Playing the Game (7 page)

Out of the corner of the eye, something did catch my attention, and on first glance I dismissed it but then a thought crossed my mind. I said nothing but calmly traversed the room to a dressing table, processing my initial thought. Oh God, if I was right this was well and truly fucked up.

Taking several moments to clarify my train of thought, and play out the consequences of my next move in my head, I knew I had no option but to ask. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I was right.

‘Laura’, my voice was quiet and unassuming, ‘who is that in the photo with you?’ I gestured to a glossy 4x6, set in a tasteful black frame. The only picture that adorned the dressing table, in fact. I asked the question, but deep down I already knew part of the answer.

‘Oh that?’ Laura smiled, ‘Me and my daughter Stella’, she was obviously a very proud parent. ‘It was taken last year on holiday on her eighteenth birthday. It’s lovely don’t you think?’

A quick glance at Charlie confirmed that I didn’t need to spell out what I was thinking for him. 

‘And where is Stella now, Laura?’ I hated to ask. If I was right her whole world would come crashing down in a few minutes.

‘Oh, she’ll be in college by now. She’s a good girl, really dedicated. She never misses a day. She’s had excellent grades all year too’.

‘Does she go to a local college?’ I continued to gently probe for information, wanting to prolong what I suspected was the inevitable for just a few seconds more.

‘Yes, she goes to the Los Angeles Community College’, she was still smiling. ‘It’s a really great program they have there, you know’.

Charlie slipped out of the room, and I knew that he going to verify whether Stella was actually in college or not. It almost felt like we were going through the motions though. I already had a gut feeling that we had just identified the girl we were currently trying to save from The Chemist, right when we were supposed to.

I too excused myself from the bedroom, I had to know if I was right on this call, and if I was, I was still unsure exactly how to proceed.

Charlie was on his cell, and from the roll of his eyes, I could tell he was on hold. ‘Should know in a couple minutes, man. I’ve had a black and white in the neighbourhood pull a code 10-20’.

The couple of minutes of dead-time, whilst we verified whether or not Stella Edwards was at her college, gave me the opportunity to play out the positives and negatives of what I should tell her mother.

Sensing I was in two minds, Charlie helped me sway the right way, as he often did. ‘Hey man, if it was me, I’d want to know’.

‘Yeah I know’, I nodded. ‘How do you…’

Charlie raised a finger, cutting me off. He was no longer on hold.

‘You sure?’ his expression remained grim, ‘I mean, you have checked and double checked, right?’

‘She’s not there’, he said, shaking his head, ‘and hasn’t been there all morning. She never made the roll call’.

‘Goddamn it!’ I couldn’t help myself, despite fully expecting that confirmation.

‘What we gonna do man?’

I just shrugged my shoulders. ‘We’re going to tell Laura that we think her daughter has been kidnapped by The Chemist, and that she has less than twenty hours to live’. I realised that that approach might have seemed clinical and heartless, but I reckoned that was the best way to get Laura Edwards to focus and help us with her part of The Game. I hoped to God she came through, for us and for Stella.

18

Last week

            Without exception, every member of the Animi left the Aon centre with a decidedly more uneasy feeling in the pits of their stomachs than when they had arrived, going onto their next appointments with a newly acquired sense of consternation.

            As was the case when these meetings came to a head, they all left at different times and from different, pre-arranged, exits in order to remain anonymous and so that no ties between them were ever established.

Lee Brindle left first, as he always did; the demands of his particular job, and the fact that he was not based in Los Angeles, meant that not only were the meetings mainly prioritised around his usually nightmarish schedule, but that his time either side of them was particularly precious.

            Conway was next, closely followed by Cyprian Hague, who was rushing to a press conference that he had already delayed once, and couldn’t afford to again; something about promising extra funding for several schools and hospitals across LA. Well, anything to get him that record-breaking extra term. If he made it to his next term, that was. After today’s meeting he was by no means certain that he would.

            Farrington and Brittles left within five minutes of each other, albeit from opposite sides of the building, and from different floors.

