War Games

by Douglas Jackson

  The furnace was still warm, which told me he must have been working with it until quite recently. A clay mould containing a full company of shiny new, sword-waving men-at-arms sat to one side, along with some kind of unfinished container that looked vaguely familiar. But what caught my attention was the enormous white chest freezer sitting against the far wall. Dewar had almost been right. Look for a man with a chest freezer and a chemistry O-level he’d said. Well, I’d found the chest freezer, but it looked as if Sandy Armstrong was more interested in biology than chemistry. I looked at my watch. The luminous dial said eleven thirty. Time was running out. I closed my eyes and lifted the lid.

  I suppose even serial killers have to eat. A bag of frozen chips shared one end of the cavernous space with a couple of pizzas and a packet of burgers. That left plenty of empty space for a body, probably more than one body, and, more interestingly, a patch of what might have been frozen blood stained the ice that caked the bottom of the chest. Relieved, I’d found nothing more sinister I searched the foundry room for any kind of hidden entrance that might lead to the place where Sandy Armstrong was keeping Gurya Ali, but the floor was solid concrete and the walls bare plaster. This room had its secrets, I was certain of that, but I wasn’t going to be the one to uncover them.

  I hurried back through the living room, averting my eyes from the horrors on the wall and checked out the other ground-floor room, which turned out to be a bedroom with an old-fashioned four-poster at its centre. A massive oak wardrobe dominated one corner of the room. I searched it just in case the owner happened to be hiding inside, but it contained nothing but old clothes and the stink of mothballs. The shelves lining the far wall were more interesting. Sandy Armstrong must have scoured every antiquarian bookshop in the country for books about the Douglas family and Robert the Bruce. They were all there, including ragged-covered titles that must have dated back a hundred years and leather-bound tomes that had once graced some aristocrat’s private library. He even had a section devoted to novels about the Scottish Wars of Independence. It contained several editions of Nigel Tranter’s Bruce trilogy, but there was one by GA Henty calledIn Freedom’s Cause that I’d never heard of before. I’d read one of his books when I was about ten years old and I couldn’t help wondering what Sandy Armstrong’s tortured mind made of Henty’s plucky, well-mannered heroes and their chirpy, very English stiff upper lip.

  It was only when I reached the top of the stairs that the sheer scale of his obsession became clear.

  The house had originally been built with two upstairs bedrooms, but Armstrong, the builder, had smashed down the partition walls to create a single enormous room. Laid out before me in every detail was the Battle of Bannockburn at the critical turning point. Tens of thousands of gaudily painted miniature toy soldiers in columns and lines and squares. Knights in armour charging with lances held low, bowmen in the very act of loosing, highlanders and lowlanders, men-at-arms, spearmen, servants and baggage carriers – all had their parts to play in Sandy Armstrong’s war game. The River Forth snaked in a blue ribbon from one end of the room to the other, and on the far side I recognised Stirling Castle upon its rock. Bruce, Douglas and the Scottish forces held the high ground with the hedgehog-like schiltrons of the spear-carrying infantry in the front line. Edward the Second’s army were penned with their backs to the Forth on the marshy ground that would be their downfall. On a hill to the west the ‘small folk’ waited, ready to make the advance that would decide the battle. The detail of the landscape and the men who fought over it was incredible. Individual knights were identified by their own colours, the coats of arms of the great families emblazoned on their shields. English infantry units wore tabards decorated with the three golden lions of the Plantagenets. It was incredible. A work of art in its way. How many hours had he spent here placing each miniature soldier exactly where he wanted him? How many hours had it taken to manufacture and paint them? I felt like smashing the whole thing flat.

  A crack of thunder pealed like the voice of doom to rattle the roof and I heard the sharp patter of rain as the storm the clouds had promised finally arrived with Wagnerian precision.

  That was when I noticed the cage.

