Stuart approached the bed and studied the patient in the dim glow of the blinking machines. Ewan McCulloch was very still and appeared almost dead. A monitor bleeped to the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
Stuart unlatched his briefcase. Slipped a hand inside and took out the carving knife. Leaning over the bed he lowered his face close to the patient’s ear and murmured, ‘I know you can hear me, you little shit.’
Whether Ewan could hear or not, he made no reply or movement.
‘That’s not all I know,’ Stuart hissed. ‘Ross Campbell told you where he found the coins, didn’t he? Tell me where they are. Tell me!’
No response. The patient seemed to be a billion light years away, floating in another galaxy.
Stuart said, ‘If you won’t tell me, then by God I’ll make damn well sure you never wake up and steal it for yourself.’
He raised the carving knife. Pressed its sharp carbon steel tip against the soft flesh of Ewan’s neck.
Ewan didn’t move or make a sound. Stuart’s fingers clenched the knife handle tightly. His mouth felt dry. All he had to do was push the blade in. He wondered how it would feel to kill. Would the blood spurt all over him, or would it just gush out like water from a hose? How long would McCulloch take to die?
Do it!
Then the room door suddenly opened, and the light came on.
Stuart whirled around, whipping the knife out of sight behind his back. His eyes widened in shock and alarm at the sight of a female doctor standing in the doorway, who appeared just as startled to see him standing by the patient’s bedside. The name on her tag was Dr Fraser. She said, frowning, ‘You’re not supposed to be in here. Why did you turn the light off? Who are you?’
For an insane moment, Stuart contemplated attacking her and stabbing her to death. ‘Sorry, wrong room.’ He stumbled towards the doorway and pushed past her and back out into the corridor, keeping the knife hidden. He broke into a run as the doctor came after him, yelling, ‘Hey, stop! Hold it right there!’
Stuart kept running. He saw a door on his left and batted through it. Dashed along another corridor and down a flight of steps, nearly knocking over a young guy in an orderly’s uniform who was coming up the other way. Stuart reached another door at the bottom of the steps and pushed through that one too, and turned right and ran. Three doorways later, he’d somehow managed to give his pursuer the slip. By pure luck he found a fire exit. The cold night air chilled the sweat on his brow as he hurried around the side of the building towards his parked car. His heart was pounding hard and his breath billowed like a steam locomotive.
Before he got into the car he turned and shook his fist at the hospital, and screamed, ‘I’ll be back for you too, you bitch!’ Then he dived in behind the wheel of the Rolls, cranked the engine and squealed out of the hospital car park and away into the night. Two miles outside of Fort William, he stopped in a layby to get his breath back. Turning on his phone, he saw he had three missed calls from Carl Hacker.
Stuart called him back.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Watch how you speak to me, Hacker. I’ve been attending to some important business. What do you want?’
Hacker relayed to his boss the report from Graham and Carter. ‘So now we know where Hope lives. When he comes back, he’s ours.’
‘It’s obvious that Hope and Kirk are up to something,’ Stuart said. ‘We need to act fast before this situation gets any worse.’
‘What do you sugg—?’ Hacker began, but Stuart cut him off and instantly began dialling Macleod’s number.
‘I’m at home now,’ Macleod complained when he picked up. ‘In the middle of my tea.’
‘I don’t give a tuppenny fuck where you are. I need you to have Ben Hope arrested immediately.’
Macleod spluttered as though he was choking on his pie and chips. ‘On what charges? I can’t have someone arrested just like that, for no good reason.’
‘Try murder,’ Stuart said. ‘Hope is the prime suspect in the brutal killing of a local citizen called Jamie McGlashan. A name I’m sure you’ll recognise. The same man we’ve spent the last several days trying to identify. And the same individual in whose police files your officer Kirk was showing an unhealthy interest earlier today. Which suggests to me that she may be acting as an accomplice. I’ve reason to believe that the two of them are together as we speak, and there’s no telling what they’re up to.’
