by Nick Oldham
He tried to get more from the engine, but it was a sluggish chunk of machinery.
‘Come on,’ he urged it.
There was perhaps half an inch either side as he shot through the gates and swerved on to the road back to Kendleton, tight, twisting, precarious, clinging to contours of the hills with a steep, craggy drop into the River Roeburn to his right as he drove in a north-westerly direction along the road he had earlier travelled.
He gripped the wheel, ground his teeth, and felt a little flush of victory. He had out-run some seriously bad guys, but now he needed to make it to the safety net of civilization and that meant reaching Kendleton, the Tawny Owl and, hopefully, the cops who should still be there.
Looking in the side mirror, he gave a tight gasp of despair when he caught sight of two menacing-looking black Range Rovers maybe a hundred metres behind.
EIGHT
FBI employee Karl Donaldson was enjoying his morning run through the countryside around Kendleton as much as he could in spite of the worrying news from Henry about the attempted abduction of Ginny during the early hours. Otherwise, Donaldson was enjoying the break in north Lancashire, a couple of days’ respite from his job in London.
He was mainly a gatherer and disseminator of intelligence, working with many police forces across Europe and the world, and was currently deep into a multi-agency investigation into an Albanian crime family with connections to Central American drug cartels and who, Donaldson also believed, had just murdered an undercover FBI agent. Donaldson was close on the coat tails of this particular family and he was keen to mete out some summary justice, hopefully in the near future because, as Henry Christie suspected, but could not prove, Donaldson’s remit in the FBI extended far beyond paperwork and desk-jockeying.
The break to attend Rik Dean’s wedding to Henry’s sister had been welcome. He had not been spending enough time with his wife recently and chilling out, having a drink and then getting very intimate with her had been fantastic for them both.
He had jogged away from the Tawny Owl with no real plan, other than to make it long, keep going for a couple of hours at least, maybe do a little off-road exploration along a few woodland tracks and paths, but generally come around in a circular route back to Kendleton using the GPS on his very fancy wristwatch for guidance.
About ninety slow minutes out, Donaldson had followed a few tracks, met dead ends or impossible terrain, spun around, followed others, but finally found himself on a forest track that narrowed and almost disappeared to nothing in a plantation.
This is where he found the Land Rover, which he knew belonged to a local gamekeeper as it had been parked outside the Tawny Owl as he’d set off for his run.
He thought nothing of it. Gamekeepers, he guessed, parked in isolated places, but even so, he slowed down and came to a standstill alongside the mud-splattered vehicle.
He caught his breath. He’d been going slow, but maybe he’d pushed himself too far. His regular running track was the rather flatter Hyde Park. Even so, he felt good and alive, inhaling the beautiful air around here.
When his breathing was normal, he stood still and listened.
Listened to nothing. The silence. Unlike running through the capital which constantly bombarded his eardrums and senses with heavy traffic and people.
That was when he heard the double ‘cracking’ noise, like two light coughs.
Then nothing.
Then another single crack.
All three noises were accompanied by a metallic snickering sound.
Donaldson remained completely still because he knew exactly what he had heard. Suppressed shot from an automatic pistol, in the trees, maybe sixty metres away from where he stood.
He wondered if the gamekeeper was having a bit of fun with an unapproved weapon, though he doubted it. Shotguns were the tools of that trade and to be found carrying a handgun would at the very least be dismissal from the job.
Donaldson knew exactly what he had heard, although he questioned himself momentarily because the sound in this context did not make sense. He had lived with firearms all his working life, fired them regularly at targets and sometimes at people, had even taken a bullet himself and even now, years later, could still feel the track the slug had taken up through his abdomen, almost killing him.
It wasn’t so much the suppressed coughing sound. What made it odd was the bit that wasn’t silenced, the metallic action of the breech, the ejection of the spent cartridge. Each gun had its own distinctive sound in that respect, so Donaldson, who had fired hundreds of different weapons in his life and become familiar with many of them, would put money on the noise he had heard as being that of a Browning 9mm, once very much a military favourite, especially with British armed forces.
