Third Strike

CHAPTER 15

My father listened with absolute concentration to the proposal the government man put forward, as though he had any number of choices in the matter. When Collingwood was done outlining what he had in mind, my father’s face was grave despite the fact that he was being offered deliverance, or something pretty close.

It was my mother who spoke first.

“What are the risks?” she asked, glancing around the group of us. “These dreadful people have already threatened us and only a few days ago someone tried to kill my husband—and my daughter, too,” she added, a touch belatedly for my taste. “Will agreeing to help you make them stop? Or will it only make them try harder?”

Collingwood pursed his lips, but I saw that gleam was back in his sad-looking eyes again. He’d clearly dismissed my mother from his calculations almost as soon as they’d been introduced. She was the dictionary definition of genteel, if far from the defenseless old lady Parker had described. I sometimes found it easy to forget that under that blue-rinsed exterior lay a formidable, albeit largely dormant, brain.

“Ma’am, we’ll do our best to ensure your safety. We need your husband’s testimony if we’re going to make anything of this. Besides,” he added with a reassuring smile, gesturing around Parker’s office, “these people are the best in the business. My recommendation would be for you to put yourself entirely in their hands.”

“In that case, are you also going to foot the bill for their services?” she said pleasantly.

Collingwood looked momentarily taken aback. “I will certainly put that to my superiors, ma’am,” he said, noncommittal.

She nodded and smiled, seeming placated. Collingwood waited a moment, as if to make sure she wasn’t going to come back with anything else, then began gathering up his papers. He picked up the flight manifest I’d looked at, and in doing so uncovered the blowup of Vondie Blaylock that had been hidden underneath it. The photograph suddenly seemed to lie starkly exposed in the center of the table and was all the more shocking because of it.

I heard a simultaneous sharp intake of breath from both my mother and father.

Then my father stretched out and picked up the photo and there was the slightest hesitation in the reach, as though he didn’t really want to look but couldn’t help himself. He took his time studying the image and, when he was done, he glanced across at Sean with taut disdain curling his lip.

“Your handiwork, I presume,” he said coldly.

“No, actually,” I said. “Mine.”

For a second he allowed his bitterness to have free rein before he ruthlessly clamped down on it. But there was something in his face when he looked at me that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps now when he looked at his only child, the product of both his genes and his nurturing, there was something missing.

I turned away and caught Collingwood watching our frosty exchange with apparent amusement lurking in those mournful eyes. They were a dark brown color, I noticed. That, together with the drooping lids, gave him the appearance of an elderly bloodhound. But one who had suddenly picked up a hot new scent, and was hunting.

“So,” Collingwood said, dropping his hands onto his thighs as though preparing to get to his feet, “no doubt you’ll need to discuss this—”

“I don’t believe so,” my father said, interrupting him. Just when I thought his arrogance had reached new levels, he did cast his eyes sideways at his wife, for all the world like her opinion mattered. She nodded, and the slightest flicker of a smile crossed my father’s thin lips. He turned back to Collingwood. “I’m prepared to help you all I can.”

Collingwood continued to rise, but only to lean across the table and offer my father a solemn handshake. “Glad to hear it, sir,” he said, shaking my mother’s hand also, almost as an afterthought, and subsiding again. He shifted his attention to Parker, waving a hand towards Vondie’s picture, which he’d left—deliberately, I’m sure—on the table. “So, Mr. Armstrong, can you help me to, ah, locate my agent so I can bring her in?”

My mother gave a start of surprise. “Oh, but surely that’s—”

“The woman who held you hostage—yes,” I cut in to stop her blurting out that she’d watched Sean and me take both her unwanted houseguests prisoner and that they were still being held at our behest. Regrettably perhaps, the only quick way I could think of to shut her up was to remind her. “The woman who allowed her partner to threaten to rape you.”

She paled, then a dark, mottled flush bloomed across her cheeks. Peripherally, I saw my father’s head snap round, but I held on to my mother’s distraught gaze until I saw the understanding creep into it and strip from her tongue whatever words she’d been about to voice.

When I let go, I expected to find my father glaring at me for raking it up. Instead, he had picked the photograph up again and was studying it afresh. It occurred to me that it was probably the first time he’d got a look at one of his wife’s captors. I don’t know how much she’d told him about her ordeal, but it must have been enough.

Parker, who’d missed nothing of my father’s brooding double take, got easily to his feet and came round the desk to shake the government man’s hand. “Would you give us some time to make a few calls, Mr. Collingwood?” he asked politely.

“No problem,” Collingwood said. “I’m grateful for any assistance you can offer.”

Parker favored him with a bland smile. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Sean and I followed Parker out into the reception area, closing the office door behind us.

“Okay,” Parker said quietly. “Get on the phone to whoever’s holding those two and cut them loose.” I nodded and started to reach for my mobile. I had carefully erased the number for Gleet’s farm from the phone’s memory, but I had it stored in my own instead.

