Reilly thanked the woman, and his shoulders slumped as we walked out of the shop. I studied his posture from behind as I followed. Was his dejection just a little bit too exaggerated to be real, like he was putting on airs? Or was I simply being too paranoid? I hated thinking about one of my oldest and closest friends like that, but at the same time, I couldn’t help it. That shadow organisation had instilled an unhealthy amount of suspicion in me, which now coloured the way I looked at every single thing in my life.
“Why don’t I drive you back to your hotel?” I suggested to Reilly, clapping a hand on his shoulder as we stood in the rain about ten feet from the shop entrance. The shopkeeper came up and flipped the sign hanging in the door to closed and began to close the blinds up.
Reilly sighed and nodded. “Looks like this was a dead end. Sorry to drag out all the way out here in the rain, Callum.”
“Hey, you know I’m always here for you,” I said, cuffing him on the shoulder once before I pulled my arm back to my side. I licked my lips and thought carefully about my next words. “But you know that if there’s something else going on, you can tell me, right? I’m all ears.”
Reilly glanced at me as the rain pattered against the umbrella and slowly slid down the canvas to freefall toward the ground. He seemed a little hesitant, though I could only tell because I’d known him for so long, and I could recognise his minute tells, like the way the corner of his right eyebrow twitched ever so slightly whenever he was uncertain.
“I’m just worried about my friend, is all,” he told me, and I could read the worry clearly enough in his eyes.
“Well, we’ll find him,” I promised, even as that thread of doubt hit me again, and I wondered what the hell was going on below the surface. I had to trust that Reilly would tell me eventually and, until then, I would keep humouring him with this. What were friends for, after all?
Seven
The following morning Fletcher and I met Martin down in the laboratory. He had yet to call us with any information on the number plate, and though he’d told us to wait until he contacted us, we were both feeling a little impatient, so we decided to risk getting our heads chewed off and went to check-in.
Martin and Benson were seated before the sophisticated computer array when we pushed the swinging doors open, though I couldn’t make out what was happening on the screens from all the way across the room.
“Hey, Martin,” I called as Fletcher and I started towards them.
“I haven’t gotten any hits on the plate yet,” Martin replied without turning around. “It’s registered to a shell company that doesn’t actually exist when I tried to look it up, and I’m still working on finding its parent company. I’ve been monitoring the traffic cams in the city, waiting for a hit, but the van hasn’t passed by any of them yet.”
“And traffic cam footage is a little patchy, especially in the city centre,” I said. The streets were so old and winding that there were plenty of blind spots and hidden streets that the van could use to escape the prying eyes of the traffic cams if it really knew what it was doing.
Martin nodded and finally swung his chair around to look at us. “Exactly. So I’m doing my best, but it might take me a while, especially if Smyth has parked the van somewhere.”
“You said the van was registered to a shell company,” Fletcher added as she stared past Martin’s shoulder at the various programs running across the computer screen. “Was there any mention of it being a rental or anything like that? I figure it’s safe to assume that Smyth had an accomplice in his escape from the hospital since someone had to bring the van there for him. Maybe we’d have better luck hunting down the accomplice?”
But Martin shook his head. “I checked for that. The company name is the only one listed on the registration, something called Vera Incorporated. They have an address listed that’s here in Inverness, but when I searched for it on Google Earth, it looks like it’s just an abandoned warehouse.”
“Still worth checking out,” I said. “Can you email the info to me?”
Martin gave me a thumbs-back, and without having to be asked, Benson pulled up Martin’s email on a separate screen, attached the relevant file to a new message, and sent it to me. Two seconds later, my phone dinged in acknowledgement.
“Thanks,” I said to both of them. “We’ll leave you to it.”
Martin’s fingers were already back on the keyboard as he altered the specs of whatever search he was running, so he tipped his head back as a sort of farewell, and Benson gave us a wave.
Fletcher and I left the lab and got back into the lift, and I leant against the wall, my ankles crossed in front of me.
“So I had an idea last night,” I said, and Fletcher curiously raised an eyebrow my way. “Obviously, we don’t have a lot to go on. We don’t have any information on the robbers themselves, and Smyth is in the wind for the moment.”
The lift doors slid open, and we stepped out onto the station’s main floor, which was far more hectic than the quiet lab down below as uniformed constables and other officers rushed this way and that, each one busy with their own case or paperwork.
“But,” I continued as Fletcher and I began to walk toward our desks, “we know someone who I think might just be able to give us the information we need and also owes me a favour.”
“Who?” Fletcher asked, her brow furrowed slightly.
“Alec MacGowan,” I said, and Fletcher’s eyes lit up with recognition.
We’d met Alec MacGowan on our first case together. He was a thief and our top suspect in his son’s kidnapping for a long time. In the end, it turned out that a man named Thomas Holden had blackmailed him into stealing the deed to a seemingly innocuous castle out in the highlands because there was a secret trove of Viking artefacts buried beneath the castle that Holden had wanted to sell them for a tidy sum. Alec had escaped police custody to attempt to rescue his son, but he’d also helped us take Holden down, so I’d let him slip away after that night, and he’d left a note that simply read I.O.U. on my car. I thought it was about time to cash that in.
