Playing the Game (23 page)

61

            Conrad Conway returned from his early meetings to get his golf clubs, as he usually did whenever his schedule permitted. Six months ago, his golf game had been in the lowest rut that he could remember since he’d broken that magical handicap of ten. For weeks his game had remained at that ebb; nothing he hit seemed to go where he wanted; seemingly slicing every shot. He consoled himself that all players of the game must go through spells like that and just hoped his would come to an end soon. In his haste to leave one morning, he had forgotten his clubs and had rushed back to his house to get them in the half hour window he had before his tee-off time. That afternoon, with his first stroke of the game, he had hit a hole in one; and the rest of his game had been pretty damn good too. He had taken the afternoon’s kitty of six thousand dollars by three clear strokes; a just reward for his fine performance.

            Ever since that afternoon, convinced that somehow the getting of his clubs just before driving to the club had played a part in turning his game around, he now went through the same ritual before each game whenever he could out of superstition. The demands on his time and his often over-loaded schedule meant that this was not always possible, but today, it was.

            Jameson Burr and Paul McCrane knew that as well didn’t they? That had been the time they’d discussed two days ago over the phone. Well he was prepared for anything they might throw at him. He didn’t know if they were watching him; he certainly hadn’t been aware of any indication that they were; he stuck to his routine like normal, just in case. Anyone who was watching him, and indeed a certain Daryl Walls
had
watched him leave at just after six that morning, would have seen nothing to suggest that Conway knew about his impending fate at the hands of two of his fellow Animi. The cool, calm and collected card was one that Conway was extremely adept at playing.

            Parking his Aston Martin outside his house rather than in the driveway, to give the impression he would be in and out of his house in no time at all, Conway felt a little apprehensive, although the feeling of his Walther P99 against the side of his chest made him feel a little better. As an added precaution, he was wearing a bullet proof vest beneath his shirt and jacket that he managed to lay his hands on from one of his contacts at the LAPD. Well why take any unnecessary chances?

            As he turned the key to his front door, he wondered if his potential assailant was already in the house, and if so, where would they be hiding? Whoever had been sent by Burr and McCrane would know how little a window they had to carry out their attack; he was after all only there to retrieve his golf clubs; a two minute task at best.

            It was a question that was answered as Conway was half way up the stairs, walking his recently-converted ‘hobby’ room on the first floor, where he kept his clubs.

            Although he’d been looking up towards the landing, and had been expecting an attack of some sort anyway, he was still taken by surprise when a stringy six-foot, pale white male leapt out of the shadows at the top of the stairs, the evil glint in his eyes undeniable.

            The psychotic look in the assailant’s eyes was confirmed as he launched himself down the stairs towards the awaiting Senator, who could not reach his firearm in time to prevent instant and hard contact from Walls as he collided with him, sending them both tumbling back.

            Shaking off the impact and initial surprise, out of the corner of his eye, Conway saw a syringe dangerously close to his neck, and it took all of his strength to manoeuvre himself into a position where he could kick the syringe out of his assailants hands, and landed a powerful strike to the nose of Walls, sending him stumbling back.

            Reaching for his P99, he winced in pain, thinking that maybe he had broken a rib or two in the fall down the stairs. It was, however, pain that would pail into insignificance compared to what he planned to inflict upon his assailant momentarily.

            Walls stood up, and readied himself for another lunge at the Senator, only to find that he was staring down the barrel of Conway’s handgun. As Walls began a charge towards Conway that he couldn’t possibly finish in time, his tracks were stopped instantaneously by two bullets from the Senator; the second one killing him on impact as it ripped through several vital organs.

            As Walls lay on the floor, an ever expanding pool of blood forming around his body, Conway stood over him, alert to the fact that maybe there was more than one assailant sent by Burr and McCrane. After ten minutes of complete silence, aside from the Senator’s harder than usual breathing, he concluded that only one had been sent.

            He called 911, sounding far more alarmed than he actually was. Although his ribs still hurt like hell, that was actually a good thing; they would make his story of simply disturbing an intruder all the more plausible and he’d have just enough time to remove the vest from under his clothing; it would look too suspicious if an attending officer was to notice he was wearing one!

