Hostage to Murder (10 page)

Lindsay made a pretence of studying the front nearside wing of the big BMW, crouching down to peer at the bumper. She was straightening up when Keillor re-emerged with a plastic folder in his hand. “Looks all clear to me, sir,” she said.

“Of course it does,” he said impatiently. “How many times do I have to tell you? Whoever knocked down your old man in
Giffnock, it wasn't me and it wasn't my car.” He thrust the folder at her. “There you are.”

Lindsay opened the folder. She glanced at the insurance certificate then looked at the vehicle registration. She forced herself not to smile in triumph. There was all the evidence she needed. The previous owner of the BMW was there in black and white. CCD (Scotland).
Gotcha
, she thought. “That all seems to be in order.” She handed the paperwork back to Keillor. “I'm sorry to have troubled you. I'll have to speak to Mr. Wayne. Just a formality, obviously. But we have to go through the motions.”

At last, Keillor smiled. “I appreciate that, officer. But I'm a very busy man. I haven't got time to waste.”

“In that case, I won't occupy you any longer.” Lindsay nodded a farewell and headed back down the drive. She found it hard to keep a spring out of her step. Somehow, she'd managed to forget the galvanising buzz that hit at the moment when a difficult story suddenly cracked open. If Rory McLaren had done nothing else, she had reminded Lindsay of the sheer delight of using her skills to bring down someone else's nasty little castles in the air.

First thing in the morning, she'd make the innocuous call to Charles Wayne. And this time, she'd tape it. OK, it wasn't strictly speaking her story. And they'd have to put it out under Rory's by-line to protect Lindsay from any comeback on her strictly illegal scam. Probably best to leave it a week or so, just to be on the safe side.

But she'd done it. She'd copper-bottomed the story. Splash Gordon was back. And it felt so good.

The high lasted as far as the Western Infirmary, where she'd arranged to pick up Sophie. Her lover stood by the outpatients entrance, deep in conversation with Fraser. Lindsay closed her eyes momentarily.
How could I have forgotten it's the second attempt tonight?
she wondered bitterly.
How could I have imagined I was going to be allowed to have a life?

 

A couple of miles away, Bernie Gourlay let herself into the house. She'd walked Jack round to a friend's house for a birthday party, and she had a couple of hours to herself before Tam would pick
him up on the way home. Normally, she'd indulge herself in a long bath heavily scented with essential oils, a gin and tonic and a glossy magazine. But relaxation was beyond her just now. Fear gnawed at her, its sharp teeth cutting into her peace of mind and ripping it to shreds.

With a deep sigh, she dropped her handbag on the hall table and walked through to the kitchen. She knew at once that something was wrong, chill damp air hitting her where warmth should have been. Her eyes darted round the room and terror gripped her chest in a physical constriction. The window by the back door was shattered, the glass crunched into fragments on the tiled floor. And on the kitchen table, clear when she had left, was a sheet of paper.

On automatic pilot, Bernie crossed the room. She gazed down and read, in thick black capitals,
NO HIDING PLACE, BERNIE
. She gave a faint whimper of anguish and crumpled into the nearest chair. Dear God, he could put his hand on her any time he chose. Her breathing was fast and shallow as dread coursed through her. What was she going to do?

“Get a grip,” she admonished herself, trying to draw herself upright. Somehow, she had to keep this from Jack and Tam. She had to protect them from what she knew. Numb, Bernie pushed herself to her feet. Things to do. There were things to do. She found the Yellow Pages and looked for emergency glaziers. It didn't matter if the man was still here when Tam got back. She could make up some story about slipping on the floor and losing her grip on a tin which had smashed the glass. First, find a glazier. Then clear up the broken glass. Burn the note. Make everything normal again.

It was, she knew, a losing battle. Nothing was ever going to be normal again. But she had to try.

