by Michael Kerr
Falling asleep, Beth was transported to Discovery Cove in Orlando, Florida, to be in a lush tropical paradise, swimming with dolphins in a manmade array of coral reefs and shipwrecks. But danger would not be dispelled by dreams. The warm azure water became chill and grey; the gentle bottlenose dolphin that swam by her side changed in form to become a hideous sea creature of the type that only dwelt in the unseen depths of the ocean. She woke, escaping from a nightmare to an equally unsavoury reality. She thought of what might have been; of what she and Matt could have attained if given a future together. The tears ran freely, silently down her cheeks as she contemplated being robbed of all her dreams. She somehow found the ability to push away scenarios of unknown pain and misery that might lay before her at Sutton’s hands. She tried to find some solace, and whispered: “Remember girl, it isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
As they passed the opening, Matt glanced to his left and caught the fleeting ruby flare of brake lights.
“He turned off, Pete. Tell Gordon to get back here,” he said, stopping, reversing, switching off the car’s lights and following the tyre tracks that had been laid down in the thin coating of snow. After more twists and turns, the twin lines of patterned tread led them along a narrow lane to where they veered left into a driveway.
Matt put the Discovery in neutral and coasted another thirty yards before easing over to the side and stopping.
Pete was on his mobile, talking Gordon in to them.
“He’s gone to ground,” Pete said to Matt as the Mondeo parked up behind them.
“Not before time,” Matt said, getting out of the 4x4 to be met by Gordon.
Matt’s guts felt as cold as the below-freezing temperature. A north wind whistled loudly through the surrounding trees. Matt had no idea what to expect next. There were three of them, armed and experienced in dealing with such situations. But he did not feel overconfident. This wasn’t just any situation. On this occasion, Beth’s life was at stake. How could it have happened again? Beth was once more in the hands of a killer, taken because of her closeness to him. Trying to be careful and keep her anonymous had not worked.
They walked up the remainder of the pitted and unpaved drive in line, keeping to its edge, to be brushed by frosted, needle-laden branches.
The plan was simple. This was the lair of an armed killer. Matt had spelt it out to Pete and Gordon. If one of them got the chance of a clear shot: take Sutton out without hesitation.
As they approached the house, the falling flakes of snow increased in number. They were only forty feet from the ugly, squat dwelling, when light blossomed from a ground floor window.
Reining in his jumping nerves, breathing deeply and trying desperately to suppress the mixture of fear and apprehension that he felt encompassing his mind in a frigid grip, Matt forced himself to focus: ‘see the ball, hit the ball’, he thought as he chambered a round in his Beretta.
Drawn like bugs to the yellow square of light, they crept ever closer. Matt tapped Gordon on the arm and motioned for him to go around to the back of the house.
Matt rationalised. They had the element of surprise. The last thing Sutton would expect was a sudden and lethal attack. He would feel completely safe here.
Inside, Hannibal looked up, cocked his head and growled.
“What is it, boy?” Paul said from where he lay in his sleeping bag on an old hide-covered settee.
Hannibal rose to his feet, whined at Paul and then faced the door and growled again.
Alarm bells rang loud and clear and long. It could have been the wind unsettling Hanny, but he did not think so. He unzipped the bag, scrambled out of it and went over to where Beth was now wide awake, her eyes on the dog.
“I could be wrong,” he said to her, unlocking the cuff that held her to the pipe, before quickly drawing the pistol from his waistband. “But I’ve got a real strong feeling that we might have been followed. Get up and do exactly what I say.”
He directed Beth through to a small bedroom that was unfurnished apart from a bedstead that in all probability was antique and had been slept on by many generations of now long gone hill farmers.
“Unlatch the window very quietly and open it,” he said.
Beth eased the catch back and strained to pull up the sash window. The wood had swollen through the passing of many seasons and was reluctant to give. It finally yielded to brute force, producing a creak that was lost amid the sounds of tree branches being whipped by the wind soughing through them.
