‘Tell me about it, Leyton.’
There seems to be a more profound sentiment underlying Skelgill’s platitude, but his sergeant is determined to expound upon his plans for a mini-break.
‘I mean, Guv – this old place – it’s actually historic. I was reading the hotel services folder in my room – there’s been a coaching inn on the site for over five hundred years – you’re talking Henry VIII.’
Skelgill gives a sigh of resignation and he yields to his subordinate’s persistence. He rocks forward and to one side, and pulls something from the back pocket of his jeans. It is the visitor leaflet, featuring the local heritage trail. It is somewhat creased, but he hands it to his colleague.
‘There’s supposed to be a monument up in the woods – to Queen Victoria. And an old bath house where they took the mineral waters. I checked it out when I were looking for signs of Jenny Hackett. It’s bricked up, mind. It’s got some Greek goddess statue on top.’
DS Leyton unfolds the leaflet and with a trombone player’s action finds his optimum focal length.
‘Well – there you go, Guv – all the more reason to come. The missus loves her historical dramas.’
Skelgill’s attention, however, has reverted to comestibles, and he selects an Eccles cake, rotating it to identify the most promising angle of attack. But now he pauses, and cocks his head in a birdlike fashion.
‘Did you hear something, Leyton?’
‘Hear something? Er, no, Guv – I don’t reckon so – just that new track that’s started.’
The sound system has been plying its audience with a discreet genre of easy-listening chamber music. DS Leyton refers to the abrupt opening of a more voluminous orchestral affair, and its familiar motif. Da da da duuum! Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 in C minor.
Skelgill looks unconvinced by his sergeant’s response. He checks his watch – the time is 4.15pm – and a glance at the nearest window provides corroboration – a late dusk for this time of year, thanks to the day’s clear skies.
‘Huh – looks like something ain’t to their taste, Guv.’
‘Come again?’
DS Leyton indicates with a jerk of his head – that from their table the little grouping of Wiktoria Adamska, Ivanna Karenina and Sir Ewart Cameron-Kinloch have risen and are unobtrusively making their way out of the lounge.
‘Maybe the music – or Samanta’s baking.’
‘All the more for us.’
Skelgill finally takes a bite of his own cake. Chewing pensively, he sinks back into the brown study that seems to be dogging him. DS Leyton selects a plain buttered scone. He spreads open the leaflet to display its rudimentary map and sketches of the trail’s highlights. He munches contentedly as he peruses its detail, murmuring from time to time. Perhaps a couple of minutes pass without any conversation. Indeed DS Leyton only vaguely becomes aware of his superior rising to gaze towards the partly closed door, beyond which a corridor leads through to the lobby on the other side of the building. However, he has his own point of interest to convey.
‘Here you go, Guv – this is up your street. Geology. Listen: “The ancient coaching inn has its foundations set deep in the bedrock of a limestone escarpment, and the surrounding area is renowned for its hundreds of collapsed shafts known as shake holes. Some of these develop into sink holes, down which water flows, and the subterranean stream may form a cave system. Such a natural passage links the mineral spring in the adjacent bath house (original structure built circa 1720) to a larger chamber which has been adapted as the cellar of the inn.” Amazing, eh, Guv?’
Skelgill does not answer and DS Leyton glances up to find his boss staring at him in a most peculiar manner.
‘Leyton.’
Skelgill has many ways of enunciating his name – but DS Leyton recognises this as one of urgency. It means, “come now”. Thus as Skelgill strides away, DS Leyton rises so quickly that he topples his chair and does not delay to reinstate it – attracting attention from all those remaining in the lounge.
Skelgill is almost breaking into a run by the time he reaches the lobby – and when he sees the main door is open to the elements he accelerates. But wearing flimsy hotel slippers he skids to a halt on the broad snow-encrusted step. Beyond, where the scene ought to be that of a still and silent fell country dusk, is a maelstrom of sound and light befitting of an action movie set.
A helicopter has landed in the car park.
DS Leyton reaches Skelgill’s shoulder.
‘Is it our lot, Guv? It ain’t very big.’
