Cold Revenge

by Jo A. Hiestand

“We weren’t one hundred percent certain you’d drive that way, mind you, but it was no big deal if you didn’t. Karin faked her wound and sat by the roadside. I gave her your car description. It was simple. All she had to do was wait and wave away other offers of help, if there’d been any. And, as I said, if you didn’t show up, well, no harm done. It was just a bit of fun designed to annoy you.”

  “And the beer bottles?”

  “That was Sean. We wanted to remind you of that little pub episode with Tyrone Wade Antony and your dismissal from the Force. And Charlie Harvester. Did it work?” She smiled, lowering her eyes like a 1920s vamp.

  “But Harvester didn’t have anything to do with the murder, did he?” McLaren said as Linnet shook off Jamie’s hand. “Or with framing Sean.”

  “No.” She said it almost as a shout of victory. “We just talked about ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day Michael McLaren fell flat on his face?’ but Charlie had nothing to do with any of this. I was the only one involved.”

  “Hardly you alone, Linnet. You had to have help. As you pointed out to me, you were home. But Danny Mercer wasn’t.” The faintest smile played at the corners of his lips as the shock registered on her face.

  A faint noise, like a door latch catching in place, came from the back of the house. Linnet pushed herself away from the mantel and said rather loudly, “Danny Mercer? Whatever made you think that Danny is mixed up in Marta’s death, Mr. McLaren? Is that why you brought this police constable with you?”

  Another sound, louder and sharper, cracked the brief silence. The bang of a door slamming and the rattle of Venetian blinds hitting a window jabbed McLaren into action. As Jamie handcuffed Linnet, McLaren ran into the kitchen.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The blinds were swinging as McLaren yanked open the door. He paused momentarily on the threshold, looking for Danny, wary of an attack or weapon. The sound of running feet came from the direction of the road. McLaren dashed down the alley and to the front of the house.

  Danny ran down the center of the road, dodging oncoming cars and glancing back, his figure bright in the headlights. He paused at a new Skia and tried to insert his key but he probably couldn’t control his shaking hand. McLaren charged up to him, Danny abandoned his car and sprinted down a side road.

  The daylight was rapidly failing, the parked vehicles, rubbish bins, and clipped shrubs dark shapes against a murky backdrop. McLaren paused at the mouth of the side road, trying to distinguish forms in the gloom. A movement to the left centered his attention for an instant, but it was a dog sniffing at the refuse bins. McLaren jogged slowly down the street, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, making no noise other than his ragged breathing. He kept a zigzag course, crossing and recrossing the road to peer behind bushes and cars, any place Danny might be hiding.

  He turned sharply toward the sound of scraping metal, his body tensing, his heart rate increasing. A man was dumping rubbish into his refuse bin.

  At the house next door, an older woman opened her front door and the light from her front room spilled onto the front pavement. McLaren dashed to the cypress standing like a sentinel at her front gate and glanced behind it. No Danny.

  He had jogged to the end of the road and was about to retrace his steps when a shape emerged from the front garden ahead. He stopped abruptly, startled by the sudden movement and the realization that the massive form was two people walking close together, holding hands. As the couple moved into the faint light from the house, the young woman smiled tentatively at McLaren. The man, however, mumbled something into her ear and nuzzled her neck with his forehead. His left hand, McLaren noticed, was around the girl’s shoulders. His right hand was in his jeans pocket. The girl shifted her eyes from the man to McLaren, then repeated the gesture as her lips silently formed the word ‘help.’ McLaren nodded and walked past them.

  The older woman eyed the couple as she finished setting out her rubbish, then called her dog and went inside. As the front door closed with a dull thud, the road sank back into darkness.

  McLaren turned and charged after the couple, covering the scant distance in seconds and shouting for the woman to run into the road. McLaren grabbed Danny’s left arm; he angled it behind Danny, using it as leverage to simultaneously release the woman and force Danny to the ground. She scooted behind a parked car and crouched, her fingers gripping the back bumper, her head peeking above the boot as she watched the fight.

  It was brief. Danny swung at McLaren with his right fist but missed. His foot lashed out at McLaren’s legs and he succeeded in landing one blow with his heel before McLaren brought him to the ground. He kept his hand on Danny’s arm and placed his foot on Danny’s back, pressing him against the pavement as he regained his breath.

  “Are you all right, miss?” He looked at the woman from his bent over position.

  She got to her feet, sliding her hands to the car’s boot in an effort to support herself. “Yes, thanks.” Her voice quivered slightly. “I was walking up to my car and he jumped out of the shadows and grabbed me. He made me walk with him, pretend I knew him. Who is he? Do you know him?”

