by Emmy Ellis
“That’s out there.” Randall nodded to the window opposite. “If you look closely, you’ll see a rabbit.”
Jackson blinked then concentrated harder. Nope. No rabbit. Then he caught a quick glimpse of two eyes, as though a streak of light had gone across them, lime green one second then gone the next. “All right…”
“Now watch this.” Randall tapped the keyboard, and a grey circle with a cross in the centre came up over the original image.
Oh Jesus…
He knew what was going to happen, and as much as he didn’t want to, he couldn’t stop staring.
It’s no different from someone hunting. No damn different.
Randall pressed another key, and the lighting on the screen changed to a brighter hue. A flash. Now the rabbit’s outline was clearly visible, its ears perked, the animal up on its hind legs. Another jab of a button, and the rabbit keeled over. Jackson shook his head, astounded by how fast it had happened. What the hell had killed it? Had to have been a bullet. But where were the guns? He hadn’t noticed anything odd about the exterior when he and Sid had arrived, but then again, he hadn’t particularly taken much notice. That was supposed to have come later, him doing a scout around the property. Why poke about outside when hidden cameras could do it for you?
“The cameras are set in tiny recesses in the outer walls,” Randall said. “Thought I’d better answer that question before you asked it. They’re not visible to the casual observer, although I expect you would have noticed the holes had you looked.”
Jackson could have taken that as an admonishment but chose instead to take it for what it was—just a casual bit of conversation. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. I touched on this earlier, but if you could get away—right now, tonight—and start a new life, would you?”
Randall turned to face him. “If this works, kills that man, I suppose I could. But going now, right now? Without knowing if it was strong enough to kill a person? No. It would bug me, the not knowing. I need to make sure I haven’t been chasing rainbows the past few years. I have to know I’m right, that I’ve completed something.”
Jackson could understand that but was buggered if he’d stay around if he were in Randall’s shoes. Too many people would be on his arse—even after tonight they’d be dogging him—and to stick around just to finish a project, knowing his life was in danger?
Fuck that.
Jackson shrugged. “You seeing what I see?”
“Bastards have sent him early,” Randall said.
Randall hovered one hand over his keyboard, that hand shaking. This was the moment of truth, the time he got to find out whether years of work had been worth it. Jackson couldn’t imagine how he felt, knowing that even if it worked, he might as well not have bothered creating it in the first place—assuming Randall did what he’d said he would and destroyed the software afterwards.
Jackson leant forward, stared at the monitor. Randall pushed a button and brought the image of a figure up closer. Yes, it was definitely a man, someone dressed in black, in a balaclava or some kind of head gear.
“Fuck me,” Jackson said. “Press the damn button.”
“I just wanted to check it wasn’t an innocent,” Randall said. He let out an unsteady breath.
Button pressed.
The man went down like a sack of shit. Randall zoomed in closer, prodded another button or two, and a red and yellow splodge came up in the middle of the screen, like the camera had switched to one that sought out heat.
“I can’t see a heart beating, can you?” Jackson inspected the screen, calm as you like.
“I can’t see anything but a heap of red and yellow,” Jackson said.
A knock sounded on the door, and Jackson jumped up, annoyed with himself for having been so entranced. This could have been a trap—the man out there could have been a decoy.
Fuck it.
He put his finger to his lips then moved to the door, withdrawing his gun. He snatched the door open, immediately in a shooting position.
Colin stood there.
“I saw something on one of your TVs, sir,” he said to Randall. “A rabbit. It reminded me of the one on the pub sign in the village. Then there was another shape, like a man was on the grounds.”
“Yes,” Randall said. “No need to worry, Colin. He won’t be bothering us.”
Colin puffed his chest out. “My goodness, sir, then we must go outside and make sure he still isn’t a threat. Make doubly sure he won’t be bothering us.”
If the old man wanted to play the hero, Jackson wasn’t going to stop him.
“Sorry,” Jackson said. “But Randall isn’t going anywhere. Not until I’ve checked the area.”
Colin smiled, his lips forming an eerie, wonky slash. He raised his hand. Narrowed his eyes.
A gunshot sounded, loud and disturbing.
Jackson winced.
Colin stared.
Randall shouted something.
And Jackson had just been pissed the hell off.
* * * *
Colin couldn’t quite work out why he was on the floor. He’d pulled his gun on that Jackson fellow, wanting to eradicate him then Randall in short time and get away while he had the chance. Instead, he stared at the ceiling, which appeared to be darkening. Were the lights being dimmed?
“What the fuck?” the bald man said to his left. “What the hell were you thinking, you weird old bastard?”
Colin wanted to answer that he’d intended on killing them, but his mouth didn’t seem to work anymore. His chest hurt, too, just below his heart, and he struggled to suck in a decent amount of air. It came to him then, why he was on the floor, why he had pain. That slaphead guest had shot him instead.
I should have known. I did know. Knew he was better than your average killer.
He thought about his boss, wishing the phone he’d been given could be used to ring out. He could have called him now, even if he couldn’t speak, so his boss would know something was wrong when Jackson and Randall spoke.
But I doubt he’d even care.
