Fifth Victim

And I remembered, too, in a stark flash, Hunt’s apparently casual greeting when he’d engineered that meeting outside Orlando’s place.

‘You’re looking good …’

Yeah, not bad for someone he’d shot in the chest only a few days before.

I realised O’Leary was waiting for me to ask the obvious question, and hoping to avoid having to volunteer the information if I didn’t. I wasn’t about to let him off lightly.

‘So, what did he say?’

‘Well, it was kinda garbled,’ he admitted. ‘Like I said, he wasn’t makin’ much sense by then, and the medics, they was pumping him full of morphine. Something about lending somebody a horse?’ The furrows in his brow were almost audible as he spoke. ‘Then he mentioned something about Florida, and a casket. Did somebody close to him die recently? Horseback riding accident, maybe?’

‘Can you remember exactly what he said?’ I asked urgently, ignoring his query. ‘The exact words?’

‘Um, I guess,’ he said, so slowly I wanted to reach down the phone line and throttle him. ‘He definitely said about lending the horse, that I do recall. Or it mighta been horses.’

I made frantic writing motions and Parker immediately dragged a notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket. I smiled briefly in thanks and scribbled down ‘lending/ Lennon?’ and ‘horse/s?’ Parker read the words over my shoulder and frowned.

‘What else?’

‘Well, I have to say I’m kinda hazy on the rest of it.’

I reined in a scream. ‘But he said Florida, specifically?’

‘Yeah, Orlando – and next fall. Maybe he was planning on a vacation he never got to take, huh?’

I ground my teeth for a moment, wrote down ‘Orlando’ and ‘fall’ below the other two words on the pad.

‘And he mentioned a casket?’ I persisted. That one got everyone’s attention and didn’t need much explanation, although I’d hardly dignify the rough-hewn box Torquil had been buried in by using such a term.

‘Casket, coffin – something like that. Yeah, I think so,’ O’Leary said.

‘Which was it?’

‘Hell, lady, I—’ He bit off whatever he was going to say, sighed again. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Casket is American, coffin is English,’ I pointed out. There might be a big difference.

‘Listen, what’s going on here, ma’am?’ His voice was terse now. ‘This sounds kinda like something we should be aware of right now.’

‘It’s a federal case,’ I said, aware of sounding pompous. I softened it down by adding, ‘But you may just have given us a big break.’

‘For real?’ he said, all suspicion gone in the face of pride. ‘You be sure to tell that to my captain, huh?’

‘I will,’ I promised. ‘Oh, where was Martino found?’

‘Under the boardwalk down on Coney Island,’ O’Leary said. ‘He’d been worked over some, too, finished with a slug in the gut. I’d guess a thirty-eight or a nine. Kid was a mess all round.’

Poor bastard. ‘Well, thank you for letting me know.’

‘I’d say “you’re welcome”, but I guess this is not the kinda news anyone wants to hear, huh?’

‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but thank you anyway.’

I thumbed the ‘End Call’ button and sat staring at the brief notes I’d made for a second, until Eisenberg cleared his throat impatiently.

‘What the hell was that all about?’

‘Ross, the kidnapper I made contact with – the one who promised to help us catch whoever murdered your son,’ I said bleakly. ‘He’s just been shot dead.’

So, you’ll never get your new set of wheels now, Ross. Sorry, kid …

‘Sounds like our boy is cleaning house,’ Parker said. ‘Tidying up the loose ends.’

‘But, if he was one of the kidnappers …?’ Caroline Willner trailed off, her throat moving convulsively as she fought to keep her voice calm. ‘What’s going to happen to Dina?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I added ‘casket/coffin’ to the list and read the apparently disconnected words, backwards and forwards, trying to get the gist. ‘But I think Ross was trying to tell us.’

Why the hell couldn’t you have been more coherent? I cursed heartlessly, but I remembered all too clearly what it was like to be shot. To experience such intense pain that it totally consumes you, blanks out everything around you until there’s nothing in the world but you and the agony, and even the prospect of dying seems welcome, because then it will stop. I don’t recall I said much at the time that anyone could have understood clearly.

But still, whatever internal sense of cruelty I might possess was squashed by the image of what Dina might be going through, right now. I thought of her terror at confined spaces.

If he’s buried her …

‘Horses,’ Parker said, eyes on my face as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. ‘Dina’s horses?’

‘What about the riding club?’ Caroline Willner asked abruptly. ‘Clearly he knows that Raleigh now has Dina’s horses, or he would not have been able to lure her away with that message.’

‘Surely the place is too busy,’ Parker argued. ‘Horses have to be looked after full-time, don’t they? There would always be people around.’

‘But there’s acres of space out on the cross-country course,’ I realised. I grabbed my phone again, dialled the riding club office. After our visits there, it was already programmed in, as were numbers for everywhere Dina had visited on a regular basis. I fervently hoped I wouldn’t have cause to delete them all just yet.

The number rang out twice, then the answering machine picked up with Raleigh’s cheery greeting that everyone was busy having a great time away from the phone right now, and anyone enquiring about livery or lessons should leave their name and number after the beep.

I rang off without doing so. ‘Answer machine.’

‘It’s still worth checking out,’ Parker said.

He had that closed-down look, I noticed, as if all his muscles had bunched in on themselves. It was a look I’d seen in Sean many times, when we were about to go into action. An economy of movement, a sureness of purpose, focus. Intent.

‘I’m coming with you.’

I turned to find Caroline Willner had risen and was standing very still and straight by her chair.

‘Mrs Willner, that’s not—’ Parker began.

‘I know,’ she cut across him, imperious. ‘But nevertheless, I’m coming with you.’

‘You’ll slow us down,’ I said, making it cold because it was the only way to make it hit home.

She flinched a little at that, but drew herself up to her full height and stared back at me. ‘The life of my daughter may be at grave risk because the man holding her believes I cannot pay the ransom,’ she said, hitting back on the point of a nerve with matchless precision. ‘I think you can trust me not to get in your way, but I will see this through. Now, we’re wasting time.’

Eisenberg cast her an admiring glance. ‘I’m going, too,’ he said, thrusting his chin out. Gleason’s expression went from smug at our troublesome client, to consternation as the tables were turned on her.

‘Sir, I really don’t—’

‘Stow it,’ he told her. He retrieved a set of keys from his trouser pocket and jingled them with a grim smile. ‘Lucky I decided to give the new Aston a run-out today, huh?’ he said. He glanced at Gleason’s furious face, at Caroline Willner’s pale determination, and heaved a sigh.

‘OK,’ he said at last, lips twisting in a rueful grimace. ‘I guess I didn’t get where I am by sending the wrong guy out to do the job.’ He threw the keys across to Parker, who caught them one-handed, almost snatching them out of the air. ‘You driven paddle-shift before?’

‘Yes, I have,’ Parker said, and tossed the keys over to me instead. ‘But Charlie will be faster.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

If Brandon Eisenberg was a little twitchy at the thought of letting loose a six-litre V12, on damp roads, with a