“What on earth happened?” Carrie asked. “Was it gas? Laura wouldn’t let me go to see in case…” She shuddered and hugged him more tightly, half smothering the child between them.
“I was OK,” he said. “I happened to be outside when it went off,” Baxter said, unable to control the tremor in his voice. “I don’t think anyone knows what happened. But if it wasn’t an accident…” He shrugged. “Dear God, what did we do to deserve this? It was pure fluke that mam wasn’t hurt, or worse. The wall cracked but didn’t fall on them.” In the kitchen they found Madge dispensing tea to Laura and Joyce, who both looked pale and shaken.
“You look as if you’ve just been down t’pit,” Madge said.
“It was worse than the bloody pit in there,” Ian said sharply. “I’ll go and clean up a bit.” he started up the stairs to wash, but almost immediately there was a knock at the front door.
“I’ll go,” Laura said quickly and she was not surprised to find Michael Thackeray on the doorstep, looking disheveled. He looked her up and down anxiously and then nodded.
“Someone told me you weren’t inside,” he said, hugging her briefly. “Is Joyce OK?”
“She’s fine,” Laura said. “She and Madge weren’t hurt, just covered in dust. But how many people were?”
“Two women dead, two others seriously hurt. All of them were in the kitchen doing the food. The rest are mainly superficial injuries. About ten people have gone to hospital. It’s very lucky there weren’t more people at the back of the building. It’s completely demolished.”
“It was full of children earlier, running in and out looking for crisps,” Laura said, feeling sick. “It could have been a massacre. Do you know what happened?”
“We think it was a bomb, but it’s too early to tell definitely,” Thackeray said quietly. “They’re going through the kitchen area looking for evidence. That’s where the blast originated. But there’s no smell of gas, and no-one had noticed anything beforehand.”
“Who on earth would want to bomb Ken Baxter’s funeral?” Laura asked incredulously.
“The same person who tried to drive you off the road the other day,” Thackeray said grimly. “Or shot at Carrie Baxter through her front window. You heard about that, I guess?” Laura nodded.
“This maverick copper? What’s his name?”
“Ferguson? Let’s just say we’re looking for Jim Ferguson urgently. The trouble is that we now know that there was no DNA to link either of the Baxters to Fielding’s death but Ferguson doesn’t know that, so if he’s pursuing some sort of vendetta against them we’ve no way of telling him he’s up a gum tree. He’s got it completely wrong.”
“Why is he pursuing a vendetta at all after all this time?” Laura asked wearily. “It’s twenty-five years ago, for God’s sake.”
“Ah, Don Hartnett, his old boss back then, tells me there’s a reason for that,” Thackeray said. “It would have helped a lot if he’d been a bit more forthcoming a bit sooner. Apparently Andy Fielding was engaged to Ferguson’s sister. When he was killed, especially in those brutal circumstances, she took it very badly, apparently, never really got over it, had endless mental health problems. She killed herself last year.”
“So it all came back to haunt them, too,” Laura said sadly, both of them well aware of just how long the shadows of old tragedies could be.
“Apparently,” Thackeray said. “Anyway, I just came up to make sure you and Joyce were OK and to make sure you could drive home safely. Are you all right with that? I’ll send Kevin up to talk to the Baxters in a while, when they’ve had time to get over the shock. Just tell them I’m very sorry this has happened, will you?”
“Fine,” Laura said, without enthusiasm. “I’ll see you later then.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
But Laura did not go home. Joyce Ackroyd was obviously keen to stay with her friend Madge, and as more and more people knocked on the door, bringing information about who had been hurt in the explosion, or worse, the stricken house became the unofficial centre for all who wanted information or comfort. In the end, Carrie Baxter, who was obviously out of her depth, glanced at Laura.
“Shall we take Daisy out for a walk? It might get her off to sleep,” she said. “This place is like Piccadilly Circus?”
“Yes, fine,” Laura agreed. “Then when we get back I really must take my grandmother home. She’s beginning to look worn out.”