Beth gasped, pulled back her hands and fisted them as several of her fingernails snapped against the edge of the heavy frame.
The Volvo was parked outside, only six feet from the window.
“Go find,” Paul said to Hannibal, hoping that whatever had alarmed him was four-footed and presented no danger.
Pete saw movement from the corner of his eye, turned toward it and loosed off a shot as the dark shape left the ground and sprang at him.
Forward momentum took Hannibal crashing into Pete, who in turn dominoed into Matt. Both men and the dog fell in a tangled heap.
Gordon heard the gunshot but held his position, pistol trained on the back door of the house, ready to empty his mag if Sutton appeared.
Out through the window and now inside the Volvo with Beth behind the wheel, Paul gave her the keys. “You get to drive again,” he said.
“I can’t. My leg―”
“Fuck your leg, drive, or everybody dies.”
As the car shot out from the side of the house, Matt rolled onto his stomach and snapped off two shots. He aimed low for the rear tyres. One slug kicked up a puff of snow. The other hit metal, not rubber, and whined off into the darkness.
“Fuck it!” Matt said, grimacing as the car vanished from sight.
Pete pushed the dog from where it lay on his chest. It was panting rapidly, blood bubbling from its nose and mouth. The bullet had hit a lung. As Pete watched, the animal made a coughing sound and then became still.
“Sorry,” Pete said to Matt. “I thought it was―”
“Gordon,” Matt shouted at the top of his voice as he climbed to his feet.
The DC appeared within five seconds. “Yes, boss?”
“He’s on the move,” Matt said, reaching out to grasp Pete’s hand and haul him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
The three of them ran back to the vehicles. Tyre tracks in the fresh snow showed that Sutton had turned left at the end of the drive and was heading up higher into the mountains.
“Let’s hope we catch up with him before the weather closes in,” Matt said, his eyes narrowed in concentration, as even with the wipers on fast, they scudded across the windscreen, barely coping to displace the wind-driven snow that almost obliterated his view of the twisting road ahead.
Christ! Beth was in such terrible pain. Her knee was a bed of coals being poked and raked over. And her whole face pounded. She could hardly see through the bruised slits of her eyelids. But she had hope again. Somehow, against all odds, Sutton had been located. It had to be Matt. If she could hold on, he would save her.
Paul’s exertions had weakened him further. He knew that his injuries were far more serious than he had at first thought. His arm felt like raw beef being fed into a mincer. It was an agony that no amount of painkillers could alleviate. He was crippled, and his confidence was now undermined. The head injury was a major concern. The concussion was now causing double vision, which combined with a pounding headache and growing nausea to impair his ability to concentrate. He was fighting the urge to just close his eyes and drift off into oblivion for a while. The grinding pain proved an ally in his battle to stay conscious. He acknowledged that he was in bad shape. For the moment survival was his number one priority, even overriding the need to kill Barnes, who he had caught a glimpse of.
The storm gained in strength and was now severe and worsening by the minute. After less than two miles, a deep drift made the road impassable.
“Stop,” Paul said. “Back up to the la
st crossroads we passed and turn right.”
Beth obeyed. She drove at little more than walking pace for less than five minutes along the side road before the depth of snow brought the Volvo to a final halt. “Now what?” she said.
For the first time in many years, Paul was not sure what to do. He knew that the area would be cordoned off, and that a lot of manpower would be drafted in to search for him. Thank Christ he had kept Beth Holder alive. She might be the only thing that could possibly make a difference. Barnes would deal to get her back.
“We get out and walk,” he said. “I know a place where we can shelter for a while and wait it out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
JOHN Williams was a partner in a haulage company operating out of Abergavenny. It was just a twelve lorry setup, no threat to the likes of giants in the business such as Eddie Stobart. At thirty-two, John was in a relationship with a school teacher, but though engaged for the past three years, still had his own semidetached house, just a half mile walk from the cottage where his fiancée, Gwyneth, still lived with her parents. Neither of them was in any particular hurry to tie the knot. Marriage was something that they both saw on the horizon, but felt under no pressure to rush into.
