Fifth Victim (37 page)

‘And you went along with that?’ Parker left me to ask the questions, while he hovered in the background, projecting just the right level of intimidation.

‘He made it sound like … fun,’ she admitted. ‘Like a game, where everybody wins and nobody gets hurt.’

‘And where did Torquil fit into that theory?’

She coloured at that. It was nice to see even someone as amoral as Manda was not immune to shame.

‘That was … different,’ she said, stumbling over the words. ‘Tor found out what we were doing and was threatening to expose us – all of us – unless we let him join in. But he wanted it all to be perfect, like a movie or something. He was so furious when the snatch on Dina went all wrong. He said it was pathetic, that he’d give us all away.’

I remembered Torquil’s expression as he’d watched the two men I now knew to be Lennon and Ross escaping from the botched attempt at the riding club. His anger and disappointment now seemed understandable. At the time I’d worried it was because he might be behind the kidnaps, not that he was waiting impatiently for his turn.

‘So he was killed to keep him quiet.’

‘Yes. No!’ Manda said, head hanging. ‘Look, they don’t tell me the details. As far as I know, all that was supposed to happen was Tor was to be kidnapped and held for a couple days for a decent ransom – he talked about making his parents pay with something that would hurt them. I guess now he was talking about the Eisenberg Rainbow.’

‘So, where is it?’

She looked disbelieving. ‘Why the hell would you want it? It’s a fake.’

‘Ah, so you haven’t quite severed
all
ties with the kidnappers, have you, Manda?’ I said. ‘How else could you know about that?’

She flushed. ‘Hunt told me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘He said that Lennon was furious, and who knew what he might do to get even.’

‘And you believed that?’ I demanded. ‘Did Hunt also tell you that Torquil was dead before I ever left the Eisenbergs’ place with the necklace? That they’d no intention of letting him go, regardless of whether the jewels were real or not?’

‘No,’ she murmured, shaking her head. ‘No, that can’t be right. Hunt said that if we went ahead and kidnapped Tor, like he wanted, he wouldn’t be able to do anything against us, because then he’d be a part of it. But I never thought for a second that they’d kill him. You have to believe me …’

‘Would you have done it?’ I asked twenty minutes later, as Parker pulled the Navigator out from the kerb. His eyes switched from the rear-view mirror across to mine, with a flicker that could have signified just about anything.

‘Would you?’ he countered dryly.

I smiled. ‘It might have been a difficult one to explain away in court as justifiable force.’

He nodded, as if that was his answer, also. ‘The trick is not what you’re prepared to do, Charlie. It’s what
they believe
you’re prepared to do.’

‘I know.’

But Sean would have done it, I realised, for real, without hesitation. Maybe that was the difference between them.

Stop making comparisons!

‘The important thing is, did
you
believe
her
?’ Parker asked now, as if reading my thoughts.

I twisted slightly in my seat, watching him drive through the lightening streets, heading east for the Queensboro Bridge.

There had always been an easy competence about Parker, but where previously he’d seemed relaxed and confident, now he showed an uncertainty around me that I didn’t like. That kiss had changed things, not necessarily for the better, but there was no calling it back, I realised. Sooner or later, we’d have to deal with it and move on.

‘Some of it,’ I replied. ‘I think the bit about her becoming a little obsessed with Hunt is true. It made her angry to be under his thrall like that. From what I know of Manda, she hates having to admit to any kind of weakness.’

‘Particularly to you,’ Parker judged. ‘You must have left quite a lasting impression on her.’

‘Well, I stopped her from killing her father,’ I said. ‘That would tend to stick in anyone’s mind.’ I shook my head sadly. ‘They should have got some serious help for her back then. Who knows how differently she might have turned out?’

‘Some people just don’t want to be helped.’

Parker’s cellphone buzzed and he slotted his Bluetooth headset in place before he took the call. I realised he’d been waiting for it, hence taking the bridge rather than the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, where the signal would have been non-existent.

‘Bill,’ he said shortly. ‘Go ahead.’

He seemed to spend the next few miles listening more than talking, his face growing darker all the while. When he finally ended the call, he took the headset off and chucked it onto the dash in frustration.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m assuming that wasn’t good news.’

