He wondered if this meant there were people around right now, carrying things in and out, or whether it was just that the occupants had been making themselves at home here for a while and didn’t any longer care if they left the place open to the elements and to other squatters.
Christopher distinctly preferred the second of these two options.
‘Stairs,’ whispered Amaryllis, heading for another door.
Of course, they had been in here once, years ago. Just before the man from the Council was kidnapped, if his recollection was accurate. It wasn’t a good omen.
They swung through the door and found the stairs.
‘They’re more likely to have based themselves on one of the higher floors,’ said Amaryllis, her lips almost touching his ear. ‘Easier to defend.’
This expedition wasn’t improving as it went along.
‘It’s getting a bit late for a school night,’ he whispered back, trying to lighten his own mood as much as anything.
They crept up the stairs. Just before the turn, there was a sound from somewhere above them.
‘Look out!’ hissed Amaryllis. ‘Somebody’s coming the other way.’
Christopher accidentally took a step backwards – his brain seemed to have told him there wasn’t time to turn round – and slipped right off the stair he had been standing on. Just as he regained his balance and was about to grin at her in triumph, the sounds from above amplified themselves until they had adopted the rhythm of running feet, louder and louder until...
He only had time to register a banging noise, sharper than the footsteps and closer, before he lost his balance again and fell back down the way they had come, right to the bottom. There was a sharp, sudden, agonising pain in one elbow and then nothing.
Chapter 33 Checking in
Where did these kids get a gun?
Christopher’s down. Where’s the phone?
The two thoughts collided in Amaryllis’s mind and she temporarily lost her ability to disentangle them. At the same time, her body reacted to the catastrophe by flinging itself upwards and forwards, so that she crashed into the young man who was heading downwards much too fast. Health and safety, she thought, letting her body take over and her fists connect with his mid-section while she brought one foot up in a practised, unhurried movement and kicked the gun out of his hand. It clattered on the uncarpeted stairs.
Another one behind the first one.
The same routine. Fists, legs, feet, head if absolutely necessary. It was necessary this time.
The two of them lay in a sprawled heap at the bend in the stairs. She scrambled over them to reach Christopher.
Still breathing. No blood. Both these were good signs.
She retrieved gun and then the mobile phone, which Christopher had dropped when he fell. No point in blaming him for that, though it didn’t mean she wouldn’t tease him about it later.
If she was thinking about teasing him, she must know with at least part of her brain that he was all right. Or it was a defence mechanism.
She pressed the speed-dial for Keith and spoke to him briefly, one eye on the two young men, who were starting to stir. She went back up and banged their heads together to keep them quiet while she called Charlie Smith. That was just a precaution in case Keith had no backup available.
She miraculously found a rolled up carpet under the stairs, carefully transferred Christopher on to it, and dragged him through the door and into the reception area. She wouldn’t have risked moving him, only there was still a danger the two young men would wake up again and he would be in the way when the next struggle began. He would be safer behind the reception desk, which must have been built in with the original construction of the building, for it was solid enough not to have deteriorated too much either from vandalism or weather conditions. It was safer to move him than not, when there were idiots like that with guns about. Still no blood. Still breathing. She made sure he was in the recovery position and returned to the stairwell.
One of the young men was just stirring. She pulled him up by his hair and said in a voice that she hoped was menacing enough to get through to him, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘Ow! Let go of my hair!’
‘Are you afraid I’ll ruin your perm?’ said Amaryllis. She hadn’t been this ruthless for some time. It brought back some good memories, as well as some bad ones she would prefer not to have awakened. But she had a hunch these young men had been behaving extremely badly.
The boy – he wasn’t much more than that – managed to shake himself free of her grip, his hair sliding through her fingers and only leaving a few strands behind.
He bent over the other one, taking him by the shoulders and shaking, presumably to try and wake him up so that they could mount a joint attack on Amaryllis. Good luck with that, she said to herself silently.
‘You’ve killed him.’ He threw the remark over his shoulder as he frantically tried to rouse his friend.
Amaryllis leaned in for a closer look, and he straightened suddenly, shoving her backwards. She teetered on the edge of a stair for a moment, recovered and twisted his arm round behind him. She had only seen the glint of the knife for a second, but that had been enough. She banged his hand against the wall of the stairwell.
‘Ow! You’re breaking my arm!’
‘Tough.’
The other one began to stir again. She swore under her breath. Why hadn’t she heard any police sirens yet?
Behind her the door at the foot of the stairs opened. It must be Keith. Perhaps he had chosen to approach silently and take them by surprise.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ said a woman’s voice.
Not Sarah Ramsay. That was the good news. As Amaryllis turned to look, she realised the bad news was that it was the woman she had previously seen only in a drawing, Madeleine Blyth-Sheridan. For safety’s sake she bent to pick up the knife lying a couple of steps down, but as she straightened up she found herself staring into the barrel of a gun.
Perhaps Sarah Ramsay would have been better news after all.
‘What’s going on, Jack?’ the woman snapped.
‘Nothing,’ said the young man who had brought the knife into play.
‘OK – what sort of nothing?’ said the woman.
