Road Kill

dazed. Now we turned to see him slowly come out of his stupor long enough to dig automatically in his pocket, pulling out his phone and staring at it as though he didn’t know what the noise meant. It was William who went across and took it out of his hands, pressing the receive key. He listened in silence, then turned back, holding the phone out.

“Charlie,” he said, nonplussed. “It’s for you.”

Equally puzzled, I walked across and took the call.

“Hello?”

“Well now, I was right about you, wasn’t I, Charlie?” said a soft voice at the other end of the line, hardly audible over the background noise. “You have got some fire in your belly, haven’t you?”

“It’s all over, Eamonn,” I said, earning myself sharp glances from both Sean and William. “What do you hope to gain by this?”

“I want my diamonds.”

“Do you really. And who says they’re yours?”

Eamonn laughed, a sound entirely without mirth. “Well, they’re certainly not yours,” he said. “Let’s just say that Isobel here promised them to me in return for cancelling certain debts. And I always collect what’s owed to me.”

“We don’t have them,” I said.

“Oh, I think you’ll find you’re mistaken, Charlie,” Eamonn said easily. “Let’s hope so, or good old Jacob’s not going to need to bother with a divorce, is he now? Tell me, do they still bury family members in one grave these days?”

“We don’t have them,” I repeated through gritted teeth.

“Don’t lie to me, you little bitch,” Eamonn snapped, his lazy drawl snuffed out like a flame. “I’ll give you ten minutes to come to your senses, or these two start dying. And trust me, unlike your friend there, I won’t make it quick.”

The phone went dead in my hand. My face was bloodless as I turned to Sean.

“Eamonn wants the diamonds,” I said through lips suddenly stiff. “In ten minutes or he’s going to start killing them. But we don’t have the bloody diamonds!”

Sean said nothing, just turned his gaze very slowly towards Daz. As if he could sense the weight of it, Daz lifted his face out of his hands, eyes darting from one of us to the other.

“Do we have them, Daz?” Sean asked then, his voice quiet and cold.

Daz flushed. “They were in the glovebox of the van,” he admitted at last, little more than a mutter. “I got the money back, too. Well, there was no point in just leaving them, was there?”

Sean moved in on him. Daz hesitated for a second, then reached inside the jacket of his leathers and pulled out a black pouch, dumping it into his outstretched hand.

With his back to any passers by, Sean undid the drawstring and tilted the bag up. A shower of sharply defined stones, glistening and brilliant, dropped into his cupped palm. Sean rolled them a little, so they sparked and scintillated as they caught the light. He looked at Daz, his face bleak.

“If they weren’t blood diamonds before,” he said in that deadly calm voice of his, “they certainly are now.”

Daz tore his eyes away from the diamonds as though breaking thrall.

“Take them,” he said bitterly. “Do what you have to.”

Sean bagged the gems up again and slipped them into his pocket, zipping it shut.

“William,” he said, “Charlie and I have just swept this ship from the bow backwards and didn’t see any sign of Eamonn. You know the layout. Where could he be hiding?”

William frowned in concentration. “We were outside on the starboard after deck and I’m sure we would have seen Jamie and Isobel being hustled past us,” he said. He nodded to the set of doors nearest to us. “If they went out on this side, and went aft, I suppose they could have got back down to the car decks. But the doors will have been locked off as soon as we left harbour.”

Sean glanced at the Breitling on his wrist. “You’d better call Eamonn back and tell him we’re willing to do a deal,” he said to me. “I don’t know how much longer we’ll have cell coverage.”

I nodded, scrolling through the mobile phone menu until I found the list of received calls and hitting the dial key. It connected and rang out four times before Eamonn answered the call.

“So, changed your mind, have you?” he said slyly, by way of greeting. “Thought you might.”

“We’re prepared to make an exchange,” I said, clipped. “When and where?”

“Engine room,” Eamonn said. “I get the gems, you get Isobel and that brat of hers, and we all walk away happy.”

“As simple as that,” I said, not bothering to hide the scepticism. “What guarantees do we have that you haven’t already pushed them over the side?”

“Oh, don’t tempt me,” Eamonn said, almost jovial again. “Here.”

There was a pause, then Jamie’s voice came on the line, high in his distress. “Charlie! I’m sorry, I—”

“OK, that’s enough,” Eamonn said, cutting in. “They’re both fine – for the moment. It’s up to you how long they stay that way. Engine room, Charlie. You’ve got four minutes.”

I stabbed my thumb on the End key even though Eamonn had already finished the call.