The pub owners obviously held the same view and paid up.
Chico suddenly appeared in the restaurant’s doorway.
“Please, would you give this to that man,” I said to the young translator, handing him my car key and nodding in Chico’s direction.
He did as I asked without questioning why I didn’t do it myself.
“He said to call him in two minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How much do I owe you for the cover charge?”
“Nothing,” he said.
I called Chico.
“There’s definitely someone waiting outside there, all right,” he said. “I spotted him, standing in a doorway on the other side of the road. He was talking on his cell. He’s probably calling up reinforcements, so I think it’s high time to leave. Where’s the bleedin’ Range Rover?”
I did my best to describe where I’d left it while Chico told me the plan of escape.
“Push the lock and unlock buttons together on the key,” I said. “The lights will flash.”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll find it. I’ll call you. And when I say go, run like merry hell.”
I waited for what seemed like an age with my eyes firmly fixed on the door, hoping that Shane Duffy and his friends wouldn’t come in before Chico made it back.
The phone vibrated in my hand.
“Yes?” I said.
“I’m stopped just down the road,” Chico said. “The reinforcements have arrived. There are three of them altogether. They’ve been standing across the road, talking in a huddle, but they’ve now moved, and I can’t see them anymore. Get out the back and do it now. Turn right, if you can, and I’ll find you.”
I stood up from the booth and moved quickly towards the passage to the kitchen just as Shane Duffy and one of his mates came bursting through the front door, brushing the young Chinese man aside. They had baseball bats swinging in their hands, although I didn’t think they were looking for a game.
I ran, pushing past two startled chefs and out through the kitchen door into the narrow alleyway behind the restaurant.
The third man was already there. I could see him clearly in the glow from the light on the wall next to the restaurant’s back door. And he was also holding a baseball bat.
Bugger.
What had McCusker said when I’d complained to him about being beaten up by his goons in the racetrack parking lot?
Those boys hardly touched you. If they’d given you a proper beating, you’d not be able to walk. Kneecaps are notoriously difficult things to fix.
I feared I was in for a proper beating, and any minute now.
I had turned right, as Chico had asked, but that was only because there was just a solid wall to my left. The alley only went right, and it was blocked by the other man I’d encountered at Towcester, the one who had held my head in a stranglehold, the one who had told me into my ear to stop asking jockeys questions.
I could tell that he knew I’d recognized him. He smiled at me and swung his bat in a great circle around his head.
I walked briskly straight towards him, which seemed to unnerve him slightly, but I knew I had a fraction more chance against one man than retreating into the hands of the other two, who chose that moment to appear through the door some ten yards behind me.
I was like the meat caught in the middle of a baseball-bat sandwich.
And I was scared, very scared indeed.
23
I continued to advance towards the single man if only because it was the way to the end of the alley, and anything was better than the two-to-one odds behind me.
The whole thing seemed to be happening in slow motion.
As I neared him, the man swung his bat at my head, but I was easily able to sway out of its way. However, the two men behind me were closing in alarmingly quickly.
Two things then came to my rescue.
First, the Range Rover appeared across the end of the alleyway, and, second, the Rottweiler was let loose from the Fortune Cookie’s back door.
Chico put his hand firmly on the horn, and the man in front of me was distracted, half turning to see what was causing all the noise behind him.
I took my chance, stepping swiftly forward and hitting the man hard on the side of the head with my left arm, my plastic-and-steel wonder, my ever-ready club. He went down in a heap, and I sprinted past him.
Chico had the rear passenger door wide open, and I leaped in, slamming it shut in the same movement, but Chico didn’t drive off instantly. Instead, he sat watching the scene in the alley. And he was laughing.
I sat up and looked back.
The man I’d hit was still down on the ground, holding his head, while the other two were fighting off the angry Rottweiler, which was trying hard to bite chunks of flesh out of their legs.
In truth, it was funny, but I was still keen to move on.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get going. That was far too close for comfort.”
• • •
“NOW WHAT?” Chico said, driving away.
Now what indeed? I thought. My plan had only extended as far as coming to Manchester and waiting for some inspiration as to what to do next. And the plan hadn’t included showing our hand and having the enemy know that we were in their neighborhood.
It had been dark at the end of the alley, but had they seen Chico well enough to identify him again? And had they noticed the make and color of the car? Were they, even now, searching the local streets for us?
Part of me wanted to get out of their patch immediately and go straight back home to Oxfordshire, to Marina and Saskia. But was that what McCusker would expect us to do?
“I think we should go and watch the action at McCusker’s house,” Chico said.
“What if those goons recognize the Range Rover?”
“It was dark, and they were otherwise engaged. Let’s take the chance.”
Chico started the car and drove the mile or so to McCusker’s mock-Georgian mansion, where he parked in the middle of a line of other vehicles on the opposite side of the road about thirty yards from the wrought-iron security gates.
