Hard Knocks tcfs-3

by Zoe Sharp

  I felt my face heat at her dryly delivered words, but I didn’t deny any of it. There was little point when it was quite true.

  The chalet had indeed been built into the side of a cliff, with a long set of winding stone steps leading down to it. They were so steep that if we’d had luggage it would have been a perilous descent, but we hadn’t thought much further ahead than the clothes we stood up in. And how fast we could get each other out of them.

  I turned away so Madeleine couldn’t read the thoughts chasing through my head, and stared out of the window again. Outside I could see a couple of the students standing on the far side of the square with a map in their hands, pointing to various key points of the roof-line opposite. So much for unobtrusive observation. They couldn’t have made their purpose any plainer if they’d been wearing sandwich boards proclaiming it.

  I turned back to Madeleine and picked up what was left of my own coffee. It had turned cold, and black, and bitter.

  “Was that all he told you about me?” I said, with more than a touch of bite. “That I was a good lay?”

  Madeleine regarded me with a level gaze, shaming my unworthy comment. “He told me you were fearless, quick, funny, clever, mentally stronger than anyone he’d ever met,” she said. “He said you were the best thing and the worst thing that had ever happened to him.”

  As you were to me, Sean, I thought. As you were to me.

  “He couldn’t understand how you came to betray him after what you’d shared together,” she went on, into her stride now, relentless. “He couldn’t understand how you could tell them about your affair, could claim he’d raped you, to try and save your own skin.”

  “I didn’t,” I denied automatically, but without heat.

  “He knows that now,” Madeleine agreed, “but he didn’t then.”

  When we’d met again last winter, Sean and I had solved the mystery of just how the army had uncovered the details of our clandestine relationship. It had been a relief to find that he hadn’t, after all, abandoned me as I’d thought, but by then it had been almost too late for it to matter.

  I suppose it might have cleared the air between us.

  Human history is littered with might-have-beens.

  I’d heard enough. I got to my feet again, throwing down enough change to cover the cost of my coffee.

  This time, I almost made it to the doorway before Madeleine’s cut glass voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “You’ve never told him, have you?” she said. “What really happened to you.”

  I stilled like she’d just jerked a snare around my neck. I swallowed, and my imagination felt the cut of the wire into my throat. Without turning, I asked, “How much do you know?”

  “All of it, more or less,” Madeleine said. “Don’t you think Sean has a right to know it, too?”

  Anger lit me. I took another couple of steps towards the door and yanked it open. I gripped the handle tight, making sure I had my escape route before I glanced back towards her.

  “He doesn’t have to know,” I managed through lips that seemed suddenly stiff, unyielding. “It wouldn’t do any good for him to know.”

  “Why not, Charlie? It might make him understand what you went through.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’d rather he thought of me as a ruthless bitch than a helpless bitch,” I bit out. “Don’t tell him, Madeleine.” In my head I’d summoned up the words as an order, a cool command, but instead they came out shaped as a plea.

  She shrugged. “OK, it’s your choice,” she said, frowning, “but I go home tomorrow and Sean’s planning on coming out here himself to take over. You know what he’s like. You can’t keep something like that from him forever.”

  “I can try.”

  Fourteen

  The full effect of my dramatic if rather flouncy exit from the café was somewhat spoiled by my immediately colliding with a person who’d been hurrying along the pavement outside. I spun round without caution from slamming the outer door shut behind me and my momentum nearly sent both of us sprawling.

  On a reflex, I grabbed at their jacket. It was only when we’d steadied that I realised who it was I’d got hold of.

  “McKenna?” I said, my voice sharp and incredulous. “What are you doing here?”

  But the youngster just threw me a panicked glance, jerked himself free, and hurried away. I watched, puzzled, until he’d turned the corner. He looked dreadful, his skin grey and clammy. He hadn’t come across as the type dedicated enough to the course to drag himself from his sick bed to take part in a group exercise.

  I shrugged and let it go. I had other things on my mind as I stalked across the square with my shoulders hunched down into my jacket and my anger bubbling away under the surface.

  Blakemore was just the unlucky one. He was the first of the instructors I came across, but even so, he was the one I suppose I had the most faith in. Maybe it was just fate that it happened that way. I caught him just as he was climbing onto the FireBlade, with the engine already fired up and ticking over.

  He nodded when he saw me approaching, unconcerned, but when I reached across the tank and hit the kill switch his eyes narrowed under the open visor of his helmet. I stood there and stared long enough and hard enough for him to slowly sit back, undo the chinstrap and pull off his lid. He put it down on the tank, folded his arms and regarded me, stony, one eyebrow raised.

  Temper is never the best thing to wear to a confrontation. It has a nasty habit of disintegrating into tatters just when you need its protection most and the colour has never suited me.

  Ah well, nothing ventured . . .

  I said, “Tell me about Kirk Salter.”

  Blakemore’s eyebrow shifted up another few millimetres. “How do you know Salter?” he hedged. He flashed a quick, almost nervous smile. “What’s he to you? Old boyfriend?”

  “Old comrade,” I said, adding deliberately, “We trained together.”

