by Robert Innes
“You got that right,” replied Woolf.
“I mean, it’s one of the first things we learn as a child, isn’t it?” Blake continued, trying to keep his voice steady. “Never get into the car of a complete stranger if you don’t know what their intentions are. But still, I went and did it, didn’t I? My mother would have a fit if she found out.”
Woolf took a long pull on his cigarette. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Blake kept staring straight ahead. “Oh, I think you know. You’ve known since the moment we met. Angel told me how brilliant your mind was, hell, you told me how brilliant your mind was. I didn’t believe it at first.” For some reason, Blake found himself laughing, though he did not feel in the slightest bit happy or amused. “I mean, I thought you were a complete idiot when I first met you.”
Woolf nodded. “And now?”
Blake turned to him and smiled grimly. “Now? Oh, I still think you’re an idiot. You’ve got to be. Anyone who takes drugs like you do has got to be an idiot. Reckless too. But I guess that’s one of the signs.”
Woolf stared at him. “Where do you get the idea that I take drugs?”
“When I saw you yesterday at the B&B,” Blake replied. “I’ll admit, you’re pretty good at hiding when you’re high. You’ve learnt to be, I guess. The only thing you can’t hide when you’re on drugs though, no matter how good an actor you might be, you can’t stop your eyes being the window to your soul. I think you got the cut of my mum pretty quickly. She probably couldn’t tell a joint from a vitamin tablet, but me? I’ve been trained to notice these things and you knew that. Hence the sunglasses coming straight down over your eyes when you noticed me walking towards you so I wouldn’t be able to see how large your pupils probably were.” He flicked the cigarette out of the window. “It’s a neat misdirection, but I’m afraid to say, not one I’ve never seen before.”
Woolf chuckled as he blew out the smoke from his nose. “I see.”
“Does it mean anything in the long run?” Blake continued lightly. “I mean, yeah, Angel finds out, he’s the type to end your career there and then, but does you snorting your nose to pieces, or however you choose to partake, does it really mean anything on its own? Probably not. But then, this whole case started out with us after the Pennines, we’ve been after them for months. For what? Supplying. And who better to have on your side when you’re trying to escape from the police than a bent copper? You’ve almost made me feel nostalgic, Alec, truly. I’ve not come across a bent copper since my days as a constable in Manchester. So, let’s cut the crap, shall we? How long have you known Caroline Pennine? Truly?”
Woolf sighed. “You really think that I don’t know that this is all some preamble to me spilling my guts to you while you’ve got your phone on record? Come on, Harte. Give me some credit.”
Blake pulled a face and then produced his mobile from his pocket. “Why don’t you give me some? I wouldn’t insult you with child’s play like that.”
Woolf took Blake’s phone out of his hand and examined it. When he was satisfied, he threw it over his shoulder into the back seat. Blake did not react, he merely waited for Woolf to begin.
“Sixteen years ago,” Woolf said quietly. “Harmschapel is old news to me. It’s just one of the places that I’ve been too. I’ve had a good life, Harte, I’ve travelled, I’ve seen things. I’m respected, admired even. There ain’t many people that will say a bad word about me. Apart from Caroline, of course. She used to be a cop.”
Blake stared at him in surprise. “You’re kidding me. Caroline Pennine?”
“You’re quick to judge, Harte, but believe it or not, she was going places. She was ambitious, she was brave, and she was absolutely smoking hot. Nobody could touch her. She could have had any man she wanted. She liked a bad boy though, which meant that I had to have her. You don’t need to know the ins and outs, trust me, they’re not important, but we began dating. And for a few months, everything was dandy. Then, I got itchy feet. I hadn’t meant to stay around here for as long as I did, but she kind of had me in her grip. Then she told me she was pregnant. That was enough for me, so I left.”
Blake stared at him. “Pregnant? Sixteen years ago? My God, you’re James’ dad, aren’t you?”