If anyone had been watching any of the members leave, they would have noticed a distinct increase in the number of times they looked over their shoulders, and a slight increase in pace.

As Brittles left the room, Burr stood up and walked to one of several half empty decanters on a table and idly poured two scotches. ‘Well Paul, do you think they bought it?’

            Paul McCrane took a moment to reflect on the events and conversations of the last couple of hours and brought his hand up to his goatee, stroking it thoughtfully as he spoke. ‘I’m pretty sure they did’, he mused, taking a large swig out of the glass in front of him. ‘I was pretty convincing, well we both were’.

            ‘The email was a particularly nice touch, I thought’, Burr flattered.

            ‘Ah yes’, McCrane agreed, ‘Well if there is one thing I can do, it’s think on my feet when I have to’. He picked up the decanter for a refill.

            ‘We have made the right decision Paul, I’m sure of that’. McCrane was sure as well, or at least he thought he was. Still, it was affirming to hear that from another.

            ‘Yes, I agree with you there. Conway’s actions have been inexcusable and you were right with your initial feelings. His actions cannot be condoned’, McCrane was clarifying what they were doing almost as much for himself as for Burr. Even though this decision had been made for some time, it was still a massive decision on their part. ‘This way, when Conway meets his untimely death, no-one here will ask questions; they will just assume that Caldwell got him first. They will be more terrified, if anything, and we can work that to our advantage. We can be their saviours. Something for which they will forever be in our debt.

            ‘Also, what is so perfect, is that we can make it look as though it
was
The Chemist,’ Burr took the reigns. ‘If we tie him up and inject him with Clozapone the media will obviously pick up on the similarities and assume that The Chemist is making some kind of high-profile
‘No-one is safe’
statement. Our hands are clean’.

            What McCrane and Burr had told the rest of the Animi was true, up to a point. They
had
released Caldwell from San Quentin and then Caldwell
had
killed the guards and escaped.

            The photograph taken on the kitchen wall of the safe house however, with the words written in blood? An easy fabrication for a seasoned pro like McCrane. The email from Vancouver? Simply didn’t exist, although if he really wanted one, he could have had one within the hour, backdated for appearance purposes.

            What he hadn't told the rest of the Animi, even his close friend Jameson Burr, was that he had received a phone call from Caldwell the day after the LAPD had discovered the body of the first girl, Keeley Porter. It was a phone call that he hadn't been expecting but had nevertheless remained calm and composed during the thirty second or so interaction. Caldwell had actually thanked him; the words 'If not for you, the girl would still be alive' had actually chilled McCrane to the bone. Even his moral code, tenuous at best, hadn't been impervious to that jibe by Caldwell. It was only once he'd read and watched the news reports that evening that he had realised that the individual that he had released from San Quentin was in fact the latest killer to be terrorising Los Angeles. It was a rare feeling of regret that he'd felt once again, when the body of Jennifer Hughes had been found stuffed callously into a rusty, decomposing water tank in an abandoned warehouse.  Whilst part of him wanted Caldwell to remain at large, for so long as Caldwell evaded the authorities there was no chance of the police linking The Chemist to the Animi, as the body count continued to rise he actually felt an increasing sense of responsibility for what was happening.   He knew if he revealed Caldwell's actual contact to the rest of the Animi he risked showing his remorse and moreover the remorse could be interpreted as a weakness, which would never do. Nevertheless, whilst The Chemist's vendetta against the Animi was complete fiction, a cover story for something he and Burr were about to do, he remained uneasy at Caldwell's freedom.

            ‘Our hands are clean’, McCrane repeated, his face displaying none of his misgivings to his associate. ‘That, my friend, has got to be one of the sweetest sayings in the English Language’.

            Burr took a sip of scotch and nodded appreciatively. ‘I want to thank you Paul for your help in this matter. I don’t know what I’d have done without your help’.

            ‘It’s what old friends do for each other’, McCrane acknowledged, although in truth, his help was on a far greater scale than one might expect, even from a lifelong friend.