  It took a moment for that one to track from starting point to logical conclusion. Blakemore looked up. “He was ex-Special Forces,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  “He was,” I agreed.

  He made a small snorting sound through his nose. His gaze turned calculating and then he nodded. “It figures,” he said.

  “So why did you kill him?” I pushed, ignoring the fact that it was probably unmitigatingly stupid to blow my cover like this, on Gilby’s home ground, with only Madeleine for back-up. “Did he find out what you were up to and try to stop it?”

  “Stop us what?” Blakemore asked. After the initial shock of my opening gambit he’d relaxed slightly. Did that mean he was an accomplished liar, on top of his game now, or that I was so far off the right track he felt secure?

  “From grabbing the kid.”

  He laughed. “Oh no,” he said, “he was with us all the way. Salter wasn’t the one who threw a spanner in the works.”

  I could have – should have – pursued that one in any number of directions, but I was blinkered by anger at his amused denial. “So why did you shoot him?” I demanded.

  “We didn’t,” Blakemore said, still grinning at me. “What makes you think that we did?”

  “Nine-mil hollowpoints fired from a machine pistol,” I said. “That’s what killed him.”

  “Sorry, Fox,” he said quickly, “but we don’t use full autos – or hollowpoints for that matter.”

  He reached for his helmet, but before he could put it back on I brought the round I’d shown to Madeleine out of my pocket and held it up to him.

  “So what’s this?”

  He stopped reaching for the helmet. Instead he took the Hydra-Shok round out of my fingers, examined it carefully. “Where did you get this?” he asked and any trace of laughter had been sucked right out of his voice, leaving a dustiness behind that was almost arid.

  “I found it on the indoor range,” I said. “I picked it up the first time we shot there.”

  “That’s against the rules,” he said, but he was onl
y going through the motions of rebuke.

  “It is,” I agreed. “But last time I checked, so was killing people.”

  Blakemore glanced up then, pinned me with a straight look. “And you would know all about that, would you, Charlie?” he said softly.

  I swallowed, pushed it aside and went on doggedly. “Why did you kill him?”

  Blakemore sighed. “I didn’t,” he said. “I thought I knew who was responsible, but now I’m not so sure.” He regarded me for a few seconds, that brooding, drawn-down stare he had as though he was mentally walking through his options and not finding any of them to his liking. Eventually he held up the round. “Can I hang onto this?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to plant this in front of someone, like you’ve just done, and see what it shakes loose.”

  I found a half-smile from somewhere. “Didn’t work too well on you,” I said.

  He grinned again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “but that’s because I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  He tucked the Hydra-Shok round into his jacket pocket and fired the ‘Blade up again. I caught his arm.

  “What’s going on, Blakemore?”

  He shook his head. “It’s too complicated to go into right now,” he said. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”

  I hesitated again, then stepped back. He nodded, rammed his helmet on and toed the bike into gear, as though afraid I’d change my mind. It was only as he ripped out of the square that I relayed the conversation through my mind and cursed myself for all the gaps I’d left unplugged with questions.

  By the time our allotted research period was up, Blakemore still hadn’t returned. I hung around by the back of the truck, hoping that he would still show, until Todd impatiently herded me in with the others.

  I scanned the phys instructor’s broad face for some sign that I was walking into a trap by allowing myself to be taken from a public place to a private one without a struggle, but there was nothing to alert me there beyond his usual arrogance.

  Even so, as we rumbled out of the square I was aware of a tightness in my chest, a prickling in my hands that made me clench them together in my lap hard enough to turn the skin white around the knuckles.

  Had Blakemore been telling the truth? Or had he just been stalling for time, putting me off my guard? His denial when I’d first mentioned the hollowpoint had seemed genuine. But faced with the evidence, there’d been something missing. Now, in the back of that lurching truck, it took me a while to work out what it was.

  Surprise.

  Whatever I’d triggered in Blakemore, whatever I’d said to him that had acted as a spur, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t suspected already. Suddenly, I remembered the little drama they’d organised for us on the range with Craddock. “So that’s how you did it,” Blakemore had said. Did what? And how was it done?

  Behind us I could see Todd at the wheel of the second truck, trying to steer with his elbows while he lit his cigarette. When he caught me watching him he threw me a cocky salute that only served to increase my uneasiness.

  Then, without warning, our truck braked hard, swerving to the right.

  The students were thrown against one another as the heavy vehicle skidded slightly. Declan’s shoulder hit mine and I grabbed on to the tailgate to stop myself pitching out over it.

  My first thought was that it was another ambush. That the men in the Peugeot had brought in reinforcements and come back for a return match. I strained for the sound of gunfire, realising with a sick dread that the thin canvas tilt sides of the truck would be sliced like butter in a firefight.

  Figgis managed to bring us to a jerky halt, but Todd had been following too close and not paying attention. I saw him rise in his seat as he stamped hard on the brake pedal. Smoke puffed from the offside front tyre as he locked it solid. For a moment I thought a collision was inevitable. When he finally wrestled the truck to a standstill his front bumper was less than half a metre from the tailgate. I could look straight into his startled eyes.