  He’d crammed it beneath the eaves at the far end of the room. A simple structure of wood and chicken wire that might have been made to keep a pet dog, but I knew it had never held one. As I got closer, I caught the unmistakeable whiff of excrement and unwashed human flesh. She’d had an old mattress to lie on and separate bowls for food and water. For a room-spinning moment I was sickened to the depths of my soul. Gurya Ali had been held in this filthy, unspeakable prison for almost a month, never able to stand upright, barely able to sit, and every hour of every day she must have known her captor would never release her alive. But at least he had kept her alive until now. The question was: where had he taken her?

  To the right of the cage, on the gable wall, Sandy Armstrong had fixed a long shelf that held a series of metal objects lined up the way another man would display football trophies. There were four of them, identical conical containers similar to the one I’d seen in the foundry. I stared at them hard, aware that the sight had begun a chain reaction in my brain. Somewhere, a long time ago, I’d seen a container like that. Older, more battered, but the same container. Bruce’s heart. The same heart that had been brought back from Douglas’s fateful crusade. It had been placed in a casket just like these. And buried. I felt the realisation grow like a fire burning inside me. Iknew.

  CHAPTER 36

  He would want her to die there. It fitted the twisted fate he had mapped out from the moment he’d snatched her from the roadside at Glendearg and taken her from her family and friends and the people she loved. I could see Gurya Ali cycling along the narrow road, cheerful and full of hope despite her problems with her father. The van stopped by the roadside; a mechanical problem, or maybe another flat tyre. A familiar figure steps out, all smiles asking for ‘a wee hand here, hen’. The hand over the mouth, the chemical stink of chloroform, a moment of fear, and then the darkness.

  Fifteen minutes to midnight. I gunned the Range Rover’s powerful engine and tore through the darkened countryside like a man possessed. As I hunched over the steering wheel, my eyes trying to pierce the sheets of rain that cut visibility down to about fifty yards, I made two phone calls. I should have made a third, but it didn’t even cross my mind. By the time I crossed the low ridge above the old town of St Boswells I was doing a hundred plus. Three miles later I took the turn-off for Melrose on three wheels, but when I reached the Newstead junction, I slowed and after a moment’s consideration drove down through the village. I didn’t think he’d be expecting company, but if he was he’d be certain it would be coming from the centre of Melrose. The road I’d chosen would bring me up on his blind side and that would give me an edge. Hopefully that edge would win me the time I needed.

  I was risking Gurya Ali’s life to save Aelish. At the same time I was risking my wife’s love and the loss of everything I lived for. We all think we know ourselves and I’d truly believed the old Glen Savage who would gamble everything on the toss of a coin was gone forever. But that was exactly what I was doing. Gurya Ali, or what she represented, could give us a future and that was why I’d placed her life in the pot. I’ll raise you one heart.

  When Robert the Bruce’s heart returned to Scotland, his knights carried it to Melrose Abbey and buried it there in a lead casket. About ten years ago, archaeologists digging at the abbey uncovered a conical lead container of approximately the correct antiquity. The four caskets I’d seen on the shelf in Sandy Armstrong’s cottage were identical replicas of that original. Four. José Caracol, although Christ knows how he’d got the heart through customs, Shoaz Ahmad, Bilal Hammouche, and the anonymous New Zealand girl. That meant Gurya Ali was still alive. He’d have her casket with him, ready for its bloody sacrifice.

  I parked the car just short of the abbey grounds and grabbed a waterproof jacket from the back seat. The torch was s
till in the rucksack, but I left it there; if it came to the point where I needed to switch it on, Gurya Ali would already be dead. Instead, I retrieved the crowbar. It had come in handy twice today, maybe it would come in handy again.

  When I opened the car door and stepped out into the night I knew I’d made a mistake. The rain rattled on the Gore-Tex skin of the jacket like pebbles hitting a tin roof. Sandy Armstrong would hear me coming from about twenty yards away and I couldn’t afford that. Reluctantly, I took the jacket off and put it back in the car. That left me standing in the pouring rain in a black cashmere sweater and dark cords. For a microsecond I wished I had some of that tiger-stripe camouflage cream we wore on night patrol to cover my pale features, but it’s not the kind of thing you can pick up at your local Co-op.

