‘Do you fancy talking?’
‘What about?’ Pixie said, claustrophobic and clammy.
‘Anything.’
She brushed his thigh with her fingers.
‘I think you’d best be going,’ Pixie jolted back. ‘This isn’t a good idea.’
‘Don’t you fancy me?’
‘You’re 15 for Christ sake!’
‘Granddad will be okay about it.’
‘I doubt it,’ Pixie tried to imagine Declan Doherty clapping him on the shoulder, telling him it was fine and dandy. ‘Anyway I’ll be going in a couple of days.’
‘You’ll be here for the wedding won’t you?’ the girl trying to inch closer.
‘We’ll see.’
He had never been to a gypsy wedding before and was sure the other young men wouldn’t want him anywhere near.
She slipped back out of the tent and left the caravan door open.
‘Of course he can come to the wedding princess,’ Doherty’s voice carried easily.
Pixie closed his eyes and muttered ‘fuck’ under his breath.
Mat Skinner, head bowed, hands in the pockets of his wax jacket, ambled along the beach. He would have felt less conspicuous if he had a dog, the beach as busy as Crufts.
A tennis ball flew past his head, the oldie with the yellow sling launcher nodding an apology as he looked up, a panting Jack Russell sprinting past in pursuit.
Bamburgh Castle, the chosen location for the meet, dominated the skyline to the left.
He had changed the SIM card on his phone before he contacted his two trusted men, the brief orders to drive north of Bamburgh, double back, and wait in the small car park adjoining the beach at the end of The Wynding. The single road was narrow enough to notice anybody following.
Mat shook his head as they approached.
Twit and Twat.
He might not have a dog but these two meat heads couldn’t have looked more out of place if they were wearing top hat and tails on a nudist beach.
They were identical, photo negatives in black blouson jackets, black trousers, and black shoes, each 6’ plus tall and as wide as the ice-cream vans that patrolled the streets in the summer.
‘Jesus, you’re not working the doors,’ Mat greeted them. ‘Couldn’t you have worn something to blend in a bit with this lot?’
He turned to look over his shoulder and swept an arm to indicate the posse of dog walkers and random beachcombers.
‘We never thought,’ one of them said.
‘Yeah well pardon me for expecting you two to think.’
Mat turned and walked back towards Seahouses, the chastened heavies like dim but faithful Rottweilers either side.
‘Anything about Geoff?’ Mat asked.
Their silence told him everything he needed to know. He wiped his left eye and cleared his throat.
‘There was nothing I could do about Geoff,’ Mat said, voice thick. ‘I only got away because my old man would have had to think of something to tell my mother if I went missing.’
Mat looked at the sand dunes, remembered rolling down them with his brothers, his mother sat on a tartan blanket surrounded by orange juice and their favourite sandwiches; chopped egg and tomato loaded with salad cream.
‘We used to come here as kids….’
The Rottweilers waited for him to continue.
‘He’s had time to think now, come up with some shit about who killed me,’ Mat let his hurt and loss fuel him for the task at hand. ‘I’ll get in first. Harry Pullman’s got John Elgin on board so everything’s sorted with the planning applications. Once we’re done it’ll be business as usual.’
‘What about Luke and Mark?’ one of the Rottweilers asked.
Mat was satisfied with the plan he had in place.
He had booked into a pub on Holy Island so he would be well away when Billy Skinner was taken out.
‘Luke might suspect I’m involved but I’ll be nowhere near,’ Mat said now. ‘I’ll even FaceTime my mother, show her where I am.’
His smile didn’t wash the cold hate from his eyes. Luke wasn’t the only one who could plan.
‘I’ll make sure I talk to a barmaid until the tide’s in then anyone who checks will know I couldn’t get across the causeway,’ Mat told his men.
He turned to face the sea, spread his arms out wide, and breathed in deep.
‘The tide will be my alibi,’ he said to the waves that never listened. ‘I’ll be out of the frame, mum will tell me, Luke, and Mark to sort out whoever killed the old man, and there’ll be plenty of choice.’
