The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1)

by Barrie Roberts

  I dived out and ran after him, catching him up by the cattle grid. He was stooped over one end, trying to lift it from over the concrete-lined pit that it covered.

  ‘Get the other end!’ he commanded. ‘Let’s have it off!’

  I followed his order and began to lift at my end, but I protested when I realised what he had in mind. ‘You can’t do it!’ I said. ‘You’ll kill him!’

  ‘Ah, not at all,’ he panted. ‘He’ll have a seat belt. He’ll just get a few bruises.’

  Together we succeeded in dragging the iron grid from its setting of impacted dirt. With a joint heave we turned it over like a big lid and dropped it on the nearside of the pit. As it clanged on to the road surface Miley sprinted for the car and I followed.

  We tumbled in and he roared away across the moor, suddenly reversing on to the grass and pulling behind a jumble of rocks. Snatching something from the glove compartment, he leapt out again and slid quickly along the side of the rocks, until he could see the cattle grid without being seen. I hunched behind him and realised that he had taken a pair of expensive binoculars from the car.

  We could hear the approaching note of the van’s engine and I tensed, still fearing that I was about to become an accomplice to murder. The van suddenly appeared around the rocky bluff beyond the grid.

  The driver had no chance. If he even had time to realise what was in front of him, he had no time to do anything about it. The vehicle’s nose plunged into the pit with a reverberating crash, the rear end lifted until the van was almost vertical, then settled on to the far side of the pit with a thud that shook the ground.

  I half rose, intending to go and see what damage had been done, but Miley pushed me down with one hand. After a silence broken only by hissing from the wrecked engine of the canted van, bangs began to echo from the wreck and the driver’s door opened slowly. A uniformed figure clambered stiffly out and sat on the edge of the pit. I released the breath I had been holding since the van appeared.

  Miley lifted the glasses. ‘Look at that!’ he said after a moment, and passed me the glasses. ‘I told you they wasn’t wobs after you. Look at his badges!’

  I focused the binoculars and scanned the driver. The uniform was a close imitation of police style, but not the badge on the shoulder. A pale green flash with silver initials leapt into my view — KES. I had seen that flash often in and around Belston and well knew what it signified — Kerrenwood Enterprises Security. So Kerrenwood’s were backing up the enemy.

  I had no time to think about why Kerrenwood’s were involved. Miley snatched the glasses back and made for the car. Seconds later he swung out on to the road and we were away across the moor. A mile further on we reached the far side of the hill, where the road began a zigzagging descent among rocks, as steep as the way we had climbed on the other slope. Below us lay a broad open valley, through which a road ran like a ruled line towards distant hills.

  ‘A Roman road,’ I said.

  ‘So ’tis,’ said Miley, ‘and the only way from here to Shrewsbury which might be troublesome.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because the queer fella behind us had a radio aerial on his van. If his radio’s still working he’ll be calling up more of the same and they’ll know where we’re going. All they’ll do is sit in those hills and wait for us.’

  I looked across the landscape. The afternoon had dulled and the sky was unbroken grey, but it was possible to see what he meant. We had burned a bridge behind us and must drop down to the straight road and follow it into the border hills.

  ‘Then don’t take me to Shrewsbury,’ I said. ‘You can’t take me into the town by car, anyway. We’ll be sitting ducks in that traffic spiral if they’re waiting for us there.’

  ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘they’ll wait for us in the hills. They’re not going to be murdering people in town.’

  ‘Then turn aside and drop me somewhere,’ I said. ‘I can find my way to Shrewsbury or get a ride through to the Midlands or whatever.’

  ‘Me daddy said I was to get you safe to the train at Shrewsbury,’ he said, stubbornly, ‘and he’s a great old one for doing things right, is me daddy.’

  He navigated us down to the road and turned right on to it, beginning to build up speed as soon as he had the long straight in front of him. I was silent, knowing I had lost the argument, but he returned to it.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said, indicating the hills ahead. I followed his gesture and saw that a curtain of rain was falling between us and the hills.

  ‘I couldn’t drop you in that,’ he said. ‘You’d be drenched and me daddy would never forgive me.’

