The Hanged Man

by Simon Kernick

  I shook my head. ‘No. He got away.’

  The smile faded. ‘He said he’d kill my kids. You know where they live. Please, make sure he doesn’t get to them.’

  I nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘Go,’ he whispered, his voice faltering. ‘Now.’

  He coughed again and started to choke. Again he turned to the side, and more blood and spit came out. I saw his grip on the machine pistol loosen. I was only inches away. I could have got it away from him. But I didn’t. He stopped coughing and looked at me. I got to my feet.

  ‘Take care, Dan,’ I said. ‘Your family will be safe.’

  I turned away, and a split second later I heard the shot.

  I didn’t turn back. My friend was dead, and in the distance I could just about make out the sound of approaching sirens.

  Fifty-nine

  The main problem Tina Boyd had was that she never knew when to stop.

  As soon as she’d switched on the light in the basement and seen the stone altar with the pentacle sign behind it, she knew she’d stumbled on to something important. According to Ray, this was the sign that had been in the basement at the farmhouse in Wales, as well as on the wall of an old folly in the grounds of the boarding school where the remains of Kitty Sinn and Dana Brennan had been found in April. It was more evidence, if any were needed, that Anthea Delbarto was inextricably linked with the Bone Field killers.

  Leaving the light on, Tina had gone down the steps and taken a number of photos of the altar, as well as a wicker basket next to it that contained the bones, some still with clumps of fur or feathers on them, of a number of small animals. She’d then planted a camera with a mike beside a cupboard in the corner of the room facing the altar.

  And that was when she should have turned and gone straight back up the stairs and out the front door.

  But she hadn’t. There were two large cupboards and two filing cabinets, all of them locked, lining one wall, and because Tina was on the hunt for more evidence she’d decided to look inside them. It was too risky to do it with the light on in the basement, where it could be seen from outside in the hall, so she’d picked the locks using only her head torch for light, a process that had been long and laborious because she’d then had to use the picks to re-lock them so her presence here wouldn’t be detected.

  The cupboards had contained plenty of occult paraphernalia – robes, old books, jars containing pickled animal parts and strange-smelling substances, a number of razor-sharp knives that were doubtless used for animal sacrifice – but nothing that suggested any obvious criminal wrongdoing.

  The filing cabinets had been even more of a waste of time: they contained nothing more than reams and reams of paperwork relating to a variety of mundane topics, from old tax returns to damp-proofing certificates.

  It was a quarter to ten when Tina re-locked the last of the cabinets. She’d been down here for over half an hour and it was definitely time to go. Keeping the torch pointed directly down in front of her she climbed the steps and was almost at the top when she heard footsteps approaching outside and someone talking.

  It was Anthea Delbarto, and she was on the phone. She was speaking in low tones and she sounded worried.

  Tina yanked off her head torch and switched it off, plunging the basement into darkness as Anthea walked directly past the basement door. She couldn’t hear what was being said but it was clear it was something serious. The footsteps faded as Anthea kept walking, and then the front door opened and she stepped outside, her voice still just audible.

  Tina waited, concluding that, with the front door open, it was too risky for her to step out into the hall.

  Then she heard it shut and the footfalls come back.

  And stop. Just outside the basement door.

  Anthea Delbarto was no longer on the phone. And she wasn’t moving either.

  Tina froze and held her breath.

  The door opened an inch, and now it would have been obvious to Anthea that someone had broken in. Tina tensed, preparing to launch herself out of the door and make a run for it.

  But then, just as quickly, the door shut and Tina heard the bolt being pulled across.

  And just like that, she was trapped.

  Sixty

  I just had time to retrieve my empty Walther, clean the prints off the other gun I’d used, and grab hold of a very shaken but thankfully alive Hugh Manning before the first flashing blue lights appeared on the horizon from the main road.

  We jumped in my car and left the nature reserve in the other direction, travelling at speed, neither of us really sure where we were going, but for me at least the top priority was to put as much distance between us and the lake as possible, because I was fairly certain that if the police brought in a helicopter they’d hone in on us immediately.

  Incredibly, my car didn’t look too bad considering it had just been in the middle of a firefight. There was the hole at the top of the windscreen where a bullet had passed through before exiting through the roof, and there were several more holes in the front and back passenger side doors, but at first glance in darkness the damage wasn’t noticeable, which meant if we could get to another main road we were probably safe.

  For the next ten minutes I drove at a fast yet controlled pace, half expecting to run into a roadblock around every corner, or hear the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead, knowing that if we were caught then there was no way on God’s earth I’d be able to talk my way out of it. I’d killed a number of men tonight. I wasn’t sure of the exact number because I wasn’t sure how many were still alive, but it was at least two, and possibly as high as six. It didn’t matter that they were all armed. I’d used an illegal gun that I was still carrying, and had left the scene of what was to all intents and purposes a massacre, with a serving police officer among the dead, and without reporting it. That meant a jail sentence, and, given my already controversial record, probably a long one.