‘You’re joking, Leyton – look at it.’
DS Leyton shades his eyes from the spotlight that is strobing the area, intermittently illuminating the woodland backdrop. The aircraft is a neat 4-seater, brand new by the look of it, ostentatiously liveried in glittering gold with – on its side – a black logo incorporating the words Adamskaya Korporatsiya.
‘Cor blimey – it must belong to Wiktoria Adamska’s husband! Imagine having that for your company car.’
‘Aye – and she’s aboard – and look who else.’
Within the cockpit a light is on. Wiktoria Adamska is nearest, port side front; she has her head turned, but there is no mistaking her blonde tresses. Behind, just visible on the starboard side, is the balding Sir Ewart Cameron-Kinloch, and next to him Ivanna Karenina. Her pale face is implacable, and she meets Skelgill’s gaze with a curious detachment – when perhaps a certain smugness might be expected – the VIP about to be whisked in executive comfort from snowbound confinement.
‘What do we do, Guv?’
Skelgill does not answer; he is asking himself the same question. He feels a hand on his arm and glances to see Samanta at his side – and he becomes conscious that others have joined them on the step. It is a star-struck audience, perhaps drawn by the detectives’ abrupt exit, or by hearing more clearly the engine as successive doors were left open. And Skelgill realises too that, along the frontage of the inn to his right, there is some shadowy movement. He sees that the cellar trap is open, propped against the wall; from within emanates the soft glow of lamplight – and that Joost Merlyn is clambering out of the hatch, with difficulty – and that he accepts a hand up from none other than the train guard, Ruairidh McLeod – and that lying flat in the snow is Wiktoria Adamska’s distinctive leopard-pattern luggage – the diminutive case and its king-size facsimile. As Joost Merlyn lurches to his feet he notices Skelgill and the others beneath the porch light, and – bereft of his stick – he begins to limp awkwardly, dragging one leg through the snow, apparently to greet them. But Skelgill is first to speak.
‘What’s going on?’
Beneath a hideous grimace, the innkeeper appears to laugh.
‘Some of my guests have made their own arrangements, Inspector.’
It is an oddly proprietorial use of the word ‘guests’ – that suddenly they are his to superintend. And his tone is triumphant, as though he detects Skelgill’s discomfiture. Indeed, Skelgill is dumbfounded. He feels stranded on the little island of the step, as though the tide of snow has flooded in to isolate him, to render him impotent – and that the flashing of the lights and the clatter of the rotors are symbolic of the cerebral chaos that has paralysed his thoughts.
He sees that what must be the pilot – an athletic-looking man in his thirties with close-cropped fair hair clad in a black flying suit – is waiting beside the chopper – presumably to receive the suitcases – for he has open a hatch inside which there are already bags. Joost Merlyn must notice Skelgill’s interest.
‘We are just organising the last of the luggage. About time that idle station porter lifted a finger – hah!’
Skelgill observes as Ruairidh McLeod labours with the large suitcase, its casters useless in the snow, the man himself further hampered by the small hand-held valise. He is bent over and the effort on his reddened face suggests he has a ton weight in tow. When he reaches the helicopter there ensues some remonstration with the pilot – who gesticulates in frustration and put
s his head in the door as if to consult with the passengers. Then he takes out two smaller cases from the hold and places them in the snow.
Skelgill finds himself thinking there will be an issue over the payload. It is a subject he knows something about – indeed it arose with DS Jones’s visit by similar means. A small machine like this, four average persons and maybe a hundred and fifty pounds of cargo. And that oversized case – it looks heavy. In fact the two men are struggling to raise it – never mind that they will have to hoist it to shoulder height to slide it into the snug compartment. As he watches, a more profound unease possesses Skelgill. This is the suitcase that he saw DS Jones lift singlehandedly onto the train. And he witnessed something of its contents in its owner’s bedroom. Ruairidh McLeod changes position to get what must be his stronger left arm under the bottom of the case. And in recognising such sinistrality Skelgill’s troubled mind experiences a flash of clarity hitherto absent. It is as though a conductor’s baton has suddenly brought an orchestra of disparate instruments into fleeting unison.