Amaryllis glanced from one to the other. Could they be mother and son? It seemed like the kind of conversation that happened inside families.
Jack scowled, increasing the fleeting resemblance between them. ‘She started it.’
Amaryllis had an insane urge to laugh.
‘I don’t care who started it,’ said the woman, unconsciously adding weight to Amaryllis’s theory. ‘Just get a hold of her now so that we can finish this.’
Now would be a good time for Keith to arrive with reinforcements, Amaryllis mused as the boy who was on his feet grabbed her by the arms. She didn’t want to do anything to annoy the woman holding the gun, so she went along with this arrangement for the moment. The boy marched her down the remaining stairs, holding her arms behind her back. The other young man struggled to his feet behind them.
‘What’s the matter with you, Sam?’ said Madeleine Blyth-Sheridan. The maternal instinct didn’t seem to be all that strong in her, although Amaryllis had no doubt the woman would fight like a tiger if anyone threatened her sons, for she was now almost sure of their identity too.
‘It’s her fault!’ said the second boy, rubbing the back of his head. ‘She banged our heads together.’
‘And you let her do that to you?’ said his mother, sounding incredulous. She shook her head. ‘I thought I’d brought you up to be street-wise.’
‘You didn’t bring us up at all,’ muttered the first boy.
‘OK, I’ll forget you said that,’ said the woman. ‘This isn’t the time or the place. Would you agree, Sam?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Fine!’ snarled the first boy, still holding on to Amaryllis, but loosely, she noticed. She tried to stop herself from
making an escape attempt too soon. She had to wait for the right moment, otherwise it would be a disaster.
The door opened on to the scene before she had even completed this thought. It caught Madeleine Blyth-Sheridan on the shoulder of the arm she held the gun by, but her aim only wavered for a very short time.
Surely this time it must be Keith.
‘Sorry – I must have blacked out for a minute,’ said Christopher, sounding sleepy.
Why hadn’t he stayed on the carpet?
Amaryllis used her anger with him to force herself free of the boy and at the same time to kick the gun out of the other woman’s hand. They both flung themselves to the floor, scrabbling for it.
‘Dear me, ladies,’ said Charlie Smith’s voice somewhere above them. ‘Standards of behaviour around here aren’t what they were.’
Keith Burnet and four other officers were the next through the door from the reception area. This time they overpowered the two young men and the woman without too much difficulty in the enclosed space.
‘They never were in the first place,’ said Amaryllis, extricating herself from the confusion. She gave Keith the gun. ‘Don’t let any of them get away... And as for you,’ she added, speaking to Christopher, ‘what the hell did you think you were doing, barging in on a hostage situation?’
He held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Sorry – I seem to have missed out on my basic security service training.’
‘That can be fixed,’ she said darkly.
In the background, Keith was cautioning his captives.
‘I bet that felt good,’ said Charlie Smith, joining them in the doorway.
Amaryllis grinned. ‘I almost feel like asking if I can go on another mission. A final, final one. Now that I know I haven’t lost my touch.’
Christopher and Charlie groaned in unison.
‘Perish the thought, squire,’ said Charlie, laughing, as he led the way out to the reception area.
‘Squire?’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’
It was as they emerged from the hotel grounds that they came across Mr Kilpatrick again. He was getting in a car outside the Blyth-Sheridans’ house and he appeared to be carrying a bag that, although it wasn’t actually marked ‘swag’, might as well have been. It was a fitting end to the day when Charlie made a citizen’s arrest and the three of them handed him over to the police to take away with the others.
Chapter 34 Walking with alpacas
The alpacas were destined for life in the grounds of a stately home somewhere in Yorkshire. Jemima wasn’t sure where the idea of a party to say goodbye to them had originated. Maybe with Christopher. He was soft-hearted enough to think of it. She didn’t think he would have done all the organising himself, though. Men didn’t tend to be very good at that kind of thing. She would never have trusted Dave to do it either.
‘They said we could have our picnic up here if we wanted,’ said Amaryllis, leading them to a spot under some trees, high up on the hill above the animal rescue centre.
There was an excellent view of the nearby field the alpacas currently lived in, and down over the little town of Pitkirtly and out across the Forth. The town was misleadingly peaceful and picturesque from this angle. Jemima sighed and shook her head.
‘Is this all right for everyone?’ said Amaryllis. ‘Christopher and Charlie are bringing some chairs, Jemima. You won’t have to sit on the grass.’
‘I don’t mind that,’ said Jemima, although she really did mind, what with all the rain they had been having as the summer progressed.
‘What’s wrong, then?’
‘Nothing, really. I was just looking at the view and thinking about how lovely and calm it all is. And then I remembered all that’s happened in the last few weeks.’
‘Appearances are deceptive, you know.’
‘I know. But it would be nice if they weren’t, just once in a while.’
An engine roared, and the little tractor from the rescue centre came into view, towing a trailer on which Dave sat in state. It didn’t look very comfortable, but Jemima had insisted he wasn’t to walk up the hill. It would take her a long time to recover from Dave’s funny turn at the garden centre.
