Breaking Point

by Frank Smith

  ‘Of course not!’ Luka said swiftly. ‘I barely spoke to her.’

  ‘Then, why would she take it on herself to follow us up a road like this late at night?’ the Australian asked as they got into the car. ‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?’

  ‘But she was the one who called the police in when Newman disappeared.’

  ‘So? They lived in the same house, so why wouldn’t she report the poor bastard missing when he doesn’t come home? What’s so strange about that?’

  ‘I still think it could have been her,’ Luka said stubbornly. ‘And we can’t afford to take any chances so close to the time.’

  ‘So stop being so bloody paranoid and rocking the boat,’ the Australian said. ‘My guess is it was a local on his way home. You know what your trouble is, mate? You’ve been in this job too long. You see trouble even when it isn’t there. You want to have a go at anyone who so much as looks cross-eyed at you, so let’s not go stirring things up when there’s no need. The boss made it very clear last time he was out here that he wants everything nice and calm and peaceful before the big day, so let’s keep it that way.’

  Luka remained silent, but the Australian knew he wouldn’t let it rest, and that could mean trouble. The last thing they needed now was another disappearance that would bring the police sniffing round again. So, the question was: should he warn the boss that Luka could jeopardize everything if he wasn’t reined in? Or should he say nothing, but keep a close eye on the man himself?

  It was a question that was still with him when they pulled in behind the farmhouse.

  Twenty-Four

  Thursday, March 27

  In spite of everything the Australian had said, Luka Bardici couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he’d been right about the car that had followed them. It had been impossible to see who was driving, but the suspicion lingered that it was the woman from the pub – the same woman who had disappeared from behind the bar a few minutes before he and Slater left.

  Slater must have said or done something that aroused her suspicions. The man was too brash, too full of himself, and he fancied himself with the ‘Sheilas’, as he insisted on calling women. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t do his job, because it was Slater who had tracked down Fletcher and taken care of him, so he did have his uses. Even so, the man talked too much, and that could be why they’d been followed the night before.

  Slater might be satisfied that the person who had followed them across the hills was just some local going home, but Luka wasn’t one to take chances, which was why he left the farmhouse well before dawn and used his own car to go back down to Whitcott Lacey to check things out for himself. He parked some distance away, then slipped around the side of Wisteria Cottage to examine the car parked behind it.

  It was an old car, rusting around the bottom of the doors, and the one that had passed them last night had sounded like an old car. If only he could get inside and start the engine he would know by the sound whether he was right or not, but that was out of the question. Not really sure about what he was looking for, Luka knelt beside the driver’s door and shone a light underneath the car. Nothing on that side, but he could see something that looked like thread or torn cloth hanging down on the passenger’s side of the car. Bent low, he circled the car. No, it wasn’t thread and it wasn’t cloth. It was grass caught between the chrome moulding and the rusted panel along the bottom of the door. It was the same sort of grass that he’d found caught in his own car since he’d been staying at the farm. It grew along the high banks bordering the narrow road, and it could be heard whipping against the side of the car on some of the tighter curves.

  He felt the grass. It was supple and fresh. It wasn’t proof by any means – there were many roads in the area where you could find the same sort of grass – but it was good enough for Luka. As far as he was concerned, his suspicions had been confirmed and Slater was wrong. It was the woman from the pub who had followed them. The question was, why? What was it that had made her suspicious?

  It couldn’t have been anything he’d done; he’d only been in the pub three times in his life, and he’d kept very much to himself each time. So it had to be Slater; had to be something the Australian had said or done to make the woman suspicious.

  Luka switched the torch off and sat back on his heels The trouble was, she had seen the two of them together and he didn’t like that at all. Something would have to be done about her. The question was, what? The boss had made it very clear that he expected everyone to keep a low profile and do nothing that might attract the attention of the police, so even an ‘accident’ was out of the question at this stage.

  But was she really a threat, he asked himself? Even if she went to the police, what could she tell them? That she’d lost them? The police couldn’t do much with that.

  On the other hand, with so much at stake, could he afford to leave anything to chance? Better to silence her and be sure. The question was, how could it be done without arousing suspicion?

  The silent vibrator on his phone alerted him to a call. ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ Slater demanded when Luka answered. ‘And what’s all that hissing noise? I can barely hear you.’

  ‘Power lines,’ Luka said cryptically.

  ‘You’re down there, aren’t you?’ Slater accused. ‘At the house. I remember seeing them on the hill behind the house.’

  ‘It’s none of your business where I am,’ Luka snapped. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Not me. It’s the boss. He’s been trying to get hold of you, and I had to tell him that you were out doing a perimeter check, and phones don’t always work out here in the valleys. I knew you weren’t because your car’s gone, but you’d better get back to him fast!’

  So what was Kellerman panicking about now? Luka wondered wearily. Everything was set; there wasn’t anything else they could do, and he would be glad when this thing was over. At least he would be out of this godforsaken backwater, although no doubt there would be others if this one was successful. Kellerman had big plans. Distribution points all over the country, right up as far as Newcastle.

