The Reckless Engineer (4 page)

Back in the living room Jeremy repeated the news to Caitlin as gently as he could. She sat back looking drained and begged him to stay the night. That settled Jeremy set out to pick up Harry, secretly grateful that he would be sinking into the luxurious warm bed again, where he had spent many nights before, within the hour.

CHAPTER 5

Saturday, October 16 — One Day Later

Despite the comfort and luxury all around him Jeremy was woken from a night of disturbed sleep by the sound of the dogs barking. It was 8:20 Saturday morning. There were voices downstairs in anxious chatter. His room (huh, he thought of this as
his
room now, did he?) was a first-floor en-suite with a bath. Actually it had a shared bathroom separating two twin rooms, but the second one had never been occupied whenever he had been here.

Jeremy washed his face quickly and hurried to the cupboard. Caitlin had laid out some clean clothes. He set his oversized laptop case, in which he carried a sleek laptop he had enhanced to pack in massive processing and memory power, so compact it hardly took any space, on the bed. Into the remaining space he generally packed various gadgets and electronics equipment he needed at client sites, including some “emergency” underwear and socks.

He pulled on a pair of black slacks and a blue Polo T-shirt from the cupboard.
They must be Ronnie’s.
Being slightly over 6 feet tall and having a wider frame, he did not fit so well into Jack’s clothes. He stepped out of his room and followed the voices downstairs.

One of the boys who worked in the stables and on the land, a brown lad in muddy Wellington boots, was talking animatedly to Caitlin, who was still in her dressing gown, in the kitchen.

‘There is police again at the front gate,
sénora
,’ he said with a heavy Spanish accent. ‘I put Molly and Max in the stables, ha?’

Caitlin and Jeremy hurried to the front reception with little Bubbles the puppy Lab running circles around them. There were two police cars at the gates.

‘If you could open the gates, Caitlin, I shall handle this,’ he said, thinking how lovely and vulnerable she looked with no makeup on and with tousled dark brown hair some length between short and medium. Something about a damsel-in-distress in silks stirred a man’s loins.

Jeremy went back to his room, splashed his face with icy cold water, and put on his shoes. He stepped out as the police cars pulled up outside the front door.

‘We have orders to do a more thorough search of the property including the grounds and the outer buildings,’ the officer in charge said. ‘And we need to question Mrs. Connor at the police station.’

‘I am Jeremy Stone from the McAllen-Connor family solicitors,’ Jeremy half-lied. ‘You may start the search, if you could leave the master bedroom on the first floor be for a little while for Mrs. Connor to get dressed please. Give me a minute to speak to my office first about interviewing Mrs. Connor.’

He went back to his room and frantically rang Harry. Jeremy had woken him up, but there was little time for pleasantries. He explained the situation succinctly.

‘Bloody Edwards!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Of course this is what he had in mind all the time! He wants a more thorough daylight search of the house and the grounds and he wants to question Caitlin; and he does not want Jack to tamper with his evidence or influence his witnesses.’

It was not often that somebody managed to outmanoeuvre Harry and he clearly didn’t like it.

‘What you’ve done is quite right, Jeremy. Do not let Caitlin speak to any of the officers. Once they will have completed the search of one room, take her there and stay with her. Now let me think . . .’ He paused for a minute.

Jeremy could sense Harry pacing up and down in his five-bedroom house at Harrow-on-the-Hill. The Stavers had moved there so that their gorgeous little boy could go to the acclaimed private boys’ school just a seven-minute walk from their house. He had thought he would do the same someday when he had a son, but that was when Maggie was living with him.

‘They have a vial with remnants they are still analysing from yesterday’s search found either there or at Michelle’s. It is possible that we have a conflict of interest on our hands in representing both Jack and Caitlin if she is being questioned as a suspect. I shall call Edwards and find out. Advise her to call her family solicitors and get an English solicitor to attend the interview with her. The Scottish system is different. If she cannot find someone I shall have to go in with her in the interest of both Caitlin and my client. Make an appointment with the officer in charge for any time at or after 2:00 p.m. for her to go in for the interview.’

‘Got it.’

‘The one good thing that might come out of this is that Jack might get released on police bail after the search and Caitlin’s interview. I shall hold until you fix the appointment.’

Jeremy had a word with Caitlin while the officer in charge spoke over his radio to DCI Edwards and confirmed the appointment for 2:30 p.m.

‘Good,’ Harry approved. ‘Ring me back and update me within the hour. I shall be there by two anyway.’

Jeremy ran upstairs where he had left Caitlin in a panic, still in her dressing gown, on the beige velvet chaise lounge.

‘Why do the police want to question
me
? Oh god! How could Jack act with such reckless, urgh, bad judgment and bring us down this low?’