They wrapped the fretful baby up warmly and strapped her into her pushchair, and set off up the steep hill towards the secondary school on the edge of the village, where there was a small recreation ground. At the top, they stopped to draw breath, with the baby still grizzling.
“I can’t believe what’s been happening here,” Carrie said, looking at Laura helplessly. “Do you understand it?”
“I know that feelings ran very deep here back in ‘84,” Laura said slowly. “People got damaged in all sorts of ways, not just physically, though there was enough of that, by all accounts. It was bricks on one side and truncheons on the other, as far as I can see. Then most of the pits closed, even some, like Urmstone, where the Coal Board had said they wouldn’t. The mining communities have never really recovered. You don’t have to be in Yorkshire long to know that. But there seems to be a personal dimension here, too. I’m not quite sure what was going on but it looks as if this policeman Fielding was up to no good, though quite how I’ve no idea.”
“I had no idea it ran so deep,” Carrie said.
“I was away at boarding school but I was aware of it. I was at home in Bradfield during the holidays, torn between my grandmother, who was down here in Urmstone backing up the women like Madge, who kept the miners going, and my father, who was out-and-out for Thatcher and would have put the ‘enemy within’ up against a wall and shot them, I think. I didn’t really know what to think.” Carrie sighed.
“And now it’s all come back to haunt us,” she said. She glanced down at her daughter, who was still grizzling beneath her blankets. “She’s not dropped off yet, but I really think I need to get back to Ian. He’s completely devastated by what’s happened.”
“You go back,” Laura said. “I’ll take her a bit further. It will be good practice. I’ll be doing this myself by the end of the year.”
“Really,” Carrie said, glancing her up and down. “It doesn’t show.” Laura grinned.
“It will soon, I think,” she said, as she turned the pushchair up the hill again and Carrie turned back down towards her mother-in-law’s house. “See you soon.” It was more than half an hour before Ian Baxter realised that Laura Ackroyd had not returned with the baby. Puzzled rather than alarmed, he put his coat on and told his mother and his wife he was going out for a breath of fresh air.
“I’ll meet Laura on the way back. Daisy must be asleep by now.”
“Aye, I need to be heading back home,” Joyce Ackroyd said. She looked frail and weary after the stresses of the day. Outside the house a car he did not recognise pulled up beside him and he was surprised to see Colin Randall lean over towards him and lower the window.
“Are you reet?” Randall asked. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral, though it looks as if I were one o’t’lucky ones. But I came over to pay my respects to you mam. Is she all right?”
“She’s fine physically,” Baxter said. “Very shocked of course.”
“What bastard did that then?”
“The same bastard who killed Vic, maybe,” Baxter said. “And took a pot shot at my wife in London. My guess is Ferguson’s the prime suspect. But I don’t really know what to believe any more, Col. The whole thing’s crazy.”
“You’re right there,” Randall said. “It’s been crazy for more than twenty years. Look at this place.” He waved a hand at the remnants of the pit, and the now demolished welfare hall. “It’s a bloody morgue. Druggies nicking anything that’s not nailed down and poor beggars like your dad dying from the dust. And I did ten years for summat I didn’t do because bastards l
ike Ferguson ran amok back in ‘84. They got away wi’murder then and it looks like they’re getting away wi’murder now.”
“Go and see my mam, Col,” Baxter said. “I’m hoping Ferguson will get his come-uppance this time around. I reckon he’s gone too far this time, certainly for this generation of coppers. It’s different now. And nobody’s going to put up with bombs, for God’s sake. It’s terrorism. They’ll pull all the stops out.”
“I hope you’re right,” Randall said, getting out of his car. “I’ll see you.”
Ian glanced up the hill, slightly surprised not to see Laura coming back down in his direction. The baby must have been more fractious than Carrie realised, he thought. But before he could move away from Col, who was locking his car, his mobile rang and he responded to a voice which he recognised and which filled him with heart-stopping fear.
