by John Burke
‘It’s a fast break-in and getaway. At Westerlaw Castle.’
Caroline heard it, and gasped. ‘No. Oh, no. Not Sir Lachlan.’
‘They’d got Westerlaw in their sights anyway, and the funeral alterations haven’t put ’em off. Just the opposite. Makes it simpler, really: the moment after the procession left for Baldonald House the way would be clear for a frontal attack. Nobody of any standing left on the premises. I’ve had an armed response unit on standby, but now we know the location they’ll have ten miles to cover. I’m on my way. But there’s just been a landslip along their likeliest escape route. Roadside bank undermined by floodwater, collapsed into the road. Odds are that they’ll have to try the route you’re on.’
‘You want us to block the road?’
‘Like hell I do. These scunners are capable of pumping all your vehicles full of holes. Let ’em pass — don’t risk anyone getting shot. But ring the moment you can give me a rundown — time, speed, direction … and if you could follow them at a reasonable distance, without getting too close and risking them blasting off at you …’
‘The bastards,’ Caroline breathed. ‘Bastards. After all Sir Lachlan’s done for me!’
The cortège rolled solemnly on. Lesley leaned forward to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror, trying at each bend in the winding road to see past the string of cars behind her. For an agonising ten minutes there was still no sign of any van or truck racing up and pulling out to pass them.
The hearse slowed at a T junction, swung carefully to the right, and then jolted to a stop, angled across the road, out of Lesley’s view; a horn was sounding impatiently. The hearse edged a few inches further, and stopped again. Somebody, still out of sight beyond the ragged hedge, was yelling furiously. Above the hedge was the top of a large blue van.
The driver of the hearse got out, adjusting his black headgear and taking a dignified step towards whatever was round the corner.
It dawned on Lesley what must be happening. ‘No!’ she shouted. Not that anyone outside the Bentley could hear her. She opened the door and stumbled out. ‘No, don’t! Come back!’
Out in the open air, she heard someone shout: ‘Get that bloody meat wagon out of the way.’
Rutherford’s calculations had been wrong. Whatever blockages there might be on the roads heading away from Westerlaw Castle, the raiders had not chosen to avoid them by following the route of the funeral cars — perhaps to avoid that possible slow-down — but had opted for a road sweeping close to Baldonald House and then away along the valley.
Lesley clutched her phone. ‘Guv, they’ve blocked our way. Or we’ve blocked theirs. At the Tam Lin T-junction. It has to be them.’
‘Christ. Don’t take any chances. Armed support’ll be heading along that road anyway. On its way right now.’
Don’t take any chances, she thought ruefully. Easy enough to say, miles away.
The row was heating up. ‘Back up, or you’ll finish up inside your own bloody hearse.’
‘I canna. Not with all this behind me. Use some sense, man. You’re the one who’s got to back up.’
Sir Lachlan got out of his Jag and was stalking towards the junction before Lesley could wave him back.
‘What the devil’s going on?’
‘Stay where you are, sir. Better still, get back in your car.’
‘I’ve asked you, officer. What is going on?’
‘I’m sorry, Sir Lachlan. Your home has been broken into. I fancy the thieves are in that vehicle just round the corner. Armed support is on its way. They won’t get far.’
‘Won’t get …? Damn it, if I get my hands on them …’
There was the sudden gunning of an engine, and fierce acceleration. The hearse driver made a wild lunge to one side, flattened against his hearse, as the bull bars on the radiator of a large blue van like a Securicor vehicle bounced round the corner. Tyres slithered on the verge; lumps were torn out of the hedge.
Crazily, the thieves were trying to escape by heading back part of the way towards the castle.
Sir Lachlan McIver was lifted off his feet by the nearside wing, and thrown into the ditch on the far side of the road. He began scrambling out as the van hit the third car in the cortege, a grey Volvo estate, and itself was jarred to one side, tilting over into the opposite ditch.
The driver wrenched his door open, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun.
‘All right, get back. Well back, the lot of you. And stay there.’
Take no chances, Lesley told herself. She turned to check that everyone else understood. No time for ambling about, and even less for heroic gestures. Just stay put and be ready to duck well down when the cavalry arrived.
But Caroline Crombie was out of the Bentley, with the driver groping vainly to stop her.