“So she said,” Woolf replied as he lit another cigarette, this time not offering Blake one. “But then she met Keith and told him that he was. To be honest, I was never sure that she wasn’t dating us both at the same time, that’s the kind of chick she was. The dates all matched. I even remember the night we did it, nine months before she gave birth. She had a good time that night.”
Blake rolled his eyes. Even when he was finally telling the truth, Woolf was still as arrogant and irritating as ever. “So, what happened then? You found out she was pregnant with your child. Did you not want to stay and support her?”
Woolf scoffed. “No. Not at all. I don’t care about kids, Harte. They change your life, and not for the better. You know what the collective term for a group of kids is? A migraine. A headache. A huge twenty year block in your life. I’m a free agent, always have been, always will be. I’m not even a cop, I’m a private detective. I kept hold of my ID for a bit of gravitas, but I haven’t been a proper cop since I lived in the States. Seems that nobody told Angel that before he got in contact with me.”
“And Angel got in touch with you to come help us in a case where the ultimate aim was to arrest your son?” Blake said, in disbelief. “Wow.”
“I know, huh?” Woolf chuckled. “I’d have done it, like I say, I had no attachment to the kid. I’ve been paid for the work I’ve done here, now I can afford to take myself and this baby elsewhere.” He patted the car’s steering wheel fondly.
“If you cared so little about James, then why did you go to see him at the petrol station that day?” Blake asked. “I’ve got CCTV evidence and a witness confirming that you went in and asked for him.”
Woolf stared into the distance. “He didn’t know. As far as he was concerned, his dad was Keith. A waster, a slob, a cancer on his life. I guess I just wanted to see how he’d turned out. What can I say, I was high and got curious. It happens. Caroline knew that you guys were after him and Keith, and when she found out I was back, she took the opportunity to point out that she had more crap on me than anyone and said if I didn’t help them, she’d hang me out to dry. They get away, they pay me some dollar, I still get paid here. It should have been a neat little transaction. That was until I realised one of the best detectives I’ve ever come across would probably have only had to have done a bit of his own digging before everything fell apart. I did my research on you. Hell, you were Thomas Frost’s arresting officer, even I’d heard of him. One nasty serial killer. I knew we were going to have to come up with something pretty decent to buy the Pennines enough time to get away.”
“So, you come up with the disappearing car trick,” Blake said, nodding. “And I’ll hand it to you, it stumped me. I mean really. Everything was just so perfect and impossible. And that’s exactly where it fell apart. Too perfect. You and the Pennines rehearsed that chase to the letter. No matter how good a driver you are, these roads are treacherous. I mean, I’ve lived here long enough to know them, but even I get caught unawares on them sometimes. And yet, here you are, new to the area, able to zoom ‘round them in this dinky little sports car, at night, in the middle of a cloudburst? No way. Everything that happened that night was perfected to the letter. The Pennines knew what they were doing, and you did too. You even knew what the weather would be doing, because you’d found out and timed it so you knew you’d be driving in it. The only person in the whole scenario who didn’t have a clue was me. Even the type of car you used to chase them was relevant, actually, this car was the key to the whole thing, wasn’t it?”
“You’ve worked it out?” Woolf exclaimed, clearly impressed. “Go on then. Amaze me.”
Blake thought back to the night of the chase, making sure that all the pieces fit together. It still was all only a
theory, but it was the only one that made sense. “When something big and senseless happens, sometimes you have to take it apart and look at the smaller aspects that don’t fit. When we rammed into the back of their car, you said that your headlights had smashed, hence why they went out. So, how the hell do smashed headlights come back on to suddenly reveal that the car in front had mysteriously disappeared?” He studied Woolf’s face, realising that he was right from the pained expression on his face. “They don’t. Because they didn’t smash at all. You and Keith had choregraphed the whole thing too carefully for that. Your sports car has two sets of headlights. One set on the bottom and the other underneath those hoods. Hoods that lift up and reveal the lights. But the headlights aren’t the vital thing here, it’s the hoods themselves.
