by Susan Hill
‘Thank you,’ she said to Kieron Bright. ‘I’m grateful for your honesty and the fact that you’ve told me won’t go any further.’
She was very tired, deflated, but quite composed. Perhaps the facts had not gone deep enough for her to feel anything else. Perhaps she would start to cry, or shake or be angry before long.
No. No, she decided. She was as she was. Her first concern was that Judith had to be prepared and looked after, her second that everything should be put in train as soon as possible.
‘He has to come back,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to him. He obviously must know what the calls were about and he’s deliberately avoiding any sort of contact, but he has to. I’ll phone him later tonight. Judith will make him talk to me.’
She heard the sound of a car in the drive – the Lawsons, bringing Sam home after cricket. Seconds later, the front door slammed and he was in, calling for her, slinging his bag across the hall.
‘A hundred and seventy-four!’ He came dancing in, punching the air, and stopped dead.
‘Oh.’
‘Sam, this is Kieron Bright – Chief Constable Bright. My son Sam.’
‘Having scored massively by the sound of it.’ Kieron stood up and shook Sam’s hand, clapped him on the back. ‘Good man.’ Exactly as Simon would have done, Cat thought.
Sam scrutinised him for a second. ‘Why does your force still use the Remington 870?’
‘Not for much longer.’ The Chief didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’m phasing it out.’
‘For the Glock 17?’
‘Yup. Much better gun.’
‘Most forces use the Glock. The Met does.’
‘You interested?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Yeah, well … Nice to meet you.’ He turned at the door, his face anxious. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Uncle Si, is there?’
‘No,’ Cat said, ‘he’s fine. Did you eat enough at teatime?’
‘No, rotten tea, shop cakes as well, but I had fish and chips with the Lawsons. Cheers, then.’ He banged out and up the stairs.
‘I think what Sam just asked you lifts a bit of a cloud.’
‘Unusual question – interesting. Why?’
‘Oh, I found a load of stuff in his room about guns … pictures of guns, write-ups about guns, clips out of gun mags, downloads from the Internet. He hadn’t hidden them or anything but, well, you know …’
He laughed. ‘Take your point, but just think – better than a stash of spliffs or a pile of porn mags.’
‘I wasn’t so sure at the time. Kieron, I’m in need of a drink. Can I get you a glass of wine or a beer?’
He hesitated. She knew he had driven himself, so he probably wouldn’t want alcohol.
‘Or just more coffee?’
In the second during which she sensed that he was going to accept, his mobile rang. He glanced at her in apology but answered at once.
‘Kieron Bright.’
He said nothing else, just listened. Something about his expression made Cat stop. Wait.
‘OK,’ he said. His face did not give away much. Just enough. ‘I’ve got to go.’
The words ‘Sorry. Thanks …’ came back to her as he raced to his car.
She stood there, watching the dust rise as he hit the road, knowing the call could have been about any one of a thousand police matters, dreading that it had been about Simon. But if it had been, he would have stopped just long enough to tell her as much.
It was not her brother she was most concerned about now.
Fifty-three
‘Can you get that light out of my eyes please?’
Andrew Morson stepped forward, to stand beside Simon near the bins. He wore a waxed coat over his pyjamas, and wellington boots. He was smirking.
‘Just worried about you going through my bins. But you seem to have found what you wanted, Johnno.’
He was too quick. He had grabbed the watch before Simon had time to realise what he was doing. He shone the torch on it, turned it over, examined the small buttons on the side.
‘Odd, don’t you think? Where did you get this?’
‘At a service station, a fiver with a fill-up of diesel. Can’t remember exactly.’
Morson held the watch up. ‘Really worth all that cloak-and-dagger stuff just to get this back?’
‘Just didn’t want to lose the only timepiece I’ve got.’
‘You’re behaving like a kid that lost his teddy … Interesting array of knobs here. You get this sort of thing on a Patek Philippe or a Rolex.’
‘Hardly. They’re just dummies, aren’t they?’
‘Are they? Let’s give them a go.’
Simon shrugged. He knew that the buttons only worked if pressed in the correct sequence, and the chances of that were fairly low – but on the other hand, there were only four buttons.
Morson fiddled about for a moment. Nothing. Or, at least, there were no beeps or flashes.
‘So why bother to come down and sort through the bins at half three in the morning? Maybe I’m missing something obvious. Am I? But in my job, it never pays to do that, so generally I don’t.’
His voice was silken, his head was cocked slightly on one side, and he was almost smiling. But not quite. His eyes, as they met Serrailler’s, did not blink. Simon’s left hand twitched.
‘Well, never mind. You’re here now, whatever time it is. Odd though. Can I keep this? It’s only worth a fiver. I’ll give you a fiver.’
Serrailler took a pace back. ‘You’d be welcome to it except that I don’t have another, and to be honest, I’ve got a bit attached to it. I’ve had it inside for a long time.’
‘Like your old teddy bear. Your constant companion. Sort of talisman, is it? I understand totally. I feel like that about my ancient shooting jacket. Still, I’ve taken a bit of a shine to it, Johnno.’
