“Probably safe to say that Carmichael won’t be coming out this way,” I said as I looked at the lock. “But we should still post someone outside, just in case.”
Alec took out his phone the moment I mentioned Carmichael’s name, looking disappointed that he still hadn’t heard back from the robber. “How long are we going to give Carmichael to respond?” he wondered.
“We’ll give him at least a day,” I said as Fletcher nodded in agreement. “Then we’ll reassess.”
“Are we going to tell the theatre staff what we’re doing?” Fletcher asked as we started back up the corridor toward the stage.
“Probably not,” I said. “They shouldn’t need to get involved, and the fewer people who know about this thing, the fewer people who can accidentally give us away to our quarry.”
We passed through the empty room, but just as we stepped into the next stretch of the hall, one of the dressing room doors opened, and a man in black came out, the theatre’s logo emblazoned on his polo. His back was to us as the three of us stopped dead in our tracks, and for a second, I thought he’d carry on his way without noticing us, but then he looked behind him and froze when he saw us staring there.
“I-- Who are you? You’re not supposed to be back here!” he spluttered, so startled that he couldn’t quite get the words out.
I pulled out my warrant card and flashed it at him. “Sorry to startle you. We got a call that some kids might have broken in here to have a bit of fun. We just came down to check it out. Looks like everything’s quiet, though. We’ll get out of your hair.”
The combination of the badge, my confident tone, and my barrage of words was enough to rattle the young man so that he didn’t have the wherewithal to ask any actual questions about our presence, and he simply nodded and stood back so that the three of us could pass, a clipboard clutched to his chest.
I gave him a swift nod as I walked by, and as soon as we hit the break in the curtains, we stepped through and made a beeline for the doors back to the lobby
“That was impressive,” Alec said as I held the door open for him and Fletcher. We moved into the now empty lobby, the people poking around the small gallery having disappeared while we were investigating the theatre.
“The badge does most of the work,” I replied. “People never question someone with a badge.”
“Though sometimes they really should,” Fletcher muttered, rolling her eyes.
We headed for the exit since we’d done just about everything we could within the theatre for the moment, and just as we hit the streets down to the pavement, a phone began to ring. I didn’t recognise the ringtone as mine, but I pulled my phone out to check, Fletcher copying the move to my right.
But it was Alec’s cell that was ringing, and the moment we realised this, we all froze right in the centre of the steps, staring at the glowing screen.
“Well, answer it!” I ordered when I realised Alec wasn’t making any move to pick up the call.
He jumped and jammed his finger down on the green answer button, hitting a second key to put the call on speaker as he cleared his throat and said, “Hello?”
“Alec MacGowan,” a man drawled. “I certainly didn’t expect to get your call.”
In her excitement, Fletcher whacked me on the arm, and I quickly put a finger to my lips to shush her, not wanting to give our presence away. She quickly settled down, though I could still tell she was buzzing with excitement as she waited to hear what Alec would say next. I felt much the same way.
“I heard you were in a spot of trouble,” Alec said, matching Carmichael’s cool, casual tone. “Thought I’d offer you my services.”
“Yes, how did you hear about that?” Carmichael asked.
“Word travels fast around here if you know where to listen,” Alec replied. “I spoke with Barron. He was supposed to help me move some product, but he’s had to shut down his operation for a while after what happened with those inspectors.”
“That was… unfortunate,” Carmichael said. “I wasn’t expecting that much resistance from the local police. Usually, they’re all bumbling fools.”
I bristled at that, and it was Fletcher’s turn to put her hand on my shoulder to make sure I stayed quiet. Alec smirked at me, clearly amused by my reaction, and I shot him a warning glare, though that just made him grin wider.
“But you’re right,” Carmichael continued. “Without Barron, I need someone else to help me get rid of this cash. I didn’t know you’d moved into fencing. I thought you mostly stuck to thieving.”