  Now I was sure there was no alternative plan, but I didn’t fancy a confrontation somewhere in those rainswept hills with the sports-jacketed killer and his thugs. Even if, by a miracle, we evaded that, there was the prospect of being simply surrounded on the pavement in Shrewsbury.

  The curtain of rain moved steadily out from the hills to meet us, until Miley had to stop and drag up a battered hood to keep out the worst of it. Now we were disadvantaged by the reduced visibility. The approaching hills were almost lost to sight behind the drizzle. Miley began to mutter to himself and slow down, driving hunched forward over the wheel and peering intently through the murk.

  Suddenly he bumped off the road on to the grass verge and pulled to a stop. Taking the binoculars, he humped his jacket over the back of his head and slid out of the car. I followed suit as he made for the stone wall alongside the road. He climbed across the ditch and perched himself gingerly against the wall, lifting the glasses and trying, with the other hand, to shield the lenses from the rain.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘What am I looking at,’ he said, and passed the field-glasses, pointing me along the inside of the wall. I couldn’t find it in the lens at first. I was sweeping across rainswept grass. Then suddenly it was there — the rear of a dark-green van parked in a field gateway.

  We slid back into the comparatively dry car. ‘A watcher,’ I said, ‘to radio ahead when we pass by.’

  ‘That’ll be it,’ he said and started the car.

  He turned in the road and accelerated back along our track, making one of his dramatic turns into a gateway on our left. It was a farm access and we bumped and slithered along a rutted and muddy track towards a cluster of stone buildings at the foot of a steep hill.

  ‘We can’t hide up here!’ I exclaimed. ‘They’ll track us here soon and God knows what they’ll do to anyone who hides us!’

  He never replied, but drove on until the track passed between two buildings and brought us into the yard of the farm. An elderly man, presumably alerted by the sound of our engine, stepped out from the side of an open stone barn as though to greet us. Miley ignored him and drove on between the barn and what was obviously the farmhouse. The track led on to a flimsy wooden gate.

  He rubbed the corroded St Christopher medallion pinned on the dash and grinned at me. ‘Pop out and fix the gate for me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to let the old fella’s sheep and cows get all over.’

  We slid to a halt at the gate. As I jumped out I heard shouts from the old man who was stumbling down the track behind us. Long before he could catch up we were through, the gate was closed and Miley was bumping and zigzagging across rough pasture. Then it dawned on me why he had sought the saint’s aid. He was going to try and take us over a small mountain without even a dirt-track to assist.

  I looked at the dark, wet slope of grass and rock rising in front of us. I couldn’t even see it clearly for the rain, but the nearer it got I still couldn’t distinguish anything that looked like more than narrow, winding sheep trails on its surface and they weren’t wide enough to hold one tyre. It was my turn to give the battered St Christopher medallion a rub. After all, if I’ve got a patron saint it must be him.

  ‘Miley — ’ I began.

  ‘Shut up, Mr Tyroll, and hold on,’ he said, without turning his head. ‘This is going to be a
bit difficult.’

  I lowered my head, not to pray because even in my liberal religion I don’t believe the Lord encourages folly, but to try and get rid of the picture in front of me. It didn’t work; it was in my head as well. And it was changing. We were slipping suddenly sideways to zigzag helplessly till we struck a rock and rolled over on to the soft top — we were shooting upwards across a patch of wet rock and sliding into an uncontrollable spin that sent us cartwheeling to the bottom — we were performing a dozen more failed manoeuvres, each of which ended disastrously and several in the livid orange fire-burst of a TV movie — we were …

  We were beginning to lurch upwards. The horrors in my head vanished and I looked up.

  All I could see was the thin, slick covering of grass stretching upwards to patches of rock.

  ‘Lean this way,’ commanded Miley. ‘Put your arm around me and lean right over.’

  I slid my right arm around his thin, hard shoulders and pressed against him, trying desperately not to interfere with his control of the vehicle. At any moment I expected his foot to go down and the disaster to begin.