  “He’s a man who made a wrong decision, unfortunately. Get up.” He grabbed Danny’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. McLaren eyed the woman, uncertain if she’d escaped injury. “You’re sure you’re all right? He didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine. Just a bit scared.” She dusted her hands on her jeans. “I expect I’ll laugh about this tomorrow. Or at least be the envy of my friends. You know,” she said when McLaren smiled, “helping catch a burglar. Or whatever he’s done.” She tilted her head, trying to make out Danny’s features in the darkness. “He do something like that? Are you the police?”

  “I’m taking him to the police now.” McLaren tightened his grip on Danny’s arm. “And yes, he did something like that.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m afraid, miss, I’ll have to send a police officer to your house to ask you a few questions, since it is a police matter.” His voice trailed off as he studied her face, assessing if she were emotionally stable for the interview.

  “Yes, certainly. You’ll need some kind of witness statement, I expect.” She pointed to the last house in the row. “I live just there. Will it be tonight?”

  “An officer will contact you to let you know. He’ll tell you he’s calling on behalf of Michael McLaren. That’s me. Michael McLaren.”

  “I’d like to help, if I can.” She glanced again at Danny, perhaps memorizing his features and clothing. “Whenever the officer comes is fine. Thank you for helping me.”

  “Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame tomorrow.” He left her on the pavement. It wasn’t until he had turned the corner that he could no longer make out her figure in the darkness.

  The rest of the story came out as McLaren walked Danny back to Linnet’s house. Though sullen and angry at first, Danny finally admitted that he and Linnet had split the casino winnings when he killed Marta. He used some of the money to buy his racing car, some he still had, and some he used to buy drugs. Marta had got into his car that fateful night because he said he wanted her advice about a problem he had.

  “She hesitated at first, but she was like that, trying to help people, so she never suspected a trap.” Marta had broken the heel off her shoe as she tried to run from Danny at the barn. “I never could find it,” he confessed after explaining that he’d kept the shoe as evidence in case he needed to blackmail Linnet at some future date. He hadn’t missed the racing club membership until weeks later. By then he was too nervous to go back to the barn to look for it. “I had it on the front seat, where I left it after my previous race. I guess it fell out when I pulled her from the car.”

  McLaren’s stomach tightened as he imagined the small, thin woman trying to run through the wood, but he said nothing. He was neither judge nor jury. Nor God, he thought, wondering briefly what would become of Danny. The man had begun his narrative by answering McLaren’s questions in short, thunder
ous snaps, but by the end the replies had subsided into muffled whimpers.

  Jamie cautioned Danny and handcuffed him as a second police car drove up. He nodded to the officer, opened the back door, and settled Danny in the rear seat.

  Linnet, in Jamie’s car, sat sullen and silent, and stared straight ahead. The village had grown quiet. A ribbon of ash gray clouds seemed pinned just above the horizon in the west. There were no moon or stars in the blackness that stretched above their heads. No fox barked, no owl called, no breath of wind stirred the tree branches. It was as if they were the only souls awake in the bleak landscape.

  McLaren tilted back his head, taking a deep breath of cool air, looking into the vastness of the somber sky. He felt small, as he always did when standing in the throat of the Winnats. Or when walking through Dove Dale. The enormity of nature welled up around him, threatened to engulf him in its wildness and beauty. The thud of the car door slamming closed pulled him from his reverie and Jamie walked up to him.

  “Hey, Mike, the Super will want you to write up a few things.” Jamie closed his fist around his car key, searching for something prophetic to say. He cleared his voice and went on. “Uh, can you fit it in between your stone wall work?”

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?” McLaren gave Jamie a half smile, suddenly very tired. “Never ends, does it? I thought I left report writing behind a year ago.”

  “You’re either optimistic or a fool. And I don’t think it’s the latter.” He slapped McLaren on the back. “Nice work, Mike. The Super will be in touch soon.”

  “Sounds like a threat. Thanks for the hand, Jamie.” He waved as Jamie walked back to his car.

  On the drive home, McLaren thought about the case. He would get nothing more than the retainer Linnet had already given him, but he was strangely unaffected by the loss of the rest of his fee. Perhaps he did live to see injustices righted after all. Was it a remnant of his police training, the job and what it stood for, or was it a quality deep within him?

  He wondered briefly how Danny had known when to kidnap Marta, when she would arrive home. Linnet had no way of knowing Marta would win at the casino that night. Perhaps it was as simple as Linnet ringing Danny, using her mobile phone from her car in the casino car park, to tell him this was The Night. McLaren squinted at an approaching car’s headlights as he imagined the short one-sentence message. Perhaps Linnet had said something months before. “I’ll let you know when we go to the casino, so you be ready any time. She’s bound to win big one of these nights.” Danny would drive to Marta’s house when he got the word and wait for her in the shadows.

