Dust to Dust

by Patricia Hall

  “I know all that,” Ferguson said contemptuously. Baxter hesitated, his brain working fast.

  “I didn’t tell them everything,” he said desperately. “If you let Laura and the baby go, I’ll tell you more.”

  “Tell me first,” Ferguson said, and looking at his implacable expression, Baxter knew he had no choice.

  “I haven’t told anyone how Craig danced around the body, grabbed the stake. If there’s DNA on that stake it’s probably Craig’s. And I always wondered if he knew where the body was, and took me there to show off. The way he behaved…like a maniac, I wondered…” Craig, he thought, alive or dead, the memory of the bones and skull just yards behind them burning into his brain, would just have to forgive him.

  Laura moaned faintly as Ferguson walked deliberately towards Baxter and struck him a heavy blow across the head with his automatic, right on the dressing which covered the morning’s injury. He stumbled forward onto his knees, dizzy with pain, feeling the blood begin to seep down his face again.

  “Craig Atkinson killed him? Is that what you’re fucking saying? And you’ve covered for him all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Baxter mumbled. “He was dead when we found him. But sometimes, just occasionally, I’ve wondered if Craig didn’t already know where the body was. I’ve thought he might have taken me there deliberately, as if he was showing off, gloating…”

  “And you never thought to tell us back then?” Ferguson snarled.

  “No, no, I didn’t think that then. I thought it was an accident, finding the body. But when my brother’s appeals came up I wondered. But by then Craig was long gone, and I had nothing to go on but a vague suspicion. Even then there was no DNA testing to speak of.”

  “Do you know where he is now, Craig bloody Atkinson?”

  “He called me,” Ian said quickly, hoping that this nugget of information would distract Ferguson. “He didn’t say where he was but he’s alive somewhere.” Ferguson was quiet for a moment and Baxter felt a faint flicker of hope.

  “I’ve told you everything I know,” he said. “Now for God’s sake let us go.” Ferguson took a step back and gazed at his prisoners thoughtfully for a second, before reaching into his back pocket for something which he handed to Baxter.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll find Atkinson now,” he said. “I’ll be lucky to get out of this God-forsaken village. So I suppose you’ll have to do. You were all up to your eyes in it, anyway.” His voice was quite calm now, as if all anger had been spent.

  “They can go,” he said, nodding at Laura and Ellie. “Undo the handcuffs.” Ian stumbled to his feet with the key Ferguson had given him and did as he was told. The gun still was aimed inexorably at his daughter.

  “Right. Now, you,” Ferguson said to Laura. “Put the baby down and cuff him, hands behind his back, and tape his mouth.” Daisy lay on the floor quite peacefully, wrapped in her blanket, while Laura did as she was told. Ferguson then handed her a roll of duct tape.

  “You’re crazy,” Baxter said. “The village is crawling with armed coppers. You’ll never get away with it.”

  “Who said this was about getting away with anything,” Ferguson asked calmly. “I reckon it’s too late for that now after what went off this morning. So I might as well finish the job.” He turned to Laura. “Tape his ankles. And then bugger off.” A sharp shove put Baxter on the floor again and he watched in despair as she did what she was told, and then walked slowly away, carrying Daisy in her arms, with only a brief, anguished, backward glance.

  “I’ve something special in mind for you,” Ferguson said. “D’you know how long they said it took for Andy Fielding to die with that stake through his guts? Hours, they reckoned, hours thrashing around in agony. I’ve not got a nicely sharpened stake, but I reckon a couple of bullets in the gut will do it, and it might take them a while to find you if I leave you in that cave back there. I’ve seen it happen once or twice and it’s not a nice way to go.”

  Baxter lay still then, his heart thumping against his ribs but his mind suddenly clear as he waited for the bullets to tear into his stomach and the agony which would follow. Perhaps, he thought, in the end it was no more than he deserved. There would be a certain symmetry in ending in the abandoned drift beside what he was sure were the remains of his friend Craig.

  But the explosion, when it came, did not rip him apart. Instead it was followed by a heavy thud behind him as something heavy hit the ground and his face was sprayed with something warm and wet. Then he saw figures he recognised through the red mist and the tape was torn from his mouth and he found himself blinking at the ruddy, panting faces of Col Randall and Roy Atkinson, who was holding a sawn-off shot-gun with a wisp of smoke still lingering around the muzzle. Baxter wriggled into a sitting position and glanced to where Ferguson had been standing. He was sprawled on the floor, his chest a disintegrating mass of blood and shredded cloth, his gun still clutched in one limp hand.

  “I killed the bastard,” Atkinson said without emotion. “It were him or thee.”

  “How did you find us?” Baxter whispered, stunned.

  “I knew summat were up when you took that call and turned white as a sheet,” Col Randall said.

