DEAD AIR (Henry & Sparrow Book 2)

by A D FOX

  Another three or four minutes and at last he could see where the track opened out into the top end of the fields. He realised he could see it quite well; there seemed to be some source of light up there. His insides clenched. Had he been right? Was Finley actually going to be here with the radio car? Murdering someone? Maybe he was choking Judy Goodson from traffic and travel because she hadn’t liked his biscuits, or Rebecca Barker off the gardening show because she’d dissed his homegrown carrots…

  Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. But that was before he saw the lights down the valley and recognised the shape of the old Ford Focus and the long slick gleam of the raised mast. What the holy fuck?! He stopped the car dead, switched off the headlamps, and pulled out his mobile, keying in redial on DS Sparrow’s number. No good. No signal. He tried 999 instead, beginning to hyperventilate in the car. Shit! Something really was going down in the Wiltshire wilderness.

  At this point a shaft of light opened up in the darkness off to his left and he saw two people emerge. His was dimly aware of his jaw hanging like a broken piñata as he recognised Rob Larkhill and… what the actual fuck? Donna?!

  Josh stared at them and then down at the mobile in his palm, which was singularly failing to dial 999 for him, his brain whirring. What did it mean? He had heard rumours that Rob and Donna had something going on, but were they both hot enough for each other to want to go out in the dark and have a shagfest in a shed or a barn or whatever? No. They weren’t teenagers. Something was seriously fucked up about this. Although part of him was itching to jump out of the car and run after them to ask what was going on, another, much more astute part of him cautioned silence. Stillness. To simply sit and wait and see. He knew, with the pool car’s dark burgundy livery and no lights, he was pretty much invisible in this darkness. Even so, as the pair of them walked down the slope towards the radio car and some other vehicle, its headlamps lighting the scene, he took the handbrake off and let his ride roll on a little further towards some sprawling hedgerow, masking his presence further still. Once it had nosed as far in as it could, he put the handbrake on again, took the key out of the ignition and let the electrics fully die before attempting to open the door. He did not want to trigger the courtesy light and get seen.

  After maybe thirty seconds he got out in darkness. He wandered a little way across the grass and tried to decide where to go next - to the shed, where dim light was still showing around a closed door, or down the slope towards the cars.

  He could have gone to the shed but instinct called him down the slope of the field instead. As he approached could hear something in that direction. It sounded like someone crying. A soft, forlorn weeping. Was it Donna? Were she and Rob having some kind of row? Because he could make out dim shapes, faintly picked out by the weak light inside the Jeep. No - the crying wasn’t coming from inside that Jeep. Josh felt the hairs prickle across the back of his neck. He should get back in the pool car and get out of here right now. Right now. But… the crying. It was so pathetic. He shone his phone torch down low in the grass, just to mark out his path and then switched it off again, still wary of getting noticed. As he got closer he could hear the crying more clearly. It was heavy sobs, like a child in a real state; distraught, not stroppy.

  As he neared the radio car he realised the sound was coming from above it. He made out a shape on the roof, up against the extended mast, and felt a cold sweat of fear break out across every inch of his skin as he crept around the far side, out of sight of the Jeep parked nearby, and shone his phone’s torchlight up.

  Fucking hell! ‘Finley?’ he hissed. ‘Jesus! Finley - is that you?’

  But Finley couldn’t answer. There was tape across his mouth. Josh was about to reach up and untape the guy when some instinct made him pause, snap off the torch, and duck down, out of sight of the Jeep. The fact that Rob and Donna were a few metres away, sitting in their car while Finley was stuck to the mast and bawling his eyes out… well, it raised a few questions, didn’t it? Josh felt waves of unreality washing over him as he crouched against the mud-spattered front tyre of the Ford. He literally pinched his arm to double-check he was awake. Because if not, this was the weirdest dream he’d had in years, including the one about Darcey Bussell and the emu… He felt the pinch, which left him with the unhappy certainty that he was indeed out here in the middle of the Wiltshire wilderness with Finley Warner stuck to the radio car mast and his boss and his boss’s PA sitting in a nearby vehicle, enjoying the view.

