A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel (8 page)

D
emijohns of apple, gooseberry, and plum wine were carefully lifted by James Goldsmith out of the boiler room and placed on the kitchen table. James was still alone in his rural house outside of Edinburgh. Most likely Sarah would be home in a couple of days. That still seemed like such a long time to James. He knew his emotions were frayed because their financial situation was still so dire and he and Sarah were at the lowest ebb in their marriage. Right now the one person he wanted around was his beloved wife. To take his mind off matters, he was keeping busy doing anything. Outside, the hills were a fierce swirl of sleet, rain, and high winds. He’d tried to take his beagle, Tess, for a walk, but only managed to get a few hundred yards before muttering, “Fuck this shit,” and returning home. Even the ordinarily hardy Tess seemed grateful for the decision. Now she was in her basket next to a fire, watching her master remove air traps and corks and lower a hydrometer into the wine to test for alcohol content.

“Wine’s not yet at the right strength, my girl,” he said to his dog as he noticed the flotation levels of the hydrometer. “A bit more sugar and another couple of months in a warm place will sort them out.”

After completing the task and returning the demijohns to the boiler room, he briefly considered catching up on the world’s news, though quickly discounted the notion. One of the joys of his new lifestyle was the recognition that what was happening elsewhere didn’t make a blind difference to his day-to-day life. He and Sarah had a TV, but they only used it to watch DVDs. In his capacity as a solicitor, he used the Web, but he was taking a few days off and the Web reminded him of work. It was the last thing he wanted to view right now. In any case, the only news he wanted was from his wife. Her job was their only way out of their debts, though he remained utterly conflicted on that option given it would mean leaving home. Still, he had to man up on that. He had to man up on a lot of things, he’d already decided.

He called the garage to check up on the status of his crashed car. For now, he had the use of a car on loan, though only for a week. After that, goodness knew what he’d do. He was cut off here, miles from anyone. And he didn’t have the cash to buy another vehicle.

He prepared himself a late breakfast of bacon, sausages, and beans. It was a bachelor treat, as Sarah liked him eating only healthy food because of his weak lungs. He wondered how he could occupy himself for the remaining twelve hours of waking time. He’d do a meal plan, he decided; something very special for Sarah for her return home. She deserved that after being away for so long, and because he had no idea how to dig his marriage out of the financial crap he and his wife had found themselves in.

He tried calling her on his cell, but it went straight to voice mail. He sent her a text, but it went unanswered. It would just be good to have an idea when she would be home, if he could make her something special to eat without her throwing it in his face. He hadn’t called her at her hotel, because she’d left James strict instructions not to disturb her while she was trying to rescue their situation. But now he felt an overwhelming need to hear her voice, to tell her that he loved her, to say he couldn’t wait until she was home.

He looked at Tess. “What do you think, my girl? Give her a call and risk her wrath?”

Tess rolled in her basket, exposing her belly.

James smiled, though he felt lost and alone. He breathed in deeply and called her hotel, asking to be connected to Sarah Goldsmith’s room.

At the other end of the call, the receptionist typed fast on a keyboard. She stopped, telling James to hold, then she started typing again. She spoke inaudible words to a colleague before returning to the call. “Sir, your wife never checked in.”

James frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We had the reservation all booked. We were expecting her. She was a no-show.”

“No-show?”

“Didn’t turn up. Happens all the time. Probably she decided . . .”

James hung up, his mind racing. Was she cheating on him, staying with a man? Revenge for her assumptions about his alleged night out in Edinburgh’s strip clubs? His hands shaking, he sent her another SMS.

WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? I JUST TRIED YOUR HOTEL. THEY SAY YOU NEVER CHECKED IN.

T
he headhunter who’d set up her job interview would know where Sarah was. Maybe the explanation was simply that she’d turned up at the hotel, didn’t like the look of it, and decided to stay in a nicer place. Yes, that was probably the answer. Nothing worse than that.

He went to the tiny office she used when she worked from home. Though James would constantly rib Sarah about her meticulous filing systems, now he was grateful for her organizational skills. It took him only one minute to find letters from the headhunter, stored in a labeled drawer. He tried calling the number shown in the company address block on one of the letters. The voice mail said the office was currently closed. Silently cursing, he took the letter to his own ramshackle office, powered up his laptop, and entered the company’s Web site, hoping other contact numbers might be listed on the site. A message popped up on his screen saying the Web site domain no longer existed. He tried again, same message. Now he was starting to feel scared. The first contact with the headhunter had been the recruiter calling Sarah. The second, third, and fourth contacts had been via letters. Neither Sarah nor James had met the London-based man.

James’s breathing was wheezy, always a sign he was panicking. He sucked on his inhaler a couple of times to try to settle his lungs. Not knowing what to do next was sending him into a tailspin of bewilderment. He was anxious and very concerned for Sarah’s welfare. But if there was a perfectly normal explanation for all this, Sarah would crucify him for interfering at such a crucial and delicate juncture of her job applications. It could be the final nail in the coffin if he did anything that might derail her efforts.

Then again, he was her husband and had a duty to her. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he backed down from that duty simply because he was too scared to check on her. He had to put his mind at rest, and to do that he had no other option than calling the law firm she was being interviewed by.

For thirty minutes, he was on the phone to them. They had 126 offices spread across the globe, each operating with different management structures and to all intents and purposes autonomous businesses within a worldwide brand. He was transferred to the head office, then to regional offices, then back to the head office in London. Finally, he was connected to the firm’s global head of human resources.

She said to him, “Mr. Goldsmith—I can tell you with certainty that we have no record of a Sarah Goldsmith being interviewed by our company, or an authorized representative of our company, for any position in our firm. Something is not right. If I were you, I would alert the police.”