  The wet tarmac slapped under my boots as I ran across and slipped silently over the wall into the abbey grounds, crouching low beside the bare stone for concealment. Street lamps lit the road where I’d parked the car, but all I could see in front of me were a few indistinct shadows and a wall of slanting water. I brushed the hair from my eyes and stared into the gloom. The main abbey building stood directly ahead, and I cursed my stupidity as I recognised the remains of the tower I’d seen in my last session in the Isolation Chamber. It lay fifty yards away across an open area of grass, with the entrance diagonally to my right, while to my left burrowed the remains of an old sewer that had once drained the monks’ latrines.

  Where would he be? I checked the luminous dial of my watch. Just gone midnight. I knew where he was going, but timing was everything and how can you time your attack when you haven’t a fucking clue where your target is? The likelihood was he’d come from somewhere near the main gate, which meant he’d use the main bulk of the abbey for shelter before he emerged into the open and did what he’d come to do.

  I had to find some cover close enough for me to see him, but where he couldn’t see me. A jagged streak of lightning split the murk above and lit the abbey and everything around it like an arc lamp. Movement. Had I imagined it? No, it had been movement. Just a flash of something that didn’t quite fit, glimpsed for a fraction of a second between two masonry towers. He was here.

  I dropped to my belly and slipped down into the shadow of the drain, grateful it was no longer in use. I’d expected it to be wet, but there must have been a foot of freezing, filthy water in there. Christ, it really was just like old times.

  Keeping my nose above the surface I slithered along the narrow channel until I could be certain I was out of his direct line of sight. In these conditions he’d be lucky to see me if I stood in front of him, but I couldn’t take that chance. If he so much as suspected my presence he’d kill Gurya Ali and make a run for it. The far end of the drain was lined with uneven stones and they bit into my belly as I slipped out into the open again. Fortunately, this part of the precinct was on a slightly lower elevation than the main area, which meant the stubs of ruined cloister would give me the cover I needed to reach the point where I’d be shielded by the walls of the north transept. Still, I froze with every lightning flash or crunch of thunder, scared, not for myself, but for the people who were depending on me. I knew that as I made my way through the grass and the pebbles, Sandy Armstrong, the Crusader killer was also nearing his goal: the pale, carved stone marking the final resting place of Bruce’s heart. I had one thing going for me. Armstrong had reached the high point of his killing spree. He wouldn’t let this final act pass without some sort of ceremony. I had to believe that, because if he didn’t act out his little piece of theatre I’d never be able to get near him before he killed Gurya.

  When I reached the shelter of the walls I pulled myself to my feet and waited with my back to the ancient stone. I allowed myself one look despite the risk. Sometimes, you just have to take a chance. I must know his location, or at the very least the exact distance to the heart stone. A blurred figure was just visible through the rain, guiding a second figure by the shoulders. Gurya was making no attempt to escape so he must have drugged her to make her pliable. My heart began thundering in my chest and I had to stop myself from launching myself across that last twenty feet of sodden grass. Too soon. Wait.

  I counted to thirty. He would lay her down by the stone where the heart lay. He would place her arms and legs in the cross configuration that all the other bodies had been found in. He would kneel over her and draw the knife. He would begin the sacrificial monologue that would dedicate his victim to Sir James Douglas . . .

  I was on my feet and running, round the angle of the wall and into the open, my feet slippery on the wet grass, the crowbar ready in my right hand. But Sandy Armstrong wasn’t muttering incantations to his false god, he was a man in a hurry. The bone-handled hunting knife in his hand was held high and the shining blade was poised to plunge into Gurya Ali’s chest. Gurya lay beneath him still dressed in the jeans and top she’d been kidnapped in, helpless against the falling knife. Christ, he might have cut her throat already. Another bolt of lightning. He must have seen some movement in the corner of his eye because he turned to me and smiled. That smile chilled my blood, because this was a Sandy Armstrong I’d never seen before, his face twisted into a mirthless, calculating rictus that lasted for a split second before he turned back to his victim. I was too far away to stop him, and he knew it. But I had to do something. Before he could bring the knife down I hurled the crowbar underhand. It wasn’t an aimed throw and all I’d been trying to do was put him off, but I got lucky. The heavy steel bar smashed into the side of his face with enough power to break bone. He screamed in pain and the shock arrested his stroke, but he still had the knife and he shook his head and lifted it again. Then I was on him.

