by Mari Hannah
Gormley and Naylor exchanged a grin.
‘If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain . . .’ Hank said.
He didn’t bother with the rest.
97
THE AREA COMMAND Inspector’s tone of voice was evidence enough that it hadn’t gone well. Two hours before the planned street ID it had begun to snow steadily and by ten o’clock he was dubious of a good outcome. Emily and Rachel met him in the prison car park, travelling under their own steam in Robert’s Land Rover. It was a smart move. The Traffic car reported all sorts of problems getting there. Regulations prevented Daniels from taking part, fairness demanding that she stay away. No chance to influence the witness, no fear of being accused of that. Fair enough, she thought, time to back off and let uniform sort it.
PARKING IN A bay near the prison gatehouse, the man in charge looked out of his window as the Land Rover Defender pulled up alongside. The doors opened almost immediately, two females emerging, transferring to his car as instructed, brushing snow from their clothing as they slammed the doors.
As they waited for the shift change, the officer turned to face them, having a word with Emily, then telling Rachel exactly how it would go down when staff walked out of the gatehouse. That included the reason why she was there, even though it probably sounded like he was stating the obvious. Experience had shown that in circumstances like these it was advisable to be prescriptive.
There was no room for error. He didn’t want the witness doing or saying anything inappropriate, anything that might render the evidence inadmissible.
He smiled at the girl, an attempt at reassurance. ‘Rachel, you’re here to see if you can identify the man who abducted and held you captive in a garage in Northumberland. You must appreciate that you may not see the person responsible. However, if you do, you must indicate to me – in the clearest way possible – that you have seen someone you recognize. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, perfectly’
‘I can’t prompt you in any way. For example, I couldn’t ask is he the man in the red jumper or anything like that. You must describe and point him out to me: That’s him, he’s wearing a red jacket, a blue jumper, a yellow scarf or carrying a suitcase or whatever. Agreed?’
Rachel gave a little nod.
But as the minutes ticked by, the weather worsened. It was a complete white-out by the time the finishing shift trooped out. As they filed past the Traffic car en route to their own vehicles, they all looked the same dressed in uniform parka jackets with hoods pulled tight around their faces. The whole thing was a bloody disaster, an outcome the Inspector conveyed to Kate Daniels at the earliest opportunity.
‘THIS IS ALPHA ONE, ma’am. No joy here, I’m afraid. We weren’t able to make a street ident. By the time the shift cleared the gate they all looked like Nanook of the North. It was impossible for Rachel to tell one from another.’
Kate punched her steering wheel in frustration.
‘OK, return to base,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the assist.’
‘Don’t thank me yet. I was clocked by security in the car park. They kicked up a fuss when I arrived, gave me a bit of earache for not clearing it with them first. Think you’re in for the high jump for not giving them any notice, ma’am.’
‘That’s received, Alpha One. I’m shaking in my boots. Actually, I’m on my way there now to eat humble pie. Apologies if you got it in the neck.’
Parked just a short distance away, Kate had already received a summons from the Governor. He was screaming for answers, wanting to know why she’d locked up three of his bods, thrown them out again and then positioned a Traffic car on his doorstep without a word in his shell-like. She was about to tell him to butt out. It was prison service property, that was true, but she was on police business, investigating a very serious matter. He’d just have to put up with her doing her job.
Well, almost.
Naylor wanted her to wear kid gloves and calm troubled waters. She hoped the Governor wouldn’t turn out to be a prat or she’d find that extremely difficult in her present mood. With very little rest in the last few days, she was exhausted and ready to call it a day. ‘Can you ask Rachel and her mother to hang on for me, Alpha One? I’ll rendezvous with them in the car park in five.’
‘No problem,’ came the reply. ‘Sorry we weren’t able to help this time.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You did your best.’
Half a mile from the prison, Kate passed the Traffic car going the other way. He flashed his lights in lieu of a wave. She did likewise and drove on, arriving a few moments later. Emily and Rachel were sitting in the Defender in the staff car park. Pulling up alongside, Kate wound her window down and offered a few words of apology for another aborted attempt at identification. Then she made her way into the jail to keep her appointment.
THE GOVERNOR WAS FURIOUS. He had every right to be. It wasn’t every day that a member of staff was locked up by the Murder Investigation Team, let alone three. But he was an OK bloke and – without giving too much away – she managed to placate him. Her investigation had been an arduous one, an intense couple of weeks, but she reassured him that it was as good as over with just a few loose ends left to tie up. That was stretching the truth a bit, but he accepted it with good grace, even offered to walk her from the admin block to the main gate.
No hard feelings.
They fell in step, chatting about the recent spate of bad weather as they walked. But as they neared the gatehouse, Kate stopped listening to the man by her side, or rather his voice faded out of her consciousness as she noticed something odd through the chain-link perimeter fence . . . Emily’s Land Rover was only just pulling away. More worryingly, there was someone following . . . a suspicious second vehicle . . . skirting the car park . . . no lights on. Kate did a double take – just to be sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her – then she started running.
