Then Go Straight Forward

By Bill Johnstone

The book is a contemporary thriller; the sequel to another Mike McCabe adventure, White Collar Option.
The shooting of two apparently innocent tourists on vacation in northern Florida and a fire in a wealthy neighborhood of Washington, DC are two seemingly unconnected incidents. However, they prove to be strands in a mysterious pattern involving organized crime, a children’s charity, the clergy and a dead security agent.
Together they trigger an investigation by journalist Mike McCabe whose news instincts determine he follows the clues to the bitter end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Johnstone
• Release date: Sep 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301612734

Bill Johnstone

The author has been a journalist for more than 30 years and has taught the subject in the USA and the UK.He was born in Glasgow, Scotland and lived in London and Washington where his novels are set.He is an avid animal lover and a trusteee of a cat sanctuary in Somerset, England.He travels frequently between the UK and the USA.

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Then Go Straight Forward

By Bill Johnstone

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Bill Johnstone

All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Let me give many thanks to family, colleagues and friends for their support which made this book possible; also to Rosamund for her support, patience and diligent proof-reading.

All characters and incidents in this book are fictional. The story is international but the author has opted for US spelling.

Series

White Collar Option

Then Go Straight Forward

Waiting For The Storm To Pass

Their Will Be Done

POINTED INWARDs

MADE TO ACCOUNT

CHAIN REACTION

CONSIGNMENT

TRUE WIND

Preface

Any quality newspaper harbors a collection of diverse personalities and talents which are as much responsible for its output as the news itself.

There are the opinion writers, who dress and talk more like academics than journalists. They are the intellectuals of the newspaper, whose views and analyses are the foundations on which the reputation of a quality newspaper is built.

At the other end of the spectrum are the spanner-men, as they are sometimes called, whose brilliance is in the management of the complex timetable of nightly production. It has never been an easy job but now it requires an even steadier hand at the helm since the newspaper is printed, simultaneously, in four centers across the country, where thousands of copies are run off and automatically bound for delivery in a matter of minutes.

And then there are the by-line junkies, driven by an unhealthy and insatiable craving like a daily fix. Some are the best journalists ever known but, too many, the poorest human beings, who consider that there was no price they wouldn’t pay for a story, preferably one which would be splashed across the front page with their names on it.

Then there were the ordinary journeymen, the foot soldiers, who have an inherent instinct for news, human ferrets who pursue the very hint of news story and doggedly stalk it to its bitter end. Mike McCabe is a champion in this field, an energy whose nose for news is second to none.

This cocktail of vanities is a newspaper, any newspaper.

Among these personalities, the news business encourages partnerships where people who might otherwise be strangers form a professional intimacy, a bond, almost a marriage, which they nurture and cultivate. Tension is no stranger to a newspaper. Curiously, it’s that emotion which fathers harmony. But discord was never too far from the surface as the different egos jostle for recognition.

At the London Daily Herald there was now another dimension, an additional ingredient to this neurotic mix of human endeavor. The uncertain atmosphere brought about by the car crash and sudden death of proprietor John Rochester, had rocked the company to its foundations. All bets were off and everyone was running for cover.

In the midst of the chaos, Rochester’s wife and daughter, the heirs to his international media empire, were picking up the pieces.

Soon the Rochester funeral would take place in Washington, DC. Mike McCabe, veteran newshound representing the newspaper, would attend with the hope that the mayhem be buried along with the corpse.

However, he also had his agenda. His relationship with a CIA agent who’d been instrumental in Rochester’s death, and had died in the process, muddied the waters. There were a lot of unanswered questions.

Chapter 1

Mike McCabe looked at the screen of his laptop. Despite more than twenty years as a journalist he couldn’t find the words. He could see them, hear them, even feel them but he couldn’t put them together. The letter didn’t say what he wanted. The content was to the point, the grammar perfect, the syntax in order and even its reading had the right rhythm and pace. But there was something missing. He didn’t know what it lacked – perhaps warmth, sympathy, or even sensitivity.

It appeared to have all of them but it still didn’t work, it didn’t say what needed to be said, in a way that was satisfying, if not appropriate. Nor did it capture the mood, the feelings, the message he wanted to convey. It was bland, almost clinical, as if written by some literate machine. Maybe the task was too ambitious, too daunting?

How could he even attempt to write about her death with such language? It had taken him hours to even contemplate trying. After all, she worked for the CIA; some called her a spy. She’d been part responsible for his proprietor’s death.

He read the letter over and over again and gazed for some time at it, then out of the window as if the early morning light might capture the words that were amiss and help better describe how he felt. But the dawn didn’t come with any inspiration. He stared at the screen seemingly for an age.

But nothing came. He couldn’t be lyrical about such tragedy. She’d been part of his world, no matter how brief or misguided. Unwittingly, she’d been dragged into it. Equally unintentionally, he’d got involved with her. It happened, as most of these things do, without planning but not without consequence. They were adults and they knew what would result. A moment, stimulated by too much alcohol in a deliciously relaxed atmosphere had taken even him by surprise. She’d transported him into a world he’d long forgotten. He the cynical newshound, witness to tragedy and drama on way too many occasions was unguarded. Where were the words that would say that? They ran around his head but nothing appeared on the page. Another half hour and nothing had been added. The same memories were going around in one endless loop.