“I’ve been expanding my portfolio since we worked together,” Alec replied smoothly. “But we probably shouldn’t talk about this over the phone. You never know who’s listening. What would you say to a meeting?”
There was a beat of silence on the other line, and I worried that Carmichael would reject us outright.
“Depends,” he said finally. “What did you have in mind?”
“There’s a concert happening two days from now at the Raven Box Theatre, eight p.m.,” Alec explained. “It’ll be public and busy enough that no one will pay any attention to us, and we can discuss terms.”
I wondered if we should try to get Carmichael to bring the cash to the concert, but I highly doubted he would go for that, and we’d probably just scare him off if he tried. If Alec could get him to show up with his crew, then we could arrest them and get them to give up the money’s location.
“Fine,” Carmichael said shortly. “But this better not be any sort of trick, MacGowan.”
Alec went even paler than usual, gulping as he looked up at Fletcher and me, but I gave him a hard look to tell him to stay the course.
“Of course not,” he lied, sounding cool and assured. “You’ll find me at one of the booths. I look forward to doing business with you again.”
Carmichael hummed. “We’ll see.” Then he hung up.
Fifteen
Alec’s hand trembled slightly as he put the phone back in his pocket, and all the colour seemed to have drained from his face. Fletcher and I gave him a moment to collect himself, although I was ready to start celebrating our success.
“This was a bad idea,” Alec said eventually, his voice trembling now that he no longer had to put on an act for Carmichael. “I’m going to get in so much trouble for this.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Think of it this way. There’ll be one less person for you to compete with for jobs or whatever.”
“Great,” Alec sneered. “I’ve always wanted to be the thief who turns his own kind over to the police to further his career. That’s fantastic. Thanks for that.”
“You agreed to do this,” I reminded him. “So you’d better do it right.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he snapped. “You don’t need to keep reminding me.”
“Don’t I?” I asked quietly, but Alec ignored me.
“I’ll catch up with you on the day,” he said. “And just so we’re clear, I will not be wearing a wire.”
“We might need you before then,” I warned. “So we can go over the plan.”
Alec was already walking down the theatre steps, and he waved a hand back over his shoulder at me. “Then you know how to get a hold of me.”
Fletcher and I watched him go, and I thought I should call out and stop him, but I didn’t know what I could say to make that happen.
“We should head back to the station,” I said to Fletcher, my eyes still on Alec’s back. “We need to clear this with Dunnel and start building our team.”
“Sure,” Fletcher agreed, and we clattered down the stairs and turned to the side to walk over to the car park.
We paused to grab some lunch before we headed back to the station, eating our sandwiches in the car and dropping crumbs all over the seats. Almost every time we went out and bought lunch, I started thinking about how I should really pack something and save myself some money, and yet I never did. I just didn’t have time to think about putting all that together when I also had a case going on.
So my wallet would just have to bear the strain instead.
By the time we reached the station, I had a missed call and a voicemail from Reilly, asking if we could meet for a drink and talk about what had happened. Reilly didn’t text much, and I didn’t have time to call him back right then, so I filed that task away to do later, after we’d spoken with Dunnel.
The chief was out of his office for once, speaking with a couple of constables by a set of desks while they looked over paperwork, so Fletcher dropped our coats off at our own desks before we headed over there to get his attention. Dunnel glanced up as we approached and held up a finger to tell us to wait before he went back to his conversation. Fletcher and I loitered a few feet away until he was finished, sending the constables off with the completed paperwork. Only then did Dunnel turn to us, crossing his arms while he waited to hear what we wanted.
“Can we talk in your office?” I asked. “It’s about the bank robbery case. We’ve caught a break.”
“Glad to hear it,” Dunnel said, though his voice and face didn’t actually betray any excitement. He motioned for us to follow him, and the three of us threaded our way through the cramped desks to his office.
