A Death at South Gare Read online

  ‘Not really. But potential new clients are always welcome.’

  She looked worried for a moment. ‘Take care, Frank. Don’t get involved in anything . . . shady.’

  ‘Shady?’ I laughed. ‘Jac, I’m meeting the CEO of an international company. Besides, don’t I always take care?’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking at me with her serious face on now. ‘No, you don’t. Most people go to the South Gare and find the sea and birds, and things. You go and find a dead body.’

  Chapter Seven

  The sense of them being close was unbearable. She couldn’t walk any faster. If she did, she would be running!

  With a squeal of brakes, a double-decker bus stopped a little way ahead of her. Three people waited to get on board. She began to run to join them.

  ‘Where to?’ the driver asked when she got there.

  She thrust money at him. ‘The terminus.’

  She took her change and sat down. No-one had got on after her. For the moment, she felt relieved.

  Towns were dangerous, she reflected. As were lots of people. You couldn’t see who or what was coming in a town or a crowd.

  On the other hand, she had to come out sometimes. She couldn’t stay home alone always. He had told her to be careful, which she was being. It was more important than ever to be careful now. She was determined she would be. They were not going to win.

  Back there, on the street, they had been close. Somebody had. She had felt it; that prickling in the back of the neck. That sense of being crowded, of someone coming too close. Once, she had almost been sure she had spotted a man, but then he had gone into a shop and she had not seen him again. Still, the feeling had persisted. Perhaps there were others?

  She didn’t know. What she did know was that she couldn’t go home yet. Home was where they had not found her. They didn’t even know where she lived. The towns were where she became visible to them. She needed to stay on guard, she told herself, blinking away a tear. The world was a more dangerous place now, and she was alone.

  Three stops down the road she got off the bus. The driver seemed surprised but offered no comment. She kept quiet. What could she say? All she knew was that too long on the bus would give them time to recover and find her again. She needed to keep switching tracks frequently. But she couldn’t tell the driver that.

  This time she hurried through what remained of the old town, heading for the Transporter Bridge. Its gaunt, Meccano-like structure soared high above everything else, but it wasn’t height she was seeking. She wanted to cross to the other side, to the sparse openness, and the anonymity, of Port Clarence, where few people who had a choice ventured and where visitors stuck out as if in high-visibility jackets.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘We’re new to these parts,’ Rogers said, ‘but we’re aiming to make a difference.’

  He had already told me what they were about. Surprisingly, to me at least, they were planning a takeover of Teesport, the dock and shipping facilities on the Tees. I nodded and waited patiently for him to make his pitch. The takeover was obviously going to be a big deal, very big. In terms of tonnage handled, Teesport was one of the biggest ports in the country. Fifth in the list, when last I looked, but sometimes second or third. I wondered what the current owners felt about it.

  ‘With our extensive experience of port operations in the United States, as well as elsewhere in the world, we believe we can do great things here. Our stakeholders go along with us on that. Privately perhaps, so do our competitors. We’re going to make things really hum!’

  He paused to let his secretary deposit a tray of coffee cups on the table. I admired the secretary for a moment. Then I glanced out of the floor-to-ceiling window.

  ‘Great view,’ I suggested as he pushed a cup towards me.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed.’

  He looked out of the window himself and frowned. Good as it was, perhaps it wasn’t the same quality of view as he was used to back in the States. If so, I could see where he was coming from.

  We were meeting in a new-build office block in the former Ironmasters’ District of Middlesbrough, one of the hearths of Victorian industry. Mostly derelict land now, but there were green shoots of recovery poking through the rubble. Riverside House, where PortPlus had its offices, was one of them.

  ‘So,’ I said, trying to get my head round what he’d just told me, ‘you’re looking to buy out the company that owns Teesport, and make a better job of running the port?’

  ‘That’s some of it. But we’ll do more than that. We plan to make better use of the port’s extensive land holdings, too.’

  ‘So where do I come in, Mike?’

  We were on first-name terms already. Had been since my arrival. Mike and Frank. Good pals, and potential colleagues, working together. Maybe.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve brought that up, Frank,’ he said earnestly. ‘The way I see it, you’re just the guy we need.’

  He paused, sipped his coffee and eyed me thoughtfully.

  ‘As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a lot we need to do in advance of the acquisition. No sensible business goes into a new venture without a whole lot of research preceding the purchase. Due diligence, right?’

  ‘Right.’ I shrugged. ‘Not really my field, Mike.’

  He nodded and moved on. ‘One of the things we need is a strategic overview of the port operation in terms of security and safety requirements. In short, we want to know what the risks are, where the weaknesses are, what the threats might be – and, most importantly, what can be done to anticipate and defend against them. That’s where you come in, Frank.’

  ‘A big job,’ I suggested, slightly unnerved by the scale of what he was unfolding.

  ‘Indeed it is. But we think you’re the man for it.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wasn’t going to say so right at the outset. I wanted to hear the man out, and give myself some thinking time.

  ‘You don’t have your own people to do this sort of work?’

