He jumped out of bed and realised that the buffeting of the storm had stopped and the sun was coming up. Not only that, he heard a sudden rush as snow slid off the roof; the thaw had begun. The problems today would be not only getting all the roads open but dealing with the flooding that would inevitably follow.
He showered, shaved and dressed at speed, then went out into the street. There was a light wind but it had veered to the south and the great piles of snow were starting to collapse like so many failed soufflés. The street and the pavement were awash with slush and all but deserted; the odd car making its way gingerly along sent up bow waves of water. Strang concentrated on diving into shop doorways when one passed but even so he was caught and drenched twice so that he arrived dripping at the police station.
The civilian assistant at the desk looked horrified. ‘Oh dear, you’re awful wet! And with the power being down the heating’s not come on.’
‘Oh, I’ll live,’ Strang said. ‘I expect I’ll find a towel in the cloakroom. Tell me, is DI Hammond in?’
It was the crunch question. If she said, ‘Oh yes, he’s in his office, I’ll buzz him,’ he’d got it wrong.
‘No,’ she said, and he was already mentally framing the question for Kate about snowploughs and minor roads when she went on, ‘You’ve just missed him, sir. He came in briefly a wee while ago and went out again.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘Just, something about problems with the main road. Shall I call his mobile for you?’
‘Yes, do that.’
He waited on tenterhooks as she listened, then said, ‘Sorry, it’s gone to voicemail. Do you want to leave a message?’
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll just go and find that towel – my hair’s dripping into my eyes.’
As he walked along the corridor he took out his phone. ‘Livvy? How are things with you?’
‘OK, except there’s no power. Kate’s just brewing up coffee on a camping stove and I’m lighting the fire.’
‘Forget breakfast. Ask Kate which minor road it was that the snowplough was being directed to and get in here immediately. Ask her about a back way – I got soaked getting along the high street.’
Strang checked out the car park and was relieved to find that they’d cleared the worst of the drifts already and once Murray got there they could drive straight out to see whether his idea was a genuine breakthrough or a wild goose chase. He went back into the station to wait. But first, he had something else to do. He should have thought of it sooner and he went off to find the duty sergeant.
When Murray arrived, he met her in reception and marched her straight out. His face was grim. ‘Let’s get going. Badged car, blues and twos. He’s checked out a Glock.’
Hammond had driven very cautiously along the high street, curbing his impulse to put his foot down to get there sooner. There was hardly any traffic and the thawing snow made the road surface like an ice rink; one small skid into a parked car would finish everything.
He patted his pocket to hear Cassie’s keys jingling reassuringly – he’d taken those from Burnside long before – and he had the code number written down, just as if the numbers weren’t seared on his mind! Getting hold of the handbag hadn’t been difficult and he put back the diary afterwards and resealed the evidence bag. No point in leaving traces you didn’t need to, even if you planned to be long gone before anyone would look.
The slope up to Highfield House was trickier still and the wheels lost grip a couple of times, but he was used to winter driving. And there were the gates now. Hammond drove on up until the SUV would be out of sight, then parked it with its nose in a snowdrift as if it had been abandoned.
There was no one about. He could hurry now and his heart was beating faster as he reached the tall gates. There was still snow six inches deep piled up behind them, but he reckoned it was soft enough for the force of the opening gates to sweep it to one side. He keyed in the code. Nothing happened.
He tried again. Still no reaction. Had those bitches changed the code again? Or – then it struck him. The power cut! Had the security gone down? He could probably open the gate by brute force, but how could he be sure there wasn’t some sort of trip switch still operating? It would be crazy to stake everything on a gamble like that.
And now he could see headlights coming up the hill. He couldn’t afford to be spotted; moments later, with his car screening him from the road, he was crouching in the slushy snow as someone drove up to the electronic gates and got out.
The Armstrongs had been up early too, listening to their battery radio as they got dressed. Elspeth had slept badly and Davy was anxious to get across to Highfield. They were forecasting a major thaw, but there was no word when the power would be back on; most of the Scottish Borders had been affected.
‘I just couldn’t get that poor lass out of my head, wondering if she was all right,’ she said as she stirred the porridge on their solid fuel stove. ‘And I’m worried about the ladies’ breakfast – I don’t know what they have that isn’t electric.’
‘Oh, Marta will have made sure they’re all right. You know what she’s like. I’m just wondering if there’s been a phone call or anything. It’ll have been a long night if they haven’t heard anything.’
‘At least the police’ll be able to do a bit more today. I doubt they were able to do anything at all yesterday.’
Davy gave a heavy sigh. ‘I wish I thought there was something they could do today. Where do you start looking, with something like that?’
‘Don’t you go over there with a face like that on you! You have to look on the bright side.’ She set the bowl of porridge in front of him. ‘You just eat that up and get across to see if there’s anything you can do.’
When he reached Highfield House there was snow heaped up behind the gates and when he keyed in the code nothing happened – of course, the system would be down. He got out of the car and pushed, hoping the snow would be soft enough to shift; there was certainly meltwater pouring down the drive now. He had to put his shoulder to it, but he managed and was able to drive the car up towards the front of the house. The biggest problem was round about it where what had been on the roof had slid off to form banks around the base; it came up to his knees as he waded through to the front door and rang the bell.
