Competition Can Be Murder Read online

  “From what I gather, Alasdair had a friend who worked in a mortuary. The police didn’t tell us everything, but they were already aware of the crime.”

  “But you said Richie’s going home with his parents?”

  “And the other boys as well. All the parents posted bond. We had quite the fireworks last night when Robert and I found out. Tried to make the case for letting the boys suffer their punishment, but parents today don’t see it that way, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t want them scarred for life, right?” I said, knowing that’s how it would be at home.

  “Personally, I’d scar his little bottom,” Sarah said. “Don’t take me wrong. But I happen to think those boys are getting a clear message from this, and it’s the wrong one.”

  I couldn’t disagree. We nursed our cups of tea and I filled her in on a bit of the rest of the evening, making light of the possible dangers Drake and I could still face. We made one of those tentative dinner plans for one evening after our work was done, before we left for home.

  At the airport, I found Meggie at her desk. Every time I tried to ask her a question the phone rang. After I’d listened to her third explanation that, yes, the company was still in business, I managed to get in a word. She indicated that Drake was over at the hangar, so I left her to the phones and I trotted over to the other building.

  The tall double doors stood open and a group of men crowded around the Astar. I recognized Joe, the mechanic from Edinburgh, and Fergus but the others were strangers, men from the police or aviation authority, I guessed. Drake spotted me standing in the wide doorway and motioned me to where he stood, beside the other helicopter.

  “JetRanger checks out okay,” he said. “So far the only thing we’ve found on the Astar is what we knew about last night, the one bullet hole in the window. Once they’ve finished, Joe and I can clean things up a bit and she’ll be ready to fly.”

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  He became somber, but nodded. “You?”

  “Sure.” One of the thoughts occupying my thoughts at four a.m. had been the possibility of my own demise in the same way Brian had met his end. I’d decided that the thugs really weren’t after me. They wanted Brian out of business and they’d effectively achieved that. Drake and I could stay long enough to finish the current contract, but Karen had already stated that she would sell the aircraft once we were done. One more small helicopter operator driven out of business. It wouldn’t make a big difference—not until we were all gone anyway.

  Chapter 47

  I hung out in the office, watching Meggie answer the phone and generally wondering how everything would turn out, until Drake poked his head in a couple hours later.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “As I’ll ever be.” I pulled on my gear and followed him out to the tarmac.

  Drake introduced me to the four men who were standing around the two aircraft. They were Michael, Rob, Alex and Duncan, but I had no idea which name belonged to which generic face by the time the introductions were finished. Three were police investigators, I gathered, and one from the CAA.

  They intended to ask a lot of questions out at the rig and we were to be their transportation. I got Rob and Alex as my passengers, both police, whom I gathered hadn’t done much helicopter travel and none of it with a female pilot. I pretended not to see their nervous glances as I escorted them to the JetRanger and strapped them into their seats.

  I listened to Drake’s radio transmission to the tower, then followed with my own, obtaining clearance for takeoff.

  The sky was clear blue today, a steady wind tracing the last of yesterday’s clouds and rain. I fought the headwind out to sea and focused my attention on keeping to my GPS course as I aimed for what would look like a microdot in the vast blank blue of the north Atlantic. Drake’s faster machine provided a good lead, but he was soon far enough ahead that I couldn’t count on visual contact to accurately get me there.

  By the time I arrived at Rig 6 Drake had landed and his passengers were emerging. Colin Finnie stepped out of his office as I brought the JetRanger to her spot softly. My two inspectors let themselves out, each with a relieved nod of thanks in my direction, and I began my shut-down procedure. The group of men disappeared into Colin’s office.

  “What’s the plan?” I radioed Drake, who was also waiting for his rotors to wind down.

  “Guess we’re out here until either Colin or the police are ready to send us back.”

  Two hours later we were still standing by and I found myself keeping an eye on the sky. Light cirrus, probable precursors to another storm, now covered the afternoon sky. As quickly as they’d moved in, we were likely to see more rain by midnight.

  “Well, this is certainly fun,” I told Drake, “but I need to find the girl’s room.” We’d shed our survival gear and moved over to his ship to stretch out in the roomy back seat.

  “Good luck. I doubt there’re too many women visiting this place. You’ll probably have to take your chances with something generic.”

  And don’t count on it being any too clean, I figured as I stepped down and headed toward the building. As I’d discovered from previous visits, a hallway ran beside Colin’s office and led deep into the structure of the rig where a variety of other rooms helped facilitate the operation: map rooms, meeting places, kitchen facilities, and dorm-style bunk rooms where the men lived on their seven-day shifts. I spotted the generic blue sign with its stick-figure people denoting the toilets. As Drake predicted, there was just one and I tapped gingerly on the door before opening it.

  The underlying roar of drilling equipment, generators, and heating fans masked any response that might have come, so I pushed gently at the door and called out. Empty, thank goodness. I ignored the row of dingy urinals against the right wall, not wanting to know their true condition. Nudging each stall door open, I finally found one I thought I could bring myself to enter.

  I was midway through the process of unzipping my jeans, when a voice froze me in place.

  “Don’t think that’s the end of it, lady.”