He pressed the buttons: one, two, three, four.
Simon lunged forward suddenly, and the torch went out as Morson hit the ground and he ran fast into the darkness.
The side path led to the drive, and he knew that the gates could only be opened by the activation of an electronic barrier. They were impossible to scale. He kept close to the high wall and ran to where the garden gave onto a rising meadow which had a ring of trees at its crown. There was no hiding place here but the rise dropped down quickly on the far side, and then towards a thick hedge. Beyond that was open country – too open. He expected an alarm to have started up but there was silence and the security lights had not been switched on. It was possible that he had knocked Morson out cold and now had a head start. He did not let himself think further.
It was still pitch dark but he found a weak gap in the hedge, and pushed his way through, tearing his shirt and his arm on brambles. There was a ditch on the other side. He dropped down and lay until his breathing slowed. He had no means of making contact with base and no idea at all of what Morson might do.
However, he had come to suspect that Johnno Miles was not Johnno Miles; now he would be certain of it, though he had no way of finding out his real identity. That was irrelevant. He had been clever enough to start probing. The explanation about the plastic watch being a beloved object because it had been with him in prison had not held water for a moment. But when he came round, he might play about with it until he discovered what happened when everything was pressed in the right order. Nobody would reply, there would be no voice, no beeping, but Simon was certain that Morson was suspicious enough to investigate further, and perhaps even discover that ‘Johnno Miles’ was an undercover cop.
Something scurried close to his feet at the bottom of the ditch and he got up quickly. A rat bite was the last thing he needed.
He had to hide out, moving across country, until he came to any sort of house, service station, farm. Even better, if he came to a village he would be able to get access to a phone – probably by simply asking for it. The news blackout on their escape meant that he would not be recognised, and although he looked scruffy, he thought he could provide a pla
usible explanation for that.
He stayed long enough to eat the banana he had taken from the house, which gave him a shot of energy, and then moved on. He had about two and a half hours before dawn. The countryside was silent, he had not heard a single vehicle or seen any headlights. It would be safe, at least for a time, and much faster, to get onto a road.
Morson was winded and disorientated. He was also angry. He had come round after ten minutes, realised that he was not badly hurt and unlikely to suffer any damage beyond a sore head. He got up cautiously. Took a few deep breaths. Went back into the house, to make two phone calls.
A few minutes later, he heard the Range Rover start up in the yard.
Painkillers and brandy took some time to work on his blinding headache and he lay thinking, not about ‘Johnno’ – that would be taken care of now – but about how the ring could have been cracked and then disabled, who had let anything slip, what information might have leaked out. Email addresses, servers, ISPs, they all led somewhere in the end.
Everyone had been alerted on a separate server and gone offline. There were other ways of keeping contact going though it would be unwise to use them.
No one knew better than he did how big the risk was now, how high the stakes, but most of them had everything to lose if it came to public exposure.
Fifty-four
Three men, one woman. The small room was one of the few in the building with a light on. They were staring at an enlarged Google Earth map showing an area of open country. It was 3.30 a.m.
Someone came in without knocking. ‘Guv – we’ve got a red.’
The officer whistled. ‘Where is he?’
The man who had come in bent over to the screen of the laptop. ‘Not that far away from where he last showed up.’ He scrolled, clicked, enlarged. Homed in.
‘This is still very rural. Now – he’s within this area … two square miles or so of this point.’
‘Shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘You’re taking the piss.’
They scrolled down. Fields. Hedges. More fields. Ditches. A farm. A cluster of buildings and a church marking a village. Big house and garden next to the church. Three more houses. Two footpaths, one B-road, one lane. One pond.
‘Signal’s dead.’
‘Shit.’
They stood about in silence, staring at the computer screen and the map as if they might come alive and tell them what was happening, what they should do.
‘I’m getting Craig out of bed,’ the DI said.
‘He won’t thank you.’
But the Super was awake, making tea in his Ealing kitchen because his mind was crowded with problems, none of which had straightforward solutions, and he had indigestion after a late curry. He listened, drinking his tea too hot. Thought for half a minute while the DI was silent, knowing he would get a clear and coherent set of orders.
‘Right. Serrailler’s safety is now first priority. I’m on my way, and meanwhile, here’s what we do.’
Fifty-five
It would be light by half past five. He would keep moving until then, hope to reach a place where he could get to a phone. He had no money but he would find something, even persuade a newsagent to let him make a call to the nearest police station. If he hit a town where there was a station, even better. Morson would now know that he was not Johnno Miles but what could he do about that?
Ten minutes later, alert but judging that it was safe to leave the shelter of the hedge, he came out into a lane and started to jog. Running would have been faster but he wanted to conserve his energy.
He didn’t hear the car. The headlights were behind but then suddenly all over him, covering him in what seemed to be a single piercing, brilliant light. He had nowhere to go. The man was out of the 4 × 4, onto him and had brought him down before he could get out of the way. He felt a blow to the back of his head which did not knock him out completely, and then a punch in his solar plexus which sent him reeling, fighting to breathe.