“When Keith slowed down to allow you to drive into the back of him, you both switched your lights off. Your front ones, and his back ones. In that few seconds of complete darkness, just before you entered the tunnel, he was free to quickly steer the car right where we’re parked now. This passing spot. He never even entered the tunnel. We went in there all on our own. But, I credit myself with enough intelligence to say that I probably would have worked that out pretty quickly, I mean surely anybody would. So, you needed a little extra thing to convince me that we were still following the car when we went in the tunnel. That night, I was still looking at two red reverse lights in front of me. Just for a few seconds, because that’s all it needed. I could be convinced that all the headlights were playing up because of the collision. You said you knew cars, and you do. You clearly have an exemplary knowledge of them, because you were able to get hold of some rear lights in the same shape as Keith’s Accord Aerodeck. That’s all you needed, just the lights. And that part happened before we even started chasing them. When we were walking towards the petrol station to apprehend them, you were behind me. It gave you enough time to stick the fake lights onto the back of the hoods on the headlights of your car. Everything happened so fast after that point and the rain was so heavy that I didn’t even see them. When it all went dark after the impact and Keith had steered off the road, you just switched headlights from the bottom and raised the hoods up, switching the red lights on in the process. I’m now looking at a completely different set of lights to what I thought I was. Then you turn the red ones off, the headlights on, and all we’ve got in front of us is a clear road.”
There was a pause, then Woolf slowly clapped. “Bravo, Detective. You’ve got me fair and square.”
Blake felt no satisfaction from working out the solution. He merely turned and looked straight at Woolf with a steely determination in his eyes. “Which just leaves me with two very important questions.”
“Which are?”
“Number one – Who killed James Pennine and how? And then, number two, and I really, really need to know the answer to number two.” He leant forwards so that he was just a couple of inches away from Woolf’s face and spoke in a dangerous whisper. “What have you done with my boyfriend, Woolf?”
16
Woolf calmly finished his cigarette and chucked it out of the open window. Blake watched him, the fury still pounding through him.
“I gotta say,” Woolf said at last. “You’re good. I didn’t expect you to work it all out.”
“There’s only one reason I know you’re behind Harrison disappearing,” Blake said, putting his hand in his pocket. “His phone was down the side of your passenger seat.” He pulled Harrison’s mobile out of his pocket and showed Woolf the screen.
Woolf stared at it for a few seconds and laughed. “Damn. “
“Yeah,” said Blake. “I just recorded you on this one instead. Harrison’s phone isn’t as good as mine, but it does the job. I’ve got all the evidence I need. So, I ask again. Where – is – Harrison?”
Woolf shrugged. “Fair enough. You got me. Excuse me.” He leant across Blake and opened the glove compartment. Blake realised a second too late what he had retrieved from it as Woolf sharply pulled out a gun and pointed it at Blake. “Get out the car.”
Blake stared at the gun for a moment, considering his options. “Woolf, don’t be stupid.”
The gun clicked in Woolf’s hands as he prepared it to fire. “I said, get out the car.”
With his mind racing, Blake slowly opened the car door and stepped out. The cold air immediately gripped him, but he barely noticed it as Woolf got out too, pointing the gun at him from across the roof of the car.
“Stay where you are,” he said quietly. Without losing eye contact with Blake, Woolf moved to the back of the car and opened the boot. Blake watched him, wondering exactly what Woolf’s plan was from here. Was he going to shoot Blake and make a run for it? Surely he knew that it would be obvious who Blake’s killer would have been if he just vanished? But then, Woolf reached into the boot and grunted in effort as he pulled out what looked like a body, which crashed to the floor, out of Blake’s sight. “Take a look,” Woolf said calmly, holding the gun steadily at Blake.
Slowly, Blake walked to the back of the car and looked down at the body on the floor. When he saw who it was, he felt his heart skip a beat. “Harrison,” Blake murmured. He stared at Woolf in fury. “What have you done to him?”