“The thief, really?” Fletcher asked sceptically. We sat down at our desks, and she immediately spun her chair, so she was directly facing me. “Why?”
“He owes me a favour,” I explained. “He’s a top-notch thief. He knows a lot about the way that community operates. He might even know who our bank robbers are and can lead us to them.”
“People who might even be his friends,” Fletcher pointed out. “Why would he ever turn them over to us?”
“Well, we have something he wants,” I said.
“And what’s that?”
“The power to put a good word in with his ex-wife.”
Fletcher blinked at me a couple of times as she contemplated my words, lightly scratching her neck. Finally, she let out a short laugh. “Oh, that’s low.”
“True,” I agreed with a shrug. “But it would work.”
“I don’t doubt it. Alright. Let’s do it. Do you know how to get a hold of him?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. Alec hadn’t left me any way to contact him, so his I.O.U. wasn’t exactly all that helpful. “But it’s possible Ainslee does. What do you say we pay her a visit?”
“If we show up on her doorstep, she’s just going to assume that something’s gone terribly wrong,” Fletcher said.
I nodded and shot a finger gun her way, acknowledging her good point. “I’ll send her a text first. I think I’ve still got her number around here somewhere.”
I began to dig through my desk, searching for the list of contact numbers I kept from old cases. I kept them on my phone while a case was active, but I deleted them after everything was wrapped up, not wanting to clutter up my contacts folder too much. I still kept a physical record in a little leather address book, just in case I ever needed those numbers again.
I found the book buried way at the bottom of one of my desk drawers and flipped rapidly through the pages until I found what I was looking for. The bo
ok was one of many, and this particular one went back about ten years. It was almost full and falling apart just a little bit with age. The information was organised chronologically by case and then alphabetised within each section, so after I found the Wair case, it wasn’t that hard to skim down the list until I spotted Ainslee’s entry.
I plugged the number into a new text and then typed out a quick message, making it as short as I possibly could. “Hello, Ms Wair. This is DCI MacBain. Could we come by and have a chat? We’re looking for your ex-husband. It’s nothing bad, I promise.”
Ainslee replied almost immediately, which surprised me, saying that she and Finn were out picking a few things up from the store, but they would be home in half an hour, and we were welcome to come by.
“We’re in business,” I said to Fletcher.
“I thought you didn’t like Alec MacGowan very much.” Fletcher leant back in her seat and kicked one foot up onto her desk. “Something about him abandoning his son like your father did to you?”
I sighed and tipped my head back until it was resting on the very top of my chair, my neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. “I didn’t, at first. I certainly don’t agree with his reasoning that completely separating himself from his family’s lives was the best way to protect them. But I suppose I understand him a little better now that I know my father didn’t just walk out on us. Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances. And he was there when Finn needed him, and from what little I heard, it sounds like he was trying to stick around, but he was letting Ainslee control the how.
Fletcher hummed softly and slowly nodded, dropping her foot back to the ground when her chair threatened to overturn. Her boot hit the floor with a thump, though she almost upended a pile of paperwork in the process.
“We should get going,” I decided as I stood up and patted my pockets to make sure I had everything. “It’ll take us a while to cross the city.”
“Right.” Fletcher rose as well, and together, we crossed the station floor and stepped outside. It had stopped raining sometime late last night, and the dampness still hung in the air and darkened all the surrounding pavement.
We got into my car this time, and since I didn’t exactly remember where Ainslee lived anymore, I copied the address from my little book into the GPS on my phone, giving it to Fletcher to hold since I couldn’t route it through any sort of centre console in my car like she could in hers.
She directed me through the traffic, following the instructions on the screen so that we skirted around the city centre as best we could. Before long, we were cruising through one of Inverness’s quieter, more residential districts, brick townhouses lining the streets as green grass swelled along the dividers between the cul de sacs.
Ainslee’s home sat at the back of the neighbourhood, though when we arrived, there weren’t any vehicles in the small parking area that she shared with her neighbours. Fletcher and I stepped out of the car, and I checked my phone for any notifications, but my screen was empty. So the two of us leant against the bonnet to wait, the air moist but cool around us.
We loitered there for about ten minutes until a small, slightly battered car turned onto the street. I watched its approach, and when I recognised Ainslee Wair’s face through the windshield, I pushed off my car and rose to my full height. She lifted one hand off the wheel in greeting as she pulled past us into the cobblestone parking area in front of her townhouse.
“Hello, Inspectors,” she said as she climbed from her car and went to help her son out of the backseat.
Ainslee Wair was a small woman, her blonde hair short and curly and accenting the faintly cherubic lines of her face. Her son, Finn, had his father’s red curls, and he’d grown since we’d last seen him nearly a year ago. He waved at us when his mother told him to say hello, but he didn’t seem to recognise us. He looked like he was doing well after everything that had happened, his smile wide and open and pushing dimples into his cheeks, and I was glad to see that it looked like he had bounced back. We’d all been worried that his kidnapping would scar him irrevocably, and while I was sure it had, in some way, he seemed to be moving past it.