‘How—?’
‘Shut up and listen. If you send your officers out to the scene, you’ll find McGlashan’s corpse inside his trailer. In the meantime, you need to put out a BOLO alert, or an all-points bulletin, or whatever the hell you people call it, on Hope’s car. I want him pulled off the streets, and Kirk too. Then I want them both brought to me. Understood?’
‘That’s insane,’ Macleod protested. ‘The system doesn’t work that way.’
‘Then improvise,’ Stuart said. ‘Make it happen by whatever means possible. Unless you want to find yourself implicated in the murder of Ross Campbell and the assault on Ewan McCulloch. That wouldn’t be too beneficial for your career, now would it?’
‘You tell on me, I’ll tell on you.’
‘I’d like to see you try,’ Stuart said.
Chapter 39
While the enemy were making their plans, Ben and Grace were speeding southwards through the night. The Mercedes’ powerful headlamps probed into the darkness and the wipers were working full pelt to swipe away the driving snowflakes. Once they had left behind the treacherous rural byways their route was all A-roads, where they joined the thickening stream of traffic trickling its way towards Glasgow and the Borders. The wintry weather lashing southern Scotland showed no sign of letting up but the gritter trucks had done their work and the roads were clear, with dirty brown snow and slush piled up all along the verges. On the approach to the city Ben joined the motorway network and let the car settle into a cruising speed of 85, just fast enough to munch the miles without too much risk of the bullet-holed car getting pulled over by the law. At the Scottish border the M74 became the major artery of the M6 that would take them all the way south through northern England to Manchester.
Conversation was sporadic between them, and Grace eventually fell asleep. Ben rolled his window down a crack and smoked, alone with his thoughts and the metronomic swish of the wipers. He had no idea what awaited them at their destination. All he could do was keep ploughing ahead, and let the dice roll.
Time inched by. Ben was tired, and could have done with someone to talk to. But he didn’t want to disturb Grace, who was still fast asleep in the big, enveloping armchair of the passenger seat with her head resting on her shoulder, her face partially covered by her long black hair. Now and then he glanced at her and thought how peaceful she looked, and how comfortable he felt in her presence. That strange feeling of cosy domesticity came over him again. But then he thought about the predicament the two of them were in, and the certain dangers that lay ahead. And he wished that she hadn’t become mixed up with him in this. If he could find a way to sideline her safely out of it and finish the job alone, he would.
On and on. Lockerbie, Carlisle, Penrith; skirting the edges of the Lake District and passing into the rugged wilds of the Yorkshire Dales. They’d been driving for over four hours when Grace woke up and announced that she was hungry. Soon afterwards a sign for motorway services flashed past, and Ben pulled in. Stretching their muscles they stepped out of the warm car into the cold evening wind that blew off the tall hills and tasted of more snow to come. They wandered from the parking area and saw more signs for Road Chef, McDonald’s and Costa Coffee. Anything would have sounded good at that moment. Ben was pretty damn hungry too. Five minutes later, they were seated in a booth for two near a window with their meals on trays. A cheeseburger, fries and a tall paper cup of black coffee for him; some kind of soya-based fake meat concoction stuffed into a sesame roll with bits of salad and a diet soda for her.
‘I didn’t know y
ou were a vegetarian,’ Ben said, eyeing her choice of food.
She shrugged and took a bite. ‘I’m not. I’m just careful what I take into my body.’
‘What you take into your body.’
She nodded. ‘I mean, have you any idea of the crap that’s in that thing you’re eating? Let me guess. You’re going to tell me you’ve had worse, like the army made you eat fried worms or some such.’
‘No, but I ate part of a goat’s heart once, in the mountains of Afghanistan.’
Grace wrinkled her nose. ‘Yuk. How did you cook it?’