  It was only once we’d all stopped that I heard the frantic voices. A man and a woman. It took a few seconds to tune out the panic and latch on to the vocab. I caught it in snatches. Accident. Mobile phone. Ambulance.

  I pushed out of my seat and scrambled over the tailgate, just as Todd jumped down from his cab. As we ran forwards I was aware of other people following.

  The couple who’d flagged Figgis down were elderly. Both were talking at once, gesturing towards the edge of the road. The woman was crying.

  We’d stopped just before a sweeping left-hand bend. As corners went it was a beauty. A long continuously curving entrance and a tightening fast exit. It slanted towards the inside like a banked circuit. A corner designed for speed. And misjudgement.

  To the outside, slightly past the apex, was a lay-by just about wide enough for a single vehicle to pull off the road. Indeed, it was where the old couple had stopped their Westfalia camper van. The road surface broke up there into gravel that had been scraped and scuffed towards the safety barrier in a long ominous twin gouge.

  Beyond the barrier was nothing. Open space.

  Because Todd stopped to find out from Figgis what was going on, I was the first to reach the barrier and lean out over it. There was a rocky drop on the other side that went down almost sheer for twenty metres before it levelled out into a stream at the bottom, and then away into the trees.

  I suppose, if I’m honest, I already knew in my heart what I was going to see down there.

  But it still came as one hell of a shock.

  Alongside me I heard Declan whisper, “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

  I don’t know just how fast Blakemore had been going when he hit the barrier, but his trajectory had taken him fifteen metres or so out from the incline. He’d landed a little way from the bike, on his back, with his torso half-submerged in the stream. From this height I could see the current creating whirlpools and eddies around this unexpected obstruction to the flow.

  His body was bent and twisted, his limbs contorted inside his leathers. A good set will keep you together, but that doesn’t mean it will keep you whole. The darkened visor of his helmet stared up blankly at the sky.

  Shards of plastic debris were scattered around his body, splashes of harsh colour against the grey rocks. The faring of the Blade had detached itself in the crash and splintered into fragments, leaving the aluminium box frame exposed.

  I was certain he was dead, and then I saw the flutter of one gloved hand.

  I’ve seen dead bodies twitch before, little more than the nervous system shaking out the last few drops of life, but this was different. A controlled movement. A weak signal.

  I turned. The two instructors were still trying to get sense out of the elderly couple. “It’s Blakemore,” I shouted, cutting them short. “And he’s still alive.”

  Todd reached my shoulder first and stared down at the drop. “You’re fucking joking,” he muttered, stepping back, shaking his head. “Forget it, Fox, nobody could have survived that fall.”

  I glared at him, then inwardly recoiled. Blakemore had suspected somebody of being responsible for Kirk’s death. It might be rather convenient for Todd if Blakemore never came out of that ravine alive. Too convenient, perhaps . . .

  Figgis came up on Todd’s other side in time to hear that last remark. He threw Todd a disgusted glance.

  “Let’s find out for certain, shall we?” he said and climbed over the barrier.

  Todd didn’t try and stop him from going. Maybe he was as surprised as the rest of us by the driving instructor’s actions. Figgis crabbed across the face to an area where the incline of the rocks was at its most mild. From there he half-climbed, half-slithered his way down, sending a rash of pebbles skittering in front of him like a bow wave.

  His agility surprised me. He made it look easy, but no one else volunteered to follow him down.

  At the bottom we watched him pick his way across the rocks an
d reach Blakemore. I couldn’t imagine that the unarmed combat instructor looked any better close up. However strong and fit you are, you’re never going to win in a straight fight with inertia, gravity, and impact.

  Figgis stepped round the other man’s blasted limbs and crouched in the stream alongside him. Carefully, he flipped open the visor of his helmet, but didn’t attempt to remove it. He undid the velcro cuff on Blakemore’s left glove and pulled it off with a gentleness I wouldn’t have given him credit for. Then he pinched the inside of his wrist, looking for a pulse. He seemed to take a long time to find one. Long enough for me to suspect I’d imagined that feeble wave.

  Finally, he stood up and looked back up to the road, shielding his eyes. By this time we were all hanging over the safety barrier, staring down. I hoped briefly that the force of the FireBlade slamming into it and catapulting over the top hadn’t weakened its foundations or things were going to get crowded down there.

  “He’s still alive,” Figgis’s voice floated up. “We need an ambulance – now.”

  “They’re on their way,” Todd shouted down, “but we’ve got some ropes in the trucks. We can use one of the tailgates as a stretcher and haul him up ourselves. It’ll be faster.”

  “I wouldn’t move him if I were you,” Figgis called. He glanced back at Blakemore for some sign that he had any sense of cognition, but he was patently oblivious. When Figgis spoke again his voice was calm, devoid of emotion. “I think his back is broken.”

  People’s reaction to this piece of news was interesting. Some pressed forwards more fully, stretching their necks for a better look. Declan went and perched on the front bumper of the lead truck and lit a cigarette with hands that weren’t quite steady. I was one of those who moved back from the barrier. I’d seen enough, and grisly voyeurism was never in my line.

  Elsa turned away, too and belatedly realised that we’d been shuffling our feet across the gravel where Blakemore’s bike had skidded off the road.