Road Kill

Twenty-nine

William led us confidently to a heavy steel door in the superstructure that opened into a steep stairwell. The inside was never intended for passenger eyes. It was industrial in its construction, lined with padding to prevent injury in rough seas like these were increasingly becoming. The ferry’s stabilisers were working hard to compensate for the motion but we held on tight to the handrail all the way down, nevertheless.

At the bottom William indicated another doorway into the engine control room. It was loud down there, and hot enough to break me out in a sweat under my leathers. William opened the door slightly and peered cautiously through the crack. He glanced back, frowning.

“There should be at least a couple of crew down here,” he said, keeping his voice low as he pushed the door wide. “I don’t know where—”

As the door swung open we caught sight of two men in ferry company uniform, slumped on the floor.

“Well, it looks like we’re heading the right way,” Sean muttered, derisive. “You want to know where Eamonn is, just follow the trail of bodies.”

He crouched by the two men, checking for pulses. One of them stirred at his touch, groaning.

“The engine room’s through there,” William said, jerking his head. “The lever operates the door.”

“OK,” Sean said, straightening. “Do what you can for these two and then get topside. I’ve a feeling we might need you up there.”

William nodded, eyes sliding over us from an impassive face. “I take it all back, what I said earlier,” he said, stony. “If you get the chance to kill that bastard, take it.”

If the engine control room was hot and noisy, that was nothing compared to the engine room itself. The place was crowded with pipes and wires and the steel grate flooring vibrated hard under our feet. Huge cooling fans were fighting a losing battle to circulate the sweltering stale air and the stink of engine oil overlaid everything, thick enough to taste.

We found ourselves on a mezzanine walkway overlooking one of the massive diesel engines that drove the ferry. The top of the engine casing itself must have been three or four metres in length. There was no sign of any crew, or of Eamonn.

Sean nudged my arm and indicated we should go forward and keep our eyes peeled. I jerked my head to Daz and we moved off. There was little point in trying for stealth. The racket of the engines running covered any sounds we might have made.

“Ah, there you are now. I was beginning to think you’d decided these two weren’t worth giving up a small fortune in diamonds for,” Eamonn’s voice called out above the clamour. “Not that I’d have blamed you, after the trouble they’ve caused.”

We stepped forward to the railing to see Eamonn down on the engine room floor below us, previously hidden by the bulk of the engine itself. He had forsaken the suit he’d worn during our last encounter for jeans and a flying jacket.

The extendible baton he’d used to kill Paxo was in his hand, the lethal metal tip resting lightly on his shoulder. Another like the one Sean had taken away from him at Jacob and Clare’s, and the one I’d taken away from the man in the Merc van. I wished I’d kept hold of it.

Jamie and Isobel had been handcuffed to each other’s wrists, face to face, around a steel support pillar. Jamie was on his knees, hugging the metalwork, his eyes closed and his face drenched with sweat. For a moment I wondered what the hell Eamonn had done to him, then I remembered his acute queasiness on the outward voyage, when the sea had been almost glassy compared to this. The plunging of the ship and the lack of a visible horizon was making even me feel unbalanced, and I didn’t suffer from seasickness.

“I hardly think they’re the troublemakers round here, do you?” Sean said, his voice loud enough to carry but icily controlled. “They haven’t quite extended their range to common murder.”

Eamonn smiled nastily at us from beneath the plaster that stretched across his nose, partly obscuring his face. He took a step sideways and circled the shackled mother and son like a shark.

“Oh but now that’s not true,” Eamonn declared. He stopped, pushed the edge of the baton under Isobel’s chin and forced her head back with it. “Is it now, Isobel my darlin’?”

Isobel stayed stubbornly mute, pressing her lips together into a thin line and glaring at him with pure hatred in her face. Eamonn studied her dispassionately for a moment, then lowered the baton and moved round to Jamie, grasping his hair to lift his slack head up and wedge the baton across his throat. Jamie’s eyes flew open as he began to choke.

“Tell them,” Eamonn goaded, gaze locked on Isobel.

Up on the walkway we saw Jamie begin to struggle in Eamonn’s hands and moved forward instinctively. Eamonn’s head jerked round towards us.

“Hold off or I’ll snap his neck in a heartbeat and there won’t be a thing you can do to stop me,” he commanded. We stopped. He turned his attention back to Isobel. “Tell them, or your lying face will be the last thing your little boy sees.”

“All right,” Isobel said from between clenched teeth. “I killed him, is that what you want to hear? Well, I admit it and to hell with you!”

