by Paul Finch
‘I have nothing to say,’ came the distant voice of Charles Thornton.
The remaining stretch of passage seemed even dimmer than it had before, but it was only as Heck proceeded down this that he realised why: elsewhere in the barn, possibly in the corridor he’d just come through, the electric bulbs had been switched off. He halted in his tracks. Or had they gone off of their own volition? Were they on a timer?
‘You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.’
There was another titter of laughter.
Heck had heard that particular phrase somewhere before, but he didn’t attempt to recollect it because something else had now distracted him. About five or six yards ahead on the right, suspended among the shovels, spades, and saws, was the bright green frame of what looked like a bicycle. When he stood directly in front of it, the crimson logo on its central shaft revealed that it was a Boardman’s racing bike. Hooked over one of its handlebars was a blue racing helmet, complete with silver flashes.
‘I’m not as dumb as you look,’ the voice added, much closer.
Heck spun round, and gazed through the second left-hand door into yet another chamber. This was also lit dimly, but sufficiently for him to discern a breeze-block pillar hung with what looked like items of folded garden furniture – and a toy aeroplane.
He strode dazedly towards it.
There was no mistake. It was a large radio-controlled model, an Art-Tech recreation of an original Sopwith Camel, with a wingspan of about three and a half feet, painted blue and yellow. Its left tail fin had broken off, while its upper left wing hung at a crazy angle, having been reattached with strips of sticky tape. He didn’t need to examine it closely to see that it had also suffered water damage, and that its interior was clogged with mud and the green/brown stems of river weed. Underneath it there was a leather satchel from which hung two long scrolls of silky textured photographic paper. When Heck took one by the corner and shook it out, he saw a large, circular image – clearly taken with a telescopic lens, to create a long-range distortion – of the road outside Harold Lansing’s house.
Movement stirred in the corner of his vision.
Heck turned to face the doorway through which he’d entered. A shape had just ghosted past it. But now something else distracted him: to his left there was yet another short passage, this opening into a much wider space that was mostly veiled in shadow, though a single bulb burned at its far end, casting a restricted pool of light over another huge, double-sized entrance, on which two heavy wooden doors had been closed. What looked like a shiny new chain was woven between their handles, but it wasn’t this that struck Heck as much as the two flattish, flesh-coloured objects hanging one at either end of it.
Hair prickling, body greased with sweat, he strode forward, passing into this next and largest chamber. Long before he reached the two objects, he knew what they would be. But when he finally padded up to them, his worst suspicions were confirmed.
Masks.
Cheap plastic masks with threaded elastic, of a sort you could purchase at Blackpool or Rhyl or Margate, or on any decrepit pier or tatty fairground. Yet they still bore the distinctive genial features of those much-loved comics, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
There was an echoing clunk from somewhere to Heck’s rear.
He glanced behind. Nothing stirred in the chamber save the grass seeds and grains of dust that his own entrance had swirled into the air; and yet the place, though it was already dim, now seemed dimmer still. Another of the lights elsewhere in the barn had been switched off. A second clunk followed, and the bulb in the adjoining chamber vanished. Suddenly all areas save the tiny island of light around the wooden double doors were cloaked in blackness.
Heck’s neck hairs bristled, but still he spied nothing.
The doors at his back were chained, and the chains were held in place by a heavy padlock. If that wasn’t enough, at the base of either door vertical bolts had been rammed point-down several inches into special boreholes in the concrete floor and locked in place. He pushed against the doors anyway, wondering if he could exert enough force to create a narrow gap between them and slide out that way – and almost jumped out of his skin at a thunderous metallic clattering and the grating mechanical growl of a diesel-powered engine hammering to life.
A bank of headlights struck him from the far side of the chamber.
