Chapter 20

The train journey north was uneventful and Kenny did indeed manage to snatch a few hours of much needed sleep. The change over in Madrid had been the only worrying moments, as there wasn't much time between his train arriving in Madrid and the second train departing. He was surprised that he easily found his way around the vast Atocha Railway Station - scene of the carnage following the 2004 terrorist attacks on Madrid's commuter trains.

He had opted to head for the smaller port of Santander rather than the larger Bilbao and it was a simple matter to find his way from the city's General Station down to the docks. All sense of security left him at that point however, and now he was huddled in a small dockside bar. Kenny was at pains to avoid making eye contact with the rough and aggressive looking seamen who filled the bar. They were already drinking spirits despite the fact it was barely 7am.

Kenny knew he was potentially in a lot of danger but he had to take risks to try to secure passage on one of the fishing boats that were berthed here. His quandary was that the danger came from the very people he needed to approach to try to make a deal. Looking at the men in the bar, he could tell that they wouldn't think twice about giving him a severe beating for the kind of cash that he had on him.

Kenny was desperately trying to figure out a way of agreeing a payment without risking the cash he had on him - that would be a very stupid thing to do. To make matters worse, the longer he sat nursing his coffee, the more suspicious of him the patrons of the bar were becoming. He had an idea and got up from his table, making his way out of the bar as quickly as possible.

Half an hour later the burly fishermen were surprised to see Kenny return and make his way to the bar. His time hunched over a coffee earlier had allowed him to single out who the boat captains were likely to be and he picked the most disreputable looking amongst them and made his approach.

His first bit of luck was that the man spoke passable English, but it took a few minutes for Kenny to find that out.

"Can I have a private word with you?" Kenny asked.

The trawler skipper was perhaps only five foot eleven but he was broad across the shoulders. He had almost black hair and brown eyes. His face was coloured by the thick stubble of two or three day's growth and his expression wasn't in the least bit welcoming. He stared at Kenny for a moment then shrugged and motioned towards a door at the rear of the bar. That at least suggested he had understood the request.

The fisherman walked off and Kenny followed. He found himself in a narrow alley that ran behind the bar. Kenny opted to go for a direct approach.

"I'm looking for passage on a boat. I need to return to Scotland, but I'd rather not take one of the normal routes, as I don't want anyone to know when I return," he started.

The skipper's eyes showed he understood and that the detail of Kenny's request had him interested.

"I'm willing to pay, pay well for someone who could provide such passage," Kenny added now.

"Ten thousand Euros," the skipper said firmly.

Kenny shrugged. He had overestimated how much the trip might cost him by fifty percent but had committed himself through the actions he had taken. He decided to make his offer the full fifteen thousand Euros he had prepared.

"I'll give you fifteen thousand if we can set sail within the hour," he replied.

The skipper's eyes narrowed and took on a predatory gleam. Kenny saw the eyes flicker momentarily, as if the skipper had been distracted by something. He spun round to find two muscular fishermen at his back. The mood was immediately threatening and Kenny felt a shiver race up and down his spine. His knees shook a little but he forced himself to at least appear outwardly calm.

"What is to stop me taking your money and then dropping you overboard?" the skipper snarled.

Kenny reached into his money pouch and withdrew a thick sheaf of one hundred and fifty One Hundred Euro banknotes. The skipper's eyes grew larger and he physically moved closer to Kenny. Kenny fanned the notes to show that what he was actually holding was a sheaf of half-notes. He had ripped the notes in half and hidden the other pieces when he had left the bar.

"You can drop me over the side if you like, but I'm not going to tell you where the other pieces of these notes are until I'm on a beach in Scotland," he said, fighting to keep his voice from cracking.

The skipper frowned.

"And what guarantee do I have that I will ever see these other parts? He demanded.

"That's easy. One of your crew will remain here with a mobile phone. When you put me on a beach in Scotland we will phone and tell him where to find the other pieces of the banknotes. They are close by so he should be able to quickly confirm he has them."

The skipper laughed at Kenny's words and nodded with newfound respect. Clearly this stranger wasn't a fool.

"Half an hour to finish re-fuelling and then we go," he said, pushing past Kenny and back into the bar.

Drew remained in his hotel room for almost a day and a half as he devoured the information contained in Kenny MacGovern's notebook. His rival, DI Roger Black, hadn't had enough information to realise what a goldmine the book represented. He hadn't known about the Church of Cyberscience and its significance. Black had therefore skimmed over the notes that explained how the money from the Hamilton brothers had been laundered. He hadn't realised the significance of the entries that dealt with the purchase of several casinos.

