by Chris Simms
Feeling numb and empty, Jon traced a forefinger down the velvety groove between the animal’s eyes. Once again, the fragments of the case started circling in his head. He tried to blink them away, but they wouldn’t disappear. Chances of Stuart Budd calling? He thought about the wife and how aggressive she’d become. Slim to non-existent, then. She’d made it plain what the bloke’s choices were: help Jon and lose her.
His thoughts went back to Haverdale. Could he get Mallin to bring Ian Flynn in? There were issues about entrapment; after all, he’d posed as a security professional to get the guy to talk. But if he could persuade Mallin to press charges, they could go into Flynn’s bungalow and turn it upside down. There had to be a saw somewhere with traces of Dave’s blood. And shoes – the Norwegian army boots could still be lying around someplace.
He crossed his arms, the cool air starting to caress his torso. What else could he take to Mallin about Flynn? Think, Jon, think. It’s all in the papers now; the bloke will be destroying any evidence of drug dealing. Probably doing it right now.
His mind went to the evening in the Spread Eagle, the crazy motorbike ride . . . fuck! The make of tyre. I forgot to ask Nikki to check the cast she’d taken against makes of Bridgestones.
He fumbled for his mobile, knocking a button and causing the screen to emit an ethereal glow: . in the morning. I can’t ring her now. Give it until, when? Seven? Six thirty?
He lay back, hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Alice. He hadn’t felt this powerless since being in hospital when Holly was born. Mopping his wife’s forehead with a cool flannel, urging her to push through unimaginable pain when all he could feel was a mildly annoying hunger in his stomach. I haven’t a clue what any of this really feels like for her. And without an understanding, I don’t know what to say. He shut his eyes and pictured her lying there barely twelve feet above his head.
*
Now wearing his park ranger’s uniform, Michael Lumm stepped back into his garage and regarded the corpse of Ian Flynn sitting upright in the chair. He could have been mistaken for someone sleeping if it wasn’t for the rope looped around his torso. That and the head of the hammer embedded in his skull, its handle jutting out like a lever by which to crank the dead man back to life.
He stepped closer to the chair, each rear leg now standing in a plastic washing-up bowl. That hadn’t been easy, Flynn twitching and gurgling as he’d lifted the back of the chair up to position a bowl beneath each leg, only the coils of rope preventing the dying man from sliding to the concrete floor.
Now, peering down, he could see it had been worth the effort. Both vessels were half full with viscous liquid. The whole garage reeked of its coppery tang. Bending down, he lifted the flap of material created by cutting across the seat of Flynn’s trousers. The incisions he’d made into the man’s buttocks gaped, blood jelly-like in the lower fold of flesh. He must have bled out hours ago.
Bracing his knees, Lumm hooked a hand under the backrest of the chair, and with his cheek pressed against Flynn’s shoulder, raised the rear legs up. His other hand groped down, sliding one bowl clear, then the other. A grunt escaped him as he lowered the chair and straightened up. Inside the washing-up bowls, Flynn’s blood gently shifted, its congealed surface thick as unwanted gravy.
Next, Lumm untied the knot and removed the rope coiled around Flynn’s chest. Then, after placing a toe against the rear leg of the kitchen chair, he used both hands to tilt it backward, tipping Flynn onto the plastic sheeting. His head cracked against the hard floor and the hammer was dislodged from his skull. Immediately, watery blood trickled from the twin holes in the crown of his head.
Lumm looked down at the other man, surprised once again at how simple it was. He’d despatched so many animals in his capacity as a park ranger: foxes, mink, deer. So why did it seem strange that a human died just as easily? He thought back to that night on Highshaw Hill, how his hands had trembled as he’d slid the hammer out from his bag. But there’d been no need for nerves; he smiled at the memory of how the man from Manchester had dropped to the ground. Of course, the blood was a problem. He should have realised there’d be so much; after all, when they culled an adult stag, puddles of the stuff were left on the moor.