“Oh, and tell your guy to make sure he gives them back a cell phone or access to a landline, okay?”

I paused in mid-dial. “Okay.”

He smiled. “Good,” he said, then half-opened the door and added, louder, “Bill, would you show Mr. Collingwood into one of the conference rooms while we make some inquiries on his behalf?”

“Yeah, boss,” Bill said, emerging from behind the reception desk. As he passed Parker, he gave him a slight nod. Obviously, there was something going on here and I didn’t fully appreciate the finer details. But before I could ask, Gleet’s number in the UK began to ring out and I didn’t have time to wonder about it. I crossed quickly to an empty office where I wouldn’t be overheard.

“Good thing, too,” was all Gleet had to say when I passed on Parker’s instructions. “They was starting to stink in there. Even the pigs was complaining.”

“Just watch yourselves when you let them go,” I warned. “The woman’s got a nasty kick to her, and I wouldn’t trust the guy anywhere near your sister.”

I heard Gleet snort even at the other end of a transatlantic phone line. “He’ll be a brave one if he tries anything on with May. She sleeps with that fuckin’ shotgun alongside her under the covers,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry, Charlie. I’ll stick the pair of’em in the back of the van and drive’em round in circles for a while before I let’em go. I’ll make sure I dump’em far enough away that they wouldn’t find the place again in a month of Sundays.”

“Great. Don’t forget to let them have a phone, though.”

“They had one with’em, didn’t they?” he said. “I’ll make sure it’s charged up when they get it back. No worries.”

“Thank you,” I said, heartfelt. “I owe you a big one for this, Gleet.”

“Nah, I’aven’t forgotten Dublin,” he said, and his voice had entirely lost its joky edge to turn stone sober. “I think this just about makes us even.”

We let Collingwood stew for half an hour while we sat in Parker’s office, drinking his excellent coffee as he chatted with my parents. Parker was erudite enough to bring my father out of his simmering silence and coax conversation out of my mother. All things to all men—or all women, come to that. By the end of it, I could see my parents drawing unfavorable comparisons with Sean, but by then I didn’t care.

Sean preferred not to take part in this conversation, sidelining himself. Perhaps he’d tried to talk with my parents too many times in the past, under too many sets of circumstances, and had tired of having the effort thrown back in his face. He wasn’t used to failure. It wasn’t a state of affairs he had to deal with very often.

After I’d finished my phone call with Gleet and joined them, I’d tried to catch Sean’s eye with a question mark in my expression.

What the hell’s Parker up to?

Sean had just given me a faint knowing smile.

Patience, Charlie. He knows what he’s doing.

I shrugged, feeling outside the joke. And that feeling only increased when, some thirty-five minutes later, Bill Rendelson brought Collingwood back through. All Parker did was thank the government man courteously for his time and tell him we’d be in touch.

I expected Collingwood to show some signs of annoyance at what must have seemed a pointless delay at the very least, but instead he just ducked his head in that strange nervous little gesture of good-bye, and limply shook hands again all round.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, sir,” he said to my father, in a hurry to leave now. “As soon as we’ve recovered our rogue agent, I’ll talk to the cops in Bushwick and see if we can get some of this mess straightened out.”

“Thank you,” my father said with understated dignity, as though Collingwood was offering to grant him some minor favor rather than possibly salvaging his entire career. Maybe he just took exception to the veiled threat—no Vondie, no clean slate.

After Collingwood had gone it was my mother, again, who cut to the heart of the matter.

“It all rather sounds like our salvation,” she said, her voice tragic, “but how do we know we can trust him?”

“At this stage, we don’t,” I said. She looked confused, but for a moment the only analogy that came to mind involved urinating in tents.

It was Sean who glanced across and said, “Remember the old quote about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer.”

My mother frowned, enlightened but not reassured. “That sounds like something out of Machiavelli—The Prince?”

“Possibly,” Sean said with a twitch of his lips. “But I was thinking more of Michael Corleone—The Godfather Part II.”

“Oh,” she said blankly. “And how do we know who is a friend and who is an enemy?”

Parker merely smiled at her and a moment later, as if on cue, Bill knocked and entered, brandishing a computer memory stick in his remaining hand, like it was an Olympic torch.

“I’ve edited out the twenty-five minutes of tuneless humming and him clearing his throat,” Bill said, “and homed right in on the heart of it.”

Parker took the storage device from him with a nod of thanks. “Mr. Collingwood did make life a little too easy for my suspicious mind,” he said, “so I asked Charlie to make sure Blaylock and Kaminski had a way to make a phone call as soon as they were released, and I arranged for Collingwood to be somewhere we could monitor his incoming calls.”

Suddenly, all that sophisticated audio equipment in the conference room where Collingwood had been waiting took on a whole new meaning.