  “I got hold of Roy and we followed you. We met that reporter and the baby running back up to t’road for help, so we ran like the clappers when she told us what was up. Now where’s’t key to these blasted handcuffs, or are you going to keep them on all day like some bloody pervert?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Laura carried Daisy back to the main road, strapped her back into her pushchair, which lay abandoned where she had left it when Ferguson accosted her, and walked slowly and somewhat shakily back down the hill towards the Baxters’ house. On her way across the fields she had met Randall and Atkinson, and urged them to run to Ian Baxter’s rescue, but when she had heard the reverberation of a shot behind her, she had feared the worst. Without her mobile phone, which Ferguson had taken off her, she could do nothing but make her way back to the centre of the village as quickly as she could. She was not entirely surprised to see Michael Thackeray getting out of a car and Kevin Mower running up the hill in the same direction.

  “Are you all right,” Thackeray said urgently. “Colin Randall said…”

  “I’m fine,” Laura said, not entirely truthfully. “But you need to get up the track where Feilding was found. There’s a murder about to take place up there, if it hasn’t already happened. Ferguson has a gun and it sounded as if he’s used it.” Thackeray pulled out his mobile and issued some urgent instructions and within minutes a couple of squad cars had roared past them in the direction of the woods, blue lights flashing.

  “I need to go,” he said. “Will you stay at the Baxters till I get back? And try to keep out of trouble?” Laura smiled wanly.

  “I’ll do my best.” she said, opening the garden gate and maneuvering the pushchair through it just as Madge Baxter came to the door and the baby began to wail. She handed Daisy over to her grandmother but as she stood on the doorstep watching Thackeray’s car speed away up the hill, she was surprised to see another car she recognised coming down, with Roy Atkinson at the wheel. It was followed closely by yet another, driven by Col Randall and carrying, to her enormous relief, a white-faced Ian Baxter in the passenger seat. Both of them pulled up close to the patch of grass where the pit-head had once stood, and regardless of what she had promised Thackeray, Laura ran down the hill and joined the three men as they got out of their cars at the bottom.

  “What happened?” Laura asked. “How did you get away?”

  Roy parked his shotgun between his legs and lit a cigarette with massive, shaking hands and stepped away from the other two men. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and looked at the others as if he was not really seeing them.

  “I shot him, didn’t I?” he said dismissively. “And before you know it the fuzz ‘ll be up there trying to prove I murdered the bastard,” he said at length. “They’ll fit me up for it, you�
�ll see.”

  “I’d not put it past them,” Randall muttered. “They were experts at it twenty years ago.” Ian glanced at him sharply.

  ` “Ferguson admitted exactly that,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He turned back to Atkinson.

  “Come on, Roy, Laura and I will tell the police exactly what happened. Col is a witness to the shooting. It was Ferguson or me. You’ll be fine. You did what you had to do.”

  “If you believe that you’ll believe owt,” Atkinson said. “Once they get up there in their hob-nailed boots they’ll have us all banged up by teatime. The whole bloody lot’ll unravel now.”

  “What do you mean?” Baxter asked quietly, but Atkinson just looked at them all, his eyes opaque, and picked up his shot-gun again and tucked it half under his jacket. But it wasn’t that Laura was looking at. Her eyes were fixed on Atkinson’s car, which he had parked carelessly half on the kerb, and which had a long scrape on the near-side wing which still had traces of blue paint clinging to the scratches, the exact colour of her Golf. Ian Baxter’s eyes followed hers for a second and he nodded slightly.

  “Did your car get damaged in the explosion this morning?” he asked.

  “Roy never takes his car when he’s drinking,” Randall said. “If he loses his license he loses his job an’all.”

  Atkinson shot him a poisonous look but did not respond, and Laura knew that it was him who had tried to run her and Ian Baxter off the road, though she could not imagine why. But she could see that Ian Baxter was putting something together in his mind and she feared what was coming next.

  “How did you know where we were, Roy?” he asked. “Did Craig tell you about the old drift mine back when we were lads and used it as a den?” Atkinson shrugged wearily.

  “Craig always had a lot too much to say,” he said. “He told me a lot of things.”

  “It wasn’t Craig who called me, was it?” Baxter pressed on. “I realised when we spoke at the funeral that your voices are uncannily alike. You called me pretending to be Craig. So where is your brother, Roy? What’s happened to him?”

  “The trouble is once you start killing, you can’t stop,” Atkinson said. “One thing leads to another. First it was that bloody copper, sleeping wi’my mam and, even worse, wheedling information out of her, the stupid cow. I waited for him that night, followed him down’t track. What I didn’t know were Craig were following me, watching. He said nowt for years. He wouldn’t shop me to t’police, even to save your Billy. But when he lost his job, when the mine closed, he started pestering me for money. Blackmail it were, and we weren’t flush, with a baby coming. He said he were planning to get out of t’village, had his bags packed, had told our mam, needed money from me to get away, like. I had a wife and kids to support and the little bastard wanted my compensation to get to Australia. So I offered him a lift to t’station in Bradfield the day he planned to go, but I didn’t take him there.” His three listeners seemed to hold their breath for a moment.