“Not good enough,” Eamonn said, tightening his grip. Jamie was panicking now, hands jerking so that Isobel was forced hard up against the other side of the pillar. “Tell them, Isobel,” Eamonn taunted her. “Tell them the kind of woman you really are. They’re prepared to die for you and this worthless brat of yours. Don’t you think they’re entitled to know?”

“I-I killed Slick Grannell,” she said, her voice wobbling. “It was an accident. I wasn’t aiming for him. I just wanted to stop that scrawny bitch from giving Jamie the money.” Her scornful gaze swept over her former lover. “I was trying to keep my son out of all this. To protect him from you.”

“You were trying to kill Clare?” I couldn’t stop the shocked question bursting out. All the time the Devil’s Bridge Club had been slyly trying to point the blame for the accident that had claimed Slick’s life towards Clare, and they’d been right. I remembered my last phone call with MacMillan. The van that had hit Slick had been registered to Isobel and I’d ridden right over that fact and jumped straight to the conclusion it must have been Eamonn or one of his men driving it instead.

Eamonn took one look at the shock in our faces and released his grip on Jamie, who slumped forwards, coughing. When he could speak again he stared up at his mother with a kind of horrified disgust on his face.

“So that’s why you wouldn’t loan me the money in the first place,” Jamie said and there was no mistaking the sneer in his voice. “You live with this crooked bastard but you wanted to keep me out of it?”

“Oh she would have been in there like a shot if she’d had the chance, wouldn’t you, Isobel?” Eamonn mocked. “Truth is, though, she’s broke. Wasn’t that your real reason for trying to run Jacob’s blonde bimbo down? No imminent wedding means no divorce and you wouldn’t have had to pay the old man off, now would you? A nice little side benefit.”

“So why did you go along with all this?” Sean slung at him. “What was in it for you?”

“Oh I found out about the little deal your man there was putting together,” Eamonn said, nodding to a white-faced Daz. “It sounded too good to be true, so I thought I’d cut myself a slice by staking young Jamie. I must admit it was a bit of a surprise when his father’s jail-bait threw a spanner in the works by giving him the cash to try and pay me off.”

“Her name is Clare,” I said with a brittle precision that hurt my jaw. “And she’s twenty-seven. Hardly jail-bait.”

“She’s still young enough to be his daughter,” Eamonn returned. “She was a thorn in my side, I know that much. That ‘accident’ was a mixed blessing. When Isobel admitted to me what she’d done I thought she’d blown the whole deal by killing Slick. I thought he was the only link, but Tess had the same contacts, so all was not lost.”

“So why try and run Tess down on Friday night?” I said, although even as I spoke I knew the answer.

“Oh that was Isobel’s boys again. Getting inventive, weren’t we, my darlin’? Getting desperate, too. Thought that if you lost your contact, you’d give it up.”

She curled her lip at him but Eamonn just grinned back at her.

“And that bunch who jumped us in the pub at Portaferry,” I said. “Isobel again, I assume?”

“Oh yes,” Eamonn said cheerfully. “You see the kind of mother she is – prepared to have her own son beaten up to keep him away from the thick of it?” He tutted and shook his head. “Evil and vicious. My kind of woman.”

“So she knew you were planning on hijacking the diamonds as soon as the exchange was made,” Sean said. He’d gone very still, his only movement an unconscious counterbalance against the crashing of the ship. “Why wait until then?”

Eamonn shrugged. “Because without Tess, and the boy wonder here, we couldn’t flush out the courier. All we had to do was keep tabs on you until the rendezvous and we’d get the diamonds without having to lay out a cent. And all I had to do was promise Isobel my lads would get her little boy out of there before the shit started flying,” he said, smiling broadly like it was all so simple.

“You two were the only possible fly in the ointment, but their own greed made them keep you out of it, otherwise we might have had more of a fight on our hands,” he went on, darkly now. “And it turned out I was right about that, wasn’t I? I knew you were trouble right from the start.” He touched a tentative hand to the plaster on his nose. “My lads did their best to get rid of you, Charlie, but it seems you’ve a habit of surviving.”

A brief and graphic snapshot of the van that had chased me from Slick’s wake, and Sam’s accident sprang into my mind. I doused it quickly.

“You must know that as soon as we reach Scotland they’ll be waiting for you, don’t you, Eamonn?” I said instead.

Eamonn’s smile blinked out to turn his face cold again. “I’m tired of listening to your yacking,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I have a schedule to keep to. Hand over those gems.”

Sean unzipped his pocket with a show of reluctance and produced the pouch. Eamonn’s eyes locked greedily onto the prize.

Sean paused, nodding to Isobel and Jamie. “Release them first,” he said.

“You’re in no position to dictate terms to me.”

