Hillier nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Dr. Kingston will take you through the French doors to the garden, out through the gate into the courtyard, and then to the car park. There you’ll be left unharmed but where I can kill you with one shot if anything goes wrong. If I get as much as a whiff that one of your goons is trying to stop us, you’ll be killed instantly.”
Kingston was about to interject, mentioning his phone call to Andrew and adding that the police could arrive at any moment, but he realized it wasn’t a good idea to warn Hillier.
Grace waved the gun at Hillier. “Call Victor now.”
29
HILLIER DID AS he was told, and two minutes later, the trio emerged from the garden gate onto the perimeter of the gravel parking area. Some thirty feet ahead, stood the solitary Land Rover, with the two front doors open, as Grace had stipulated.
Before approaching the car, Kingston scanned the courtyard, its various buildings, and the other cars parked there, to make sure the area was deserted. All seemed secure, though he knew that Victor and his cohorts and perhaps others could easily be lurking out of sight nearby.
Two minutes later, Kingston was behind the wheel, putting on his seat belt, checking the fuel gauge, wondering what was keeping Grace, when he noticed she had had stepped several feet away, facing the three other cars parked close to the house but still able to keep a wary eye on Hillier. She raised the small gun, gripped it with both hands, and fired a rapid succession of shots—not one of them wasted—deflating the rear tires on each vehicle. In five seconds, the empty magazine was replaced with a full one from her pocket. She hurried to the car and sat beside him, slamming the door shut, winding down the window. There she rested her gun on the door ledge, leveled at Hillier, who sat in his wheelchair watching helplessly, alone, powerless, and brooding.
“Goodbye, Allen,” she shouted over the rumble of the V-8 engine. “You’ll never see me again.” Closing the window, she withdrew the gun. Kingston slammed his door shut and the Land Rover skidded forward, scattering gravel from its spinning rear wheels. He eased off the pedal, and they moved briskly across the courtyard and down the long hedge-lined lane to the main road and freedom.
Kingston was thinking that it was taking them a long time to reach the road when a line of tall trees ahead signaled that they were almost there. Rounding what should surely be the last curve, his foot went instinctively to the brake. The feeling of relief and gratitude—to Grace in particular—that they’d escaped unharmed suddenly evaporated, replaced with a sinking feeling in his gut. He glanced at Grace. She’d seen it, too. The iron security gate at the end of the drive was closed.
Ten feet from the gate, hand brake on, Kingston jumped out to examine the gate, to see if there was a push-button opener. On his side there was nothing. On the other, visible through the railings, was a keypad. Grabbing the rails with both hands, he yanked the gate to and fro with all his strength to test its sturdiness, quickly concluding that it would be too dangerous to try to ram their way through. As he turned to get back in the car, he spotted a CCTV camera, and then another one, on tall poles hidden among the trees. “The bastard’s watching us, too,” he muttered under his breath.
He ran to the back of the car, remembering that Andrew had said there were tools stored in it. A cursory glance in the storage space told him there was nothing that would be of use, no sturdy rope or chains.
Time was becoming critical. Hillier knew that their only means of escape was blocked. And the option of attempting to scale the gate’s high, sharp-pointed railings and take off by foot was no option at all. They’d already wasted two or three valuable minutes, but Grace was showing remarkable patience and composure, having said nothing but a loud expletive at seeing the closed gate.
Back behind the wheel, Kingston was about to do a hasty U-turn to find a place where they could go off-road across the fields, when a white van approached the gate from outside—no doubt a tradesman making a delivery. This stroke of luck could be their only chance. Kingston backed up and moved to one side of the lane to make room for the truck to come through the gate and pass. He was pinning his hopes on the chance that the time lapse between automatic opening and closing would allow him to slip through.
The driver entered the code in the keypad and, slowly, the gate opened. The van eased forward, but instead of passing the Rover as Kingston had expected, it stopped abruptly several feet away.
Its doors burst open and two men leapt out, running toward the stationary Rover. One was gripping a tire iron, the other a baseball bat.
Kingston jammed the gearshift into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. Instantly the vehicle hurtled backward, fishtailing crazily, gravel and dirt flying in all directions. He regained control, managing more by luck than skill to keep the car straight and not plow into the thick hedges on either side of the path.
Head and shoulders turned backward, eyes glued to the lane behind, he dared not turn to see if he was outpacing the men. Then, through the rear window, he saw Victor running toward them on the lane. He would certainly have a gun, and in a matter of seconds it could be all over. They would be either captured or dead.
Slowing so as not to narrow the gap between them and Victor more quickly, Kingston took his eyes off the rear window for a fraction of second and saw Grace leaning out the window, trying to steady herself against the lurching of the car, the gun trained on their attackers. A crack echoed across the fields, and the man closest fell to the ground, screaming, clutching his knee, the bat spinning out of his hand. Doubtless realizing that he could be next, the other stopped in his tracks, the tire iron dangling at his side.
There was no time for conversation. Kingston knew that if there was any chance of escaping, he would have to find a gap in the hedging where they could drive off into the fields, where the four-wheel-drive Rover could outrun just about anything else. Victor had slowed to a walk and now was fewer than fifty yards away.
