Fallen Idols

by Neil White

  He closed his eyes. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Detective Inspector Ross was just plain old Glen at home.

  He was lying in bed, his eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling. He hadn’t slept for a couple of nights now. His wife was breathing lightly next to him, looking tranquil. His daughters were all inside, soundly asleep in their rooms, as ever.

  The telephone rang next to his bed. He picked it up, nervous, twitchy.

  He listened as the news came through, his expression unchanging. Just something he ought to know. Might affect the Bob Garrett enquiry, scaled down when the announcement about the suicide was made. There had been a shooting on Bob Garrett’s street. A tall male, all in black, running after Jack Garrett, taking shots. He just nodded and listened, rubbed his chest with his hand when he heard that Jack Garrett had got away.

  Then there was something else. There were more detectives in town. They had been to Rose Wood’s house, and now they were heading to Bob Garrett’s.

  He put the phone down, and when he looked round his wife was awake, watching him.

  He patted her on the arm. ‘Just work, sweetheart. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘You look awful, Glen. What’s wrong? Are you sleeping all right?’

  He smiled and patted her on the arm again. ‘I’m fine. Go back to sleep.’

  She looked at him for a moment before turning round and curling up again. He returned to his view of the ceiling. It was blurred now, knocked out of shape by the tears in his eyes. He knew now how it would end. He knew that all this would be gone for him soon. He’d thought it had been dead for over ten years, as lifeless as Annie Paxman herself. It hadn’t. It had just been dormant. And now it was alive again and spinning out of control, and it was going to spin all the way back to him.

  He tried to swallow but it was hard. His breaths were tight and ragged, and when he looked down he saw that his fists were clenched. He closed his eyes, as if darkness would help. It didn’t. The shadows were still there.

  He heard a car outside, two doors open and close. He knew who it was: the two London detectives coming to speak to him.

  He reached over and wrapped his arms around his wife. She was content, smelling of warm nights, and when he pulled her to him, she murmured. As he buried his face in her hair, he wondered if this would be goodbye. He gave her a kiss and then climbed out of bed.

  FORTY-FOUR

  I was aching as I sat in the grass, my brow damp with sweat. The sun was low and I could just make out my feet, shining silver. But I could see a patch of darkness, and by its warmth, its stickiness, I knew it was blood.

  I ran my hand down my leg and felt my trousers. They were damp. I had a deep slash in them, neat and easy to stitch, and I guessed that my calf wasn’t much different. I had tried walking but it had been too painful, each step making me wince and grit my teeth.

  I sat down for a moment to rest my feet. They were red and scrubbed, but the walk through the grass had helped, the dew cooling them down and softening up the scrapes and scuffs. I looked around and checked for movement among the shadows.

  I checked my watch, wondering how long I would have to wait. I couldn’t make out any houses, just fields and trees, and I realised I was the only glimmer of life as far as I could see. If that crazy bastard came back, I was a sitting target, no one to hear the gunshots, no one to see the shooter.

  I lay back in the grass. I wasn’t sure I cared. I felt drained and exhausted and just wanted to sleep. The grass was wet, and pretty soon my back was soaked. I didn’t move. I watched the new day turn a bright cool blue, licked by the red streaks coming from the east. It was like fire trying to reach across to the sky in the west, still hanging on to some hues of night-time.

  I closed my eyes and wondered whether I could sleep. I didn’t feel like I could walk any more and I was losing the will to stay awake. It didn’t take long for the world to fade away, my breaths slowing right down. It felt like I was slipping backwards, away from consciousness.

  I jerked awake when I felt vibrations through the ground, and then I heard the sound of grass squeaking under someone’s shoes. My heart began to race and I sat up quickly. My head snapped around, trying to see shapes, hints of movement.

  I felt shadow fall over me. I started to scramble backwards, but then I recognised the shape.

  I grinned. ‘What took you?’

  Laura looked at me, then down at my leg. She gasped and went to her knees, her hands going out towards me.

  ‘Jack, are you okay?’

  I sat up and pulled up the leg on my trousers. She put her hand over her mouth, shocked.

  ‘I thought you’d got away,’ she said.

  ‘I did,’ I replied, ‘but he got a cheap shot in before I got out of the house.’ I grimaced. ‘I think it was a knife.’

  She sat back and put her hands on her legs. ‘I saw you,’ she said, ‘running down the street.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know whether you had made it away or were stuck to the front of that lorry.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I ran down the side of a house just down from yours. I was just across from you when he fired a shot.’

  ‘How did I look?’ I asked, breathing heavily with pain, trying to make light of it.

  ‘Imagine a barefoot city boy running down the road for his life. That’s how it looked.’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You just had a bad seat.’

  She smiled and leant forward and kissed me on the top of my head. ‘We need to sort that leg out.’

  ‘You any good at needlework?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was thinking more of a wash and a bandage.’

  I lay back again. The sky was getting brighter.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  ‘We?’

  ‘If you are going to be the hotshot reporter all day, I need to stick with you.’

  I looked up at her. My spirits had lifted since she’d arrived, and thoughts of giving up on the story had gone. ‘Detective or friend?’ I asked.

