Under Fire Read online

  “Not much. Bits and pieces. The doctors said I had a lot of antihistamine in my system, plus that date-rape stuff.”

  “Rohypnol?”

  “Yes,” she replied, then quickly added, “They said I was okay down there, you know, so that’s good.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Yeah, so, I remember walking through the Gardens—Princes Street—and there was a woman. She dropped her purse. I heard footsteps, then I was falling. I heard her voice yelling and I heard a couple of names. Funny-sounding ones. Roman, or something like that, and Yegor.”

  “You told all this to the other inspectors?”

  “Yeah. My mum thinks you lot aren’t very keen. I was drunk and had drugs in my system, and I was walking on my own. Just a stupid girl being stupid. I guess if I’d been raped, then you’d be more interested.”

  Amy’s eyes brimmed with tears. Jack pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside table and handed it to her. Though he didn’t want to believe the police were giving her case the short shrift, there was no way to tell. Similarly, he had no way of knowing whether the police, if in fact they were actively investigating Aminat Medzhid’s disappearance, would connect this Amy’s abduction to that of Aminat. He needed to reach Medzhid’s daughter, and her kidnappers, first.

  “I’m interested, Amy,” said Jack. “Do you have any memory of the garage where we found you?”

  “Just being in the tub where the police found me, and someone giving me water.”

  “How about the van? Do you remember anything about it? Smells, sounds, snippets of conversation? Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths.”

  Amy closed her eyes.

  After a bit Jack said, “It’s okay if you don’t—”

  “No, wait. Something about a toll. Someone was arguing—‘no toll’ . . . ‘used to be’ . . . ‘February.’ I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell if any of that’s real. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Did you just remember this, or did you tell the other inspectors?”

  “I just remembered it. Why would someone do this to me? I wasn’t raped, my parents didn’t get any ransom calls, we’re not even rich . . . What was it all about?”

  Something far, far outside your world, Jack thought.

  What he couldn’t understand was why Amy Brecon was even alive.

  • • •

  HE DROVE BACK to Edinburgh, checked into a motel, slept until six, then drove to Kirkgate Road in the southeastern corner of the city. After several wrong turns on the narrow, winding side streets he found the garage where Amy had been held. It was nothing more than a pair of tall wooden doors set into a graffiti-covered cinder-block wall. The front of it was crisscrossed with blue-and-white police tape and the side door was open. As he passed, he saw a policewoman kneeling, looking at something on the floor.

  Following his phone’s map, Jack then drove two miles east to a block of row houses that backed up to a cemetery. He slowed, studying the house numbers until he reached number 15. In the front window hung a giant red-and-blue roundel emblazoned with the words Rangers Football Club. He got out, walked up the front steps, and pushed the buzzer. Thirty seconds passed. Jack pressed the buzzer again.

  “Yeah, yeah . . . hold on,” a male voice called.

  The door opened, revealing a gaunt elderly man in plaid pajamas. His skin was pale and paper thin. A cigarette dangled from his lips. “Whatya want?” he grumbled.

  Instead of answering, Jack pulled a pair of fifty-pound bills from his pocket and pressed them against the glass.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Five minutes of your time.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “What happened at your garage,” Jack replied.

  “Already talked to you. They broke in. Squatters.”

  Jack tapped the money on the glass and repeated, “Five minutes.”

  “Ah . . .”

  According to Gavin, the owner of the garage, Fingal Cowden, was dirt poor, subsisting on welfare and what sporadic income he gained from renting his garage, and he was also dying of emphysema.

  Cowden sat down on the couch.

  Jack looked around. The apartment was cramped, with just a ratty couch against one wall facing a thirteen-inch television. The only light came from a floor lamp aimed at the wall. Beneath the lamp was a green oxygen cylinder.

  Cowden was miserable, and dying. Jack felt bad for what he had to do next, but he put it out of his mind.

  He handed Cowden the bills, then said, “You told the police you hadn’t rented it out.”

  “Right. They broke in.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Get out of here!”

  Jack pulled another fifty-pound note from his pocket and dropped it on the couch beside Cowden. “I’m not the police, and I don’t care that you lied to them.”

  “I didn’t want no trouble. If I’d told them, they would’ve stuck me in a cell.”

  “I don’t care,” Jack replied.

  “Who are you?” Cowden said, eyes narrowing.

  “Did the police tell you about that girl they found in your tub?”

  “Not my tub.”

  “Did they tell you about her?” Jack pushed. “Her name is Amy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s in the hospital, badly hurt. I’m a friend of the family. I’m here to find who did this to her.” Jack dropped another fifty on the couch. Cowden stared at the bill for a moment, then slowly reached out and took it. Jack said, “Tell me who you rented the garage to.”

  “You’re not the police?”

  “No.”

  “I’m gonna need more than this you gave me.”

  Jack pulled out another fifty, wadded it up, and dropped it between Cowden’s feet. “That’s all you’re getting.”

  “Then get outta here—”

  “Have it your way. I’m coming back—this time with Amy’s dad.” This got Cowden’s attention. He looked up at Jack. “Who’s her da?”

