The Will Of The People (Conspiracy Trilogy Book 1)

by Christopher Read

  Anderson turned immediately left, sprinting as fast as he could towards the fence; instantly a security light blazed out to show him the way forward. Flat open farmland would hardly help Anderson’s cause and he was convinced the mudflats of the Wash were his only hope: if King John could lose his baggage train and crown jewels there, then one man should easily evade capture. If eventually he could get to a phone, then he would take the gamble and call the authorities – Anderson felt he now had little choice.

  The glare from the security light quickly faded, and the fence was now just a few yards ahead. Abruptly, Anderson sensed a dark figure away to his right, and he pivoted around, almost slipping, gun hand wavering uncertainly.

  “Mike! It’s Charlie!”

  Anderson struggled to comprehend, but then all at once it made perfect sense – the cavalry had arrived, just slightly lacking in numbers.

  * * *

  Gun in one hand, shirt in the other, McDowell raced along the corridor and out through the fire exit. A single security light blazed out into the night, its beam carving out an area of brightness some thirty yards deep, and it took McDowell precious seconds to reorient his sleep-dulled brain. Abruptly, away to his right, he heard a shout then the muffled crack of a pistol.

  McDowell ran towards the sound. Up ahead a burly figure knelt on the grass halfway to the fence, gun raised, peering through the gloom towards the sea wall and the dark shadows dancing along its edge.

  “Fisher!” McDowell shouted. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Anderson’s buggered off,” Fisher replied angrily. “Bastard’s armed and there’s someone else with him.”

  As a breathless Rebane joined McDowell, the alarm was suddenly silenced. “Morton’s half-dead,” Rebane said without emotion. “It could be the girl with Anderson; she’s proving to be as big a problem as him.”

  “What do you want me to do?” McDowell asked, gaze moving along the top of the sea wall. “The phone signal out there is patchy but they’ll get through eventually. If she uses her usual phone we’ll get her position but it might be better for Carter to bar the phone’s SIM.”

  “Agreed,” said Rebane quickly. “I’ll handle the police; we just need to tidy up a bit and get Morton to a hospital.”

  “And Anderson?” McDowell prompted.

  “Take Fisher and go after them,” Rebane ordered quietly. “Kill them only if you have to. I’ll get us some backup.”

  * * *

  Anderson stumbled unseeing into the ditch, his feet slipping their way down the greasy bank and into thick clinging mud. He slithered to a halt and lay on his back, taking in big whooping gasps as his lungs tried to replenish his body’s desperate need for oxygen, every breath tearing at his chest. Charlotte tumbled down into the mud beside him, breathing deeply.

  How best to reach safety? With McDowell and friends close behind, there wasn’t time to concoct something complicated – yet an escape along the sea-wall seemed too obvious a choice. There had been the occasional sound of pursuit, the beam of a torch briefly lighting up the darkness before it was extinguished, but so far nothing too close for comfort.

  “What’s the plan?” Anderson asked in a whisper.

  “There’s no plan,” Charlotte said softly. “Aren’t we just making this up as we go along, pretty much as usual? Heading east looks safest, but I’ve no idea what the tide’s doing.”

  “East it is.” He held Charlotte’s gaze, “What about Jessica? And Adam Devereau?”

  “Mum’s okay in Dublin… I’m sorry, Mike, there was a hit-and-run; Adam’s in intensive care.”

  Anderson nodded in understanding, too angry to speak even though he had expected as much.

  “We need to keep going,” said Charlotte gently.

  Seconds later they were trudging towards what they hoped was the sea, using the gullies as tunnels to safety. The larger ones were deep enough for them to be able to squelch along in a sort of crouching stumble with the gully’s rim above their heads. Each one seemed to contain at least a foot of brackish water, and at any moment Anderson expected to find the sea surging its way towards them. He tried to move as fast as the clinging mud would allow, but it sucked his feet downwards with the grip of a drowning man, the black goo slurping in protest as every leaden step was wrenched from its sticky grasp. The rain started again, a steady drizzle that helped rinse some of the cloying mud from their bodies.