  McLaren exhaled loudly as his fingers curled around the steering wheel in anger. Of course he didn’t have to prove that. The police could search mobile phone records in preparation for the trial. It was enough right now that he had placed Danny at the murder scene and given Jamie the probable murder weapon and the missing shoe. Danny’s fingerprints would be on both. McLaren smiled, for the first time in months feeling happy about the future.

  He turned the car around in the lonely stretch of The Winnats, the windswept mountain pass of the Pennines. Without thinking he headed back the way he had come, driving through Castleton and heading south toward Kirkfield. He had several miles of dark highway to cover and he settled back in the car seat, the B6061 rolling beneath the wheels and his mind rolling through the week’s events. His fingers loosened their grip on the steering wheel and he turned on the stereo. The cassette tape recording started up, the strains of the guitars and viola as familiar as Dena’s face, which hovered before his eyes. As his folk group’s rendition of “Near Woodstock Town” began in earnest he realized it was Wednesday. Unless things had drastically changed in the past year, Dena would be at her sister’s house in Hathersage. He turned the car again and headed for Hathersage as he cranked up the tape’s volume and sang along.

  Several songs and several miles later he entered the village. It was little more than a splash of light in the surrounding dark countryside, its restaurants and pubs open for the night crowd. McLaren passed the Hanoverian Hotel before turning onto the road housing the local police station.

  It was long past regular office work hours and the road was deserted. A few streetlamps shed orange-tinted light on the landscape but outside these pools the street was dark. The familiar blue police lantern shone above the police station door. McLaren parked his car opposite it and got out. He took his time assessing the area, wanting no wayward pub-crawler or village resident to spot him. So he sauntered to the police station, pretending to window shop in the closed establishments nearby. He stopped short of the entrance to the station and picked up a beer bottle lying at the curb. The brown glass caught the light from the police lamp and seemed to wink at McLaren. The irony wasn’t lost on him, and his pent-up rage and hurt broke from him in an unstoppable rush. He felt the weight of the bottle, its curve sitting snugly in his hand rather like a rock for mending stone walls. Taking a deep breath, he threw the bottle at the lamp. A satisfying shattering of glass rewarded his effort and he ran back to his car.

  He slumped against the car seat, imaginary newspaper headlines flashing through his mind. ‘Ex-Cop Caps Cold Case.’ ‘Ex-Cop Comes Thru When Chips Are Down.’ ‘Killer’s Second Mistake: Hiring Ex-Cop.’ He smiled at the reaction the story would undoubtedly cause, both in the media and throughout the Force. He’d again be the topic of conversation around police station water coolers and break rooms, but this time he wouldn’t mind. The talk would be about good police work, not the titillating gossip of a ruined career.

  Opening his mobile phone he punched in Dena’s number. He gazed at the police lamp, at the blue glass broken on two sides where the beer bottle had caught it. The light bulb, he noticed, was shattered. The street lay dark and unpopulated. Police…beer bottles. His thought broke off as Dena’s voice came to him over the phone. He grinned as he imagined her face. “Dena, sweets. I’d like for us to try again. I’m learning to release my emotions.”

  A word about the author…

  Books, scouting, and music filled Jo A. Hiestand’s childhood. She explored the joys of the outdoors through Girl Scout camping trips and summers as a canoeing instructor and camp counselor. Brought up on classical, big band, and baroque music, she was groomed as a concert pianist until forsaking the piano for the harpsichord. She plays a Martin guitar and has sung in a semi-professional folkgroup in the US and as a soloist in England.

  This mixture formed the foundation for her writing. A true Anglophile, Jo wanted to create a mystery series that featured a British police detective who left the Force over an injustice and now investigates cold cases on his own. The result is the McLaren Mysteries.

  Jo’s insistence on accuracy—from police methods to location layouts—has driven her innumerable times to Derbyshire. These explorations and conferences with police friends provide the detail filling the books.

  In 1999 Jo returned to Webster University to major in English. She graduated in 2001 with a BA degree and departmental honors.

  She has combined her love of writing, board games, and music by co-inventing a mystery-solving game, P.I.R.A.T.E.S., which uses maps, graphics, song lyrics, and other clues to lead players to lost treasure.

  Jo founded the Greater St. Louis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, serving as its first president. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America. Besides her love of mysteries and music, she enjoys photography, reading, change ringing, and her backyard wildlife.

  Her cat Tennyson shares her St. Louis home.

  http://www.johiestand.com

  COLD REVENGE has a companion song. “Cold, Haily, Rainy Night” is available on a single-song CD recording. This bluesy folk song is arranged and performed by The Thin Dimes, and is available through the author’s website:

  http://www.johiestand.com/coldrevenge.html

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  >   Jo A. Hiestand, Cold Revenge