We sat in the dark for quite a time, watching nothing happen other than the sporadic passing of vehicles along the residential road.
“I’m going for a walk,” Chico said, opening the door.
“Is that wise?” I asked.
“Probably not,” he said with a huge grin. “But I’m bored just sittin’ here.”
He slipped away into the shadows while I swapped position from the backseat into the driver’s, ready for a quick getaway.
Still nothing appeared to be happening. Were we wasting our time? I thought it was time to go, but I daren’t call Chico. The last thing he’d want just now was his phone going off in his pocket.
I squinted through the windshield towards the house and was horrified to see a shadowy figure go up and over the fence at the end farthest from the gates. It had to be Chico.
What on earth was he doing? Was he mad? Surely McCusker would have motion-sensor security lights or even cameras.
I opened the Range Rover window and listened out for a sounding alarm or a shout of discovery, ready to rev the engine and smash down the gates if necessary.
But the night remained quiet, the only sound in my ears being the rushing of my blood and the thump-thump of my own heart.
“Come on, Chico,” I said to myself silently. “Get out now.”
Suddenly, as I was staring at them, the gates began to open. I slithered down in the seat so I was not so visible, but no car came out. Rather, one of the vehicles coming down the road towards me, a large Toyota Land Cruiser, turned in through the opening. It was impossible to see who was inside due to a combination of poor street lighting and heavily tinted glass.
I watched as the gates closed behind the Toy
ota and feared for Chico. Was that McCusker coming home or was it his three goons returning to report a failure to beat up Sid Halley at the Fortune Cookie restaurant? Either way, I didn’t think it was good news for my man, currently hiding behind enemy lines.
All I could do was sit and wait.
As the hands ticked around slowly on the Range Rover clock, I became more and more concerned. Five minutes passed, then ten.
What if Chico had been captured? Should I not launch some rescue mission? Or call the local police?
Another five minutes went by. It felt like twenty.
My phone suddenly emitted a beep to tell me that a text message had arrived. I grabbed at it.
The text was just two words long. Stay put, it said.
I stayed put, and the clock on the dash ticked around for another fifteen agonizing minutes.
The gates began to open again, and the Toyota drove out. As before, I was unable to see who, or how many, were inside.
Should I follow? But Chico had said to stay put, so I did.
I watched as the gates began to close automatically once more. When there was barely a foot of opening remaining, Chico popped out like a champagne cork and came running over to the Range Rover.
“Go,” he said as he climbed in.
The engine was already running, and I wasted no time in engaging drive.
“Where to?” I asked, pulling out.
“Follow that Toyota,” he said, panting with excitement and adrenaline. “God, I’m getting too old for this lark.” He grinned at me. “Best fun I’ve had in a long time.”
“What did you find out?”
“Not much,” Chico said. “But keep an eye on that Toyota. McCusker’s three heavies are in it. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had a nasty car crash?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
I sped up, went through a traffic light that had turned red just a fraction beforehand and hoped that there wasn’t a police car behind me.
We followed the Toyota out of Didsbury, south on the A34, then onto the M56. I hung back behind a couple of cars, and I was confident they couldn’t spot us in the dark.
I wasn’t sure when it dawned on me that they weren’t on some local errand. Maybe it was as they turned south onto the M6 near Knutsford.
“Do you think they’re on their way to Oxfordshire?” I asked Chico with concern.
“I fear they might be,” he replied.
“Why fear?”
“Because I saw one of them load a jerry can into the trunk.”
Oh God! I thought of what Angus Drummond had said about his parents’ Dutch barn full of fresh hay going up in smoke. Was the same on the agenda for my house?
“What shall we do?” I asked Chico.
“We could call the police,” he said. “Or the fire department. But it’s still over a hundred miles to Banbury. Let’s just wait a while and make sure we know where they’re goin’.”
I drove on behind them down the M6 past Stafford, past junction 14 and the place where Mandy, our beloved red setter, had been killed on the freeway. I had little doubt that the person who had let her go amongst the speeding traffic was in the vehicle two cars in front of me.
“So what else did you see?” I asked, finally.
“Well,” he said, turning to me slightly in his seat, “I goes over the fence really easy and then waits for quite a while on the far side just in case there’s an alarm I haven’t spotted, one that I might have tripped, sending a silent message to the cops. But nothin’ happens, and there are no sirens in the distance, so I goes forward towards the house and works my way round the back, round to the only window with lights and no curtains drawn.”
He was almost panting with the excitement.
“It is a study, and it’s definitely McCusker who’s sittin’ at the desk. You can’t mistake those eyes—just like in that photo you’ve got, except he’s older and fatter now than he was. I took a snap.”
Chico held his camera so I could see the photo he’d taken of McCusker through the study window. “It’s not that great because I couldn’t risk getting too close.”
“It’s brilliant,” I said, glancing down briefly at the image of my enemy.