            Three weeks ago, Burr had turned up on his doorstep around eleven o’ clock one evening completely unannounced, enraged and from the overpowering smell of his breath, slightly drunk. McCrane had ushered him inside, alert to the fact that this contravened the usual Animi procedure of communication and was strictly forbidden. Even for lifelong friends such as Jameson and himself. Had it been anyone else, he would not have even answered his door.

            Once inside, he tried to placate his friend’s fraught demeanour. ‘Jameson’, he asked. ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

            It took a few minutes to get any kind of answer out of him, Burr preferring to pour himself another drink rather than respond to the question. ‘Fucking bitch’, he finally managed. ‘I’m going to kill the bastard, that’s what I’m going to do’.

            ‘What do you mean?’ McCrane coaxed, although he suspected that even those few words Burr had spoken had given him the general answer.

            ‘She’s having an affair, that’s what I mean’, Burr spat. ‘She left her cell at home this morning when she went to work. I’d had my suspicions for a couple of weeks so I checked her voicemail’.

            ‘And  I take it you found something?’

            ‘There was a message on there from two days ago’, Burr looked genuinely hurt and McCrane looked on sympathetically. ‘Let me just say it confirmed my suspicions … graphically’.

            ‘And there’s no way you could be mistaken? Taken it out of context perhaps?’ McCrane asked. Burr looked up, fighting back tears.

            ‘If you had heard it …’ He tailed off, going scarlet with rage as he recalled the message he had heard himself that afternoon. After a minute, he regained some of his composure. ‘There’s more’, he told McCrane. ‘The message I heard this afternoon was from Conrad Conway’.

            McCrane sat down, digesting what he’d just been told. It was no secret amongst the Animi that Conway wasn’t exactly faithful to his wife, but to sleep with another member’s wife? That had crossed a line, absolutely no doubt about it. It was something that could not be tolerated under any circumstances. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked his friend. Burr drained his glass, considering his response.

            ‘I want you to help me kill him’, he answered.

            Having known Jameson Burr for more than three decades, that was the answer that McCrane had been expecting. His friend was not one to let anyone who crossed him, either in business or pleasure, go unpunished. Conway had crossed Burr in the worst possible way. ‘I’m sure we can come up with something’, he responded, his mind already weighing up one or two options. ‘Give me a couple of days to think about it, let me see what I can work out’.

19

            Breaking the news to Stella’s mother was no easier than I had expected. I’d done it myself, my tone as compassionate as I could be, but my words must have seemed cold and stark. I was sure we weren’t here just to learn Stella’s identity. There must be something else; the next step, the next part of the game. As our initial search had uncovered nothing but the photograph, I suspected that the mother held the key. And the sooner she realised that, the more chance her daughter had of coming out of this alive.

            I did all I could to assure Laura Edwards that there was every reason to believe we could get her daughter back safely. She clung to the slim possibility that we were mistaken. It was true that at the moment we had no hard fact, merely speculation, but the code had brought us here, her daughter fitted the profile and was presently unaccounted for. What were the chances we were wrong?

            I completely understood her need to cling to that, and if that’s what got her through this, if that’s what made her more receptive to our questioning, so be it.

            We relocated to the living room, having given Laura just enough time to pull on a robe. Our questions over the next half an hour or so were nurturing, coaxing as much information as we could out of Laura. The PD had an on-call psychologist who had arrived on-scene after around twenty minutes, and was in danger of undoing all our groundwork by taking a completely different tack. We didn’t have the time to backtrack.

            From what we could gather, Stella just seemed like your typical average girl. Just like the other two. No reason on earth why they should be singled out for special treatment by The Chemist. Her mother and father had separated a couple of years ago, but Stella had not let this detract from maintaining an excellent academic record that didn’t waiver once during that difficult time. She was a popular girl, lots of friends and a good social life, yet her mother said she had never overstepped the mark in that respect. She had been a good girl.