The Final Episode of our Crime Thriller set in the world of property
Following the deaths of property tycoon Charles Rudd and his CEO Nick O’Keeffe in a sailing accident in Liverpool Bay, insurance investigator William Rohm travelled north to sign-off their big-money life policy claims. Even though he discovered that organised crime were involved in a deal Rudd was working on, Rohm had to accept that there was no provable link to the men’s deaths. Back in London, he is on the point of closing the case when he learns that O’Keeffe’s Rolex watch has mysteriously turned up on the Isle of Man.
The next day, Rohm was awake early to get the eight-fifty flight from London City airport. His boss, Jo Stet, had given the trip her blessing but mollifying Kate, his wife, had been a different matter. He’d told her all about the Rudd case and tried to be reassuring but she’d been just a tad concerned at the thought of him being anywhere near death-threatening international gangsters.
“I’ll be fine,” he’d said with a cheery smile, “since Leighton’s Assurance was founded in 1895, relatively few of its employees have actually been murdered whilst on company business.”
She’d forced a smile but stayed unhappy all through the evening and over breakfast and on the doorstep as she kissed him goodbye.
Arriving at the Isle of Man’s Ronaldsway Airport, it seemed that he’d
The twenty-minute drive into town was on a fast country road across a landscape of farmland, low stone walls and signposts with Manx-Gaelic names like Ballabeg, Braaid and Strang and at points along the way, cloud-swathed hills could be glimpsed on the western horizon running along the spine of the island. The capital, Douglas, was a town of thirty thousand, but now, out of season, its streets were quiet. Rohm checked-in to the Sefton, one of the many grand, stuccoed Victorian hotels on the seafront, went up to his room and regrouped. Ten minutes later, he was ready to call the Manx cops, go over their plan and firm-up the arrangements to meet. Their quarry, John Cain, had either found the Rolex after O’Keeffe’s body had washed-up somewhere or he had killed both Rudd and O’Keeffe then grabbed the watch before escaping the sinking boat in Liverpool Bay. Whatever had happened and whoever he was, he’d be cornered and unpredictable.
Will Rohm walked into the Mermaid Café at two o’clock to find the place empty apart from the two cops sitting at a table in a corner. They’d all exchanged profile photos before he’d left London so no introductions were needed. His hosts stayed staring at their smartphones as Rohm sat down and traded cold handshakes and staccato hellos. They couldn’t have made it clearer that he wasn’t part of the team.
“We can’t see the front of the shop from here,” said Rohm as he craned his neck around, trying in vain to look past the café’s columns, window mullions and door frames blocking his view.
“Relax. If we can’t see him, he can’t see us,” said Detective Inspector Rusty Steele curtly. “Sergeant Torque is in the back of the store. As soon as Cain arrives, he’ll message us and we’ll move in.”
Rusty Steele delivered her lines with an authentic cool. She was in her early thirties and her eyes were sharp and bright. They wouldn’t miss much thought Rohm. At least her phone was showing what Rohm took to be work emails. From what he could see, her colleague, the thick-necked Sergeant Steve Tenon, was reading the sports pages.
“We’ve got almost an hour before Cain is due,” said Rohm. “What shall we talk about?”
“Nothing?” suggested Tenon with a snarl.
Rohm ignored the man’s crude machismo and pitched his next question straight at Rusty.
“So before I called you yesterday, you hadn’t tried to trace Rudd even though it was his name on the Rolex database?”
“The watch hadn’t been reported stolen and we were waiting to see what Cain had to say for himself,” said Rusty, her eyes still fixed on her phone. “Don’t you have some work to do Mr Rohm, I’m kind of busy here.”
Now Rohm shrugged and gave up trying to make conversation. He fixed his gaze on the little he could see of the jewellery shop. People walked by, cars pulled away leaving spaces for other cars to park-up. Ten minutes went past followed by another ten. Nothing happened.
Then Rusty Steele’s phone bleeped a message and everything changed.
“Christ…” she said, standing up as she looked at the screen on her phone“…he’s there.”