‘Left handed.’
‘Come again, Guv?’
Skelgill does not take his eyes off the scene of imminent departure.
‘Leyton – what did you just say?’
‘You mean about the chopper?’
‘No – in the tea room – the bath house.’
‘Oh – you mean – that there’s a tunnel connecting it to the cellar?’
There is a short pause before Skelgill responds.
‘Leyton!’
If Skelgill’s earlier exhortation was insistent, this one is do or die – and DS Leyton does – despite not understanding (but trusting), and he takes off after Skelgill, the pair of them slip-sliding across the icy snow towards the helicopter, where the pilot and the guard have the suitcase on the lip of the compartment and are about to heave it in.
‘Stop! What’s in that case?’
They probably do not hear Skelgill exactly. But though they sense him coming they are trapped in their strained stances and are powerless to react when he launches himself arms outstretched to pull the suitcase crashing down, whereupon it bursts open like a great clamshell. And DS Leyton’s concomitant Anglo-Saxon outpouring proclaims the magnitude of the secret within – for, inside the case, curled into the deeper compartment, clad in a paintball overall, is the body of a female. Its hair covers the face, but there is no mistaking the distinctive honey blonde shade. Jenny Hackett!
Skelgill is on his knees in the snow. He has lost his slippers. And he seems frozen as he stares at the unmoving figure. But it is the flotsam – the fragments that began to coalesce when he subliminally heard the helicopter and then his deputy mentioned the underground passage; they have taken shape. He does not see the whole picture – but he grasps its essence.
DS Leyton suffers no such mental gymnastics, and where Skelgill’s impulse was to go on the offensive, his is to minister to the victim. He pulls away the hair and slides a hand onto the neck.
‘Guv! She’s alive! She’s warm – she’s got a pulse!’
And, indeed, it is apparent that she is breathing – slowly and shallowly, as if she is consumed by the slumber of winter hibernation.
‘Get her inside, Leyton.’
DS Leyton is not a tall man, but he could give a good account of himself against a charging bull, and with a grunt he has the limp form in his arms and is on his feet and stomping steadily back towards the inn. Subsumed in the snow and the dusk and the flashing lights and the rattling throb of the rotors, neither he nor Skelgill has paid attention for half a minute to their surroundings – but now Skelgill sees Samanta come down off the step and run to DS Leyton to offer him assistance. Amidst the blur-cum-whirr-cum-clatter he becomes vaguely aware now of the movements of others around him – and his senses sharpen to how they ought or might react in these extraordinary circumstances. But what happens next is less predictable – for suddenly the passenger door flies open and Wiktoria Adamska tumbles from her seat and pushes past him to get at the suitcase.
‘My papers!’
Although clad in her travelling outfit of striped fur coat and platform shoes she drops undaunted to her knees and snatches up from the base of the case a translucent plastic folder that contains a bound document.
Skelgill is about to restrain her, and they rise together – but at this moment the rear passenger window slides open and there is the face of Ivanna Karenina. Her narrowed gimlet eyes glitter as black as her hair, as black as hell; her thick mascara seems to drip with menace.
‘Wiktoria! Voyti v tebya durak!’
Skelgill will later learn from Samanta that these words translate as “Get in, you fool!” – but he does not need the rendition to understand the sentiment. This is not some species of benevolent evacuation. It is an audacious escape.
And instantaneously the idling engine erupts into full throttle. The noise becomes deafening and loose snow begins to swirl and fill the air like the visitation of a mini tornado. Skelgill realises that the pilot has abandoned the residual luggage, ducked under the tail and scrambled into his seat. And he sees that Wiktoria Adamska is rooted to the spot, staring uncomprehendingly at Ivanna Karenina. The latter fixes her with an unblinking stare for perhaps five more seconds, before she barks an unintelligible command and simultaneously slams shut the window. In response the pilot reaches to close the passenger door and takes up the cyclic. With a judder, the helicopter pries itself from the icy ground and begins to rise.