So, he wondered, a Browning in the middle of a woodland glade in rural Lancashire?
He walked up to the Land Rover and peered into the cab, shading his eyes.
Empty. He wandered to the back door, which was locked, and looked in through the window where he saw a shotgun cabinet secured to the bulkhead. It was open with a shotgun visible inside it. He tried the door handle. Locked.
He hesitated, rolling his chiselled jaw.
There was something very uncomfortable about what he had just heard and because the need to investigate had been drilled into him, become part of him, in over twenty years with the FBI, he knew he had to check it out and would rather do so armed and dangerous.
He picked up a stone about the size of half a house brick and weighed it in the palm of his hand.
‘You shouldn’t have found me,’ the sniper whispered to Tod Rawstron as he dragged his dead body through the grass by the legs. ‘You idiot.’
He dropped the legs which thumped down, then went back for the damned fucking dog.
His intention was to scoop out a shallow grave and basically cover boy and dog with some soil and foliage, then get the gamekeeper’s Land Rover and drive it deep into the woods and hope neither man, animal nor vehicle would be discovered for a day or two, long enough for him to complete his task.
He looked down at the young lad, angry with himself as much as anything.
It had all started to unravel and he, himself, was to blame.
His anger had made him break cover and do ridiculous things when deep inside he knew he should have controlled himself, stuck to the plan, been patient, but fury had driven him, made him vulnerable.
His brain seemed to be waging a war with itself, making him lose it.
‘OK, OK,’ he said under his breath, ‘let’s get back on track from here on in.’
His inner calm began to self-restore, the inner calm required of a sniper. A calm shattered by the noise of breaking glass.
Donaldson dropped the stone and reached inside to release the door catch. He stretched in for the shotgun, broke it and found it to be empty. It was an old weapon, but well cared for, double barrelled, twelve-bore, basic and reliable. All he needed. He shook the last three cartridges out of a box and slid two into the breech, the third into his shorts pocket. He closed the weapon and released the safety catch.
The sniper knelt on one knee behind a tree, his breathing shallow, his heartrate reduced, his concentration now total. His Browning was in his right hand, muzzle pointing at the ground, his left hand cupping the right.
He watched and waited, then saw the man approaching through the trees, creeping slowly with a shotgun in his hands.
The sniper recognized him: Karl Donaldson, one of Henry Christie’s friends. He knew all about Donaldson, that he was much, much more than a pen-pushing legal attaché.
He too, the sniper knew, was also a trained killer.
He was getting on a bit now, had to work twice as hard to maintain his fitness levels and speed, but a very big part of what Donaldson was sometimes called on to do was all about attitude. The sniper knew Donaldson had all the attitude necessary and going up against him would not be anywhere near as easy as facing the dumb cop, Christie.
But Christie was the one he wanted.
He had no argument with Donaldson just like he had no argument with the gamekeeper and he hoped he would not have to kill the American here and now, but if it was necessary, he would not hesitate.
He knew it would be necessary.
Donaldson moved quietly, very, very slowly, gently edging his way through the grass that tickled his shins, placing his feet carefully. The shotgun felt good, balanced.
For a few seconds he stood just inside the treeline, allowing his eyes to adjust to the more dappled light and shade filtering through the leaves and also allow his other senses to adjust. The sound was different in here, the smells also.
Mostly it was a compost-like smell, decaying leaves and trees on the ground, but then there was also a brief, tantalizing and transient aroma that touched his sense of smell, then it was gone, but to Donaldson it was unmistakeable.
Gunpowder.
He moved slowly, crouching.
Then stopped.
