Crossfire (The Clifford-Mackenzie Crime Series Book 1)

by R. D. Nixon

  His sadly travelling gaze brushed past overturned chairs, fallen lamps and displaced sofa cushions, and finally lit on the fire surround. Home-made, its beautiful wooden shelving was now knocked crooked, and scarred across the top where an angrily hurled coal shovel had scraped it. Duncan had helped him build that – how long ago now?

  Rob remembered that afternoon as if it were last week. It had been just like the old days. Their guilty secret pushed to the backs of their minds, if not totally forgotten, they had worked on it together, playing loud music and making their mellow way down a bottle of Talisker. The work never suffered for it though; it had been solid, strong... Like the two of them, they’d said, mushy with sentiment and whisky. Built to last, unlike Sandy and Mick. They’d raised solemn glasses to their two friends, now lost – or so Duncan had said. He must have known the guilt would prevent Rob from wanting to pay his respects; the lie twisted inside him, and he wondered what other untruths Wallace had told him.

  He moved, with aching slowness, over to where the scratched mahogany shelf had been ripped free of its stone resting place, and leaned on it with his slippered foot to push it back so it would at least look right. It slipped, and his foot sheared off the side, scratching his ankle and halfway up his calf on the square edge.

  He howled in fresh pain and angrily seized the nearest object, the poker, swinging it around and smashing it against the woodwork. The shelf moved again, and Rob stopped. He started to smile, and the smile turned into a chuckle, then a full-blown laugh, tinged with more than a touch of hysteria. Kneeling, he wiped a tear away, and he wasn’t even sure what that tear was made of: pain, mirth or just a jumble of emotions that needed an outlet. He reached out and pushed the shelf away from the wall a bit more, then reached into the gap and pulled out a piece of newspaper packing. Voices rebounded off the aching walls of his head, playing like a scene from a film:

  What’s all the old newspaper for, Dunc?

  Insulation. Can’t beat it. Why don’t you go and make some coffee while I start packing the cavity with this? Could do with diluting some of that Scotch.

  ‘Ah, the old I’ll-fill-the-cavity-with-newspaper-while-you-make-the-coffee trick,’ Rob whispered, reaching further into the two-foot square base. Sure enough, as he rummaged among the newspaper his fingers touched something with more substance. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, and then the window, before he pulled out what he’d found.

  It felt heavy in his hand, solid. He sat back on his heels, ignoring the fiery pain that flared along his injured leg, and let the paper unroll so its contents fell into his palm. There it was, the first of what he knew would be three, astonishingly beautiful, pieces of porcelain.

  About eight inches in height, with a full skirt, the woman stared back up at him with wide, painted brown eyes, her mouth tilted in a perpetual smile, her smooth arm raised to support the child at her shoulder. Rob turned the figure upside-down to check the wide base. The flaw was there; near the edge of the signature, only noticeable when tilted so the light slid off the smooth edge and caught in the hollow of the tiny dig mark.

  Rob placed the figure on the floor beside him. A minute later all three stood together, all with the tell-tale flaw, all containing part of Frank Mackenzie’s lost fortune. There was no hesitation in his mind when he considered what to do next.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late to make amends after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mackenzie glanced up at the sky. It would rain again soon, and Doohan had told him the cottage was hard enough to find in good weather; in poor conditions the turnoff would be even easier to miss. He set off again, snapping his visor shut as he went, his heart beating hard and fast with the mixture of anticipation and urgency. Back towards Abergarry, the A82 flying away under his wheels, familiar enough that he rode by instinct, letting his mind reach ahead and work through Doohan’s rather confused directions.

  The Wallace estate. Glenlowrie. That was easy enough; Mackenzie knew where it began, but there were many small, un-named roads that led up into the hills from there, and even having grown up on the neighbouring Drumnacoille, the Spence Estate, he’d have a job making sure he took the right one. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up wasting precious hours following a ribbon-track that led nowhere.