That’s why, he thought smugly, I’m being more organised this time round. He turned to the array of tools and removed a medium-size hacksaw. Pointing the end of it at Flynn, he spoke. ‘No one comes into this town and deals drugs, unless it’s through me. No one, understand?’
Flynn’s lifeless eyes gazed up, dried saliva like a fungus on his chin.
‘Whatever bullshit he came out with about digging for treasure, he sold you drugs. That, my friend, is called a toehold. And I don’t give those to anyone. You hear me?’ He crouched, bending forward so his face was directly above Flynn’s. ‘You hear me?’
He glanced at his watch. Still an hour before he needed to be at the visitor centre, preparing for the day. Once there he could give Riley a call. See if the RSPB officer had worked out which other nests Craig Budd might try and target on his latest collecting spree.
A sudden surge of anxiety caused him to blink. If Riley had any ideas, the first person he would have passed them to was that bloody DI Spicer.
He looked back at the corpse laid out before him. ‘Fucking idiot,’ he cursed, lining up the serrated edge of the saw against the other man’s neck.
Jon’s eyes snapped open. Was that a beep? Did my mobile phone just beep? Weak light was now showing at the curtain’s edges and he could hear a few birds’ tentative twitters. Shit, I must have fallen asleep. The chorus of electronic notes sounded again. I didn’t dream it! He reached to the side of his head and examined the number on the phone’s screen. Buchanon using someone else’s mobile? His eyes moved to the little clock . Surely not at 5.50 in the morning. He pressed green. ‘DI Spicer.’
‘It’s Stuart Budd here.’
Christ, he must have retrieved my card from his wife’s coat.
‘Hello.’
‘You said my brother was in danger because of what he saw near that reservoir.’
Jon sat up, knowing this would be his only shot at getting Stuart to help. He tried to clear his head. ‘I believe your brother saw something – something serious enough to cause him to panic.’
Stuart kept his silence.
Getting to his feet, Jon paced towards the closed curtains.
‘Perhaps the people who committed the murder realised Craig was there. Maybe that’s what caused him to fumble the osprey’s egg. He was in a rush to get away.’
Still no response.
Jon held up a hand, as if addressing an audience behind the hanging material. ‘I’ve no idea who these people are, but if they find your brother, I’ve no doubt they’ll kill him too.’ He waited with his eyes shut. Please, please say you’ll help me.
‘I’m at Piccadilly station. Can you come and pick me up?’
As Jon started reaching for his trousers, he thought about Alice asleep upstairs. I can’t just leave her. ‘Now? You need to be picked up right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look, I could do with an hour or so, just to—’
‘I know where he is. Craig. I know where my brother is. Anglesey. But we’ve got to get there – fast.’
Jon’s head dipped and breath flowed from between his lips.
‘OK.’
Even though most of the shops’ shutters were still down, Piccadilly station was busier than Jon had imagined. Streams of men and women, hair neatly tied, ties neatly knotted. The clump of their footsteps filled the quiet hall as they flowed silently for city centre offices like a migrating herd.
Jon’s eyes swept around, searching for a solitary figure that was standing still. Stuart Budd was over by the Virgin Trains’ desk, shifting from foot to foot.
As he started towards the other man, Jon thought of the hastily scrawled note he’d left for Alice. Could she understand the urgency of the situation? Would she even want to? He im
agined them staring at each other across a shapeless grey lake, separated by an inability to understand what the other felt. This, a voice in his ear announced, is how marriages end.
Another voice, this one for real. ‘Jon, you’re a bastard, you know that?’
He kept the phone against his ear as he drew closer to Budd.
‘Sorry, Nikki – but I didn’t want to miss you. Court or somewhere that doesn’t allow mobiles.’
‘At quarter past six on a Thursday morning? Which bloody courts do you know that are open then?’
‘I’m sorry. Listen, I’ve got a make of motorbike tyre. That’ll help narrow the search down, won’t it?’
‘Yes, by about ninety-nine point nine percent.’ The line beeped. ‘Go ahead, I’m recording this on voice notes.’