Christopher and Charlie appeared at a slightly slower speed, lugging two chairs each. Charlie’s face was so red when they reached the others that Jemima began to worry about his health too. But then, you couldn’t worry about all your friends all the time. She had to stand back and let somebody else fuss over Charlie. So far there had been no sign of a special person in his life who would do it, but there was still time.
The dog walked just behind him, casting nervous glances from side to side. He wouldn’t sit with everybody on the picnic rug but adopted a position just off the edge, as if he didn’t think he should take up any space.
Amaryllis ordered Dave and Jemima to sit on two of the chairs, and said the others would have to draw lots for the two spares, but Jock McLean, arriving a bit later with a cool-bag almost as big as himself which proved to contain enough drinks for a somewhat larger party, claimed one of them and Chief Inspector Ramsay, who wasn’t far behind him with a plastic box of fairy cakes, was more or less pushed into the fourth.
‘Where are Ashley and Keith?’ enquired Jemima. ‘We can’t start without them.’
‘Keith’s bringing the table,’ said Amaryllis. ‘He had to go round by the police station for it.’
‘He’s never bringing one of ours, is he?’ said Sarah Ramsay. She looked younger and prettier today, Jemima was pleased to see, in a long floral top and very tight jeans. Her face was more relaxed than usual, too. Maybe she had settled in a bit now.
‘He did say there were some trestle tables round at the back that were never used,’ said Amaryllis. ‘But I might have misheard, of course.’
Sarah Ramsay sighed. ‘I suppose it’ll be all right just this once. But if there’s any trouble, I know nothing about anything.’
‘Neither do any of us,’ Amaryllis assured her.
It was interesting to watch the two of them together. Jemima couldn’t imagine them being friends, exactly, even if they had played in the same hockey team. Amaryllis was all sharp angles and quick, decisive actions. The Chief Inspector was more solid and reliable. Not that you couldn’t rely on Amaryllis either. She had been a great friend to all of them.
A police car drew up on the road at the top of the hill, and Keith and Ashley got out and then manhandled the table out of the back.
Sarah Ramsay rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t see that.’
She faced the front determinedly as Keith and Ashley and the table approached, and closed her eyes as they unfolded it, opening them only when Amaryllis said, ‘The table-cloth’s on now. You’d never know where it had come from.’
‘It’s from my mum’s garage, actually,’ said Keith. ‘We couldn’t get the trestle table in the car in the end.’
‘Ah, yes, the car,’ said the Chief Inspector.
They turned to look. The police car was disappearing round the next bend in the road.
‘They were on their way up here somewhere anyway,’ said Keith. ‘I’ll get them to pop back for us later on their way somewhere else. No problem.’
Amaryllis organised the setting out of a massive amount of food and drink and plates and plastic glasses. Jemima sat back in the chair and smiled. It was nice just to sit for a while. No doubt somebody would insist later on hearing the full story of what had actually happened, but for now she would just enjoy the moment, as that psychologist on the television kept advising. It wasn’t very often that life allowed you to do that, or that a particular moment was so enjoyable that you wanted to linger in it.
It started sooner than she expected. Once everybody had a drink and a plate of food, Amaryllis remained on her feet instead of sitting on the rug, and said, ‘Right, then. We’d better get started, otherwise it’ll take all night.’
Nobody asked what they were supposed to get started on. They all knew only too well.
‘Where do you want me to start?’ said Keith. He had an iced fairy cake with a sugar flower on top in one hand and a plastic glass of pink lemonade in the other, and a wide-eyed innocent look about him. It must be something to do with having a picnic, Jemima thought. Nobody could fail to appear younger and less cynical while eating in the open air on a hillside, with alpacas grazing peacefully nearby.
‘The garden centre?’ suggested Dave.
Keith nodded. ‘As good a place as any. As some of you already know, Mr Anderson took on the place mostly because he wanted to keep an eye on the Blyth-Sheridans... I’m just sorry you got caught up in it, Ashley,’ he said to his girl-friend as an aside. She smiled and patted his arm. ‘He’s making a good recovery, by the way. He was lucky they didn’t just kill him, like they did with the Blyth-Sheridans. The three of them were completely ruthless.’
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, Keith,’ said Amaryllis.
‘Yes, well.’ He took a reviving gulp of lemonade. ‘The Blyth-Sheridans. They inherited the house, with the stables – which come into the story later on – and proceeded to knock the house down and build a new one. It’s got quite a nice kitchen, a bit on the big side though.’
‘Yes, I thought that too,’ said Christopher. ‘The kitchen’s bigger than the whole of my downstairs.’
‘But that’s what you need, if you’re going to get caterers in for events and so on,’ said Ashley, blushing as everybody stared at her.
‘Caterers? Did they even entertain at all?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Not as far as we can tell. They may have thought they would in the first place, but they seem to have lived more or less like hermits,’ said Keith, getting back on track.
Jemima thought it might have been nice to hear more about the over-sized kitchen. Sometimes when Amaryllis and Christopher, and maybe Jock McLean and Charlie, all popped round to her house at the same time she could have done with somewhere larger to feed them all custard creams in.
Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10) Page 19
