by Chris Ryan
Alex felt fury rise in his throat like bile. ‘Right, we do the car,’ he said. ‘They can’t get away if it doesn’t have tyres.’ He went to the front wheel.
Amber grabbed him. ‘Then that leaves them stranded here with us.’
Alex pulled away from her and squatted down.
Amber went round in front of him and took him by the shoulders. ‘Listen. I’ve seen those men, they’ve got guns, they’re vicious. If we let them get away we can help Hex – if we’re not too late . . . If they’re stuck here they’ll turn on us. Our only hope of helping Hex is if we stay alive.’
The sound stopped and a torch flashed around the beach.
Amber and Alex shrank back into the shadows. The men were coming back to the Range Rover. The noise of the helicopter circled close and then moved away.
‘We’ll go without lights,’ said one of the men. ‘That way they won’t find us.’
They climbed in and started the engine. The tyres spun on the pebbles, then found a grip. The four-wheel drive roared, then took them up onto the moor and away.
Alex and Amber wasted no time. Keeping low, they ran from their hiding place to the area where they had seen the men. Yes, it was a cave.
Amber flashed her torch in. ‘Hex?’ she called. ‘Hex! Tiff!’
The sound echoed back at her.
‘Hex!’ called Alex.
Trembling, Amber stepped into the cave. There were rocks scattered all over the floor. ‘Hex! Tiff!’
The only answer was dripping water. Were they too late? Would they find Hex and Tiff beaten to death?
Amber walked towards the back of the cave. The floor became sandy, swallowing her boots. She went slowly, shining her torch in front of her feet. Then she found the shaft.
She shone her torch in. It glanced off something blue. A jumble of blue drums. ‘Alex!’ she called.
Alex picked his way over to her. The shaft was filled with chemical drums. A pair of eyes looked up from them, the nose barely above the water line.
‘Tiff!’ exclaimed Alex.
Tiff stared at him blankly. Was she alive?
Alex put his torch down on the edge of the shaft and reached for her. Tiff remained where she was, staring, silent, her expression unchanging.
‘Amber, I think they’re drugged. They can’t move.’
Alex slipped into the water. It was full of drums. His feet touched them and they turned round like slippery balls. He tried to push the surface ones aside but they hardly moved. They must have been weighed down with stones to stop them floating out if the shaft flooded to the top.
At least that explained what the noise was. It was the men throwing them in. They must have drugged Hex and Tiff, then dumped these barrels on top of them so that they would drown.
He reached Tiff and tilted her head back. She was breathing very shallowly. Right. Now he just had to get her out.
‘Hex!’ called Amber. She was searching every shadow between the drums, going over and over them, she still hadn’t found him. Finally she spotted a pale patch.
Like Tiff, only his eyes and nose were poking out. He was nearly under the water.
Amber left her torch on the edge and slipped in.
‘Watch these drums,’ called Alex. With one arm he held Tiff under her shoulders. With the other he tried to push drums out of the way. His feet slipped and he thudded down on the drums.
Amber half walked, half waded through them. Her feet slipped from under her and she carried on on all fours. Hex looked at her. His eyes were open, but nothing moved. A barrel rolled under her shoulder and she crashed into the water on her side. It tasted sharp, tainted with the chemicals that had washed out of the barrels. She emerged, spitting. The cave resonated with hollow booms as Alex tried to fight his way out with Tiff.
Amber went the rest of the way sliding on her belly. She reached Hex. His dark eyes seemed alert but expressionless. She tilted his head back so that the mouth was uncovered but he didn’t move. He was helpless. ‘OK,’ she muttered to herself. ‘How are we going to get you out?’
She slipped down in the water and tried to pull at his shoulders. His short dark hair against her face smelled pungently chemical. She pulled again and he came up a little, but this wasn’t going to be easy. He was strong and fit, and all that muscle made for a lot of weight.
Alex reached the edge of the shaft and pulled Tiff out. Her face looked up, lifeless. He put his ear down to her nose and mouth. She wasn’t breathing any more.