He was choking as he felt himself kicked off his feet then lifted over the back of the vehicle so that he tumbled forward. His chest burned and his throat ached with the effort to get two consecutive breaths and, when he did so, he was kicked in the stomach, winded again, and hit with something that made the inside of his head flare briefly like a bonfire being set alight, then go black.
The last thing Frankie wanted was to drive too fast and hit a random cop car on night patrol looking for stolen vehicles. He kept to the speed limits. The van heading up to meet him would do the same. But it was quiet, even on the dual carriageway. No sound from behind him. He’d knocked the man out, that was all. It was up to the others to do the rest.
He turned on the radio low – traffic news, weather, phone-ins from the miserable and the desperate and the idiotic, uber-cheery presenter, seeing you through the small hours. Another twenty minutes and he was heading into a town. Another twenty, he’d start to look out. He knew the meeting point.
He wasn’t bothered about any of it. All in the night’s work. He’d done plenty of unusual jobs and Lynn never asked questions. Why else did they get paid so much, plus the coach house, the cars, the food and drink, the holidays, the account cards? They’d never cheated. He was proud of that. Everything they spent was accounted for and the statements transparent. Meanwhile, pincers straight from the furnace wouldn’t get a word from him of what he knew – and he knew everything.
They were already there, lights doused, as he turned into the slip road that led to an industrial estate.
It was done in less than five minutes. The man was out cold and stayed out when they hauled him from the boot and threw him hard into the back of the van. None of them spoke a word other than to identify themselves with the names Morson had given. They wore dark clothing and balaclavas over their faces.
Frankie waited until the van moved off, then sped over the bridge and back on the road home. He didn’t give the guy he had knocked out a second’s thought.
Fifty-six
The first call had worried him but not unduly. The second, in the middle of that night, had him up and dressing as he answered.
‘No, you listen to me – this is one of my senior officers, he comes under my command, he’s my responsibility before he’s yours and I’m in on everything. I don’t care what your bloody protocols are – so far as I’m concerned they don’t exist. This started on my patch, we’ve a vested interest. I owe it to Serrailler.’ He listened again briefly, then said, ‘Forty minutes, I’d guess, but the pilot will radio in.’
The police helicopter was scrambled and down into the small park across the road from the Chief’s house ten minutes later, another three and they were airborne, heading east.
Local special forces were alerted; the London team would be meeting them on the edge of the mapped-out area. There had been no further signals from Serrailler’s electronic bleeper, which was now assumed to be dead.
‘Let’s hope,’ the DI said as they loaded up, ‘it’s the only thing that is.’
It was still barely dawn when the police vans, choppers, unmarked cars and a large body of officers stood in a field belonging to Daffern Farm, getting orders. The air was heavy with early dew, the cows on the other side of the high hedge were undisturbed.
‘Bloody good job it isn’t sheep,’ someone said. ‘Half the county would have heard, racket they make.’
‘OK, Daffern Farm. Jim Weston is the farmer, there’s a wife, son and daughter-in-law, all live in. We’re going up in single file, we knock them up, I’ve got the warrant, but no barging straight in, wait for the word. Might be no problem, chances are it’s nothing to do with them and they know nothing, but we have to start somewhere. Outbuildings – cowsheds, couple of barns – around the house, usual load of old vehicles and derelict caravans, and we’re searching everywhere – and that means everywhere. Heads up.’
They went forward in silence, boots brushing long grass. There was a single light on in an upstairs front room.
<
br /> The hammering on the door set a dog barking inside. The police dog handlers held theirs back on short chains.
‘Jim Weston?’
‘Good God, what’s this all about?’ The man peered out, his unshaven face bewildered. But he listened without protest. ‘Nothing here and nobody, but I suppose you wouldn’t come without some sort of reason, not this lot of you. I’ve got nothing to hide. Go where you like, only let me get the women warned and dressed before you go barging through the house if you don’t mind.’
‘That’s all right, sir, you do that, get them downstairs quick as you can, and whoever else lives here.’
‘Nigel, only he’s away, not back till Thursday.’
Minutes later the house was swarming with police. Others, plus the dogs, were into every corner of the outbuildings, as the first streaks of dawn showed pale in the eastern sky.
Frankie drove past as they were regrouping, having drawn a blank. He slowed a little and glanced in their direction, because it would be odd not to, took everything in, and then put his foot down.
Serrailler came round because someone had trained a power hose of freezing water onto his head. He was lying on concrete. He saw a thin paring of what might be the moon and a thin line of light on the horizon, both of which confused him, so that he closed his eyes. The hose hit him again at full power.
‘Open your eyes, Johnno. Open your fuckin’ eyes …’
He opened his eyes. But Johnno? Who were they talking to? Someone else. Not him. The concrete was ridged and cold against his back and pain was everywhere, he could barely breathe for it, squeezing and knifing his lungs and ribs when he tried. He saw boots. Denim legs. Tried to look up but the pain in his head would not let him. He wanted to see their faces.
‘Get up.’
He lay.
‘Get the fuck up, Johnno …’