Tidal Rage by David Evans (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

the money he had earned from the Hilton job, and was eager to help, as the cash was draining away fast. Colton was forty-two years of age, and his various appetites, which only excluded drugs, matched the size of his broad shoulders.

Several hours later, Tuck returned to Cheryl’s. She was awake and lying prone on the daybed, a sleeping Esme wrapped up in her arms. With some minor protests from Cheryl, Tuck lifted Esme up from her arms and took her into the spare bedroom and put her to bed, fully clothed, and still with the ponytails in her hair.

On returning he found Cheryl quietly weeping and sipping homemade lemonade.

“Thought wine or champagne would have been flowing?” Tuck asked.

She ignored the question. “I know what you’re planning, Tuck.”

“You know what Cutler is like, Cheryl; he isn’t going to walk away while his parents’ killers are in the same town, you know it as well as I do.”

Cheryl would never leave Cutler exposed, nor would she ever try to influence Tuck’s decisions, although part of her screamed inside her head to tell him not to go.

Tuck put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in tightly. “You just got your daughter back; spend some time with her and let me sort this out.”

“You have to be careful; you’re going to be a father,” she said.

“I would be honoured to be Esme’s father, and glad you think I can fill the role. We’ve come a long way in a short time, Cheryl, and believe me, I’m not one to say this lightly; I love you.”

“And I love you, too. You will make a great father to her, and that is why I want you to be careful. This has been one of the best days of my life. I have my daughter back, and I got some news this morning; looks like you are going to be a father twice in one day. So, it is lemonade, I am afraid. Champagne will have to wait for nine months.”

 

Chapter Thirty

Robert Stahmer was a methodical, instinctive, and dogged investigator. He realized early in the Classical Canta Libra investigation that, among all the people he and Ghislaine would interview, there was a high probability they would interview the killer. He was also astute enough to know that the person who could plan the lifeboat explosion would not give himself up willingly in an interview. They were dealing with an extremely intelligent person, with a talent for planning.

Stahmer requested and received the employee digital profiles from the Classical Canta Libra human resource director via Sean Wright. He had forwarded them to Fabienne. He asked Fabienne to add some lines to her software to include the fields on intelligence ratings.

He knew the average IQ was 100, and that an IQ of 132 put a person in the top two percent for intelligence. Stahmer reckoned, based on the planning and cunning used in the lifeboat fire, his target had an IQ at the top half of the scale, between an IQ of 110 to 125.

Stahmer was also aware that probably none of the employees aboard the ship would ever have been tested, but there were parameters Fabienne could build into the software to identify previous awards and exam grades, and from this they would certainly be able to exclude some of the employees from the suspect list.

At first, Fabienne had resisted; it was a natural state for her to resist. The work involved was far more in-depth than a few lines of code to the software. She would have to hack and extract information on the subjects from numerous educational facilities across the globe. She constructed an add on software application in a day that would do this while she slept.

Within two days of Stahmer’s request, the code had been written. Fabienne did as she did each evening; she went to one of her three favourite restaurants. Tonight it was Domiciles, in the business district of Geneva. She had a routine, and the head waiter always obliged when possible. She would be seated in a quiet area of the establishment, and would eat while working on her iPad. Tonight, she feasted on a cheese fondue slab that melted down onto a drip tray, which she mopped up with Parma ham. It was during this meal that her software search program, Speedy, extracted and highlighted a significant clue.

Stahmer had not ceased his pedantic search for the truth, and this had taken him and Ghislaine to three countries in four days. Stahmer wanted to interview the bereaved families of the victims of the lifeboat disaster. First, they went to France, then to Iceland, and then to England, to interview Christie Rooney and Pam Carter’s families, the two entertainers from the Classical Canta Libra.

The interviews in France and Iceland had not shed any light on the investigation; they were simply bereaved parents who were looking for answers as to why their loved one had died. None of the families believed the official version, and indeed it had been they who had forced Classical to bring in MIDAS.

Stahmer and Ghislaine first travelled to Snow Hill in Birmingham to visit Pam Carter’s mother; the father had died of a heart attack shortly after Pam’s death, and the mother quite openly blamed the loss of Pam for his demise. The interview was like the previous two, devoid of information they had not already collated.

They travelled by hire car from Birmingham the hundred or so miles to Borehamwood, a suburb on the outskirts of London made famous by Elstree Studios. The hour was late, so they took rooms in the Travelodge to freshen up before interviewing Christie’s parents the next day.

They took two rooms, which cost less than a third of what one room would cost ten miles further towards the main city of London. After