Mat walked to the water’s edge, staring at the Farne Islands and the cormorants diving into the sea.
‘No point in you two walking too far from your car,’ he turned his head. ‘Everything all set?’
The Rottweilers nodded as one.
‘The unfaithful bastard will be at the cemetery this afternoon,’ Mat sent his words across the water. ‘You know what to do.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ed settled back into the driver’s seat. Service Station Sunday was hardly haute cuisine. The tuna sandwich, the only thing on offer without mayo, would repeat more often than ‘Only Fools and Horses’.
He reached across and opened the passenger door as Sam sauntered across the car park, two coffees in hand.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ she said, bending down and passing him the cardboard cups.
‘I’m okay for now.’
He rejoined the A34 signposted The Midlands and Newbury, shook his head, and moved into the outside lane.
‘I remember a time when you hardly saw a wagon on the roads on a Sunday,’ Ed grumbled. ‘Now it’s like a truckers’ convention.’
Sam turned her head and pushed her cup into the drink holder beside the gear stick.
‘That’s the problem with being a miserable old goat,’ her voice was teasing. ‘You’ll still remember pubs closing at three, shops all shut on Sundays and even the notion of a takeaway still a twinkle in Colonel Sanders’ eye.’
She started to sing Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony.
Ed laughed. ‘Alright, alright but I’m telling you there weren’t many lorries driving on Sundays back in the day.’
Sam sighed. ‘It’s called progress.’
‘Not always a good thing,’ Ed muttered. ‘Mind that tuna might have tasted better in old fashioned Hovis.’
Sam turned on the radio and channel hopped through Christmas perennials and mind-numbing talk shows before she gave up.
She leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes, her mind back on the case.
Stirling told them the records showed the young maestro John Elgin had transferred to a school in Seaton St George. He was definitely one and the same.
Ed seemed to be reading her thoughts.
‘Elgin doesn’t look like he could set fire to a BBQ never mind a bloke, even if the bloke just happened to be a paedophile who abused him when he was a boy,’ he stretched his back and wiggled his ankles behind the wheel.
Four more hours of this. I’ll have to be carried out.
‘But he’s well connected,’ Sam said. ‘Even Curtis said he’s scared Elgin’s involved with Billy Skinner.’
The problem, both of them knew, was how far to trust the information.
Another resting in the ‘unconfirmed’ box was whether Elgin and Curtis knew the other had been one of Scott’s victims.
Ed said it was possible but any of the victims could have been involved in his execution.
‘Who’d be more capable than two military men, especially one in the Special Forces,’ he said, Stirling’s revelation a striking new element.
‘What worries me,’ Sam said, stretching her legs, ‘is since we started looking into the backgrounds of Scott’s known victims we’ve already discovered another two that never reported, three if we count Elgin. How many more are still out there?’
‘More don’t report than do,’ Ed said, glancing in the rear view mirror and indicat
ing to overtake yet another HGV.
Sam watched the giant wheels of the truck as Ed accelerated past, the noise and closeness making her uneasy.
‘Elgin’s a potential victim of historic child abuse so we need to think about how we come at him,’ Sam said. ‘And let’s see what we’ve got locally before we go running all around the country chasing new victims and potentially new suspects.’
She felt her mobile vibrate before she heard the ring tone and only pulled it from her pocket after an expletive-laden fight with her seatbelt.
‘Hi Bev.’
Sam listened. ‘Really? Christ, the plot’s thicker than Bisto…look we’ll not be back until late. Keep it under your hat. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
She put the phone in the centre console.
Ed glanced at her. ‘What’s up?’
‘No obvious kiddie porn on Julius Pritchard’s computer.’
‘Pity but he was savvy enough with the tech to cover his tracks,’ Ed said. ‘So what’s with the Bisto?
‘An interesting document that is on the computer,’ Sam told him. ‘A pre-nup dated before their marriage saying his wife gets nothing if they divorce.’
