by A D FOX
But then Larkhill zig-zagged a little and headed back to the cars. He’d obviously worked out his best hope of escape now lay with one of them. Lucas doubled back too, not chasing but finding a path that would intersect with the man before he reached his escape point. He tried to keep his breathing quiet and not thud too heavily; better to let Larkhill think his change of tack was undetected. Lucas reckoned, though, without the distraction of his damaged knee which suddenly kicked off with a surge of intense pain, leaving him breathless and staggering. He fell onto his face and groaned mutely as the agony ripped through him. He had to get up. He had to. It took him time, though, shakily getting onto his good knee and placing the foot of his injured leg carefully on the turf. It howled, but it was still just about usable.
Meanwhile Larkhill had reached the cars and was getting into the Ford. He slammed the door and the headlamps brightened as he gunned the engine. Then the car moved a little way before coming to a halt with the harsh beep of an alarm signal. As he limped across the grass Lucas could see Larkhill opening the driver door and half getting out, while pressing on something on the dash. A motorised hum cut through the air and the mast began to descend at a slow and steady rate, which had to be purgatory for the escaping murderer. ‘Shit, shit, SHIT,’ Lucas heard him curse. ‘Come ON!’
But the mast was not designed to come on. It was designed to retract at a steady, sensible pace. Just steady and sensible enough to allow Lucas to cover the ground between them and hurl himself at Larkhill. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his winter coat and threw him to the ground. Larkhill shrieked and bucked and clawed up at his face.
‘Stop it, you little shit,’ said Lucas, punching the side of his head. ‘I’m arresting you on behalf of the Wiltshire Constabulary, for murder and kidnap and for really pissing me off.’
He wasn’t sure what he was going to tie the guy up with. He didn’t carry cuffs. There would probably be rope or something in the radio car and maybe some more of that godforsaken gaffer tape, but right now he didn’t dare let Larkhill go. The man was fighting back hard. Lucas realised he might be wearing the only thing he could use right now - the chain around his neck. It was made of stainless steel and its links were strong. Strong enough to have saved his life once, when he was just about to slide off the roof of a tall building in Paris.
So he rolled the guy again, onto his chest. He managed to pin Larkhill’s wrists together once more and then whipped a hand up and pulled Sid out of his jumper and flipped the chain over his head. He was about to loop it tightly around Larkhill’s wrists when he heard a gunshot ring out across the field. Shit! Kate! He glanced up in shock and Larkhill took his chance to twist around, kick against his bad leg, and leap up. Crying out in agony, Lucas slumped back against the driver door, knocking it shut, and Larkhill came at him, trying to drag him away.
Lucas found Sid singing in one hand, the looped end of the chain in the other. As Larkhill came for him he lassoed it around the guy’s neck and jerked him sideways. Then he was up again and shoving his adversary against the windscreen. Larkhill kicked and hissed, elbowing Lucas in the face until he released his grip, and then scrambled up the windscreen and onto the roof. There he wrapped both arms around the lowered stub of the antennae to steady himself while he kicked out repeatedly against Lucas’s face. Lucas felt a surge of rage as he saw Sid now swinging wildly around his enemy’s neck.
The muddy sole of Larkhill’s boot abruptly connected with his brow and Lucas slumped against the car door as his leg gave another almighty howl of pain. He found the driver’s side window was wound down and he reached inside it to grab the key from the ignition; he could at least prevent Larkhill from driving away. He felt another kick to the base of his skull which made him spin and grasp blindly around the dash. His fingers encountered another ignition point - a red rocker switch which he knocked in passing. At once the motor of the mast began to hum again and the antennae started to rise up. Taking another kick to the face, he bashed the button again to stop it. But the motor didn’t cut out. It just hummed on.
Again Lucas went to get the key and turn all the electrics off but another vicious boot strike to his brow beat him back out of the car and onto the grass. He looked up in time to see Larkhill grimacing murderously down at him for around three seconds before the man suddenly jerked up and away. There was a gurgling cry. For a second Lucas wondered if Kate had arrived and seized the guy by the throat from the far side of the car, but no. It wasn’t any human intervention.