The various things that MacGovern had noted down were mind-boggling and Drew believed he now had all of the information he required to nail the teacher for a number of major crimes. He had details of names, dates and how the commissioning of the murder of Mark MacGhee had taken place. He knew which of the accountants had cleansed the money, which of the solicitors had set up the Church as a charity and he had his confirmation about the police constable in Dundee harassing Mark MacGhee.

All that Drew needed now was Kenny MacGovern himself. He felt confident that he would be able to break the teacher if he questioned him now. If some of the people involved in the various crimes also squealed, then MacGovern was bang to rights.

The notebook was also mind-boggling for MacGovern's claims that he had been ordered to do everything, that he was a victim of mind control. All of it - setting up a porn web-site, the sex acts he had performed with a number of young girls, commissioning murder - all of it was down to being ordered to do so by someone else according to MacGovern. Drew mentally calculated how much money the web-site was pulling in and whistled when he came to a total.

"Mind control my arse! There's your motive right there sonny. Money, pure and simple. You just couldn't get enough could you?"

Drew only had one day left of his week in Spain but wasn't particularly upset at having to leave. He suspected that the teacher was either already out of the country or in the process of leaving. The detective also had a sneaking suspicion as to where his target might be heading next.

Following his suggestion, Juan and Ignacio had identified the dead knife-man as one Wilson Bankier - a doctor from Dundee. As Drew has suspected, the doctor had been on the same flight as he had arrived on and had obviously been following him around. The fact that an otherwise law-abiding doctor had seemingly turned into a killer was just as much of a conundrum as the solicitor Jason Welsh attacking Mark MacGhee.

That knowledge linked two things that didn't fit the overall picture that Drew was forming and that meant two things that worried him. One possible explanation for both Welsh and Bankier's actions was that they really had been subjected to mind control. If that was the case and MacGovern was the mastermind behind all of the criminal activity, why would he order someone like Bankier to attack himself? The second thing that didn't fit was that the notebook made no reference to any contact with Jason Welsh. If MacGovern had ordered the solicitor to attack MacGhee, surely it would have been mentioned in the book? If it hadn't been MacGovern who was controlling Welsh, who was? Did that lend more credibility to the claims the teacher was making that he was being controlled all along by someone else?

Drew didn't like loose ends and he decided he would need to think about these things some more. Meantime he had to pack as he had a flight back to Glasgow to catch.

The trawler skipper was true to his word and the modern trawler Katerina put to sea without delay. The skipper and the crew left Kenny very much on his own, remaining mostly in their own cabins or on the bridge for the best part of two days.

Darkness was falling on the evening of the second day when a crewmember came to the bows to tell Kenny that the skipper wished to see him. He made his way to the bridge and the captain beckoned him over to a chart that he was poring over. The skipper's right index finger stabbed at a point on the chart and Kenny looked down.

"I will drop you here in two, perhaps three hours. You'd better be telling the truth about the money or you won't leave the beach," the skipper snarled.

Kenny wasn't happy with the intended drop-off point, as he knew it was quite a distance from the main roads in that part of Scotland's Northeast. He shook his head and used his own finger to point at the chart slightly further north, closer to the small port of Stonehaven.

"It needs to be here. There will be little traffic at the time of night you drop me so I need to be near a main road to try to get a lift. Don't worry about your money, it will all be there."

The Katerina had a small dinghy with a powerful outboard and the skipper explained that they would use that to run Kenny ashore rather than risk grounding the trawler. Kenny looked dubiously at the dinghy, it wasn't very big and there was a significant swell to the sea around them.

Getting from the trawler into the dinghy was a hair-raising experience in itself and Kenny was certain he was going to end up in the rough sea. At the last moment a pair of rough hands seized his arm and pulled him off of the ladder he was on and into the bobbing craft. He was still trying to gather his wits about him when the outboard roared into life and they were leaving the lights of the trawler behind.

Kenny couldn't see a thing but the skipper stared past him and kept the dinghy in a straight line. He assumed the skipper's night vision was much better than his own and would have been alarmed to find out that it wasn't. The trawler captain was using a bearing taken while on the trawler and the sound of waves crashing onto the beach to navigate by. He had checked carefully and there were no reefs or rocks along this stretch of coastline so he figured it was safe.

The crewmember sitting beside Kenny turned and clicked on a powerful torch to illuminate the beach that they were rapidly approaching. The skipper ran the dinghy in as close as he could before cutting the motor and raising it out of the water. Leaping over the side, he used the last of the dinghy's forward momentum to help him haul it through the last few feet of water and onto the sand.