For the second time in two minutes Skelgill’s instincts gain ascendancy. He leaps at the chopper, obtaining a tenuous grip against the smooth fuselage and a precarious foothold upon the skid.
Whether he hears Wiktoria Adamska’s despairing protest, or feels her trying to get a hold on his jeans, there is only a fleeting moment in which he might consider that she is trying to save him from certain death – a fleeting moment because some alternative fate intervenes.
‘Boom – boom – boom – boom – boom.’
The bangs that emanate in rapid succession from the direction of the inn are accompanied by a simultaneous sequence of cracks – the latter so very close at hand it seems to Skelgill as to be outrageously adventurous – and a neat ring of holes is punched into the aluminium bulkhead beside him – and instantaneously powerful jets of pressurised fuel spurt out.
Skelgill hears a warning alert inside the cockpit – the engine dies and the helicopter drops back to earth with a jolt that throws him out into the deep snow. As he flounders about and gains all fours he looks up at the old building. There, in the strobing light, framed in an open first-floor window, calmly assessing the scene and holding an old-style military rifle at the ready, is the steely-eyed American, Bill Faulkner.
He looses one more shot into the forest beyond; its echo reverberates around the clearing. But if it is intended as a deterrent to malevolent action it is not entirely successful. Skelgill, winded, now kneeling and spitting snow – sees the pilot leap out of the cockpit and hook an arm around the neck of the unsuspecting Wiktoria Adamska. She screams in horror – a vicious Bowie knife is pressed to her throat and the man – who has all the alacrity and muscle of a special forces operative, is using her as a human shield against the rifle. He grunts some order in what must again be Russian and begins to thrust her before him through the snow as though he intends to take her into the hotel.
Skelgill rises, preparing to intercept.
The man snarls at him in English.
‘Keep back – or she dies!’ Then he calls out to Bill Faulkner. ‘Surrender the gun!’
Skelgill is coiled – but he sees the risk before him. And sown in his mind there are seeds of confusion. Could the woman be acting? Is she in cahoots? It is her husband’s helicopter. But if she acts she excels. And his instincts tell him he must make a move before the man gains complete control of the situation. And then – and then his eyes tell him he is witnessing something that defies logic.
From a snowdrift just behind the pilo
t and his hostage rises a ghostly apparition that assumes the abominable limbed form of the sasquatch. But as it rises to its full height it is revealed to be a sasquatch that wears shocking maroon corduroys, and when the white bed sheet is silently cast aside not a sasquatch at all – but the imposing, indeed deadly figure of Richard Bond. In a flash he is upon the unsuspecting hostage-taker to snap back his head with an audible crack. The knife falls free into the snow. The body follows.
Freed, Wiktoria Adamska flings herself at Skelgill. She wraps one arm around his neck and kisses him forcefully upon the lips. Pressed between them, hard, he can feel the document file that she has held onto so desperately throughout her ordeal.
15. SHAKE HOLES
Friday, 11.30am – four months later
‘Flippin’ shame we never found Mikal Mital’s manuscript, Guv.’
Skelgill nods pensively. He has a stalk of common rush gripped between his lips; it is plucked from their surroundings, more abundantly herbaceous than on their last visit to the vicinity of Shap Fell. DS Leyton elaborates.
‘I feel like we’ve caught the monkeys but the organ grinders are still plying their trade.’
‘I thought we’d got it, Leyton – though I couldn’t understand why, when Wiktoria Adamska wouldn’t get in the chopper, they didn’t try to snatch the folder. I never imagined for a second that it were designs for a bunch of see-through kegs.’
DS Jones appears mildly amused by Skelgill’s turn of phrase.
‘Her new collection has been a big hit on the catwalks. London. Milan. Paris. New York. She’s on the covers of all the glossy magazines. She would have lost a small fortune – not to mention months of original work.’
Skelgill does not answer – he is wondering whether he can contrive a joke about the woman getting her knickers in a twist – but coincidentally DS Leyton wags a reproving finger.
‘That’ll teach her to make duplicates in future. Belt and braces – my old Granddad used to say. I always photocopy my notebook, the minute I get back to the office.’
Murder at Shake Holes Page 23