I shut the door behind us after we’d all entered, and then we took our seats, Fletcher and I side by side across the desk from Dunnel. He picked up his coffee mug and took a sip but immediately pulled a disgusted face when he realised it was cold and set it down again, sliding it all the way to the corner of his desk where he wouldn’t make that same mistake again.
“Talk to me,” he said, steepling his fingers together as he waited for our report.
“We’ve got a plan to catch Carmichael,” I began slowly, taking the time to order my thoughts. We’d been keeping Alec’s involvement on the down low, claiming he was a confidential informant whenever someone asked, but it was probably time to bring him out into the open since he’d be taking such an essential role in our plan. But I didn’t think Dunnel was going to like it. “There’s a concert happening the day after tomorrow. We’re planning to lure him there and use the cover of the concert to get close and arrest him.”
“And how exactly do you plan on doing that?” Dunnel asked.
“Okay, so don’t get mad,” I said, though that was probably the exact wrong thing to say if I wanted Dunnel to stay calm and keep an open mind. He raised both eyebrows and pursed his lips, but didn’t say anything. “We’ve been working with Alec MacGowan to get insider information on Carmichael’s patterns, and we’ve set up a fake business meeting between him and Carmichael at the concert.” I ran through the information quickly, as if that might somehow soften its impact and make Dunnel less angry.
His eyebrows shot even further toward his hairline, though that shouldn’t have been physically possible. “The thief?” he demanded, a hint of incredulous anger caressing his words. “The one who escaped police custody? The one you would never admit was at the Holden estate, even though I’m ninety per cent sure he was there, and you let him walk after? That Alec MacGowan?”
I cringed and offered Dunnel a sheepish grin as Fletcher shrank back in her seat. Dunnel hadn’t moved or sat up in his chair, his voice hadn’t even really changed tone all that much, but I could still see the displeasure rolling off him in waves, filling the entire office like an invisible gas.
“Maybe,” I said, then amended that statement when Dunnel glared at me. “Fine. Yes. Alec helped us catch Holden, so I let him go as a sort of thank you, and now he owes me. That’s why he’s helping us.”
“I want you to walk me through every single thing that has happened since you brought the thief on,” Dunnel ordered very, very calmly, so calmly that it scared me far more than any kind of shouting would have. “Leave nothing out.”
“Right,” I said, looking over at Fletcher to see if she would help me out on this one, but she seemed perfectly content keeping her mouth shut. “So we used his ex-wife, Ainslee, to get in contact with him so I could cash in the I.O.U. He agreed to help us out in return for us putting in a good word with Ainslee. We told him the details of the case and showed him the crime scene. He was the one who found the little calling card that Carmichael left on one of the bills, and he was the one who gave us the guy’s name, and he told us about the fence he thought Carmichael might use.”
I took a deep breath as I’d forced all that out in one go, though I was reluctant to pause in my explanation as that might give Dunnel a chance to interrupt and rip me a new one, but he stayed quiet and waited for me to go on, no doubt building up to some kind of scary climax once I was finished.
“He was with us when we went to go stake out the fence, and he stayed in the car when we got out to confront Carmichael and his crew,” I continued. “He helped us search the fence’s house, but he was the one who accidentally triggered the trap that almost blew it up.”
“You’re sure it was an accident?” Dunnel asked coolly.
“Fairly sure, yes,” I replied, matching Dunnel’s tone as best I could. Just because he was my boss didn’t mean I had to be cowed by him. “What, was he going to blow himself up, too, just to get rid of some evidence? Because that’s what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten him out of there.”
Dunnel hummed in the back of his throat but didn’t say anything else. I paused just long enough to make sure he was finished before I continued.
“When we interrogated Smyth, he gave us a phone number linked to Carmichael, as we told you,” I said. “We had Alec call it, pretending like he could help Carmichael get rid of the marked bills. He just called us back and agreed to meet Alec at the concert.”
“And the plan?” Dunnel asked.