  “I’ll let him introduce himself. If he comes, it won’t be with money. Tell me who you rented the garage to and we’re done.”

  “I don’t know who—”

  Jack turned and headed for the door. “Twenty minutes,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Wait! I have a phone number. I can give you that. And a name, the woman who came with the rent money.”

  • • •

  “THAT’S IT?” Gavin said a few minutes later over the phone. “A phone number and a first name? Helen?”

  “Not quite.” It had taken another fifty pounds, but Cowden also gave him the make and model of the van. It had been insurance, Cowden had told him, in case the woman did any damage to the garage.

  “Pretty weak insurance,” said Gavin.

  “Have you made any progress on what I got from Amy?”

  “Assuming they’re even real,” Gavin said. “Helen and Roman have a lot of variations from several countries.”

  “Any of them from the Caucasus?”

  “Both of them. ‘Yegor’ is a variation on ‘Igor.’ The most prevalent distribution is in Russia.”

  “How about what she said about the tolls?”

  “Still working on it. It could be roads, freeways, bridges, parking lots, and there are a lot of them around Edinburgh, and chat rooms about toll roads in Scotland aren’t exactly a big thing. And we’re assuming that’s where she was when she heard it.”

  “You can do it. I’ve got faith.”

  “Bless you. I’ve also got something on Helen’s phone number. It’s a pay phone in Kinghorn. As the crow flies that’s nine miles north of Edinburgh. And no, before you ask, I can’t get LUDs from the phone. Hey, are you near a decent Wi-Fi connection?”

  “I can be.”

  “I found some video surveillanc
e from the university you need to see.”

  Jack was back in his hotel room thirty minutes later. He powered up his laptop, then called Gavin, who directed him to a Dropbox account. He gave Jack the log-in and he typed it in.

  “I’m there,” said Jack.

  “I downloaded all the feeds for that night, but the two I want you to see are labeled zero-two-four and zero-two-six.” Jack scrolled to the first MP4 file and double-clicked on it. His screen filled with a dim but otherwise sharp black-and-white image.

  “I’m watching it.”

  “That’s the CCTV camera just south of Pollock Halls, looking north.”

  After a few moments, the white top of a bus came into view from the lower edge of the screen. It pulled to a stop beside a lighted bus stand.

  Gavin said, “That’s the number twenty-two bus. Aminat’s on it. She’ll get off and cross the street.”

  The bus pulled away and Jack watched a figure trot across the street then disappear beneath some trees along the sidewalk. “What is that?” he asked.

  “A path that leads directly to Chancellors Court. Keep your eyes on the sidewalk. You see him yet?”

  “Got him.”

  A figure jogged down the sidewalk and turned onto the path. “He’s in a hurry,” Jack murmured. He felt his heart quicken; he was watching something horrible about to happen to Rebaz Medzhid’s little girl. In his mind’s eye he could see the figure jogging up behind her—

  “Okay, now go to the other video,” said Gavin.

  Jack double-clicked on the file and again a black-and-white image filled his laptop’s screen. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  “CCTV at the intersection of Dalkeith and Holyrood Park Road, looking north. You see the building at two o’clock, the one with the lighted top floor? That’s Chancellors Court. The path Aminat took is to your right, out of frame.”

  “We don’t have anything of the actual parking lot itself?”

  “No. Keep watching.”

  Jack kept one eye on the video, the other on the running time code at the bottom. Forty seconds had passed since Aminat entered the path.

  Fifty seconds.

  From the direction of the path a dark, late-model van approached the entrance to Chancellors Court. It stopped. The right-hand turn signal started blinking. The van slowly pulled out and turned north onto Holyrood Park Road. Jack lost sight of it.

  “God Almighty,” Jack murmured. From the time Aminat had stepped onto the path to when the van left the scene, barely one minute had passed.

  “She was in there, Jack,” replied Gavin. “Maybe fighting—”

  “Shut up, Gavin.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do you think you can make something out of the license plate?”

  “They’re local, that much I can tell, but at a distance the CCTV resolution is lousy, so I can’t make anything more of the license plate.”

  “Where does that road lead?”

  “A T intersection with roads heading east and west. I’m checking for any traffic stops on those roads, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Whoever was inside that van, they’ve done this before.”

  “Can you tell whether campus security made any copies of these vids?”

  “There are no duplicates on their servers, but whether they’d forwarded copies to the police is anyone’s guess.”

  Jack hoped not. The video he’d just seen might lead the police to Aminat before he could get to her. If that happened he’d never make Medzhid’s deadline. “Can you wipe the originals from their servers?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Do it.”

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  THE THOUGHT GNAWED at his brain: Had he just signed Aminat Medzhid’s death warrant? If the police hadn’t yet obtained the surveillance videos Gavin had just erased, they might now have no leads at all. Chancellors Court’s parking lot looked empty and was poorly lit. Even if there had been witnesses, something told Jack the people inside that van weren’t dumb enough to use real license plates, or at least unobscured ones, leaving the police with only a vague description of a vehicle that had been sitting in the lot for less than two minutes.