“Neither are you,” Sean said.

Eamonn’s face was murderous, then he smiled again. “Why not?” he said. He produced a set of keys from his jacket pocket, held them up for a moment, then deliberately let them fall. The keys hit the grating at his feet and slithered through into the dark void below.

“There you go, now,” he said. “It won’t take you more than – what? Two minutes to reach those? And I can’t take them back either. Fair’s fair. Now give me those stones.” He stepped closer to Jamie again. “I can still kill the boy, if that’s what you’re after?”

Sean sighed and started to move towards the nearest stairwell. As he passed me his eyes slid sideways, little more than a flicker. I followed his gaze and saw a set of tools on the wall behind us, each clipped into its own place. Right in the middle was a large pair of bolt-cutters. I blinked at him, just once, to show I’d got the message.

“I don’t think so,” Eamonn’s voice called out. We both froze, as though Eamonn had caught the gesture and divined its meaning.

Eamonn was shaking his head. “Not you,” he said, eyes narrowed on Sean. “You must be joking if you think I’d want to be getting close to you again for a while. And she’s just as bad. Give the stones to the wee faggot. He can bring them.”

Daz flushed at the insult but said nothing as Sean handed over the bag of diamonds to him. He made his way down the steep open-tread steps and approached Eamonn warily, fiddling with the pouch in his hands.

Eamonn held out his hand for the stones, his expression as arrogant as a man with his nose plastered all over his face can manage.

“Charlie! Sean! Can you hear me?” William’s voice sounded tinnily from my collar. “Erm, I think we might have a problem up here.”

“What is it?” I muttered, lifting the mic nearer my mouth as casually as I could manage.

“A big nasty-looking guy’s just come through the Off Limits gate and broken the lock off the fire control room,” William said.

“The what—?” I began, just as Daz reached out to give the diamonds to Eamonn.

At the last moment Daz flipped the untied bag upside down and the stones showered down onto the metal grating like hail, disappearing into the same dark space that had swallowed up the handcuff keys.

“You want the diamonds,” Daz cried wildly. “Here, take them. It won’t take you more than a couple of hours to get to them!”

“You stupid bastard,” Eamonn roared, bringing the baton slashing down towards Daz’s head.

Even as Daz blocked the blow with his forearm, Sean had jumped for the stairs, sliding down the handrails rather than bothering with the narrow treads.

Before he could reach the bottom Eamonn had lifted a small walkie-talkie to his mouth and shouted, “Are you in position, Michael? Hit the bastards! Hit them now!”

There was a delay of perhaps three seconds, during which time I’d started to dive for the board that held the bolt-cutters. Sean had landed at the bottom of the stairs and taken a stride for Eamonn. Daz had fallen and was rolling out of the way, hugging his injured arm to his chest.

I’d almost begun to believe that whatever nasty surprise Eamonn had planned had backfired on him when the big cooling fan next to me suddenly lost impetus and started to spin down. A piercing alarm siren wailed into life, backed by a blinding flashing light.

The engine room lights all went out, leaving only the warning light strobing in the darkness. Then the emergency lighting clicked in.

“William,” I snapped into the radio, shouting over the siren. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Oh shit,” William said. “He’s hit the manual override on the fire control system. Get out of there, Charlie! You’ve got thirty seconds before the compartment seals.”

“What?” I yelled, wrenching the bolt-cutters off the wall and racing for the stairs. “What the hell happens after thirty seconds?”

“The whole of the compartment floods with CO². It takes less than two minutes.”

Oh shit, I echoed silently. I jumped the last half-dozen steps, landed badly and staggered on.

The vibrations through the deck had changed, I realised, the engines were shutting down as well. As our forward momentum dropped, the stabilisers began to lose effectiveness. The ferry had already been pitching in the swell but now it began to roll more violently as well.

“Shut it off, William,” I managed. “Jamie and Isobel are stuck down here. Shut it off!”

“You can’t,” William said, anguish twisting his voice. “Once it’s been activated, that’s it. It’s supposed to be a last resort if there’s a fire. Anybody still in there when it goes off is as good as dead. Just get out!”

“Daz,” I shouted. “Get to the door. Wedge it open!”

“With what?” Daz demanded, lurching to his feet.

“Anything you can damn well find!”

Sean had cornered Eamonn by this time. Eamonn took one look at the deadly intent in Sean’s face and tried to bring the baton up, but the confined space was against him. He backed up and prepared to make a stand but Sean just swatted the baton aside and put one hard deliberate blow straight into the middle of Eamonn’s face, shattering his already broken nose. Eamonn gave a squeal of pain and dropped to the grating with his hands to his face.

