“Now what?”
Eddie shrugged. “Can’t believe this,” he muttered, and crunched his way over to the window. “What time is it?”
“Half four,” Mick said. “I need food, Eddie. I’m gonna fall over soon.”
“Settle down for half an hour or so, and all will become clear.”
“What you talking about?”
“It’ll be dawn soon,” he said, peering into the eastern sky. “And then we won’t need a torch.” He stared to roughly the spot he thought Mick was. “I ought to just smash the thing to bits. It’d only take one or two good blows and the whole junction box would come down.”
“Not worth the risk of damaging the memory stick.”
“I have an LED torch on my phone.”
“I thought I asked you to turn it off!”
“I did turn it off, just saying, that’s all.”
“Can’t risk it.”
“It would take a minute, two at the most.”
“Think about it. They think you killed Stuart and they’ve been all over your flat like a bad case of mould, so they’re looking hard for you.”
“Not hard enough to warrant checking cell phone masts.”
“You think? Course they will, you’re a Rule Three bad guy, and they’ll want you quick. This is all about drive-through justice now, Eddie. They want results and quick, they’re not so bothered about quality, they just want results.
“They already know Henry Deacon is dead and no doubt your forensic buddies will have found our fingerprints in his house by now so we’ll be in the frame for topping him too.”
Eddie shook his head. “No we won’t; he was dead hours before we got to him.”
“If someone like your friend Benson is leading that enquiry, do you think that little fact will get in his way? You said yourself people interpret things how they want.” Mick rubbed a sleeve across his leaking nose. “Anyway, we can’t prove we were only in Deacon’s house ten minutes.”
Eddie sighed.
“If they catch us now, we’ll be railroaded straight through court, a very brief Review Panel hearing and our feet won’t touch the fucking floor on our way to the slaughterhouse. Seven days from now, we’ll be cooling in the ground in some graveyard somewhere.” Mick touched the nearest wall, made sure it wasn’t wet, then turned and slowly slid down it into a crumpled position. Hands on his knees, he waited. “Maybe we wouldn’t even see a courtroom either. We’re very bad men, and if the police or someone else thought we were dangerous…”
Eddie turned back to the window, bared his wet face to the wind, and watched the sky. “I’m fucking freezing.”
“We already went to press with doubts over the Jag and the CSI building burning down. Deacon knows we’re not on his side anymore; he’s after both of us. And logically, if he’s after us, he’ll want to silence us permanently.”
Eddie turned into the room, his back to the wind now.
“So no, I don’t think we can risk turning the phones back on even for a minute.”
“I’ve never been hunted before,” Eddie whispered. “Kind of weird.”
“Only kind of?”
“It’s not how I imagined it to be.”
“You imagined being hunted?” Mick laughed.
“Well you know, it’s one of those things. You watch an action film or you read an espionage book, and you imagine what it would be like. Well, I did anyway.”
“And how did you imagine it to be?”
“I thought I’d be fine, because the guy I just watched on the screen or the fella in the book always was. But it’s not really like that, is it? I couldn’t survive for long. Especially if they have technology on their side too. I’m absolutely knackered, struggling to keep my eyes open. I’m hungry, thirsty–”
“Scared?”
Eddie was silent for a moment. “Yep, I’m scared too. Part of me wants to walk into Holbeck nick and just reason it out with Benson or Taylor or whoever. That part of me says all this is ridiculous, it’s just a misunderstanding, it’s just a misinterpretation of forensic evidence and it can easily be explained away. And when I’ve done that, Benson or Taylor will look a bit sheepish, hold out their hand and offer an apology and we’ll all carry on as though nothing has happened,” Eddie laughed.
Mick didn’t laugh. “Then you really should be scared. I don’t know what’s on that thing up there in the ceiling, but even the stuff I already have is enough to end Deacon’s career. Some of it, like Henry being worried his old man would kill him, isn’t really printable because it’s conjecture unless we find some hard facts at Henry’s scene. But make no mistake here: if Deacon suspects I have any kind of damaging info on him or reads my story in the paper, it’ll be a straight battle between him and me. And that battle has already begun.”
“You could take him out of the equation with what you know; he won’t have the power–”
“Don’t be so naïve about politicians, Eddie. Even when they’re out of the job, they are fierce, and none more so than Deacon, he’s the king of retribution. And so in answer to the question you haven’t yet asked of me, I am scared too. Scared shitless, in fact.
“I have enough ammunition to do irreparable damage to him and his misadministration of The Rules. And hopefully enough up there in the ceiling to bury the fucker. And I will too, given the chance.”
“What if he offered you immunity for all the info you have?”
Mick shook his head. “I’ve been doing this shit for twenty-odd years. Some of my work has been quite good; some of it earned me awards. And sometimes I’ve come across a story that makes the hairs on my neck stand up. I’ve finished my copy and sent it to the editor and thought ‘this is it, this is the one’. But it never really has been. Oh, there have been ground-breaking stories, hard-hitting stories about criminals in Eastern Europe or paedophile rings in Scotland… whatever. But none of them has had the potential that this has. And trust me, mate, these stories land in a journo’s lap once in his entire life if he’s extremely lucky.” Mick straightened his back. “I’d never agree to any terms or immunity he’d offer. Never.”