            Reaching back into his jacket pocket, he pulled out two business cards, which were very rarely given out, taking care only to handle the sides of the cards; one was Burr’s, one was McCrane’s. Carefully, taking the time to ensure he didn’t stand in any blood, he slipped both cards into the corpse’s back pocket. The story that Britland-Jones had published this morning was good, very good, but just as an added insurance, let’s see if McCrane and Burr can explain what a low-life scumbag, breaking into and attacking the good Senator Conrad Conway, is doing with their personal business cards in his back pocket.

            He was looking forward to seeing what explanation they gave for that!

62

            I don’t think Paul McCrane was expecting me, judging from the look on his face when I opened the door to the interrogation room. I think he’d been expecting Will Harlow again. I must have looked pretty pissed off, as indeed I was, because when he saw me, backed up by Charlie, he looked a little taken aback, although he remained composed. I wouldn’t have expected one of the most successful District Attorneys Los Angeles had appointed in recent years to have remained any other way. I didn’t bother to introduce myself and luckily for me, there was no solicitor present. I guess maybe McCrane had decided he didn’t need one. I simply walked towards him and pushed him off his chair and onto the floor. I felt Charlie’s hand on my shoulder; a warning hand, just reminding me not to go too far, which I had no intention of doing. But we needed McCrane to talk, and to talk now. The further McCrane believed I might go, the quicker I thought he would talk.

            I picked up the chair and placed it over McCrane’s throat, using my weight to increase the pressure, making it difficult for him to breathe. He’d looked shocked initially, but as he lay on the floor, trying to get air into his lungs, the look of shock gave way to a smile. ‘You’ve just signed your own fucking release papers’, he wheezed, pointing to the camera in the corner of the room, ‘whoever you are’.

            ‘They’re not on, McCrane’, Charlie informed him from behind me. ‘It’s just you and us. No-one is watching’. The smile soon disappeared as I leant further forward, piling on yet more pressure.

            ‘That’s right’, I said. It was hard for me to hold it together, but I thought I was doing pretty well under the circumstances. ‘We can make this quick if you like’, I told him. ‘The Chemist, Sarah Caldwell has my daughter. We know that you know who she is and we need to find her’. I leant back, giving McCrane some respite, and he seized the opportunity to fill his empty lungs with air.

            ‘I don’t know what you mean’, he began.

            ‘Wrong answer’, I told him, leaning forward again, harder this time. The look on his face as the air drained out of him told me that he couldn’t take too much more of this. I suspected we could break him fairly quickly. ‘We’ve got surveillance tapes you leaving San Quentin with her’ I said, which was more-or-less true. We thought it was Sarah Caldwell at least. ‘Where is she now?’ I leant back once more, giving him the chance to speak.

            ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about’, he spat. I picked him up, the chair falling to once side as I did so, and threw him across the table with enough force that he bounced off the table and landed on the floor a good seven or eight feet from where we were standing. Moving quickly, I was on him again, picking him up once more and landed a solid blow to the side of his head, not hard enough to knock him out but just hard enough to hopefully send him the message that we weren’t to be messed with.

            ‘Ok, ok,’ he coughed, ‘You want to know what I know about Sarah Caldwell?’ Charlie and I remained silent, expectantly. ‘She was released from San Quentin’, he told us ‘but she escaped. We don’t know where she is now’. After our shock tactics, he seemed to be getting his composure back, and with that, some bravado. ‘I do know one more thing about Sarah Caldwell though’, he wheezed.

            ‘And what’s that?’ I demanded. McCrane was now smiling again.

            ‘If she’s got your daughter, there’s no way you’ll be seeing her again’, he laughed. ‘At least, not alive’. I think he’d still been smiling as I landed a second  blow, much harder this time, to the front of his face, which knocked him out cold, immediately on impact.