CHARGING INTO THE gatehouse in a panic, she banged loudly on the inner security window. The duty officer jumped to attention, abandoning his newspaper when he saw the Governor racing into the building behind her.
‘Rewind the CCTV!’ Kate yelled, pressing her ID to the glass. ‘Now, man! DO IT!’
Taking his cue from the Governor’s nod, the officer did as she asked.
Three pairs of eyes scanned the image as it rewound at speed until Kate told him pause it, then run it on at normal speed.
‘Freeze it there!’ she said.
Pressing the pause button again, the officer stopped the tape, leaving the image of the unlit car on screen. Without being asked to do so, he zoomed in on the car. One person only inside.
Instinctively, Kate knew who it was.
‘Let me out of here, quick!’ She moved towards the exit. ‘Call for backup and keep hold of that tape.’
It seemed to take for ever for the inner and outer doors to open and close. Then she took off, sprinting to her Q5. She started the ignition and sped off like a woman possessed.
The narrow country lane was winding and unlit, the Q5’s wipers struggling to cope with the bleaching snow. Each load that was wiped away was quickly replaced by more big white flakes that settled on the windscreen, obscuring her vision. Peering through it as best she could, she did a double-take, closing on a sight up ahead that was confusing: white lights rotating in the darkness.
‘Shit!’ Panic set in.
As she depressed the brake, slowing the Q5, her phone rang.
‘I know who did it,’ Carmichael said.
98
AS SOON AS she got home, Emily told Rachel to set the fire while she went into the kitchen to make some tea and toast for supper. Twenty metres short of her driveway, moving headlights changed direction and stopped. The lights were cut. A car door slammed shut and a figure moved swiftly towards The Stint on foot.
DANIELS HARDLY HAD time to digest what Carmichael had told her before the image up ahead became clear. The lights she’d seen were the headlights of a car, flipped on its roof and spinning in the road l
ike a breakdancer. Applying the brakes sent her bag and other items shooting forward into the foot-well. The Q5’s backend slewed across the road and she had to compensate by steering into the skid before finally bringing the car to a halt.
Putting her hazard warning lights on, she got out, the phone still in her hand as the spinning vehicle came to a graceful stop. It wasn’t Emily’s car, or the suspicious vehicle that followed her from the prison car park – the same vehicle she suspected of colliding with this car and causing it to crash.
Steam was billowing from the engine of the upturned car and there was a strong smell of petrol in the air. The driver was trapped inside.
Kate swore under her breath.
‘Boss?’ Carmichael was yelling down the phone. ‘Boss? You OK?’
‘Lisa, I’ve come across an RTA. Get on to Control. I need immediate assistance.’ Giving her exact location, Kate took a mini-Maglite from the door pocket of the Q5 and scanned the scene. The crashed vehicle’s front windscreen was out – a side window too – but there were no passengers as far as she could tell. ‘I have one casualty, but there may be more. Ambulance and fire service personnel required.’
‘Leave it with me,’ Carmichael said. ‘I’ll sort it.’
‘Lisa, Emily is in danger. A suspicious vehicle tailed her from the prison. I was following when I came across this lot. The prison should’ve called for backup already, but tell Control they’ll need to find another route through Felton. The stricken car is sideways on. The B6345 west of Acklington is completely blocked.’
FEARON TRIED THE front door. It was locked. Silently, he moved round the rear and saw Emily through the window. She’d nicked her finger on a bread knife and was searching in a cupboard for something to put on it, leaving the knife unattended on the bench.
Stealthily, he moved away.
When Emily heard the window break, she froze.
Rachel!
Her eyes darted to the knife block. She grabbed the largest knife there and bolted from the room, reaching the living-room door just as it slammed in her face. She tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge.
IN THE LIVING room, Fearon kept his shoulder to the door. Grabbing Rachel by the hair, he pulled her head to one side so it was almost parallel with her shoulders. He stared deep into her eyes, sniffing her perfume, the same one her mother wore. The girl was too terrified to struggle, her whole body rigid, eyes fixed on the cold steel blade in his hand.
‘Walter, please listen to me,’ Emily called through the door. ‘Let my daughter go. Take me instead. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve always wanted. Mr Stamp told me so.’
Emily wished Martin were here now. She was calm, despite the sound of Rachel’s hysteria from the other side of the door. Careful not to make a sound, she searched the drawer of a small side table. Finding the key she was looking for, she moved to the cupboard under the stairs and opened the gun cabinet Robert had fitted against the far wall. Removing the shotgun with trembling hands, she fumbled in her first attempt to load the ammunition. Cursing under her breath, she tried again, determined to do whatever was necessary to protect her only child.
99
KATE DANIELS DIDN’T hear the officer in the control room. Her phone was in her hand, but her arm was by her side as she stared at a pair of lifeless eyes. The young woman was hanging upside down from her seat belt. She looked about twenty years old; not a pretty girl by any stretch of the imagination, but she had beautiful hair, the colour of bronze, styled asymmetrically as if she’d made a real effort tonight. To the left of her lolling head, on the interior of the car’s roof, a gift lay on its side. It was wrapped and lovingly tied with a bow, suggesting the girl had been on her way to a party.