  But surely they couldn’t be..? His mind wouldn’t even allow him to form the words. It was just too bizarre. There had to be a logical explanation. Above him Finley was still sobbing, but more quietly now. ‘Stay there,’ hissed Josh, before realising how laughable that advice was. ‘I’ll get you down… just wait…’

  Then light flared across the grass as the Jeep door opened and he heard Rob and Donna get out, talking so casually you would think they were wandering through SBH with a mug of coffee, planning staff appraisals.

  ‘We can still do this,’ Donna was saying. ‘Oh shut up, Finley, for fuck’s sake.’

  Finley shut up at once, allowing Josh to hear the conversation more clearly, despite the bash-bash-bashing of his panicked pulse in his ears.

  ‘I’m still worried it leaves a confusing narrative,’ Rob was saying. ‘I mean - yes - he could have spiked her drink, but they’ll find Rohypnol in his bloodstream too and wonder why.’

  ‘The guy’s a weirdo - all that twig waving,’ said Donna. ‘He could be into all kinds of druggy fetishes. The police hate him anyway; that’s what I heard. My friend’s brother-in-law works at Salisbury cop shop and apparently Lucas Henry led them all into a bog back in September and then did a runner, leaving them stuck there, looking like a bunch of pricks. They won’t take much convincing that he killed their colleague.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Rob, still sounding worried. ‘Let’s just get this done. Jesus - it’s nearly 2am. I’ve got to get back to the station before the breakfast crew get in. And I’ve got to get all this bloody mud off my shoes. I’ll have to go home first. You’ll have to get the Jeep washed too.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Donna. ‘We’ll get those two drugged up and along the lane to the crash site, finish them off, then get back to Finley. At least he’s not going anywhere. Check his tape, will you?’

  Josh shrank tightly against the side of the car, holding his breath, as the man his radio career had been depending on walked across and looked at Finley.

  ‘He’s not getting out of that,’ he said, after a pause and a fresh whimper from their captive. ‘Come on. Back to the shed. I’ve really had enough of this business, you know.’

  ‘Well, you started it,’ said Donna. ‘And if you’re going to start something, you’ve got to be ready to finish it.’

  The pair of them wandered back up the field. Josh sank onto the grass and wondered if now would be a good time to put his hands over his eyes and starting singing Lalalalalala.

  There’s got to be a way out of this. Kate knew she was concussed; she just didn’t know how badly. The motorbike crash hadn’t helped and the blow with the butt of the rifle and a sprinkling of Rohypnol was quite the cocktail. She had been more awake than she had let on, though, when Donna had tried to drug her. Kate had managed to keep most of the powdery residue in her cheek, diluting it with saliva and dribbling it down across her chin. She knew she’d been affected by it - but not as badly as that blow to the side of the head. She had heard most of what was said as Donna and Rob had discussed their masterplan, allowing herself to peer between half-closed lids as Donna settled on the crate, broke her twelve-bore, and set it down by her feet. She had taken a small leather cartridge bag off her shoulder and dumped that on the floor too.

  When Donna had got up again, Kate, still peering through the letterbox of her eyelids, saw she had taken the rifle, but, in her eagerness to go and collect some more date rape drug, had left the bag of cartridges behind. The ammo wasn’t much use to anyone, of course,
without the rifle. It wasn’t like she could throw a bullet really hard at Donna’s face, even if she could get her hands free. Shove it down her throat… yes…

  ‘Kate! Are you awake?’ She could dimly make out Lucas, working hard to pull against his tape, but not making much headway. She found she didn’t have the resources to reply beyond a vague grunt, because she was focusing hard on her own bindings. She was very woozy. Very hot. Sweat was running off her, making her cotton shirt stick to her, trickling between her breasts and her shoulder blades. Sweat was good, though. It was even pooling between her wrists, gummed up in their sticky sheath of tape. She twisted them back and forth and found that the salty moisture she was exuding was making her skin slippery. The cut on her hand started stinging and bleeding too. Yep. That’d help.