  ‘Lover?’ she queried, her eyes dancing with mischief. When I didn’t answer, she kissed me on the forehead. ‘For today, I’m a detective, for your sake.’ She pointed towards the town. ‘If you’re going that way, you’ll need to get past a police roadblock.’

  ‘Have they been to the house?’

  ‘In numbers. You’re starting to interest them now, and it seems like the road into town is lit up by headlights.’

  I cursed as I thought of my computer, the story I had started to write, and the envelope I had been given by Martha.

  Laura read my thoughts. ‘They’re in the boot of my car.’

  I stalled for a moment, and then asked, ‘how come?’

  ‘Because while you were running through the fields like a singing nun, I went back into the house to get your stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘I guessed you would want your things, so I got your work from last night. I got out just before the police arrived.’

  ‘And did you get a good picture of him, the one you flashed down the stairs?’

  ‘Sure did. Right in the face, looking up.’

  That made my heart surge. He killed my father, and we had a picture of him.

  ‘Lover sounds just fine, by the way,’ I said, and grinned at her.

  ‘So what now?’ asked Laura. ‘Are you going somewhere quiet to finish your story?’

  I thought for a moment, and then realised that I was going to stick to my plan.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the Dales. There’s someone I need to speak to.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  The American smiled as Kirkby Askham came into view, a small cluster of life a few miles on from Skipton, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.

  There wasn’t much there, just a pub, a church, a couple of small shops, and miles and miles of natural beauty. The buildings looked like the stones that bound them had just tumbled together and then bonded over time. This was picture-postcard Yorkshire, w
ith rolling fields, the occasional burst of woodland, and a sea of open rough pasture, sheep grazing lazily over the village.

  But he wasn’t there for the view. He had been touring the roads around it, checking out the area, but it was Liza Radley’s house he was after, a converted barn a couple of miles into the hills. He needed to get to it on foot and not arouse suspicion. He had driven round and round for half an hour, looking for ways in. He thought he’d found one.

  He set off, a thin grin on his face, and then took the left turn just after a bend in the road. No one saw him. The road closed in straight away, dry-stone walls lining a narrow tarmac track, the stones a lighter limestone grey than the blackened walls he had seen in Turners Fold. Beyond those, the fields pitched and rolled, broken into squares, the sound of his engine loud in the peace of the scene. The road twisted, rolled and climbed, so he guessed it was an old track. There was no other traffic, no signs of any buildings, life, industry.

  He climbed a slight rise with the brow fifty yards ahead. It was hard to call it a hill, but it was enough of an incline to provide a horizon, a spread of blue just a few seconds away. He slowed down, tried to cut his engine noise, and as he crawled over the top of the slope he looked into a green valley. It wasn’t deep, more of an undulation, a couple of fields sloping down to a narrow river, trees lining the banks, and then a long field rising away from it. In the dip was a house, the rise and fall of the land just enough to make it secluded. It sat on its own, grey, isolated, dotted by windows picked out in white. It would have once been a lonely barn, somewhere to store straw and food when the snow kicked in. Now, it was just some house stuck in the middle of nowhere, hidden in a cleft, undisturbed by outsiders.

  He backed up twenty yards, to just before the brow of the hill, and stopped. He reached into the glove box for his field glasses and then got out of the car.

  He walked slowly back to the brow, his ears straining for the sound of activity at the house, making sure she wasn’t setting off after him in her car. This was his show, not hers. He couldn’t hear anything, so he kept walking, slowly, steadily, until he could see into the dip in the landscape, could see the top of the house. He knelt down and shuffled forward, crouching just behind a clump of rough pasture grass. He put his field glasses to his eyes and looked around.

  He focused on the house. It looked empty. He didn’t mind that. If she wasn’t there, he would wait until she returned. She would have to come home eventually, and he thought it would be soon. She was shooting in the north now, quick darts out and then quick darts back. All the curtains in the windows were closed. He could see the front wing of a car, parked at the back of the house.

  He brought his glasses further down from the house, then swung them back. He’d seen something near the porch. His eyes had caught something that he ought to take notice of but his brain hadn’t been quick enough to tell him what it was. He ran the glasses up and down for a few seconds before he saw it. It was a drinking glass, one that contained some liquid, maybe half-full.

  He put his glasses down. Who goes away leaving a glass outside?

  He picked up his field glasses and scanned the house again. He looked at every window, checking for movement inside. He couldn’t see anything. Just the closed curtains.

  He looked around the rest of the property.

  The road that snaked down to the house was interrupted by a cattle grid, a ten-foot-wide rattle of metal bars. He couldn’t see a path across it. On foot it would be tricky, and would slow him down enough to make him a good target. Driving over it, he might as well call her in advance. He could wade through the stream, it was too wide to jump over, but the water would slow him down and make his footsteps noisy when he was in the house.

  He ignored the back of the house, as his searching that morning had hinted that there was nothing behind the house for miles, so he would have nowhere to leave his car. He had no intention of starting his search again. The locals would only see a car so many times before they found it suspicious.