It was a few minutes before he heard bolts being drawn back on the other side and Marta Morelli, looking bleak, appeared. ‘I’m sorry, Davy, I had to check who it was. The alarm system—’
‘Oh aye, I know. It’s an awful nuisance, this. Elspeth was wondering if you were all right for your breakfast.’
She gave a wintry smile. ‘Oh, we’re all right. Not very hungry, though, I think.’
Obviously no news, then. He was heart-sorry for them, but there wasn’t much he could do. He said awkwardly, ‘Just thought I’d come and see if there was anything you were needing.’
‘Thank you very much. Anna will appreciate your concern.’
‘Well, you know where we are.’
Davy nodded and went back to his car. Maybe, as Elspeth had said, the police would be able to do something once things got back to normal. It was all they could hope for. He drove back home.
Leaving the gates standing wide open.
The rhythmic dripping of the melting snow ticked like a metronome getting faster and faster in the silence after Hammond left. There was a little light now filtering through round the hardboard on the windows but if there was sunshine outside it wasn’t doing anything to warm the air and Cassie retreated under the duvet. As he had told his story she had sat up, fascinated and appalled by what he had said; now she was very, very cold and very, very hungry. She picked up the bottle of water by the side of the bed and allowed herself a drink but there wasn’t much left. She had no confidence that he would even bother to come back to kill her. Without water, you could die in a couple of days.
He was going to kill Anna first, though. He would find the code she’d scribbled down an
d sneak in on them while they thought they were secure. It was horrible to know what would happen but be unable to warn them. He’d wait till night-time, probably, when they were asleep. And Marta? Would he kill her too?
It just felt unreal, as if she’d stepped into a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. His story – did she believe it? That Anna would be so wicked as to agree to have a child she would sell on? The terrible thing was that from what she knew of Anna, there was that splinter of ice in her heart that all good writers are supposed to have, along with a ruthless dedication to her work. Did she care about anything else at all? Cassie herself, and darling, lost Felix, had come far behind that.
Yes, she’d loved her mother, she’d told Hammond – if that was his name, which it probably wasn’t. She’d added that she didn’t like her much, and that was true as well – but she admired her talent immensely. She didn’t need the global razzamatazz to tell her that Anna had some odd, inexplicable gift that let her speak directly to people’s hearts and make a difference, and that applied to her daughter’s as well. Whatever she’d done, the world would be poorer if Hammond succeeded in carrying out his mission.
She was helpless to stop him, or to save herself. With the duvet right over her head she was warming up and she was tired, so tired. Despite the hunger pangs and the headache she still hadn’t managed to shake, she fell asleep.
DC Livvy Murray had experienced DCI Strang’s driving before when they were in a hurry, but the last time they hadn’t been virtually aquaplaning. The water was running off the fields on either side and the piles built up by the snowploughs were spreading slippery slush right across the road. She tried not to gasp as they came up behind a cautious car that didn’t move out of the way quickly enough, but he somehow manoeuvred round it and fortunately there was very little other traffic.
‘It came to me in the middle of the night,’ Strang told her. ‘I went to the CID room yesterday afternoon to offer my services and Wilson was in a bit of a state, trying to deal with a worsening situation and he dashed off. Kate was there and mentioned there’d been a mix-up with snowploughs having been directed to keep open a minor road and I thought at the time that was odd – Hammond was coordinating the deployment and it was uncharacteristically inefficient. But I was focused on Wilson being ready to grass and it was annoying that he wouldn’t be able to meet me last night – I was pretty sure Hammond had realised we were on to him when he lied about Jackson’s address and I’d have liked more than that to convince the boss to act immediately.
‘Then of course I was at the Grahams’ and it was only after I went to bed that it came back to me about that road – and of course then it was a sort of “duh!” moment. We know Hammond was involved in some very dirty stuff already, so the profile fits. I’ve put out an APB on his car, so we may get him that way – he won’t realise we’re looking for him yet.’
Murray could see what he was saying, but she was still not completely convinced. ‘If he was planning to do a runner, it’s plain dumb. He’d know that kidnapping Cassie would bring the roof in. What reason could he possibly have?’
‘His motive, do you mean?’ There was an ironic emphasis on the word and she winced as he went on, ‘We can’t possibly know. Maybe it’ll become clear if we get him, maybe it won’t. I still don’t know that I’m right. Oh, that’s the side road now.’
As he turned on to it, he said, ‘Our job is simply to try to piece his actions together and hope we can get to Cassie before something happens to her.’
The snowplough had certainly been there, but while it had packed down the snow there hadn’t been enough passing traffic to clear it and the surface was treacherous. To Murray’s relief Strang slowed down; there was no need for sirens either. They passed a farm and then a few houses where there was no sign of life. They scanned them as they passed.
‘Quite a few folk would get out when they knew this was coming in,’ Murray said. ‘They wouldn’t be expecting the road to be passable so quickly.’