Alex opened her mouth and checked. Her airway was clear. He took a deep breath, pinched her nose and tilted her head back for the kiss of life.
Amber pulled on Hex’s shoulders again, but still he wouldn’t move. She braced her feet on a drum and gave a good yank, but he was stuck. The drums rolled under her feet and she went crashing under him.
Amber kicked out to push herself up. The drum she had her feet on revolved and she slipped further down. That seemed to free Hex. He rolled, his broad back solid on top of her. She pushed up but there was nothing to spring off, just those rotating barrels. She flailed with her hands but the body was still on top of her. She opened her eyes – she could see nothing and they stung with the tainted water. Her lungs were bursting. Her clawing hands met only Hex’s unresponsive skin and more of those barrels.
Hex thought he had entered hell. He knew Amber was stuck underneath him but he couldn’t move to free her. If he hadn’t been drugged, he could have rolled or got out of the way. He could have called to Alex, who was kneeling over Tiff, concentrating on getting her to breathe.
Hex couldn’t feel Amber, but he could hear her. He could hear the muffled sounds of her fists and legs pummelling on the barrels, as they uselessly rotated like ball bearings. She was slipping further in like a stick into quicksand.
The drumming was getting fainter. How long had she been under? If only he could move.
His confused brain gave him a reboot. Remember when you saw Alex on the drug. This might be another hallucination. His logical brain was trying to defend him, trying to keep him sane. He couldn’t really be about to kill Amber. It must be something from his worst claustrophobic nightmare. She wasn’t really going to die here, in this cave, trapped by his useless body.
Another voice sounded in his ear. ‘Come on, you useless lump.’
Alex. He heaved at Hex’s arm. Hex bumped over the barrels like rollers on a conveyor belt. Beyond him he heard Amber explode to the surface.
Alex looked up into the sky. The helicopter beat through the air, circling. He tucked the waterproof matches back into his survival tin and put it in his pocket. A branch stood upright in the pebble beach, the top a plume of flame. With petrol from the quad bike and a T-shirt, Alex had made a distress signal.
Amber was paddling in the sea, washing the chemical tainted water off her skin. Tiff and Hex were lying on the pebbles, breathing in the cool night air.
The smoke caught Hex’s throat and he coughed.
Amber looked at him crossly. ‘Don’t think you’ll get the sympathy vote.’
Alex looked at the two prostrate figures. In the firelight they looked peaceful. ‘At least whatever they’ve been given has kept them quiet.’
Hex couldn’t have spoken even if he hadn’t been drugged. He needed to think. He’d nearly killed Amber. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this game any more.
32
AFTERMATH
Hex sat on a bench in the police station, waiting to give his statement. In front of him, the doors to the four interrogation rooms were closed, red lights indicating that interviews were in progress. The top officers of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency had been drafted in, and Amber, Alex, Paulo and Li were giving detailed statements.
The SDEA had been monitoring the situation ever since a routine check had picked up Paulo and Li’s initial report to the local police about the gamekeepers with the pills on the moor. Now Alpha Force were giving them virtually a complete picture of the operation – how the raw materials
were stored in the lodge, transported to the factory on the moors inside deer carcasses; how the finished pills were transported to the bothy for packaging when there was an order; and how orders were shipped out from a lonely part of the coast by boat. The SDEA estimated the factory must be turning out several thousand pills a week, each batch with a street value of thousands of pounds.
Every spare policeman in the area was working on the case. They were removing evidence from the factory. They were going through the storeroom at the lodge. They had already dredged the cave, excavating tonnes of stone-filled barrels. Plus something else. They had found a decomposing body, shot in the throat at point-blank range.
Hex heard a creak as the swing door opened. A WPC showed out a man with a silvered beard. He was walking very slowly, as if he had had shocking news.
‘How long do you need to keep him for?’ he was asking the WPC.
‘No more than a few days. We’re trying to get the coroner now. Once we’ve done the post-mortem and forensic examination we can release the body to you. You can start making funeral arrangements.’
The man nodded.
The WPC smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s not been a good holiday for you, has it, Mr Fletcher? The arson attack and now this.’ She opened a door to show him through to reception.