  Scotland was something else again. Next to the Russians, they were the meanest bunch of bastards Luka had ever met. They had their own network north of the border, and you didn’t even think of messing with them if you knew what was good for you.

  Still, orders were orders, so the sooner he called Kellerman, the better. He didn’t like the idea of leaving the problem of the barmaid unresolved, but you didn’t keep Kellerman waiting, and you certainly didn’t tell him that there might have been yet another breach of security.

  Still, he could give her something to think about; something to keep her from following anyone for a while.

  Luka took out a knife and slid the thin blade first into one tyre, and then another. The slits were so small that he could barely hear the air escaping, but two of her tyres would be flat within fifteen minutes.

  Emma Baker was trying hard to concentrate on her work – exams would be coming up in another three weeks, and while she knew she would do all right, she wanted to do better than that. But the nightmarish drive into the hills the night before kept intruding into her thoughts.

  She couldn’t be sure about the role of the quiet man, but according to Molly, the fingerprints of the Australian had been found on Mark’s van, so he must be involved in some way. Emma had tried to get hold of Molly, but the detective who had answered her call this morning had told her she wasn’t there, and he’d seemed vague about when she would be back.

  Emma looked at the clock for perhaps the fiftieth time that morning. Almost twelve. She made up her mind; she would call at lunchtime, and if Molly wasn’t there she would ask for Sergeant Tregalles.

  DC Lyons sat slumped in his chair, feet up on an open drawer as he munched his sandwich. The office was all but deserted. Ormside had gone upstairs on some errand or other, and the others had all gone to the pub across the street for lunch. Normally, he would have been there as we
ll, but someone had to stay behind, and he was it today.

  Seemed like he was ‘it’ every day, he thought bitterly.

  He poked at the load of crime statistics Ormside had dumped on his desk. ‘The collator needs a preliminary sort before entering them into the system,’ he’d said. ‘And keep an eye open for patterns while you’re doing it. Might save her some time if you can pick any out ahead of time.’

  A mind-numbing task if ever there was one, and certainly not the sort of job that someone with his background and training should be lumbered with.

  He popped the last of the sandwich in his mouth, then screwed up the paper it had been wrapped in and lobbed it at the wastepaper basket. An easy shot, but today it bounced off the edge and fell to the floor. Muttering to himself that nothing seemed to be going right these days, he was about to pick it up when the phone rang.

  ‘DC Lyons,’ he said, swallowing the remains of his sandwich.

  ‘Emma Baker,’ the caller told him. ‘I believe you are the detective I spoke to earlier, when I asked to speak to Molly Forsythe. Do you know if she is back yet?’

  ‘That’s right, Miss Baker, but Constable Forsythe isn’t available at the moment. Can I help you?’

  ‘What about Sergeant Tregalles? Is he there?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, miss. But if it has to do with the Mark Newman case, I’ve been working very closely with Sergeant Tregalles on that one, so if I can help . . .?’

  ‘It’s just that . . . It’s just that the Australian was in the Red Lion again last night. You know the man I mean – they found his prints on Mark’s van when they pulled it out of the water, and Molly asked me to let her know if I saw him again. Well, I did see him again. He came in last night with another man, and I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I followed them when they left.’

  Suddenly she had Lyons’ full attention. ‘We don’t advise that, miss,’ he said, quoting directly from the manual, ‘because it could be dangerous. But since you did, can you tell me where they went or what they did?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Now that she was actually talking to someone about it, Emma realized how little she really had to tell. ‘You see,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I’ve never done that sort of thing before, and I’m afraid I lost them when they left the Lyddingham road to cut across country to the main road to Ludlow. Do you know the road I mean? It’s about a mile-and-a-half out of Whitcott.’

  ‘Yes, I do, miss,’ he said as a memory stirred. Tregalles had pointed to that very same road when they were on their way back from Lyddingham, and told him about Fletcher’s call to a farmer by the name of Roper. Could it be that there was something about the farm that Tregalles had missed? This could turn out to be just what he was looking for, a chance – a proper chance to show them what he could do. If he could find out . . .

  Emma was speaking again, ‘To tell you the truth, I feel a bit foolish calling about this now, but I thought you should at least know that the Australian is still in the area, and he was with the other man – the one who might have been in the pub the night Mark and Mickey Doyle had their heads together. So if you would just tell Molly or the sergeant that I called?’

  ‘No, no, don’t hang up,’ Lyons broke in. ‘Even though you say you lost them, I would like to hear everything from the beginning. You may recall something that turns out to be very important. You say the Australian and another man came into the pub? Can you describe this other man, Miss Baker?’

  It had taken Lyons very little time to pinpoint the location of a hill farm belonging to a man by the name of Evan Roper. He studied a contour map of the area, and decided that the best way to approach the farm without being seen was from the rear. He would have much preferred a position overlooking the front of the place, but there was no cover. Approaching from the rear would mean a cross-country hike of roughly three miles, and a fairly steep climb, but for someone who had competed in five marathon events last year alone, from the Fun Run in Knowle in May, to the Loch Ness Marathon in Inverness in October, a three-mile walk in the hills was a doddle.