The inhaler was now a permanent fixture in his mouth as the dread consumed him. This wouldn’t be an elaborate ruse by Sarah, covering her tracks of infidelity. His wife had far too much integrity to cheat behind his back. Many times, she’d made it clear that she would rather get divorced than sleep with another man while married. And there was the crucial matter that she loved her husband dearly. His biggest fear was that she’d fallen victim to an elaborate fraud, something far more complex and clever than the scheme that had earlier this year drained five thousand pounds out of her current account.

He googled her name, unsure what he was looking for, yet beside himself with trepidation. He opened the BBC News site.

And that’s when he saw the headline.

SUSPECTED MURDERER WILL COCHRANE ATTACKS POLICE ON AMTRAK TRAIN

D
isbelief hit him as he read the news story that contained updates about the murder in the Waldorf Astoria, the manhunt in the U.S. East Coast, the incident on the train, the fact he was being pursued though his whereabouts were unknown, and the unrecognizable female victim in the bathtub.

The woman in the bathtub.

James spat out his inhaler. “No, no, no, no!” he cried. His hands shook as he called the Scottish police emergency number. “Not Cochrane.” Tess was by his side, barking. “Anyone but Cochrane,” James said, before speaking to the police operator.

“My wife . . . wife . . . her name is Sarah Goldsmith. She’s in New York City, supposedly for a job interview. I think she’s been murdered. She’s been murdered by her brother.

“His name is Will Cochrane.”

CHAPTER 8

T
hyme Painter and Joe Kopa
ń
ski were in Baltimore, grabbing breakfast in a diner a few minutes after it’d opened, at 6
A.M
. They’d had no sleep and had come to Baltimore because everything suggested Cochrane was heading south. The night had been frenetic, with the detectives coordinating the manhunt and issuing instructions to local police units. But they’d found nothing. Cochrane had vanished.

Now there was nothing else that could be done until Cochrane was spotted again. They were exhausted, famished, and pissed off.

Kopa
ń
ski asked, “Why didn’t Cochrane kill me on the Amtrak?”

Painter thought about this. “His mind might be broken, but maybe cop killing is a step too far for him. Soldiers, covert operatives, police officers—they’re a brotherhood. If he kills one of them, he’s killing his own. It would really be crossing the line.”

“Still doesn’t reassure me. He put me on my ass. I’ve never come up against something like that.”

Painter touched his hand. “If you’d opened fire in the train, it would have turned into a bloodbath. You made the right call.”

Kopa
ń
ski looked at her hand. “I think you’re right. He doesn’t want to kill cops right now. My worry is, what happens if that changes?”

Painter’s cell phone rang and she recognized the number as belonging to her Manhattan precinct. The officer at the end of the line said she had an important call to transfer from a firm of family attorneys in New York.

“Yeah, patch it through.”

Painter listened without speaking as the caller introduced himself as head of the firm. He said he’d been remiss in not calling earlier; he had been upstate on an urgent matter and had only just returned to the office at this early hour to catch up on what had been happening during his absence. He’d discovered that two days ago a man called Will Cochrane had been due to visit his offices to sign adoption papers. The matter was being dealt with by one of his junior attorneys, and unfortunately the employee hadn’t put two and two together and realized that the man who skipped his appointment was the same man being sought for questioning in relation to a murder. For that significant lapse, he was sorry. He gave Painter details about the intended adoption before concluding, “Ma’am, if any of the police officers Cochrane attacked last night had been killed, I’d have no hesitation in sacking my employee for being so dumb.”

Painter hung up and told Kopa
ń
ski about the call. “I’m thinking two options: first is Cochrane stays away from the Granges. That’s no use to us, unless we—”

“Entrap him by—”

“Luring him there on a false pretext.”

“Which is illegal.”

“And unethical.” Painter added, “We could get the Granges’ cooperation. But a man like Cochrane would see through that. Second option is that Cochrane’s headed to the Granges’ without the need for entrapment.”

“To explain his side of the story.”

“Or do something far worse.” She bowed her head, deep in thought. “It looks like that’s where he’s headed. Our job is to find him between here and there. But we’d better send a couple of Roanoke detectives over to the Granges to warn them about the situation and to camp in their home.”

“I agree. But having two cops in the house for days, maybe weeks, can be frightening for young minds. The twins will be unsettled.”

Painter smiled. Her tough companion, as ruthless as they get when he had the bit between his teeth, now and again surprised her. “The issue is whether the Granges will cooperate with us. Even with detectives there, if Cochrane calls the Granges they might try to warn him off.”

Kopa
ń
ski said, “We could get Marty Fleet involved.”

Painter eyed him. “Get a warrant from the attorney general’s office to monitor the Granges’ phones and e-mails?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t like it, but we’ve got no other option.”

His colleague agreed. “Cochrane’s desperate. He’ll be forced to do things he ordinarily wouldn’t.” Her phone rang again; it was NYPD forensics. Painter frowned as she listened. “Nothing? That can only mean she’s foreign, but that’s needle-in-a-haystack territory unless someone comes forward with information.” When the call ended, she said to Kopa
ń
ski, “Forensics has been thorough. They’ve run the victim’s DNA through our national databases three times, plus have been cross-referencing them to the archives of hospitals on the East Coast, in case for some reason her details weren’t transferred to the main database. Nothing. We have to assume she’s not an American national. Forensics is going to start liaising with foreign counterparts, starting with Europe, to try to identify her that way.” Painter stared out the adjacent window. Outside it was lashing rain and looked bleak. “The hostage said that Cochrane claims he’s innocent of the murder.”