and kitchens.
I trotted over to the front desk and, using my best smile, managed to snaffle a roll of brown packing tape. The same guy who’d sorted Daz’s keycard out was still on duty and he was still feeling guilty enough to be accommodating.
By the time I’d got back to the lift, Daz and Paxo were already there, clutching half a dozen empty one-litre bottles between them. I looked at them in surprise and Paxo grinned at me.
“There was a big plastic skip of them near the bar, so we just helped ourselves,” he said. “We found three with lids on.”
“Good enough,” I said. “Where’s Sean?”
“Here,” Sean said, appearing. He had a one kilo bag of sugar in one hand and a small metal tube in the other which he held up and shook at me. “Remember those little short sparklers in the dessert last night?” he said.
“Fuses,” I said, smiling. “Perfect.”
***
Right before we left, I used the hotel phone to place an international call to Detective Superintendent MacMillan.
“Hi there, Superintendent,” I said, breezy and reckless, when the police switchboard put me through. “You remember you asked me to find out what that group of bikers were up to?”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line. I stood there, holding the phone to my ear while the Devil’s Bridge Club members stood around and tried not to look offended. Besides anything else, now they’d made their choice to go with us, they were mostly too apprehensive to react to my admission.
Gleet was still on the bed, propped up with pillows. We’d folded a bath towel into a makeshift sling around his arm. His eyelids were heavy again and he was fighting to keep them open.
Then MacMillan said in that familiar clipped voice, “Why do I get the distinct impression I’m going to regret saying ‘yes’ to that?”
“Well, make a choice,” I said, matching my tone to his. “I don’t have much time.”
There was another pause, shorter this time but, if silence could have a tartness to it, this one had much more of that.
“All right, Charlie,” he said eventually, with a heavy sigh. “I’m listening.”
“I’m in Ireland,” I began, baldly. “There are two people dead.”
I heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. “What is it with you?” he muttered tightly, then, louder: “All right. Tell me.”
“One we think is a diamond courier, murdered in the gents’ toilet of a petrol station just outside Naas. The other was Slick Grannell’s girlfriend, murdered in a hotel room nearby.”
“Grannell’s girlfriend?” he said sharply. “Wait.” And he hit the silence button at his end without waiting for my acquiescence.
I did as I was told, listening to the static. The boys waited with me, most of them so tense I don’t think they’d remembered to breathe. Only Sean looked at all relaxed and that, I knew, was deceptive. It seemed to take a long time before MacMillan came back on the line.
“Mr Grannell was doing some deals with some nasty people involved with smuggling gemstones out of Africa,” he said without preamble when he returned. “Since his death we’ve had a few enquiries in from other forces and from Interpol. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details with you, Charlie, but I would strongly advise you, for what it’s worth, to contact the local police, to cooperate with them fully, and leave it to them,” he said, spelling out each word very precisely as though someone else might be listening in. “I did try and warn you but, trust me, you do not want to get yourself any deeper involved with this one than I fear you have done already.”
I shook my head. A useless act since he couldn’t see me do it. “It’s not as easy as that,” I said. “After they killed Tess they grabbed one of the lads – Jacob Nash’s son, Jamie.”
“Ah,” MacMillan said, not needing to be told about the strong bond I had with Jacob and Clare.
“We think we might know where they’re taking Jamie, and we’re going to see if we can catch up with them,” I said, deliberately cagey. The last thing I wanted was for MacMillan to try and intercept or divert us. Or, for that matter, ask too many questions about how we intended to go about our task.
As if he could read my mind MacMillan paused again and then said, “Is Meyer with you?”
“Yes.”
He made a humph of sound. “So, why are you telling me this – apart from to make me a possible accessory to whatever it is you’re going to do?” he said, the sarcasm sharp in his voice now.
“We’ve a man injured,” I said, eyes trailing over Gleet where he lay against the pillows, his face still partly clotted with old blood. He’d lost his battle with sleep again, his head lolling sideways in a way that echoed starkly how Tess’s had been. “He tried to stop them taking Jamie and they laid into him. When the police get here, it would help if there was someone who could vouch for him, otherwise I think they’re going to give him a pretty hard time of it.”
“And why can’t you vouch for him yourselves? No, on second thoughts don’t answer that,” he interrupted quickly before I had chance to speak. “I really don’t want to know.” He sighed again, an annoyed release of pent-up breath. “All right, Charlie. If they call me I’ll put in a good word for your friend. What’s his name?”
“Officially he’s Reginald Post, but he’s known as Gleet,” I said.
“Ah, that wouldn’t be the same Gleet who runs a custom bike workshop from his sister’s farm near Wray, would it?” the policeman asked.
It was my turn to pause, taken aback. “Yes, it is. How do you know that?”