“On your right!” Grace shouted. “A gate.”
Kingston saw it just in time, skidding to a stop a few yards past it. He slipped into low gear and pressed his foot down, hard. The Rover leapt forward, smashed through the wooden gate and bounced crazily across a shallow gulley, eventually finding traction on the damp, grassy field, then picking up speed. A gunshot came from behind in the distance—Victor, now well out of range.
“Let’s see if we can find a way out of this goddamned mess,” Kingston said, glancing at Grace.
Andrew’s old Rover took everything in stride, including deeply rutted, muddy stretches and a couple of marshy, flooded areas. Pressing forward, with no further signs of civilization, farms, lanes, even tractor tracks, they were now relying purely on luck to help them find a way out.
“Way over there, in the corner,” Grace said, pointing. About a quarter mile away, a thin wisp of smoke was visible against a backdrop of dark trees.
“Looks promising.” Kingston changed course as they crossed the corner of a recently plowed field, bouncing up and down.
Then he heard the sound.
The clattering noise was growing louder every second. At first he thought something was stuck in one of the car’s wheels, but he quickly rejected that idea. The sound was reaching a crescendo when he realized what it was. He almost ducked instinctively as the black-and-yellow helicopter swooped over them with a deafening roar, no more than twenty-five feet off the ground. Kingston could feel the powerful downdraft through the steering wheel.
The pilot circled ahead tightly, revealing the word POLICE on the fuselage. He made a soft landing fifty feet away, giving Kingston plenty of time to come to a stop.
Kingston and Grace slumped in their seats. No words, just smiles of relief and a quick glance up to the heavens from Kingston as he got out of the car. One of the policemen aboard, wearing a bulletproof vest over a navy pullover with sergeant’s stripes, was walking toward them. The other, holding a semiautomatic carbine in his lap, watched from the helicopter, its roto
r blades turning idly.
“Better hide the gun,” Kingston said to Grace.
Grace took it from the pocket in the door, wrapped it in her scarf, and quickly shoved it under the front seat.
“Dr. Kingston, I presume,” the sergeant said with a trace of a smile.
Kingston nodded. “I can’t tell you how glad we are to see you chaps.”
“I’m Sergeant Wilkinson.” He stooped to glance into the car. “The lady is Grace Williams, I take it?” “She is.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re both in one piece. Now let’s get you out of here.” He turned and pointed toward the tiny column of smoke they’d seen. “Head over there. It’s about four hundred yards. On the right, you’ll see a farm gate.” He paused, the smile back. “This time it might be good idea to open it, by the way. Beyond it is a lane that leads to the B846. Make a left—heading east—and when you reach the main road, turn right toward Amersham. We’d like you to go directly to Amersham police station, where you’ll be asked to file an initial report. They’re expecting you. The station is on King George Fifth Road, off Chiltern, near the railway station. In the meantime, we’ll lead you across the field to the road, just in case,” he said, and headed back to the helicopter.
Halfway there, he stopped and looked back.
“I forgot to mention, Doctor, there’s a friend of yours waiting at Amersham. He’s been very worried about you.”
“Andrew,” Kingston said. “Of course.”
Wilkinson smiled. “Yes, Andrew. The desk sergeant said that he’s been worried about his Land Rover, too,” he added with a sly parting smile.
Kingston smiled, too, then shifted the Rover into gear once more.
30
KINGSTON LEFT THE rutted field, passed through the open wooden gate, and in minutes was on the road headed toward Amersham. Fifty feet above, the police helicopter made what Kingston took to be a farewell: a rolling wave and then a swoop upward with a loud clatter before disappearing among the low clouds.
For a long moment, neither spoke as Kingston shifted through the gears, picking up speed on the empty road ahead. He had a hundred questions to ask but didn’t know where to start. Grace saved him the trouble.
“How far is Amersham?” she asked.
“I’m guessing five or six miles. Why?”
“We don’t have much time, then.”
He was about to ask what she was getting at when she cut him off.
“I owe you a huge thanks, an apology, and an explanation as well,” she said, tugging her seat belt and shifting to face Kingston. “You saved my life back there and I’ll never forget it. I just hope one day I’ll have the chance to thank you in full. The apology is for deliberately misleading you, having got you into this mess in the first place, for lying to you when you and the policewoman came to Beechwood. It was stupid of me, but I was trying my damnedest to keep you out of it.” She took a short breath. “I had to resort to that, otherwise it could have jeopardized my plan to deal with Hillier. It was all coming down in a matter of days. If I’d told you the truth, I had no idea what would have happened. You could have gone straight to the police, for all I knew.”
Kingston had been avoiding eye contact, trying to keep her talking, but he took his eye off the road for a second to glance at her. He wasn’t going to speak, but she raised a hand anyway, shaking it slowly.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I’d prefer you just listen so you know how this all came about. And, given what faces me, we may not get another chance. It’s ironic that with everyone I’ve come in contact with since arriving in this country, I end up trusting you more than anyone else. I owe it to you to at least try to explain what led me here and why I did what I did today. I’m not making any excuses and I’m ready to accept the consequences, whatever they might be. I think you deserve to know the truth, though.”