To his left, lying in a bed of grass, was a freshly killed dog, blood still oozing from a head wound. Donaldson registered what he was seeing but did not react to it. The dog was a Labrador, the same breed and colour as the one belonging to the young gamekeeper, Tod. Donaldson recalled seeing it as he set out on his run, sitting in the Land Rover, resting its chin on the open window frame, big, dopey-eyed, waiting for its master to return.
Donaldson was shocked by the sight but tried not to give away that he had seen it just in case he was being watched; the creepy feeling he had told him that eyes were on him.
He also spotted flattened drag marks in the grass where it looked as if a body had been lugged away.
Again, he did not show he had seen this, nor that he had now seen the shape of a vehicle hidden between the trees.
Someone living rough, he thought, trying quickly to piece all these little things together.
Had Tod stumbled across someone? A vagrant or a criminal on the run? Or someone who might want to kidnap a young woman from her bed?
Donaldson remained still and quiet, aware he had nothing to protect himself other than the shotgun.
Someone very dangerous?
Donaldson took a few steps.
His mouth was arid as adrenaline gushed into his system. He became more tense and alert. His forefinger tightened slightly on the shotgun’s trigger whilst his left hand, supporting the double barrels, gripped more firmly.
The figure moved quickly.
There was a rush, a rustle of bushes behind Donaldson who threw himself sideways into a clump of thorny gorse, twisting as he did, trying to pivot and bring the shotgun around and if necessary fire at the shadow of a man. Donaldson registered the shape of a pistol in the man’s right hand and at the exact moment the American saw and heard the flash-bang of that weapon being fired, he too fired one barrel of the shotgun. It was not well aimed, a shot on the move, and the jerk of the recoil flipped the gun skywards at the same moment he felt the slipstream of a bullet zip by his right ear, barely an inch from his head.
He continued with the momentum of this move and rolled sideways across the bush, firing the shotgun a second time but only at thin air because the man had vanished as quickly as he had appeared. Donaldson broke the shotgun and picked out the spent cartridges, tossing them aside, reloading just the one barrel with the remaining ammunition. He didn’t fumble, did not waste time, but knew he was vulnerable as he did this.
Unless he had hit and wounded the man, which he thought he had.
Detective Superintendent Rik Dean awoke with a monstrous headache alongside his new wife, Lisa, who was still deep asleep, having been as drunk as he had at the conclusion of the previous evening’s festivities. She was snoring like a drain.
Rik squinted at her. She was on her back, mouth open. Very gently he eased her sideways and the snoring ceased.
His head felt as though he might have done Henry Christie’s old party piece of smashing a metallic tray against it whilst singing the old classic, Rawhide, ‘Get along, move ’em out,’ smash, smash, smash.
He slithered out of bed onto his hands and knees, then used the bed as a climbing frame to get to his feet. When steady he headed for the bathroom where after an extended spell in front of the toilet he stepped into the shower and turned it on full blast.
Ten minutes later, with his head still beating like a bass drum, he was dried and shaved and almost back in the real world but knowing he needed a lot of water because of alcohol dehydration, followed by a lot of coffee, paracetamol and food, preferably of the greasy variety.
Today was planned as a day of recovery and to get his head around the wedding ring on his finger.
He let himself quietly out of the bridal suite into the corridor, this being on the first floor of the old part of the Tawny Owl rather than the new annexe. All the bedrooms on this level had been refurbished and were all quaint and countrified as opposed to the more clinical new ones.
The previous day had been excellent and worth the money that Lisa had forced him to spend. Alison (mainly) and Henry had done a great job of their first ever wedding and Rik was looking forward to thanking them both, his new brother-in-law and wife-to-be.
Rik walked to the end of the creaky corridor, all old floorboards and beams, and paused to glance out of the window overlooking the front of the pub and to the village green and woods beyond.
Usually a pretty sight, but Rik stopped cold when he saw the police activity outside. A crime-scene van, two marked cars, and a few others, plus Jake Niven’s police Land Rover.
He raced down the steps, curious obviously, and slightly worried.