  ‘It’s been a few years since I saw the place, mind,’ Doohan had told him, his rheumy eyes worried. ‘I remember that once you get up past the second turnoff there’s a steep hill with a…a what do you call it? Blind summit. Then it curves down to the left towards the cottage. Sharp, like. If you miss that bend, you’d be all right though; the rough land ahead is a fairly flattish bit of ground. That’s where we gathered for the shoot during the season, and Sarah would slope off down the hill to her wee ruined cottage. Until her father took it over for himself, that is.’

  Mackenzie opened the throttle further as the road straightened out temporarily. Traffic was light this Sunday lunchtime; this kind of on-off drizzle usually persuaded most tourists of the appeal of a pub lunch. The route led through the middle of Abergarry, and as he reached The Burnside, at the far end of town, he remembered his promise to Charis and swerved into the car park. He got as far as pulling off his helmet before he paused to think, and reluctantly acknowledged that it was a bad idea; she’d only want to come with him, and that might prove dangerous; he had no idea what he was riding into. Mackenzie hesitated a heartbeat longer, but quickly pulled his helmet back on and started the bike up again, leaning hard out of the car park, out towards the lower boundaries of the Wallace lands and Jamie Thorne.

  With his visor up, for clearer vision against the drizzle, he was aware of the loose strap beating its rapid tattoo against the side of his helmet; he’d forgotten to fasten it again in his hurry to be away. The rattle was annoying, and loud, but he heard the car over it long before he saw it, somewhere back along the road, roaring and coughing like an old tractor. He glanced behind, but saw only the bend he’d just negotiated; the steep side of the mountain, rising away to his right, stole his view of the road. Dismissing it, he took the bike faster, dipping into the bends, riding much as he had ridden home from his visit to The Heathers just a couple of nights ago.

  The car roared closer again, and he cast another look over his shoulder. Now he could see it; faded red and with a dented wing, one glance had shown him no more than that. It wasn’t Bradley then, nor was it Stein’s expensive hire car – so who else could be headed up here at this kind of speed? Even Mackenzie had to slow down for this road more than he’d liked, particularly since it had started raining again and the little-used route was becoming close to treacherous already. This wasn’t some Sunday afternoon sightseer, but someone with a darker purpose.

  He slowed down to risk another glance, and this time trained his eyes on the windscreen for the precious second he could spare: just a shadowy outline, broken by the swish of the wiper blades. He jerked his head round to the front again, frustrated and more than a little angry. The car was inching up behind him again, and he snapped down his visor and accelerated out of the next bend as hard as he dared on the wet road. Snow markers flashed by on his left, faster and faster; still the car kept pushing at him.

  Up ahead there would be a passing place; they were dotted every quarter of a mile or so on these roads. He’d pull over there, although what would happen then he had no clue – he just had to make it to the cottage, somehow. Maybe the car would simply pass and go on its way; he’d take the mild embarrassment with gratitude. As he approached the expected passing place he eased off the throttle and headed into the cutaway – but with a surge of horror he realised the car had increased speed and was almost touching his back wheel; if he slowed down any more now it would be game over.

  Another hurried glance over his shoulder made him twist the throttle open and swerve back out onto the main road, leaning forward across the tank, willing the bike faster. Where he gained, the car lost, and vice versa – this game of cat and mouse was becoming deadlier with every p
assing mile.

  The back wheel skipped on a loose stone, and Mackenzie’s heart took flight, but the danger was already past by the time he’d felt that nanosecond of loss of control. The car revved hard, pulling up alongside him, falling back, then closing in again, so close that Mackenzie could feel the heat of the engine on his leg. Hands slick with sweat inside his gloves, he flipped open his visor again, sucking in cold damp air to try and open his fear-clamped throat.

  His mind chanted Jamie’s name over and over, and he forced himself to think straight; to do otherwise would be to give in to panic and risk never reaching the boy at all. The hill rose ahead of him, and Doohan’s words echoed in his memory:

  ‘... If you miss that bend…the rough land ahead is a fairly flattish bit of ground...’