“Even if agreeing could save your life?”
“And what a life to save, eh?” He looked across at Eddie; the fact that he could now actually see him quite clearly passed him by. “The story is everything and everything is the story.”
“Come on,” Eddie said, “let’s get you your story.”
Eddie retrieved the smashed window frame, positioned the seized hinge upright and carried it to the junction box. It wavered several times, but at last Eddie managed to engage the edge of the hinge in the screw’s slot and began turning around. Only half a turn later the screw leaned sideways and fell out. Then the disc swung aside and something slid to its edge, teetered, and then fell on to the wet concrete floor.
Mick retrieved it quickly enough, and stood with the object of their quest wrapped in a self-seal plastic bag. Both stared at it in awe as though discovering some priceless relic.
At almost five in the morning Mick placed the memory stick reverentially as deep as it would go into the inside pocket of his saturated summer jacket and closed the zip, patted the bulge and headed for the door.
Once out in the yard among the hulks of dead machines, Eddie shielded his face against the rain and trudged through the grey mud towards the black gates he could see in the distance, maybe quarter of a mile away. The light of the new day was thin and the world was a mass of varying degrees of greyness lacking definition and solidity, a lot like his life, he thought. “How sure are you they can’t find your cottage?”
From behind, Mick shivered, pulled up his collar and entered the same field of mud they’d exited three and a half hours earlier. “I’m not sure of anything. Like I said, only the farmer knows I live there, and he doesn’t know who I am anyhow; he doesn’t know I’ve got the government’s future in my pocket.”
“And ours.”
Mick laughed, but it sounded like the groan of a horror
-movie door.
“Okay, just thinking things through; how secure is your email?”
“We use re-routers to try and lose capturing devices. Until now it wasn’t the government we were avoiding; it was other newspapers and television broadcasters. They often claim a story is their own exclusive when really they stole it from the ether. So all our emails are encrypted. Take them months to crack it.”
“I mean, would it be wiser to go straight to your office?”
Now Mick did laugh, “Oh no, no, no. I wouldn’t make it through the front door before I was bundled into some car and taken away and shot and left in a ditch.”
“Nice thought.”
“I’m taking as few chances as I can.”
“Sounds like you’ve had experience of this shit before.”
“Unless you’re reporting on the local school’s gala it pays to take precautions.”
Eddie approached the chain link fence. “But you mean to tell me that all you correspondents live in isolated cottages–”
“Listen, I work in crime, so I probe into–”
“I get that, but even so, it’s extreme. You use a different mailing address…”
Mick stepped through the hole in the fence followed by Eddie, and they trudged through a list of discomforts towards a distant summit that still hid in the shadows. “I worked in other countries earlier in my career,” he began, “Eastern European ones. I was a special correspondent. I had a flair in those days for searching out news that no one was aware of… not unlike this kind of shit, I suppose.
“They put you out there for several reasons: maybe you’re good with foreigners, can be empathetic towards them, can build up contacts with the local police; or you’ve got a keen interest in that country or a specialism within it; or they want you out of the way. I don’t know,” he shrugged, “maybe there’s someone with better connections who wants your current job in this country, whatever. Anyhow, I was over there whether I liked it or not. And I was over there ad infinitum too.”
“You really know how to piss people off, don’t you?”
“Who said I was out there as punishment?”
“Is that what I was to you, a ‘contact’?”
“I won’t lie, Eddie, that’s exactly what you were in the early days. I needed a forensic slant on some of the stories I wrote, something different from the usual police angle. But I grew fond of you and it developed into a rather nice friendship I think. Didn’t it?”
“Go on.”
“I was there for five years, had become well known and well liked. I was turning in good work, and then I got married to a local girl, so I sort of ‘belonged’.”
“Didn’t know you were married.”
“Lots you don’t know about me.”
They crested the summit and less than a minute later, they could see the roof of Ros’s car.
“So what happened? Why did you come back to the UK alone?”
“Let’s just say we weren’t together for very long.”
“That’s women, mate, very fickle.”
“She was murdered.”
Eddie stopped, turned in the mud and waited a second for Mick to catch up. “I didn’t know, Mick. I’m sorry.”
Mick shrugged walked on past Eddie towards the car. “It’s history.”
Eddie caught up and walked by Mick’s side. Through the rain, he whispered, “Is that why–”
“Barely had a sober day since.” He smiled across at Eddie. “And I don’t want to start now,” he grinned. “When this shit is over, if it doesn’t go well, I want to die pissed out of my tree.”
“Now I understand…”
“Most people don’t, Eddie. But I really think you do.”
“I meant the seclusion and the postal address stuff.”
“Oh that. I went a little OTT on the security stuff, I didn’t think they would follow me from over there, but I like to sleep soundly.”
“It’s better than a flat over a fucking carpet shop.”
“We’ll see.” Mick veered off the track, waved a hand, “I got to pee.”