He staggered back, shielding his face against the initial blinding glare, though his vision quickly attuned and he found himself staring in disbelief at a colossal hunk of farm machinery as it manoeuvred its way out of the darkness. What Heck knew about agriculture he could have written on the back of a speeding ticket, but he didn’t have to be an expert to recognise that a combine harvester – fifteen tonnes of heavy, juddering metal, grinding, clanking gears and spinning, gleaming blades – was revving towards him.
At first he was frozen with indecision. The steel giant’s grain platform was about twelve yards across, ideal for cutting broad swathes through phalanxes of ripened wheat, but it didn’t fill the barn from one side to the other. It was about twenty yards away when Heck attempted to dart round it, and yet the leviathan shifted direction with a speed and agility born of modern hydraulics, pivoting nimbly towards him. Beyond the wall of flashing steel and shimmering light he caught brief glimpses of the driver: a slim, short-haired young man installed behind the Perspex screen of the cab, leaning forward eagerly, shifting levers with practised ease.
Heck could do nothing but retreat as it slowly but surely backed him into a corner. Here the mechanical brute halted, the sheer width of its platform preventing further progress and leaving him in a tiny triangular space. But its engine continued to run and the cutter-bar to spin its array of blades and scythes less than a couple of feet away, blasting grit and straw all over him. With a driver this skilled, the machine could easily be brought round until it was flush against the wall, or maybe only a deft adjustment would be required to scoop him onto its platform, where he would be threshed and shredded until the marrow came out of his bones.
Heck retreated until the slatted barn wall struck him in the back. He glanced up at the cab again, to see that the driver had now climbed out and was peering down. What Heck had first taken for a young man was actually a young woman, almost certainly Tilly Thornton. She was clad in grubby grey overalls, but was of a slim, wiry build, had very short fair hair and plain features – it wouldn’t have been difficult, in the midst of a road accident, for some panicky lorry driver to mistake her for a male cyclist.
Before Heck could shout up at her to turn the machine off, the air caught in his throat as a thin, strong ligature was tightened across it. Two hands had emerged from between the wooden slats, one to either side of him, and had slipped a loop of cord over his head, though he only needed to claw at the loop, which had already tightened like a garrotte, to find that it was made of flat, sharp-edged nylon. It was a cable tie, and its clip was already being shoved against the nape of his neck, the band cutting into the flesh of his throat and the windpipe underneath.
Heck wrestled with the ligature, only to be yanked backwards, striking the timber wall with massive force. The tie was quickly secured on the other side, the planking pressing against the rear of his skull. He couldn’t even turn his head to glimpse his assailant through the gaps, but it was plain who had snared him.
‘Put your hands out,’ Charles Thornton’s voice instructed. ‘One to either side … just like Jesus on the cross. Do as I say, or I’ll choke you to death.’
Heck had no choice. He could just about breathe – any further pressure on his throat, and he would strangle. He lifted his arms out wide, and one after another they were seized, cable ties were slipped round his wrists and they were tightened, binding him securely. A fourth tie was looped over his head, pulled into place across his brow and constricted to the point where he thought it was going to crush his skull. A fifth was then applied to his legs, binding his ankles together; this latter felt less se
cure than the others – it couldn’t fit snugly round both limbs, but Heck knew it would take a massive struggle to get free of it. He stood there, breathing hard, his head, neck, shoulders, and basically his entire body immobilised. He’d never felt more vulnerable. As if sensing this, Tilly Thornton gave another of her trademark high-pitched titters, clambered back inside the cab, and began manipulating the controls.
Heck tried again to struggle but, as he’d already surmised, it was futile.
With fresh clouds of exhaust from its rear, the harvester laboriously shifted its position – was it going to come at him from the side, as he’d feared? If so, there was no way to avoid it. Its wall of glinting blades cast a hypnotic spell as they rotated ever faster.
Chapter 32
‘Well, well,’ came a cheerful voice.
Heck could only look to his front, so he didn’t see Charles Thornton until the combine harvester had chugged backwards for ten yards or more, and shut itself down.