‘OK, it’s a Bridgestone. I didn’t see the exact name. I think it was T and possibly an O. There were about five letters or numbers in all.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
The line beeped again. ‘OK, got it. I don’t need to ask how urgent this is; I read the report about your brother.’
‘Which paper?’
‘Manchester Evening Chronicle.’
‘It was in that? When?’
‘Yesterday. Page five.’
He thought of Carmel’s text. My condolences. Yeah, right. Another thought hit: my parents have probably seen it, too.
‘I’ll get back to you, soon as.’
‘Cheers, Nikki.’ The line cut and he held up a hand to get
Stuart Budd’s attention. On seeing him, Budd picked up a small holdall. ‘I’m parked out the back in the taxi rank,’ Jon announced, turning round and leading the way back to the escalators.
They walked in silence, and as they went, the tannoy system announced a train departing somewhere. But there was a slight delay between the speakers dotted around the vast station and the announcement had a layered effect, like a dead person calling out in a horror film.
He drove up the Mancunian Way, leaving the short stretch of flyover motorway to join Princess Road, heading out of the city against a never-ending stream of cars coming the other way.
Soon they were on the M , travelling west towards Wales. Jon turned his head and glanced at Stuart. The other man’s reddish hair was all messed up and his hands were in his lap, nervously picking away at the cuticles of a nail. He looked like a schoolboy, sitting outside the headmaster’s office.
‘I’m guessing your wife doesn’t know you’re here,’ Jon stated.
A little shake of his head. ‘No, she doesn’t.’
Join the gang, Jon thought. ‘Will she take you back?’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Probably not.’
‘So why did you do it?’
‘He’s my brother. What else could I do?’
Jon nodded. ‘How did you work out where he’d be?’
‘I went online, to sites I swore to Nichola I’d never visit again.’
‘Egg-collecting sites?’
‘If you can call them that. Messages, coded names. Just lines of text, really. I told them I was starting again – I needed to find Craig. The Budd brothers, back together again.’ He stared at his fingers in shame.
‘Dyson and Crag.’
‘Dyson and Crag.’
‘And?’
‘He’s here for one more night, possibly two. Then he’s gone.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘He doesn’t live in this country any more. Somewhere in Amsterdam now – he collects on the continent where the laws against it are almost non-existent.’
‘The RSPB officer said it was a peculiarly British crime.’
‘He travels down to the Pyrenees, apparently. Climbing cliffs to steal from the nests of imperial eagles. He’s even more of a legend now than he ever was.’
‘Why take the risk of coming back? And why Anglesey?’
‘The challenge. Ospreys haven’t nested in the Peak District for over a hundred years. To have that clutch is a huge victory – except he lost one.’
‘And Anglesey?’
Stuart glanced at Jon, and behind the look of embarrassment was just the faintest hint of awe. ‘A pair of sea eagles, flown down from the west coast of Scotland.’
‘Another big prize.’
‘DI Spicer, sea eagles were driven to extinction in Britain back in the eighteen hundreds. They were only reintroduced to a few isolated spots in Scotland in 1975 . There are now thirty-two territorial pairs in that country, thirty-one now these two have ventured south. In all that time only four clutches have ever been taken – and none since the year two thousand. I know this because my brother stole that fourth clutch.’ He shook his head, digging away at the corner of his thumb. ‘And now he’s out to rob this pair of their eggs.’
‘Surely there’s some sort of protection in place?’
‘Absolutely. The guard will be round the clock. There’s barbed wire, CCTV, an exclusion zone stretching two hundred metres back from the edge of the cliff where the nest is located.’
Sounds like bloody Colditz, Jon thought. ‘Why did you say one, maybe two nights before he vanishes?’
‘The female laid two eggs, one the day before yesterday, the other a day before that. He has to get them in the next forty-eight hours—’
Jon closed his eyes. ‘So they can be blown.’
‘Precisely.’
They drove in silence, the massed metal chimneys and pipes of the Stanlow Oil Refinery on their right. A burn-off flame wavered against the pale sky.
‘The reason I called you,’ Stuart suddenly said, ‘is because not everyone thinks my brother is a legend. There are plenty of others who’d love to see him back inside. Maybe worse.’