  Unlike Charlotte, Anderson had been restricted in his choice of attire, with T-shirt, jeans and casual shoes all proving a poor choice for such an environment. Twice already the mud had sucked a shoe from his foot; his jeans seemed happy to soak up ever more muck and it felt like he was actually wearing three pairs of trousers. His T-shirt was almost worse than useless, kindly leaving his arms free to be scraped and clawed at by a score of hidden dangers; already his bloodied scratches were now too many to count. Not that Charlotte was fairing much better, her face and hands grazed and bruised, jacket and jeans both torn.

  Charlotte stuck doggedly behind Anderson, the occasional stifled expletive her only form of complaint. Yet Anderson was quickly becoming disorientated: the sea-wall, so long his only guide, was lost in the blackness, and he was relying almost entirely upon intuition and luck. The gullies were becoming shallower now and there were less of them, the landscape gradually changing to one of liquid mud.

  A particularly tenacious pool abruptly resisted Anderson’s attempt to free his feet and he lost his balance, slithering down into the syrupy grip of cold marsh water. Charlotte waddled her way alongside, and then she too collapsed into the mire, her body twisting sideways in a futile attempt to protect her face.

  Exhausted, they lay side-by-side, the thick mud oozing its way around their bodies. Slowly at first, then with gathering intensity, Charlotte began to shake with silent laughter, the sight of them both covered head-to-toe in stinking black sludge pushing her towards hysteria.

  With a sudden push of her arms, she struggled to a sitting position, wiping away the mud from her face to glare at Anderson with a look of part anger, part sympathy. “The Last of the Mohicans, what sort of bloody clue was that? Hours I spent trying to work it out.”

  Anderson clambered to his knees, “Sorry, Rebane was too suspicious, so I just picked any old film.”

  “At least calling me Lottie was one of your better ideas. Sadly, I almost got to like it.”

  “To continue with the mutual appreciation theme – it really was very nice of you to come and rescue me. Or were you just passing through?”

  Charlotte gave a wry smile, “I was out for a pleasant walk and got carried away. The alarm going off scared the shit out of me and then you appeared – that was the good news, but I wasn’t expecting a full-scale war with people shooting at me.”

  “Unfortunately, it all seems to have got out of hand. Going to Warsaw wasn’t going to be much of a holiday, more of a catastrophe; so I thought it best to reject their kind offer. McDowell and I weren’t getting on too well anyway... What’s in the back-pack, anything to drink?”

  Charlotte slipped the back-pack from her shoulders and struggled with the zip. “Water, food, and phone – assuming I can find the battery.”

  “Hang fire on the phone,” said Anderson. “Once you get a signal it’s possible to use the GPS chip to track us. Does McDowell know your number?”

  Charlotte thought for a moment, “I used my phone when I organised your visit last week; so it’s possible.”

  Anderson weighed up the risks and was still none the wiser, neither option particularly attractive. “Your phone, your choice,” he said finally.

  Charlotte didn’t have such doubts. “Who do I call?”

  “Forget 999; we need the number for the anti-terrorist hotline.”

  Charlotte cleaned her hands as best she could before fumbling around in her back-pack; water first, then battery and phone. Her hands were shaking again but this time it was definitely down to the cold.

  “No signal.” she announced
after a few seconds. With a sigh of regret she removed the battery, replacing it and the phone carefully into her back-pack.

  Anderson struggled to his feet, peering through the darkness at the surrounding mudflats. “Where’s your car?” he asked eventually.

  “South at Freiston Shore,” Charlotte replied. She looked pointedly at Anderson, “North?”

  “North,” Anderson confirmed. “We can try the phone again in fifteen minutes.”

  “And exactly which way is north?”

  “The one opposite to south, Charlie; it’s obvious.”

  Charlotte gave a despairing shake of her head and they began to trudge in a direction which their combined intuition assumed was north. Anderson again led the way, trying to keep the expanse of mud to his right, gullies to his left. It was now almost one-thirty, and he was conscious that they needed to be somewhere less open by the time it became light. There was also the concern that the tide might suddenly decide to assist McDowell and start chasing them as well.

  Abruptly Anderson froze. A whispered warning to Charlotte, then he turned towards where he sensed the sea wall should be, listening intently, foolishly imagining for a moment that he had heard the sound of a car door slamming shut.

