Chapter 31
‘I just have to ask one thing,’ Grace said, shivering. ‘Can we go in your car? Because I think I’m about to die of cold pretty soon if I don’t get to a proper heater.’
It was a ten-minute drive from where the old Land Rover was parked to where Ben had hidden his Mercedes. He replied, ‘Whatever you want’, jammed the Landy into gear and got it turned around on the track, then headed up to the winding narrow road that snaked around the perimeter of the loch. The thing was primitive, just a thumper diesel bolted to a chassis, more a tractor than a car. He wondered how generations of SAS soldiers, including himself, had coped with such basic machinery back in the day. That thought took him back to thinking about Boonzie again, and he shut his mind down and resolved not to think so much.
He soon found the spot where he’d left his car. The tyre tracks leading to the hiding place were mostly snowed over, as he’d been betting on for concealment from less benign eyes than Grace’s. He parked her Landy next to the Mercedes, and they switched vehicles.
‘Life saver,’ Grace sighed as they set off towards Kinlochardaich and the blasting heat started to permeate the inside of the Mercedes. She snuggled back into the soft leather seat like a cat draping itself over a warm radiator. ‘Nice car. I could get used to such luxuries. Whatever they pay sort-of-teachers in France, it’s obviously way more than my meagre police wages.’
‘It’s not mine,’ he said.
She looked at him. ‘Please don’t tell me you stole it.’
‘I nearly had to. The rental companies don’t like me too much.’
‘Why not?’
‘Long story.’
Ben glanced at the dashboard clock. Their diversion to switch vehicles had delayed them a few minutes and it was now 2.23 p.m. He was anxious about the passing of time, fretting over Mirella’s deadline for calling in police involvement from her side and hoping he was about to finally meet the man he’d been trying to find for two days now. His one consolation was that, thanks to Grace’s digging, they were a step ahead of the others searching for Jamie McGlashan.
Ben was soon to discover he was wrong.
He drove faster, the big car’s traction control gadgetry effortlessly tackling the wintry conditions as they sped towards the village. The sky was leaden with cloud and the snow was falling more heavily. He flicked the wipers to full speed to clear the screen.
‘Cold winters you get up here,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Getting colder year on year, too. Not like you’d think it, from all the climate change crap on the news saying we’re all about to roast to death.’
‘I have a solar physicist friend who’d tend to agree with you,’ Ben said.
Grace raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Is that what you teach, solar physics?’
Ben had to smile at that. ‘Not exactly.’
At 2.26 p.m., as the first village houses were coming into view up ahead, Grace pointed at a minor junction cutting off to the left, the edges of the road hard to distinguish from the verges. ‘Turn left here.’ Then shortly afterwards, she pointed to the right and said, ‘Take that one.’ He could see she was directing him around the edge of Kinlochardaich.
Minutes later, as they were heading beyond the village outskirts and the dash clock hit dead on half past the hour, Ben glimpsed the lone, sad trailer sitting in the middle of a snowy field ringed by a barbed-wire fence and an old blue Subaru Forester parked beside it, and knew he was looking at the McGlashan residence.
‘So you weren’t bullshitting me. He lives just where you said he did.’
‘More like a double bluff,’ Grace replied, with a smile. ‘Threw you right off the track, didn’t I?’
‘I’d still have found it without you.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet you would’ve.’
The field gate was open. Ben slowed for the entrance and drove on through, following a set of fresh tracks that cut across the open ground towards the trailer. It must have been years since the field was in any way tended. Under the layer of snow and ice the ruts and holes were rock hard, making the Mercedes lurch and bounce. Three sides of the plot were open, the fourth a thick line of trees at its eastern perimeter. There were no other houses or vehicles in sight within the wide expanse of whiteness.
