I wished I knew what thoughts were going round inside his head but he’d got them buttoned down tight. As though aware of my silent scrutiny he turned his head slightly and met my eyes. He didn’t need No Entry signs and barbed wire to warn me that I should keep out. I didn’t try to go against him.
Maybe we both needed a little time to come to terms with all of this.
***
More FBI men, with lights and vans and a paramedic ambulance, were waiting for us on the small dockside when Walt brought the two airboats alongside. As soon as the lines were secured and the engine cut, Till jumped out. He immediately started throwing quick and efficient orders to people who appeared by his side then melted away again. It was a pleasure to watch such oiled machinery at work.
They took Whitmarsh away on a stretcher with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. They stabilised Lonnie’s smashed arm and bundled him in, too. Somebody appeared with blankets for the rest of us which they draped around our shoulders. How on earth did they know to bring so many blankets, for heaven’s sake?
Sean and I stood with Trey and let the mêlée ebb and flow around us. I noticed Walt accost his nephew at one point. I don’t know what was said but if the body language was anything to go by, Walt won the argument. Till looked vaguely annoyed as he came back over to us.
“OK,” he said. “I’m sticking my neck out here and there’ll be hell to pay but if you want to be in at the finish, let’s go.”
We were on the move before he’d even finished speaking.
“Not you, Trey,” I said as he made to join us.
“Aw, c’mon,” Trey complained. “I deserve to be there, too.”
“You’ll get to hear all about it later,” Walt told him. “Let’s let these good people go do their job, huh?”
I expected the kid to put up more of a fight than that but he just nodded and hung his head. Walt put an arm around his shoulders and after a moment’s hesitation Trey leaned in to him. There was something right about the two of them, standing there like that. If Trey was serious about severing his ties with his father, I reflected, he could do a lot worse than Walt as a surrogate.
Till had already jumped into the passenger side of a dark nondescript saloon and Sean and I jogged across to take the rear seat. The driver gunned the engine and we headed back up the rough track towards Livingston Brown’s luxury resort. The lights of at least two other cars followed behind us.
I sat forward in order to talk to Till. “So you found Gerri’s body,” I said.
He twisted in his seat. “Yeah, and for a little while we thought you were the most likely candidate for the job,” he said. “Until we found that recorder in your bag, that is. I gotta hand it to you, Charlie, that tape was pure dynamite.”
“Will it be enough to definitely nail Brown for the shooting?”
“Oh yeah, no doubt about that. With that and the other evidence we’ve uncovered, he won’t see daylight again.”
“What other evidence?” Sean asked.
“Turns out Brown was investing heavily in the software company Pelzner worked for,” Till said. “He didn’t just want the program, he wanted the whole nine yards. Hardly surprising considering if that program ever hit the market, they’d all be billionaires. Only problem was, Brown didn’t have the money to pay the going price. In fact, he’s practically broke.”
It was hard to keep focused on him when we were bouncing around over every pothole. I held on to the seat in front of me and tried not to clout my head against the roof of the car. It was like being back on that damned rollercoaster ride with Trey.
“So,” Till went on, “it looks like he was trying to destabilise the company, arranging sabotage of property and intimidation of the staff. It all helps rock the boat. I should imagine that’s why Ms Raybourn called in you guys.”
Sean nodded.
“The company owner told us that he also secretly leaked some advance news of the program to the financial press, trying to keep the stock price up,” Till went on. “Our guess is that’s when Brown cooked up the scheme to make it look like Pelzner had run out on the deal.”
“But they messed it up,” Sean said.
Now it was Till’s turn to nod. “Oh yeah, they messed it up all right,” he said. He glanced at me, his expression brooding. “I suppose that’s all thanks to missy here.”
“And then he found out that Keith couldn’t make the program work, after all,” I put in. “And it was just a case of stopping us falling into the wrong hands and then getting rid of us as fast as possible.”
“Well he sure left a trail of destruction trying to do just that,” he replied. It’s gonna take months just to fill out all the paperwork.”
I smiled. “But then Whitmarsh found out from Henry that Trey might just hold the key.”
“Which he doesn’t.”
“I wasn’t there for this part,” Sean said. “Who’s Henry?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. There would be plenty of time for talking later. I turned back to the FBI man. “So do I assume from all this that we’re more or less off the hook.”
He favoured me with a slow appraisal. “Sure looks that way,” he said. “Particularly if you was to agree to give evidence in court.”
I sat back in my seat. “Well how about that?” I murmured with more than a hint of irony in my tone. “Chief suspect to star witness all in the same day.”
***
The first person I saw when we walked through the main entrance doors to the clubhouse was Randy, the time-share salesman I’d hijacked to get to Brown.
He did a classic double-take. First at the fact that both Sean and I were coated in slime and leaving a wet muddy trail across the tiles behind us. And second when he recognised me underneath it all.
“Oh my God,” he yelped, “somebody call the cops!”
“No need, sir, she’s with me,” Till said, flashing his official ID. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“FBI? You’re with the FBI?” Randy repeated, looking dazed. He blushed at the memory of what he’d tried to do with me up against a filing cabinet. “Am I under arrest?”
Till sighed. “Just take us to Mr Brown,” he said.
Randy led the way with much more eagerness than he’d shown last time I was there. He eventually stopped just outside a pair of large double doors with a plaque on one that said Party Room. By the sounds of it Brown was just rounding off his big welcome speech on the other side. Nobody listening to the old guy’s melodious voice would ever guess he was a vicious murderer.
Till spoke fast and low into his radio, then issued brief instructions to the men he had with him. They all seemed to know the drill without needing long explanations, in any case.
When the moment came they kicked the doors open and went in at a run. There were a few squeals and shrieks from the assembled crowd, but mostly it was all over before anyone had the time to get excited.
It was only then that Sean and I were allowed into the room. Several hundred pairs of shocked and bewildered eyes followed our entrance, but the most stunned belonged to the harmless-looking old guy with the wispy grey hair, currently face down on the floor with two FBI men on top of him, cuffing his hands behind his back.
Brown was loudly announcing his outrage at this manhandling and, I considered, was making a pretty convincing show of wronged innocence along the way.
“You don’t begin to have the right to treat me this way,” he protested, sounding hurt and a little self-righteous, just as he would if he was truly blameless. “You don’t have a single shred of evidence against me.”