  Chapter 48

  I fought back the electric charge that shot through me as my heart started again with a thud. I clutched at my clothing and tried to peek through the crack where the door met the stall. There wasn’t one, it was a tight fit.

  “End of what?” I said, trying to gather my thoughts and see if I could recognize the voice.

  “Trouble. You keep comin out here, you got trouble.” The man kept his voice low, almost a growl.

  I re-buttoned my jeans and tugged my T-shirt down. “Two more days,” I told him. “We won’t be here after that.”

  His menacing laugh chilled me. I heard a sound I couldn’t immediately identify, a splashing. At the foot of the stall door a splatter of liquid dotted the floor and ran toward my feet. I jumped back, crowding myself into a corner by the toilet. The man was urinating on the door!

  “What—you’re crazy,” I shouted.

  The laugh continued and the splashing stopped. The door to the hallway whooshed shut on its closer. I flung open the stall door and made little zig-zag steps to avoid the wetness. The hall was empty.

  What was that all about, I wondered. Some kind of primitive marking message, or the more direct way of saying ‘piss on you.’ I ran toward Colin Finnie’s office and pushed my way in. Finnie and two of the inspectors looked up at me.

  “I just received a threat,” I said. I filled them in, including all the details.

  One of the inspectors headed for the hall, while the other—Alex, I think it was—began asking questions and jotting notes on a small notepad. I told him of the previous threats—subtle, not so subtle, and those staged to look like accidents. “These guys are serious about getting us out of here,” I concluded. “They have to be the ones who fired on Brian yesterday.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “according to your husband’s statement, we’ve pinpointed the place from which the shots came. Now we’re searching mar
ine records to learn which boats could have been there at the time.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to do it?”

  Colin spoke up. “Well, we’re able to eliminate certain of the union boats because they were at the various rigs, and there are witnesses.”

  “But every single boat that might . . .?” My skepticism rose.

  “We’ve got good leads,” Alex said.

  “Brankin’s been the most vocal toward Drake and me,” I said, “but it wasn’t his voice I heard just now.”

  “Be assured that we’re keeping a close eye on Mr. Brankin,” Alex said. “But we also want to get whoever’s behind him, giving the orders.”

  Satisfied that I’d told them everything I could, I went back outside to tell Drake about this latest threat. Both helicopters sat on their pads, but Drake was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter 49

  I called out and got no answer. A cleaning rag lay beside the JetRanger, one that I kept in the cargo compartment for little spills. The compartment door was closed but unlatched, and the window cleaner and roll of paper towels stood inside, out of the box we always strap down during flight. Drake must have started to clean the windows on the aircraft and needed to go inside for something. I felt a tiny jab of annoyance because we’d agreed that one of us would always stay by the ships.

  It was already after three o’clock and the clouds continued to build. I was impatient that we weren’t getting underway more quickly. I wanted to be safely back on land before dark. I sat on the skid step and planted my elbows on my knees, making myself take a few deep breaths to relax.

  By the time thirty more minutes had passed, my relaxation techniques had all run out and I was feeling decidedly put out with my husband. Had he simply decided to have coffee and shoot the breeze all day with someone? I looked up to see Alex and Duncan approaching.

  “Nearly ready, then?” Alex asked. “We’ve done our interviews.”

  “Where’s Drake?” I asked. “Was he with you?”

  “Haven’t seen him,” Duncan said. “I think Bill’s in the map room, checking something. Maybe he’s in there.”

  “Look, someone should stay by the aircraft, just to be sure there’s no one prowling around. Can you go inside and tell him we’re ready to leave?”

  Alex volunteered, so I took a few minutes to finish the job Drake had begun, wiping down the front windows on each helicopter and stowing the cleaning supplies securely. Ten minutes went by. Twenty. My pique quickly turned to worry.

  Our two other passengers, the third inspector and the aviation man, emerged and stood there with Duncan comparing notes. I was about to ask one of them to go looking for Alex and Drake when Alex came out of the building.

  “I can’t find him,” he said. “At least he’s not in the main common rooms here.”

  “We better get Colin’s help. He knows this rig inside out.”

  Colin quickly rounded up a crew of ten men to help with the search, while he got on the phone and called to various parts of the huge rig to see if anyone else had seen Drake. “Why don’t you wait by your helicopters, Charlie,” he said. “That’s most likely where he’ll go.”

  I trotted back to the aircraft where my four passengers now shuffled, clearly as eager as I was to get going. I circled the JetRanger, performing my preflight inspection, not wanting to stay any longer than we had to. I didn’t like the increasingly violent waves on the roiling gray water. I walked to the edge of the helicopter pads. This one corner of the rig consisted of the flat concrete surface we landed on each time. No railing or barrier protected anyone who might come too close to the edge. I looked down and realized with sickening clarity that anyone who went over the edge right here would hit the sea a hundred feet below and surely be dashed to death against the massive pilings. My stomach heaved.

  I stumbled backward, needing to put distance between myself and the edge. What if Drake had . . .

  Chapter 50

  “Charlie!” A shout brought me back to reality. “Charlie, didn’t you hear me?” Colin Finnie walked toward me, waving me to come. “We found him.”