Eddie trudged on a few paces and then took out his phone, and pressed the on button. It seemed the decent thing to do, just to send Ros a quick message, one word, that’s all, so she wouldn’t be late for work.
He looked at the keypad, typed one word and pressed send. When the little envelope on the screen fluttered away into the distance, he pressed off. There, no harm done and everyone’s happy.
71
Friday 26th June
– One –
The alarm brought Ros back from a sleep so shallow that her eyes were barely closed. She pulled aside the curtains, saw the empty parking slot outside her gate and sighed. Maybe she should wait for him, maybe he would be here any minute. It was six-thirty. He had thirty minutes left.
She was about to take a breath and become Strong Ros, the one she’d always been when she visited Eddie. It required skill and determination; it required self-belief so that Eddie didn’t see her quaking inside her shoes. She got ready to inhale when her mobile phone buzzed and startled her.
It was him, it was Eddie A text message. ‘sorry.’
She dropped the phone and headed straight for the shower. Strong Ros was nowhere to be seen; Timid Ros closed the bathroom door. On the one hand, she was relieved he was still okay, and not to mention pleasantly surprised that he had the courtesy to let her know, but on the other hand, she was sad he was still battling with his ordeal. She wondered why he was sorry though: that he still had her car; that he was going to be late? Or was he sorry that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life with her after all, because the rest of his life was only about an hour or so long?
– Two –
From thirty yards away the scratches along the roof and down the sides of the car stood out proud; there was foliage protruding like a tongue from under the front bumper, more stuck behind the wiper blades and embedded into the joints of the wing mirrors. “She is going to kill me.”
Exhausted, cold and soaked through, Mick sat in the passenger seat while Eddie scraped away as much mud as possible from his shoes before he collapsed behind the wheel and started the engine. “Get the fucking heater on, quick,” he said, “before my fingers fall off.”
Eddie engaged first gear and turned the car round, wheel-spinning most of the way, until it successfully pointed downhill.
The roads heading out of Great Preston were empty. The rain gathered strength, and the wind hurled rain at the car with enough intensity to slow Eddie down. The car veered and rocked but after forty minutes of steady progress, they made it onto the busier main roads heading north towards a discreet village called Aberford. Neither spoke throughout the journey, each content to dwell upon his own thoughts.
Mick was playing his plan through his mind, from walking in through the front door to shaking hands with Rochester in the office in a week or maybe even two, depending upon how the news was received and what the authorities chose to do with it. Sometimes, the wheels moved slowly, but when public concern was a major priority, they were jet-propelled.
There was always the possibility that he would never see Rochester again; a freak accident perhaps, a blatant killing, or an unexplained disappearance were all equally plausible. And if that was the case, he thought, then so be it, so long as my work reaches the public.
The information Henry Deacon had given him would make Michael Lyndon famous as the one who told the story, entwined with the famous Sir George Deacon like Woodward and Bernstein entwined with Watergate, a kind of notoriety. And he wondered what treasure the little waterproofed parcel in his inside pocket held; must be something big to go to all that trouble hiding it. And there was a tinge of honour creeping into Mick’s mind as he thought of Henry choosing him, Mick Lyndon, to tell that story. Yes, there was pride there.
Eddie too drew out a plan, though his was considerably shorter. He figured the cottage was as safe a place as any right now. Once the stories were out,
his biggest concern would be skipping work and avoiding a Rule Two infringement for assaulting McHue.
He began thinking of Ros, and wondered if they had a future together. And that’s when he smiled at the thought of Sam, his little fellow, his mate, his son. And the smile went away.
“Park it up there under the trees.” Mick pointed to a rough track to the south of his cottage that went nowhere, simply ended between the trunks of two trees. “If they get lucky with a sweep.”
“Helicopter won’t be flying in this weather.” But he parked it there anyway, because if Eddie was going to get any luck at all, it would be of the bad variety.
“Won’t be long and you’ll be a free man,” Mick said as they walked into the hallway. “Shoes.”
Eddie slipped his shoes off. “I always was a free man.” Mud plastered the lower part of his jeans and had crusted on the inside right up to the knees, drying out and flaking off in lumps. He pulled off his socks, and marvelled at his pure white wrinkled feet.
“You know what I mean.”
Eddie threw his wet jacket on the floor next to a cold radiator and then unbuttoned his jeans and rolled them off his legs. “You got a shower in this dump?”
“Washing machine and drier in the kitchen, feed the vent pipe out through the window otherwise the place’ll steam up; shower upstairs, towels in the airing cupboard. Fix me a drink first, would ya?”
“Coffee?”
Mick stopped halfway through yanking his jacket off, raised his eyebrows, and continued when he was sure that Eddie got the message.
“I’m not having one.”
“What?”
“I feel okay without. My y-axis is flat-lined.”
Mick stared blankly at him.
Eddie walked through into the kitchen, laughing, leaving wet footprints on the dark quarry tiles, found the washing machine and dumped all his clothes in. He was about to remove his boxers.
“Whoa, boy. I so do not want my whisky served to me by a naked man, thank you very much.”
[Eddie Collins 01.0] The Third Rule Page 44