  Go gently, she told herself. Don’t pull it too tight. Because the more you pulled and twisted on gaffer tape, the more it worked itself into a kind of tortured cord, even harder to break. If you were gentle and left it as a cuff you could more easily get at its joins and pick them open. The blood and sweat continued to pool and she began to gently work her palms against each other, up and down, rubbing like a miser, slick with perspiration and A positive, vaguely aware of Lucas trying to say something. She began to tilt and rock her hands so that the moisture travelled up the sides and onto the backs until finally, finally, the skin was so wet she was able… oh so carefully… to slide one hand out.

  This should have been the moment when she leapt up, unbound first herself and then Lucas and got the pair of them away. That’s exactly what should have happened. What happened instead was she lost consciousness again.

  Lucas had wrenched at the tape so fiercely it had twisted into an unbreakable cord. He wanted to headbutt the post he was attached to, from sheer frustration. But why bother when Donna was going to come back and do the job properly with that spade?

  The drug they’d managed to get into him was having an effect. He felt waves of sleepiness rolling over him and had to keep shaking his head to keep it at bay. He must stay awake - he was no use to Kate in a stupor. He felt Sid thrumming on his chest and wished he understood what his dowsing senses were trying to tell him. Problem was, he was too fucked up to remember his own name, let alone devise a way out of this.

  ‘Kate! Are you awake?’ he burbled, his words thick through swollen and bloodied lips. Kate only groaned in reply. Damn. Damn. Damn it. This was not how they were meant to end. There was so much more he needed to say to her. He rested his forehead against the post and said: ‘Kate… there are things I need to tell you. About Mabel… about that day in the quarry.’

  Kate made another moaning sound. Could she understand him?

  ‘I want to say… I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘About what happened. It was me who…’

  Kate suddenly sat up. In the light overhead she looked red and flushed, her blue eyes bright and feverish. Then she raised one shaking, bloody hand before slumping over sideways again. ‘Shit,’ she grunted. ‘I always knew…’

  Kate came to enough to hear Lucas mumbling away again, apologising. Like it was his fault. She sat up with a velocity that made her head swim, but she still couldn’t move her legs properly thanks to her feet being stuck to a bloody tractor. She fell over sideways with a thud.

  ‘Shit. I always knew,’ she said. That she shouldn’t have got him involved. That sooner or later she would wreck his life again. He was probably actually going to die this time and it was all her fault. She wanted to apologise but her mouth wasn’t working properly and her words weren’t making much sense. Still… she had her hands free now although one still had a cuff of grey tape stuck around it. She turned over and reached across the packed earth and straw towards the leather cartridge bag. When Donna came back it might help if there was no extra ammunition available. She could hide it.

  She faded again and then found herself snoozing on the bag, using it like a pillow. It was thin. There were actually only six cartridges in it. Were there still two in the gun? Had Donna already shot them into someone else? Maybe into her? She was losing herself. Panicky waves kept coming for her. Was she in a shed? Or was she in a basement, naked and about to be killed by a deranged nurse who believed herself the next Damien Hirst?

  Kate knew she needed to get those bullets out of the bag. She could try to hide the bag but in her present foggy state, she didn’t think she was really capable of it. She didn’t have the oomph to throw it to the far end of the shed and just lying on top of it wasn’t much of a plan. She might not even be conscious when Donna came back for her ammo. Getting the cartridges out and throwing them around the shed was an easier option. She got up on one shaky elbow and tried to extricate them… but she couldn’t get them out of their tight little pockets. Her blood and sweat-smeared fingers kept slipping and sliding and she just couldn’t make the pinching shape she needed to tug them out. She slumped down again, dazed and defeated, panic roaring somewhere in the distance. Panic wasn’t going to help.