Lucas scrambled across the grass on his backside and elbows, and stared up into a sky which was slowly growing lighter with the approaching dawn. His mouth fell open as the tower of metal and cable travelled relentlessly upwards, the outline of a man struggling, choking and gasping against it. Larkhill was now standing to his full height, up on his tippy-toes, his hands scrabbling vainly at the hydraulic mechanism he was snagged on.
Lucas finally worked out what was happening. While Larkhill had been hanging on to the low level antennae and kicking his foe repeatedly in the head, the steel chain around his neck must have looped across the top of the mast. And now that mast was rising up, taking the strong chain and the struggling man with it, his back to the mechanism, his fingers at his throat and his legs kicking out wildly.
Kate was surprised it didn’t hurt more. The punch of the cartridge as it struck her spun her around 180 degrees and she found herself face-planting the rear wheel of the tractor. She rolled over on the ground, her hand reaching for her right shoulder, hot moisture meeting her fingers. She could dimly hear Josh and Finley shouting and she could see that Donna had scooped up the bag of cartridges from somewhere amid the wreckage of wood, metal and her own limbs and was now rummaging in it so she could reload the gun.
‘You’re… not… going… anywhere,’ panted the woman.
‘Josh… Finley… run,’ Kate yelled, although it only came out as thin gasps.
The bag opened and Donna broke the shotgun and went for her ammo with the slick motion borne of decades of farm girl experience. Then she paused, staring into the bag in confusion. ‘What the fuck?’ she said, as stringy blobs of plasticine came away on her fingers.
Two seconds later Finley threw the crate at Donna’s head and the shotgun, the ammo bag and its neat little row of plasticine-smothered bullets scattered to the far corners of the broken shed.
Finley and Josh leaned over her. Finley pressed his scarf firmly to her shoulder and held it there. ‘I trained in first aid,’ he told her. ‘I have to use pressure to stop the bleeding. Sorry if it hurts.’
She watched them for a while, unable to speak, until eventually the sides of their faces went blue and red and blue and red and she passed out.
Lucas did everything he could to save Robert Larkhill. He got into the car and bashed around all the buttons on its dashboard, randomly switching on the stereo with a blast of BBC Radio Wessex jingle and a familiar swell of easy listening music. He took the keys out of the engine but it didn’t make any difference. The mast power source was obviously running on a different battery to the one under the bonnet and the red rocker switch seemed to have fused itself in the UP position. Hammering it with his fingers didn’t have any effect. He shoved the key back in, in case that might help but all it did was start the stereo again.
As Lucas attempted to get up onto the roof of the car and lift the guy off the aerial he realised it was too late. The man’s body was still going up, snagged firmly to the top of the antennae by the chain around his neck. Larkhill was no longer struggling, but hanging limply, his eyes wide and fixed.
Lucas didn’t need to be a dowser to know the man was dead. He sagged back onto the grass, his knee screaming a shrill note of agony and his badly-kicked head throbbing along to the melodic strains of Lifted by Lighthouse Family.
36
Getting loaded into an ambulance by her work colleagues was becoming a habit. Kate was happy to see the paramedic, though, because the wound in her shoulder was hurting li
ke a bastard by the time they’d walked her out of the shed, leaving another medic to work out what the hell to do with Donna Wilson who was still, amazingly, in the land of the living. Wiltshire Fire & Rescue trucks were on their way with rescue equipment.
Further down the field a circle of lights had been set up around the radio car and from her seat in the ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, bandaged and finally getting the benefit of some intravenous morphine, Kate could see the limp body of Larkhill slowly descending as someone at last worked out how to get that mast down.
Michaels emerged through the dawn light, looking shell-shocked. He sat next to her. ‘How are you doing, boss?’ he asked.
‘I’ll live,’ she said. ‘What’s happening down there?’
‘Your boyfriend’s getting his leg strapped up and then I’m going to be asking some questions.’