If it had been twenty years ago, he would have ripped the paper from the typewriter, dramatically curled it up into a ball, shouted some meaningless obscenity and thrown it across the room and maybe even smile if it managed to drop into the wastepaper basket at the far end. Had that happened, it might even have given him some satisfaction. He might also have acquired some absolution in the process; a cathartic ritual that would absolve him of his unease. He’d feel better and the words would then come gushing like the work of some inspired romantic poet. They would pour onto the paper.

Not so; we were two decades down the technology road. The paper and the typewriter were memories, icons from a by-gone world. This was the age of the microprocessor where the mechanical sound of his old machine was replaced with a barely audible click and the content of any letter could appear and disappear in seconds at the silent touch of a button. No drama, no histrionics, no time for obscenities and no sound effects. Gone, in an instant!

But the mind was not as efficient as the technology; it hadn’t made the same progress, or similar advances. It was stuck in the old ways. While he could wipe his letter from the screen and from the archive of his laptop in a flash, the message and its meaning were not so easily erased from his memory where it could linger indefinitely and inflict its pain forever. He would have trouble erasing her from his thoughts with any ease.

How could he write a letter to the mother of a girl just murdered, one that conveyed even a fraction of the feelings he had for her when she was alive and how he felt on hearing of her death? How could he say to this woman, whom he’d never met, that her loving daughter Marie Chambers had been a chance victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time and that her unlucky innocence and naivety were as much to blame for what happened than the shot that killed her? None of it made any sense.

She’d surprised him with her sparkle when they’d first met at a reception at the British Embassy in Washington. He was bowled over immediately. Barely a few days later, it happened. She’d captivated him over dinner and within hours they were together. He could still smell the room and her perfume. He felt that would stay with him forever; a mixture of lavender and rose petal. But it now seemed brutally brief.

Not long after, under police protection in her house in Washington, she was no more. Within seconds, without her bodyguards detecting the slightest hint of commotion or hearing the tiniest sound of a shot, she was dead. The supersonic bullet smashed through her kitchen window, leaving only the minutest of holes as evidence of a disturbance. She lay on the floor, her eyes still open in shock and a trickle of blood oozing from a wound in her head; her young life gone, her beauty but a memory. The brutality and finality of it shocked him then and now.

She’d worked for the CIA but only in a minor capacity, as hundreds of others did, performing tasks that were no more clandestine than the toils of a bank clerk; no more related to espionage than someone at a checkout. Her role had been to watch him. In the end, she was literally caught in the cross-fire. He would now have to live with the thought that her intimacy was contrived and her response to him just part of the job.

Fortunately, the police had spared him the details of her killing but the subsequent newspaper reports had no such restraints. They’d painted the picture in its graphic sickening detail. She’d been questioned by the police about her involvement in the car crash that killed John Rochester. She’d said nothing. In the hope that she would open up in a more relaxed atmosphere, they released her under surveillance. It hadn’t worked. Within a few hours she was dead at the hand of an assassin.

He hadn’t seen the body but had preferred to remember her as she had been. Not so her mother; she had no such choice. She wouldn’t have been able to avoid that anguish. She had to identify the body of her only daughter on a police mortuary slab two days after the shooting; a cold lifeless white corpse that bore little resemblance to her vivacious and pretty daughter.

He pressed the delete button on the laptop and the letter disappeared from the screen. There was little or no point to the exercise. It would solve nothing and erase even less from his memory. The letter was a coward’s charter he’d decided; these sentiments he would need to deliver in person. How he was going to do that he didn’t know.

His eyes closed with exhaustion and he was soon asleep, back in the world of warm memories, back with her. He woke with a start and looked about him. It was dark.

Half an hour later he’d a cold beer in hand and was sitting on the deck of his barge, Sergeant Pepper, looking across the river Thames. There wasn’t too much swell but the occasional boat, rocking its way up river with its disco and dancing guests, created enough to get the barge bobbing in the wake.

His houseboat had been a labor of love. He knew it was a cliché but it was true.

He would liked to have told how he’d rescued this old coal barge from the breaker’s yard and, had he not done so, it would have ended up in a scrap-yard, doomed to a life of rust and decay. Sadly, the real story wasn’t as romantic. He’d bought it from someone who’d got it from a holiday letting company on the Regent’s Park canal but didn’t have the money to restore it properly.

Hotfoot from the fallout of a divorce where he was lucky to emerge with his skin, never mind his shirt, he had barely enough to put down a deposit on this decaying hulk of metal. In a curious way it seemed to represent his life at the time; an ageing relic that had seen better days and needed a new life. Endless conversations with his local bank manager, and financial promises he wasn’t quite sure he could keep, gave him the remainder of the money he needed. He’d then lived in a shell for almost a year before he made any serious improvements.