  I was wrong. With our weight as far to the driver’s side as he could get it, he had inched the wheels on that side on to the bottom of a sheep trail. Now he edged forward slowly, his feet working like a cyclist’s, his lean, strong hands alternately coaxing and forcing the bucking steering wheel. I glanced at his face and saw a wild, jaw-gritted grin fixed below the boy’s blue-grey eyes. They were everywhere at once, on the perilously narrow, muddy track that gave us our only grip on the hillside, on the changing slope ahead of us, on the mirrors and sometimes dead ahead as some new hazard loomed.

  Slowly I let out my pent-up breath. Gradually the astonishing skill of my companion became the entire focus of my attention. I forgot that one wrong move of eye, foot or hand could bring us to a crushed or flaming end and bent all my mind to willing him into the right moves though I had no idea what they were until he made them.

  How long it went on I couldn’t say. Maybe twenty minutes, but it seemed far, far longer. The engine snarled and coughed, the windscreen wipers whined and time vanished. Nearly halfway up the slope our ribbon of track bent across the top of a patch of rock. Suddenly the wheels’ grip gave way and we were sliding left.

  Fighting the wheel with his right hand, Miley reached out with his left and jerked me further towards him, leaning right forward so that I was sprawled between his back and the driver’s seat. ‘I told you it was difficult!’ he muttered.

  The sickening slither stopped and gradually he inched the wheels round, seeking an inch of purchase on the bare, wet rock where even mountain sheep would not trust their feet. We found it and we crept upwards again for a few more minutes.

  Then the engine stopped and we came to rest. ‘You can sit up now, Mr Tyroll,’ he said.

  Cautiously I levered myself back into my own seat and peered around. We were two-thirds of the way up and on the left shoulder of the hill. Generations of sheep had rounded the hillside here, their feet wearing a platform in the hillside, and there we sat with a view into the valley beyond.

  I breathed long and deeply and felt my sweat-sodden shirt cooling on me. I gave my friend Christopher a grateful pat. ‘Have you got a fag to spare?’ asked Miley.

  We smoked silently for several minutes, then I said, ‘What next?’

  ‘Down there,’ he replied. Two hundred yards below us a narrow lane crossed the hillside and wound down into the valley to join the road we had abandoned miles back.

  Miley flung his cigarette end out of the window and started the engine. ‘Lean back,’ he said, ‘it’s still a bit steep.’

  So it was, but it was ease itself compared to the way up. The only difficult bit came as we neared the little road, cut off from the hillside by a sharper slope and a hawthorn hedge. Miley dealt with the problem by a long, accelerated slant across the slope, taking out about twenty-five yards of hedge as we angled through it and jolted down on to the tarmac, covered in enough hawthorn sprays to camouflage us.

  Again he begged a cigarette and we took a rest. Behind us along the valley a train hooter sounded and he looked out. ‘Here we go!’ he said and we rocketed away in his old style, bounding and slithering through the winding lane until we reached a crossroads at the valley bottom. His driving had long since ceased to bother me. So far as I was concerned, Miles Murphy could take a car to the moon if the fancy took him and I’d be happy to go along.

  At the crossroads he surprised me by following our lane across the road into its unsignposted continuation. A few twists and turns later a loud bell rang ahead and we came round a corner in time to see the bar of a level crossing dropping across the road. To our right lay a small country rail station.

  Miley braked sharply in front of the bar. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Your train to Shrewsbury’s coming in. Don’t get off the station there. They’ll be looking for you outside.’

  I scrambled out of the car, dragging the bag that contained my few purchases. ‘Miley,’ I gasped, ‘you’re a marvel!’

  He grinned his toothy grin. ‘I’m a fair ould driver,’ he said, ‘but me daddy’ll skelp me for not driving you to Shrewsbury, so he will. Now get on that train, Mr Tyroll, else he’ll kill me dead!’

  I ducked under the bar and jogged along the trackside, climbing the steps on to the little platform just as the two-carriage train shuddered to a halt. Minutes later I was seated in the rear carriage as the little train pulled out. Miley gave me a cheery wave as we crossed in front of him.

  The train’s even rhythm made me feel quite queasy after the jolting, lurching and zooming of the last couple of hours, and the fat Welsh conductor eyed my dishevelled appearance disapprovingly as he issued my ticket.