He thought she was about to say “reckless abandon”.

‘I have never stepped inside a police station in my life. I haven’t even spoken to a policeman about a traffic ticket.’

‘Caitlin, please don’t panic. They just want to ask you some questions as a witness. Things like could you confirm Jack’s whereabouts at such and such a time, et cetera.’

He was aware that this may or may not be entirely true, but he needed to calm her down.

‘If it helps I can try to get the police to come here instead of your going to the police station. Let us call your family solicitors whom you will be comfortable with to accompany you. We need someone practicing Criminal Law in England.’ It was better put that way.

‘Miller & Co. in Portsmouth, but they do only corporate mergers and acquisitions. Harry is doing a superb job. Could Harry be there with me? Let me call Papa.’

She picked up her phone.

He needed to give Harry some more time. ‘They’re finished with the kitchen. I shall fix some breakfast for us. Give me ten minutes and then come down.’

Downstairs in the kitchen he straightened out the main items displaced from the search as fast as possible and drew the blinds for privacy.

‘Papa’s on his way. He is happy with Harry also, for now. Could he get here in time?’ Caitlin came in with Bubbles and closed the door.

‘Let’s call him.’ Jeremy drew out a dining chair for her and rang Harry on his mobile.

‘Harry, the McAllens would like you to be here today.’
For now
, she had said, Jeremy noted. ‘Could we have the officers come here instead of Caitlin’s going to the police station? Any news from Edwards?’

‘She’s not being especially questioned as a suspect at the moment. Most people in the McAllen-Connor household will be questioned eventually to assist with the investigation as a matter of routine. If Caitlin cooperates Edwards might release Jack on police bail.’

Jeremy saw what Harry had meant by “a conflict of interest”. The urge to guide Caitlin to look after Harry’s present client’s interests was strong. Yet someone needed to be here guiding Caitlin in her own interest.

‘So, yes, I can be there with her. If it need not be recorded I shall get the officers to come over to the Connor residence. I should be there about 12:30 and we can take it from there.’

Jeremy relayed the encouraging news to Caitlin.

‘You must be starving. Let me fix some breakfast—kipper, eggs over easy, and toast,’ Caitlin said with a grateful sigh and took the pan from his hand. ‘Oh, and Jeremy, there are important company documents here. Could you ask the officers to take copies of everything and leave the originals, or at least leave copies behind? They may use the copier in my office on the first floor. I told them so yesterday also.’

Back to icy calm. And, yes, she had run everything by herself yesterday without putting a step wrong. Was she the “protected princess in distress” she was a moment ago, or this cool, calm business-woman impeccably running a large corporation’s accounts, this little castle, and the lives of everybody in it like a well-greased machine?

The boss had spoken and he had better say “how high.” He headed out towards the search in the backyard. And she had picked his breakfast for him right down to the very last detail. He had wanted a toasted bacon sandwich and a black Americano with two sugars. Like Jack had complained long ago, Caitlin did make everybody’s decisions for them. Suddenly Jeremy couldn’t contain the feeling he needed a break from her. He remembered that Jack had sometimes felt the same way.

CHAPTER 6

Saturday, October 16 — One Day Later

The police and the forensics officers had just concluded turning Jack’s lab inside out. Jack had turned this large barn in his backyard into his lab when he had first moved in with Caitlin. Jack and Jeremy had spent many weekends here together after Jeremy joined Marine, turning it into the dream workshop and male sanctuary any engineer would wish to escape into. Jeremy had put up the loft to the right of the main entrance, and together they had carried the TV and the comfortable old couch and armchair up here.

Jeremy turned the coffee maker on, took out a bag of pretzels and some dips from the mini fridge to stop his stomach rumbling, and sank into the couch. Only a pleasant, diffused light from the morning sun reached him up here, and an occasional gruff command from a distant policeman disturbed the peaceful sounds of birdsong and the wind. He closed his eyes and drifted off into light memories . . .

Jack and Jeremy were once again on the waves of Portsmouth Bay heading out to sea on
The Ancient Mariner
, one of Marine’s boats, to test the latest products out of their engineering division: the MS350 Sonar Visor and the MR430 Radar Tracker. The MS350 bounced sonar signals off the bottom of the sea through the transducers attached to the boat’s hull and generated a visual of the terrain at the bottom of the sea and fish shoals in the waters below them on the touch-control screens. The MR430 did a 360-degree radar scan and tracked any radar-visible object in the vicinity of their boat.

Jack had put the boat into anchor and they were taking a break in the sun out on the deck in their black jeans, having taken their shoes, socks, and shirts off. Jack threw Jeremy a chilled Coors and popped another against the edge of the deck with a hiss, the cool froth running over his hand. The waves lapped around, reflecting a brilliant sun like multitudes of shimmering undulating silver cut glass.

