I nodded in agreement. “We’ll get on that. Thanks, Chief.”
Fletcher and I saw ourselves out of Dunnel’s office and headed for our desks. I wanted to email Martin that phone number, just in case he could run a trace on it. I didn’t even bother to take my coat off as I sat down. I just woke up my computer and opened up a fresh message window, my fingers flying across the keyboard as I typed.
“What’s our next move?” Fletcher asked, sitting down in her own chair and spinning it to face me. “We’ve got this phone number, but Smyth said Carmichael didn’t answer it when he called. It’s more than likely he won’t answer when we call.”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” I said. “But we’ll need to bring Alec back in for it.”
Fletcher and I met Alec MacGowan at Bellfield Park once again, and we found him on the same bench as we had the first time. Fletcher and I approached and sat down without a word, figuring he’d be less jumpy this time, and sure enough, his posture was a little looser, and he casually hooked an elbow over the back of the bench as he shifted to the side to look at us. He’d found his own plasters for the cuts he’d gotten from all the flying his glass, though his were skin-toned rather than patterned, like mine.
Alec raised an eyebrow when he took in my plasters but didn’t say anything about them. He just sat there waiting for one of us to speak, although I didn’t launch into the matter at hand right away. I watched the flow of daily life for a few moments instead, dreaming as I usually did when I was people watching.
“We spoke with the security guard,” I said finally. “He confirmed our theory that Carmichael had bribed him to cut the cameras and ignore the alarm from the door. And he gave us the phone number he was supposed to use to contact Carmichael if anything went wrong.”
“Have you called it yet?” Alec asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I figure we only have one shot at this, and we want to make sure we do it absolutely right.”
“And you want me to be the one to call,” Alec guessed with a sigh.
“Bingo,” I said. “He knows you, so he’ll be more likely to listen. All you have to do is tell him that you know of a way to get the marked notes off his hands and set up a meeting somewhere. We’ll do the rest.”
Alec rose from the bench rather abruptly and walked a couple of steps closer to the river, where he began to pace across the grass, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. I glanced at Fletcher, and her concern at Alec’s sudden shift in behaviour matched mine. We stood as one and moved closer to Alec, though I wasn’t totally sure if it was so we could talk more easily or so we could stop him if he tried to bolt.
“What’s the matter, mate?” I asked as Alec continued to wear a groove into the grass.
“Asking me for information was one thing,” Alec said, his voice tense and his movements sharp. “Asking me to actually set another thief up for a fall? I don’t know, MacBain. That feels like something else entirely. I don’t know if I can do it. We do have a code, you know. It’s tenuous and changeable at best, but it’s still there.”
“But you owe me,” I reminded him. “I thought that was sacred to you.”
“Well, yes, but this might fall outside the lines of an I.O.U.,” Alec said. He spun sharply on his heel and headed back in the other direction, carving out a five-foot line in front of Fletcher and me. “If it gets out that I helped you like that… hell, if people even find out that I fed you information… then I’m done. People will never want to work with me again. They probably won’t even want to buy from me.”
“Would that be so bad?” Fletcher wondered quietly, and Alec shot her a confused glance. “You’d be able to go back to Ainslee if she’ll have you, and you wouldn’t have to worry about your lifestyle affecting your family.”
“Except when they come to exact their revenge for my betrayal!” Alec snapped, his voice cracking halfway through. “Because there will be a price to pay, I guarantee it!”
“Alec, you need to calm down,” I said.
I stepped right into his path so that he had no choice but to skid to a halt or plough right into me, and I put my hands on his shoulders, holding him in place. His chest heaved as he panted, though it was more from anxiety than exertion, and I could tell he was on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just back off and tell him we didn’t need his help. I’d have to find some way to calm him down while still getting him on board with the plan, and that felt like a very fine line to walk.
“Look, we’ll make sure that none of the blame falls on you, okay?” I continued. “We’ll do our best to plan this, so it seems like it was all a grand coincidence, or we were staking you out or something, alright? But we can’t do it without you. We need someone Carmichael trusts.” Alec gave me a sardonic look, and I amended my statement. “Fine. Someone he knows to reach out and make first contact. You do this for us, and I’ll talk to Ainslee for you. I’ll tell her all about how you helped us catch a killer, and how you did the right thing, how you did something for your son to be proud of. That might really help convince her to give you a second chance.”
Alec hesitated, chewing at his lip, and he looked as if he wanted to push past me and continue to pace as he thought about it, but I kept my hands on his shoulders, pinning him to the ground in front of me so I could stare into his face and force him to stare into mine.
“That’s a low move, using Ainslee as leverage to get me to do what you want,” Alec said, though he didn’t look mad about it, just resigned. “But Ainslee wants a man with integrity. What kind of integrity do I have if I betray my own kind like that?”
“How do you know what Ainslee wants?” I countered. “Have you talked to her? Have you asked her? All you did was decide what you thought was best for her and run off. You never gave her a chance to accept this side of you.”