63

            Getting nothing from McCrane, for the time being at least, I was relieved to learn that Harlow had managed to track down Britland-Jones. I’d give McCrane a few minutes to recover then I’d get back in there. If I had to beat what he knew out of him, then so be it. Even if it cost me my job, it would be a small price to pay.

Jameson Burr, in the meantime, had also been located, arrested, and was en-route to the station for questioning regarding the missing two hundred thousand dollars from the housing fund. I wondered, if Burr had worked so closely with McCrane on that, whether he was as close to him in other areas of business. Specifically, the release of Sarah Caldwell from San Quentin.

‘Tell you what, Patton’, Charlie said. ‘I’ll take Burr, you take the journalist. Burr might know about Sarah Caldwell but if you reckon Britland-Jones might have done some family research after her brother was killed, he’s more likely to have something isn’t he’.

The Chemist was being suspiciously distant. Usually, when a game started we’d have something to work with; like the code, but so far we’d had nothing. I suspected this was just to prolong my agony of knowing my daughter had been taken and that there was nothing I could do about it although the one saving grace was that it gave us more time to find Sarah Caldwell herself. I was convinced that she didn’t suspect that we knew her identity.

Britland-Jones and Jameson Burr both arrived at the station pretty much simultaneously, Britland-Jones, knowing he would have been pulled in for questioning regarding the story in The Times looked like he had his explanation prepared. Burr on the other hand was looking decidedly more worried; only having just read the article for himself, moments before the LAPD had turned up at his health club to arrest him. I used the time waiting for Britland-Jones to arrive to call Vikki back, letting her know that Katie wasn’t at school but stopping short of telling her that she had been taken by The Chemist. There was no point in giving her anything extra to worry about; I’d much rather she thought that she had just gone out and not bothered calling her. I did my best to reassure her that Katie would be fine, knowing that if we were no closer to finding her within the next few hours, I would have to relent and tell my ex-wife the truth; something I was not relishing.

Charlie and Harlow took Burr into an interrogation room and likewise, I took Britland-Jones. It struck me, that across all three interrogation rooms; McCrane, Burr and Britland-Jones, that somewhere in there lay the key to finding Sarah Caldwell and finding my daughter.

Taking two cups of coffee into my room, I sat down opposite Paul Britland-Jones, who recognised me immediately.

‘Detective Patton’, he acknowledged. ‘I thought Detective Harlow was taking this one?’ he enquired, maybe a little puzzled as to my involvement in what he thought was only an embezzlement and corruption case.

‘He is taking this one’, I told him, pushing one of the cups in his direction. ‘I need to ask you some questions about something else’.

‘Hey Patton, I’m here voluntarily you know’, he looked slightly alarmed. ‘I’ve not been read my rights, just to make you aware of that!’ He took a sip of the coffee. ‘Do I need to call my solicitor?’ he asked.

‘Relax’, I told him. ‘You might be able to help me with some research you may have done eight years ago. You remember Andrew Caldwell, don’t you?’

‘Ah, indeed I do Detective’, he said. ‘Hardly you finest hour was it?’ Well, there was no denying that was there?

‘Well obviously not’, I agreed. ‘You ran a story though I seem to remember, about his family?’ Sensing that this was going to be one-way traffic in terms of him helping us, Britland-Jones played the card that I thought he might.

‘I did indeed’, he confirmed. ‘And supposing I assist you Detective and I give you the information you so clearly and so desperately need; after all, you wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t really need something from me would you? I’m sure Detective Harlow is itching to question me about the story I broke this morning’.

‘Go on’, I was cautious.

‘I sense that there is another story here; an exclusive perhaps?’

‘Maybe there is’, I said.

‘And if I was to furnish you with the information you need, would that exclusive be mine?’ If that was all he was asking, it was a no-brainer.

‘Of course’, I told him. ‘You have my word’.

‘Well then, Detective, in that case, what do you need to know?’

‘He had a sister didn’t he?’ I already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from someone else besides myself.

‘Yes he did’, the journalist confirmed again. ‘Sarah Caldwell, I believe her name was. Why do you want to know about Sarah?’ I ignored the question.