  Jesus, he was strong. I hit him with my shoulder and the power of my attack catapulted us clear of Gurya Ali’s prone body. But it was like colliding with a freight train. Sandy Armstrong gave the impression of being slim, but he was six feet of solid muscle, hard as the stone he worked with and his strength honed every day using the heavy tools of his trade. Struggling for grip, I knelt astride his body and tried to get his knife arm in a pressure grip that would dislocate his elbow. I had him pinned against the wet turf and it should have worked – I’m a good fourteen stone – but he flipped me off as if I was a piece of gossamer.

  Only the fact that he couldn’t make up his mind who to kill first saved me from the same fate as his other victims.

  If he’d got a proper hold on me it would only have been a matter of time before that knife was ripping my throat or tearing into my guts. Instead, he hesitated, and I was able to get to my feet. Now I reckoned the odds were about even again, because I was trained in hand-to-hand combat and he wasn’t. I could think of a dozen ways to kill or disable him if I could only get past the glittering blade of that knife.

  But Sandy Armstrong knew that, too, and behind the burning eyes I could see his brain working with the cunning of the truly mad. He understood that defence was his greatest strength and that if he could get me to come to him, he’d be able to stand back and use his greater reach to cut slices from me one piece at a time. After that, all he had to do was wait until I’d bled out and he could deal with both of us at his leisure. Gurya lay a few feet to his left and he crabbed slowly towards her, the blazing eyes never leaving me, blood dripping from a wound on his cheek. I turned with him, matching him step for step. All the time we were moving I searched the short grass for the crowbar, but it was lost somewhere in the darkness and the rain. Eventually, he stopped. Gurya’s body lay between us. I could see she was alive now, her chest gently rising and falling under a wet shirt plastered against her body. All it would take was one step and he could plunge the knife into her breast.

  But I didn’t think he’d do that. Sandy Armstrong wanted Gurya’s heart in his lead casket to complete the set, and the only way he was guaranteed to get it was to kill me first. That meant Glen Savage must be the Crusader’s next victim, not Gurya Ali. Neither of us had said a word since the start of the fight, bu
t maybe that wasn’t so surprising. Nothing I had to say to him was going to make any difference and Sandy only had one thing on his mind and it wasn’t making polite conversation. One of us was going to die. I didn’t intend it to be me.

  He waited for me to make my move and I made him wait. As long as he didn’t threaten Gurya I was prepared to wait him out, but of course he knew that. He bent towards her, taking the front of her shirt in his hand. For an instant, his eyes left me. In that same moment, I took my chance, moving in fast. But this was no bull-in-a-china-shop charge. I stayed upright, feinting right and left, and he stood to meet me, the big curved blade following my every move. I got a little too close for his liking and he swung the knife at my throat, the razor edge glinting dangerously. The move opened up his right side and invited me to attack it, but I knew that if I did that he’d reverse the swing and bring the point down into my kidneys. Instead, I went with the blade, trusting my fighting experience against his strength. If I could only neutralise the knife I’d have a chance. Growling with effort and fear I managed to get both hands on his knife arm and turned, shoving my hip in close and pivoting so he had no choice but to go with me or have his arm torn out of its socket. At the same time, I worked on the nerve in his forearm, digging my fingers in deep and forcing him to drop the weapon as he flipped over onto his back.

  I’d gambled on being able to get on top of him, where I could start smashing his face in and he’d be so busy defending himself he’d struggle to hurt me, but I’d underestimated his speed. He twisted and writhed like a snake and suddenly it was me who was pinned by his body, his legs wrapping round mine and his hands clawing for my throat. I used my arms to beat him away but I couldn’t keep it up forever and eventually his fingers closed on my windpipe. The preferred method of execution in Spain used to be the garrotte; death by slow strangulation. The executioner placed an iron band round your throat and then tightened it one turn at a time. Now I knew what it felt like. Sandy Armstrong could have choked the life out of me any time he liked, but he wanted to enjoy this and he wanted me to suffer, so he took his time.