The Reckless Engineer (25 page)

CHAPTER 33

Friday, October 29 — Fourteen Days Later

Jeremy’s flight landed in Aberdeen nineteen minutes late after flying circles over a pristine white land already four feet under snow, waiting for a blizzard to subside. Jeremy had not met Darren Skipper in person before. He had only spoken to him on the phone. He put his luggage down and looked around for someone holding a placard with his name on it. Finding no one, he was feeling around in his pockets for his mobile to call Darren when it rang. It was Skipper.

‘Hello, Darren.’

‘Hello, Jeremy. Turn to your right and walk a hundred yards. You should see an Emirates counter on your left. There’s a Costa Coffee just past it. I’ve got a table to the left of the entrance. Look out for a red and black North Face backpack on the table. You can’t miss it.’

‘Got it.’

‘See you in a minute.’

Skipper hung up.

Ten minutes later Skipper was driving him in his rented grey BMW to the Aberdeen Marriott.

‘I have booked you the room next to mine. Harry called and put me on alert that you’ve been doing some late night work recently and to have the room ready in advance.’

‘Huh. I suppose you could call that “work.”’ Jeremy smiled at the past two nights’ activities flashing through his mind. ‘Thanks mate. I am not tired. I slept on the plane. Update me on the developments when we get in right away. Can we order coffee and sandwiches up to your room? I didn’t want to eat airline food and risk throwing up all over the plane.’

‘Sure. Our guy is damned elusive and as slippery as an eel, but I’ve managed to track him down to where he’s lying low. And Ronnie’s ten times as dirty as his old man. Let’s wait till we get up to my room and I shall bring you up to date.’

Skipper pulled up in front of the sixteen storey Marriott’s lobby, helped Jeremy take out his luggage, and tossed the key to the valet. Most of the paperwork already having been taken care of, they were done with the checking in and up in their twelfth floor rooms in no time.

In true Marriott style Jeremy’s room was luxurious in an impersonal sort of way with large outer glass windows that treated them to a God’s view of Aberdeen covered in pristine snow all the way to the chilling north seas.

Jeremy drank a cup of black coffee for a shot of caffeine. Thank God for black coffee, a man’s best friend after a night of alcohol and sex. And bloody good sex, too. He smiled to himself. He massaged his aching head with his thumbs, one temple at a time. A bath. The shelves above the spa-bath had lavender and citrus bath oils in small bottles. Just what he needed-hot air bubbles on his muscles and scented steam in his lungs and pulsing sinuses.

He had two missed calls on his mobile when he got out of the lavender steam, from Annie and from Alan Walters. He had told Annie only that he had to return to work for urgent business and that he would call her. It was the morning after the night before. Was Annie just a holiday romance, or was there something more there? What about Maggie? He didn’t really know right now.

He called Alan.

‘Hi, Jeremy.’

‘Alan. How’s it going with young Sean there?’

‘Very well. Nice young chap and his work is top notch. I’m delighted with him.’

‘I am in Aberdeen, but I’ve got your work here with me. Sean and I shall be working on it remotely over the weekend.’

‘The reason I called, Jeremy, is that Sally’s Section 2 Appeal is coming up Wednesday afternoon next week. Could you make it to the hearing, hold her hand through it?’

‘Yes, yes of course. What time is it scheduled for?’

‘Two in the afternoon.’

‘I shall be there. I’m flying back on Monday.’

By the time Jeremy walked into Darren Skipper’s room the investigator had ordered room service. There was a silver tray of assorted sandwiches with grapes, cheese, and cheesy crackers on the side on his coffee table. A flask of Italian coffee with cream and sugar stood next to it. Darren pumped out a cup of black coffee.

‘So tell me, where is our guy hiding out?’

Jeremy sat down in the armchair next to Skipper and picked out some sandwiches onto a plate, one of them with sausage & black pudding in the middle.
Ack!
He left that one to the side.

‘In The Rock & Oar, a pub he owns by the docks. The two floors above the pub is a split-level, converted flat. He lives in it most of the time and does most of his business out of the pub. He also owns the bed and breakfast next door to it, The Sugarhouse Hotel.’

‘Is the B&B part of the same building?’

‘They are adjacent to each other. There’s a doorway from the pub into the B&B on the ground floor. It uses the pub kitchen and its staff to provide breakfast for the guests. The guests are encouraged to use the pub as a restaurant for other meals. Wait, I have pictures.’