  If it was as flat as Doohan had hinted, he could keep left, then change direction at the last moment to head straight for that old meeting place, while the car would carry on through the left fork.

  The climb was steep, but his bike was in better shape than the car, and more manoeuvrable; he edged ahead, trying to force himself to steady his breathing, to slow his heart down. The top of the hill came into sight, and as he gave the bike a touch more throttle, he saw the sign: ‘blind summit’, and steeled himself. Keep left, keep left, hold your nerve...

  Too late – as he came over the top, he realised the road did not dip away to the left as he’d expected; instead it veered off in a tight curve to the right.

  In the split second it took to realise it was the wrong hill, Mackenzie fought to keep the bike on the road as he touched the brake lightly with his boot, resisting the urge to stamp down on it. If he lost it now, he’d be lucky to escape with his life.

  Daniel Thorne’s face tightened with a grimace of annoyance as the bike pulled smoothly away up the hill again; the bastard could ride, give him that. And this car was nothing more than a heap of shit held together with duct tape and hope, which didn’t help. Back at the hotel car park he’d not been able to believe his luck when Mackenzie had turned up. He himself had only arrived back in town only ten minutes ago, and settled down for what might be a lengthy wait for Charis to appear; he’d looked with distaste up at mountains that didn’t even look like proper ones. Just ugly lumps of rock. Charis didn’t belong here – she was a city girl.

  The low, throaty roar of a big motorbike coming up the main street had broken into his pondering, and instinctively, idly, he turned to look: nice machine, old-ish, but powerful; be worth a bit, if he was up here working for the lads again. The bike pulled into the car park, and the rider climbed off even before he’d switched off the engine, clearly in a hurry. He pulled off his helmet, and Daniel straightened in his driving seat. The Scottish boyfriend. He must be here for Charis too.

  But Mackenzie had clearly already changed his mind and was getting back on his bike. If Charis wasn’t here, the chances were he would know where she was. Daniel twisted his own ignition key and followed; his old car had a job to keep up with the far more nimble bike, but the speed limit through town slowed Mackenzie down a bit, whereas Daniel couldn’t give a shit if he was ticketed, since it wasn’t his car anyway. Besides, a bit of distance between them couldn’t hurt, so, once out of town he hung back, just keeping the bike in sight, and wondering where the hell Charis had gone.

  Pulling up this hill was hard going, though. The Kawasaki leapt ahead despite the wet surface of the road, and Daniel pressed his foot down, yanking on the heavy steering wheel to drag it round the bends. At the summit he saw the bike’s brake lights flash, then bike and rider vanished from sight. Seconds later, coming over the brow himself, he saw the lights come on momentarily once more, as the road twisted into a series of tight S bends, and Mackenzie was thankfully forced to slow down to avoid the water that lay in gleaming puddles on the road surface. The car hissed through them without hesitation. Swings and roundabouts.

  They were climbing again, but Daniel was bored now; it would be more fun to spook Mackenzie, riding his back wheel like a panting dog, then easing forward so the front bumper almost brushed the blue-jeaned leg clamped tight to the bike. Mackenzie couldn’t risk glancing back, and Daniel grinned; any second now the arrogant fucker would lose his nerve, tip the bike the wrong way and he’d wind up with so much road rash he’d look like raw burger meat.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  They’d still been bumper to back wheel as they hit the top of the hill. Mackenzie should have given up, let the bike go, but he hadn’t. He’d kept right at it, until the very last second when Daniel had taken a hand off the wheel to wipe his eyes free of the rain that had gusted through his open window. The front of the car – wheel, bumper, wing, he had no idea which – had clipped the back of Mackenzie’s bike, and the next moment the Kawasaki was skidding off the side of the road, vanishing as completely as if someone had erased it from the grey, drizzly picture.

  Heart hammering, Daniel pulled the car into as straight a halt as he could without following the bike into the void. A hurried, unnecessary glance in the mirror told him there had been no witnesses, and he shoved open his door and ran around the back of the car, staring back and down.

