give everyone a map of a portion of the loot? They would have dug it up by now if they had hit hard times. No, something has them running for the treasure now. Something has made them wait.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t get a piece of the jigsaw. I mean it’s been a long time since that robbery. They could have shifted the goods on by now. But there are these maps, handed out, a piece each. That’s to keep them honest and in check, so they don’t move it on before they have agreed to. But maybe there are pieces left out, put to one side for a rainy day, hidden but available to each of them.’

  ‘So, what do we do with this?’

  ‘What can we do, Hope? We wait for Stewart. She’s at the source of this. Ross and her are close, so close they nearly got killed. There’s nothing we can do. We either find the children of MacPhail running around here and that Dudley bloke, or we get to the loot before them. Listen to me. I’ve fought hard at every press conference to say stolen items and not loot and I‘m beginning to talk like a pirate myself.’

  ‘But why don’t we take a look at our maps and see if we can find these smaller deposits? We could get ahead of them, we could . . .’

  Macleod was not listening. Instead, he was focused on the man at the table next to them. Hope stopped herself from turning around fully to look. Instead, she brought her finger up to her chest and then pointed at the man but tight into herself so the man could not see what she was doing. Macleod gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Hope stood up quickly and spun around reaching out for the man. But his chair was already falling backwards, and he was halfway across the bar.

  ‘Get him, McGrath, that’s Dudley!’

  Hope exploded into a run across the bar but caught the leg of a seat as an unsuspecting drinker moved back their chair. Tumbling forward, she clattered into a man carrying a tray of drinks which flew to the air. Beer landed on her neck and glasses smashed on the floor, but she picked herself up and continued to chase.

  The man was out of the door and when she reached the outside of the street, she barely saw him in the poor light. But there was a foot and the sound of heavy breathing in the dark and Hope raced towards that sound. Along from the hotel was a loop of road that led down to the harbourside and her fleeing suspect had taken this route. Running hard, she sought him in the dark and could hear the gentle crash of the sea against the harbour walls.

  A small outboard motor started and Hope left the road and moved onto the rocky shore, fighting to keep her footing on the wet rocks. There were a number of tenders nearby presumably from the yachts and motorboats who had arrived after the news of the first murders had leaked. Some would be treasure seekers, some just wanting in on the buzz of the situation but with the island packed, many had brought or hired yachts and boats and now filled the moorings just off the shore.

  A grey dinghy was leaving shore and heading for Kisimul castle and Hope jumped into a similar tender and started the engine. She heard Macleod shouting for her to wait for him, but she was in pursuit. I’ll show him, bring back his suspec
t for him. Stewart’s not the only one who can get into the field.

  It took only a few minutes for the suspect’s tender to reach the castle, sitting out in the bay, dark as the night that now surrounded it. Hope struggled to see much as she landed her craft and then noticed a figure in the dark scrambling across the rocks. Jumping from her tender, Hope slipped on a seaweed covered rock and came down hard with a thump, her cheek crashing into a stone. The whole side of her body smarted but she got back to her feet and then as quickly as she dared, she began to cross the treacherous rocks until she got to the castle walls.

  ‘Dudley, you bastard. We have you now. Pretty poor place to stash a map, especially for an old fart like yourself.’

  The voice was young and male, and Hope slid along the castle walls until she could make out two figures in the dark. Th older man was standing upright with his hands raised, startled from the little Hope could see of his face. It was poorly lit by a torch held by the other man who was also holding a gun, the torch barely lighting the barrel but even Hope could recognise the shape.

  ‘Map! Where have you stashed it? I know it’s here somewhere. Say or I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Kill me, then you won’t have a map and no goods, son. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Then I’ll shoot your kneecaps until you tell me. One by one so you can’t walk. All the money in the world won’t be any good when you have to crawl for your dinner.’ With that the young man stepped forward and pointed the gun directly at Dudley’s knees.

  ‘Okay, I’ll get it.’

  Hope felt her heart beating hard, and the adrenalin begin to flow but she tried to hold herself in check, awaiting the correct moment to intervene. If she could get the map as well as both of these suspects, she’d show Macleod her worth.

  Dudley walked a little further around the castle until he reached down into a gap in the rocks. At least that’s how it looked to Hope as everything was so dark. Dudley threw a bag at the other man.

  ‘There. Now piss off before they get here. I’m being pursued.’