Rohm’s first thoughts were that Cain had suspected something or that his instincts had told him to do the unexpected. The two cops hurried out of the café, across the road and into the store with Rohm in tow. Inside, the jeweller was standing behind his counter, looking anxiously at the two men in front of him. One was medium height, wearing an overcoat, jumbo cords and a wide-brimmed hat. The other stood a good six inches taller and had raised his hand to acknowledge the arrival of Steele and Tenon.
“Mr Cain?” said Rusty as she walked up to the man and showed him her police ID. “We understand that you brought a watch into this shop for repair. Your name isn’t the one on the Rolex database – can you explain that please?”
“The watch belongs to a friend of mine,” said the man in a steady voice.
The police glanced sceptically at each other.
“And who might that be?” asked Tenon.
“Charles Rudd. I’ve known him for years.”
“Then you’ll also know that Mr Rudd drowned in sailing accident last December – how did you come into possession of his watch?”
The man didn’t answer. His eyes darted towards the door.
“Perhaps I can help,” said Rohm. “In a manner of speaking he’s right – he’s known Charles Rudd for years. This is Charles Rudd, founder and chairman of the Seafarer Group and he does own the watch. Well, he’s the one who paid for it.”
Rudd turned on Rohm. His steel-blue eyes glared angrily and for a second he looked like he might shake Rohm warmly by the throat. Rusty Steele’s poker-face expression didn’t change.
“You’re meant to be dead Mr Rudd,” she said.
Rudd took off his hat as he spat his words in Rohm’s direction.
“And who the hell are you?”
“Leighton’s Assurance.”
Rudd curled a lip at Will for two seconds then looked dismissively away. To a man like him, Rohm was just another middle-management paper-pusher.
“So what now?” said Rudd looking at Rusty.
“So now you’re under arrest. I believe you have committed a number of offences including misleading the Coroner’s court and being party to insurance fraud.”
“I changed the watches and disappeared because someone was going to kill me. I needed to get them off my back and hide away for a while.”
“We’ll get to that later,” said Steele.
“And meanwhile you’ll be able to keep me safe? Those gangsters are still out there. They can get to anyone, anywhere.”
“Please go with my colleagues,” said Steele. “They’ll take you to our Headquarters – no one can harm you there.”
“You better make sure they don’t,” said Rudd, jabbing his finger at Rusty. “If anything happens to me it’ll be your job alright? My people will see to it.”
“I have to warn you that threatening behaviour is also a criminal offence and could be added to your already lengthy list of charges,” said Rusty coldly. “Is there anything else you’d like to say at this time?” Rudd reigned-in his anger and kept silent but he stayed eyeballing the detective. He wasn’t used to someone biting him back.
After Rusty had read him his rights, Rudd was taken away. As he disappeared out through the door, he stole the briefest of glances back at Rohm. It was as if he’d suddenly realised that it was Rohm, not the cops who had done this to him.
“I knew you’d come in handy,” said Rusty as soon as they were outside, the smallest of smiles playing at the corners of her mouth. “Why don’t you come with me to the station? Once I’ve interviewed your friend Rudd, I’ll help you fill-in the missing pieces so you can write-up your report.”
Her message was clear. He should tidy-up the loose ends, recover his company’s money then leave the rest to the police. It was their gig now, not his. Although young for a senior detective, Rusty Steele already seemed like an experienced cop. ‘I bet she was always like this’ Rohm thought to himself – that even as a child, she’d appeared older and smarter than the other kids around her. With some people, wisdom comes as standard.
Rohm messaged his office to let them know about the drama of Charles Rudd’s re-appearance then walked to the detective’s car and drove with her to Douglas police headquarters.
“Did you see that coming?” she said after a couple of minutes.
Rohm didn’t reply. Instead, he frowned and stared out of the car window. Rusty didn’t push it and moved the conversation in an altogether different direction.
“Did you ever think of joining the Force?” she asked as the car sped through the suburban streets.
“I like doing things my own way. Working for a big outfit like Leighton’s is bad enough but being a cop would have felt like the army. And what about you – ever thought the grass was greener?”
“Nope. I like the law.”
“Even when it protects the bad guys?”