John had taken a few days off to pursue his other love; photographing the great outdoors and all aspects of its flora and fauna. The Black Mountains were one of his favourite stamping grounds, familiar to him due to his treading their trails since he had been a little boy, usually in the company of his maternal grandfather, who had walked the mountains up until his eightieth birthday, when he had decided that his legs were no longer up to it.
John’s calf muscles ached as he trudged through the deepening snow, his face tingling and burning with the force of the icy wind that drove the stinging flakes almost horizontally at him, making it necessary for him to lean forward, shoulders hunched to keep on his feet.
Fair weather had turned foul during the morning. Cloud as grey as aged granite swept in from the west to hide the sun; its arrival a warning of an impending storm. John had packed his tent and equipment, recognising the signs and deciding to head for lower ground before the heavens deposited their load.
The going was slow, and with conditions worsening by the second and his stamina almost depleted, John was relieved to see the shape of a chapel’s ruins materialise through the howling squalls. It was a place to take shelter and sit it out until the storm passed, and even stay overnight if need be and then continue down to where his Range Rover was parked on hard standing adjacent to a picnic site that was all but deserted throughout the winter months.
The stone built chapel had no roof, but there were still sturdy walls and short passages to seek a sheltered place away from the cutting wind.
John erected his tent and was soon in his sleeping bag, warm and snug, hoping that some of the shots he had taken over the previous two days would prove saleable. Selling his work gave him a thrill. It was recognition that he had attained a certain standard. Several magazines and local newspapers had used his photographs, and the payment he received helped to finance his pastime; though the pleasure was not entirely derived from being paid, but the titillation to his ego in seeing his work and name staring back at him from the pages.
He was falling asleep, beginning to dream that he was about to press the shutter of his camera as his viewfinder framed an osprey taking a thrashing rainbow trout from a mountain tarn, when the tent flap was pulled back and he was immediately wide awake, looking up at the shadowy figure of a man who was bandaged and bloody, and was pointing a handgun at his face. Next to him was a woman who looked to be in a lot of pain.
“Who the fuck are you?” Paul said, surprised to find some dipshit camper tucked up nice and cosy in this remote location.
“I…I’m John,” he stammered, with good reason to be afraid.
“Are you alone?” Paul said.
“Y...yes. I’ve not seen anyone for days.”
Paul thought it over, undecided as whether to keep the man alive or just put a bullet in his head. He determined that he might need the guy to drive, should they get the opportunity to leave when the storm passed. It could be a stroke of luck that he had run across him. At the very least he would serve as another hostage.
“Get out of the sleeping bag,” Paul ordered.
John obeyed. He climbed out of it and knelt with his shoulders slumped, arms hanging loosely at his sides, hands open. He also avoided making eye contact, presenting non-threatening behaviour to the armed man.
Paul thought that John was a wimp, and certainly not the type to give him any trouble; a small, thin man with short mousy hair and wide, fear-filled eyes.
Pointing the gun’s barrel at John’s large backpack he said, “What have you got in there?”
“Just camera equipment, some rope and a torch,” John said.
“Open it and show me.”
John unzipped the pack and pulled out most of the contents.
“Okay. Help this bitch into the sleeping bag,” Paul said, pushing Beth towards the trembling man. “Zip her up in it, then use some of that rope and tie her in good and tight.”
John reached out instinctively to catch the woman as she tottered into his arms. Both of the strangers were injured, and he assumed that they had been in a car crash. But why did the man need a gun?
As John secured Beth as instructed, Paul searched through the backpack to satisfy himself that there were no weapons in it, and then watched John tightly bind Beth into the bag, before throwing his knife to him to cut the rope with. He chuckled. Amused at how horrified the man would be if he had known the blade’s history; the number of lives it had ‘cut’ short.