  ‘Cut it a bit fine, didn’t you?’ he remarked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we had a bit of trouble on the road.’

  20

  Shrewsbury station was quiet. I had forty-five minutes before the Wolverhampton train, so I settled down in the snack bar to try and ease my unsettled stomach. It wasn’t the train’s motion, it was a flood of adrenalin washing about with no immediate emergencies to make it useful.

  I was settled in a corner, hidden behind somebody else’s forgotten newspaper, when I heard a loud Brummy voice at the counter asking for a tray of six coffees to take out. A cautious glance around the newspaper’s pages revealed a tall man in KES uniform who was chatting up the attendant as she filled his order. Miley had been right. They had the outside of the station well covered. I drew back behind my paper and when he left he was far too busy not spilling his mates’ refreshments to pay any attention to an Independent reader in the corner.

  Twenty minutes later I was rattling away to Wolverhampton, humming ‘Ye banks and braes’ — you know, the bit about ‘You tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road’. It hadn’t been the best day of my life, but it was turning out a lot better than it might have done.

  I spent the night in a commercial hotel on the edge of Wolverhampton, calling my articled clerk, Alan Reilly, at home to pick me up in Wolves the next morning. Before nine next day Alan and I were letting ourselves in at the back door of the office. While he went to fix the coffee, I heard two cars pull into the yard and a moment later Claude and my assistant, Alasdair Thayne, let themselves in.

  Claude the Phantom is ex-Services Investigation and looks it. Over six foot, broad-built, with a round, fair face and close-cropped greying hair, he always dresses in an anonymous grey suit and razor-starched white shirts that would advertise detergents. Sometimes the appearance is against him. I once sent him to interview some hippy witnesses in a Nottingham drugs case. He’d been gone two hours when I got a phone call complaining that an obvious CID officer was in Nottingham pretending to be my enquiry agent. On the other hand, he happens to be the best.

  Alasdair Thayne is a very different kettle of fish. Shropshire born of an old county family, public school and Oxford educated, first class law degree, he s
hould have been lolling behind an antique desk in London, pulling five hundred quid an hour for helping City crooks launder money. He’d been with me two years, since he answered an ad in Private Eye when I finally decided that I needed an assistant. When I saw this tall, elegant young man, with a posh drawl, slicked-back hair, a pencil moustache and tailored suits that all created a kind of twenties atmosphere, I couldn’t imagine what he wanted with my practice.

  ‘I rather thought it might be a bit more interesting than drawing wills and conveyances and helping unsavoury chappies evade tax, Mr Tyroll,’ he explained. I think that was the last time he called me ‘Mr Tyroll’. Since then it’s always been ‘governor’ or ‘boss’. I bet he calls his father ‘pater’.

  I had misgivings about employing him, but I didn’t have options. In three interviews two candidates turned me down before the interviews ended, so Alasdair won by default. Lucky chance, because he turned out to have a brilliant brain and an absolutely imperturbable manner in crises. In courts his coolness convinces magistrates that the most unlikely stories are true, and little old ladies and hardened Black Country villains think the world of him.

  He lounged into a chair while Claude went to help Alan with the coffee. He pulled a battered tin from his pocket and began rolling a cigarette. He ought to smoke Sullivans or Freibourg and Treyer to support his image, but he rolls evil-smelling things out of foreign tobaccos which he buys in a back-street shop. I suppose it’s the only way he can afford his suits on the wages I pay him.

  When the product was fuming well and scattering smouldering debris on to the edge of my desk, he asked, ‘Did you get to see the unused documents in Gormley’s case, governor?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘Inspector Saffary showed me anything that wouldn’t help and flatly refused to show me the radio log and the incident log.’

  ‘Why did you think they’ll help?’

  ‘Look, Karen Worstance was raped at nine in the evening of a Thursday. Gormley was breathalysed and taken to the nick at midnight on Saturday. While he was being processed for the breathalyser affair, Saffary hooked him and questioned him about the rape. Why? My information is that until that amazing hunch of Saffary’s, the entire division had been looking for a man who looked nothing like Gormley. I wanted to confirm that and find out what made Saffary question Gormley.’