“Oh, stop whining, Harte,” Woolf snapped. He leant down and picked up Harrison by the scruff of the neck, into a standing position. Harrison moaned weakly, his eyes fluttering. “Just a little knock out drug,” Woolf said, seeming satisfied by the panic he could clearly see in Blake’s face. “He’ll be fine in a few hours. But that can soon change.”
“Blake,” Harrison murmured weakly. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
“He was in there the whole time?” Blake snapped furiously.
“Seems you two are pretty well matched,” Woolf replied. “He can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business either. Now, walk. That way, go. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
He waved the gun in the direction of the tunnel. Blake slowly put his hands up in the air and walked in the direction Woolf had indicated. As he made his way towards the tunnel, he could hear Harrison’s feet being dragged across the ground.
“Up the footpath,” Woolf snapped. “And don’t try anything or your pretty little boyfriend gets a bullet in his brain.”
“Okay, okay,” Blake said quietly.
They walked up the path near the tunnel in silence. Blake was trying to work out exactly what Woolf had planned. Clearly, it had been his intention all along to get Blake on his own and Harrison was obviously going to be used as an incentive for him to do as Woolf told him, but he did not understand what the ultimate aim was.
They kept walking up the path, the car soon disappearing from view as the winding path took them further away from the road, until they eventually came to a river. The sound of the water flowing quickly along echoed around them.
“Stop there,” Woolf ordered. Blake stopped, looking down at the dark water rushing beneath him. Woolf frogmarched Harrison to the edge of the river and held the gun straight at Blake.
“Now,” he said quietly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. This river is pretty deep, and I don’t think Harrison here is in any condition to swim, do you?”
Blake wanted nothing more than to rip Woolf apart with his bare hands, but he knew he had to be compliant for the moment, so just shook his head.
“So, it’s simple,” Woolf continued. “Show me that phone.”
Blake reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out Harrison’s phone, which was still recording. “Drop it in the river. Do it now.”
Blake bit his lip, wondering if the recording could survive the water. Reluctantly, he held out his hand and dropped the phone. It landed in the river with a splash.
“Good boy,” Woolf said. “Okay, so now you have a choice. I would honestly love to drop Harrison right in the water and watch you struggle to get him out with a bullet wound in your arm. After everything, it would give me s
o much pleasure, trust me. But I’m prepared to sacrifice my fun on one condition.”
“And what’s that?” Blake asked, watching him carefully.
“You let me go,” Woolf replied simply. “You let me disappear and you’ll never see me again. I take my money, and I go. No traps, no tricks. I’m out of this crummy village by morning and you make up some story to Angel.”
“Like what?”
“You’re a bright guy, Harte, I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“You honestly expect me to let a murderer just go free?”
Woolf stared at him. “I haven’t murdered anyone.”
“What about James Pennine? Or Keith? Come on, Woolf. There’s nothing recording you now, you might as well tell me,” Blake snapped.
“Harte, truthfully, I swear on my mother’s life, I have no idea what happened to either of them. And I’m quite fond of my old mom. God bless her. I may be a lot of things, but I’ve never murdered anyone. So, do we have a deal?”
Blake looked down at the river. “Even if I choose to believe you, you think I’m just going to let you run off into the sunset after everything you’ve done? Abducting my boyfriend? Helping two suspects to escape? Taking drugs while on the job? I don’t think so.”
Woolf chuckled and held Harrison’s limp body over the river. “Admirable work ethic, Harte, but I don’t see how you’ve got a huge amount of choice.”
Blake’s heart hammered in his chest. The only way he could see out of this was to call Woolf’s bluff. “Don’t you? I do. Go on then, drop him in and shoot me. You just said yourself, you’re no murderer. Arrogant, a complete arsehole, but you haven’t got in you to murder anyone.”
Woolf stared at him in disbelief. There was a long pause. Blake could see him weighing up his options.
“Well,” he said quietly. “There’s a first time for everything.”
And everything seemed to go in slow motion. Woolf released his grip on Harrison and he plunged into the river.