‘Bill can’t find anything on Trevanion,’ he said. ‘And I mean
anything
. Fake name, fake addresses, fake references. No record of him with Immigration. Zip. Looks like he’d created a legend for himself that would stand up to initial scrutiny, but as soon as we dug down a layer, it all collapsed.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it,’ he agreed with a little sideways glance. ‘That’s not all. This guy’s good – good enough to hack into a secure comms network and traffic light control programs. Bill said by digging around he’s triggered some kind of alert in the system.’

‘
Shit
,’ I said again, with a touch more feeling this time. ‘So he knows we’re onto him.’

He might kill Dina and run, just to cut his losses
…

‘There’s ten million at stake,’ Parker said tightly. ‘He won’t cut and run now. This is what he’s been working toward.’

I wished I shared his confidence.

We headed east out of the city, against the traffic and into a fresh sun rising weakly from the ocean as if waterlogged by last night’s storm.

Dina had now been kidnapped for forty-four hours.

The deadline was ten hours away.

I cursed again the chance meeting that had caused me to open up to Hunt. ‘But how did he know where to find me?’ I wondered aloud into the quiet interior of the vehicle, and caught the twitch of Parker’s head in my direction. ‘The more I think about it, the more I can’t believe it was coincidence, him just happening to turn up as I was leaving Orlando’s parents’.’

‘You think he might have slipped a tracker on you?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ I said. ‘Mind you, he didn’t have to bother doing that with Torquil’s ransom, did he? Gleason had two trackers on me then – one on me and one on the money. If Hunt’s so clever he can interfere with traffic lights, I’m sure he could have hacked into the GPS system and followed me that way.’

Parker’s face was grave. ‘All the company vehicles have on-board trackers in case of theft,’ he said. ‘If he’s activated this one, he knows exactly where you’ve been over the past twenty-four hours, and who you’ve talked to.’

‘There’s one person I didn’t meet at a known location,’ I said. ‘One person Hunt couldn’t know for certain I’ve been in contact with.’ Parker merely raised an eyebrow in my direction. ‘Ross. At least, I bloody well hope he doesn’t know – for all our sakes.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

‘He’s not going to call, is he?’ Caroline Willner said quietly.

We were gathered tensely in the living area at the Willners’ house. Beyond the wall of glass was a dull grey sky, specked with seagulls squabbling over the heaped kelp and general detritus that marked the edges of the tideline.

It was ten minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon. Ten minutes past the deadline the kidnappers had set. Ten minutes past the time we should have received detailed instructions about the ransom drop.

‘With this much cash at stake? He’ll call,’ Brandon Eisenberg said, his voice more confident than his tightly clasped hands would suggest. His wife had stayed away this time, I noticed, although Gleason was in attendance, taking up her usual position just behind his chair.

I wondered if Eisenberg felt guilt or vindication that he’d tried to palm off a paste copy of the Rainbow onto his son’s kidnappers. In the end, it hadn’t made any difference to the outcome. The boy was still dead.

But if they’d got their prize, would they have taken Dina so soon afterwards, and asked so much by way of retribution?

Parker glanced at me and said nothing. He’d spent the day fending off the authorities. I didn’t ask how Eisenberg himself had got them off his back. Made a few calls, probably. A guy like that always had a little black book of the right phone numbers.

When we’d got back to the house earlier this morning, we’d driven the Navigator straight into the garage and checked out the underside. Sure enough, we’d found a small magnetic GPS tracking device attached to the chassis where it was well hidden from our daily inspections. Nevertheless, I’d be beating myself up about missing it for some time to come.

I was beating myself up about so much at the moment that it could take a number.

If she dies, it’s on your head, Fox
…

Bill Rendelson was currently trying to backtrack the signal from the tracker, but it was configured to fire off high-speed bursts of information that were almost impossible to follow – unless you were set up for the task.

Hunt, it seemed, had been one step ahead of us all the way.

He’d now had Dina for fifty-four hours, and the clock was still ticking.

I closed my mind to the fact that by the time Torquil had been gone this long, we knew for certain he was already dead.

I admit I was so tense that I jumped when my cellphone rang. I rose with a murmured apology for the interruption, moved across to the window. I didn’t recognise the number on the display, so I answered with a cautious, ‘Yeah?’