  I looked up to see Drake emerging from the building, hair disheveled but otherwise looking as neat and trim as ever in the khaki flight suit he always wore under the bulky survival gear. I wanted to run to him and just hold on but the three inspectors crowded around him first.

  “. . . some little closet,” he was saying as I came close. He stretched an arm toward me and circled my waist with it. The hug conveyed a degree of relief that he wasn’t sharing with the officers. He continued: “I don’t know if I could identify the man. It was just one of the oil workers. He came out here and told me my wife needed help and he’d show me where she was. He led me down a couple of hallways and I was beginning to wonder what on earth Charlie would be doing this far down. I think I was about to question him when this right hook came out of nowhere. I saw stars and figured out he was shoving me into a small space and closing the door on me.

  “It was pitch dark in there and by the time I felt around for the door I heard him locking it from the outside. I’d been pounding on it ever since.”

  “It was a storage closet back near the generator room,” Colin explained. “You can barely hear anyone shouting right in your ear there. No wonder we didn’t hear you.”

  “I was threatened in the bathroom, too,” I told him, not expanding on exactly what had happened.

  “Well, I don’t care if it causes problems for Karen in getting paid or not. We’re not flying out here again,” he told Colin. “It’s not worth risking our lives.”

  The three police inspectors looked visibly relieved. “Naturally, we can’t order it, sir,” Alex said, “but we were about to make a strong recommendation to that effect.”

  Only Colin seemed unhappy. He’d come to rely on the convenience of the two aircraft, but I was beyond caring. The man who’d lured Drake to his temporary prison might have just as easily knocked him unconscious and thrown him over the platform’s edge. In fact, he might have planned to detain us until dark and do exactly that. I edged in closer to Drake.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to him.

  We bade Colin goodbye, assuring him that we didn’t bear him any ill will. Drake suggested that he take the four passengers with him in the Astar, lightening the load for the slower JetRanger. The CAA man had a plane to catch back to Edinburgh so we suddenly had a deadline. It took less than five minutes for everyone to be in their seats and for the welcome whine of turbines to wind up. I let out a big pent-up breath as we both cleared the rig and headed for open sea.

  Despite the darkening sky and slight turbulence as the wind picked up, I felt unexplainably light. Richie Campbell’s kidnapping ordeal was over. The helicopter contract, while an exciting experience, had caused more worry than joy and I was glad to be free of it. Within the hour we would drop off our passengers. Drake would still have to explain to Karen why we wouldn’t finish the last two days of work for her, but the more I thought about it the more sure I felt that she’d have a strong case for being paid for the work done up to this point. Even a big, powerful oil company surely couldn’t withhold payment for time that had legitimately been flown. For right now, I wanted a hot shower and nice dinner out with my husband. Someplace with dark, quiet booths and good wine.

  A subtle change in sound grabbed my attention, then the piercing, constant tone of the low rotor horn. My eyes darted to the instruments. My N1 compressor speed was dropping rapidly as the pulsating engine-out horn joined in. Oh shit. Engine failure.

  I looked for Drake. The Astar was ahead of me, out of sight now in the deepening gloom.

  I keyed my mike. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Delta-Delta-Alpha-Bravo. I’m going down in the sea.” I glanced at my GPS and read off the coordinates. I repeated the message twice. No response.

  I looked down at the rolling sea, knowing that I had no choice. I might survive this if I could pull off a perfect autorotation, and if the floats co
uld keep the fragile aircraft upright.

  The procedure came back to me, those dozens of times we’d practiced them in training. I went through the steps in my mind, my hands automatically guiding the cyclic in minute moves. The steel gray water came closer and closer, rolling with sickening undulations that threatened my sense of direction. I fought to keep the horizon in sight as the airspeed slowed to less than eighty. I squeezed the trigger to inflate the floats. There was a loud bang on both sides of the helicopter as nitrogen exploded into each of the floats, expanding them along the length of each skid. I brought the helicopter’s nose up and felt the skids touch water. This is it, either this thing will float or I’m about to go under. I’d never felt so alone in my life.

  Chapter 51

  The swells were a good three feet high and it was all I could do to keep my eyes above them. I threw the fuel shutoff valve, shutting down the engine and pulled on the rotor brake to stop the blades. I hoped the tiny craft would stay afloat until Drake could circle around and get me. Had he heard my Mayday? Did he have any way of plucking me out of the sea without endangering himself and his passengers? I didn’t think so.

  As I repeated my radio call a wave, higher than the rest, crashed against the side of the aircraft. The whole thing leaned precariously.

  Okay, Charlie, think. This thing probably won’t hold until someone gets here. I jettisoned my door. If the aircraft went down I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to push against the throbbing sea to get out. I unbuckled my harness and made sure my survival suit was zipped to my throat. I remembered to reach back to the center post between the front two seats and activate the emergency locator transmitter.

  Another wave rocked the ship.

  “I’m in the sea, I’m in the sea,” I called out over the radio. As a third wave tipped me dangerously toward the passenger door a small shriek slipped out. I prayed that Drake, the Coast Guard, or someone out there was getting this.