  “You killed him and hid his body up in the old drift,” Ian Baxter whispered and Roy nodded.

  “And his baggage. You’ll likely find that an all, if it hasn’t rotted away.”

  “Craig’s still there. I found him, what’s left of the poor beggar,” Ian said. “And Vic? Did you kill Vic Randall as well? What the hell did he do to deserve that?” Laura saw Col Randall stiffen and Ian Baxter put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “He knew, an’all,” Atkinson said. “I reckon he always knew that I went off by myself that night. I sent Billy to Col’s car, then I waited up by t’school till I saw Fielding cutting across the fields. I knew he used that track to get back to his van parked out there beyond the woods. I knew all about his spying by then. It were all long forgotten till this new investigation stirred things up again and Vic Randall said he couldn’t let Billy rot in goal any longer. It weren’t right, and he wished he’d tried years ago to get him out. And I thought he were going to give those missing records to t’police and shop me after all that time.”

  “They were destroyed way back,” Randall burst out. “That’s why my dad couldn’t help Billy. You killed him for nowt, you stupid bastard.”

  “Aye, well, I couldn’t find owt in his house when I had a quick look, so that explains it.” Randall, red-faced with rage, made to grab Atkinson but he suddenly looked intently over Ian Baxter’s shoulder and they all half-turned to where police cars where drawing up and radios were breaking into an angry chatter. Laura could see Thackeray and Mower getting out of their car and begin walking in their direction, even as Atkinson pulled his shot-gun from under his coat and the entire scene froze.

  “Back off,” Atkinson shouted at the approaching officers.

  “Some of the police are armed,” Baxter said quietly. “If they think you’re threatening us they’ll shoot to kill.”

  “Aye, I know that,” Atkinson said. “But happen they’ll miss. Best to be sure, eh?” And with a half smile he stepped away from them slightly, towards the remnants of the pit-head, where the winding wheel was silhouetted against the threatening sky, raised the gun to his own chin and pulled the trigger.

  That evening Laura Ackroyd sat with her knees tucked up on the sofa, a glass of white wine and soda in her hand and her eyes closed. Michael Thackeray watched her from a chair across the room, conscious that his whole future happiness was in the warm and pleasant room Laura had begun to turn into a home for three.

  “It’s over now,” he said gently. Laura opened her eyes and smiled faintly.

  “I’m sorry, Michael,” she said. “I really did try to be good. It all happened more or less by accident. I had no idea all that would happen.”

  “I know,” Thackeray said. And then she gave him a wicked grin.

  “I rang Ted Grant, though,” she said. “He wants a thousand words for the front page tomorrow. I can write it at home. I don’t have to go into the office.”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “You have to take me as you find me, Michael,” Laura said. “I can’t change.”

  “I suppose not,” he said, and sighed. “What fooled us all was the fact that there were two killers in Urmstone, Roy Atkinson trying to cover up what happened way back, and Jim Ferguson trying to pin something else on the Baxter family in revenge for his friend’s murder and his sister’s death. There doesn’t seem any doubt that the body buried in the old drift mine is Craig Atkinson’s, and Roy put him there, just as he said. And I’m sure the DNA from the Feilding murder scene will turn out to be Atkinson’s and possibly his brother’s as well. And we’ll be looking to find a match in Vic Randall’s house. You said yourself he was still in Urmstone that night. He didn’t leave for Turkey until the next day.”

  “But Ferguson blew up the welfare hall?”

  “Oh, yes, there’s not much doubt about that. And he must have fired the shots in London too. They’ll be able to match the bullets to his gun easily enough to prove it.”

  “So in the end Billy Baxter will go free,” Laura said sadly. “But at what a cost? Ian and his mother must be devastated as much as pleased.”

  “It’s not a happy ending,” Thackeray said. “How could it ever be? The man’s served over twenty years.”

  “And not really an ending at all for some,” Laura said. “What about Col Randall? Ferguson said quite clearly that he was set up by the police, or else some of the spooks. He was innocent of that motorway attack, too.”

  “It was a bad time, Laura,” Thackeray said. “I’m sure there were lots of things said and done back then which will never be put right.”

  “And as everyone kept telling me, Urmstone will never forget all that, and they’ve even more tragedy to remember now.”

  “But you and I have to forgive and forget,” Thackeray said quietly. “You don’t have to tell me how hard it is, but we both have to try. We’ve got a future to look forward to.” Laura nodded and gave Thackeray a brilliant smile.

  “If we have a girl I think we s
hould call her Daisy,” she said. “I got quite attached to Ian Baxter’s little daughter while I was lugging her about over hill and dale. What do you think?”

  “I think,” Thackeray said, moving to sit beside Laura, “you can call her whatever you like. But please, please take care of yourself between now and then. Will you promise?”

  “I promise,” Laura said. “And now what about this wedding..? I don’t want to be too fat to wear white.”

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  The Ackroyd and Thackeray Mysteries

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY