by Andy Maslen
She loaded the long guns, wearing another pair of the nitrile gloves. Twelve Hatton rounds slid up into the magazine tube of the Winchester, each requiring slightly more effort as the long spring’s increasing compression pushed back against her thumb. Four Federal soft-points clicked home into the Blaser’s magazine insert.
While Stella made herself a mug of tea, other-Stella wandered over from the mirror to inspect the weapons.
“Overkill. I like it. You’re going to take your time with him, though, aren’t you?”
Stella looked over her shoulder. “What do you think?” she said, picking up the Maoui Deba and turning it this way and that, so its razor-sharp edge caught the light from the fringed lampshade overhead.
“How are you going to get to the judge’s place from here?”
“Hire car.”
“I thought you didn’t like driving?”
“Needs must. Besides, I can always let you drive, can’t I?”
“Fair enough. And we just won’t mention to the nice lady at Avis that you died on April twentieth 1980, will we?” other-Stella said, running a red-varnished fingernail along the zip protecting the new identity documents. “Just one more thing.”
“What?”
“The other woman. He said she was English. Knows her way around weapons. Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Stella shrugged. “I’ll just have to be careful, won’t I?”
32
Ready, Aim …
That night, in Craigmackhan’s richly furnished master bedroom, Ramage was mired in the dream again.
He rolls up to the sliding steel doors of the body shop and kills the engine of his Bentley. A regular door has been cut into the massive shutters, and he pushes through, taking care to step high over the sill that tripped him the first time he brought the Bentley in for a service. A sharp edge rips the fabric of his scarlet legal robe and blood drips onto the floor.
Inside, the proprietor, a man he only knows as ‘Big Sam’, is working on the front axle of a 1951 Bentley Continental when Ramage steps through the door. His son, ‘Little Sam’, is hand polishing a brand-new model bearing the same name. A radio is playing in the background: Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love.”
Seeing his customer, the elder Blackbourn lays his wrench carefully on the floor beside the driver’s side wheel of the big, gleaming limousine and straightens, easing his back with a few rolling stretches from side to side.
“Good morning, Judge Ramage, sir. Wasn’t expecting to see you for a few months. Everything all right with the car?”
“Not as such, Sam. Had a bit of a prang yesterday. Sorted out the other driver, but now I’m left with a nasty scuff on my front offside wing.”
“Well then, let’s take a look. See what’s what, eh?”
The two men step out, single-file, through the narrow door to the outside world. Ramage’s robe continues to bleed, though Big Sam is diplomatic enough not to mention the smears and drips spoiling the immaculate floor of his garage.
Big Sam squats in front of the Bentley’s front offside wing. He extends his right hand and then, as if inviting an animal to take his scent before advancing further, trails the backs of his fingers up and across the ruined metalwork.
The damage extends back from the headlight for forty centimetres or so. The dark purple paint has been cracked and scraped away, revealing weeping red flesh and shards of bone beneath. Scuffs of silver paint decorate the edges of the wound.
“Nasty,” Big Sam says. He strokes the stubble on his chin and turns his gaze on the judge. “Hell of a prang to do that to a Bentley. Other chap all right, was he?”
“Parked car. I left my card. I came off worse, if you can believe it.”
Big Sam stares at the dented wing for a few seconds. Pauses. Runs his blackened fingers through his thinning hair. “Job like that? Done properly. Going to have to take it back to the flesh and blend it in.”
Ramage purses his lips and folds his arms, trying to avoid looking down where the blood is pooling around his feet. “Which I understand, Big Sam, believe me. But the timescale. Please.”
“Setting the bone, sutures, debriding the dead flesh, prepping, base coat, two, maybe three top coats, clear coat … hand-polish. I’m thinking a week Friday. Priority job, obviously. Seeing as how it’s you, Judge.”
Ramage smiles. It is better than he’d been expecting. “A week Friday is fine, Big Sam. And your fee?”
Big Sam looks Ramage in the eye.
“Two million. Please.”
Ramage smiles.
“Our usual arrangement will suffice, I hope,” he says, opening his wallet and pulling out a sheaf of black-and-red banknotes with charred edges. “Ten thousand now and the balance on collection?”
Big Sam palms the notes and they disappear into the front pocket of his brown bib overalls.
“Always a pleasure, Judge. Oh,” he says, eyes widening, as he looks into the rear of the car. “What do you want me to do about that?”
Ramage gazes past Big Sam’s outstretched arm and pointing finger.
A baby sits in a child’s car seat, strapped in and looking at him with slitted eyes of fearful intensity. It’s a little girl to judge from the pale-pink ribbon tied in a bow on the top of her head.
“You killed my Daddy,” she says in a dry, whispery croak that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “You killed my Daddy. Then you burned me. I’m too hot. I can’t sleep. I want a cuddle.”
Black smoke curls from her lips as she speaks and when she coughs, a smoke-ring shoots from her rosebud mouth towards Ramage’s face. She stretches her arms out towards him.
Not wanting to, but unable to resist, he reaches out to pick up the baby, noticing as he does so, that small orange flames flicker restlessly on her downy cheeks. But she screams, “You’re hurting me!” before bursting into flames that leap the gap between them and ignite his hair.
Ramage awoke, screaming, and batting at his skull.
“Oh, God,” he moaned. “How did we get to this?”
Stella arrived back at the B&B around noon the following day, behind the wheel of a rented silver Golf. She’d driven it carefully all the way back from Perth, never once exceeding, or even reaching, the speed limit. Even when the sweeping open road through the gorgeous landscape of lakes and yellow-and-purple moorland screamed at her, “open it up”.
On the bike, it would have been a different story. She’d have cracked the throttle wide open and torn along the road, taking a racing line around every bend, getting her knee down and shrieking with the sheer unconfined joy of the machine’s power and balance. But given her ambivalence about four-wheeled transport, and the fact that secured in the boot was an intriguing collection of firearms and other implements, she felt an encounter with the local traffic cops was best avoided.
Inside her room, she changed into the camouflaged shooting gear, packed, and went downstairs.
The landlady did a double-take as she took in Stella’s hunting outfit.
“Off shooting, are you, dear?”
“Stalking, yes.”
Stella settled the bill with cash, earning a smile.
“Well, good hunting and come again, won’t you dear?” her landlady urged her as she left, pressing a hand-tied cellophane bag of homemade shortbread biscuits into her hand.
And then Stella left, pointing the Golf towards Craigmackhan.
Leaving the Golf parked at a picnic area off a narrow country road, Stella shouldered the kit bag and a backpack loaded with a groundsheet, a fleece, a flask of coffee and a dozen energy bars. She consulted her map, then began the two-mile walk through the woodland that bordered Craigmackhan. As she left the picnic area behind her, the birdsong and the soughing of the breeze in the tall fir trees grew louder. The combination of sounds had a calming effect on her nerves, which had been singing like wind through telegraph wires ever since she’d started the car that morning. Somewhere in the distance, she heard occasional de
ep booms coming in pairs. She’d seen on the map that the Ministry of Defence owned the land to the west of her position and assumed the booms were explosions.
A good day to be testing weaponry, she thought, shifting the weight of the kitbag. Yes, she could have slung the long guns over her shoulders and stuck the Glock in her belt. Hell, she could have wrapped a scarlet bandanna around her forehead and stuck the cleaver between her teeth. But a chance encounter with a couple of birdwatchers or hikers would, she felt, queer her pitch as an avenging angel. They’d smile politely then race for the road and be on the phone to the police in seconds. Mission over.
Pausing by a rotten log, she sat and lowered the heavy kitbag to the ground where it settled with a scrunch into the dry bracken. She unscrewed the flask of coffee and poured a cup, washing down a couple of energy bars with the hot, strong brew. The smell of the coffee overlaid a sweetish smell of rot wafting up from the decaying tree trunk. The sun chose that moment to come out, sending bright, golden rods of light splintering through the tree canopy, and mottling the bracken and leaf mould on the ground like a leopard’s pelt. She inhaled deeply and rolled her shoulders, letting her head fall back on her neck and staring up through the leaves to the sky beyond.
“What if I just turned back? What if I just sold everything and disappeared?”
“No!” other-Stella snapped. “Not. Going. To happen. We’ve come this far and we’re bloody well going to finish it.”
The birds continued singing merrily as the two women discussed the mission. The wind strengthened, and the branches above her head swayed and snapped as gusts swirled through the wood.
Stella knew her ideas of vengeance were unlikely to bring her peace. After the accident, when she’d been living under the mistaken impression that Lola was still with her, she’d visited a grief counsellor. He’d been kind, and listened as she poured out the lurid fantasies of revenge that she was now in the process of enacting. He’d quoted some eastern mystic at her, something about holding onto anger being like gripping a hot coal and expecting it to burn the other person. It made sense. But at that moment, and ever since then, sense hadn’t been high on Stella’s list of priorities. The shock and grief when she realised she’d lost Lola as well as Richard had taken her last remaining shreds of rationality and burned them to a crisp.
In any case, Stella wasn’t out for peace. After dealing with Ramage, she intended to find a quiet spot and join Richard and Lola. They’d be together again. Safe from harm. A family, just like all the other happy families. Mummy, Daddy and Lola. Safe for ever.
“Come on then!” a voice said, right into her ear. “Enough with the ‘What iffing’. We’re going to kill Ramage. Eventually. On your feet, DI Cole.”
Other-Stella extended a hand and pulled Stella to her feet. Helped her lift the kitbag and settle it across her back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Stella checked the map again and strode off eastwards, through a stand of Douglas firs and heading for Dracula’s castle, chatting amiably to other-Stella about where she’d begin working on Ramage when she had him secured.
Lucy Van Houten was already in place. She’d arrived at Craigmackhan five hours earlier and was ensconced in a hide she’d constructed from bracken and fallen tree branches. She caressed the stock of her new rifle, a Sabatti STR chambered for 6.5mm Lapua rounds and equipped with a GECO 2.5-15X56 infrared telescopic sight. She’d brought neither food nor drink. She didn’t feel she needed them.
Collier called Ramage, sure that by now his attack dog would be in place, watching and waiting.
“Ramage.”
“Leonard, it’s Adam. We’ve got a problem. A major problem. She’s not dead.”
What? You told me it would all be fine. That your man would succeed.”
“I know. But somehow, she evaded him. I haven’t heard a peep out of him either. Either she did him in and dumped him somewhere or he’s gone to ground.”
“Never mind that, Adam. Does this mean I have some homicidal detective coming after me?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. I’m getting onto traffic next. Getting the ANPR cameras monitored for her bike. I doubt she’ll have gone by road, but it’s a start. I’ll do what I can with rail and air but I have to be careful. She’s a serving police officer. I can’t go charging around setting up a manhunt without ringing the kinds of alarm bells I’d rather stayed silent.”
Ramage sighed. “How did we get to this, Adam?”
“How did we get to what?”
“Murdering innocent civilians and their children, then planning to kill serving police officers?”
“You know how, Leonard. Don’t start getting sentimental on me. Not now. The group comes first, never forget that.”
“No, you’re right, of course you are. Look, I have a couple of chaps up here who work for me. Part-time poachers, full-time ne’er-do-wells. They’ve helped me out with a couple of tricky situations in the past. I’ll haul them up to the house and have them bring their guns. If she shows up here, I’ll just have to take care of her myself. Then you can figure out a way to clear up the mess. And I’ll repeat this for you, Adam, just in case you’ve forgotten: I am not going to sit around here waiting to be arrested by a rogue officer with a vigilante complex. And if I am, well, let’s just say they’d better build a bigger dock at the Old Bailey, hmm?”
“Don’t worry. It won’t come to that. Not anywhere near.”
Stella scraped out a nest in the crunchy, brown bracken on the hillside overlooking Ramage’s house. Gordon Wade had been right. The thing was a monstrosity. Gothic windows, a tower, turrets, even a low, crenelated wall around the roof, giving the whole building the air of a fantasy fortress as imagined by a Victorian builder who’d read one too many penny dreadfuls about vampires in Mitteleuropa. The stone was dirty grey, mottled with scabs of white and yellow lichen. Ugly, white security bars had been fitted to the insides of the downstairs windows.
Through the Blaser’s telescopic sight, she could see the purple Bentley sitting at the front of the house in a circle of pale-gold shingle. It looked as though someone had posed it there for an advertising campaign. She was considering shooting at it when a rough-edged engine note floated up towards her from the road on the other side of the house. She eased her finger away from the trigger and looked over the top of the scope. A Land Rover sporting a harlequin suit of petrol-blue, khaki and primer-red panels pulled round the side of the house and drew up next to the Bentley. Out jumped two men dressed in waxed jackets, corduroys and boots. One went round to the rear door and emerged a second or two later with a pair of what looked like shotguns. Long-barrelled weapons, at any rate. She put her eye back to the scope. Yes. Under-and-over shotguns just like those she’d ignored in Campbell’s the day before.
As she watched, the front door – a heavy affair of oak with curved black straps of iron – opened, and out stepped Ramage. He was dressed in a pair of rose-pink trousers, an open-necked shirt and a mustard-coloured cardigan. Stella’s breath caught in her throat and she could feel her blood rushing in her ears, the surf-sound swelling and receding in time with the throbbing behind her eyes and in the base of her throat. She sighted on his head, watching the way the cross hairs danced on his face, but they were bobbing up and down as her pulse throbbed in her chest. Besides, a clean kill was the last thing Ramage was going to get.
She observed the three men talking, then Ramage returned to the safety of the house, while his two guards broke open their guns, inserted cartridges into the barrels and then closed them with a double crack that reached Stella’s ears a split second after she watched the barrels snap shut. The men walked in opposite directions, beginning a circuit of the house.
“How loyal are you to your master?” Stella asked aloud, as she settled herself more comfortably into her sniper nest. “Will I have to kill you too, or will you desert your post at the first sign of danger?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
other-Stella said, lying down beside her.
Three hundred yards to the west, embedded in an almost identical nest of vegetation, Lucy Van Houten kept watch on the house. She amused herself by sighting on each window on the side facing her in turn, imagining people appearing as if at a fairground shooting gallery, bobbling left to right, or snapping erect, like tin targets for her to knock down again.
When the two men arrived in their Land Rover, her heartbeat increased by just a fraction. She sighted on their foreheads, in turn, and considered blowing their heads apart like soft fruit, picturing the spray of pink in the air. But Adam had been clear. The detective kills the owner, then Lucy kills the detective. Adam would be angry if she disobeyed his orders. He might not give her any more assignments. She didn’t think she could bear that.
While Stella waited for the men to reappear at the front of the house, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to her six-month rotation with the Metropolitan Police’s firearms squad. Being fast-tracked didn’t simply mean a series of promotions and cushy duties. She’d walked the beat with a forty-two-year-old sergeant named Jack Hempstead while he instructed her on the various forms of villainy he’d encountered in his eighteen years of pavement pounding. She’d looked on as private crime scene cleaning firms scraped blood and body parts off floors, walls and, on one memorable night, ceilings. She’d donned waders and elbow-length, red rubber gauntlets and waded through a sewer searching for a shooter that the mid-level drug dealer they’d been chasing had chucked down a drain. So, all in all, she felt she’d earned her place on the fast track and could take the good-natured jibes of her colleagues as she was promoted, first to detective sergeant and then detective inspector at the tender age of twenty-six.