As Tilly Thornton climbed out again, lithe and wiry as a monkey, her older brother wandered casually into view. He too wore grey farming overalls, the top three press studs of which were open, exposing a broad, bare chest, its thick, curling hair damp with sweat. Heck had the odd, brief notion that Thornton was naked underneath, a vaguely repugnant idea. He didn’t know what Charles and Tilly had been doing in here while they were waiting for him to turn up, and now decided that he didn’t want to know.
Thornton was armed. A rifle hung over his shoulder by its strap: a Remington 597, from what Heck could see. A man-stopper in any sense of the term.
‘“You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead”?’ Thornton said, addressing the quote to Heck as if it was a question. ‘“If you had a face like mine, you’d punch me right in the nose”? No?’ He seemed disappointed. ‘You didn’t recognise any of those gags? Some of the best lines from the kings of slapstick comedy.’
‘Sorry,’ Heck said, eyeing his captors warily. The nylon tie across his forehead was agonising, especially as stinging sweat was dribbling down from it into his eyes.
‘I suppose if I’d said “that’s another nice mess you’ve got me into”, that would have been too much of a giveaway?’
Heck tried to shrug.
Thornton shook his head. ‘What a crying shame. How many other people could get a laugh by putting a human body through a sawmill? Or sucking some poor klutz down a pipe into the waste disposal system? How about dropping a pile of bricks through a chimney onto someone’s head?’
‘Before my time, that’s all,’ Heck said.
‘Oh no … inspiration is timeless, Sergeant. But you already know that, don’t you?’
‘Well, yeah, I suppose. Yours goes all the way back to the eighteenth century, doesn’t it?’
Thornton glanced at his sister. ‘So he did get nosy.’ He turned back to Heck. ‘Meet Tilly, by the way.’
‘Hi Tilly,’ Heck said.
‘Hi,’ she said with mock-enthusiasm. Such ridicule didn’t suit her. As he’d already observed, she was plain-looking with hard, lean features. The little girl from the Shetland pony photograph was vaguely recognisable, but all traces of pixie cuteness had gone. ‘So you thought you’d check out my homework?’ she said. ‘I should never have left it lying around like that, but I’m such a messy person. I’m surprised you had the time, though, before Zara fucked your brains out.’
‘She didn’t do that.’ Heck tried to feign disappointment. ‘Was she supposed to?’
‘She wasn’t supposed to do anything. But she can’t help herself.’
‘Well … she did show me her bare bottom.’
Tilly hooted with laughter. ‘I knew it. She is such a slapper. Don’t be flattered though, Sergeant, seriously. You’d have been the eighth or ninth this month.’
‘Suppose it was Zara who phoned ahead?’ Heck said. ‘Told you I was coming, eh?’
‘No.’ Tilly looked po-faced. ‘She might’ve done if she’d thought you and me were an item; wanting all the sexy details, that kind of thing. She’d probably have rubbed one out while I was telling her. That’s happened before now.’
‘Nice …’
‘But with you just being a copper and all …’
‘So how did you know I was coming?’
‘You can thank Iron Knickers Allacott for that. She sent me a text.’
If Heck had been able to, he’d have kicked himself. He should have realised the text sent by the Guildford concierge would have acted as a warning that he was en route.
‘Good job for us she’s so efficient, eh?’ Tilly added. ‘She’s all bark and no bite, though. She lets us have blokes on the premises all the time. She can hardly object, you see. When her own boyfriend turns up and fucks her, she howls the place down—’
‘This is all very interesting but it’s hardly relevant,’ Thornton interrupted, smiling broadly, though his smile didn’t reach his eyes, which were fixed on Heck like a pair of gibbous moons. ‘Find Sergeant Heckenburg’s keys and move his car. Put it in one of the outhouses, so it isn’t visible from the front. We can dispose of it properly later.’
Tilly hastened to obey, rifling Heck’s pockets until she located his keys.