Darren flipped open his laptop and passed it to Jeremy. The slide show of the B&B and the pub was very clear. Very high resolution, Jeremy thought. He didn’t think that Skipper’s tiny miniature digital camera he had shown him in the car could do such a good job. He flipped through the pictures, taking everything in.

‘You said Skull lives in the flat above The Rock & Oar “most of the time”. Where else does he hang out?’

“Skull’s got a woman, Catalina, a Spanish
sénorita
who lives on the south side of the city with their two boys. He spends two or three nights a week there. She takes care of the housekeeping and the cleaning at the B&B and the pub. This woman has a setup hiring illegal or cheap immigrants from Spain, Italy, Prague, Romania, Lithuania . . . you name it. Pays them cash-in-hand. She runs this cheap hostel on the east side of the city in which she rents out rooms to them, sardine packed, a couple of bunk beds in each room; but very clean because she gives them odd jobs as cleaners, paying them a few bucks for it. I think Skull owns that building too, but he leaves that business to Catalina. There is potential for him to hide out there if the police come looking for him.’

Jeremy nodded and flipped through the images.

‘So Skull does his business from this pub, ha?’

‘Most of the time. They say he is McAllen’s main “trouble-shooter,”
big
part of the McAllen entourage, and part of “the crew” holding the fort for McAllen right now while he is dealing with more pressing matters down south.’

Darren took a blank pad of paper provided by the hotel. ‘Here, lemme sketch this out for you. The Rock & Oar has four distinctive areas separated out by arches or walls. This room at the far left corner as you step in through the main entrance on Regent Quay is Skull’s hangout.’

Skipper leaned over, flipped through the slides to a picture of the pub interior, and tapped the screen with his forefinger. ‘These are Skull’s sidekicks, this Spaniard, Hosé, and this Scotsman, Heineken, honoured by the moniker on account of his remarkable ability to guzzle down gallons of his favourite drink by the same name. They run the pub and the B&B and God only knows what else. It is in this room, “The Fireside,” that Skull, Hosé, and Heineken hang out with their gang. Skull disappears in there for hours with his men and his clients sometimes, locking and bolting both doors to the rest of the pub behind them.’

They looked like thugs and were built like wrestlers. Jeremy felt the same fear he had felt in Cossack’s den raising fine hair at the back of his neck.

‘You said “most of the time.”’

‘Sometimes he takes them up to his flat. The only entrance to the flat is up these metal stairs from the backyard to the metal ramp or balcony, from which there is the only door into the flat.’

‘Where are all the exits from the pub? If we are going to send in the police, we have to give them as much information as we can. If an arrest attempt goes wrong then evidence will be destroyed before the police can get a search warrant again.’

He was sure he would have to get the police involved for this one at some point.

‘The pub is in the corner of Regent Quay and Sugarhouse Lane. The main door exits to Regent Quay, and the secondary door, out to Sugarhouse Lane. The pub grounds run all the way to Mearns Street off Sugarhouse. There are two metal gates to the backyard, one from Sugarhouse Lane, and the wide entrance on the Mearns street at the back. The massive steel sliding gates are shut most of the time except for loading and unloading lorries and an eight-foot high wall runs along the perimeter of the backyard. These gates are like prison gates. There is a door within the back gate that can opens to allow people through without opening the whole of it, heavily bolted.’

‘No easy way to get into that backyard from the gates then.’ The bloody place looked impenetrable. They would have ample warning to destroy any evidence during the time the police took to get in from the outside.

‘Nope, none at all. Now the B&B has been extended into its part of the backyard, all the way to the back street. It has a front exit to the Regent Quay, a back exit to Mearns Street, and another back exit out to the pub’s yard. From the yard there is a ramp running down to the basement where the cellar is and the metal stairs running up to Skull’s flat on the first floor.’

‘What’s out here along the rear hallway?’

‘The rear hallway runs back between the bar and The Fireside all the way to the back exit into the yard. Now let me think . . . The first door to the left as you enter the hallway from the front of the pub is a massive storage room, right behind the Fireside. The next door to the left lets you into the customer toilets. The next and final door to the left is into the staff toilets. On the right, as you enter from the pub is a massive pair of swinging doors into the kitchen. Then at the end of the hallway the stairs to the cellar run down to your right. The hallway exits to the backyard. The entrance to the flat on the floor above is right above this one. Heineken has a Staffordshire Bull Terrier very imaginatively named Bull. Bull runs free in the backyard all day till about one in the morning. Nobody gets past Bull through that yard.’

