Accidental exposure, p.54
Accidental Exposure, page 54
“That sounds like a bad idea.”
“Look.” Brian turns to stare at Isabel, “You said you were going to help. Now I don’t know much about murdering and there seems to be a lot of it going on so I think we should get in touch with people who do.”
Isabel nods and watches the screen over Brian’s shoulder.
He taps away at the keyboard, focused and dedicated. He logs into his account with his mobile phone service provider.
“This seems fairly simple,” he says. “I don’t get many calls so I guess I just go back to the right day, then try to remember the time and it should be obvious.”
“Don’t people block their numbers these days?” Isabel asks.
“Some people do, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” As Brian drops this comment, his eyes roll over an unfamiliar collection of digits.
“What’s this one? Do you know this number?” he asks.
“No, doesn’t ring a bell.”
Brian looks at the details of the mysterious number, checking the time and date. He glances at Isabel and she shrugs. Brian dials the number and Isabel moves her ear closer to eavesdrop.
The phone on the other end rings only once before someone picks up. They say nothing.
“Hello?” Brian asks.
“Yes?”
“Who is this?”
“You know who this is, or at least who I represent. What do you want, Mr Crown?” the voice replies.
“Something’s happened, I need to meet with-”
“Be at the pub where you had the first meeting in one hour. Ask for Alex and don’t be late,” the voice orders then promptly hangs up. Brian sits stunned for a second before he hangs up his end.
“Did you hear that?” he asks.
“Yeah, you better get moving. I’ll wait for you here. I’m not getting too closely involved with those people if they told you never to speak to anyone about their operation.”
“Good idea. ”
“Wait, Brian.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you taking with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you have a gun?”
“Are you serious? No, of course not.”
“Well, maybe you should get one.”
Brian thinks for a moment and says, “I don’t think that would help and I don’t have time to organise anything, I wouldn’t even know how. I need to go now.”
“Good luck.”
Chapter 59: The Target All Along
Brian arrives at the pub and announces, “I’m looking for Alex?” to the young woman behind the bar.
“Yeah, he’ll be here soon,” she says with a forced smile as she hands him a couple of menus. She points towards the furthest table from the entrance. It sits alone behind a narrow empty doorframe in a separate room. Anyone else at the bar can see through the hole in the wall and know that it’s occupied, but they can’t hear what’s being said in here. The little cove looks like it’s designed to accommodate the paranoid.
Brian sits on a chair with his back against the wall. He notices a couple of fairly rough looking men sitting at the tables in the other section and remember how half the people in the area had been employed by Barrows when they first met. He’s more nervous now. He could have broken protocol by calling them and if he has, what’s the punishment?
Before long, Brian watches Barrows enter with Rugs. Last time they came separately.
What does that mean?
Rugs looks exactly the same as he always does with the same fed up grimace slapped across his arrogant gob; Brian even wonders if he’s wearing the same big puffy clothes. Barrows is still smiling his big threatening grin and he nods to Brian as he approaches and their eyes meet. There are another two unidentified men with them and they’re looking to all corners of the room, watching for something.
Rugs flops down on a stool next to Brian and shuffles in as close as possible. Brian can feel his warm breath on his chin as Rugs glares at him. Barrows sits opposite with the bodyguards keeping watch beside him, facing outwards. Brian is trapped. A wash of dread and vulnerability bathe Brian in regret.
“Hello Brian,” Barrows says, dropping his head slightly like a bowing Japanese soldier.
Before Brian can respond, Rugs growls, “If anyone else is aware of this meeting you’ll die in that seat. Do you understand? If anyone else arrives expecting to join us or break up this meeting, I’ll kill you before you stand. Do you get it?”
“OK, don’t worry, they won’t. It’s just me. I need to talk.”
“Fine,” Barrows begins, “Then talk.”
“First of all, I apologise for ringing you; I don’t know if that’s the way you usually operate.”
Barrows raises his palm to halt Brian.
“Don’t worry; we deliberately leave that number traceable. If we simply handed you our contact details, you might call us for truly trivial matters. Only desperate people go looking for our telephone number, find it and use it. So please Brian, tell us what troubles you.”
“Annette, my wife. She’s alive,” Brian says. The other men just nod to show they heard him.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Brian adds.
“Please Brian, I am not the Lord. It wasn’t me who brought her back. We gave you a lot of good information, but you seem to have done nothing with it,” Barrows replies with a sprinkle of disappointment.
“It’s not exactly great information.”
“What do you want? A map to a place where your issues don’t exist? You asked about a man, a woman and your child. Now you know about two of those things. So what are you doing now? What was the point of all this?”
“I’m trying to find Andy. Everything else is just curiosity.”
“We are working to find your son. Don’t worry, we are close,” Barrow’s smile has faded a little and he even looks insulted.
“Yeah well I met Byrne too,” Brian says casually, expecting there to be no more than a mild flicker of interest.
“What?” Rugs perks up and, at that exact moment, Barrows asks, “Pardon?”
“Byrne, the Irish thug my wife was mixed up with ages ago. He’s still here. He came to my house with a knife a couple of hours after I saw Annette and he tried to stuff me into his van. ”
Rugs and Barrows shoot a suspiciously concerned look at each other before Barrows speaks again.
“This matter is not to be taken lightly, Brian. Tell us everything that happened, beginning with your meeting with Annette, up until you called us. Leave out absolutely nothing.”
So Brian does. He tells them about the dumpster in the swamp. He re-creates the entire day, night and morning in vivid detail for the men, answering any and all questions they have. When Brian is finished, Barrows says, “This is concerning.”
He isn’t smiling anymore; there are just thick wrinkle lines scratched across his face where his grin once sat.
“What do you think about this Byrne character?” Barrows asks.
“He’s obviously a serious danger, but I don’t ‘think’ anything about him. I just want to figure out what he’s doing around Annette and why she won’t talk to me.”
“Do you have the reports with you? Give em to me,” Rugs orders.
“You won’t find anything,” Brian insists as he hands over the papers.
“You don’t know what you’re looking for, college boy,” Rugs replies and he begins to read over the information as Barrows continues their conversation.
“People like Byrne are not to be trusted. You tell me your wife is alive; I think you’re a bad husband. No one cares. You tell me Byrne came to your house with a knife; I think you’re in danger. Now we have a problem,” Barrows says. He’s smiling again, but it seems more like a habitual reflex than a reaction to actual enjoyment.
“People who kill for pleasure will only ever have selfish motivation and so, sooner or later, they become dangerous to everyone. Even their friends.”
“So you think Annette is in danger too? Do you think Byrne has captured her, or maybe he’s blackmailing her or something?” Brian asks .
“I doubt Annette is being forced to do anything, but I am certain she has been in danger for longer than you would care to believe.”
“Here it is,” Rugs blurts out, pointing to a section of the police report.
“Here is what?” Brian asks only to be answered by Barrows.
“My associate has had an extensive career dealing with the less pleasant part of our society. He knows the habits of the men who occupy this niche, so you should trust his judgment. He has found an oddity in the report.”
“What did you find?”
“What did you say Byrne’s old fake identity was? What name did he mention at your house?” Rugs asks.
“Anton, Anton Anderson.”
“OK, well that was the name of the other driver,” Rugs says triumphantly.
“What? What do you mean?”
“Anton Anderson was driving the car that your wife swerved to avoid. She swerved off the bridge and the rest is history,” Rugs continues.
“That’s crazy. It couldn’t be Byrne; the police would check his license. They would run the registration of his car and realise if it was a fake name. Or maybe that’s the real Anton Anderson?”
“Nope,” Rugs begins, “It’s too big of a coincidence for it to be the real Anderson. It must have been Byrne using his fake identity. I could set up a falsified driver’s license linked to a car rego for a little under two grand if you wanted to be cheap. For twenty-five hundred bucks I could do you the same job and it would look legit, even if it were investigated. I’m sure he could get the same deal from one of our enemies.”
“So what does that mean?”
Barrows says, “It means Byrne wanted to hurt the people in your car and since he already knew Annette, he’d probably planned it for some time. ”
“I’ll bet you any money you like that lovely wife of yours did something foul to Byrne and he came for her. That would explain Annette faking her death,” adds Rugs.
“No, she wouldn’t give up on Andy like that and what about me?”
“Too bad Brian, get over the denial. This makes sense. Annette upset the man she was cheating on you with and he tried to get her back. And now she’s trying to hide from him. That’s why Byrne is trying to kill you too.”
Barrows stands to leave and Rugs follows with the bodyguards.
“But why would Annette run from me? Why did she run in the first place?” Brian asks and Barrows answers.
“Brian, I’ve seen the photos. You looked as though you were dead when they pulled you from the water. Annette must have thought you were gone and she must have been afraid to keep Andy around if Byrne was still threatening her. Maybe Annette made what appeared to be a responsible decision. Maybe avoiding you is her way of protecting you from Byrne. Is that the kind of information you have been expecting?”
As they begin to walk towards the exit, Brian thinks about what Isabel has told him. ‘When a problem presents itself to Annette, she finds a solution and that solution is often extreme.’
After a few steps, Rugs turns to suggest one final explanation. “You’re a lawyer. Bad guys hate the people who put them in prison. Maybe you were the target all along.”
Chapter 60: Knock on the Front Doo r
“You’re back!” Isabel shouts with excitement as Brian returns to the apartment. She stands just inside the doorway, bursting with relief as he laughs uncomfortably.
Did she think I wouldn’t come back?
“How did it go?” she asks before Brian has a chance to say hello.
“Good, I guess.”
Brian closes the door behind himself and, once he’s in the apartment, an exhausting shroud washes over him. It’s only two o’clock in the afternoon, but the stress is draining Brian like the batteries in an old mobile phone. He sits on the couch and closes his eyes to rest for a minute.
“So, what did they say?”
“I told them what had happened and they looked over the information they’d already given me.”
“All right, go on.”
“They think Byrne was driving the car that Annette swerved to avoid and they think Byrne was trying to hit us deliberately.”