‘Uh, hi there, ma’am,’ said a man’s voice, careful and polite, a lifelong Brooklyn accent. ‘I’m tryin’a reach Charlie Fox. He there?’

‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I’m Fox. Who’s this?’

‘Ah … oh,’ the man’s voice said, and I had the impression of his heart suddenly landing in his boots as whatever news he had to impart took on an added element of difficulty. ‘Well, ma’am, my name’s Officer O’Leary, from the Sixtieth precinct. We just picked up a gunshot victim, a young kid, asking for you.’

I said sharply, ‘A girl?’ Aware that Parker’s head had snapped round.

‘Uh, no,’ O’Leary said, caution forming around his words like frost. ‘Guy by the name of … um …’ I heard rustling as he leafed through his notebook, ‘… Ross Martino. You know him?’

‘Yes,’ I said faintly. ‘I know him.’ I reached automatically for the Navigator’s keys, which were still in my jacket pocket. ‘Which hospital? I can be there in—’

O’Leary gave a heavy sigh. ‘There’s no need to rush, ma’am,’ he said, and I heard years of weary experience in his voice. ‘Look, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but … the kid didn’t make it. It was a real nasty one, and by the time the paramedics reached him …’ I heard the shrug as he broke off. Wasn’t the first time he’d had to make this kind of call and no doubt it wouldn’t be the last.

‘Oh,’ I said blankly, mind reeling.
Shit
. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t really know him all that well. Can I ask … why are you calling me?’

Without any background to our relationship, O’Leary seemed taken aback.

‘Well,
he
seemed to think it was real important we contacted you,’ he said, with a note of censure. ‘Look, by the time we got there, he wasn’t makin’ much sense, y’know?’ He paused, obviously reassured enough by my claims of distance from the victim to expand. ‘He’d taken one in the gut. It was kinda messy, if you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I murmured, remembering the shot the masked kidnapper – Hunt? – had aimed squarely into my own body. McGregor, Parker had told us, had lost his spleen and a part of his intestine as a result of his injuries. And I remembered, too, in a stark flash, Hunt’s apparently casual greeting when he’d engineered that meeting outside Orlando’s place.

‘
You’re looking good
…’

Yeah, not bad for someone he’d shot in the chest only a few days before.

I realised O’Leary was waiting for me to ask the obvious question, and hoping to avoid having to volunteer the information if I didn’t. I wasn’t about to let him off lightly.

‘So, what did he say?’

‘Well, it was kinda garbled,’ he admitted. ‘Like I said, he wasn’t makin’ much sense by then, and the medics, they was pumping him full of morphine. Something about lending somebody a horse?’ The furrows in his brow were almost audible as he spoke. ‘Then he mentioned something about Florida, and a casket. Did somebody close to him die recently? Horseback riding accident, maybe?’

‘Can you remember exactly what he said?’ I asked urgently, ignoring his query. ‘The
exact
words?’

‘Um, I guess,’ he said, so slowly I wanted to reach down the phone line and throttle him. ‘He definitely said about lending the horse, that I do recall. Or it mighta been horses.’

I made frantic writing motions and Parker immediately dragged a notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket. I smiled briefly in thanks and scribbled down ‘lending/ Lennon?’ and ‘horse/s?’ Parker read the words over my shoulder and frowned.

‘What else?’

‘Well, I have to say I’m kinda hazy on the rest of it.’

I reined in a scream. ‘But he said Florida, specifically?’

‘Yeah, Orlando – and next fall. Maybe he was planning on a vacation he never got to take, huh?’

I ground my teeth for a moment, wrote down ‘Orlando’ and ‘fall’ below the other two words on the pad.

‘And he mentioned a casket?’ I persisted. That one got everyone’s attention and didn’t need much explanation, although I’d hardly dignify the rough-hewn box Torquil had been buried in by using such a term.

‘Casket, coffin – something like that. Yeah, I think so,’ O’Leary said.

‘Which was it?’

‘Hell, lady, I—’ He bit off whatever he was going to say, sighed again. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Casket is American, coffin is English,’ I pointed out.
There might be a big difference
.