Jeremy studied the sketch and the photographs intently while Darren sipped a beer from the bottle.

‘Where are we going with this, Jeremy? We are not going to rob the pub, are we?’ He laughed.

‘Nope, but we are going to break into the flat.’

Jeremy sat back and raised his eyebrows up and down twice.

Darren raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

‘No, no, no, no, no. Are you crazy?’

‘What are they going to do, call the police on us?’

‘That’ll be the least of your problems. Skull, Hosé, Heineken, and Bull will simply kill and bury us. Besides nobody gets past Bull up to that flat.’

‘They are not going to know we will have been there. Check me out of this hotel, Darren, and get ready to check me into The Sugarhouse Hotel. We’re gonna case out that joint and break into Skull’s flat. I shall tell you how when we get there.’

CHAPTER 34

Friday, October 29 — Fourteen Days Later

They approached The Sugarhouse Hotel along the Regent Quay on the same side of the road as the pub, Darren driving his BMW rental. They took the corner around the pub and the next left again into Mearns Street.

‘Skull and his men park their vehicles along Mearns, just behind their backyard. They pull in some of the vehicles into the backyard before they close up at night, but mostly they just leave them parked along the street here. Everybody around here knows not to mess with Skull and his men; they won’t even touch the parking spaces, let alone their vehicles.’

Darren slowed down after turning into Mearns.

‘Those cars and the white vans along here are all Skull’s, Hosé’s, or Heineken’s.’

They drove past the vehicles and found a parking spot a block down from the pub.

‘This is a good spot if you need to follow Skull,’ Jeremy pointed to it. ‘Let’s take it.’

Jeremy took his case and the overnight bag he had packed, and he walked around to the front of the hotel, taking the next street up from Sugarhouse Lane. Darren had made enquiries in advance and the manager expecting their arrival greeted them at the door. They had decided that Darren would take the lead, posing as a businessman recently assigned to an Oil & Gas project in Aberdeen. Jeremy had once again put on Otter’s disguise, adding Annie’s extra make up on top, to avoid being recognized from the TV news reports.

‘Good evening. Mr. Skipper, I believe. I am Eric Tanner, the assistant manager of The Sugarhouse Hotel.’

‘Yes, I’m Darren Skipper. This is my engineer Charles Brown. We need a quiet room for Charles for three nights please, Friday through Sunday.’

‘Of course, that won’t be a problem. Hope you had a good flight sir.’

Tanner led them to the reception.

‘Can’t complain.’ Jeremy smiled politely.

‘Are you here on business?’ Tanner enquired.

‘Yes, I’m a civil engineer from London. I have to do a survey and compile some reports and estimates for Darren. I should like your quietest double en suite at the back of the hotel please. This seems to be a busy road. Is the one at the back of the hotel on the first floor available?’

‘The Champagne Executive. Unfortunately that one is taken till Sunday morning. I have the room right above it on the second floor, The Wine Executive. Everything is the same except the décor is in a different colour scheme. The Master Suite at the front of the hotel on the second floor has also become vacant. It has stunning sea views over the bay, but it will cost you £35 more per night.’

Jeremy winked at Darren.

‘It will be hard for me to justify the expense to the directors, Brown. You will be all right with the Wine Executive, won’t you?’

‘Yes, that should be fine.’

‘Do you need a room for yourself, Mr. Skipper?’

‘I’m going to be in Aberdeen long term, Mr. Tanner. I have a flat on Holburn Street. I shall, however, need a room for my electronics engineer I’m flying out here at some point. I shall be in and out of Brown’s room because we are going to be doing a lot of work together. Is that okay?’

‘Of course. I shall issue a second key for you at no extra cost.’

Check-in completed, they found themselves in The Wine Executive a few minutes later. Darren closed the door after Tanner, listened to his footsteps retreating, and turned around.

‘What the hell are we doing here, Jeremy? I guessed that you wanted the room downstairs so that we can keep an eye on the entrance to the flat and the backyard from the window. We have the same view from here, so I guessed you wanted this one. I shouldn’t have to guess. You should tell me.’

Jeremy walked to the window and looked down on the backyard of The Rock & Oar.

‘Yes this one will do. The angle is a little awkward, but I can manage. I’m going to break into Skull’s flat when he is out—when Skull is at Catalina’s and while you keep an eye on him.’

‘That yard is guarded by a score of men and Bull running free. You will never get up there.’

‘Think
Mission Impossible
, Darren.’ Jeremy patted him on the back.