“That’s a bit out there isn’t it? The cops would have identified him and you would have known sooner,” Isabel says.
“We went over all that. Trust me, it’s possible and it is likely that Byrne is behind all of this. Actually, I’m almost convinced.”
Brian closes his eyes again. He’s tired, so damn tired he can feel his breathing slowing and his muscles drooping.
“I’m taking a nap,” Brian announces. “Feel free to join me. I haven’t had a lot of time to rest the last few days; I need some sleep.”
Brian grins to himself, enjoying the pleasant little decision and looking forward to the peace that’s coming.
He strolls to the bedroom, patting Yeeha on the head as she lazily opens one eye to welcome him home. Isabel is still considering the offer in the living room, so he takes off his shirt and pulls on some track pants, wincing as he stretches the stitches. Brian slips in between the sheets and lies on his side, shivering a little in the crisp fabric and facing away from the door. He wonders if Isabel is coming.
A minute passes with no company, so Brian wriggles, sighs and tries to dream.
He hears footsteps approaching. Isabel gets in bed without saying a word.
She lies on her back on the mattress without touching Brian in silence but then breaks the peace with more suggestions.
“I think you, or we, should put the focus back on Andy. It’s too dangerous to get sidetracked.”
“Yeah, but now I’m thinking about Annette as well. Before Andy was all I had, now I could have a whole family again.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. You know there’s something going on with Annette and until you find out what it is, she can be a pretty big threat. You still don’t even have a plan as to what you’re going to do when you actually see Andy.”
Brian can feel his skin sinking into the bed. His muscles are slowly drifting away as he takes long, rhythmic breaths. He listens to the air pass in and out of Isabel’s body like music.
Brian wakes to find himself holding Isabel. In his sleep, they both shifted so that Isabel’s cheek is now nestled snugly against Brian’s chest and his hand has wandered to her hip. It’s an awkward surprise, but it’s comforting.
“What time is it?” they ask each other simultaneously. Neither of them answers.
They both get out of bed and Brian immediately slips his shirt back on.
It’s midnight, but the pair of them are well rested and hungry, so they throw some dry pasta into a pot of boiling water. Brian and Isabel sit and eat the plain, buttery pasta with a little quiet banter, then move to the couch to watch boring late night TV. These activities are dull, but dull right now comes as a rare delight.
Before too long, Brian is asleep again and, the next morning, Isabel suggests they check into a hotel. Byrne will return before long .
“Why don’t we go somewhere nice? I’ve still got a little money,” Brian suggests.
“We just need somewhere we can get away from easily.”
They choose a little motel where the individual rooms open directly onto the car park. No elevators and no lobby, just a door between them and the outside world. They pay for a week and ask the office attendant not to bother having someone clean the room, promising they’ll be tidy.
The room itself is small with one king sized bed. It’s clean and cosy, although not a lot more. The walls are faded orange, but it looks as though someone had once painted them red. A single deep armchair is stuffed in the corner and appears to be the only expensive piece of furniture. The bathroom is small, but the fact that Brian feels perfectly safe for the first time in a while assures him that this was a good idea.
As Brian unpacks his bag into the tiny closet, he asks Isabel what her plans are.
“I’m staying; it’s organised. My patients have been transferred to an associate for the next week.”
A few days pass without event. At first, Brian peers out the front window constantly, afraid that someone has followed them there. Before long, he only glances occasionally at the car park, then eventually not at all. The two of them eat junk food and watch TV on the soft, lumpy bed. Sometimes they sit close to one another and sometimes they don’t. It doesn’t matter. There are no boundaries or rules and they wouldn’t want there to be. There’s a feeling of excitement coupled with the nervous anticipation of what will happen next. Somehow, with this move, Brian knows that all his turmoil is coming to an end.
Soon he will find Andy, or soon he will be dead.
But first, the world finds Brian and he hears a firm knock on the front door.
Chapter 61: A Whole New Set of Problems
The knock comes again without hesitation.
“Yeah? Who is it?” Brian asks. There’s no reply. Isabel picks up the only thing she can find that resembles a weapon, the lamp, and moves to stand beside the door. She’s ready to clobber just about anyone on the other side who isn’t in uniform.
Brian holds the doorknob firmly and waits a moment in case the visitor has something to say. Still no sound from outside. He twists the copper fitting and jerks open the entrance to their room.
It’s Rugs, standing with another of his derelict associates.
Isabel, having never met Rugs, panics at the sight of two threatening looking strangers and throws the lamp as hard as she can towards the guests. Neither of them flinches as the ceramic vessel slides between both of their heads without even grazing a little skin and explodes as it hits the bitumen of the car park.
Rug’s partner looks back at the shattered pieces behind him, then back to Isabel. As Isabel is about to faint from fear, the man Brian doesn’t know yet breaks the awkward silence by erupting with laughter.
“Dr Isabel Black,” Rugs says in a calming, kind tone.
“Yes?”
“You can call me Rugs and my associate here is Charlie. Please relax. We’re friends of Brian’s,” he continues as he pushes Brian out of the way and enters the room.