‘Work at McAllen BlackGold was technically a superb challenge, but it was politically difficult from the start,’ Jack responded to an earlier question from his friend.

Andrew Grant, the fifty-five-year-old engineer who had managed BlackGold’s engineering labs for twenty-two years before Douglas McAllen had bought the company, had expected to land the job and had been quite cross when McAllen had brought Jack in. At every opportunity Grant had tried to undermine him, tried to cause rifts between him and the McAllens, and challenged and bad-mouthed his plans in a knee-jerk fashion. Initially Jack had underestimated Grant and had treated his struggles as irrelevant irritations, ignoring Grant and enforcing his own way on the issues that he had cared about and letting Grant get away with it on the issues that hadn’t mattered.

Eventually Jack had left BlackGold Engineering for Marine a little more than five years ago because persistent Grant had managed to antagonize Ronnie into a power struggle against him and had created a nasty sibling rivalry between Ronnie and Caitlin. The last straw had been when a fault had been created on the PCB layout of Jack’s latest design of the drill-head guidance unit when it was sent into production, an act of such subtle sabotage, Jack knew, that could have been executed only by Grant. However, when Douglas McAllen, not understanding the electro-mechanical details and spurred on by Ronnie and Grant had also reprimanded him, Jack had resigned on the spot. Friction with the powerful McAllen males had started putting his relationship with Caitlin under pressure. Maintaining good relationships with Douglas and Ronnie and the goodwill between the McAllen sister and brother had been more important to him than the job. He had decided he would hand the reins over to Caitlin and drive Grant through her.

That plan had worked well. No longer underestimating Grant, Jack had maintained control over all new engineering designs as a consultant, driving down to the BlackGold offices a couple of evenings every week and some weekends, and working from his lab at home which he had gradually brought up to state-of-the art standards. Jack had made sure that all new electronics designs that had gone into production were his own, supervised against sabotage at every stage by the loyal QA engineer he had head-hunted and hired via Caitlin. Sales revenues from Jack’s newly designed devices had gone through the roof. As a result three and a half years ago, just before Caitlin’s and Jack’s wedding, Douglas McAllen had appointed Jack as the Director of Engineering of McAllen BlackGold. They had forced Grant into an early retirement with a golden handshake.

Jack, however, had not cared much about political issues that were not technically important to him at the start. His attention had been straightaway distracted by Caitlin for whom, he later thought, he had fallen at first sight. Jack had simply thought of flirting with her as a nice secret perk, a bit of fun and banter to spice up the working day; and then it had been a challenge trying to seduce her when she had returned his attentions a little shyly, hesitantly, and subtly.

After the first time he had got her into bed in the Rox Hotel suite in Aberdeen, however, he could not stop thinking about her. Caitlin had been quietly strong, pure, majestic, and mysterious and it had been an unforgettable experience seeing her breathless with passion at his touch. He had shattered her calm composure with a violent, passionate kiss, broken through the ice reserve, torn off the clothes that had come between them, and fitted into her like into a glove two sizes too small. She had cried out in pain, clung to him, and sobbed quietly at the sheer violence of it; but she had returned to him every night he was there, again and again, as if she were mesmerized.

Only Jack had been allowed in through Caitlin’s barrier of ice reserve and control since her break-up from Gavin, Gillian’s father, more than three years before they had met.

Caitlin had met Gavin, a technician, when she was 22 while out on an offshore oil rig on a planned demonstration of McAllen’s newest sonic drill. The set-up of the new equipment by her own technicians had failed and Gavin had gallantly walked in and saved the day.

Gavin was a massive lad over 6’ 4” tall and he had taken off his shirt to set up the equipment, no doubt to impress Caitlin, to reveal giant pecs of steel tattooed in blue. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the dragon that had wound around his left upper arm where it had morphed into various striking poses, breathing out red flames as his muscles strained to get the heavy equipment into place. Afterwards, coming back to her boat, he had turned around and lifted Caitlin off the ramp from her waist like a feather and set her down on the stern.

Back at the port Gavin had taken Caitlin to his favourite pub and made her drink bitter beer, laughing and grimacing at the taste, while her technicians took the McAllen equipment back to the offices. In the evening he had driven her home in his beloved truck, dropping her well out of sight from the main house.

Caitlin and Gavin had hidden their relationship from her family for as long as they could. When they were eventually found out all hell had broken lose, just as Caitlin had expected. Gavin was a poor, working-class lad, unrefined and uneducated in their eyes. A year younger than Caitlin, he had already accumulated several thousands in gambling debts and a criminal record—eight weeks in prison followed by a community service sentence for assault—Douglas had dug out the dirt. The McAllens had seen him as an out-of-control gold-digger unsuitable for the family and their daughter.

