by David Hodges
She was not taken in by the apparent emptiness of the scene, however, and moments later spotted the plain CID car tucked into a gateway opposite the entrance to Duval’s cottage. There seemed to be no one in the vehicle, which meant that either her colleague was relieving himself behind the hedge or – more likely – was hidden away close to the cottage itself, waiting for Duval’s return.
She mouthed a soft ‘Not very clever, boys’, as she followed the rhyne along the front of the property and accelerated towards Glastonbury. If Duval had chosen to drop by, he would have spotted the plain car in an instant; he was not a fool after all. It was the sort of ham-fisted and predictable setup she would have expected from a television cop story rather than a professional CID team and she guessed the whole thing was more of a formality exercise – a case of going through the motions to forestall later criticism – than anything else.
Nevertheless, the presence of one of her colleagues somewhere in the vicinity did make her job that much more hazardous, particularly as she had no idea whether he was closeted in the cottage itself or lurking about in the shadows outside. It was always a possibility that there was more than one of them too – even though, with manpower the way it was, this seemed pretty unlikely – but she tried not to think about such things as, in a few hundred yards, she turned off the main drag into a narrower lane that thrust its way across the marsh between the familiar skeletal hedges, extinguishing her lights and relying on just the moon to light her way.
She found another gateway a few yards further on and pulled in on to a grassy bridge that had been built over another arm of the rhyne, which enclosed the field in which Duval’s cottage stood. Patches of frozen water glittered in the moonlight amid the green invasive duckweed choking the ditch and she climbed out of her car very carefully, shivering as she remembered her nightmare experience in the icy water on the other side of Duval’s cottage the night before.
The cottage itself was clearly visible in the middle of a huge field, set well back from the main road and crouching into the stubble grass, as if trying to hide itself from scrutiny. Nothing moved and no lights showed in the vicinity, but she knew one of her colleagues would be hiding there, with his police radio connected to his ear by its thin plastic tube and earpiece. It was just on three, so he would probably be close to dozing off by now; bored, tired, eyelids heavy and half-closed. She knew the score from her own experience of observation duties like this. Between two and four in the morning, life was always at its lowest ebb and it was a constant battle to keep awake. If you did fall asleep, even for just a few minutes, you regretted it when you woke up again – cold, dispirited, every muscle aching for relief and with your mouth tasting, as poor old Alf Cross had once succinctly put it, like a camel’s armpit. After four, sleep was no longer the priority; you became irritable, restless and impatient for the dawn when your early turn relief was due to arrive, which gave you a renewed sense of alertness.
To be on the safe side, it was imperative that she got in and out of the cottage before that phase cut in and she hadn’t much time in which to do it.
Despite the need for haste, she forced herself to follow the hedgerow all the way round the edge of the field to where it joined the fenced boundary of the cottage, then down the fence to the side of the cottage, which was set back some forty feet from the road. A diagonal route would have been more direct, but it would also have been more risky too – especially if the obs man was not one prone to falling asleep like the rest and had brought night sight binoculars with him. But her caution cost her precious minutes and it was nearly twenty past three when she finally reached the bottom end of the cottage fence and peered through one of the gaps.
Take it steady. Stop. Listen. Don’t be in too much of a rush.
The warning voice in her brain urged even more caution, but the only sound to intrude upon the still air was the sudden sharp cry of some nocturnal winged marauder that flew low over her head with a thump of heavy wings and disappeared into the night as if it had never existed.
Taking a deep breath, she ducked through the opening and moved swiftly across a neglected lawn to the side of the cottage – only to freeze again and press herself into the brickwork when she heard a loud cough close by. Seconds later there was the fizz of a match and she smelled cigarette smoke.
Damn it! He had to be just yards away, maybe hidden by the corrugated iron water butt she could see to her right. How on earth had he missed seeing her cross the lawn?
Placing her feet with extreme care into the tufted grass, she leaned against the brickwork with one hand for support and crept along the wall towards the rear of the cottage in the manner of an astronaut negotiating the barren airless surface of the moon, anticipating the moment when her foot collided noisily with some half buried object en route. But to her relief that didn’t happen and she made it without mishap.
The back door of the house was tucked into a rickety porch and with cold trembling fingers she tried the key Duval had given her in the lock. The door opened without difficulty and she found herself peering into a tiny curtained room which at one time would have been called a scullery. As she stepped inside, her nostrils were assailed by a rank odour and she was not long in discovering the source. She saw the eyes first – a whole row of them, glaring at her in the torchlight – and she recoiled with a sharp intake of breath. The rabbits had not yet been skinned and were hanging by their ears from the hooks of an antiquated Welsh dresser. Nice.
With a grimace she tore her gaze away from them and turned her attention to an internal door a few feet in front of her. The door creaked as she opened it, admitting her to the kitchen. At last.
She saw the coat hanging on the back of another door directly opposite her and crept towards it as if she thought it was a live thing that might take off in fright at any moment.