  Moments later a searchlight blazed through the darkness away to his left. The source looked to be some sort of multi-beam spotlight, seemingly mounted on a vehicle sitting atop the outer sea wall to the south. For once Anderson’s sense of direction had been pretty good, and they had in fact been travelling roughly parallel to the embankment, now perhaps some three hundred yards distant.

  The searchlight beam slowly travelled eastwards, sweeping across the mudflats, before starting a parallel traverse a few yards further to the north but still several hundred yards south of Anderson and Charlotte.

  They quickened their pace, then a second searchlight illuminated the night, this time ahead of them to the north, the beam playing back and forth, highlighting an area no more than eighty yards away.

  With casual ease, the second beam waltzed ever closer; Anderson grabbed Charlotte and pulled her to the ground, right arm pressing her down into the mire. The searchlight beam swept towards them, slid past, stopped, moved on again, then suddenly reversed, gliding back towards them.

  It crossed directly over Anderson’s body, the light reflecting for an instant from his watch. The beam continued to creep slowly along the mudflat, until abruptly it pulled away, sweeping round to the south as something else attracted its attention.

  Charlotte twisted around to lie on her back, hands furiously wiping the muck away from her face. She tried glaring at Anderson but could barely see, her second option of roundly questioning his parentage also difficult with a mouthful of sludge. In the end she merely spat out a glob of mud and a single well-chosen expletive, knowing that Anderson had had little choice.

  Anderson was keen not to wait around for the searchlight’s return. With Charlotte in tow, he headed north and roughly parallel to the sea wall, the two of them scrambling their way from one disgusting mud hole to the next. The two searchlights stayed to the south, gliding back and forth in a fruitless search for their quarry.

  After another twenty minutes, Anderson called a halt. They sat side by side on one of the more solid clumps of mud, sharing the rest of the bottled water whilst planning out their next move. The phone option again proved futile, it choosing to display ‘SIM Blocked’ in protest at its treatment.

  They left it until two-thirty before moving inland, the searchlights having abandoned their quest a good fifteen minutes earlier. Both Charlotte and Anderson were suffering badly from the cold, their best insulation a thick layer of sludge.

  Yet it was far easier than the outward journey. Now the gullies could be waded across rather than being needed for protection. Eventually the sea-wall appeared through the darkness, and as an extra reward the rain stopped. Anderson was feeling relatively optimistic, rethinking who best to contact and how exactly to play it. The stinking mud was starting to dry, forming a crazy-paving like crust over most of Anderson’s body.

  Some forty yards short of the sea-wall, he felt a gentle tug at his arm, and he turned to see Charlotte gazing at something over his shoulder. Even as Anderson turned back, he heard the slap of boots on the sodden ground. Instinctively, he reached to his jeans pocket for the gun, then common-sense prevailed, and with exaggerated care he moved both hands away from his body.

  Torchlight played across Anderson, a second beam illuminating Charlotte. Seconds later, McDowell emerged from the gloom, gun in hand, his smile a reflection both of triumph, and anticipation.

  Some ten minutes after their enforced return to Erdenheim, Charlotte stood silent, arm held tightly by a surly-looking woman, watching through tear-filled eyes as McDowell taught Anderson a lesson in manners, or perhaps it was a reward for his own treatment of Laurel.

  It was brief but very unpleasant. Letting Charlotte see for herself Anderson’s punishment was McDowell’s way of permanently ending false hope. And with Charlotte’s capture, Anderson’s value as a hostage seemed to have depreciated significantly.

  It was then Charlotte’s turn, but there no physical violence, just a barrage of questions. Charlotte wisely stuck to the truth, responding with a mix of hostile restraint and bitterness. However, the anger was still there, Charlotte having to vehemently deny her mother knew anything of her plans; then it was back to a sullen tone to explain why she wouldn’t be missed at work.

  Left alone at last, Charlotte helped a half-conscious and still-dressed Anderson into the shower, washing away mud, muck and blood. Nothing seemed broken, but just about everywhere was tender to her touch. McDowell had been keen to emphasise that Warsaw was still the plan: whether they were sticking with the promised sea trip or it was now to be by air, he hadn’t said. Either way, it didn’t seem a journey to look forward to.