“Good,” he said as John returned the knife to him, pushing it back across the canvas floor of the tent.
Within the fleece-lined bag, Beth quickly warmed up, and lying still diminished the pain in her leg to a dull ache. Overcome by stress and exhaustion, her mind began to close down, and her thoughts ran wild as she fell sleep to dream of being transported back to London and being with Matt, reliving the emotions that had led to her falling in love with him: experiencing his nearness, his entering her in a union of mind and body, filling and fulfilling her so perfectly on so many disparate levels. But the dream turned sour, like milk left too long to curdle and stink. Matt was lying next to her in bed. She reached out to put her arm around his waist, only to draw it back as her hand touched ice-cold skin. He turned to her, but was no longer alive. His face was expressionless and as white as the bed sheet. His eyes were open but had no pupils and were unseeing. And there was a small round hole in his forehead that she knew had been made by a bullet.
Beth woke up awash with perspiration, enveloped in a blanket of fear far more binding than the sleeping bag and rope that constrained her. She took deep breaths and rallied her spirit. Matt was close by. She truly believed that she could actually sense his nearness. Was that possible? Maybe it was just wishful thinking. She chose to believe that he was in close proximity. He was resolute, uncompromising, and more than a match for the injured, insecure and mentally disturbed murderer, whose captive she had become. When the showdown came, Matt and whoever was with him would act with concentrated lethal intent. Life was all about odds, and she would put her money on Matt every time in this kind of situation. He was driven, in part a man who could detach his humanity from a given equation and function on automatic, in the same way that a soldier could leave his wife and children, slaughter strangers that his government had decreed the enemy, then return to his other normality, to be a caring and devoted family man. Matt’s hidden strength was his ability to be unambiguous; quick-witted and proactive under extreme duress. He could operate without letting minutia cloud or dull his mind. He was an unstoppable force who did not view any adversity as insurmountable. She knew that with his dying breath Matt would raise his middle finger with insurgency at the affront of his passing. As with everything else, he would meet his demise head on, without fear or asking for fa
vour. So where was the big lummox? She wanted this to be over and done with. Being a hostage, injured, and a potential murder victim was not her idea of a fun way to spend Christmas.
The parked Volvo came into view through the squalls, appearing ghostlike behind whipping curtains of snow.
Matt stopped well back from the other vehicle, letting the Discovery’s engine tick over as he and Pete surveyed the surrounding landscape.
“He’s on foot with nowhere to go, running scared,” Pete said.
Matt frowned. “Maybe. But we have to assume that he knows this area. We don’t.”
“He can’t have got far, boss.”
“We’ll check the car in case it’s a trap, and then follow him if he isn’t making a stand.”
“Do you think that Beth is with him?”
“Yeah. She’s all he’s got to slow me down. He’ll believe that keeping her alive and with him will hold us back. As for Kirstie Marshall...” Matt took a deep breath. “We’ll check the house on the way back. Our priority has to be Sutton.”
Gordon parked behind them, killed his lights and climbed out of the Mondeo to meet them as they exited the 4x4.
The Volvo was empty. Matt found two sets of rapidly filling footprints in the snow. He was positive that Beth was with Sutton. She was his supposed insurance, and he would not harm her while he felt at risk. The man was without doubt a headcase, but as with almost all disturbed and violent criminals, he was not without a certain animal cunning, possessing instincts as sharply honed as the knife he used on innocent victims.
Leaning forward into the freezing blizzard Matt led the way and the three of them plodded in single file in the wake of their quarry.
The ruin of the chapel was standing in a world of white. A meadow sloped down from its frontage to a barely discernible tree line. And at its rear a steep mountain rose up to afford it some shelter from the wind.
“What’s the plan?” Pete shouted, having to cup his hand to Matt’s ear to be heard.