  It was the land to the left of the house that interested him most. The house was only around twenty yards from a small cluster of trees, the southern edge of a windbreak. Behind the cluster were more fields, running to a rise similar in height to the one he was on. From his searches that morning, he knew there was a lane on the other side of the rise, with gates providing a space to park in. If he could get into the fields without being spotted, it would be the most anonymous way of closing in. He wasn’t worried about the registration number being identified after he had gone. He was driving on false plates and the car would be going in the crusher once he had the million pounds in his hand. If he was successful, he would use her car to leave the scene.

  He backed away, satisfied, checking all the time that he hadn’t been spotted. It didn’t seem that way. He got back to his car, and once in it he released the handbrake. He rolled gently backwards for a hundred yards, and then when his speed slowly disappeared as the road levelled out, he put on the brakes and started the engine.

  He turned back towards Kirkby Askham as quietly as he could. He was going to work.

  FORTY-SIX

  We stopped for breakfast at an old trailer, hot food served out of a hatch, the spread of the Dales the view.

  I was clean again. A supermarket had provided the clothes, just a white T-shirt and jeans, white deck shoes on my feet. I’d raised my eyebrows at them when Laura handed them to me. I’d expected better from a city girl.

  I had a roll-bandage over my leg, nice and tight. I could stand better, but I hoped I wouldn’t need to run.

  We’d headed north again, but when we saw the trailer we knew we had to get some energy and convince ourselves that we were doing the right thing.

  We were halfway through bacon sandwiches when I heard the ring of Laura’s phone.

  I was nervous about who it was, but I relaxed when she mouthed ‘Tony’ at me. I watched her nodding and listening, but it was only when I heard her gasp that I really paid attention. She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head, looking shocked and pale.

  I raised my eyebrows in silent query.

  She held her hand up to me to ask me to wait a moment, and then passed me the phone.

  I dabbed my mouth and then when I put the phone to my ear, I heard Tony’s voice.

  ‘Good to hear that you’re all right, Jack.’

  I guessed what he was talking about. ‘News of the raid on my house slipped out then?’

  ‘More of a shootout is what I hear. Your name is the talk of the wire in Lancashire this morning, and the police have swamped the town.’

  ‘That was no shootout. That was an escape.’ I shook my head and sat back. ‘Someone is after me, Tony. He has killed my father, and now he’s after me.’

  ‘Was it the American man people are talking about?’

  ‘Who else could it be?’ I answered wearily. ‘To do with David Watts, I guess.’

  Tony didn’t respond. I looked back up at Laura, who still had her hand over her mouth, but was now looking down, thinking hard.

  ‘Tony?’

  I heard Tony sigh, and then he said, ‘It isn’t just the American hunting you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Another pause, Tony thinking how to put it. In the end, he went for simplicity.

  ‘Rose Wood died last night,’ he said, his voice low and sad.

  I paused, lost for words. I thought about her, polite and lost, but I sensed the danger in the message.

  ‘How did she die?’

  I heard Tony breathing hard, trying to work out how to say it. There was only one way.

  ‘She was stabbed,’ he said, his voice flat, letting my own mind do the equations.

  ‘Stabbed?’

  ‘Uh-huh. A knife, they reckon, jammed into the neck, just below the ear. A neighbour called it in.’

  I thought about Rose and it made me angry. And I thought how it was changing my day. That made me angrier.

  ‘So the police want
me to call in and give them the low-down on our meeting?’ I asked.

  ‘It gets worse than that.’

  ‘Can it?’

  ‘Oh yes, it can.’

  Seems that I was slow on the uptake.

  ‘Follow the trail, Jack.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Tony didn’t say anything for a while, just static filled my ear, and then he said, ‘The police want you because they think you might have killed her.’

  My mouth dried up. I wasn’t sure how many shocks I was supposed to take in a week.

  ‘Me?’ I queried, my voice shrill. ‘She was alive when I left her.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that, but the neighbour who found the body told the police that you were the last person to visit the house.’ He coughed lightly, and then continued, ‘The neighbour knew your father, so he named you. He went round after you’d gone and found her.’

  ‘So I’m a murder suspect?’

  I sensed Tony nodding. ‘Number one,’ he said.

  I dropped the phone from my ear for a moment and looked at Laura. I could tell she was going through the assessments in her head: what would happen to her if she didn’t take me in? I was a wanted man and she was a police officer.

  I put the phone back to my ear.

  ‘We have to get Glen Ross,’ I said, a snarl creeping into my voice. ‘We have to do it today. Use those tapes.’

  ‘It might not be Glen Ross calling the shots.’

  ‘Who else? David Watts?’

  ‘Why not?’ Tony replied. ‘He’s got a hell of a lot more to protect than Ross, and he’s the only one who could afford a contract killer.’

  ‘C’mon, Tony. He’s a footballer, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but he’s got millions of pounds to protect. That can do strange things to a man.’ He paused for a moment, and then said, ‘It might buy you some leverage with Liza Radley if we wait.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Think about it, Jack. She wants the story told. If she knows that if she doesn’t tell it soon, she might be silenced for good, then she might tell it to you.’