  But tonight at least, luck was on my side, and we reached a road containing traffic that my satnav identified as the B3078. I immediately turned north on it and slowed down, joining a queue of three cars backed up behind a slow-moving lorry.

  ‘What the hell happens now?’ said Manning, speaking for the first time since I’d hauled him off the grass by the lake. ‘I need protection.’

  ‘And you’ll get it,’ I said. ‘I guarantee that.’

  Manning gave me a disgusted look. His face was puffy and it looked like he’d been crying. ‘You can’t guarantee anything right now. What happened back there was your fault.’

  His voice had taken on a whining, child-like tone that annoyed me. ‘My colleague was compromised by the Kalamans. They were blackmailing him.’

  ‘And that’s precisely why I need some bloody protection. Instead you’re just taking me off into the middle of God knows where, running from the very people you’re meant to be handing me over to. Why didn’t we stay put, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘First of all, it was your choice to get me involved. Secondly, I’ve just saved your life.’

  ‘Only because you put it at risk in the first place by not keeping the meeting to yourself.’

  I glared at him. ‘No, Hughie boy. You were the one who put things at risk when you got involved with violent gangsters, just because they paid you lots of money, instead of doing a normal day’s work like everyone else. And secondly, for your information, we’re not on the run. I just need to get away to plan our next move.’

  ‘Which is?’

  I sighed. ‘When we get close to London, you’re going to call the number of the woman I reported to until yesterday. Her name’s Sheryl Trinder and she’s high up in the NCA. I also know she’s clean.’

  ‘How do you know? I assume you thought your colleague was clean too.’

  I sighed, thinking of Dan lying dead on the ground, his life destroyed by the Bone Field killers. The shock of that still hadn’t hit me, although I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long until it did. ‘H
e had a weakness which they exploited. One thing I can tell you about Sheryl is she doesn’t have any. She’s hard as nails, and honest with it. I’ll be here while you make arrangements to meet her at HQ, then I’ll drop you off nearby, and she’ll take over.’

  Manning shook his head angrily and stared out of the window. ‘If I’d known this was how it was going to end up, I’d have stayed on the run.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, it’s too late for that now.’

  He pulled a phone from his pocket. ‘I need to know what happened to my friend. The one who was there tonight. I think he might be hurt.’

  ‘The police will be there now. They’ll find him.’

  ‘They might not. He was in the woods.’

  I didn’t want Manning to complicate things by phoning someone at the crime scene but I didn’t like the idea of leaving someone behind injured either, so I told him to go ahead and make the call.

  He did. At the same time, my own phone vibrated in my pocket.

  ‘It went to voicemail,’ said Manning quietly. ‘I think he might be dead. He helped me, you know. He didn’t have to.’

  ‘Then pay him back by helping put the Bone Field killers behind bars. You were there when Alastair Sheridan killed a woman, weren’t you? A long time ago.’

  He looked at me. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘The woman was a prostitute and her pimp at the time told me about it. He said it happened at Alastair’s house and that you were there. For all we know you might have been involved.’

  Manning shook his head vehemently. ‘That had nothing to do with me.’

  I met his eye. ‘So you say.’

  Manning sighed. ‘I won’t lie to you, I was there. I thought Alastair and I were just going to have a threesome with her. We did that sometimes in those days with girls. Sometimes we even got a bit rough with them. But that night, Alastair was on coke and he’d been drinking, and he was in a very belligerent mood. He knocked the girl around. She yelled at him to stop and when he didn’t, she fought back. It turned out she was quite handy with her fists and she forced him off her, and cut his face as well.’ Manning looked out of the window. ‘He was furious. He grabbed some kind of statuette and hit her with it. She went down on her knees but instead of stopping he kept hitting her with it. I couldn’t look. I felt physically sick. And I’m not proud to say it but I ran out of the room and left her in there with him.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You could have called the police.’

  ‘And I wish I had. But I didn’t. I was in shock. Alastair came out of the room a little while afterwards. He was still naked and covered from head to foot in blood. He told me it had been an accident and the girl was dead. He also told me that he knew people – dangerous people, he called them – who could get rid of her, but if I said a word about what had happened to anyone, he wouldn’t be able to protect me. I’d be killed too. The thing I remember most is the way he wasn’t really that bothered about the fact that he’d just killed someone. It was like it was a minor inconvenience.’

  ‘You’re going to have to testify against him to have any hope of getting into witness protection,’ I said.

  ‘As long as I don’t go to prison, I’ll do whatever I have to do.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what happened to the dead woman?’ I asked him.

  ‘Two men came to the house. I can’t remember much about them except one was older with a foreign accent, and he was the one in charge. They said they’d take care of it. I promised not to say a word to anyone so I was allowed to go.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose you remember the girl’s name?’

  He didn’t.

  It depressed me how little worth this poor woman had had for Ugo Amelu, Hugh Manning, or any of the people who’d used her in her short life. I was fairly certain even a low-life like Manning would avoid prison, as long as what he had to say was good. It was also a pity there was no body. It meant the case against Alastair Sheridan was shaky to say the least.

  I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw there was no one behind us. ‘The phone you just used to call your friend. Throw it out of the window now. I don’t want it being tracked.’