Mr Fletcher. Martin Fletcher. Hex never forgot a name. Martin Fletcher was the hiker who had been trapped in the burning bothy with Alex and Paulo.
The two figures pushed out through the door into reception, leaving Hex alone with his thoughts again.
The light on one of the interrogation rooms went off and Alex came out. A plainclothes officer followed him with a clipboard. ‘We’ll be ready for you in five minutes,’ he said to Hex.
Alex sat down beside Hex.
‘You look pleased,’ said Hex.
Alex was smiling. ‘There’s loads of evidence on the gamekeepers. The police think they were responsible for a factory in Glasgow a couple of years ago, but they shut up shop and scarpered. That Ivanovich guy is a real coup. He’s Russian Mafia and he’s been wanted for ages. And then there’s the body in the cave.’
‘Who was he?’ Hex grimaced. ‘I’d like to know who I was sharing my bath with.’
‘His name’s James Fletcher. He’s a professor of astronomy. He was staying at a bed and breakfast in March and he disappeared. They never found his body. Until now. They think he stumbled on something and was executed.’
‘James Fletcher . . . Martin Fletcher . . . they must be brothers.’ Hex saw Alex’s bemused expression and explained. ‘Martin Fletcher’s the guy you were trapped in the bothy with, right? I just saw him here now. He was identifying someone.’
It made sense. ‘Oh yes. He mentioned he had a brother who used to come here. Poor guy.’ Alex shuddered. They had all nearly joined him.
Hex’s mind was on the same thing. ‘I suppose the two thugs who tried to kill me and Tiff have gone free, though.’
A smile of triumph played over Alex’s lips. ‘No they haven’t. Remember Paulo spent all that time tinkering with the Range Rover? The tracker had been disconnected. He got it working again. The police picked them up about an hour down the road.’
Hex laughed quietly to himself. ‘That is stylish,’ he said. ‘Very stylish.’ He’d enjoy giving the evidence that ensured they stayed behind bars.
‘When you were in the lodge,’ said Alex, ‘did you get any evidence on the laird?’
Hex thought. ‘We overheard one conversation with the gamekeepers and the two heavies.’
‘Was it taped?’
Hex shook his head.
Alex sighed. ‘That’s a pity. They’ve interviewed him but there’s no actual evidence to pin on him. He says he’s a city boy and lets his staff run the place. He had no idea that storeroom was full of the raw materials for drugs. Allegedly. They’ve looked into his history to see if he has a previous record but they can’t even work out where he came from.’
‘I’m sure he was the third man who came to the hostel,’ said Hex. ‘I remember his kilt. He was even wearing it later. But when I looked it up on the database, I saw it was a standard pattern to fob off tourists who want fake Scottish ancestry. Hardly enough to make a positive identification.’
Alex was grinning.
‘What’s the joke?’
‘Just my puerile sense of humour. You looked up his kilt and you didn’t find anything.’
Hex laughed and shoved him on the shoulder. ‘Get out of here. I’ve got to go and give evidence in a minute. You’ll upset my concentration.’
Alex stood up. ‘I’m going to get some air. See you soon.’ He pushed his way out through the swing doors.
Hex got out his palmtop. Now Alex had gone, he had a few minutes before the plainclothes officer came back to interview him. Just enough time . . .
There was a file he’d sent to a secure website while he was on the computer in the Glaickvullin shop.
Alex walked out into the car park. The sun was shining. It glinted off the windows of a taxi as it pulled in. It bleached out the ridges in the concrete drive. Behind, the moor rose up steeply, a cliff of purple heather.
A silver-haired figure came out of in the shadows of the building. He walked past Alex, his red Gore-Tex jacket over his arm. Martin Fletcher. Poor man, thought Alex. He looks lost. What’s it like to find out your brother was murdered?
As he walked down the three concrete steps, he tripped. Alex rushed to help him up. He found his arm gripped in a fist of iron.