The thought was sobering, and Colin had the strange, unsettling feeling that his life hadn’t amounted to much in the end. Just a sad man who’d pledged to serve people living in this house—and for what? To end up a corpse on an office floor?
He smiled. And his mouth must have decided to work because he laughed.
“What’s so bloody funny?” Randall snapped. “I don’t see what’s so amusing, Colin. I thought you were on my side. The last time someone came here you lost an eye protecting me. What changed?”
Colin laughed harder.
The bald man, that Jackson, cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve killed people, you know that, and after tonight I’d decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore—I was going to fuck off somewhere, start again. But him?” He pointed at Colin. “He knows things, could get you in the shit.” He paused. “You need to make some decisions. You need to get rid of him.”
“I do?” Randall said.
It seemed Randall cared for him to some degree. He’d sounded alarmed at what Jackson had suggested.
Jackson bent over Colin, obliterating the sight of the ceiling. His strong-boned face held an expression of menace, something that churned Colin’s stomach with immeasurable amounts of fear. Colin stopped laughing. The glint in the man’s eyes—he didn’t like it.
“I’ll take him outside,” Jackson said. “He won’t be going anywhere fast, what with the state of him. Then I’ll come back. Then you’ll press that button. Kill him. After that, it’s time for us to leave.”
Randall sighed. Nodded.
Colin smiled. Typical. Randall would probably go and live the life Colin had planned. Beaches. Bars. Warm seas. Sun loungers. Cocktails with cherries and paper umbrellas. No worries. Every day full of nothing but wonderment.
Still, what did it matter now? The pain below his heart was increasing, and shortly he’d be dead. All that would be left after they’d disposed of him was any blood staining the fl
oor. He closed his eye, wanted to poke his nail into the skin of his missing one. Didn’t have the energy. He was picked up in strong arms, and he thought of Nellie. Thought of the picture on the pub sign and how he was going to end up like that rabbit outside earlier.
The image of that sign told him that fate had twinned him and Nellie right from the start. Maybe they were meant to be together. It was just a shame he had to wait a while in Hell before he’d see her again. But come to think of it, she’d go to Heaven, his Nellie, he was sure of that, so they wouldn’t get to see one another after all.
A shame, that.
Chapter Sixteen
Since coming to Marsh Vines, Langham hadn’t had the chance to forget work at all, and now fatigue overcame him, except he didn’t want to sleep here. He just wanted to get the hell away. “Want to go home?”
“Yep.”
“Come on. I just need my own fucking bed now.”
Langham led the way down to the foyer. He had a hunch that if they stayed and came into contact with officers tomorrow, he’d end up staying put and helping them out. After signing out of the register, he made for the car, pleased once he was putting their bags in the boot. He should never have ignored his instincts when they’d first arrived. And their arrival seemed like days ago, yet it had just been hours. If he’d kept on driving, gone through the village instead of stopping… If he hadn’t seen Sid Mondon and Jackson Hiscock, the first indication that their holiday wasn’t going to turn out as a holiday after all…
Once in the car, he started the engine then whacked up the heat. Drove away from a village he never wanted to go to again. And what was it with villages lately? Supposedly quiet places where nothing ever happened. In his experience, that was turning out to be a load of crap.
“That place,” he said, glancing across at Oliver, “was weird.”
“It was, but there’s a weirder place up ahead.” Oliver balanced his elbow on the door then propped his face in his hand. Stared into the darkness, narrowing his eyes.
Oh fuck. “What do you mean?”
The last thing Langham wanted was more weirdness, more offences encroaching on his time. He fought the urge to shout, to go on a rant about just needing a bit of bloody peace, for fuck’s sake. It wouldn’t change anything, nor would it make the future any different.
“Oh, someone’s been killed,” Oliver said, as if he were merely mentioning the weather. “In a field, from what I can gather.”
Langham told himself to accept the fact that neither of them were going to be able to get away from their calling in life. Oliver hearing that kind of thing then relating it to Langham was par for the course. Best to just accept it, get on with it as their lot. He digested the information. Had the fleeting but disturbing image of a woman sprawled out, much like one Oliver had found in the Sugar Strands case. Deaths in a field usually meant bodies being dumped, perhaps the result of supposedly missing persons who hadn’t been missing at all but taken.
“Do we need to call anything in right this minute?” he asked, meaning that if the crimes had been committed ages ago, like those in the strawberry patch out the back of The Running Hare, there wasn’t any urgency in the matter.
“Yep. It’s recent. Less than an hour ago. And it isn’t just someone—there’s two of them.”
“Jesus Christ. Let me know if we need to stop, if you get told where we need to go to find them.”
“I know already. It’s that big house up there.” Oliver pointed ahead. “But we won’t find anything. No bodies. Just a bit of blood in an office belonging to some old man called Colin.”
“Two deaths in a field and possibly one inside then?” That made three—and definitely a good excuse not to get involved.
“Nope, just two. Colin was shot inside then killed outside.”
What? “Oh, right. So the bodies have been disposed of?”
“You’ll see.”
