Not the End of the World (17 page)

‘Not here,’ she said breathlessly, taking hold of his arm. ‘Come back upstairs, quickly.’ she hurriedly keyed in the access code on the door leading to the stairwell, then ushered him inside and closed it again. ‘Upstairs to Miss Nunez’ office, quickly,’ she urged, in a semi‐
whisper. ‘There’s a man on the telephone saying there’s a bomb in the building. Said he’s going to level the place so that the “filth market” can’t take place.’

‘So what’s the rush?’ Larry said. She thought he was joking. ‘If I miss him, I’ll catch the next guy later on.’

‘What next guy?’ she gasped, dismay flashing in her eyes as she trotted up the stairs, but Larry wasn’t saying. When he strode back into the office, Silver was standing on the carpet chewing his knuckles while Nunez sat at her desk talking into the telephone. Silver tried to give him a chastising now‐
will‐
you‐
take‐
me‐
seriously glare, but Larry’s grin unnerved him too much. ‘Yes, of course,’ Nunez was saying into the mouthpiece, looking up at Larry with worried eyes. ‘We are treating your threat with all seriousness, sir.’ Larry leaned across the desk and hit the silence button on the phone. ‘Tell him he’s got to talk to me. It’s procedure – you can’t evacuate without it. Do it.’ She nodded nervously. He released his finger. ‘No, I didn’t cut you off, sir,’ she said. ‘No, I wouldn’t mess you around. But I can’t evacuate the building right now. I have a member of the police department here and I need his clearance first. It’s his call. I’m going to put him on.’

‘Very good,’ Larry mouthed as she handed him the phone. ‘Hello sir. My name is Sergeant Larry Freeman of the LAPD. I understand you are warning us of an explosive device here in the Pacific Vista hotel.’

‘That’s right,’ said a male voice. Larry pressed a button to put the incoming signal through the speakerphone. ‘A bomb. A big one. I’m warning you, I’d get everybody out of there right now if I was you.’

‘Yes sir, safety is our first priority. And I’m assuming you wish to avoid human casualties, otherwise you wouldn’t be giving this warning, which is why I need to ask you a few questions about the device. I don’t suppose you’d be prepared to tell us whereabouts in the hotel it’s planted?’

‘You’re darn right.’

‘I figured. Well, that’s your prerogative, sir. But I do need to know a little about it so that we can estimate what kind of distance we need to evacuate around the building. How big is the device?’

‘Big.’

‘Like what, twenty pounds?’

‘Bigger. Try forty.’

Nunez closed her eyes. Silver looked like he was about to run to the bathroom. ‘And what kind of explosive is it?’

‘ca.’

‘Jesus, sir, you’re playing for keeps, aren’t you?’

‘Darn right. And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘My apologies. Just one more question sir, and this is extremely important: we really have to know this. I’m assuming the device is on a remote trigger. Are you using a bilateral transept detonator or just the old faithful MUB linear?’

‘What? The second one. MUB linear.’

‘Uh‐
oh,’ Larry said to Nunez in a stage whisper, partially covering the mouthpiece so that the caller could still just hear him. ‘He’s using an MUB linear.’ He took his hand away again. ‘All right sir. I understand exactly how seriously we have to take you. I’m going to initiate a KMA drill right away.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Kiss My Ass,’ he said, and put the phone down. Silver’s eyes bulged in horror. The more phlegmatic Nunez just stared at Larry in anticipation.

‘Are you nuts?’ Silver asked.

‘There’s no bomb.’

‘You don’t know that. How can you be sure?’

‘Do you know what MUB stands for?’ Larry asked him. ‘Made Up Bullshit?’ suggested Nunez, with a raise of her right eyebrow. ‘Exactly. Just like bilateral transept detonator. Bombers first need to know how to build a bomb, Mr Silver. This guy didn’t. He Just wanted to disrupt the party. Bombers also don’t wait around answering questions on the telephone, in case the cops are tracing their call.’ He turned to Nunez. ‘I’m afraid you’re probably gonna be getting more of these calls over the next few days. I’ll organise for a trace on this line so that we can maybe bust a few of them as a deterrent. The guys running the trace will also be there to talk to the callers, and they’ll soon let you know if there’s anything genuinely worth worrying about.’

‘Thank you Sergeant,’ she said warmly.

‘Don’t sweat it. And Mr Silver?’

‘Yes Sergeant?’

‘Relax.’