Kingston nodded. “I would like to hear it,” he said, eyes back on the road.
“I knew all along about Brian,” she said. “I knew about his friendship with Ronnie Butler, the robbery, and eventually what Allen Hillier’s role was. I’ll get to him in a moment, though.” She paused to run her tongue over her lips.
“I didn’t hear from Brian until three years after the robbery. He was hiding in the Welsh mountains. He told me that his new name was Reginald Payne and he was enjoying life on his ‘little farm,’ as he called it. He wanted me to track down Hillier for him. Later, when I went to visit him, he told me that Allen had converted half of his share of the stolen money and all of Butler’s into diamonds.”
“Diamonds?” Kingston barely stopped himself from slamming on the brakes. Grace’s words brought Darrell Kaminski’s story flooding back: the plot that Kaminski had overheard at Alcatraz.
“Yes, diamonds. That’s what Allen did in those days—a lot of shady stuff. Brian knew Butler’s plan was to hide the diamonds in a graveyard somewhere in the England but not where. Butler’s plan was to go to the U.S. and start a new life under a new name and come back later, when the robbery was long forgotten, to retrieve the jewels. Hillier had supplied all the necessary papers, a U.S. passport, and passage on a freighter.”
She waited while a Harley-Davidson in a hurry roared past them, too close for comfort. Pay attention, Kingston chided himself—to the driving, as well as the story.
She continued. “All that stuff about Brian being well-off, his successful business ventures, the house in the Chalfonts—it was all fiction. I visited Brian in Wales once and a couple of times later at Beechwood—both from Canada, by the way. I really did live there for the last twenty-five years. Anyway, on what would be my last visit, I became concerned about his well-being. He was drinking a lot and I suspected drugs. Then I didn’t hear from him for several years. In what turned out be our last phone conversation, he told me that he was not only in poor health but bad shape financially as well. He was planning to salvage what little he could from the sale of Beechwood—it was heavily mortgaged by then—and move to a state-run care home. I was in no position to help, not that I would’ve, anyway. Before we hung up, he threw me another curve—what he called ‘the final atonement.’ He said that if he died under suspicious circumstances, or was killed, I should immediately tell the authorities to investigate Allen Jay Hillier, the only person living who would want him silenced. When I asked why, what it was between him and Hillier that would provoke such an extreme statement, he clammed up.”
Kingston glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, at the same time noting the AMERSHAM 2 KM sign ahead. At last it was all falling into place. The problem he faced now was that they were going to run out of time before he could get the whole story from Grace.
“What was your guess at the time?” he asked. “What was it between your brother and Hillier that would make him say that?”
She paused for a moment. “I didn’t need to guess. I just knew, in my bones, that Brian had been blackmailing Hillier—and back there the son of a bitch confirmed it. You heard him.”
Kingston nodded.
“Hillier.” She shook her head. “The biggest mistake of my entire life. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for him.”
“You knew him a long time, though.”
She sighed. “I did. I was seventeen when I first met him—before the robbery. It was at a nightclub in Soho. As he was leaving, he spotted Brian, who was at our table. To me Allen was Prince Charming. But Brian thought he was fawning over me and cautioned me to steer clear of him. I soon forgot all about it. Then I met him again, by chance, quite a few years later. At the time he owned a house in Kew and law offices on Kingsway. We dated for a while, and I learned how his empire had expanded in those several years. Eventually I moved in with him. By that time, he owned several businesses, was a director of others, and was well connected politically. I suspected that he also had connections with London’s organized crime syndicates. It turned out that I was right.”
In the rearview mirror, Kingston not
iced that a blue-and-yellow striped police patrol car had slipped in behind them, maintaining its distance. That more or less ended his hope of buying a little more time in the police station parking lot.
Grace continued. “He was a complex man—charismatic, sophisticated, fiendishly clever one moment, callous and ruthless to anyone who crossed him or got in his way the next. Remember, he was a lawyer and knew how to evade the law and use it to his advantage. He never did his own dirty work. He had plenty of other people to do that. He was always squeaky clean.” She looked away for the moment. “Going back to the blackmailing, it was obvious to me, knowing what I did, that Brian’s threatening to divulge Hillier’s role in the robbery would in itself be more than sufficient reason for extortion, and he knew he could count on Hillier paying up because he had far more to lose if it came to a showdown. A simple phone call to the police is all it would have taken to blow the lid off their secrets and put them both behind bars for a long time. Brian knew that his life was coming to an end, anyway. For Hillier, murder was the only answer. It wouldn’t be the first time, either.”
“He’d murdered someone else?”
This time she looked at him. “He arranged it. An American man.”
Kingston frowned. “How did you learn that?”
“From a man I once knew. Hillier had hired him to do it.”
Kingston was getting confused. It was all coming too fast.
“Surely he didn’t admit to that,” he said.
He didn’t need to. He’d told me more than enough already—it was as plain as the nose on your face. A few days later it was in all the papers. The body was found in the Thames.”
“You knew then that Hillier was responsible?”
“I was certain. But he didn’t admit it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
6.The Alcatraz Rose Page 20