The school playground was deserted. By the gates, a man leaned against the wall. If it hadn't been for his air of relaxed nonchalance, the sense of entitlement that seemed to emanate from him, he'd have looked worryingly out of place in his stylish Italian suit and glossily polished loafers. His dark hair was cut short, apart from a heavy, side-swept fringe that fell just above his eyebrows. Without his beak of a nose, he'd have been handsome in a heavylidded Southern European way. He carried a smart briefcase and a plastic bag with the logo of a computer shop on the side. His eyes scanned the street constantly, but without disturbing his appearance of self-containment.

The shrilling of the interval bell rang out from the school building and a stream of chattering, liberated children began to emerge. The man calmly pushed himself off from the wall and walked through the gates, his attitude suddenly intent. His eyes lit on a dark-haired six year old, careering round in a game of tig with half a dozen others. The man headed straight for him.

As he approached, the boy caught sight of him and stopped dead, his face uncertain. The man walked up to him and dropped into a crouch, meeting him eye to eye. “Ciao, Giaco,” he said, his eyes crinkling in a smile.

Jack Gourlay said nothing. He broke eye contact and looked at the ground.

“Didn't your mamma tell you I was coming today?”

Jack shook his head. The man held the bag open and showed it to Jack. While he peered into it, the man looked swiftly around, to check if he'd been spotted. Seeing nothing to worry him, he said, “Look, Giaco. It's for you. A Nintendo. For taking on holiday. You're coming on holiday with me. Today.”

The boy shook his head. “I can't.”

“You can't? Who says you can't come on holiday with your papa?”

“I've not got my jammies or anything.”

“We'll buy anything you need. Come on, Giaco, it's an adventure. I thought you liked adventures? It's been so long since we had fun together. I really missed you.” He dropped bag and briefcase and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. “You miss me too?” he asked softly.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Jack said, still not meeting his eyes.

“So now we make up for lost time, OK?”

“I better tell Jimmy.”

It was, the man recognised, capitulation. “Who's Jimmy?”

“Jimmy Doran. He's my pal. The one over there with the ginger hair. He'll wonder what's happened to me if I don't tell him.”

“OK. Tell him you've had to go off with your dad. But be quick. We've got a plane to catch.”

Jack's face lit up. The prospect of a plane journey clearly dispelled any lingering doubts he had about entrusting himself to Bruno Cavadino.

 

It had been a toss-up whether Lindsay would call Charles Wayne from home or wait till she arrived at the Café Virginia. If she did it from home, she could present Rory with a
fait accompli
, all the loose ends tied up in a neat wee parcel, Charles Wayne on tape admitting he'd had dinner with David Keillor as the glittery silver bow on top. But if she did it from the flat, she'd have to contend with Sophie, who was working from home that morning with her feet up on the window seat, presumably to minimise any sudden
movements that might dislodge any potential embryo. Sophie certainly wouldn't approve of the co-parent of her potential offspring committing an arrestable offence under the family roof. On the other hand, Lindsay didn't really want Rory eavesdropping on her impersonation of a police officer either.

In the end, she compromised. On her way to the Hillhead underground station, she took a detour down Ashton Lane and slipped into Bean Scene. Armed with a large cappuccino, she huddled into the farthest corner, jacked the mobile into her mini-disk recorder and called the main CCD switchboard. After a little preliminary jockeying with a secretary then a personal assistant, she was finally put through to the great man himself. His voice was a light tenor, its strangulated vowels testifying to its owner's origins somewhere around the Thames Estuary.

“Mr. Wayne? This is DC Lindsay, Strathclyde Police. I'm sorry to bother you. I wondered if you could help me with a wee inquiry.”

“Of course, of course.” Wayne sounded both enthusiastic and unctuous. “Anything to assist the police. We like to foster good relations here at CCD.”

I bet you do
, she thought. “I've got a witness statement from Mr. David Keillor that says you spent the evening before last dining at his house. Would that be correct?”

“Spot on, Detective. A lovely evening it was too. But why are you interested in my social engagements?” Now there was a note of caution.

“I'm trying to eliminate Mr. Keillor from an inquiry into a road traffic accident. Could you tell me what time it was when you and your lady wife left the Keillors?”