‘No!’ Lesley yelled.
Caroline wove past her like a rugger player making a last fierce run for a touchdown.
‘Bastards! You filthy bastards!’
The man slid down to the ground, and fired. In court he might later say that he had been off balance, and the gun had gone off without him squeezing the trigger. Or it had been a panic reaction.
Caroline choked a cry, stumbled to a halt, and opened her arms to clutch at the air. In agonising slow motion she crumpled into a heap in the middle of the road, and blood began pumping slowly from her mouth.
Over the brow of the low hill an armed response vehicle raced down upon them.
Ishbel Dacre was half out of the Bentley, sobbing helplessly. And Lesley was sobbing a call for an ambulance into her phone.
But they had only to look at that crumpled figure in the road to know that it was too late for paramedics, an ambulance, a hospital. The only place for Caroline Crombie now was in the silence of the vault along with her father.
*
They sat in Rutherford’s drab office with a deskful of reports, an ashtray of stubbed-out fag-ends and scribbled memos between them. Lesley enunciated words which seemed no longer to have any meaning for her. ‘All right, say it. I shouldn’t have let Caroline get out of that car.’
‘No, you shouldn’t. Neither should that driver.’
‘I was the senior officer there. Pin it on me.’
‘Certainly nobody’s going to pin a medal on you.’
‘So that’s it. I can pack my bags and go.’
‘Go?’ He was hunched up in that weird Quasimodo distortion she hated so much. ‘Go where?’
She told him about the other post she had been offered. The way things were, she could obviously look forward to a better future working with Sir Nicholas Torrance and his friends than battling on here. She wasn’t really equipped for this.
Rutherford heard her out, staring at her with that disconcerting intensity of his. He could make anybody feel guilty, especially his own colleagues.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be a classier kind of job than you’ve got with us loutish lot. Just a squad of day-to-day dustmen, aren’t we? Garbage removal, trying to keep the community clean. Better for the soul to play nanny to some respectable ancient paintings than real, lousy human beings.’
‘Jock.’ She had never used the name before, and used it now only because she knew he hated it and she wanted to kick him out of his own bossy offensiveness. ‘I do happen to think those things are important.’
‘Sure, sure. Scratched-out old canvases better any day than carved-up corpses. If you have a sensitive stomach, that is.’
‘I’m a specialist. This is my speciality.’
‘Yes. But look at what you’ve contributed to your section here. You’d rather drop all that, leave us to start all over again, while you wander off into Veitch’s world?’
‘What’s Veitch got to do with it?’
‘Hiring security men. Ex-coppers. Bent ones. To protect his property and his … shall we call it his interests?’
‘I’m not a bent ex-copper. It won’t be like that.’
‘I suppose not. A bit posher, protecting th
e knick-knacks of the very tasteful rich, eh?’
‘Taste has a lot to do with it, yes. Nothing wrong with that. It’s what keeps civilisation going.’
‘Oh, no it bloody isn’t.’ Rutherford was quite frightening as he slammed his fist down on the table and dislodged two piles of paper. ‘What keeps civilisation going, Lez, is sanitation. Street sweepers and clearing the muck out of the drains, scraping the shit off the streets, disinfecting the place. Helping keep your fine pictures in position, yes, fair enough. All part of the service. But only one ingredient in the same soup dish of good men, bad men, weird women, and scum who poison the soup. You belong to us, Lez.’
‘I’ve got this chance of doing a whole lot better for myself.’
‘Och, aye, all right. So you would, in some ways. But … just when you’re in line for promotion.’
‘I suppose you’ve been consulted on that.’
‘That I have.’
‘You mean you’re going to recommend me?’
‘No.’
‘That’s it, then.’
‘Silly bitch. No, I’m not going to recommend you. I’ve already done so.’
She had shied away from Nick Torrance because of his taking her for granted. Now she wanted to back well away from Rutherford.
‘I’ll have to think about this.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Rutherford with even more insufferable complacency. ‘You’ve already decided.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. You’re staying. You can’t tell me you’re not.’
That was exactly what she longed to do. Tell him she wasn’t staying, that she’d had enough, that she was handing in her ID card and emptying her locker and leaving.
And she couldn’t bring herself to say it.