The man swayed above him and then, like a tree felled with an axe, be toppled over and pitched head first towards him, arms and legs flapping like a scarecrow caught in a strong wind, until he came to rest at Tarrant’s feet. Sensing that the other man was probably above and behind him, Tarrant swivelled round and fired twice in quick succession.
McKee backed away towards the room where Calvert was guarding the boy, and the Browning in his hand jumped repeatedly as he now pumped one shot after another to keep Tarrant pinned down. He reached behind his back, and trying the door with his free hand, was surprised to find that it was locked.
He kicked his heel against it. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he shouted, ‘unlock this bloody door and bring out the boy.’
The helicopter was almost overhead now, and McKee suddenly realised that the pilot had no way of knowing that he had reached the pick-up point because the beacon wasn’t operating, and unless he acted quickly, the Wessex would simply continue on course. He ran into the bedroom and flicked the radio on to transmit.
Calvert unlocked the bedroom door, and standing well to one side, opened it carefully. He pointed the Springfield carbine at David and indicated that he should walk in front of him. McKee might be prepared to link himself to a walking bomb but he was of a more cautious nature. Seven pounds of PE was enough to blow out a wall and bring most of the roof down on top of them; it was also more than sufficient to mangle the pair of them into a bloody, unrecognisable pulp, and he was not going to risk an accidental explosion. He had carefully wrapped the umbilical cord around the boy’s neck until he was satisfied that there was not the slightest chance of either of them inadvertently stepping on the trailing lead and actuating the push-pull switch. The boy shuffled out on to the landing; Calvert allowed him to get three paces ahead and then followed him.
As he crept up the last few steps, Tarrant heard McKee say, ‘Wessex, unknown call sign, this is Drabble—acknowledge, over.’
A metallic voice answered, ‘This is Gulf Echo 221, I read you okay, over.’
‘221, you’re over the landing site now.’
The pilot wasn’t convinced. He said, ‘221, negative. We have no audio signal from your beacon and no visual sighting of the H panel.’
The anger showed in McKee’s voice. ‘221, use your eyes, you’re above me now, turn due south and land in the vicinity of the copse.’
Tarrant reached the landing and froze, appalled at the sight of David. His appearance had changed so much that he scarcely recognised him. The boy’s face was ashen beneath the dirt, a strip of grubby sticking plaster covered the cigarette burn on his neck and a filthy bandage covered the fingers on his right hand. His eyes were hollow and dull and he seemed somehow to have shrunk in size.
His son was less than four inches shorter than Calvert and that left precious little for Tarrant to aim at. He brought the Lee Enfield up into his shoulder again and signalled David to get out of the way. He was the very last person David had expected to see and not surprisingly, he was slow to react. The gag turned his cry of recognition into a grunt and he remained frozen like a statue until Calvert, who was still partially unsighted, urged him forward. He staggered, and as he veered to the left, Calvert noticed Tarrant for the first time. The barrel of the Springfield carbine was pointing down at the floor, and it was still in that position when the first.303 round smashed into his jaw. The impact turned Calvert through one hundred and eighty degrees and then the second and final round broke his spine.
The mute appeal in his son’s eyes laid a claim on him, but as long as the other man remained, Tarrant knew that they were both still in danger. Putting David gently to one side, he went into the room on his right.
McKee was staring at the radio in total disbelief, and he had every reason to. Over and over again, the Wessex pilot repeated, ‘Gulf Echo 221, May Day, May Day, May Day, I have power failure, I say again, May Day, May Day, May Day.’ McKee spun round to face the intruder and simultaneously his right hand darted for the Browning automatic which he had left on the table. Tarrant grabbed the hot barrel of the Lee Enfield with both hands and felt the metal burn the skin on his palms. He had used every round to come this far and now the empty rifle could only serve but one purpose. He swung it savagely like a club and the butt snapped McKee’s wrist as if it were matchwood. The scream rose high and sounded like a flock of gulls.
McKee tried to nurse the injured hand but the second blow dislocated his left elbow and the pain exploded in his skull. And he was defenceless now, and he tried to tell this blond madman that it was all over but the words wouldn’t come, and he could only watch helplessly as the rifle swung back again in a vicious arc, and somehow he managed to raise his right arm because he thought the blow would be aimed at his head, but in this he was mistaken and the butt scythed into his right side and the pieces of the shattered rib cage punctured his lung and he staggered backwards until he felt the ledge pressing against his thighs, and even then as he was dying, he saw Tarrant bend down, and hands grabbed him by the ankles, and then he was turning up and over, and the window gave way under his weight, and then he was falling and the hard earth rose up eagerly to meet him and ultimately there was nothing but a deep, black, everlasting void.
And now he could go to his son, and Tarrant’s hands were shaking as he untied the gag and began the delicate task of removing the obscene harness, and he was suddenly conscious of the throbbing pain in his left arm where the dog had savaged him, and he felt sick and light-headed when he saw what they had done to David, and the tears were running down his son’s face, and he too had to fight hard to hold them back because David was trembling so much that he could scarcely stand upright.
*
The Wessex, banking sharply as it circled, gave Harper a lopsided and distorted view of the house below. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Tarrant’s car wedged against an open door and close by there was a Mini, and then they were over the front of the house, where he spotted a horse-box parked outside a garage, and then the lane was no longer in sight and instead he had an oblique view of the copse beyond the Dutch barn. The helicopter turned sharply in the other direction and his stomach went with it, and then they were dropping and fluttering as they fell like an autumn leaf.