It was named after a feral cat he’d once befriended, which in turn had been named after his favorite Beatles album. The cat’s lifestyle seemed to describe the barge perfectly.

But now it was not only home but it gave him a sense of freedom which was a welcome relief from the shackles and the bitterness that came with his divorce.

Now it had all the trappings of modern living; at least that’s what the sales literature would say if he was ever stupid enough to sell. He’d managed, again by more luck than any clever strategy, to get a berth for it near Chelsea on the north side of the Thames. The walkway, on which it was moored, was flanked by some of the grandest and most expensive pieces of real estate in London.

To his surprise, the neighbors on shore were fine and didn’t seem to mind his presence in their front yard. He suspected that most of them had other homes dotted all over Europe or America. He’d got to know a few faces as they walked their dogs in the morning. The odd one or two would wave some form of greeting. They probably considered the little nautical commune, where he moored the barge, to be some bohemian stronghold whose inmates were the last of the holdouts. Maybe they even envied his lifestyle? Or perhaps, in their swanky dinner parties, they were hatching schemes to have him evicted or better still sink his boat in the middle of the night. On reflection, that was a better story.

His cell-phone rang. It was the news desk, phoning around after seeing the first editions of the rival newspapers. The night editor would check if any important story had been missed and then phone the relevant correspondent.

‘McCabe,’ he said quietly and waited for the news that would ruin his beer and the remainder of the night.

‘Sorry Mike,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘My mistake; I hit the wrong button.’

He smiled when he heard the young news editor.

‘I hear you’re off to the funeral tomorrow?’

‘Yes, you caught me packing,’ he lied.

‘Good journey.’

McCabe smiled again. ‘Thanks.’ He pressed the red button on his phone then finished his beer. He looked across the river watching the lights turning off one by one. It was the last time he expected to see this sight for a while. He’d miss it.

Chapter 2

Mel Bradley, Duval County sheriff, took a call in his car about sixty miles south of the Florida border, a few hours west of Jacksonville. He was hoping it wouldn’t be one of the usual reports of careless driving; a perplexed tourist who hadn’t realized he’d run out of road but kept driving nevertheless; or one who’d been so intoxicated either by alcohol or the scenery that his vision had been impaired and he and his car had ended up in a ditch.

It was none of these. When he heard the deputy’s voice, he knew it was the one he’d been waiting for. He snatched the receiver. It didn’t connect immediately. It was dead for a moment before it sprung to life again.

‘Bradley,’ he said quickly his voice slightly on edge. The connection crackled for a second. There was silence for a moment again and then a low hum hit his ear. The voice was loud and clear.

‘It’s exactly as you said sheriff,’ said the radio. ‘No sign of life; nothing at all.’

His team had just arrived at the spot and was acting out the sheriff’s precise instructions. He wanted a detailed report and a thorough examination. The truck, he’d asked them to check, had been parked in the same spot for nearly three days. It had been reported several times.

But the evidence didn’t tell them much. There were no occupants or signs of where they might be, no suggestion of foul play, no damage to the vehicle; all very strange.

‘Nothing; not a clue sheriff,’ said the deputy on the radio.

‘Not such a thing,’ said Bradley bluntly.

‘What?’

‘There is no such thing’ repeated Bradley. ‘Trucks don’t drive themselves’ he added, a little impatiently. Even here in this remote spot, miles from anywhere, with no obvious sign of life, he knew there were indications, clues, visible markers, if you knew what to look for and where to look.

Bradley knew, alright. He’d brought his big-city experience to small-town thinking. He’d planned to retire here but the lure of the office and the incompetence of his predecessors had driven him to at least consider running for one term. His civic pride or his vanity did the rest.. So, barely a year in the district, he was now sheriff.

‘Don’t try and see the entire picture at once. Just describe the scene to me; tell me what you can see; one bit at a time’ he added. ‘Start with the truck.’

‘The engine is cold, sheriff; hasn’t been driven in a couple of days, I’d guess.’

‘What’s inside?’

‘There’s camping equipment and the usual stuff in the back. Registration plates are Washington, DC. We checked it out. It’s not been reported stolen. Didn’t surprise me, cause it’s pretty beaten up; hardly a prize. But we’re checking out the ownership now.’

Certainly, the incident was strange. Sightings of the vehicle had been reported at least a dozen times over the last few days by drivers who knew the area well and thought it suspicious not because it was doing anything in particular but because it wasn’t.

To the trained eye of a local, how a vehicle was parked told a lot. At a glance it was obvious if it had been parked with some care or not. If it was the latter it might have been abandoned. The numerous sightings suggested that as a possibility. It was parked in a spot of no particular interest, there was no sign of its owners and it appeared not to have moved in nearly three days.

Increasingly, Bradley had become suspicious of strangers in the area over the last several months. The county was pretty sparsely populated, the traffic flow fairly light and most of the population had lived in the area for years. As