  He did as he was told and, remembering that my own phone had just vibrated, I pulled it out of my pocket. There was a message from Tina. As I drove I read it, feeling a mounting sense of concern. The message said she was trapped in the basement at Anthea Delbarto’s house and that Delbarto knew she was in there.

  ‘Shit,’ I said out loud.

  Manning shot me a concerned look. ‘What is it?’

  I texted back to let Tina know we were on our way.

  ‘A slight change of plan,’ I told him.

  Sixty-one

  Tina waited in the darkness, close to the top of the steps, thinking about her next move. There was no way out of the basement other than the door, and the bolt meant that no amount of lock-picking skills was going to get through that.

  She’d been trapped in here for over twenty minutes now, listening to the silence outside and wondering what Anthea Delbarto, who clearly knew she was down there, intended to do with her. Ray had texted her back to say he was coming but hadn’t given her any details of how he planned to extract her, only said that he wasn’t far away.

  She heard low voices whispering on the other side of the door. A woman she immediately identified as Anthea, and a man. Tina tensed, then slowly descended the steps in the darkness, trying to remember the layout of the place as she hunted for a place to hide.

  Behind her, Tina heard the bolt being pulled back and quickly hid in a tiny alcove just to the right of the bottom of the stairs, using the end filing cabinet as cover. At the same time she removed her backpack in case she needed to use it as a weapon, and took a small can of pepper spray from her pocket.

  The key turned in the lock and the door opened, allowing in a crack of light. Shoes scraped on the concrete, and a second later the light was switched on.

  Tina squinted in the sudden brightness, and as her eyes refocused she realized that her hiding place was clearly visible from the bottom half of the steps. Holding her breath and staying as still as possible, she braced herself as the person who’d come inside descended the steps one at a time, until finally he came into view. It was the strange man who’d almost killed her and Charlotte Curtis in a French forest three months earlier. The man from Brian Foxley’s forty-year-old photos, the one Ray had called Mr Bone. He was no longer wearing the hat he’d had on that day in France, and his thin, wispy grey hair was caked in sweat. One side of his face was badly swollen, and his right eye was almost closed. Even so, he was holding a pistol with suppressor attached and there was still a careful, spider-like stealth in the way he moved that told Tina he might be hurt but he was nowhere near finished yet.

  No more than ten feet separated them, and as he sniffed the air like some kind of animal and turned both himself and the gun slowly in Tina’s direction, she shot up from her hiding place and threw the backpack at him.

  It hit him in the chest, but because the pack was so light it barely knocked him off balance. However it was enough to make him turn away instinctively, and before he could steady himself and fire, Tina was on him, sending them both flying through the air and crashing on to the floor in front of the altar. Tina landed on top of him and the gun flew out of his hand and clattered across the floor. Without hesitating, she brought up the pepper spray and fired it into his face, moving her head out of the way so she didn’t get its effects too.

  He choked and struggled but was unable to stop her as she sat up on his arms and punched him repeatedly in his already injured face, opening up a deep cut just beneath his eye.

  But then she heard movement behind her and turned to see Anthea Delbarto coming down the steps fast, waving a poker.

  ‘You whore!’ shouted Anthea. ‘Get off him!’

  For a woman in her sixties she was quick on her feet, but Tina
was a lot quicker, and she leapt up and turned to meet Anthea as she reached the bottom of the steps and lunged at her. Tina stepped aside and dodged her, grabbing Anthea’s wrist and twisting, before taking a step forward and driving the flat of her palm into her nose.

  Anthea cried out in pain, threw her hands up to her face, and dropped the poker as blood poured out of her nose. The palm to the nose was always a brutal blow, causing an almost intolerable burst of pain that put most people out of action temporarily. However, just to be sure, Tina drove an elbow into the side of her head, knocking her backwards into the steps, then turned round in time to see the man who’d shot Charlotte crawling along the floor towards his gun, his arm already outstretched.

  Tina took two rapid steps and kicked him in the head, the force of the kick shunting him along the floor and temporarily out of reach of the gun. She immediately stepped over him and grabbed it.

  ‘Move and I’ll kill both of you,’ she said, pointing the gun from one to the other.

  Anthea was still holding her face as the blood from her nose dripped down her chin, but the man, although injured and still suffering from the effects of the spray, was glaring at her malevolently through the one bloodshot eye that was still open, and Tina found herself grudgingly admiring his resilience.

  ‘I owe you for France,’ she told him, ‘so feel free to give me an excuse to kill you.’

  He gave no reaction at all but his eye followed her, like a predator’s, as she walked round him carefully, giving him as wide a berth as possible. Tina was fully prepared to shoot him if she had to. She’d long ago ceased to be squeamish about killing.

  She grabbed her backpack and hurried up the steps, watching both of them the whole way, before shutting out the light and letting herself out, feeling a burst of relief as she emerged into the coolness of the hall. She locked the door and threw the bolt across, trapping them inside, and pulled out her phone to call Ray and let him know she was OK.

  Then she heard a movement behind her.