“Yep – even the devil himself gets the benefit of the law and due process. Anything less and we’re all stuffed. That’s us over there,” she said pointing at an unprepossessing building overlooking a public park and an access road lined with parked cars. With its dormer windows and roof lights peppering a slate-grey Mansard roof, the building looked more like a long, low-rise community centre than a police station.
Inside, Rusty pointed out the coffee machine and left Rohm to it. The crime rate must be super-low here he thought, the place was empty. He busied himself with office emails and made a phone call home. After an hour, Rusty Steele returned and took him into a small, windowless interview room. They were alone.
“
Rohm smiled to himself. What an actor that Danvers had been! He’d played Rohm like a violin and had almost got away with it. Almost.
“Rudd says he was due in Belfast next week to take a freighter to Mexico under his new name of Cain,” continued Rusty. “He’d been due to leave weeks ago but there’d been problems with his new ID. He didn’t know about the Rolex database. He said the watch was worth a lot of money – that he bought it for O’Keeffe so it was his anyway.”
Rohm chuckled in disbelief.
“So he blew his cover over a hundred-grand watch when he must have had millions salted away in Mexico. Avarice undone by greed.”
“Greed is a Deadly Sin isn’t it. It certainly did for Charles Rudd.”
“And for Nick O’Keeffe I think…” said Rohm.
A silence hung between them for a few seconds.
“You believe Rudd’s story?”
“It sounds plausible. He’ll go down for five years I should think,” she said.
“And because of who he is, it’ll be an open prison and he’ll be out in two?”
“So?”
“So in the middle of a storm, Rudd has the time and presence of mind to swap rings and watches with a corpse, launch a life-raft from the rolling, pitching deck of a disintegrating boat and make it ashore? And after all that, his phone is still working.”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible maybe, probable no. Insurance is a betting game – a game of likelihoods and I know a bad bet when I see one. What do you think the odds are of someone pulling that off?”
Rusty Steele smiled at him as if she knew what he was about to say.
“That’s the least likely explanation of what really happened that day. I think Rudd planned it all before they set sail. O’Keeffe was his look-alike so there was a chance an identity switch with a decomposing body would work, at least long enough for him to get clear. Rudd could have knocked O’Keeffe unconscious before the storm really kicked-in, switched the jewellery, trapped him below decks then damaged the keel on the Mad Wharf sandbank. He made sure the boat would capsize and go down in deep water then took the life-raft and rowed back under the cover of darkness. O’Keeffe may have been like a brother but he saw his opportunity and killed him anyway. The EPSOK gangsters suspected that Rudd had faked his own death because that’s the sort of thing they might do. That’s why they were watching his house.”
“Even if you’re right, there’s no real evidence for us to follow,” she said. “In the end, him and us will be happy to take the five-year sentence.”
Rohm looked hard at the detective. She hadn’t surprised him. If he was the police and the CPS, under pressure and under-resourced, he’d be thinking the same thing. Only fight the battles you can win. But at least now Rohm had done his job. He could go home.
They said their goodbyes and wished each other well. Rusty organised a car to take him back into town and they were standing together as it pulled up in front of the police station.
“You really can leave it us now,” she said shaking his hand. “Go back to London, write-up your case report and move on.”
As they pulled out of the forecourt and accelerated away, Rohm scanned the line of parked cars on the access road. In one of them, a man sat in the front seat, suited and wearing his albino-white hair long. Rohm had seen him before. Just four days ago, he’d been outside Rudd’s house. If he was an EPSOK hit man then it would be no more than Rudd deserved. And Will Rohm would tell no-one. He would be policeman, jury and judge.
END
A re-edited and revised omnibus edition of Liverpool Bay is now available. The complete short story can be accessed as an eBook via Amazon-Kindle.
© Tom Marriott, March 2020
This story and its characters are fictitious. Some real places, institutions, agencies and public offices are mentioned but the people and organisations involved are wholly imaginary.
Photo by Hannah Gerrish
Acknowledgements: Robert Bolt, Raymond Chandler, Robert Macfarlane
Thanks to: Ed Gaynor, Hannah Gerrish, Stephen Lee, Rod Mcleod, Jeremy Price, Philip Rees-Roberts, Carly Schabowskiand Nick French.
