Fifth Victim

to dig.

It was just after six-fifteen, the evening warm but with a sharpening wind. Almost fifty-seven hours after Torquil had been kidnapped.

Dig, twist, throw …

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

‘Torquil’s dead,’ I said.

The words sounded curiously flat and emotionless, even to my own ears. I had just walked into the living area at the Willners’ house, soiled and ragged from hours spent with numerous cops and medics and crime scene techs. If the Eisenbergs had tried to avoid the authorities before, they were neck-deep in them now.

The local and state police had been quickly followed by men in aggressive suits with aggressive haircuts and equally aggressive personalities, who were probably FBI agents or something similar. They’d told me, no doubt, but after a while the IDs they waved under my nose all began to blur together.

Not for the first time, I was glad of Parker’s calm presence. When it came to dealing with people like that, he had played the game for a long time.

I needed a very long, very hot shower, and to crawl straight from there into bed, but by the looks of it I was a long way from either.

Now, a small collective intake of breath greeted my news, but by then they must have been expecting the worst. By the time I reached the Willners’ place, with every outside light blazing, it was dark – way on the wrong side of midnight and almost back round into morning again.

I confess I’d harboured a vain hope that the household would be safe asleep by the time I got in, and I could put off the whole wretched business of explanations until the morning. I was so tired my vision had started to shimmer around the edges, and it was easier to list the parts of my body that didn’t hurt, rather than those that did. I should have known I was onto a losing streak.

Parker had tried to convince me to go back to Manhattan with him for what remained of the night, make the return trip out to Long Island when I’d had a few hours’ sleep – maybe even take a day to myself. Reading between the lines, I knew he was trying to save me from having to be the one who broke it to Dina, and though I appreciated the gesture, I couldn’t shirk that responsibility.

As it was, I ended up with everyone else’s share of it, too.

Dina wasn’t alone in the living room. She was sitting in the chair her mother favoured with its back to the view. After today, I might be joining her in not wanting to face that expanse of sandy beach.

Opposite Dina, on the leather sofa Parker and I had shared during our first visit, was Manda Dempsey, with Benedict sprawled alongside her. Hunt and Orlando were together on another sofa, which had been arranged at rightangles to make chatting easier. They didn’t look like they’d been doing much of that.

So, the gang’s all here.

As soon as I came in, everybody got to their feet and watched me approach with varying degrees of apprehension. Perhaps there was a little disgust thrown in there, too. I was filthy and I stank, and I recognised that I was not likely to be at my tactful best. Hence my opening statement, and their reaction to it.

Maybe I should have taken Parker’s advice after all.

Nevertheless, I skimmed their faces out of habit, seeing expressions of shock and surprise, but there was something just a little off about them. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so bloody tired, I might have worked out what that was.

The security personnel who habitually accompanied the various members of this group had positioned themselves in the outer reaches of the room, maintaining a perimeter. They eyed me, coldly assessing, judging my abilities purely on the results I had obviously failed to achieve.

Over in the far corner by the edge of the windows, Joe McGregor stood quietly, inconspicuous and self- contained. He appeared to be taking absolutely no notice of whatever stilted conversation had been going on in that room before I turned up, but I knew I’d get the full rundown from him later. He made eye contact and gave me a fractional nod – of condolence or support, I wasn’t sure which.

Right now, I’d take whatever I could get.

‘Did he—?’ Dina began, and swallowed, hands to her face. ‘I mean … what did they do to him, Charlie?’

I glanced down at my sweat-stained, dirty clothing. ‘They buried him.’

Dina’s face spiked in horror. ‘Alive?’

I hesitated. From what I’d been able to glean by the line of questioning I’d faced, there was some doubt about the time and manner of Torquil’s death. That could just have been me projecting my own fears onto it.

If Torquil was alive when he went into that box, then if I’d been quicker, or we’d put it together faster, he might still be alive. But the moment Parker and I had wrenched that lid loose, had seen the boy’s arms slack by his sides and no sign that he’d tried to scrape his way out through the timber that encased him, I hadn’t needed to wait for a pathologist’s report.

He might have been drugged, I supposed, but in my heart I knew that he’d been dead when they put him into the ground. The plastic pipe – the one I’d mistakenly thought was to provide an air supply – turned out to be little more than a marker post, unconnected to the inside of the box. With a bitter anger, I remembered the care I’d taken digging round it.

But the bottom line was that the sole purpose of this morning’s exercise had been to ambush me for the Eisenberg Rainbow, at a point where the chase teams would be able to do damn all about it. It had taken timing that was military in both conception and execution, and although none of these rich kids had seen service, they were surrounded by people who had.

So, why had it been such a pair of amateurs who’d tried to ambush Dina at the riding club? I recalled again, from the CCTV footage Gleason had shown us, the way the passenger from the Dodge – the one who’d grabbed the rucksack – had flinched when the driver shot me. Had they realised their past mistakes and recruited a real pro in time to snatch Torquil?

And if he was such a professional, why had he killed his victim instead of returning him in exchange for the necklace?

I glanced at the faces again, realised I didn’t trust any of them with these speculations, but wasn’t sure why. I shrugged, said dully, ‘Who knows if he was alive or dead when he went into the ground?’

Dina sank back into her chair as if her legs had suddenly ceased to support her weight. Manda threw me a dark look and moved across to perch on the arm to put a comforting arm across Dina’s shoulders.

‘You might show a little compassion, Charlie,’ she said, eyes filled with reproach. ‘You must know how claustrophobic Dina is.’

There was no right way to answer that, especially to admit I hadn’t known. She’d never mentioned it, and the subject of phobias had not come up. When I thought back, I realised that she’d always taken the stairs or escalator in the department stores we’d visited, if there was a choice, but I’d assumed that was more about personal fitness than fear.

‘Oh, poor Tor,’ Orlando murmured, turning her face into Hunt’s shoulder. He put his arms around her and favoured me a mildly reproving look, also.

So, suddenly he’s your best friend …?

It was left to Benedict to voice my cynical thoughts out loud. He made a gesture of bored annoyance and flung himself back onto the sofa.

‘Oh, come on, Orlando, don’t go soft on us now,’ he said, almost jeering. ‘It’s not as if you ever liked the guy.’ But there was a little too much studied bravado in his tone. I wondered who he was trying to convince.

Orlando yanked herself out of Hunt’s embrace and whirled on Benedict, tilted forwards, arms rigid and her tiny hands clenched into fists.

‘How could you?’ she shouted. ‘He might not have been our friend, but he’s still dead, isn’t he? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Benedict looked momentarily shocked at her outburst, but he recovered his sullen poise quickly enough. ‘No,’ he said with an arrogant stare. ‘It doesn’t. People die every day. That’s life.’