It was all in the past in his red-blooded youth, Gavin had promised Caitlin. He had fallen into debt one day waging his salary trying to win the money needed to repair their roof before the bitterly cold Aberdeen winter months settled in, more for the sake of his old mother than for himself. He had been trying to pay it back, but the loan sharks had piled on the interest faster than he could keep up, and a fight with them had got him into trouble with the police. He would sell his truck and pay them, Gavin had promised; for her he would give up all that and turn over a new leaf.

Caitlin would have him give up none of it. She had loved the essence of what he was exactly as he was. Immediately she had paid off Gavin’s debt, not allowing their beloved truck to be sold. He had made her stand on it at the back with Mutt, his trusty Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and had driven it through the beaches at sunset with her arms outstretched and the wind in her hair. He had run naked with her into the icy cold seas at night, and afterwards lit warm fires on the beach by the side of the truck while Mutt shook off cold water and she dried herself. He had roasted chicken wings in the open fire dipped in BBQ sauce and they had had dinners of wings, roasted corn-on-the-cob, roasted marshmallows, and bitter beer.

But they had not believed in him; they had not given him a chance. Caitlin had stood by her love, but Gavin had folded under pressure. It had been said that Douglas McAllen, after getting Gavin fired from his job, had paid him well over a million pounds to take his old mother and disappear from Aberdeen and never to speak to or contact Caitlin again.

Douglas McAllen had not liked Gavin Hunter and had not wanted him for his daughter. When Douglas McAllen did not want someone, he spared no expense in getting rid of him, or her.

Caitlin had looked for Gavin everywhere and, unable to find any trace of him, had retreated into a shell of endless pain. She had found out that she was pregnant by him two months after he was gone. Gavin’s daughter had been a big baby like her dad and, unable to turn around or come out through Caitlin’s narrow delicate hips, Gillian had been cut out of Caitlin through a Caesarean section.

There, Caitlin had remained within her shell of pain, untouchable, unreachable, until Jack had come along.

The day after Jack left the Rox Hotel suite, having spent his first nights together with Caitlin, she had followed him south and checked into her favourite south seafront hotel, The Clarence, in Portsmouth. It was time that she completed the purchase of the planned McAllen residence in the South, she had told her parents. She had set up her junior accountant to do the routine accounts tasks in Aberdeen and to work remotely with her.

Jack himself had delegated the routine engineering tasks to Grant and Ian, the senior engineers, for he had been invited to assist Caitlin with the purchase. They would show up every morning at the offices at McAllen BlackGold, supervise and set the day’s tasks, and then start on the viewings. It had been a tough property market and they had taken their time, spending many of he afternoons together at The Clarence, with Jack falling more deeply for Caitlin with each passing day.

After a month and a half they had narrowed down the choices to three properties and Caitlin had left for Aberdeen to seek the senior McAllens’ approval for one of them. Douglas and Leana had rubber-stamped Caitlin’s favourite, sensing that the pain their daughter had carried watching Gillian grow up alone had finally lifted, hoping it had lifted. Douglas McAllen had wanted atonement for his part in his daughter’s pain and he would do anything to earn her forgiveness.

The events in their lives that had followed had been unstoppable. Six months later Jack had asked Marianne for a divorce and had moved out of the Connor family home into The Clarence. Everything to do with the divorce had, from then on, been handled by the McAllen lawyers. A further four months later Jack and Caitlin had moved in together into their home, the mansion in Guildford . . .

‘But there is a part of her that I could never touch reserved for Gavin,’ Jack said, pulling up
The Ancient Mariner
’s anchor. ‘She was innocent of the etiquettes of dating and she actually told me details of their intense relationship over the years. It feels as if she has made a conscious decision to love me and make a life with me because her parents approve, rather than wanting me deep down. I don’t think she loves me the same way she loved Gavin, or maybe still loves him, with all of herself. I think she still cries for him.’

‘Jeremy, I thought I might find you in here.’ Caitlin had appeared at the door, disturbing Jeremy’s memories.

He sat up and looked down. She had washed and dressed in tight grey plaid breeches, a coral top, boots, and a black quilted gilet lined in deep coral to keep off the cold air. This so suited her. There was no denying her class and good taste.

‘Breakfast is ready. Shall I send some out for you on a tray?’

‘No, I shall have it in with you please, thank you, Caitlin,’ Jeremy said kindly. ‘And I think I shall sort out this mess they have made in here afterwards, if you don’t mind. It’s a mammoth task only an engineer should attempt.’