  ‘We do have security staff, of course. You can’t run ports without them, given all the opportunities for theft, smuggling, illegal import-export, and the like – never mind terrorism. But in this situation we lack local knowledge, and local knowledge is key. That’s what we want you to provide.’

  ‘In relation to . . . what, exactly?’

  ‘Fencing, security patrols, electronic barriers, people investigation systems – whatever seems important at a strategic level. We’re not going to tell you what to look for, Frank, or what to do. What we will do, however, is pay top dollar for your expertise and local knowledge.’

  I nodded, impressed. I would need to scope the job properly before I took it on, but there could be a lot in this for me. It was a big, and potentially lucrative, contract he was waving at me.

  ‘You want to talk figures?’ he asked. ‘Money?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet, Mike. I need to think about what you’ve said and work out how best to approach the job. We can talk about the price later.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said with a nod.

  ‘Well, I’ve got enough information for now, I think.’

  ‘Good. Get back to me as soon as you can, Frank. We’re in a hurry.’

  Just then the door opened and an older man looked into the room. Rogers looked round, surprised, and then he smiled.

  ‘Ah, Donovan!’ he said, recovering fast. ‘Just the guy I wanted to see. Come in and meet Frank Doy. I’m hoping he’ll be doing our strategic overview of security issues. Frank, meet Donovan McCardle, our chairman.’

  I stood up to shake hands with the newcomer.

  ‘Mr Doy. I’m pleased to meet you,’ he said in a rich, deep voice. ‘Are you going to take the job?’

  He didn’t sound American, as I would have expected. If anything, his accent behind the smooth tone sounded antipodean. Certainly not local anyway.

  ‘I’m going to go away and work out what I can do for you, Mr McCardle. It’s a very in
teresting opportunity Mike has just outlined, and I hope I can rise to the challenge.’

  ‘Good. Excellent.’

  He nodded and smiled in a perfunctory way, giving me the impression his heart wasn’t in it. But he was a very courteous, civilized sort of man, one who perhaps came from old money rather than one who had made his way up through management schools and the lower echelons of the corporate world. Quiet authority had entered the room with him.

  ‘When you’re finished with Mr Doy, Mike, I’d like a word,’ he said, moving on.

  ‘I’m just on my way out,’ I volunteered, turning towards the door.

  ‘I’ll hear from you. . . ?’ Rogers asked.

  ‘Soon,’ I said. ‘In a couple of days.’

  We all shook hands. Then I left, wondering if I had ever come across Donovan McCardle before. Something about him had seemed vaguely familiar. I would never have forgotten a name or a face like his, but I just couldn’t place him at all.

  Chapter Nine

  She paid for her ticket and joined the four cars and half-dozen pedestrians and cyclists also making the trip. Together with the others, she stood on the cradle – the gondola, they called it – that hung suspended from the roof of the structure and waited for it to complete its gentle progress across the Tees.

  On the other side, the cars and her fellow passengers all sped off immediately. She waited. She stood out of the way, beside an old brick wall, and waited. She waited five minutes, ten. Two cars and a small lorry boarded the gondola for the return journey. She hadn’t seen any of them before. She hadn’t seen the two cyclists who joined them before either. When the bridge captain came to close the gates in readiness for departure, she jogged forward and slipped aboard.

  The gondola set off back across the river. She stayed out of sight but kept her eyes focussed on the opposite bank. Complacency had never been one of her failings. Neither had impatience. You couldn’t be a hunter without patience and mental stamina, and you couldn’t survive being hunted, a hunt victim, without them either.

  Her eyesight was good, excellent in fact. She saw the man when they were only halfway across the river. She had never knowingly seen him before but she knew he was waiting for her.

  So she couldn’t go home yet.

  A woman sat behind the wheel of one of the cars. She approached her and asked if she would mind giving her a lift to the railway station, claiming to be afraid of missing her train. The woman smiled and opened the door for her.

  As they left the gondola, she kept her head down, and believed the man missed her.

  At the railway station she thanked the woman and went inside, only to come back out again almost immediately. A bus stopped nearby. She saw the destination was Stockton, a couple of miles to the west. She boarded the bus. Going in the opposite direction seemed a sensibly counter-intuitive thing to do. The fox does that, she thought with a wry smile, when he runs down the centre of the road instead of crossing it. Confusing the hunt. That was the idea.

  She didn’t know how it happened, but in Stockton she found herself near the river again. There, she mingled with students roaming through a complex of buildings that turned out to be the university campus. Still wandering, she came across a rowing club. There were one or two boats, sculls she supposed they would be called, on the river. Even more were alongside the river, pulled out of the water, sitting in neat rows, ready for use. And then she came across a group of kayaks, also in waiting.

  Her mind raced. How far? No distance at all. Ten or twelve miles, perhaps. No more. She thought about the current and the tide. She would be going with the flow. No incoming tide to work against. Even after the barrage she could see a little distance away the tide would be in her favour. The river would carry her there. All she had to do was steer.

  Her excitement grew. This was how she could elude them. They would never think of it. She hadn’t even thought of it herself until now. A last quick look round. Then she stepped off the path and stooped to push one of the kayaks into the water.