“You’ve been putting her on a pedestal,” Fletcher added from the side. “And being on a pedestal’s no good for anyone.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, lifting one hand off Alec’s shoulders just long enough to snap my fingers and point at Fletcher. “How about you let her come down to your level? How about you really learn what she wants from you rather than assuming things?”
“First off, who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like this?” Alec demanded. He finally shook off my hands and took two quick steps back, crossing his arms firmly across his chest as he put space between us. “And second of all…” He trailed off, suddenly unable to maintain the fire that his anger had lit in him. “Damn it, you’re right, aren’t you? I’ve been doing just that. But that doesn’t mean I think this is a good idea! This is more likely to end badly than anything else!”
“Everything we do could end badly,” I said, thinking of the Kraken and my father and the strange lab beneath the waves of Loch Ness. “Crossing the street could end badly. Asking someone out on a date could end badly. Every single case Fletcher and I work could end badly. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still do it. You do things because of the chance that they’ll end well, because you’re trying to move forward, or because you’re trying to make a change.” I shrugged and glanced away from Alec to look at the river again. “I guess I really just have one question for you. Are you willing to move forward? Because this is how you do it.”
I turned back to Alec and raised one eyebrow as a challenge, one hand propped on my hip. Alec stared at me, then at Fletcher, then off across the park. He took his phone out of his pocket and stared at something on the screen for a long time, although he kept it tilted away from us so we couldn’t see what was there. I had a feeling it was a picture of Ainslee. I stayed quiet and let him think. I’d said my piece, however philosophical it had gotten there at the end, and there was nothing much left to do except let Alec come to his own decision. If he said no, we’d think of something else. There was almost always an alternative plan to be found, even if it wasn’t necessarily as good as the first.
“If I do this,” Ale
c said slowly, and I felt my heart lift with a little bit of hope, “then it’s going to be planned down to the T, and I want to know every single detail before I even make the call, okay? That means the when, the where, the who, the how. Everything. And I want your word that no one’s going to try to arrest me at the end of this.”
“That all sounds reasonable,” I agreed and held my hand out for him to shake. “Do we have a deal?”
Alec didn’t shake right away. “And I reserve the right to back out at any time if I think there’s a danger to my family or me.”
I looked over at Fletcher to see what she thought, and she shrugged, leaving it up to me.
“Fine,” I said. “But if you back out before the job is done, then I won’t speak to Ainslee for you.”
“Fine,” Alec agreed, parroting my exact tone. “We have a deal.”
He slapped his palm against mine, and we shook, nodding firmly at each other as relief flooded through me that we’d gotten him on board.
“Alright,” I said as I released Alec’s hand. “Let’s head back to the station and start--”
“Woah, hold on,” Alec interrupted. “What part of I can’t go there do you not understand? A thief can’t just walk into a police station. It sounds like the start of a bad joke that ends with me in a cell.”
“Right,” I said, frowning. “Then we’ll go to my flat.”
“We’ll have to swing by my place first to grab my laptop,” Fletcher added, and I nodded that we could do that.
“How does that sound?” I asked Alec.
“That’s fine,” he replied. “I’m certainly not showing you where I live.”
I wasn’t necessarily sure I wanted Alec to know where I lived either, but that was just my paranoia talking, and the little voice was easily ignorable. Alec was probably trustworthy, at least when compared to the shadow organisation that had been plaguing my life.
So Fletcher and Alec followed me back to my car, and we drove first to Fletcher’s flat, where Alec and I waited in the car while she dashed inside to fetch her laptop. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, wondering if we were supposed to chat while we waited for Fletcher. He met my gaze and adjusted his cap so that it lay better atop his red curls.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said and hesitated. There was a question burning in my mind, but I wasn’t sure it was really my place to ask it. “If Ainslee let you back into her life, would you stay a thief?”
“I tried the normal life thing when we first got together,” Alec told me, glancing out the window as his face turned contemplative. “It didn’t really work out so well for me.”
“You could try again,” I suggested.
He shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t feel all that different from how I did back then. I still feel that call to the danger, the excitement. I don’t know if I’m ready to hang it up yet. Or if I ever will be.”
“There are plenty of other jobs that involve danger and excitement,” I pointed out.
Alec let out a sardonic laugh. “Yeah? And I’m going to get them with what CV?”
He had a point there.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your life. I just… I’ll admit I do kind of want to see you get back with Ainslee.”
Because if he went back, then a small part of me could believe that my father could come back, too. But I didn’t say that part to him. It was just a little too personal.
Alec actually blushed at my words and turned his head to the side to cover up the sudden reddening of his face, which lit up like a Christmas tree because of his fair skin.
The door to Fletcher’s building opened before we could say anything else, and she came out of the door and started jogging toward the car with a bag clutched to her chest, her pace just a little bit off since her knees no doubt still hurt. She flopped back into her seat and dumped her bag at her feet, huffing out a breath as she pushed a strand of hair away from her face.