  Of course, Jack had little more than this information. The smart move would be to turn over what he had to the police, pray they find Aminat before Medzhid’s five-day deadline expired, then hope Seth could convince Medzhid they had nothing to do with the kidnapping.

  Jack dismissed the idea. He would find her and get her back home.

  What happened with the coup was Seth’s problem.

  • • •

  JACK SPENT the rest of the day and all the next morning either pacing around his hotel room, watching the news for reports on either Amy Brecon’s kidnapping or the disappearance of Aminat, or driving around the city, going nowhere in particular and hoping his subconscious brain would kick out some angle he hadn’t yet considered. He managed to resist the impulse to go to Chancellors Court and start canvassing the occupants, knowing he’d end up sitting in a police interview room, being asked questions he couldn’t answer.

  • • •

  JACK AWOKE to the sound of a news reporter’s voice: “. . . police spokeswoman has verified for an STV Edinburgh producer that reports of a missing Edinburgh University student are indeed true.”

  Jack sat up, found the remote beside his pillow, and increased the volume.

  “Though the police spokeswoman refused to confirm whether investigators believe the young woman’s disappearance may be the result of foul play, they will be treating the circumstances of the disappearance as suspicious until further notice. The young woman, as yet unnamed, is apparently the citizen of another country, having come to Edinburgh two years ago—”

  Jack muted the TV.

  The race was well and truly on now.

  • • •

  HIS PHONE RANG. It was Ysabel.

  “Where are you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  “In a seedy motel in Edinburgh. I’m fine. You?”

  “In Baku at the lovely Mirabat Hotel. There are cockroaches in the shower. Seth said he wants to be close to Medzhid. He’s also talking about breaking into Hamrah’s headquarters. He thinks he might be able to find a lead to Pechkin. I think Spellman’s talked him out of it.”

  “How’s Seth acting?”

  “Hyper, worse than I’ve ever seen him. I don’t think I trust him anymore, Jack.”

  He was more than a little ashamed to admit it, but he shared her feelings. While he thought—hoped—Seth wouldn’t burn them again, his friend’s judgment was still highly questionable.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “One more thing: I found out that meeting, our relationship, was a lie.”

  “Explain.”

  “He told me himself. He’d been following Pechkin in Tehran; Pechkin got interested in the Pezhman working group at the university, so when I was brought on board, Seth set his sights on me.”

  Was his tailing of Pechkin how Seth got involved with Hamrah Engineering, or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter, Jack decided. The two were intertwined.

  Ysabel added, “I don’t really care, actually. The way he told me, it was so matter-of-fact it gave me the chills.” She chuckled. “I can tell you this much: He’s off my Shab-e Cheleh card list.”

  Jack laughed. “You have a unique sense of humor, Ysabel Kashani. Do me a favor: Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  Given Seth’s obsession with the coup, vindicating his father, and the mistakes he’d already made, Jack wondered what might be unraveling without their knowledge.

  • • •

  MID-AFTERNOON, his phone rang: Gavin. “I assume you saw the news?”

  “Yes.”

  “The latest is that Scotland Yard’s involved.”

  “Ple
ase tell me you didn’t call to ruin my day,” said Jack.

  “It is mostly bad news. I struck out on the van’s origin.”

  Jack had hoped that if Helen had paid cash for the garage, she might have done the same for the van.

  “Edinburgh’s got too many back-lot dealerships.”

  “We’ve got another missing Edinburgh student, Jack, a kid named Steven Bagley. The same night Aminat was grabbed he was supposed to be headed home to London for a wedding. He never got there. Steven and Aminat are Facebook friends. Good ones, based on their posts. Campus security found his car parked a block from Chancellors Court. They must have gotten him, too, Jack.”

  “Maybe he stopped by Chancellors to say good-bye,” Jack replied. “Where did you find this?”

  “Bagley’s parents called his friends, then campus security. The police will have all this by now.”

  Jack thought, Helen and her team didn’t intend to take Bagley. He saw something and tried to intervene. Bagley will be a burden to them. Expendable.

  “Start watching for reports of bodies turning up that match his description,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “I think I’ve figured out what Amy was talking about with the tolls. Forth Road Bridge used to be toll-free, but the toll was reinstated back in February.”

  Jack called up Google Earth on his laptop, typed in the bridge’s name, and scanned the area. Forth Road led north, away from the city, and across the channel to the North Queensferry. On a hunch, Jack typed in “Kinghorn.”

  The town was eighteen miles from Forth Road Bridge.

  • • •

  JACK GAVE GAVIN his next set of marching orders and then, sick of sitting in his room waiting, got into his car and headed east, crossed the bridge, then drove up the coast to Kinghorn, more a quiet seaside resort than a town. As tourist season was still three months away, the streets were quiet, with only a few local cars on the main roads. As it had at the Firth of Tay, the wind whipped off the ocean, buffeting the Fiesta and whistling through its window seals.

  He knew the trip was pointless, but it was action he could take. If he was very, very lucky perhaps the gods would smile on him and he’d stumble upon a late-model dark-colored van. It wasn’t going to happen, he knew, not even in a town as small as Kinghorn.