As they drew closer to the trailer home Ben could see the mess of junk lying all around it. The fresh tyre tracks led up to McGlashan’s Subaru, which was parked with its front end up close to a stack of old gas bottles and other detritus. The trailer home itself was raised on blocks with a set of rusty metal steps leading up to the door. Its roof was layered with four inches of snow, like everything else around except the car, which was only lightly dusted with fresh flakes. If McGlashan was home, he hadn’t been home for more than a few minutes.
Ben pulled up behind the tail of the Subaru, blocking it in lest its owner get any ideas about trying to escape. He was half expecting the poacher to come bursting out at any moment, but there was no movement. He killed the engine, said, ‘Right then, let’s go and say hello,’ and swung open his door.
Ben was stepping out of the car when two things happened.
The first was the terrible, wailing scream that came from inside the trailer. For a split-second Ben froze where he stood and locked eyes with Grace, who was climbing out from her side. She stared back at him, her face tightening into a hard frown. Each of them thinking the same thing. Each recognising a sound that Ben had heard before, and which Grace hadn’t, but which the human brain is naturally hard-wired to identify as the cry of a fellow human in extreme, off-the-charts agonising physical distress. The same awful sound that mankind’s primitive ancestors learned as their signal to run for their lives when one of their number was suddenly clasped in the jaws of an attacking cave bear or sabre-toothed tiger.
The sound of pressing, ultimate, primal danger.
Then the second thing happened. Which was that the trailer door crashed violently open. But instead of Jamie McGlashan bursting out through it as Ben had been half-expecting moments earlier, what emerged were two large men. Both dressed the same, in black quilted winter jackets and black woollen beanie hats and black leather gloves and black combat trousers tucked into military boots. Neither of them looked remotely like a benefits scrounger and part-time poacher disturbed from his slumber by unexpected visitors. They looked exactly like two men who’d just been interrupted in the act of doing something very nasty and violent to a helpless victim. Their faces, the fronts of their jackets, their hands and forearms were spattered and glistening with blood. So was the long knife that each of them was clutching as they leaped down the steps from the trailer entrance. And Ben had a pretty good idea whose blood it was.
He sized the situation up in a flash. First, the fact that there were no vehicles parked nearby except for McGlashan’s blue Subaru and his own. Which meant these two guys had made their way here on foot, although he was betting their car or van wasn’t far away behind the trees that backed onto the eastern edge of the field. Then there was the lack of snow on the Subaru’s windscreen and the recent tracks on the ground, showing it hadn’t been parked there long. If McGlashan was inside the trailer, and if that was his blood, then it meant he’d only just arrived home and these two guys had been here waiting for him, knives ready to move in for a quick, dirty and silent kill.
But knives weren’t all that they had brought with them. As the first guy to reach the bottom of the steps took to his heels and ran, the second guy threw down his blade and ripped a large black pistol from his jacket. With an angry snarl on his face he pointed the gun towards Ben and Grace and opened fire, fast and wild.
Grace yelled out in alarm and threw herself on the ground behind the Mercedes as gunfire raked the screen and punched holes in the bodywork. Ben ducked behind the open driver’s door. Which wasn’t a safe place to be, because anything flimsier than an armoured limousine door skin could offer scant protection from pistol bullets. He managed to thrust an arm between the front seats
and grab his bag from the rear before the shooter redirected his aim away from Grace and the driver’s window burst apart and a shower of glass fragments rained down over his head and shoulders.
Ben dived to the ground and rolled and scrabbled under the bottom door sill as more bullets smacked and ricocheted and blew up puffs of snow inches away. Still the guy kept firing, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM, filling the air with noise.
The Mercedes sat high off the ground, but the snow was deep. It got into Ben’s eyes and nose and mouth and for a few moments he was thrashing blindly to crawl out from under the other side of the car. Knees and elbows, his back raking against the car’s underbelly. He rolled out from underneath and dragged his bag with him. Grace was three feet away, cringing under cover. The shooter had paused firing and was moving around the front of the car with the pistol in both hands, hunting for his targets. In about two seconds he was going to have a clear shot at them. Grace first, because she would be the closest. Then Ben.