Another loud cough from just outside the kitchen window. She switched off her torch and thrust a hand into one pocket. Nothing. A flashlight grazed the window as a bulky silhouette moved past. She froze. The flashlight disappeared, leaving her with just obstructed moonlight. She tried the other pocket and felt the crackle of paper.
Exhaling her relief, she tugged the piece of paper free and flicked it open with the fingers of one hand. Then, switching on the torch in her other hand, she quickly masked the beam with her fingers and scanned the note. The words jumped out at her: ‘… know about arson … meet me Brean Down car-park …’ It was enough. She had what she had come for. All she had to do now was get clear of the cottage without being spotted.
In fact, she did quite well initially and had actually managed to relock the back door and partially retrace her steps round the side of the cottage before things fell apart. How the obs man had sussed her presence she never did find out, but his flashlight blazed in her face before she had gone more than a few feet.
‘Kate?’ Hayden Lewis exclaimed, his surprise only fractionally greater than hers. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
chapter 10
WITHIN SIGHT OF Duval’s cottage Twister pulled into the side of the road, then carefully reversed into a gap in the hedge, cutting the engine and lights. If his assumptions were correct and the police were staking out the place on the chance of Duval returning, going any closer in the sort of vehicle he was driving would be suicidal. At least where he had parked up he was hidden from the view of any passing police patrol and there was no need for him to get any closer at this stage anyway, for he knew exactly where his quarry had gone. The road in front of him was straight for at least a couple of miles and he had seen Kate’s MX5 swing off into another signposted lane several hundred yards beyond the cottage. Furthermore, the clever little GPS monitor in his Land Rover, which was tracking the device fitted to her car, indicated that she had stopped for some reason.
First the clandestine meeting with Duval under the pier and now what looked like being a nocturnal visit to his cottage. Things were getting more interesting by the hour.
Quittin
g the driving seat, he went to the front of the vehicle and clambered up on to the bonnet, focusing his night-sight binoculars on the field in which the cottage stood – his gaze passing over the drove where he had callously totalled the police Transit without giving it a second’s thought.
From his slightly more elevated position he was able to spot Kate just entering the field, but then lost her seconds later as she moved swiftly into the cover of the roadside hedge. It was obvious that she was heading towards Duval’s place, her covert approach indicating that she was fully aware of the likely police presence. But he had no chance of picking her up again, for his view was blocked by the cottage itself and the fence that enclosed it. ‘Going in by the back door then, are we, my little treasure?’ he murmured to himself. ‘Well, I’ll just have to wait until you come out again, won’t I?’
Returning to the driving seat, he lit a cigarette and sat watching the smoke curl upwards in the moonlit cab while he waited patiently for the GPS tracker monitor attached to the dashboard to activate.
Hayden Lewis seemed more indignant than angry and Kate slumped back against the wall of the cottage, feeling a bit like a recalcitrant public-school boarder caught sneaking out of the dormitory for an illicit liaison.
‘You’re supposed to be off the inquiry,’ he expostulated. ‘You shouldn’t be anywhere near here.’
She nodded lamely. ‘I know, Hayden. I – I just had to check the place out.’
‘Check it out? Whatever for? That’s why I’m here.’
She gently pushed his flashlight downwards, so that the powerful beam no longer blinded her. ‘I just don’t think Terry Duval was responsible for the Transit blast,’ she said without thinking.
‘What?’ She saw him stiffen. ‘Why on earth would you say that?’
She hesitated. She wanted so much to tell someone about the note – to wash her hands of the thing she had got involved in and hand the responsibility over to another colleague before she crossed the line that would put her in the frame for assisting an offender. Hayden would certainly have been her choice if she had had to choose anyone, but she was terrified of how he might react. She knew he was sweet on her, but how sweet? Would he jeopardize his own career to help her or simply throw up his hands in horror and run to the guv’nor? And was it fair to lumber him with the responsibility of having to make that decision anyway?
He was staring at her now, saying nothing, just staring; waiting for an answer to his question.
‘I – I just think it’s all too pat,’ she blurted suddenly, throwing away her one chance of absolution. ‘Why would Duval crap on his own doorstep knowing he would be the number one suspect? And what would be the point in murdering the surveillance team anyway? It doesn’t add up.’
‘Perhaps he just lost it and decided to get even.’
She shook her head quickly. ‘I don’t buy that, Hayden. And anyway, even the Land Rover I saw was totally different to the one he owns. It was grey and had a snorkel fitted. His doesn’t have a snorkel and it’s green.’
‘So he owns another Land Rover we don’t know about.’
‘In which case, why have we never seen it? And where does he keep it?’
Suddenly she stopped short, conscious of the fact that her argument was beginning to sound like the sort of passionate defence of Duval that Callow had homed in on earlier.
He grunted and she could tell he was not happy about her answers. Hayden was an intelligent man and she had inadvertently only added to his suspicions.
‘Kate,’ he said finally, ‘you’re not doing something you shouldn’t be doing, are you? I mean, you’re in so much trouble already and—’
She reached forward and quickly squeezed his arm, cutting him off. ‘’Course not,’ she replied, forcing a husky laugh. ‘I just don’t think it all adds up, that’s all, and – and I wanted to see if I could get some answers by coming here.’