  Chapter Ten

  By the time I got out of the building, the first doubts were surfacing. What Mike Rogers had been talking about was a big job. Could I handle it? Possibly, but doing it properly would take time. Months, probably. PortPlus wouldn’t want that; they had come to me because they thought my local knowledge would allow me to do the job fast.

  But perhaps I had that wrong? Perhaps they knew it could only be a superficial job if it was done fast, and that was all they wanted anyway? It certainly made more sense to look at it that way.

  It was still puzzling that they had come to me in the first place. Who had given them my name? And why had they decided I was the man for the job? I owed somebody a pint, and perhaps more.

  I shook my head and dived into the Duke of Wellington. I ordered a guest ale I’d never heard of to allay my unease about the job.

  Quite apart from the scale and speed of what was required, I hadn’t much liked the PortPlus CEO. He was too much Corporate Man for my taste. Mr Smooth-and-Clean. Suit and tie, and parachuted in from a million miles away. A bean counter at heart. Not my kind of person.

  But the job would keep the wolf from the door for many months, I reminded myself. So maybe I should just swallow my reservations, and get on with it. Plenty of my clients were people I didn’t much care for in a personal sense.

  Having begun to rationalize the situation to my own satisfaction, I called Jac to let her know how the meeting had gone.

  ‘Frank? Thank God! I’ve been trying to phone you all afternoon,’ she said without preamble. ‘There was no answer.’

  ‘I switched my phone off before I went into the meeting. Why? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m worried, Frank. A neighbour phoned to say some strange men were around my house. When I dashed home to see what was going on, they were very unpleasant. Quite frightening, really. And they made threats concerning you.’

  My pulse was racing long before she had finished.

  ‘Are you all right, Jac?’

  ‘I suppose so. More or less.’

  ‘Have they gone?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Stay where you are. If you see them again, phone the police. I’ll get there as fast as I can – twenty minutes, or so.’

  I got up, abandoning my pint. An elderly drinker at a nearby table looked round as he heard my chair scrape and said, ‘I didn’t think much of that beer either, son. Go and complain. They’ll give you another one.’

  I nodded and made for the door. The last thing I needed was well-meant advice about beer.

  ‘So what happened?’

  Jac looked at me and shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘They didn’t trash the house or beat me up. They were rough men, and they just . . . just terrified me!’

  We sat in the kitchen and I made a pot of tea. Jac was composed now but unusually withdrawn.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They said I should remind you to say nothing about what you saw the other day at the South Gare. If I did that, and you did that, nothing would happen to either of us.’

  ‘That it?’

  She nodded. ‘It was the way they looked at me that was so frightening. The one that spoke just radiated power and evil.’

  I was in no doubt how upset she was. I had never seen her like this. It had been a bad experience, one I had brought on her, however inadvertently.

  ‘Three of them, you said?’

  She nodded.

  They must have been the three I had seen at the Gare. Witness intimidation was obviously their priority right now, and they were doing pretty well. I didn’t tell Jac what they had done to the dog. That wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘They’ve gone now,’ I said gently. ‘They won’t be back. But come and stay with me for a while?’

  She shook her head, paused a moment and then said, ‘I can’t do this, Frank. I can’t live like this. It’s all right for you. You’re used to it. But I’m not – and I don’t want to be!’<
br />
  I could sense she wasn’t going to stop now. I waited, tense, wondering what else was going to come out.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, taking a deep breath and slowing down, ‘and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to continue with our relationship. I’m sorry, Frank, but I like the life I’ve built for myself, and it’s under threat now because of my relationship with you.’

  She hadn’t finished yet either. She shrugged and added, ‘It’s just one thing after another. I want to spend my time thinking about painters and paintings, not worrying about criminals and threats to my life!’

  I knew then that nothing I could say would make any difference. Anyway, she was right. I knew that, as well.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘I want all this to end. I’ve decided to go away for a while. You can get on with your life, and I’ll get on with mine. Oh, I know it’s not your fault, Frank! You didn’t go to the South Gare the other day and decide to get involved in whatever was going on there. It just happened. I do know that. I don’t blame you. But these things happen too often around you – you seem to attract them! And I can’t live in a permanent danger zone.’

  So there we were. This wasn’t what I wanted. But it was what she wanted, and I knew it was probably right for her. Once I had come to terms with that, there wasn’t a lot more to be said.

  ‘When are you leaving?’

  She glanced up at the clock on the kitchen wall and said, ‘As soon as the taxi arrives.’

  I didn’t bother asking her where she was going, or for how long. I didn’t give her any advice either. I just kissed her on the cheek and walked out.

  I headed home after that. I was feeling low, really low, as down as I had been for a long time. Jac was right. I knew that. This was no way to live. Bill Peart had told me the same thing often enough. So had Jimmy Mack, my neighbour and friend, if it came to that. Trouble was never far away from me. Why would any sane, decent person want to be anywhere near?

  But this was what I did. It was how I made my living and stayed free, my own man. There were bad times but there were also the good times, and I got a buzz out of them. Low as I was at that moment, I knew I wasn’t going to change.