Martin Fletcher’s grey eyes pierced his like two flints. He spoke in a low voice. ‘I’ve had my eye on you. When you’ve finished here, come and see me at MI5.’ He handed Alex a business card.
Alex looked at the card. It had a name and a number on it, nothing more.
The taxi pulled up. A petite figure got out and Alex caught a glimpse of pink shoes. Tiff, come to give evidence. She skipped up the steps and the taxi pulled away.
Martin Fletcher hadn’t finished with Alex. ‘Tell Hex when he wants a change of scene to e-mail johnsmith.’
‘John Smith?’ repeated Alex. But it wasn’t quite the way Martin Fletcher had said it.
‘johnsmith. All one word, lower case.’
He brushed the dust off his hands and walked away across the bleached car park.
Hex completed his task and put the palmtop back on standby. The plainclothes officer still hadn’t come back. The outer door swung open again. Alex, thought Hex.
Instead of Alex’s walking boots he saw faded pink Converse trainers.
It was Tiff. Her blonde hair was pushed up into a tweed cap and her face was pale. ‘Mind if I sit here?’
It was the first time Tiff had asked for anything. Usually she demanded.
Hex moved over on the bench and she sat down. ‘You OK?’
‘I think I preferred the other pills I took.’ She actually looked sheepish.
‘Yeah,’ said Hex. ‘It looked like they were more fun.’
Tiff stared at her feet. ‘I’ve been an idiot.’
This was a different Tiff talking. She was sad, like the other evening when she’d taken the drug, but this time she knew what she was saying.
As she had then, she reminded Hex of so much. Particularly a spoilt rich girl who had been desperately unhappy. He had an urge to put his arm around her. Instead he grinned. ‘You were more than an idiot.’
If he’d said that to the old Tiff, it would have lit the blue touch-paper. Instead she nodded and flexed her feet thoughtfully. ‘I hated everything. I took it out on you guys. I was petty and spoiled, while there was all this life and death stuff going on around me. Tell everyone I’m sorry.’
Hex put his hand on her arm. ‘A few years ago I hated everything too. Then I met some people.’
Tiff was quiet, thinking about what he’d said. ‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Keep in touch, right? Just as friends, nothing scary. Tell the others too.’ She lifted her
hand as if inviting him to arm-wrestle her. ‘Respect.’
Hex clasped her hand. ‘Respect.’
The sun was shining in Glasgow too, but the figure hunched over the computer had drawn the curtains across the window to block it out. Duncan Stewart was staring at the screen, unable to believe what he was seeing. But he had to. And it was serious. His bank account had been cleaned out.
Fists pummelling on the front door made him jump. No one hammered on doors like that – except the police.
The police were people Duncan Stewart liked to steer well clear of. The house was full of ecstasy pills; he’d just sold a shipment for London. Cautiously, he peered out of the window into the litter-strewn street below.
It wasn’t the police. It was a guy with tattooed shoulders and a gold Rolex watch. Fergus. But why was he trying to hammer down the door? Were the police after him?
The thundering came again. ‘Duncan!’ he heard. ‘Get up, ya lazy bastard.’
Duncan raced down the stairs. His heart was hammering. If the police were onto them, they’d better dump that ecstasy fast. He snatched open the door.
Fergus nearly ran over him as he came in. He slammed the door behind him. He looked furious.
Duncan asked first. ‘Have you been busted?’
‘My bank account’s been cleaned out.’
Duncan felt a mixture of emotions. Relief, because he didn’t have to get rid of all the drugs and scrub his house clean. But what Fergus said reminded him of what he’d just seen on his computer screen upstairs.
Fergus marched past him. ‘Where’s your hardware?’ It was a rhetorical question; he seemed to know. He pulled open a cupboard and slid out a box of buckshot cartridges.
‘My bank account’s empty too. I just saw it this minute.’
‘Yeah. Well I saw it twenty minutes ago. My son’s done an audit trail. And guess whose fingerprints he found? That clever bastard Frank Allen.’
Fergus tossed Duncan a sawn-off shotgun and picked up another for himself.
‘Laddie, I think it’s time we went hunting in the north.’
33
THE BEACH