‘When your camp’s surrounded on all sides by units of enemy fighters who’d be only too happy to chop your head off if they found you, you don’t give away your position by lighting fires. So it wasn’t cooked.’
‘That’s so gross. I don’t know how people can stand that kind of life.’
He shrugged. ‘It was my life.’
‘You must have had other things in your life though. Like a wife, girlfriend, someone special, waiting for you at home, praying you’d come back in one piece. No?’
‘Not then,’ he said. ‘Too much complication.’
‘What about now?’
‘Not now either.’
‘Too much complication?’
‘Just how it is,’ he said.
‘What, are you a monk or something?’
‘Let’s just say I’m between romantic entanglements at the moment.’
Grace took another bite of the concoction and chewed reflexively. ‘You don’t like talking about yourself, do you? I suppose it goes with the territory.’
Ben knew she was right about that. Maybe he needed to open up a little more. ‘I was married once, to someone called Leigh. Engaged another time, to someone called Brooke.’
‘Didn’t work out?’
‘Leigh died.’
‘Shit. Sorry I asked.’
‘It was a long time ago, but I still think about her very often. Brooke and me, that was years later. Anyhow, she left me because I walked out on her, the day before the wedding.’
Grace shook her head. ‘Why did you walk out?’
‘Because a friend needed my help,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was stupid of me. But I couldn’t say no. I had to go.’
‘Like you did for Boonzie,’ she said. ‘Taking risks and making sacrifices for friends in need is obviously a strong character trait of yours.’
‘You’re making me sound like a good person.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘I’m the wrong guy to answer that question.’
She touched his hand, just briefly, and flashed him a smile. ‘Then let me answer it for you. I don’t think you’re too bad a person.’
‘When this is over, you might see me differently. More people are going to get hurt, Grace. I am going to take an active part in that. I don’t like it much, but it’s going to happen. No way to change it. What we were involved in today, that was just the beginning. And we can’t underestimate our enemy’s intention to hurt us, too. They’re going to fight back with everything they’ve got, and they’re not soft people. One way or another, things are set to get ugly.’
Grace’s smile dropped away and she looked at him seriously. ‘I thought we’d been through this. Are you trying to tell me I shouldn’t be with you?’
‘I’m asking you not to make me responsible.’
‘For me?’
‘For what could happen.’
‘I can look after myself,’ she said.
When they’d finished eating they walked back to the car in silence, fuelled up and then resumed their long journey into the night. Sometime after nine p.m., as the motorway cut between the city of Lancaster to the west and the barren moorlands of the Forest of Bowland to the east, the snow dissipated and turned to icy rain. Beyond Preston they switched motorways onto the M61 and their route curved eastwards towards Manchester. As ten p.m. came and went, with less than an hour to go before they hit the Peak District and the old spa town of Buxton, Ben decided it was time to alert Mad Monty to their imminent arrival.
‘You don’t waste time, Major.’
‘I have none to waste. ETA should be around eleven tonight. What’s your address?’
Montgomery gave him a sat nav coordinate for a location close to a village called Harpur Hill, on the edge of Buxton. ‘There’s a disused, flooded quarry known locally as the Blue Lagoon. I’ll be waiting for you. If you get there first, don’t get too close to the water. It’s blue because of caustic chemicals leaching out of the limestone, and as toxic as bleach.’
Following Monty’s coordinates, they reached the Harpur Hill quarry shortly after eleven o’clock. A rocky track led them close to the huge square-cut pit, whose edges plunged steeply down towards the water that looked inky black in the darkness. Ben and Grace stepped out of the car and looked around them. The quarry appeared deserted, no vehicle lights or any sign of life to be seen. The driving icy rain was turning into sleet. Grace shivered and wrapped her coat around herself. ‘Is it just me, or is this kind of a weird place for a meeting?’
Ben was about to reply when he sensed something wasn’t right. ‘Shush.’
‘What?’