‘I’ve told you what happened,’ said Kate, a wave of immense weariness stealing over her as the paramedic put a blood pressure cuff on the arm below her uninjured shoulder and began to inflate it.
‘Yeah - at your end - but what happened down there is another story. Looks like Henry decided to be judge and jury and hang Robert Larkhill.’
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘He was just trying to stop him escaping. If he says the mast thing was an accident, that’s what it was.’
‘Yeah, well, we’ll see,’ muttered Michaels and Kate realised there were so many ways still open to Wiltshire Police to wreck Lucas Henry’s life. She could only hope forensics would bear out what Lucas said. Certainly the injuries on him would tell a lot of the story.
She drifted away for a while and then drifted back, finding herself under a blanket on a gurney in the ambulance. Lucas Henry was lying across from her, similarly blanketed, blood and bruises all over his face. Two medics were securing them both with straps across the blankets. ‘We’re about to take you in,’ said the woman nearest to her, smiling reassuringly. ‘You’ve lost a bit of blood and you’ll need topping up.’
‘What about Lucas?’ asked Kate.
‘He’ll be OK,’ said the guy tending to Lucas.
‘They won’t let me have Sid back,’ mumbled Lucas.
‘Who’s Sid?’ asked the man, but Lucas was out for the count.
‘Who’s Sid?’ the man asked Kate, looking worried. ‘Another casualty?’
‘No,’ said Kate. ‘Sid’s a bit of glass.’
‘I think she’s delirious,’ said the female medic.
Kate thought she was probably right.
37
‘Good morning, you lovely people! Great to have you here with me for my very first breakfast show on BBC Radio Wessex! It’s just gone six and we’ve got a lot to pack in over the next three hours, including news, sport, weather, traffic updates and Wiltshire’s own top psychic and spoon bender Davy Gatward On The Couch, but first, here’s a little Neil Diamond to start your day…’
It caused Kate a great deal of pain to hit the volume switch on her radio fast enough to block out the opening bars of Sweet Caroline, but it was worth it. Afterwards she sank back on the sofa with a sigh of relief. She would turn the sound up again in a couple of minutes when Neil had safely belted out his final chorus. She wanted to hear how Josh was getting on. It was quite amazing that he was taking over the old Voice of Wessex slot just a couple of weeks after the events at the show ground. A lesser man would still be too traumatised after everything Josh had been through.
It was no less amazing that the listeners were adapting so fast. After the shock of Dave Perry’s death came the even greater shock of the murder of Sheila Bartley just the next day, which had hit the news, locally and nationally, roughly twelve hours after Kate and Lucas’s ambulance had bumped them painfully down the farm track away from the West Wiltshire Showground.
Sheila’s untimely end prompted a condolence book signing queue three or four times the length of Dave Perry’s and a media circus unseen in Salisbury since the Novichok poisonings of 2018. Most shocking of all for the regular listeners was the news that the station manager’s personal assistant had been arrested and charged with the murder of Bartley and the cover up of the murder of Perry, as well as the attempted murder of Radio Wessex’s number one fan Finley Warner, a local motorcyclist and a Wiltshire police officer. More staggering still, that she would have been jointly charged with station manager Robert Larkhill, had he not expired before he could be arrested.
Kate knew the full facts of the case would blow the collective mind of the Radio Wessex listenership when it all eventually came out. For now, she was merely an anonymous copper who’d helped to bring the surviving murderer into custody, sustaining a serious injury for her trouble. By the time this came to court she would already be renowned for her testimony on the Runner Grabber case. The thought of such notoriety was even less comfortable than her slowly healing shoulder. Of course, had Donna died, it would have been a shorter, simpler inquest rather than a full-blown prosecution. If she was pleading guilty it wouldn’t be so drawn-out, but the word was that Donna - now a double amputee - was pleading innocence, claiming coercive control by Rob Larkhill had terrified her into being his unwilling accomplice. Yeah. She’d looked so unwilling as she’d tried to reload that shotgun and have another go.