Langham didn’t press for more. If he were honest, he didn’t want to know the ins and outs. He headed towards the house in the distance, frowning as a set of headlights outside it cut through the darkness about a mile away. Without having to ask, he knew the car belonged to the killers.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Get my phone out of my pocket, will you? Ring Fairbrother. He’s going to be well and truly hacked off. He’s got enough on his plate back in Marsh Vines.”
Oliver reached across and fumbled for Langham’s phone in his pocket. “The men who have been killed—I get the sense they deserved it, or at the very least that they were bad men themselves.”
“Brilliant, just what we need. Probably a pair of burglars who got caught.”
Oliver dialled Fairbrother’s number. “It’s more complex than that. And those men in that car… Well, one of them is bad, but at the same time I don’t think he likes being bad. Not anymore anyway. I can see what he’s thinking, clear as bloody day. He wants to start again, to pretend what he’s done never happened. And he’s done a lot.”
“Many killers think that, Oliver. Feel remorse. Doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get away with it, though.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
The killers’ car had come to the end of the driveway. The headlights spilled out onto the tarmac, cone-shaped slashes of brightness. While Oliver spoke to Fairbrother, Langham battled with feeling sick. Butterflies flapped about in his belly, and adrenaline had seeped out, on the verge of racing through him. The car ahead shot onto the main road, and Langham put his foot down.
“Fairbrother has sent someone out to intercept,” Oliver said.
“Good. If backup get there first, we’ll be able to go home. If not…possibly a long night ahead. And to be honest, we’re so close it’s bound to be us who pulls this one over.”
Langham concentrated on the car, keeping a decent distance behind yet wanting to make sure he didn’t lose sight of it. Mind you, out here in the middle of the night, he wasn’t likely to—
“What the fuck?” he said.
Another vehicle had appeared at a T-junction at the end. A large black van. The car in front swerved and parked side-on, the screech of tyres setting Langham’s teeth on edge. As Langham drew up to it then slowed to a stop, two men got out. One had long hair that flowed in the breeze, and the other was bald. The bald one turned, stared straight at Langham’s car, the headlights illuminating him.
“Fucking Hiscock.” Langham jabbed at his seat belt release button. “I knew he was up to something out here. I bloody—”
“Don’t get out.” Oliver flung his arm across to press his hand to Langham’s belly. “If you get out, he’ll shoot you.”
“Shit. Shit!” Dread filled Langham, giving him that terrible weightless sensation he’d experienced so many times before, where he thought he’d either spew or shit himself.
“Let them go. He’s got a gun in his waistband.”
Langham toyed with getting out anyway, but Hiscock’s face held a warning, one Langham didn’t intend to ignore. He was going against his instinct—to apprehend.
“Fuck it!”
Hiscock and the long-haired man ran towards the van then got inside. It drove away, and Langham swore he caught sight of another familiar face.
“That sodding Sid Mondon!” He whacked the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Didn’t I say, on the way here, that they were up to something?”
“You did.”
“I knew. I bloody well knew.”
“You did.”
Langham took his phone from Oliver then rang Fairbrother. Their conversation was brief, with Langham relating what had happened, that their progress had been cut off by the car blocking the road and a van appearing to collect Hiscock and a man he’d never seen before.
“I didn’t get a glimpse of the number plate of the van. We could go back to the house—mansion, more like,” he said to Fairbrother, “but Oliver thinks there isn’t any point. Whoever was killed there is long gone. So we’ll stay here until someone else arrives—the car’s
parked across the turning, blocking us in, and I don’t want anyone coming along and crashing into it.”
“Right,” Fairbrother said. “The thing is, as you know, I’m up to my armpits in it here. I’ve got Villier on her way out to you. She’ll have to deal with it, because you need to get the hell home then fuck off on holiday. Like I said to you earlier, crime follows you, so all I can say is that wherever you’re going, you’d better be prepared.”
“Pack it in. I don’t even want to think about it. Catch you soon.”
Langham cut the call then got out of the car. He walked to the other one. The door was open from Hiscock’s hasty exit, and the interior light showed nothing out of the ordinary inside. No blood.
Oliver joined him.
“I can’t even begin to understand what’s been going on at that house,” Oliver said, “because from what this Colin is telling me, it’s weird, like space-age stuff, and nothing is going to be found on the grounds.”
“Shit. I’ll let Villier know when she gets here, although what time that’ll be is anyone’s bloody guess.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned to look at the house. Lights were now on in the top floor windows—bright-orange lights.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Langham shouted. “That place is on fire!”
He called it in. By the time the fire crew appeared, the house may as well have been classed as gone. He clamped his eyes shut. He suspected something had been put on timer to make sure the place went up once Hiscock and that man were well away, otherwise it would have been on fire as the men had left. If he went over there now, there was no telling whether he’d be able to get inside—whether there was anyone in there who needed saving.
“Should I go there?” He opened his eyes and turned back to Oliver.
“No point. It’s just dead bodies in there. The fire has to destroy something other than those. Colin says it’s some sort of computer. It’s very important that the fire is left to burn. At one time he’d have said the software should be saved, but he’s been talking to Nellie, the woman from The Running Hare, and—”