‘We can get teams out to talk to them later, but the chances are there won’t be witnesses. Some may even be second homes – it’s a nice valley, this.’ Then he slowed right down. ‘Look up there – see the house on that slope? Somebody’s driven out since the plough came through. Let’s take a look.’
As they tackled the drive they slipped back once or twice and it was slow progress. Murray’s stomach lurched; in policing you never knew when you’d find yourself looking down the barrel of a gun. Hammond could be lurking inside with his Glock – they could do very nasty damage, those – but his car wasn’t there so he must surely have left. But even if Strang had guessed right and this was where he’d taken Cassie, what might they find then? The sick feeling in her stomach got worse so she tried telling herself that maybe the place just belonged to an innocent householder as they parked outside.
Strang reached the door first. While he knocked on it, she walked round the outside, looking in the windows at the empty rooms of what looked like an abandoned property. Then she turned the corner and saw the windows that had been blanked out.
‘She could be here!’ she yelled and instantly Strang hammered on the door yelling ‘Police’, then kicked up at the handle to shatter the lock.
Cassie woke in total confusion. The hammering, the voices – was this some new threat? Then ‘Police!’ and splintering wood.
And there was the sound of someone charging at the door of her prison. At the second onslaught it gave way and she recognised the chief inspector who had interviewed her as he burst in with a woman following at his heels who hurried over to her.
‘Are you all right?’
She tried to collect her wits. ‘Yes … I think so. But never mind that. It was him – your inspector. He’s gone off to kill my mother.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Detective Chief Superintendent Borthwick put down the phone, leant her head on the desk and groaned. There were good days and bad days, and any day when you had to issue a statement warning that a police officer – armed with a weapon he was perfectly entitled to carry, under Police Scotland rules – had gone rogue and was a death threat to one of the best-known authors in the country was most definitely a bad day.
DCI Strang had done a sort of good news/bad news presentation: Cassie Trentham was now safe in hospital recovering from a mild concussion and shock – good – before he told her about the threat to Anna Harper – bad.
Protection was the key issue. Strang was at the house with Anna Harper and her friend now, armed himself, and when the armed response unit that she was just about to action reached them – not much more than an hour, with sirens – Anna would be as safe as the Queen in Buckingham Palace. It was unfortunate that as she made the mental analogy, she remembered that the Queen had once woken up to find an intruder sitting on her bed and had to force away the thought.
With the order given, she turned her mind to briefing the media relations officer. Armed and dangerous, do not approach, the press release would have to say. A very, very bad day.
The good part of the day for DCI Strang had been when Marta Morelli opened the Highfield front door and he was able to tell her that Cassie Trentham was safe. Leaving him and DC Murray on the doorstep, she ran ahead to tell Anna Harper the good news. When they followed her to the study, the woman who had always seemed icily cold to him, and her friend who had channelled anxiety into aggression, were both reacting with uninhibited floods of tears and fervent expressions of gratitude. They were both looking so haggard that he doubted if they’d eaten at all, or slept, for the past couple of days.
That was the good bit over. The rest was downhill all the way, beginning with telling them that the person who was behind it was one of his own colleagues. The tears stopped, and the expressions of gratitude too. He could see Marta starting to bridle.
‘But – a police officer? How could this be?’
He took refuge in the old cliché. ‘I’m afraid there are bad apples in every barrel. My unit was de
spatched here because we had reason to believe that there were irregularities in DI Hammond’s department—’
‘The inspector?’ Anna said sharply.
He saw a meaningful look pass between the two of them. Murray had obviously noticed it too; did she have any more idea than he did what it signified?
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ he said, as Murray caught his eye. He gave her a nod and she leant forward.
‘Ms Harper, did he look as if he could be your son?’
Both women looked shocked. ‘What-what do you mean?’ Anna stammered.
It wasn’t the question he would have asked but it certainly had shock value. Sometimes chucking in a hand grenade with the pin out was the answer and Murray was good at that. She went on, ‘You see, he told your daughter his life story in some detail and that’s what he claimed to be.’
Marta seemed more collected. ‘And what was this “life story” that he told her?’
Strang said, ‘I think we’ll deal with it the other way round – you tell us the story. I asked you some questions before. Perhaps you will see reason and answer them now.’
The two women looked at each other again, then Anna said with her usual hauteur, ‘Perhaps you will excuse us while we discuss what you have told us?’
Marta added, ‘The maid in the kitchen will give you a cup of tea.’
Reluctantly Strang agreed. They weren’t accused of any crime; this whole thing was a kid-gloves job and given that he had more bad news to give them he couldn’t afford to make things worse. As directed, they went through to the kitchen.
The ‘maid’ was a woman in her thirties, slight and sharp-featured with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked startled to see them and seemed the anxious type; her hands were shaking as she wiped up something spilt on the floor and fetched mugs from a cupboard. When she told Strang her name was Kayleigh Burns it explained the nerves. If you were Jason Jackson’s girlfriend and had helped him break into the house, it was understandable that you wouldn’t really see the police as your friends. It was surprising she was still there; she must be good at her job. Help wouldn’t be that easy to find in Halliburgh.
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