Larry got back to the station house around two thirty, carrying a late lunch of coffee and half a sub, which in retrospect wasn’t entirely appropriate, but then he wasn’t to know. There had been a folder for him at the front desk, and he carried that in his left hand, coffee in the right and sandwich bag in his mouth as he shouldered open the door to the office he shared with Zabriski. There was a Latin‐
featured woman at Zabriski’s desk, looking up expectantly as he barged in. ‘Fe ight ith oo,’ Larry said through gritted teeth, kicking the door closed and dropping the bag on to a pile of newspapers on his desk. He found a space for the coffee then turned around to face the visitor, just as Zabriski came in the door with a similarly steaming polystyrene cup, which he handed to the woman. ‘Larry, this is Maria Arazon of the Californian Oceanowhatchamacallit. I forget, I’m sorry. I said she could wait here for you. I gotta go. I’m trying to keep the press off of the exploding shitbag thing at AmTrak. Last thing we want is copycats on a stunt like that. Miss Arazon, this is Sergeant Larry Freeman.’ She put down her coffee and stood up, extending a hand as Zabriski retreated. She was young, late twenties, early thirties at the most. Her wide hazel eyes were bloodshot and dark‐
ringed, her hair as tousled as her T-shirt. Either she hadn’t slept or she’d slept in what she wore. ‘Good afternoon, Ms? Miss?’

‘Doctor, professionally. But Miss,’ she said, holding up a bare ring‐
finger, ‘as of about two years.’ She looked unsure of herself and distrusting of everything around her, lost as to where she fitted in. Larry recognised it. The victims, the bereaved, they would often tell you something personal straight off that they’d otherwise never dream of mentioning to someone they’d only just met. He wasn’t sure why: maybe their defences were so shot they didn’t bother putting up the usual screens; maybe they needed to talk to someone like they were a friend, not just part of the state’s clearing‐
up machine, not just another aspect of this horrible process. ‘Dr Arazon. I won’t say I’m pleased to meet you because I’m sure we’d both rather not be having this conversation.’

‘You got that right,’ she said quietly, traces of a Mexican accent in her few words.

Larry wheeled his chair over to the other side of Zabriski’s desk and sat down facing her, but a few feet to one side so that it didn’t seem too confrontational. ‘So what can I do for you?’

‘I spent yesterday afternoon at the Coast Guard Marina,’ she said. ‘It was requested that someone from CalORI take a look over … things.’

‘That’s right. Thank you very much for doing that. I appreciate how difficult it must have been. And did you find there was anything unaccounted for?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ She took a sip from her coffee and nodded to herself. ‘What remains unaccounted for is what happened to my friends. I’ve seen the boat and I’ve read the preliminary draft of your report, and to be perfectly frank I don’t buy it.’ Larry paused, breathing in for a second. Don’t bite back, you’ll learn nothing. ‘Let me just get my file on it,’ he said, and got up to retrieve it from his own desk. ‘Okay.’ He sat back down and uncapped a Biro. ‘So what exactly don’t you buy?’

‘The part where four trained professionals got into a submarine one morning and never came back.’ There was a fiery challenge in her tired eyes; Larry recognised that too. Deny the bad thing is true, argue for how it can’t be true, and maybe in the end it’ll turn out it wasn’t true. Except it never does. ‘Okay,’ he said again, nodding. ‘But Dr Arazon, I have to ask you this: given that the four trained professionals we’re talking about were your friends, is it that you don’t buy the story because you don’t believe it happened that way, or because it hurts to think that it did?’ She looked away from him impatiently, swallowing. She’d probably thought she was all cried out before she came in here, but having to do this was unwrapping the bandages again. ‘I don’t buy it principally because it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Well I can appreciate that it doesn’t make—’

‘You’re not hearing me, Sergeant. I’m not in here to blub and say, “Boo‐
hoo, my friends are dead it’s so unfair, why why why?” I’m saying it doesn’t make sense because all four crew would never go off in the sub at once. At least one person stays top‐
side during every dive. It’s basic safety procedure.’ Larry nodded, looking away for a second from the relentless insistence of her eyes.

‘All right, I hear you now,’ he said. ‘And I understand what you’re telling me. Now, let me ask you not to take this wrong, and to try and see it from my position for a second. What you’re telling me is that it would be unsafe for all four crew members to take off in this sub at once. So as we’re left sitting here with no crew and no sub, from an investigative point of view, the information you’ve just given me would tend to support rather than contradict my conclusions.’ Her eyes flashed again, but Larry resumed before she could respond. ‘I know how hurtful, even how insulting this sounds to you, to suggest that your colleagues would do something negligent like this, but we’ve got to accept the possibility that that’s what happened.’ She had a bitter smile on her face. Larry suspected he wasn’t the first person who had failed to satisfy her need for a better explanation. ‘I thought you’d say that,’ she told him. ‘That’s why I’ve waited to mention the log book.’