Donaldson remained on one knee in the prickly bushes, not moving, not breathing, willing his heart to stop making such a loud noise.
A slight breeze wafted the lower leaves of the trees but other than that, nothing moved.
He rolled his jaw as his eyes moved, adjusting themselves continually, his ears straining for any sound.
Nothing.
He re-gripped the shotgun and waited in the same position for a further ten minutes before rising slowly to his feet, feeling the blood rushing back down his legs. The gorse scraped his calf muscles, drew blood.
The attacker had moved incredibly quickly. Donaldson could not be certain if he had wounded him or not. He thought he had.
He took a step towards where the guy had appeared from, ultra-cautious, knowing he had to check it out and maybe force the issue again by putting himself in the firing line. The spot was identifiable from the broken stems of grass. Donaldson sank to his haunches, still continually looking around, and inspected the ground and grimaced with satisfaction when he saw two splashes of blood on a big, wide green dock leaf.
He had hit the guy, the question being now, how badly?
He did not want to spend too much time with his head lowered for fear of being ambushed again but from what he could see there did not seem to be a great deal of blood, no big gouts of it.
He rose again and still moving vigilantly, went to the dead dog and crouched beside it, laying a hand on its chest. Still warm.
‘Stumbled into something,’ he muttered, twisted around and looked at the flattened grass possibly caused by something or someone having been dragged through it. Initially Donaldson had thought body. Now he was certain of it.
Once more he stood up, went to this and followed the trail which led him to Tod Rawstron’s body. He took a moment to feel for a pulse, a necessary but ultimately pointless action because he could see the young gamekeeper was dead. He had taken two bullets in the chest.
‘Poor lad,’ Donaldson whispered.
He stood up once more, keeping the shotgun ready to fire and made his way to the hidden vehicle, finding it to be a VW camper van, quite old but in good condition. It was unlocked. Donaldson slid open the side door and quickly peeked inside.
It was basic – camp bed, cooking stove, some food. He walked around to the rear of the vehicle and opened the engine cover to reveal
the engine, which looked pristine and well cared for. He smiled grimly as he removed the distributor cap and points, which he slid into a pocket. Old engines were far easier to disable than new ones, he thought. This vehicle was going nowhere.
The early morning phone call from Henry Christie had not been welcome, but although PC Jake Niven had still been under the influence of the previous night’s alcohol he had readily rolled out of bed and staggered into the shower and, as per Henry’s suggestion, he’d drunk about a litre of cold tap water before turning out in response to Henry’s plea for help.
Now, much later in the morning, Jake was beginning to feel it – exhausted, wiped out and still not a little disgusted by his organization’s response to the incident which, in anybody’s books, was a serious crime.
Jake was sitting on the wall at the front of the Tawny Owl on which, the day before, many of the wedding photos had been snapped. He had eaten the free food provided by Henry and was now having another coffee to give him more energy to carry on.
‘Caught you!’ came a voice from behind.
Jake turned to see Rik Dean stepping out of the pub doors with a mug of steaming coffee in his hand.
‘Hi, boss,’ Jake said. He took it that their working relationship had now resumed following the fun of last night. Though the men knew each other well, having been embroiled in a gruesome child abduction/murder case over the last few months, they each knew the boundaries.
That said, Rik gave Jake a dismissive wave and said, ‘Call me Rik … What the hell’s going on?’ He gestured with his mug at the police vehicles.
‘Henry got assaulted in the early hours and someone drugged Ginny and tried to abduct her from her bed.’ Rik hoped that was succinct enough.
Rik’s mug had stopped halfway to his mouth and his jaw had dropped. ‘Run that by me again.’
Which Jake did but in greater detail and at the end of the mini-briefing Rik was almost apoplectic with rage.
‘Why the hell didn’t he get me up?’
Jake gave him a blank stare.
‘Well, OK, I get it. I was too pissed.’