“Let me see . . . I paid off the babysitter just before midnight, so we must have left there somewhere between half past eleven and twenty to twelve.”

“And Mr. Keillor was with you all evening?”

Wayne chuckled. “Naturally. David's always a very good host.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Wayne. I'm sorry to have taken up your time.”

“No problem. Glad to be of help.”

Lindsay pressed the stop button on the recorder as she hung
up. She plugged in the headphones and listened with satisfaction. It couldn't have been better. A little judicious editing of the conversation to eliminate any reference to her subterfuge and she was home and dry. Not only did she have Wayne's admission that he had dined with David Keillor, she had the implication in his last statement that this was far from the first time the men had met socially. It would be fun watching Keillor try to wriggle his way out of this one. A pity it would be Rory doing the showdown. But she was going to have to get used to this way of working, alien as it was to her natural instincts. She'd spent years guarding her exclusives against her rivals; it wasn't going to be easy to trade that for sharing.

Rory was already online in her booth when Lindsay arrived at Café Virginia. Rory raised one finger to indicate she was in the middle of something so Lindsay booted up her own laptop and started writing up the notes of her conversations with Keillor and Wayne. Before she could finish, Rory folded her screen down and raised her eyebrows. “Well?” she said. “How did it go?”

For one crazy moment, Lindsay thought she was referring to the previous evening's insemination. She was about to open her mouth and say, “Gruesome,” when she realised the topic under discussion was the story. She outlined her progress to Rory, whose grin spread wider as she grasped the full implications of what Lindsay had established.

“You are fucking outrageous,” she spluttered. “They didn't call you Splash Gordon for nothing, did they?”

“I think you'll find it was more ironic than admiring,” Lindsay said, remembering the less than supportive atmosphere of the newsroom. “And I wasn't exactly on the ball. I didn't tape my little chat with Keillor.”

Rory shrugged. “Irrelevant. You got Wayne on tape, which is even more damning. We're going to have to wait a couple of weeks before I hit Keillor, though. If we're really, really lucky, he won't make the connection with your thespian activities.”

“We'll keep my name off the finished piece, all the same,” Lindsay said firmly.

“Aye. There's time enough for glory.”

“I sincerely hope so.”

 

Bernie stood outside the school gates, chatting idly to a couple of the other waiting mothers whose children were in Jack's class. The bell sounded, the doors opened and children of all shapes, sizes and colours began to pour out of the building. After a few minutes, the stream had slowed to a trickle. The other mothers were gone, one with a chattering daughter, the other with a son interested only in the collection of football cards he'd pulled out of his pocket as soon as he'd cleared the school entrance. But still there was no sign of Jack.

She felt a strange fluttering in her stomach, a physical manifestation of an undefined fear. Now, no more children emerged. It was time to panic, she realised. Bernie walked through the gates then, as she neared the school doors, she broke into a trot.

Unnoticed by her, the man leaning against the bus stop twenty yards down the street suddenly shifted. Michael hastily put away the knife he'd been using to clean his nails and began to stroll up the street towards the school. Whatever was going on with Bernadette Dooley, it wasn't in the script. Not as he understood it, anyway. Where was the boy? What was going on?

What he couldn't see was Bernie running down the school corridor to the classroom where Mrs. Anderson taught Year Two. She grabbed the lintel and swung herself into the room, her breath catching in her throat. “Where's Jack?” she demanded, her voice shrill.

Mrs. Anderson, a comfortably plump woman in her mid-forties, looked puzzled. “It's Mrs. Gourlay, isn't it?”

“Where's Jack?” Bernie was shouting now, not caring what the teacher thought of her. “He didn't come out when the bell went. Where is he?”

Mrs. Anderson's face sagged. “I don't understand. Mr. Gourlay came and fetched him at morning interval. Didn't you know?”

“Tam?” Bernie looked thunderstruck. “Tam came to the school and took Jack away?” She shook her head incredulously.

“That's what Jimmy Doran told me. When the children came back after break, Jimmy came up to my table and said Jack Gourlay
had told him to tell me that he'd had to go away with his dad.”