They landed hard and the crewman shouted something, but Harper didn’t hear him clearly because he was busy with his seat belt, and his one concern was to get out through the door as quickly as possible. He followed hard on the heels of the last man in the stick of eight, and although it was totally unnecessary, he kept his head well down until he was clear of the whirling rotor blades. He waved his arms and shouted, and with one accord, the team fanned out into an extended line as they doubled forward. They came on like a row of beaters with Vincent on one flank, Drew on the other and Harper in the centre, and all their carefully rehearsed drills had gone by the board because Tarrant had loused everything up, and Harper’s immaculate idea had simply degenerated into a mad, stampeding rush.
The blood was pounding in his head and his legs were like lumps of lead and Harper felt sure that he was going to be sick, and then the post-and-rail fence loomed up in front of him and he tried to take it like a steeplechaser but his left foot caught the top rail, and landing awkwardly, he skinned his hands and knees. And then he was up and running again, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed a dead man lying inside the stables, and there was another face down outside the house. His lungs bursting, the sweat pouring off his face, Harper staggered into the hall and saw the bloody shambles around him.
Caution now set in, and he waited there until Drew and Vincent came and joined him, and then he sent them ahead because they were the experts. They moved forward in Indian file but they didn’t have far to go. Tarrant, carrying David in his arms, met them in the dining-room.
There was a hostile silence while each man waited for the other to say something. Harper said, ‘I’m glad your son is safe.’
Tarrant lowered David into a chair. ‘Are you?’ he said
indifferently.
Harper ignored the implied note of censure. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that you haven’t killed them all?’ There was no reaction from Tarrant. ‘No?’ said Harper. ‘I rather thought that might be the case. I presume this is what you people in the army call minimum force, is it?’
Tarrant said, ‘What did you expect me to do? Shake hands with them?’
‘No, but you might have tried to take at least one of them alive. As it is, we have missed out on a lot of valuable information.’
‘Is there anything else you want to say?’ said Tarrant. ‘Or can I go home now?’
‘Where?’
‘The Zephyr is a write-off, but I’ve got a self-drive Volkswagen parked down the road. I’ll pick it up and take David home.’
‘Like that?’
‘I’ll take David to see a doctor first. There should be one in Melton Basset.’
‘You’ll never make it on your own. Drew will drive you into the village.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I wish,’ said Harper, in a moment of rare childish irritation, ‘I wish I could say the same.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ said Tarrant, ‘I won’t take offence if you don’t.’ He stooped and picked David up in his arms and carried him out into the yard.
They were a little short on transport but the Mini-Cooper was available, and Drew, who was good at that sort of thing, bypassed the ignition circuit at the switch with a piece of wire. It wouldn’t do the car a lot of good but there was no one to complain about that. They stopped by the call-box at the end of the lane and Tarrant got the operator to put through a person to person call, and it seemed an age before Alex answered, and when he told her that David was safe, she started to cry, and she was still half crying, half laughing, when David spoke to her, but it didn’t matter that they were almost incoherent because the nightmare was over and Tarrant knew that they had come together again, and this time it would last. And Drew, who was watching them from the car, saw the emotion in their faces and turned away because he suddenly felt embarrassed.
*
A small army of men had gone through the house and cleared everything away, and Harper had made sure that Julyan’s body was removed in the Wessex helicopter long before the ambulance men arrived, because he was determined that news of the intended defection should not leak out. Tarrant and the aircrew were bound by the Official Secrets Act, and he had no fears about Alex either because in his own mind, he was certain that once David had been returned to her, she would not be interested in the whys and wherefores.
To keep the Press at bay, he had authorised an initial release which merely gave the bald facts. Later, one or two of his own people would come forward as witnesses and the police investigation would show that one of the kidnappers had gone berserk under the influence of drugs. It would be a work of fiction, but he believed that it would stand up under scrutiny.
Seated there in the lounge with a glass of Burroughs’ whisky in his hand, Harper had reason to be pleased with the end result, and yet a tiny seed of discontent remained.
He looked at Vincent across the room, and without any preamble said, ‘What do you make of Tarrant?’
Vincent considered the question carefully. ‘I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him,’ he said.
‘Any reservations about him?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Neither am I,’ said Harper. ‘Every time something happens I see that man in a different light. He’s like a chameleon, his colour changes with the background, and there’s no one left who could either prove or disprove his innocence. He killed them all.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘It’s all very untidy.’
‘His son looked in a bad way.’
‘Yes, he did. If Tarrant was a party to the affair, some of his associates went further than he thought they would.’
‘A bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ said Vincent.
‘Possibly, but I’d still like to be a hundred per cent sure of him.’
‘I see.’
‘I don’t think you do,’ Harper said briskly. ‘I want you to keep him under tight surveillance for the next twelve months.’
‘And if he is bent?’
‘The CIA have a curious expression—they speak of terminating with utmost hostility.’
‘And how do we put it?’ Vincent said quietly.
‘Oh, we don’t go in for that sort of thing,’ Harper said hastily.
There was a long pause, and then, for no reason except perhaps that he had a deep and abiding interest in the game, Harper said, ‘I wonder if we shall retain The Ashes?’
Contents
Front
Top Notch Thrillers
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Sunday FIRST DAY
1
2
Monday SECOND DAY
3
Tuesday THIRD DAY
4
Wednesday FOURTH DAY
5
6
7
8
Thursday FIFTH DAY
9
10
11
12
13
Friday SIXTH DAY
14
15
16
17
Saturday SEVENTH DAY
18
19
20
Seven Days to a Killing Page 20