“Okay, I’m good to go,” she said, and I dutifully turned us around to head for my own flat. Fletcher and I didn’t live all that far from each other, so it didn’t take me long to cross the narrow streets and junctions, parking as close to the front of my building as I could get once we arrived.
Alec and Fletcher climbed out of the car and immediately headed for the front door, but I paused with my keys in hand and looked around the street, trying to place anything out of the ordinary. There were a couple of other parked cars, but any one of those could have been a cover for something far more devious.
I shook myself and started after Fletcher and Alec when I realised they’d stopped on the front step and were waiting for me to let them in. I needed to stop thinking as if every shadow was a potential threat, but the Kraken’s sudden reappearance had shaken my old patterns loose, bringing all the paranoia right to the very front.
I unlocked the door and led the way inside, taking Fletcher and Alec upstairs to the hall my flat was on. I eyed the other doors as we passed them by. I didn’t really know my neighbours all that well, so any one of them could--
No. I was shutting that line of thought down before it could finish. I couldn’t keep distrusting anyone and everyone.
I let everyone into my flat and clicked on the lights as I took off my shoes and tucked them in the corner. I couldn’t really remember how neat I’d left the place, but when the lights came on, I was pleased to see that it was at least reasonably clean, with only a little bit of disarray in the living room and a couple of dishes in the kitchen sink.
“Let’s set up at the kitchen table,” I said as I hung up my coat. “I’ll go grab my laptop.”
I just had to remember where I’d last left it. I headed into the living room and found the device plugged in by the sofa, so I picked it up, cord and all, and bore it back into the kitchen, placing it by the empty seat across from Fletcher’s. Fletcher was already looking through my cupboards for snacks while Alec perched on the corner of the table and waited for one of us to tell him what to do.
I couldn’t sit down right away, though. First, I needed to check the entire flat for signs of forced entry or intrusion. I went around and examined all the windows, making sure they were still locked and unbroken, and I searched through the things I’d left out to see if they were undisturbed. I even checked the lampshades and assorted knickknacks for bugs, though the logical part of my brain told me that was overkill.
Alec ambled into the living room just as I was running my hands along the floor lamp, and he raised an eyebrow as he folded his arms and leaned against the doorway.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I jumped and quickly pulled my hands away. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” Alec said, unimpressed by my obvious lie. “Well, Fletcher’s ready to get started if you are.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said and followed him out of the living room back into the kitchen, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d missed something.
Fletcher had found the packet of Bourbons that I’d stashed in the back of a cupboard in an attempt to hide them from her, and she held them out to me as I sat down before my laptop. I took two, setting them down directly on the table.
“So we need to pick a place to set up a meeting between Alec and Carmichael,” I began. Alec hopped up on the table again. He didn’t seem capable of sitting in chairs like a normal person. “Preferably, this would be someplace pretty public so that the rest of us can blend in until it’s time to make the arrest. We’ll want to make sure there are plenty of other people around to provide cover, but we also want to make sure we can control the area and the exits.”
“Are you thinking outside or inside?” Fletcher asked around a mouthful of biscuit. “There are plenty of parks we could use that are usually busy at any given time of day, but a wide-open space would be harder for us to clamp down on.”
“And they’re a bit more obvious,” I added. “Carmichael may not want to meet in a park,
especially if he’s bringing that much cash with him. Why don’t we look for any events happening over the next couple of days? Preferably popular ones, and I think it would be better if we could do this inside somewhere. That way, we can place constables outside to block off the exits.”
Fletcher cracked her fingers before placing them on her keyboard, and Alec pulled out his phone, so he could do a slightly pared-down version of the research. The three of us lapsed into silence as we got to work. I started by simply searching for ‘events near me’ and sifting through the myriad of results for something that would work. While we wanted the event to be populous, we didn’t want it to be too huge or extravagant, or we would have trouble controlling the variables. I poked around my social media as well since Facebook was always trying to recommend events to me based on the data it stole off me. I opened up a Word document to make a list of maybes to come back to later, listing out the date, time, address, and anything else I thought might be important.
“Okay, what about this one?” I said about an hour later once I’d compiled a fair number of options and gone back through them in an effort to narrow them down. I spun my laptop around so Fletcher and Alec could see the one I’d chosen. “It’s a concert at one of the smaller venues in town. It’ll still be plenty popular but small enough that we can control the exits and move through the crowd relatively easily if we need to. It’s two days from now, so that’s just short enough to keep Carmichael in town for the meeting.”
“I’ve been to that venue before,” Fletcher said as she leaned across the table to read the address. The packet of Bourbons was completely gone. “It’s got the main exit, one emergency exit, and the back door for the performers. We can easily cover all three of those, and it’s set up like a mix between a bar and an actual theatre, so Alec can snag one of the booths and hold the meeting there.”
“Alec?” I asked. The thief was a big part of the plan, so he deserved to have a say in it as well.
Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller Page 20