‘Who?’
‘Other collectors.’
Jon remembered the RSPB officer describing how eggers sometimes sold each other out. ‘You mean rivals?’
Stuart nodded. ‘I rang you because I thought, what if anyone using the chatroom puts two and two together with the murder in Haverdale? I mean, he left his bloody calling card in the ospreys’ nest. What if they figure Craig could have witnessed something and put it out there that he’s on Anglesey? I’m sure the people you’re after would love a piece of information like that.’
Jon straightened up. ‘These eggers. What sort of people are we talking about, Stuart?’
‘Type?’ A dry laugh rattled in his throat. ‘There are no types.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Eggers are often from unskilled professions, but not exclusively. I know of businessmen, city types. There are two currently active who’re in the police. A magistrate. They’re everywhere.’ Keeping his thumbs hooked around the steering wheel, Jon straightened his fingers. The closest he could get to a placatory gesture. ‘OK, let’s not panic. There’s a risk. But it just means we have to find him first.’
As they entered the tunnels of Conwy, Stuart reached into his bag and took something out. ‘You didn’t tell me it was your brother who was murdered.’
Jon glanced towards Stuart’s lap and saw a copy of the Manchester Evening Chronicle. The paper was open on a page dominated by a grainy photo of Dave. Where the fuck did they dig that up from? ‘Does it matter?’
‘This isn’t part of the official investigation, is it?’
Jon shot a look to his left, but Stuart was sparing him direct eye contact. ‘No. No, it isn’t.’
‘So, what do you stand to lose by being here?’
‘Pretty much the same as you.’
‘Job?’
‘Probably gone already.’
‘Wife?’
The word sparked a series of images in Jon’s head. The first time they’d met, just a small movement of her head transfixing him from across a crowded bar. He’d known then she was the one, even before they’d spoke. Their wedding day, everyone he cared about there to see his proudest moment. Alice giving birth to Holly, her focused calm while the delivery-room staff worked frantically around
her. Their future together; becoming old and slow and doddery, but content in each other’s company to do so. ‘Not without a fight.’
Stuart glanced out of the side window at the towering peaks on their left. ‘Families.’
Jon knew what he meant. The cause and cure of everything.
‘How did it start with you and your brother?’
‘Stealing eggs, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘It all began when I was nine, Craig was seven. We stole a tawny owl’s egg from a nest in the woods at the bottom of our garden. Something about it completely captivated us. Maybe it’s the potential – what it could be, there neatly encased, snug in the palm of your hand. Soon we were scouring local parks, hedgerows, thickets – robbing the nests of blackbirds, thrushes, robins, wrens. The thrill of finding a nest, reaching in and feeling those delicate oval shapes inside. Usually still warm from the mother’s body heat. It’s addictive. You start yearning for a larger collection, which means finding rarer species.’
Jon settled into his seat, the car in fifth gear as he cruised the long curving road leading them to Anglesey.
‘Craig was always a climber,’ Stuart continued. ‘He got hooked on kestrels, sparrow-hawks, even herons. Tops of trees, swaying up there like a little monkey. Later, clambering up cliffs, fast as a lizard.’
‘Hence the nickname, Crag? Or is it because of his good looks?’
‘It came from climbing, originally. They seem to love nicknames in that sport. But it fits him in general, too.’
‘The RSPB officer at Haverdale said he made a living from his climbing.’
‘He did. All that went when we got sentenced. But yes, he had sponsorship from the likes of Red Chili, Berghaus and Petzl. He took part in all the UK competitions, won quite a few of them. I can’t stand heights, so I kept to ground-nesting birds. Skylarks, curlew, red grouse, lapwings. Kingfishers, with a bit of digging. Then I discovered colonies. Birds that nest on islands. I’ve been everywhere with Craig. Mull, Orkney, Shetlands. Marsh harrier eggs from the Fens. For Craig, we’ve done the Cairngorms, Cuillins, Dyfed, Powys, the Lake District. All over.’