Sean didn’t bother trying to finish the fight. He’d heard my brief exchange with William on his own radio and now he spun back to where Jamie and Isobel were tied.

I braced myself steady against the railing to operate the big bolt-cutters. They sliced straight through the inside band of the handcuffs without any fuss. Jamie was still on his knees and I had to cut him loose from Isobel completely so Sean could hoist him to his feet.

Isobel gave a gasp. We turned to find Eamonn was back on his feet with a length of heavy chain in his hand and blood running freely down his face.

Sean dumped Jamie’s almost senseless body onto me. “Get him out,” he said.

The fear grabbed me by the throat but there wasn’t time to argue. I half-carried, half-dragged Jamie to the staircase, shouting at him until he put one foot in front of the other and began to climb.

We reached the upper walkway. I glanced back briefly as Eamonn launched a frenzied attack on Sean, just had time to see Sean dance out of the way, agile despite the heaving floor under him, and kick Eamonn’s legs from under him.

“Come on, I don’t know how long it will hold!”

Daz was by the doorway. He’d found a small pallet truck and had jammed that into the door aperture. The door itself was attempting to close on hydraulic rams that were designed to seal the engine compartment in the event of disaster, come what may. Over 2000psi of pressure was slowly and inevitably crushing and distorting the legs of the pallet truck. Our last exit was shrinking with every passing moment.

And then, our thirty seconds were up.

I heard a hissing noise from above my head. A series of pale green pipes with flat nozzles was strung across the ceiling of the compartment. Now, gas was spraying out from each nozzle. The carbon dioxide, heavier than air, cascaded down into the engine room like misted water.

Desperation lent me strength. I heaved Jamie over my shoulder with a thankful prayer that it wasn’t William I had to lift. Gritting my teeth, I charged for the doorway, almost throwing Jamie through the gap into Daz’s waiting arms.

I turned. Isobel was staggering along the walkway about six metres behind me but of Sean – and Eamonn – there was no sign.

“Come on!” I bellowed, starting to gasp now as the carbon dioxide flooded in, and trying not to let the panic show. “Time’s up!”

Sean’s head appeared from the other side of the engine. He scrambled up onto the massive diesel, ran along the top of the casing and jumped for the walkway near where I was standing. I grabbed his forearm as he landed, but his grip was tight. He vaulted over the railing in a flash and dived for the steadily closing doorway. I followed him through, dimly aware of hands grasping me and hauling me clear.

“Who else is inside?” demanded a man alongside me. He was in uniform like a naval officer and carrying a walkie-talkie. Through the haze of little black dots that the carbon dioxide had starred across my vision, I realised that Isobel wasn’t right behind me.

“Two,” I said, still panting for breath, just as one leg of the pallet truck buckled with a terrible graunching noise and the door lurched a little further closed.

“Mum!” Jamie cried, coming out of his nausea enough to realise who was left behind. “Where is she?”

As I watched, Isobel’s head and shoulders appeared through the gap. Two crew members grabbed her arms and started to pull, but she was suddenly yanked backwards with a dreadful wailing cry. Eamonn’s bloodied face thrust out of the doorway instead.

Jamie flung himself forward and Sean and I grabbed him before he would have tried to force himself back into the engine compartment. He struggled wildly in our arms, tears streaming down his face.

The crew, meanwhile, started to pull Eamonn clear without making any judgements on who deserved to be saved. The door was edging towards its goal all the time, the pallet truck little more than a compressed and twisted mass of scrap metal. But Eamonn was nearly out, only his legs remained inside.

I could see the triumph blooming on his face but then the triumph changed to horror. He began to yell, struggling against something still inside the engine room.

Through the ever-diminishing gap I could just make out Isobel’s face, teeth bared. She’d abandoned any last hope of making it out of there, but she had a death grip on Eamonn’s shins and she wasn’t for letting go.

“Mum!” Jamie cried again.

“I’m sorry,” she said calmly. “Tell your father I’m sorry, too.”

Eamonn’s struggles unintentionally loosened the crew members’ grip on his arms and Isobel managed to drag him another few inches further backwards. His eyes met mine and for a second I saw resignation and defeat in them.

“Was it worth it?” I asked him.

Eamonn didn’t reply. At that moment the structural integrity of the pallet truck finally failed. It folded up completely. With that last piece of resistance gone, the hydraulic ram on the compartment door achieved its aim, quietly and without fuss.

Isobel still had Eamonn’s legs pinned inside the engine room when the door closed. The steel plate cut through both his thigh bones, just above the knee, as neatly and as precisely as a guillotine.