‘They’re not worth the paper they’re written on,’ Ed said.
‘Maybe but a family like the Pritchards, all that legal stuff in the gene pool, would just keep the case in court for years,’ Sam tried to imagine just how hard Granny Pritchard would fight to stop shop girl Linda snatching the family jewels.
‘But more interesting…’
‘What?’ Ed all ears.
‘In her email box there’s a nice series of photographs of our grieving widow snogging in the park.’
Ed indicated and moved out to pass another truck, Sam making a conscious effort not to look this time, saying the pictures had been taken by a retired cop turned private investigator.
‘So maybe granny was right,’ Ed said. ‘Do we know the lucky man?’
‘Seaton’s resident lothario,’ Sam paused for effect. ‘John bloody Elgin.’
Cold, stiff and cursing his luck, the man peering over the hedgerow breathed out his own swirling fog. Thirty minutes squatting in a field would have been bad enough in the summer; in December it was a nightmare.
His thick leather gloves had given up the fight with the plunging temperature and his fingers were now welded around the binoculars. To his left, a straight road descending towards him gave an unobstructed view of approaching vehicles.
The BMW appeared in the magnifying lenses as it travelled down the hill, nothing in front of it.
He bent down, pulled open the hand-held marine distress flare and ran towards his rendezvous point. Orange smoke rose upwards, a much better means of communication than a mobile in the countryside where the signal might be a bit dodgy.
Passing the billowing smoke and fleetingly curious about the source, Helen Larney slowed as she drove towards the red traffic light. Coming to a stop she swore under her breath.
She and her 13-year-old daughter Maisy were headed for the cemetery - flowers for her mother’s grave on the back seat - before heading home and tea with Helen’s in-laws.
She fiddled with her wedding ring, muttering frustrations under her breath. Had she had more time to spare she might have savoured the smell of new leather as her Range Rover Sport idled behind the BMW, the first vehicle in the queue.
She glanced across at her daughter singing along to something playing through the headphones attached to her iPhone.
Always the bloody same. Never a workman in sight.
She looked at the BMW’s number plate - 189 GBH - and shook her head. Years ago she dated a lad called Gary Henderson. He was the type of dick who’d have loved a plate like that.
A blur of movement to her left broke her wander down memory lane.
She jumped in her seat as two figures dressed in dark boiler suits and ski masks ran out of the hedge. They raced to the BMW, one smashing the front passenger window with a sledgehammer and yelling at the driver, the other swinging a similar hammer at the front of the car, the blows so hard the airbags exploded.
Helen hit the remote locking button, frantically searching her handbag for her phone, Maisy rigid, wide-eyed, and screaming beside her.
In the BMW, the driver had dived towards the glove-box but the hooded figure at the passenger window repeatedly punched him in the head…five, maybe six bone crunching blows, Helen couldn’t keep count.
She watched the driver scramble backwards out of his seat.
By the driver’s door, the second attacker spun him around, grabbed his collar and head-butted him with such force his nose exploded. A flurry of lightning fast blows with a cosh the figure was now carrying sent blood spraying in all directions.
Helen Larney had seen enough. Gasping, she put the Range Rover in reverse and gunned the accelerator but she hadn’t been quick enough.
She saw a white Ford Transit van tearing towards her, tyres squealing as it skidded to a halt, its back doors alongside her window.
The two attackers were dragging the limp BMW driver by his arms towards the van as another masked figure jumped from behind the wheel, flung open the back doors, and held them as the victim was thrown inside. Within seconds all three masked men were back in the Transit and the van was roaring away, the back doors swinging wildly as Helen watched in her offside wing mirror.
The whole attack had lasted less than two minutes.
Wide-mouthed, stunned, and shaking, Helen Larney dialed 999. The driver of the BMW, who looked like he could fit in the pockets of his attackers, had never stood a chance.