‘What about the log book?’

‘Ship’s log, written by Mitchell Kramer. Last entry untimed, undated. Just said they were taking the SM to the Slopes Of Stronghyli.’

‘Yeah, I remember now. What are you saying?’

‘There’s no such location. Stronghyli’s the geological name for a place in Europe that doesn’t exist any more. The biggest undersea feature near where the sub went missing is Fieberling Guyot.’

‘So why would he write the slopes of whatever?’

‘Not the slopes of whatever, Sergeant. The Slopes Of Stronghyli. With a capital O on the word “Of”. I’ve seen the entry.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Think of the initials.’ He did. Oh shit. ‘Get it now?’ Larry nodded, then exhaled slowly. Experience had taught him not to let such surprises intoxicate the detective in him. ‘Okay Doctor,’ he said. ‘This all sounds pretty weird and mysterious, I’ll grant you, but let’s try and keep our feet on the ground for a minute, huh? If the boat was in some kind of trouble, some kind of danger, why not put a call out on the radio? Why not shoot a flare? Why make your cry for help in a coded message? An SOS is supposed to be a scream, not a whisper.’

‘Depends on whether someone has their hand over your mouth at the time.’

‘That’s true enough,’ he conceded. ‘But if you’re suggesting someone else was on board, well … You’ve seen the place yourself. We don’t have any evidence of a struggle having taken place, no breakages, no signs of blood. And the other thing we don’t have is a motive. Why would anyone wish your colleagues harm, and better yet, why would they go all the way out to the middle of the ocean to do them harm?’

‘No witnesses, for one thing,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know, Sergeant, I thought motives and explanations were your department. I’ve only got questions, and I was hoping you’d be interested enough to look for more answers than are in your report.’

‘Oh, I’m interested,’ Larry assured her. ‘After what you’ve told me I’m gonna request a forensic sweep of the boat, see if anyone else was on board. I’m not here to brush this aside with the first plausible theory that comes along. But I can only take it as far as the evidence will let me, and so far there ain’t much of that. Unless there’s somethin’ else you’re holdin’ out on.’ She looked back at him just a little too quickly. There it was, he thought. He could see there was something she wanted to tell him, but by the same instinct he suspected she wouldn’t. Not yet, leastways. She got up from her chair. ‘I’ve got to get back, Sergeant,’ she said, making for the door. ‘Thanks for coming in, Dr Arazon. I’ll let you know if we find anything.’

‘Sure.’ She opened the door, then paused with her fingers around the handle. ‘Sergeant, if you really are interested, two words: Sandra Biscane. C‐
A‐
N‐
E.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘You’re the cop. Look it up.’ Sandra Biscane. The name meant nothing to him, nor did he think it was supposed to. Maria Arazon was trying to draw him into something, playing her cards one at a time, and he’d bet that whatever this one turned out to be, it wouldn’t be the last. She had the fatigue and fragility of the bereaved, but she wasn’t simply looking for answers to console her for her loss. That lady knew something, but she wasn’t going to give it up until she figured he’d earned it. Larry took a seat at the computer terminal, placed his coffee next to the keyboard in front of the sign that expressly forbade doing so, and logged on to the database. Arazon hadn’t given him any pointers or any parameters, so he’d just have to feed in the name alone – no categories, no geographical locations, no connections – and sit back. Maybe even go for a walk. He settled on finishing his coffee and watching the little egg‐
timer icon empty out then up‐
end itself over and over in the centre of the monitor. The boat had been troubling him since his visit to the marina. At first he’d put it down to being spooked by the weirdness of it all, but even if Arazon hadn’t come along, he still wasn’t certain he’d have remained satisfied with his report as it stood. This Slopes Of Stronghyli thing didn’t have to mean everything Arazon might imagine it could mean, but he’d be surprised if it meant nothing at all. All down the years they taught you that when you hear hooves, you should look for horses, not zebras, but that didn’t mean that it never turned out to be a herd of the black‐
and‐
white critters once in a while. Despite Rodriguez opining that even experienced sailors can screw up, there was still something left unsaid about this one. Especially now he knew that it was not the done thing for all four of them to go down in the sub at the same time. He arced his cup into the trash basket just as the screen flashed back into life. ‘Biscane, Sandra NOT FOUND,’ it read. ‘NEAREST MATCH? YES/NO.’