“Glad I caught you, Mr Baxter,” it said. “You’re not taking very good care of that wife and baby of yours, are you?”
“What do you mean?” Baxter responded, icy cold, but Ferguson did not explain.
“You remember you told us years ago about the place in the woods where you and your mate Atkinson used to go when you were lads? You meet me down there in half an hour and we might be able to come to some arrangement. And don’t even think about telling anyone. I’ll be watching. And if I see anyone else following you, you’ll be very sorry.”
“What the hell’s going on,” Randall asked, obviously alarmed by Baxter’s look of shock.
“Remember - you on your own,” Ferguson said. “Don’t go running to that beggar DCI Thackeray. I’ll be watching.” The call ended but not before Baxter thought he had heard a baby crying in the background, a faint plaintive sound which turned him dizzy with fear.
“What is it man?” Randall asked, but Baxter shook his head, his eyes dazed.
“Nothing,” he said faintly. “I just have to be somewhere else, that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about.”
But Col Randall did not believe him and watched him walk away unsteadily up the hill with growing alarm.
Ferguson had said that he would be watching, and Baxter knew that from the vantage point where he and Craig had their secret place all those years ago it was possible to see the track down into the woods from the main road for most of its length. But there was one point, where the path dropped down to the stream in the valley bottom through a rocky defile, where he would be invisible. He hesitated for a moment and then veered left, scrambling along the stony stream bank. Dark and fast running here where an outcrop forced it into a deeper channel. A hundred yards from the path, and still out of sight from the opposite bank, he leapt across and then crept quietly through the trees, turning off his mobile and stepping carefully so as not to give his position away.
His heart thudded uncomfortably as he worked his way through the thickening undergrowth to the miners’ shelter where he and Craig had once built their campfires. Further up the slope on this side of the valley, a rocky overhang and matted vegetation concealed the entrance to the abandoned drift which he and his friend had explored all those years ago. Breathing heavily, he stopped for a moment under the overhang before pushing inside to take stock.
Not far away he could hear a faint murmuring sound which he knew must be his daughter, evidently unperturbed by her ordeal. Of Laura and her kidnapper he could hear nothing and he wracked his brains for a means of getting Laura and the baby out of the hands of a man who almost certainly was carrying, if not brandishing, a gun. The only thing which prevented him from confronting Ferguson and offering up himself in exchange for Ferguson’s hostages was the conviction that he was very unlikely to accept a deal. He would have no qualms, after the bombing, about killing them all.
He could feel the tension wracking up inside him, making him sweat, and reluctantly he drew back into the darkness of the drift he hated so much to catch his breath. He sat for a moment with his back to the rock wall to consider his options, but as he heard Ferguson call his name, he realised they were diminishing fast. He pulled out his mobile and considered calling the police. They might respond, he thought, but the chances of Laura and the baby surviving a full frontal assault by armed officers seemed to him to be remote. He gazed at his mobile for inspiration, but inside the drift it was picking up no signal. He would have to move outside to make a call. As he took in the implications of that, the handset slipped though his fingers onto the sandy floor. He scratched around in the dirt, trying to locate it as silently as possible, but before he felt the familiar plastic his fingers reached something else, something long and smooth which instantly made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Feeling sick, he scrambled back to his feet, clutching what he had found in one hand and his mobile in the other.
“Please, no,” he breathed to himself as, back near the entrance where the daylight filtered dimly through the undergrowth, he dusted off what he had found and confirmed his fears. What he had in his hand was a bone, undoubtedly human, and when he forced himself back to the rear of the passage way, which had been blocked by a rock-fall generations ago, he could just make out the shape of a human skull and the skeleton of a human body beneath a light covering of earth and stones. The implications almost overwhelmed him. He had no doubt at all that this was where his old friend Craig had ended his life. He had to stagger back to the entrance and take a deep breath of fresh air before he could focus his mind again on the far more urgent problem of how to rescue his daughter and a woman he liked and who had done her best to help his family. He put the fragment of what looked like a leg bone close to the entrance of the drift and turned again to the grim reality of the moment, to find that his time had run out. His mobile rang.