He moved back towards the car and reached for his bag. But before he could get to the shotgun inside it, a tall, thin shadow detached itself from the darkness and a figure stepped towards them.
Chapter 40
The figure said, ‘There’ll be no need for that, Major. Move away from the vehicle, please, keeping your hands where I can see them. Your lady friend, too.’
Ben and Grace stepped away from the car. The figure came closer. Tall, bony and stooped, wearing a long dark coat and a broad-brimmed hat that dripped with rain. And clutching an old service automatic that he had pointed at the two of them.
Ben didn’t like being sneaked up on, and if he hadn’t been tired and bleary-eyed from the long drive, the colonel would never have got the edge over him. Mistakes like that could cost you your life.
‘I apologise if I appear somewhat overcautious,’ Monty said. ‘But one can never be too careful, under the circumstances. I hope you won’t mind if I frisk you for concealed weapons?’
‘Be my guest, but you won’t find any,’ Ben said.
Monty was quick and efficient, and as discreet as possible when it came to searching a lady. Her hair was wet from the sleety rain and her eyes flashed a look of fear at Ben. He replied with a smile that said, ‘It’s okay.’
There were four moments during the search when Ben could have taken the pistol from him and turned the tables, but he held back. Once the colonel was confident that neither of them was armed, he waved the pistol towards the darkness. ‘My vehicle is parked over there. After you, if you please. But first, you’ll oblige me by giving me your car keys. You can have them back later.’
Ben locked the Mercedes and tossed Monty the keys. Then they turned and started walking in the direction Monty had pointed. He walked five paces behind, still holding the pistol and shining a small torch whose beam showed the way. They headed down a crumbly stone path that wound to the quarry’s edge, where a plain Ford panel van was hidden behind a stack of huge limestone boulders. Monty blipped the locks and said, ‘Now, if you’d be so good as to get in the back, we can be on our way.’
The van’s twin rear doors were plain metal with no windows. Ben yanked on the handle and opened up the back. A dim light came on inside, showing the thick plywood sheets attached to the interior.
Grace looked at Ben and shook her head. ‘You’ve got to be shitting me.’
‘Come on,’ Ben said softly. He helped her into the van, then climbed in after her. The only seating in the rear cargo area was the hard metal humps of the wheel arches, one on each side. Monty closed the door and locked it. They heard his footsteps crunching on the rocky path, then the sound of the driver’s door opening. As the engine rasped into life, the interior light went out and they were in pitch blackness.
‘What is this?’ Grace
hissed. ‘Are we being kidnapped?’
‘No, it’s just the cost of doing business,’ Ben replied. ‘If we want what he has to offer, it’s got to be on his terms. Quid pro quo.’
‘With a gun pointed at us.’
‘I don’t blame him for being careful. I’d have done it just the same way, in his position.’
The van bumped and rocked and creaked as it made its way back along the rough track from the quarry. There was little for the rear passengers to hang onto to prevent themselves from getting tossed around, but it wasn’t long before the van reached the road and the ride smoothed out.
The drive lasted just fifteen minutes. After a series of twists and turns the van lurched up an incline that felt like a driveway. The engine sound became echoey as they entered an enclosed building, like a garage, then died. Ben heard the whirr and scrape of the electric garage door closing behind them. Their host climbed out from behind the wheel. Footsteps walked up the side of the van.
Ben said, ‘Try to be nice, okay? Stay focused on our purpose for being here.’
‘As long as he doesn’t point that gun at us again. I could have him banged up just for owning it.’
Then the back doors opened, and the plywood interior filled with light.
As Ben had guessed, the van was parked in one bay of a domestic block-built double garage, the other half filled with garden tools and shelving units and all the utilitarian clutter of the typical middle-class suburban home. Colonel Monty’s pistol was no longer in evidence, and his manner was courteous and apologetic. ‘I do hope you can forgive me for all these precautionary measures. Your telephone call did leave me in something of a quandary. No hard feelings?’
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