No way. Not going to happen.
Because now Ben’s hand was inside his bag. Fingers closing on the butt of the sawn-off shotgun within. Two twelve-gauge buckshot rounds loaded in the chambers, strikers already cocked and ready. No time to take it out. No time to hesitate. No time to take aim either, but with a sawn-off hand cannon at short range no aim was necessary.
He didn’t want to do it. Hated it with all his heart and soul. But the shooter was leaving him no choice. The guy was coming on another step around the front of the car. The gun tightly clasped in his black-gloved hands. His eyes burning with the heat of battle and his cheeks flushed red and steam billowing from his open mouth like dragon’s breath. Fresh from the last kill and ready for more. Seeing his targets hunkered down in the snow. Raising his pistol to open fire on them.
Ben’s thumb found the safety catch. A simple sliding button on the tang, backward for safe, forward for fire. He felt the click. Forefinger on the trigger, the whole bag raised in the air with the gun still inside it, pointing at the shooter’s chest. Then the resistance of the trigger broke and the weapon went off like a grenade and kicked back hard against the palm of Ben’s hand as it blasted its devastating payload out of the bottom of the bag.
The heavy thump of the gunshot echoed over the field, far louder than the snappy reports of the pistol. The shooter caught the full blast of the twelve-gauge buckshot round square in the chest and went straight down, arms outflung. He crashed backwards into the snow, and it was over.
Chapter 32
The exchange had lasted less than five seconds. Ben ejected the smoking shell from his weapon. He wouldn’t be needing the second one. The guy was lying on his back as limp as a boned duck, the white snow turning pink all around him, eyes staring straight up at the clouds.
Ben strode over to him and took the pistol from his curled, dead fingers. The weapon was a Glock 21, a full-size combat auto in forty-five calibre. Totally illegal to possess as a civilian in the UK. Which in itself said interesting things about the identity of the shooter. The gun’s grips were sticky with blood from the guy’s gloves, which were smeared and glistening with it. Ben dropped the magazine from the mag well and racked the slide to pop out the remaining cartridge from the chamber. The guy had managed to fire off seven rounds to Ben’s one. He still had seven left. A lot of bad things could have happened in those seven rounds.
Once Ben had the dead guy’s weapon secure, he went over to Grace. She was slowly picking herself up from the ground, clumps of snow falling from her clothing, and took the helping hand that he offered her. Her fingers felt very cold. Her mouth was hanging open in shocked disbelief and her eyes were darting back and forth between the dead guy and Ben.
‘Jesus Christ,’ was all she could say. ‘Holy shit. What did you just do?’
He said, ‘What I teach.’
‘Killing people?’
‘Saving them.’ He checked her briskly over. ‘You’re not hurt.’ Then he glanced over the field and his eyes followed the tracks in the snow left by the escaping attacker, who was now well out of sight. The tracks headed straight for the trees on the eastern edge of the field, where Ben had guessed the men’s vehicle was hidden. He was momentarily torn between going after him and going into the trailer. As he was making up his mind, he heard an engine firing up somewhere behind the trees and revving hard away. He thought, Fuck it, and let it drop. He hurried over to the trailer. Bounded up the slippery metal steps to the door and pushed inside.
The victim was in a mess. Still alive for the moment, though most of his blood was no longer inside him. His throat had been slashed wide open and more than a dozen deep stab wounds perforated his portly torso. The poor guy had been virtually eviscerated. His eyes were all out of focus and rolling wildly. As Ben crouched over him, the dying man seemed to register the presence of a helper and tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet gurgle and a blood bubble that swelled from his lips and then popped. Then his eyes rolled over white, his last breath rasped from his scarred mouth and his muscles slackened as death settled over him like a blanket.
There was nothing Ben could do here. The victim had done all the talking he was ever going to do.
Should have gone after the bolter, Ben thought. Bad decision.