“So there I am, happy as can be, sittin’ behind a bush near the window, watchin’ McCusker shoutin’ at someone on the phone, when I hears the bleedin’ front gate open. Bugger me, I thinks, there must be a silent alarm after all, and the cops have arrived. So I works my way farther down the garden, lookin’ for another way out. But no one comes round the corner with a flashlight or anythin’, so I gradually goes back towards the window.”
The car in front pulled off at a junction leaving us right behind the Toyota. I eased back gradually, allowing a couple of other cars to overtake me.
“There are now four of them in the study, and McCusker ain’t too pleased—I can tell from his body language even though I can’t hear his rantin’. Then the four of them go out, and McCusker turns off the light. So I makes my way round the house until I can see the driveway. That’s when I sees them takin’ a jerry can from the garage and puttin’ it in the car.”
“Was there anything else that they put in there with it?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“Suitcases or holdalls?”
He shook his head. “Not that I saw.”
So this excursion south was not planned to last very long, not long enough to warrant an overnight stay in a hotel.
The Toyota ahead suddenly indicated and left the freeway at the Hilton Park services just north of Birmingham. I eased back a little and followed them down the slip road.
They went through to the gas station at the far end, stopping next to one of the pumps. I slowed the Range Rover to a halt in the shadows, and we watched as they filled not only the Land Cruiser but also the jerry can.
Fortunately, I had filled up earlier that afternoon and still had plenty of miles in the tank, easily enough to get home.
Chico took pictures with his phone, but we were too far away for them to be much good.
“These guys are not very bright,” Chico said. “The CCTV will capture them fillin’ that can. If they use it to torch your place, the cops are bound to find the tapes.”
It wasn’t much of a comfort.
“Especially if we points them in the right direction.”
The refueling stop complete, the Toyota set off again southwards on the M6, with us in fairly close pursuit.
“Right,” I said to Chico. “It’s less than an hour now to my house. What are we going to do?”
“Can’t you phone your tame coppers and tell them what’s goin’ down?”
I’d also thought of that.
The only number I had for Norman Whitby was his office phone at the Greater Manchester police headquarters, and the last thing I was going to do was to tell anyone in that organization that I was currently following Billy McCusker’s hired goons down the M6. With a mole in the police camp, it might be tantamount to telling the man himself.
I wondered about Terry Glenn at the Met.
I’d just done a deal to say I’d ask him for no more favors, but this was an emergency. And anyway, did I care?
I tried the number of his cell, but all I got was voice mail. I left a message, but I didn’t hold out much hope that he’d return the call, not tonight, maybe not ever.
That just left D.C.I. Watkinson and D.S. Lynch, and I wasn’t sure how much they would help after all the hoo-ha about the indecent images even if I could contact them at eleven o’clock on a Sunday evening.
“Hello,” said an annoying telecom electronic voice when I tried their number. “No one can take your call at present. Please leave a message.”
I did as asked and left a message, asking them to call back urgently, but it would likely not be listened to unt
il the following morning, and, by then, it would probably be too late.
24
The Toyota turned off the M40 at the Banbury junction, by which time I was almost in panic mode.
I had called Charles and warned him, even though I was pretty sure that McCusker wouldn’t have known his address, not unless Norman Whitby really was the mole in the Greater Manchester Police.
Chico and I had discussed running the Land Cruiser off the road, preferably head-on into a tree or a concrete bridge, but it was traveling at a steady seventy-five miles per hour, and neither of us felt very comfortable at the probability of causing deaths, not even when the individuals concerned were so unpleasant.
As the Toyota slowed down for the roundabout over the freeway, I was beginning to have second thoughts. Perhaps running them off the road would have been the best strategy, but now it was too late.
To my great surprise, the Toyota didn’t turn right towards my house in the village of Nutwell but left onto Daventry Road.
“Oh my God!” I said. “It’s not my place they’re going to burn down. It’s the Molsons’ in Chipping Warden.”
“Who?” asked Chico.
“Tony Molson,” I said. “He rode Black Peppercorn to win at Uttoxeter this afternoon after he’d been categorically told by McCusker to lose. I reckon he’s going to make an example of Tony to send a message to the others.”
I thought back to what the owner of The Chequers Inn had said to me earlier about his friend who had tried to stand up to McCusker. They torched his pub with him in it. Barricaded the doors so he couldn’t get out.
I feared for Tony and Margaret, and especially for the Molson boys, Jason and Simon. They were the innocent bystanders in this affair.
Four lives. Four deaths. Barricaded into their burning home. Was I now so squeamish about running the Toyota off the road?
But it was much too late. Chipping Warden was just five miles from the freeway junction, and we were halfway there already.
“Call the fire department,” I said to Chico. “Tell them there’s a fire at Rose Cottage, in Mill Lane, behind the church in Chipping Warden. Use my phone.” I tossed it to him. “It’s pay-as-you-go. Give a false name.”
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