Kate knew she was lucky to have come away from that shed without a much worse injury. The shotgun pellets had torn through flesh and grazed her scapula but missed the vital junctions of her shoulder joint. It still hurt like hell, though. The slow-healing pain wiped her out, siphoning off her energy and forcing her to rest at home when she was longing to get back to work. The high dose painkillers were quite effective, but they gave her vivid and unsettling dreams, repeatedly taking her back to the shed and Donna’s legs crushed against the tractor, Lucas biting Larkhill’s fingers, Finley up on the car roof, about to get electrocuted… some nights she didn’t get there in time to stop it.
If that wasn’t entertainment enough, some dreams were an imaginative mash-up of the Radio Wessex Murders and the Runner Grabber case. And a little amusing side dish was Mabel, her long lost late sister, occasionally wandering through the mayhem, her golden hair floating in the breeze, amid the sun-bleached stones of the quarry whilst somehow simultaneously strolling through the midnight horror of the strangled man hanging from a mast.
It was disconcerting the way the truth floated around the dreams and the dreams floated around the truth… until she wasn’t sure what was real memory and what was just the drugs and her own dark subconscious. It might take a while - and a bit more therapy with Joanna - to tease it all apart.
‘Tea?’ Francis leaned in her doorway. He had taken to dropping in to check on her so often he might as well just live here in her bit of the house.
‘Early up or late to bed?’ she asked, easing up the radio volume now that Neil Diamond had stopped reaching out and touching sweet Caroline.
‘Late to bed,’ he said, with a stretch and a yawn. ‘Did you sleep?’
‘..ish,’ said Kate, shrugging.
‘Heard any more from Lucas?’
She shook her head. Lucas was, as far as she could find out from her work colleagues, also recovering steadily from his injuries. The motorbike crash had done worse damage than the fight with Rob Larkhill; his knee had needed surgery. She had seen photos of the bruises all over his face. They had a distinct boot sole pattern which would help confirm the defence that Larkhill had been stamping Lucas to the ground when the rising mast had snagged him by the neck and finished him off. The chief engineer at Radio Wessex had also confirmed the glitch with the hydraulics on the mast. Forensics would probably be able to bear out exactly how Larkhill had died, but until then Lucas was once again under a cloud of suspicion. He had to be getting used to it by now.
Francis brought tea and digestives. ‘I like the dragon,’ he said, settling down next to her and putting the tray on the coffee table beside her small sculptures.
Kate nodded, picking up her creation in bright green modelling
clay and teasing its tail upward. She was finding the plasticine therapeutic; perhaps even more so now. It had probably saved her life, slowing down the bullet retrieval from the bag and giving Finley a few more seconds to hit Donna with the crate. And now it was helping to keep Kate’s mind off things. Lucas was among those things. She hadn’t spoken to him - apart from a couple of texts - since that night when they’d both come so close to being murdered at the bike crash scene. She’d asked if he was OK. He’d texted back: Yeah. OK. You?
She’d responded: Doing alright. Painkillers help.
Gotta love Voltarol, he’d texted back.
And that was that. All the official stuff, like taking his photos and his statement, was being handled by her colleagues. Lucas and she were destined to meet again, of course. They would see each other across two courtrooms now. It would all come to a head over the next few months and she knew she would see him again. All in good time.
So why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? Especially that time in the shed when they were both so out of it? Something had been going on… something he said. Or maybe it was just a feeling she had. She’d felt so… intense. Like everything in her world was about Lucas Henry and something he was telling her.
But that was hard to get into by text and she wasn’t supposed to be talking to him. Kapoor had been to see her at home, checking in with genuine concern. He’d brought an impressive pack of plasticine. Word had obviously got out about her murderer-thwarting habit. He also advised that she and her dowser friend should maintain some professional distance while the facts of the case were established.
He’d looked tired as he got up to go. She’d said: ‘Guv… are you OK?’
He’d smiled and said: ‘I’ll be fine. I’m taking a few days off, though. I need a small procedure.’ She knew that was all she would get in the way of detail.