McClure said, ‘The M6 bombing.’
‘ Oh my God,’ the man breathed. Then he pulled himself together. ‘Right, come this way.’
Reception confirmed that the man had booked and paid for Room 111 but hadn’t returned to it since yesterday, unless he’d sneaked back without their knowledge. The key had not been returned yet.
McClure and Donaldson conferred hurriedly.
‘ He could be in there, then,’ McClure said. ‘In which case we could do with an armed back-up.’
‘ He won’t be there,’ Donaldson said with certainty. ‘And anyway, you gotta gun. Don’t be a cissy.’
McClure paused, then made a decision. He nodded and turned to the manager. ‘Give us a pass key to the room, please.’
The corridor was quiet and empty. A laundry basket on wheels was part-way along it, the room itself three quarters of the way down. The two detectives edged slowly along. McClure held his gun in his hand. Sweat beads began to form on his head.
Donaldson grinned. ‘You ever used that thing in anger?’
‘ Never even drawn it outside a range,’ McClure whispered.
‘ Thought as much.’
The men stood on either side of the door. They eyed each other for a moment.
Donaldson knocked loudly and shouted, ‘Good morning. Maid service.’
There was no response.
Donaldson inserted the pass key, pulled the handle down and pushed. The door swung gently open. There was nothing to see. ‘Armed police! Come on out with your hands up,’ McClure barked.
Nothing. He repeated the order. Still nothing.
In one swift movement, gun held in the classic two-handed shooting grip, he twisted into the short hallway, low, fast, his breathing controlled, but heart beating like a demented drum machine. Keeping low, he almost danced to where the short hallway widened out into the bedroom proper — where he exposed himself fully for the first time.
He expected a bullet in the head. It never came. The room was empty. He beckoned Donaldson in.
The American sauntered up behind him. ‘Very good. You move well.’
‘ Thank you. Let’s check out the bathroom before we get too cocky,’ said McClure shakily.
It was empty.
‘ He booked in and fucked off when he saw us, I guess,’ Donaldson mused.
McClure reholstered his weapon. ‘I’ll tell the manager to seal off this room until we can get Scenes of Crime to do it.’
Thirty minutes later they accosted Karen Wilde in the lift at Preston police station.
As they followed her down the corridor to her office, Donaldson said, ‘What a bitch,’ under his breath.
McClure merely raised his eyebrows.
‘ I’d like to fuck her though,’ he added without moving his lips, eyes glued to her rear.
‘ Join the queue,’ McClure retorted.
‘ Right, what’ve you got for me?’ Karen said when they reached her office. She sat at the desk.
‘ I’m Detective Chief Inspector McClure from Greater Manchester’s Serious Crime Squad and-’
‘ I’m Special Agent Donaldson, Karl Donaldson, FBI, based in Miami, Florida, in the United States of America.’
‘ I’m fully aware of the location of Florida. It’s where Mickey Mouse lives, I believe.’
Both men shook her hand, Donaldson with a grave, piss-taking formality. ‘And may I add what a pleasure it is to meet ya’ll, ma’am?’
‘ You can add what you damn well like. Just get on with it — I’m busy.’
McClure opened his mouth but Donaldson cut in. ‘Allow me… I’ll try and sum it up in a nutshell.’
‘ Do try,’ said Karen thinly, resting her chin on her thumb and forefinger.
‘ I work in the Organised Crime Department of the FBI and for the last five years me and my partner have been trying to nail a mobster called Corelli. Very rich guy, into anything illegal you care to mention — drugs, prostitution, fraud… Anyway, we’ve been pretty unsuccessful.
‘ This guy Corelli has loads of business partners. One of them is a young punk called Danny Carver. Carver has been linked to Corelli for about three years. Suspected of being involved in some major stuff. I mean mega-shit — gun-running, drugs, massive commodity frauds, the whole caboodle. Eventually, Carver gets pissed because he does a lot of legwork but only gets a small percentage of the profit. So what does he do?’
‘ Do tell,’ said Karen.
‘ Cuts loose and starts doin’ deals himself without the boss but using his contacts. Cheeky, huh? Corelli ain’t happy but he lives with it until Carver schmoozes into a deal that Corelli himself is actually tryin’ to put together with a drug baron in Manchester, guy called Brown. Corelli is that far’ — here Donaldson laid his palms together — ‘from doin’ business when Carver steps in and pulls the rug out from under him then sets up the same deal with Brown but with bigger percentages all round.’
‘ What does this deal involve?’
‘ Importing crack into the UK. Basically taking over the British market,’ intercut McClure. ‘Big money.’
‘ Millions,’ affirmed Donaldson. ‘Money that Corelli wasn’t happy losing. The rumour is that Corelli put out a contract on Carver — but I stress it’s only a rumour.’
Karen checked her watch impatiently.
‘ What we intended to do,’ Donaldson said hurriedly, ‘was to nail Carver, which wouldn’t have been too difficult because he’s a sloppy operator. Then we’d promise him immunity from prosecution, a new life, new I.D. — y’know, full-blown witness protection — in exchange for him testifying against Corelli. Might’ve worked,’ he mused.
‘ Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘we fixed up this transatlantic cooperation exercise between the FBI and the Greater Manchester police — with the blessing from your Home Office… and it was all going well until yesterday. Carver was — ’
‘ What happened yesterday?’ Karen interrupted.
McClure took over. ‘We’d had Carver and Brown under obs for a couple of weeks. We knew they’d holed up in an hotel in Lancaster with a couple of call girls. It was our intention to pick up their tail yesterday morning, but we were late arriving at the hotel because we got snarled up in motorway roadworks. By then, both of them had gone.’
‘ How careless,’ sneered Karen. ‘This is very interesting, but what has it got to do with me?’
‘ According to the management,’ said Donaldson, ‘Carver had left in a Daimler with one of the hookers and Brown had gone off in a Beemer with the other girl.’
‘ A Beemer — what’s that?’
‘ Sorry — a BMW,’ explained Donaldson. ‘Next thing we know — BOOM! Carver has a bomb up his ass.’
‘ Hang on. So you’re saying that the car that blew up causing the M6 tragedy, had Danny Carver in it — and you might know who killed him and why?’
‘ Not exactly,’ Donaldson stressed. ‘I am saying that Carver was in the Daimler. I’m surmising that he was killed by a hit man who works for Corelli, because he’d usurped him on a big business deal.’
‘ How can you be sure that this Danny Carver was in the Daimler? There’s nothing identifiable left in the car. It’s not even recognisably a Daimler. ‘
‘ Just adding up the scores on the doors,’ said McClure.
‘ Talk evidence,’ Karen insisted.
‘ OK,’ said Donaldson. ‘Firstly we know that Carver was booked on a flight to Miami from Manchester yesterday. He didn’t get on it — we checked.
‘ Secondly we have a video tape here from the hotel’ — he held up the cassette — ‘which shows Danny Carver getting into a Daimler with a girl and being driven away. We’ve watched your tapes of the explosion from the freeway camera and it looks like the same model of Daimler. I’ll bet when your forensic team get their results together they’ll find the remains of three bodies.’
‘ I am definitely intrigued,’ said Karen, beginning to squirm a little with excitement.
Donaldson went on, ‘I saw a man in the hotel lobby yesterday who I recognise as having some Corelli connection — but the great thing is that the hotel video cameras pick him up arriving in a car, parking it, walking