  * * *

  Rebane sat at Erdenheim’s bar toying with an early breakfast of eggs and bacon, eyes heavy with lack of sleep. McDowell pulled up a stool to sit beside him, a steaming mug of black coffee in hand, happier now the loose ends were finally being tidied away.

  “Helene,” McDowell reported, “has picked up Saunders’ car from Freiston Shore; she should be back from East Midlands in a few hours. Carter’s already working on the flight adjustments.”

  “And Anderson,” Rebane asked, “I trust he’s still alive?”

  “I was careful. A few bruises is barely enough for what he did to Morton; the poor bastard’s got a fractured jaw and broken nose – I should have done the same to Anderson.”

  When Rebane merely gave a tired nod of understanding, McDowell continued, “Why not just save all this effort and kill them both now? You can still dump them in the North Sea.”

  Giving Anderson free reign in the hope he would get bored had proved to be foolish and Rebane would have been happy enough to follow McDowell’s advice if it hadn’t been for the problem of Jessica Saunders; he certainly had no wish to wipe out the entire Saunders’ clan unless it became absolutely necessary.

  “We need Charlotte to keep up the pretence with her mother,” explained Rebane with a hint of annoyance.” If Jessica Saunders becomes suspicious – what then? Kill her as well? The police can hardly ignore two deaths and a missing daughter. We’ll simply be focusing everyone’s attention back on Marshwick and then Erdenheim. Is that what you want?”

  “Just checking,” McDowell said, not bothered by Rebane’s sarcasm.

  “Jessica Saunders is in Dublin for a while longer,” Rebane said wearily, hand rubbing his brow in an attempt to focus his thoughts, “then on to her brother’s in the south. Whether we like it or not, we need to leave her alone. Charlotte will co-operate, if only to protect her mother.”

  “Whatever you say,” McDowell said unhelpfully. “If she’s anything like the other two, then I just hope you’ve got a back-up plan.”

  “I always have a back-up plan,” Rebane replied, with a half-smile. “Sometimes even a secon
d reserve...”

  * * *

  The van slowed to a halt and Charlotte heard the driver’s door open and close. McDowell sat opposite, finger moving to his lips in a warning not to make a sound. Although their trip from Erdenheim had been relatively short, it hadn’t been the most comfortable of journeys, with all three seated on the bare metal of the vehicle’s floor, backs pushed against the sides of the van. Charlotte and Anderson sat side-by-side, handcuffed together, warily watching as McDowell’s gun with its silencer had swapped aim from one to the other, fearful in case the van should hit an unusually deep pot-hole. Now the gun was rather less mobile, resting on McDowell’s thigh and pointed loosely at Anderson, almost as though tempting one of them to try something stupid.

  After some five minutes the driver returned and the van cruised slowly to its destination, reversing the last few yards. Again the driver left them alone, and McDowell repeated his warning as to the need for silence. From outside, Charlotte could hear people talking, the words indistinct, also machinery and the clink of metal on metal.

  Abruptly, the rear doors were pulled open. Only yards away towered the blue-painted hull of a cargo ship, sunlight glinting off the pillar box red of her hold and hatch covers. McDowell clambered out onto the concrete dock, impatiently gesturing at Charlotte and Anderson to do the same. Charlotte shuffled her way forward, having to work with Anderson so they could simultaneously slide off the rear edge of the van.

  It had been years since Charlotte had last visited Boston’s small port, but it could be nowhere else. Not that she could see much, a grey warehouse to her left, the river away to her right. Even before their eyes could adjust to the early-morning sunshine, McDowell pushed them forward, hustling them up onto the gangway. The van driver followed close behind, a suitcase in each hand.

  The Princess Eloise looked to be relatively modern, although there was still plenty of chipped paint and well-worn metal. Sturdy but somehow also elegant, her white superstructure reached up to the radio mast and a flag of blue, yellow and green. It was a combination Charlotte frustratingly failed to recognise: a vertical band for each colour, with three green diamond shapes in the centre, arranged like a V.