Sensing Grace’s presence behind him, he stood and turned to face her. She looked grim and sickened, but then he figured that a cop who had worked the mean streets of the big city had seen plenty of blood before and wasn’t about to start puking or fainting on him.
Ben shook his head. ‘He’s done.’
‘Yeah, I think I can see that.’
‘Is it Jamie McGlashan?’
She nodded. ‘I haven’t seen him in a long time. He’s put on a lot of weight. But I recognise that scar on his lip. It’s Jamie.’
They left the trailer and descended the steps. Silence had returned. The gentle whistle of the wind blew the falling snow into their eyes and hair. Ben walked over to the body of the first guy, crouched down next to him and started going through pockets. The shotgun blast had torn him wide open and the snow all around him was stained pinkish-red.
Grace stood watching what Ben was doing. She shook her head. ‘You know, when I asked if you were planning on shooting anybody, that was kind of meant to be a joke. I didn’t realise you actually were.’
He stopped and looked at her. ‘You think I planned this?’
‘You’re carrying a sawn-off shotgun. I don’t think you brought it along for crows.’
‘Are you going to ask where I got it from, officer?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to arrest me for possession of a prohibited firearm?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry that I shot the bastard?’
She folded her arms, thought for a moment, and then shook her head again. ‘I’m not sorry that he’s dead and we’re not. And I’m still not sorry that I asked you to come here with me. In fact right now I’m feeling pretty damn glad. But before long I’ll be thinking about all the stuff I should be sorry for. Like holding back information from my superiors. Inviting a civilian to participate in an unauthorised independent inquiry. Colluding in the illegal killing of a suspect.’
‘And fleeing the crime scene,’ Ben said. ‘That is, unless you want to call this in and wait for your colleagues to turn up.’
She gave a dark laugh. ‘Whatever. I don’t care. I just want to understand what the hell happened here.’
‘What happened is that we got here too late. A few minutes sooner, Jamie McGlashan might have had something useful to tell us. But now we’ll never get to hear it, because the other people who’ve been hunting for him got to him first.’
‘But this says something,’ Grace said, pointing at the blood and the dead guy.
‘Damn right it does. It says I’m pushing on with this. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘You don’t have to do this, Grace. It’s not too late.’
‘You mean, not too late to go back
to my cosy little world as a provincial backwater copper and forget this shit is happening right under my nose?’
Ben said nothing and set about checking the dead shooter’s pockets. They were completely empty, except for a spare loaded magazine for his Glock. There was no wallet, no cards, no cash or change, no keys, no phone, no form of identification whatsoever. It was pretty much what Ben had expected.
As Ben was finishing up, the dead man’s head lolled over to the side – and that was when Ben spotted the tattoo inked onto the side of his neck, just visible over his collar. A sinister human skull enmeshed in a Gothic-script capital D that passed through one eye socket and between its grinning jaws. Two crossed military daggers behind the skull formed an X.
It was a distinctive design. And to Ben, one that held a very particular and interesting significance. He reached down and picked the dead man’s floppy right arm out of the snow. Yanked off the blood-spattered glove and rolled the guy’s jacket sleeve up to the elbow. Nothing.
Grace looked puzzled. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking for something.’ Ben picked up his bag. It was a wreck, with a big ragged hole in the bottom that he’d have to patch up later. From it he took the Ka-Bar survival knife that he’d bought in Inverness. He unsheathed the black blade and used the razor-sharp tip to slash open the dead guy’s jacket sleeve all the way to the shoulder. The dead guy was wearing a fleecy cold-weather shirt underneath. Ben slashed that too, exposing the pallid, rapidly cooling flesh of his upper arm. And there was the second tattoo he’d been looking for. Older, less sharp and more faded than the skull on the dead guy’s neck.
Ben said, ‘Bingo.’
Grace peered. ‘So he had tattoos. So what?’
‘Not just any tattoos,’ Ben said. ‘The one on his arm is the regimental wings of the Parachute Regiment. He’s ex-military.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe the tat’s a fake.’
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