Chapter Thirty
Bev Summers and Paul Adams rang the bell on the stone pillar, spoke to a woman on the intercom, and walked through the electronic gates as soon as they started opening. They smiled at the fountain and the mermaid as they approached the front door. Marge Skinner was waiting.
‘What’s happened? Has he been in an accident? They wouldn’t tell me anything on the phone, just that I had to wait for you.’
‘Can we come in?’ Bev asked.
‘Yes but tell me what’s happened.’
‘Let’s go and sit down,’ Bev said.
They followed Marge into a large split-level room with a pool table on the upper level. Luke and Mark were leaning against it; both dressed in cream chinos, Luke wearing a white v-neck t-shirt, Mark with a pastel coloured cashmere jumper draped across his shoulders.
Marge put a cigarette between her trembling lips and had to spark the lighter three times before her shaking hand got close enough to connect. ‘Please.’
Bev and Paul, like everyone else in the silent room, remained standing.
‘About thirty minutes ago a man driving your husband’s car was attacked and abducted,’ Bev said.
Marge’s hand shot to her mouth and she dropped onto the sofa. Luke and Mark jumped to attention, Mark demanding ‘where!’ just as Marge was crying ‘who by?’
Now Luke stood relaxed against the pool table, legs outstretched, hands inside his pockets, annoyed that he had shown emotion by snapping into a rigid stance.
‘Mother, Mark,’ his tone controlled. ‘Let the detectives continue. Officers…’
Bev sat next to Marge.
‘Were you expecting your husband to be driving his car this afternoon?’
Marge nodded.
‘Do you know where he was going?’
‘No.’
Paul was watching for any reaction from the sons. Their initial shock suggested they had no idea about the abduction.
‘There were flowers on the front passenger seat.’
‘Bastard!’ Marge shouted.
‘Mother,’ Luke said quietly. ‘Where he was going is irrelevant.’
‘Actually we think it is,’ Bev said. ‘This wasn’t a spur of the moment attack.’
‘What do you mean?’ Marge asked, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she had taken from the sleeve of her blouse.
‘Whoever it was driving your husband’s c
ar...’
‘It was dad.’ Luke hadn’t moved and his voice still had no trace of emotion. ‘They’ll find out anyway, so we may as well tell them.’
Marge nodded.
‘Years ago dad had an affair,’ Luke said. ‘The woman died whilst they were still involved. It’s the anniversary of her death today. He never misses, hasn’t since…’
‘Alright Luke,’ Marge stopped him. ‘They don’t need to know the ins and outs about that cow.’
‘How long has she been dead?’ Bev asked, looking at Luke.
‘Twelve years,’ Luke thinking how fast that time had gone by. ‘He goes every year. Puts flowers on her grave at the exact time she died. Just before ten past three.’
‘Is that well known?’
‘I bloody hope not,’ Marge said, stubbing out the cigarette in the onyx ashtray. ‘I’m feeling a big enough fool sticking by him without the world and his wife knowing about it.’
‘Luke?’ Bev asked.
‘It wasn’t a secret and I see where you’re going,’ he told her. ‘Would people know where and when to ambush him? Yes I suppose they would. You know as well as I do, nothing’s secret in this world. So what happened?’
Bev stood. It was bad enough the sons were on the raised area without her adding to their height advantage.
‘He stopped at traffic lights, temporary lights, and that was where he was attacked,’ she said. ‘He was driven away in a Ford Transit.’
Luke plucked a fleck of lint from his chinos and glanced at his brother.
‘It wasn’t just good luck that the lights were there I take it?’ Luke said.
Bev understood why all the police intelligence had Luke taking over once Billy Skinner stepped down…not only could he keep whatever emotions he was feeling in check, he was tack sharp.
‘The lights hadn’t been put there by any agencies,’ Bev confirmed. ‘We believe they were put there by his abductors.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Mark said.
‘That’s enough,’ Luke stared at his brother then turned back to Bev. ‘I presume by asking who was driving you haven’t found anybody yet.’
Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set Page 82