‘And bring the stuff we talked about,’ Thornton said.
The girl hurried off, leaving the barn through a side exit that had previously been concealed in shadow.
‘You think dumping my car will save you?’ Heck said. ‘You seriously think I won’t be missed? The rest of the team know exactly where I am. When I don’t return, they’ll come straight here, looking for me.’
‘Sergeant Heckenburg – in the short time I’ve known you, there’s been at least one attempt on your life. It seems you make enemies easily and widely. We may fall under suspicion for a time, but they won’t be able to prove anything.’
‘You won’t have a chance to conceal the evidence, Thornton. They’re on the way now. The whole shooting party.’
‘Dearie me.’ Thornton looked disappointed. ‘If they were, would you really have just told me that they’ll come here if you’re missed? That was a poor effort, Sergeant. Nought out of ten. That said, I’m intrigued that you got here in the first place. You joined a lot of dots where there basically weren’t any. Is that what you do, make lucky guesses?’
‘Sometimes luck comes into it. For you too, I reckon.’
‘Well of course. I mean, not every spectacular accident we’ve attempted to stage in the last few months has paid off. But that means it’s all the more satisfying when it does.’
‘You’re round the bloody bend, pal.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say so.’ Thornton sounded offended. ‘I just enjoy myself. Course, not everyone gets it. I was thrown out of college, you know – Brasenose at Oxford – for being a practical joker. The old drawing pin on the chair routine, the old bucket over the vice-principal’s door.’ He sighed. ‘My luck really ran out that day. No sense of humour, these upper-class toadies. Every one of them pointed the finger. I think they’d expected it to be water. When it turned out to be paint, they were a little freaked.’
‘I’m talking about the incident at the bridge,’ Heck said.
‘Ah yes …’ Thornton’s expression lightened. ‘Well, our luck was definitely in that day. Imagine how disconcerted I was when you turned up here, asking questions about Father, saying it might have been murder. And then all of a sudden someone attempts to kill you while you’re with us – by setting up a ridiculous accident, no less! Coincidences do happen, you see. I must say, I thought that would put me in the clear. The way I dived into the river and heroically saved you. I wouldn’t have done that in normal circumstances, you understand. But here was a chance I couldn’t pass up. And then, Sergeant … then …’
He stepped out of sight, only to return half a second later with something in hand. Heck gazed in disbelief at his own laptop.
‘I only found this when we went through the wreck of your car the day before yesterday,’ Thornton sai
d triumphantly. ‘It was in the glove compartment, which is near enough airtight. Can you believe that? I mean water got in, obviously. But only a little bit. We managed to get it working again, and accessed all your recent reports.’ Thornton shook his head. ‘Never heard of encrypted files? How about security passwords? Slack work, Sergeant. Loose lips sink ships, and all that. Or at least they sank poor Vincent Budd.’
Heck could barely conceal his loathing. ‘You chopped that poor bastard’s hand off, didn’t you?’
‘Hmm. Bit risky, that. If the coroner buys that as death by misadventure, I think we’ll need a new coroner, frankly.’
‘I wonder what other murders-for-gain you’ve fitted into this pattern of yours?’ Heck said. ‘Your father’s maybe?’
Thornton regarded him with interest. ‘You know for a fact my father was murdered?’
‘There may have been one unlikely coincidence on this farm, but I’m damn sure there weren’t two.’
‘Well, you’re right of course. And your instincts were right when we chatted about it the other day. Father really should have been able to extricate himself from that valve before he got turned into a real-life windbag.’
‘You held him down, I’m guessing?’ Heck said.
‘We knelt on him. Took both of us, because he put up quite a fight. Hence the bruising all over his body.’
‘Must’ve felt good?’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘Just tell me one thing, Thornton: was that what all this was about? Killing your father and inheriting Thornton Farm?’
‘I haven’t inherited Thornton Farm.’