“There are three doors in and out of the building, and one of them requires a passcode,” I explained. “We’re going to post people at each door to keep watch, and we’ll give Alec a little bit of time to speak with Carmichael, just to see if he can ascertain the money’s location. Then we’ll use the cover of the concert to move in and arrest Carmichael and his team.”
“And MacGowan as well?” Dunnel prompted.
Fletcher and I glanced at each other again. That would be the legal, law-abiding thing to do, given what we knew of Alec’s past and the fact that he had technically escaped from police custody, but it didn’t sit right with me. He was going out on a limb to help us, even if we’d essentially bullied him into it, and he’d proved himself to be an ally, one that we’d lose the moment we tried to arrest him.
“That would be a dick move, sir,” I said carefully. “He’s the main reason we’ve gotten so close to Carmichael, and he trusts us, well, sort of. It wouldn’t be right to arrest him.”
“He is still a criminal, isn’t he?” Dunnel asked dangerously, and I gulped.
“Well, he hasn’t mentioned or engaged in any known criminal activity since we’ve been working with him,” I said carefully, knowing I was swimming out into some very dark and frightful waters.
“And how do you know that he’s not going to double-cross you?” Dunnel demanded. He finally shifted positions, sitting forward in his chair so he could rest his forearms on his desk, fingers still steepled together. “Maybe he calls Carmichael again, now that you’ve left him alone, and they set the two of you up. Alec helps him escape, and they disappear with the money together. Did you think about that?”
“Of course, I thought about that!” I snapped, struggling to keep my tone calm. “But I believe he won’t.”
But even as I said it, doubt wriggled within me. Alec had said on multiple occasions that helping us like this would ruin him. What if Dunnel was right, and he decided to betray us to hold on to his standing in the thieving world? It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. Was our promise to put in a good word with Ainslee really enough to keep him in line? But I couldn’t let that worry show to Dunnel. Otherwise, he’d shut the entire operation down, and we’d lose Carmichael for good.
“Fletcher? Where do you stand on this?” Dunnel asked, turning to my partner.
&nbs
p; “I’m with Callum, sir,” she replied promptly. “Yes, it’s a risk. But we know what motivates Alec. He wants to get a second chance with Ainslee, and we have the power to help make that happen. I don’t think he’ll risk losing that chance. It’s more important to him than money or reputation.”
“I don’t like it,” Dunnel said, shaking his head. “Your hold on MacGowan is tenuous at best, and there are simply too many things that could go wrong. You’ll have to find another way to take down Carmichael. You’ve got plenty of potential leads down in the lab between that phone number and the number plate. Eventually, you’ll get a hit off one of them.”
“I don’t think we will, sir,” I contradicted him. I perched on the edge of my seat and stared straight into Dunnel’s eyes. “Carmichael has a well-oiled system in place. We’ve thrown him by catching him at the fence’s place, and no doubt, Crane’s death threw him too, but it won’t be long before he recollects himself and disappears. He’ll ditch that car. Eventually, he’ll ditch that phone, too, and he’ll be gone. We need to get to him before that happens. Otherwise, he’ll just keep robbing banks, and people might keep getting hurt. I really do believe this is our best shot to get at Carmichael. I think it’s worth the risk.”
Dunnel sighed, and I watched his face for any sign of a shift in his opinion, but he’d always been skilled at putting on a mask, and I couldn’t get much off him.
“You know I can shut this down with a single word,” Dunnel said finally.
I started to squirm in my seat but forced myself to still, holding my breath and nodding while I waited silently for Dunnel to continue since he seemed to be building up to something.
“And I want to make it very clear that I do not like this,” Dunnel said. “I think it’s a terrible idea, and it’s going to end badly for all of us, but I also respect that you’re the senior investigating officer on this case, and your knowledge of it is a lot more intimate than mine is.”
Fatal Transaction: A DCI MacBain Scottish Crime Thriller Page 22