  His plan was to conceal himself directly across from the farmhouse on the far side of what appeared on the map to be a gully or shallow ravine, and he found it hard to curb his impatience to finish his shift and be on his way. His mind, that afternoon, was more on planning his approach than on searching for patterns among the crime stats he was supposed to be sorting.

  Reluctantly, he decided that he would have to go home to pick up his digital camera and one or two other things before taking off for the farm, but he should still be in position with at least an hour of daylight left for observation.

  And if Slater or the other chap that Emma Baker had described should show themselves, he would take pictures. He had quite a decent telephoto lens he’d bought on eBay, so he was confident he could get a reasonable shot of them at that distance.

  He looked at the clock again. The time seemed to be crawling by, and he was impatient to be off. He could hardly wait to see the look on Tregalles’s face when he plunked the pictures down in front of him tomorrow morning.

  It had all seemed so simple and straightforward back there in the office, but nothing was working out as planned. For a start, it had taken him considerably longer to get there than he’d thought it would, and it was almost dusk by the time he’d worked his way into position. And while it had been sunny and warm earlier in the day, the temperature was dropping rapidly, and mist was rising from the valley bottom.

  He found cover of a sort in a scrubby patch of trees overlooking the valley, and now, stretched out on a groundsheet, he took his first good look at the farmhouse through binoculars.

  His heart sank. What he’d thought would be a good vantage point wasn’t anything of the sort. In fact, what had looked like a shallow ravine on the map, turned out to be a broad, steep-sided valley, and one look through the lens of his camera told him that he could never get a decent picture of anything at that range.

  Lyons buried his face in his arms and groaned aloud. He’d been so caught up in the idea of proving that he could act on his own initiative, so anxious to ‘show them what he could do’, that he’d made a balls up of it again.

  But there had to be something he could salvage from this disaster. Perhaps he could tell them . . .

  Tell them what? That he’d deliberately withheld the information he’d received from Emma Baker, so that he could come out here on his own to take a few pictures? And then what? What the hell had he been thinking of? If Paget ever found out . . . Just the thought was enough to make him cringe.

  ‘Idiot!’ he breathed. What he should have done was report Emma’s call to Ormside, and taken whatever small credit there might be for tying it in to Roper’s farm. Too bad he hadn’t had the sense to think of that earlier.

  There was nothing for it now but to leave as quickly as he could and say nothing to anyone about coming out here. He’d give Molly Emma’s message in the morning and let her make the connection with the Roper farm. And if she didn’t make the connection, he could suddenly recall Tregalles’s mention of the farm, and take credit for that at least. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  Somewhat buoyed by the thought, he knelt to roll up the groundsheet and was reaching for his rucksack when he heard a sound, and something cold and hard was pressed against the base of his skull.

  ‘Don’t even think of moving,’ a hoarse voice whispered in his ear. ‘Move before I tell you to, and I’ll blow your bloody head off!’

  Perhaps it was the pent up anger and frustration that made him do it; perhaps it was simply an adrenalin rush that made him lash out without thinking. His forearm smashed with numbing force against the weapon as he jerked his head away. He twisted round, kicking blindly. He felt his boot strike solid bone, and heard a yelp of pain as his assailant went down. Lyons didn’t wait. He was up and running for his life, slithering and sliding down the hillside so fast that he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to.

  His foot
went out from under him and suddenly he was flying through the air. He landed hard, tried to stop himself, but the slope was even steeper here, and there was nothing he could do except try to protect his head as he plunged end over end into the mists below.

  Twenty-Five

  Friday, March 28

  A very worried-looking Sergeant Ormside met Paget at the door as he entered the office next morning. ‘Alcott’s looking for you,’ he said baldly, ‘and I’ve never seen him in such a state. Practically blue in the face, he was. Came in like a bloody whirlwind and told me to tell you to get up to his office before you do anything else.’

  ‘Did he say what it was about?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say. Just about took my head off when I asked, so I wouldn’t hang about if I were you, sir.’

  ‘Nothing that might give us a clue in the night log?’

  Ormside shook his head.

  ‘Better get up there and see what it’s all about, then,’ said Paget as he headed for the door. ‘Wish me luck.’

  ‘I think you might need a bloody sight more than luck,’ Ormside muttered to himself as the door closed behind the chief inspector.

  The superintendent’s door was open and Alcott was standing by the window, a cigarette cupped in his hand, eyes fixed on some distant object.

  ‘You wished to see me, sir?’ said Paget as he entered.

  Alcott turned to face the chief inspector. ‘No,’ he said deliberately, his voice ominously low, ‘I did not wish to see you, Chief Inspector. What I want is an explanation. I want to know why you, as a senior officer, feel you have the right to jeopardize a major investigation, when you have been given explicit instructions to halt your own investigation? And why you would see fit to send in one of the greenest men you’ve got to go blundering about like a drunken sailor, is beyond me. This action of yours has almost certainly destroyed years of painstaking work, to say nothing of what will happen to God knows how many young women and children who might have been rescued.’ His narrowed eyes bored into Paget’s own. ‘This is a disciplinary matter,’ he continued ominously, ‘and I—’