  Panic. There were ways to manage it. She remembered Joanna, the counsellor, and reached one hand into her jacket pocket, squeezing the plasticine, feeling it give as her fingers forced ridges into it. That was better. She brought some out with her and massaged it between her fingers. She needed to do something soft and calming before she tried to sit up and attack the tape on her ankles. Something slow, soft, squidgy and calming.

  ‘Kate? Can you hear me?’ That was Lucas. Probably. He wasn’t dead yet, then. She felt vaguely glad before she fell asleep again.

  32

  It would have been hard to untape Finley at the best of times, but here in the deep chill of a November night, trembling with shock, Josh was making a pig’s ear of the job. Finley had at least stopped crying at last and was listening to Josh’s whispers and fixing him with wide, wet eyes.

  Josh had found the skinny pen torch on his keyring. After disconnecting it he was now holding it between his teeth, shining a beam the size of a teacup onto the tape around Finley’s wrists. It had been wound around clumsily, in haste, so it was fairly easy to find the edges. Josh went to work on it, aware that he should probably be ungagging Finley first, but afraid that doing so might unleash a torrent of panicky words which would bring Rob and Donna running back down the field.

  ‘Don’t worry - I’m getting you off there,’ he said, with difficulty, his teeth clenched around the torch.

  At last he found a decent amount of edge and started tugging the tape back against itself. It made horrifyingly loud tearing noises, but there was no sudden torchlight swinging back down the field. He tugged and ripped and at last Finley’s hands were free. At once the young man ripped the tape off his mouth, gasping.

  ‘Ssshhhh!’ hissed Josh. ‘Whatever you want to tell me - wait! We mustn’t make any noise or they’ll come back.’

  Finley gulped audibly and they both went to work on the tape, Finley on the thick grey gaffer cummerbund around his waist and Josh on the broad ribbons around his knees and ankles. It took another couple of minutes and at any moment Josh expected to hear a shout from Rob and Donna. A perverse part of him wanted them to come back; wanted to scream ‘What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?’ He still could not fully believe what he was seeing; what he had heard them say. Although he hadn’t heard anything about Dave Perry it seemed increasingly likely that they’d killed his fellow presenter too. What the actual fuck? He had a vague memory of some psychologist on Radio 4 talking about how many psychopaths there are in the world… around one per cent of the human race, apparently… and how many of them make it into the top tiers of politics and big business. He guessed that had to apply to the BBC too. He knew that his contemporaries in local radio were incredibly passionate and competitive and there was a rich smörgåsbord of personality disorders among them, no question… but he hadn’t really expected to find two psychopaths at SBH. Who knew? The psychologist was right.

  At last Finley was free and Josh helped him to slide across the roof and jump down, on the darke
st side where he had hidden. Finley’s legs gave way immediately. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whimpered. ‘They’re not working right.’

  Josh put an arm around his shoulders. ‘I’m not bloody surprised,’ he said. ‘But you can do this. Come on. Let me help you up. We’ve got to get away from here. I’ve got the pool car at the top of the slope.’

  Finley staggered to his feet and together they began to make their way through the darkness. Josh kept his eyes fixed on the dim light showing around the edges of that shed door. He guessed whoever the other two were, they were being held in there. Did he dare go and look? Maybe try to help them? No. He had to get Finley into the pool car and get the hell away from here. Then maybe find a high point and a signal for his mobile so he could finally dial 999 and scream blue murder.

  ‘They tricked me. Made me sign a suicide note,’ Finley said. ‘Saying it was me who killed Dave and Sheila.’ He started crying again and Josh stopped and stared at him.

  ‘Sheila? They killed Sheila?’

  Lucas drifted for a while and then he was aware of Kate getting up again and struggling with her bound ankles. He heard a ripping sound and thought that was probably a good sound to hear. He couldn’t be sure because the room was doing a long, wallowing spin at that point and he was pressing his forehead against the post, trying hard not to fall off the floor.