Ainslee passed Finn the house keys so he could unlock the front door while she went to open the boot. Finn snatched up the keys eagerly and practically bounded over to the door. Clearly, this was a job that he enjoyed.
Fletcher and I immediately moved to help Ainslee with the bags. She looked surprised for a second, then smiled at us in thanks and let us loop the straps of the reusable bags over our arms. We followed her into the house and straight down the hall to the kitchen, setting everything down on top of the dining table. Ainslee gave Finn one of the bags, and he dutifully went to the fridge to start putting the food away since that was probably the only thing he could reach at his height.
“You said you’re looking for Alec?” Ainslee asked as she took a tub of ice cream from a bag and moved it to the freezer before it started to melt. “Why? Has he done something?” Worry coloured her voice deeply, and though her back was currently to us, I could still see tension riding along the lines of her shoulders.
“He hasn’t done anything. He’s not in trouble,” I assured her. “He just owes me a favour, and I was hoping to get in contact with him to cash it in.”
Fletcher was staring at the bags of shopping like she wanted to help put everything away, but she didn’t actually make a move, probably because she didn’t know where anything went and would just be more of a hindrance than a help. I understood the urge. I felt a little odd just standing there as Ainslee moved back to the table to fish through the bags for anything else that needed to go in the freezer and fridge.
“I see,” she said, a bag of frozen fruit in her hands.
“Have you seen him or spoken to him since everything happened?” I asked.
“He left me a letter,” Ainslee said as she took the frozen fruit to the freezer. “It said that he would love to be a part of our lives again, but he’d understand if I didn’t want that. He left me a number where I can reach him whenever I’m ready.” Ainslee shut the freezer door, leaning over Finn, where he still sat on the ground with the fridge open as he put the fresh food away. She laid a gentle hand on his head as her face screwed up with a sudden overflow of emotion. “I haven’t… I haven’t called it yet. I want to, or I think I do, but I’m… terrified to, I guess. So much has happened between us that I don’t know if I could ever trust him again, but God, I miss him so much.” She shook her head slightly as she sighed. “I loved him. I really loved him, but is that enough to risk him hurting me again?”
She raised her eyes to look at Fletcher and me, clearly desperate for us to give her the definitive answer, to tell her what to do, but I could only shrug and spread my hands out helplessly before me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted honestly. “My father left us, too. If he were to try to walk back into my life right now, I don’t know what I would do.”
That had been true when I thought he’d simply walked out on us, and it was still true now, even when I knew that something or someone might have taken him away from us. He’d still left, and he’d still chosen to hide the truth from us, and I couldn’t say if that was a gap that I wasn’t sure could be bridged again.
Ainslee nodded as understanding and disappointment warred across her face. She sucked in a deep, shaking breath and squeezed her eyes shut for a second as she fought for control. Finn finished with the shopping and stood up to close the fridge door. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his face into her thigh. Ainslee rested her hand on top of his head again, flattening his curls, and a small smile curled her lips as she stroked his hair.
“I’ve got the number memorised,” she said to Fletcher and me. “I’d be happy to give it to you.”
“That would be great,” I said, and Ainslee went to find a scrap of paper to write it down for us. “Do you want us to pass along any sort of message for you?”
Ainslee was hunched over the counter with a pen in
her hand, and she froze with the tip pressed to the page, her breath catching in her chest. “I guess… tell him I’m still working up to it. And tell him I’d also understand if I’ve waited too long, and he needs to move on.”
I nodded, though I didn’t think Alec MacGowan was the type to move on. It seemed like he’d be willing to wait for Ainslee and Finn until the end of time.
Ainslee finished writing down the number and crossed back to the kitchen table to pass it to me. I gave it a quick once over before tucking it in my pocket.
“Thank you,” I said to Ainslee. “I really appreciate it.”
“What is it that you need his help with?” Ainslee replied. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“A bank was robbed yesterday. We were hoping Alec might have some intel that would help us track the perpetrators down.”
Ainslee nodded twice. “Well, I hope he can help.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “But I’ll pass on your message either way.”
“Thanks. Come on. We’ll walk you to the door.”
Finn was still attached to Ainslee’s waist, but at her words, he let go, and the two of them shepherded Fletcher and me toward the front door. Ainslee opened it for us, and Fletcher and I stepped out one by one as I checked the sky to make sure it wasn’t going to try to rain on us again.
“Say goodbye to the nice inspectors,” Ainslee told Finn, and he waved eagerly at us.
“Bye, nice inspectors!” he chirped, and I couldn’t help but grin at him as I waved back.
Ainslee and Finn stood in the doorway until Fletcher and I got into my car, then she urged her son back inside, pausing to give us one last, soulful look before she closed the door and sealed them both into the brick townhouse
“Finn seems okay,” Fletcher said as I started the engine.
I released the handbrake and slowly rolled away from the kerb. “He does, though we were only there for a few minutes.”
Fletcher nodded thoughtfully, her expression sobering somewhat. “At least he’s got his mum to see him through it.”
Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller Page 10