“You’re taking too long,” Ferguson said, and Baxter could hear the voice twice over he was so close to the gunman. “I want you here now.”
“I’m almost with you,” Baxter said, his voice hoarse, as he moved into the open just as Ferguson came out of the tumbledown shelter, his black anorak hood pulled up to conceal his face but a automatic very visible in his hand.
“Where’s my daughter?” Ian croaked, unable to see or hear the baby or Laura now.
“Your family’s safe enough,” Ferguson said. “You and I are going to have a little chat and this time there’ll be no lies or you’ll never see your wife and baby alive again, and that’s a promise.” He thinks Laura’s Carrie, Baxter thought, outraged at the idea that Laura might die simply because she had generously taken his baby for a walk.
“That’s not my wife,” he said. “She’s just a friend.”
“And I suppose the brat’s her’s too,” Ferguson sneered. “Pull the other one. I watched your mother’s house long enough to know who’s been in and out.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” Baxter said desperately. “You’ve got it wrong. Ask her.” But he knew he was clutching at straws as Ferguson, never taking his eyes off his face or moving the gun from the unwavering horizontal aimed at his heart, curled his lips into a snarl of implacable hatred. The man was consumed, Baxter thought, and would not be deterred from murder, if that was what he had in mind.
“I told you no lies, sergeant,” he said quietly. “I don’t know anything which might help you find the killer of your friend.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ferguson said. “I reckon this whole bloody village knows more than they’ve ever let on. I never thought your brother was alone that night. I always thought he had help, either from you or from one of the Atkinson brothers. There’s unfinished business here and I aim to finish it once and for all. I was with Andy Fielding right through that year. We’d been together for years. He was going to marry my sister, for God’s sake. That was another life ruined by your effing strike. There’ll be retribution now. Some justice at last. ”
“Innocent women in the kitchen at a funeral?” Baxter protested. “An innocent woman and a baby now? You call that justice?”
“There’s no-one innocent in this village,” Ferguson said. “Stay
there and don’t move.” He turned quickly and went into the hut and returned with Laura, walking in front of him with her mouth taped, her eyes pleading, holding the baby awkwardly with her hands handcuffed in front of her body. Ian made to approach them but Ferguson waved him away impatiently with the gun.
“Keep back,” he said. “If you want them loose, you pay for it.”
“What do you want to know?” Baxter asked helplessly, knowing that if he could win their freedom he would confess to being involved in the murder himself.
“Who killed Andy? If it wasn’t your brother or you, who was it? Was it that bastard Colin Randall? Did he really deserve what he got? That’d be a turn-up after all the trouble we went to to stitch him up for the motorway job. We told our friends that we particularly wanted that pinned on Urmstone. They didn’t mind. They got the propaganda they wanted, didn’t they, whoever got sent down. Just so long as it was a miner?” Baxter’s mind reeled.
“Friends?” he whispered.
“Forget it,” Ferguson said. “There was stuff going on back then with the spooks even we didn’t know the half of. That wasn’t what was bothering me. I wanted Andy’s killer, and I wanted the man who actually did it, and whoever helped him, not a random set-up. And I still do. So if not a bloody Baxter, who?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Baxter said desperately, glancing at Laura and hoping that she had taken in the implications of what had just been said. If he didn’t survive himself he hoped even more desperately than before that she did and passed on what she had heard. But Ferguson was walking towards the woman and child, aiming the gun at Laura’s temple as she dropped her head towards the now silent baby.
“No, listen!” Baxter cried, desperate now. “There was just one thing, one thing that I know that nobody else does. Craig Atkinson and me bunked off school the morning the policeman was found and headed down here to the woods.” Ferguson was listening intently now, though the gun never wavered.
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