“You bugged him,” I said with admiration. “Clever.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny that allegation.” Parker curved me a smile, more in the eyes than the mouth, but when he spoke his tone was serious and somber. “And I certainly have no intention of doing so outside this room.”

While he was speaking, he’d plugged the stick into a USB port on the slimline laptop computer that sat open on his desk, and hit the relevant keys.

Parker’s laptop had a tiny high-tech-looking pair of external speakers connected to it but, even so, when the audio file started to play we crowded more closely around the desk to listen.

The first thing we heard was the warbling note of a cell phone ringing, some heavy sighing as it was fumbled for in some hard-to-reach pocket, then Collingwood’s voice.

“Yeah?” he said by way of universal greeting, sounding almost bored. Then his voice sharpened and there was a slight clatter in the background, as though he’d been leaning back on a chair and had let it jolt forwards flat onto its feet with the shock of the unexpected caller.

“Vonda! My Lord, where are you? Are you all right?”

The microphone was good but not that good. We could hear some squawking in the background, but not enough to begin to decipher actual words at the other end of Collingwood’s line. It was just audio scribble.

“Hey, hey, just wait a goddamn minute!” He cut right across the top of whatever she was saying. “I don’t know what the hell you got yourself mixed up in, kiddo, and I don’t want to know … . No, you just listen to me. You come on in and we’ll work this whole thing out. You stay out there, off the grid, and I can’t help you.”

He sounded sad rather than angry. Tired, as though this was a ritual he’d been through many times before, a procedure he had to go through, but he knew it never ended well.

Vondie launched back in at this point—strident, if the cast of what she was saying was anything to go by. Collingwood barely let her get into her stride.

“Believe me when I tell you, you’re in a world of trouble right now, kiddo, but it’ll be worse if you run.” His voice turned almost pleading. “Look, I know you’re hurting. That busted nose needs to be fixed if you’re gonna stay looking beautiful, huh?”

Parker reached out and paused the playback, looking round the assembled faces. “Immediate thoughts?” he asked crisply.

“Well, he doesn’t sound like he knew what she was up to,” Sean ventured. “Unless he was aware you were recording him, of course, and he was playing to his audience? If it’d been me, I’d have assumed you were monitoring.”

Parker shrugged. “It cost a lot of money to have surveillance gear installed in that room,” he said, offering me a wry smile. “We know he didn’t sweep it, so unless he’s had cleaners in that we don’t know about, I doubt he would have spotted anything.”

“He sounds almost … fond of that woman,” my mother said, a dent forming between her eyebrows, as if she couldn’t understand why anyone could possibly want to show affection for one of her erstwhile tormentors.

“Protégée,” I said shortly. “He trained her, that would be my guess. If she’s cocked-up and he can’t fix it, or if he can’t bring her to heel—and quickly—it’s going to reflect as badly on him as it does on her,” I added, echoing Sean’s remarks the day of my abortive fitness test. “If he’s on the level.”

“I think you’re right,” Parker said. He glanced at my father but only received a brief shake of the head in response. My father had never been one to speak just to hear the sound of his own voice unless he had something of value to say. Parker nudged the mouse and Collingwood’s voice re-emerged.

“Come on in, kiddo,” he repeated. “Whatever you got yourself into, you can still make it right … . Hey, hey, I know. I just want to help you, kiddo. I stand by my people.” Coaxing now. “Just come on in. Come home—please?”

There was a long pause but this time we couldn’t hear anything of Vondie’s voice. Either Collingwood had shifted his position, or she was no longer screeching at him. Or she was giving his words long, silent consideration.

Eventually, Collingwood said, “Okay, but call me and let me know which flight. Promise? I’ll meet you … . Yeah, I’ll bring you in myself … . It’ll all work out, you’ll see … . Yeah, take care of yourself, kiddo. Bye.”

We heard a muted bleep as he ended the call, then a long slow exhalation and a single quietly muttered but entirely heartfelt word, just before the recording ended: “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Parker murmured, clicking it off with a thoughtful air. “I’d say that just about sums it up, wouldn’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Sean replied. “The question is, Do you trust him more, or less, after hearing it?”

It had been a general question, but he cocked an eyebrow at my father as he spoke, making it direct and personal.

My father gave an elegant shrug. “I’m not entirely sure that I have much of a choice in the matter,” he said, indifferent. “But I’ve always found that actions speak far louder than words. If he’s to be trusted, I would rather suggest that we’ll know soon enough by what he does.”

“But, Richard, surely if this man isn’t to be trusted, that means they’ll make another attempt on you, doesn’t it?” my mother demanded, her voice taking on distinct overtones of Vondie’s shrill note.

My father gave a grim smile. “In that case, my dear,” he said with utter calm, “we’ll find out just how good Charlotte is at her job.”