There was another long pause and she could sense the battle going on inside his head. She was out of order being on the property and it would have been pretty obvious to anyone that she was up to something. By rights he should report the circumstances straightaway. The problem was, could he bring himself to do it and not only welsh on a colleague, but destroy the career of someone he had fallen for in such a big way?
She squeezed his arm tighter. ‘Are you going to turn me in, Hayden?’ she said, the tremble in her voice genuine as she remembered her own twin sister saying the same thing just a short time before.
He took a deep breath. ‘Flippin’ heck, Kate,’ he said tightly. ‘Did you have to put me in this position? Just bugger off, will you, and don’t let anyone else see you or I’m in the poo big time.’
On impulse, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Hayden,’ she whispered, feeling an absolute heel. ‘I owe you one.’
He was still looking after her as she slipped through the hedge and made her way back across the field, gnawing her lip in frustration. Why the hell hadn’t she told him the truth? He was the one person she could have trusted and she had not only thrown the chance away, but had played on his feelings for her own purposes. She couldn’t have felt more despicable.
Throwing open the door of her car, she slumped into the seat and sat there for a moment, her eyes tightly closed and her head pressed back against the headrest as she tried to blank off her emotions and think positively – but failing miserably.
So she had the note, but without Duval what good was it to her? She had allowed herself to be inveigled into following his agenda, letting a vicious arsonist and suspected murderer dictate the terms of his own surrender. What had she been thinking of? She had made the worst possible decisions all the way through and now she had no alternative but to stick with the course she had chosen.
Starting the engine, she pulled forward into the lane before carefully reversing into the open gateway where she had parked. Then, returning to the main road, she headed back the way she had come, past the parked CID car and Duval’s cottage.
Unfortunately she failed to notice the Land Rover Defender parked in the field as she drove past and she had gone a few hundred yards before she glimpsed its distinctive cumbersome bulk in her rear-view mirror. The vehicle was not displaying any lights and was gaining on her fast, but – perhaps through tiredness – the significance of its sudden appearance behind her didn’t really register. Land Rovers were a common sight on the Levels at all times of the day and night, so it was natural she should assume that this one belonged to a farmer out on an early morning stock check who had forgotten to switch on his lights, and she slowed to let him pass. But the driver made no attempt to overtake and by the time it dawned on her that something was terribly wrong, it was too late.
The next instant over a ton of heavy steel smashed into the rear of the MX5, hauling her back in her seat, before propelling her forward into the cruel burning embrace of her seat belt and sending her car careering across the road on to the opposite grass verge.
For some reason her airbag did not inflate with the impact and she successfully managed to wrestle the car back on to the road on the approach to a sharp left-hand bend, but she was unable to gain her correct side before the Land Rover pulled alongside and slammed into her passenger door. As her airbag now exploded with painful force and her car mounted the verge for the second time, she glimpsed the Land Rover’s driver through her passenger side window and her last conscious recollection was of his bearded face, brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, grinning at her with malicious satisfaction before her car left the verge on the apex of the bend and plunged straight into the rhyne.
The man in the Land Rover pulled into the side of the road just yards from where he had forced Kate’s car off the road and turned round in his seat to stare back at the spot, his heavy brows crinkled in a frown. Twister could just see part of the roof and a corner of the boot of her MX5 and realized that the small vehicle had somehow become wedged between the steep banks of the rhyne at an angle. With a b
it of luck, the front end, including the woman copper’s head, would be under water or so badly damaged that she had been crushed to death by the impact, but he knew he had to make sure.
His feet slithered on the frosty road surface when he stepped out of the car and he drew his coat more tightly about him as he crossed the road diagonally to the churned up grass verge, a pocket torch in one hand. Part of a rear light unit lay on the road side, which he picked up and tossed into the rhyne – no sense advertising the crash – before approaching the edge of the bank and peering over.
The front of the car had smashed through the thin layer of ice and was buried up to its windscreen in the water, the driver’s side well below the surface and the windscreen crazed over with the force of the impact, but he could see little of the interior, which was in dense shadow.
Checking that the road in both directions was empty, he got down on to his hands and knees, wincing at the cold rising from the crisp grass, and leaned against the edge of the roof for support. Then, thrusting his face to within a few inches of the strip of front passenger window that projected above the bank, he directed the beam of his torch into the car with his other hand.
At once he was able to make out Kate’s motionless figure, partially buried by the inflated airbag. Her body seemed to have been forced sideways in the confined space between the airbag and the seat, her head twisted round and turned towards him at what looked like an impossible angle and one limp arm hanging down beside the seat, partially submerged in the water swirling into the car through the shattered driver’s window. She did not stir even when he hammered the roof with the butt of his torch and her eyes were wide open and vacant. He had seen death many times in his army service – had been responsible for it on a number of occasions too – and although the sunken position of the car made it impossible for him to get closer to his victim to actually check her pulse, he could tell from the look of her that she was dead, and he smiled grimly as he stood up. ‘Job done,’ he murmured.