Her last, poor kid.
‘. . . 7824: please respond. Are you able to offer medical assistance?’
Blinking snow from her lashes, Kate swallowed down her grief for the girl. It felt surreal, standing there in the middle of nowhere in the glare of the Q5’s headlights, staring at a stranger, the snow falling silently all around her, a voice from the control room cutting through the deathly hush.
When she lifted the phone to her ear, her voice was flat. ‘Come again, Control.’
‘Are you able to offer assistance? Control over.’
‘Negative. It’s a fatal . . . the casualty’s neck is broken.’
‘Stay with the vehicle, 7824.’
‘That’s a negative . . .’ Drawing her eyes away from the dead girl, Kate’s thoughts returned to Emily. She lifted her torch, scanning the scene. Even with the Q5’s capability, with dense bushes on either side of the narrow road, there was no vehicular way through and it would take longer to find another route. ‘I’m making my way to the priority job at The Stint, Control.’
‘Yes, we’re aware of that. Officers have been dispatched.’
‘7824, my battery is low. Please use the force radio from now on, over.’
LEAPING OVER THE steaming chassis, Kate sprinted up the road, arms like pistons, willing herself to cover the ground to Emily’s home less than a mile away. As she ran, all she could hear was the sound of her own heavy breathing. Slipping on the icy surface, she strained to see over hedgerows as the road twisted and turned.
And there it was up ahead . . .
A tiny light in the darkness.
Exhausted and panting for breath, she ran on. As she neared the property, she could see that the kitchen light was on inside the house but, as she rounded the final bend, a dark shadow appeared behind a curtain of snow. She stopped running and approached with caution, trying to get some breath into her lungs. A 52 plate, dark-coloured Renault Clio was parked just short of the gateway. Lights off. Driver’s door wide open.
Shining her torch inside, she leaned in. The car had been hotwired and a hypodermic needle lay on the passenger seat, a tourniquet strap next to it.
Fearon would be pumped up and capable of anything.
Kate turned to face The Stint. The tiny cottage was backlit in the moonlight, a Christmas-card image covered in fresh snow, exactly as it had been on the day Emily and Robert moved in. That was party night too, an open-house celebration for a wonderful couple beginning a new life together.
A gunshot pierced the night air, stopping her dead in her tracks as she walked toward the house. The sound sent a shiver up her spine. She spoke quietly on the radio: ‘7824 to Control, shots fired at The Stint. Where the fuck is my backup?’
Kate knew she had a decision to make. There were two women in the house and one drugged-up male, presumably armed with a shooter. Another gunshot sent her heart banging in her chest. There was no time to waste.
Swallowing down her fear, and despite advice from the control room to the contrary, she decided not to wait for her colleagues to arrive. Not that anyone would’ve blamed her. She was unarmed, at an obvious disadvantage, but she was also a police officer with a duty to preserve life.
Emily and Rachel were still inside. She couldn’t leave them to the mercy of Fearon.
She crept into the house. The hallway light was off, the bulb crunching under her feet as she entered. She listened. Total silence. To the left of her, Robert’s gun cabinet was empty and there was a faint smell of cordite in the air, the internal door blasted open. In her mind’s eye, she could almost see the weapon in Fearon’s hand, poised to blow her head off the minute she entered the living room.
Through a crack in the door, she saw blood.
One cream-coloured wall was covered in it.
The torch caught a flash of denim, about forty-five degrees to her right on the floor.
Male, not female.
She blew out her cheeks, relief bringing tears to her eyes.
Fearon was lying on his back, a gunshot wound to the right side of his chest, a bloody knife in his hand. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were shut but she was taking no chances. Kicking away the knife, she kneeled down beside him and felt for a pulse.
Still breathing.
She felt sick as she stood up straight, her imagination working overtime. For a moment she just stood there, trying to restore her breathing to normal. She didn’t want to turn round for fear of what faced her on the other side of that room. But the sound of a faint whimper sent her spinning in that direction.
Emily’s pathetic figure was slumped against the wall, bloodied and still, Robert’s shotgun by her side. Rachel was curled up in a foetal position beside her mother, her face pale with shock, unable to take her eyes from the psychopath that was Walter Fearon.
100
FLASHING LIGHTS TURNED the snow blue as it continued to fall in eerie silence. The Stint was now a crime scene. A WPC had been posted outside the front door, instructed to keep out unwanted visitors. Emergency vehicles were parked haphazardly on the road and on the driveway, transportation for the range of professional personnel who had swarmed to the scene when alerted by Control: crime scene investigators, photographers, paramedics and, of course, Kate Daniels’ own team of murder detectives.
Fortunately, no forensic pathologist had been summoned.
Not yet, anyway . . .
Kate took a deep breath.
Not long after she’d entered the cottage, armed support had burst through the door, training their guns on everything that moved. For anyone who hadn’t seen them in action and didn’t know how professional they were, it was one of the most frightening experiences imaginable. Rachel had gone into shock and they had quickly been stood down.