  The bike lay halfway down the steep slope, too far away for Daniel to be able to see the extent of the damage. But where was Mackenzie? Not pinned under his machine; they’d become separated immediately. No, there he was. Lying twisted and broken-looking on his stomach, facing down the hill, one arm bent under him, the other flung over his head. He wasn’t moving, and Daniel could tell by the way his helmet lay that his head was impossibly twisted; there was no way his neck was intact, not in that position.

  He felt at once sick and thrilled. Not happy-thrilled, exactly, but the adrenalin was coursing through him. His extremities tingled; he could feel every pulse point in his body… He had killed someone. Okay. That was weird. It was scary too, but on the plus side there was no way Charis would stay here now.

  Daniel kept his eyes on the motionless form down in the valley, but Mackenzie wasn’t going to move, he knew that. ‘How does it go, Mackenzie?’ he said softly. ‘No-one’ll find the pieces?’ The smile spread across his face, and he stepped away from the edge and slid back into the car, his fingers shaking as he started the engine. He pulled away, keeping hard to the right, mindful of the ease with which he had despatched Mackenzie to the Great Beyond. It was only around a hundred yards to the top of the hill, and as the road dipped smoothly down to the left he saw a flat, grassy area straight ahead, where he was able to turn the car around to head back towards Abergarry. As he passed the spot where Mackenzie had plunged to his death, he checked the road carefully, but there were no tyre marks, and neither bike nor body was easily visible from the road. Looking back as he drove away from the scene, Daniel realised with a flicker of reluctant respect that Mackenzie hadn’t even touched his brake. He shook his head. What use was courage if it ended up killing you?

  The Burnside

  Charis’s nerves were stretched to snapping point. She and Maddy were sitting in the lobby, ostensibly deep in discussion and note-taking, while Maddy kept one eye on the door and Charis sat opposite her watching the stairs for Stein. He was their only hope of finding the cottage now, and Maddy already had her car keys in her hand ready to follow him, the moment it was safe to do so. But if she thought she was going alone, she was hugely mistaken; Charis was determined to hang onto her belt no matter how annoyed it might make her.

  ‘Why don’t you just go and knock on his door?’ she asked at last. ‘That get-up would frighten anyone into telling the truth. And it’s obvious he likes you.’

  ‘He can see me, that’s no problem, but he can’t know we suspect him. That’ll just send him into hiding, and we’ll never find your lad then.’ Maddy was clearly as tense as hell, but trying not to sound too impatient. ‘Just leave this to me, okay? I’ve done it a hundred times.’

  Charis fell silent. Mackenzie’s continued silence was causing her fingers to knot and twist, unable to
relax, and she forced herself to focus on the low table in front of her, examining each streak in the wood grain as it curled into whorls, tracing the smoothly blended shades with her eyes until they stung. Maddy had persuaded her to eat some kind of breakfast, but she’d only managed half a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, and now they churned uneasily in her stomach.

  The door opened and she twisted to see if it was Stein, but it was that pig of a sergeant, and a shorter, fatter man who had to be Bradley. Remembering how that man had treated Mackenzie, she clenched her fists in an effort to stop herself flying over there and tearing his eyes out, but she couldn’t allow Mulholland to see her. And definitely not Maddy, in her high-vis clobber.

  She looked back but Maddy had vanished, presumably around the back of the booth next door to their table, and she breathed a sigh of mingled admiration and relief as she sank back in her seat. Mulholland had taken the stairs three at a time, while Bradley spoke with the young woman on duty at the desk, and after a moment he reappeared, shaking his head. The woman shrugged an eloquent I did tell you, gesturing to the key rack behind her.

  Were they searching for Stein too then? Charis strained to hear the conversation as they headed for the bar, but all she caught was, ‘…cottage already,’ from Bradley, and, ‘…here first,’ from Mulholland. Shrinking down into her seat she half turned away, as if searching for something she’d dropped on the floor beside her, and they passed by her again without a glance, pulling open the big glass door and heading purposefully for the gleaming Discovery on the forecourt.