Caroline stopped again. Unless her pursuers actually descended into the passageway, she could not be found. She could hear their footsteps now, beating dully on the turf and coming to a halt almost right above her.
‘Satisfied?’ demanded Sandy.
‘Let’s go,’ answered Cherry, avoiding direct agreement. ‘This place is creepy. I wish to God I was in front of my own fire. I bet that sister of mine’s turned the house into a shambles.’
‘Right. Hey, Chuff! There’s nothing here. Let’s be on our way.’
Chuff, Caroline surmised, had been the decoy sent ahead along the beach to give the impression they had all gone. She was glad it had been him. For some reason based purely on her couple of sightings of the threesome, she feared him most of all. Cherry seemed bad-tempered and understandably irritated by the whole business. Sandy seemed quite a reasonable sort of fellow. But Chuff … She shuddered and thanked heaven he had not joined the search.
The footsteps above were moving away now, leaving her alone with whatever uncomprehending ghosts inhabited the site. For a second she felt an absurd impulse to call them back, just to have human company.
And even more absurdly it was for their assistance that she screamed as Chuff’s hand seized her by the hair and dragged her violently backwards.
It was a double bluff, she thought miserably, as she twisted herself round, clawing the walls with her right hand in an effort to keep her balance. I saw through it once and thought I’d won for ever. I’m no use for this game.
But even as her mind admitted defeat, her body opted for survival like her pretended neolithic sister of three thousand years before. She swung her left hand at Chuff’s head. It would have been an ineffectual hook had it not been for one thing. With a diligence that Hazlitt would have admired, she was still carrying the whisky bottle.
Oh my God! Bang goes his other ear! she thought in horror as Chuff released his hold and half fell to the floor. She made a small movement forward to administer first aid, realised that the object he was trying to drag from his pocket was a gun, heard the rapidly returning footsteps of the other two above, and fled.
Behind her the gun spoke. Television and the cinema had accustomed her to the sound of gunfire, both real and theatrical. Not until this moment, however, did the reality of the fear such a sound could cause occur to her. Newsreels might take her to Asia or Africa, fill her with revulsion, outrage, horror—or on occasion boredom—but the sound of Chuff’s gun put every cell in her body at the red alert of terror.
She heard the bullet scrape along the wall beside her. Then she was round a corner and running wild.
Someone descended with a thud into the passageway behind her. That left one above. One too many. A voice, Sandy’s she thought, shouted, ‘No guns!’ A comfort if it penetrated Chuff’s two thick ears. She saw a narrow opening to the right and thrusting herself in, crouched with her whole body shaking like a peal of wedding bells. Her new pursuer approached, did not pause, was past in an instant. She could not see who it was, did not want to see, did not care if she never saw again any member of that monstrous race who could hurl hot lumps of lead at her soft and defenceless body.
But he had stopped. There was a long silence, more terrible than any that had gone before. This time it was real silence. Here in this stone-deadened tunnel no noise seemed to penetrate. Not the wind or the sea or the rustlings of life in grass and air. Only, now, the sound of footsteps returning.
She retreated into the tunnel, stooping low. It must lead into one of the open huts, but there was no attracting glimmer of light at the end of it. Then the ground was no longer under her feet and she fell forward into a pool of absolute blackness.
Instantly she rolled on her back and sat up, trying to force her sight through the darkness. The tunnel by which she had entered was completely lost to her. She had no way of understanding where she was and she heard a voice she knew must be hers crying out for light.
It came instantly, a great slab of it almost immediately above her. And another. And another. Moon and starlight but curiously distanced, curiously artificial.
Then she knew where she was. Hut No. 7, the best preserved of all, and roofed with glass to prevent further deterioration through the weather. At night it seemed the glass roof was boarded over, to protect it from sheep perhaps, or other creatures of the dark.
Up there now was a creature of the dark, dragging aside the boards.
Caroline realised she was sitting before the central hearth. To her right and left were beds—small enclosures created by three vertical slabs. A grave had been found beneath one of these she recalled. And it was from this very hut that the woman with the broken necklace had fled.
A stronger light than moon and stars fell through the glass and sought her out. She made no attempt to evade it and peered up through the translucent screen at the figure beyond.
It was Chuff, of course. She could scarcely make out his face but imagined he looked very angry. Certainly there was something almost insanely purposeful about the way he was pointing his gun. Sandy’s command about firing, his superior’s directive, about her well-being—she was sure neither meant anything to this man. He advanced along the edge of the still-unremoved boards till he loomed directly overhead, blotting out the moon.
Hazlitt hadn’t returned, she thought suddenly. She hoped it meant he was safe, but feared it must mean quite something else. In which case, there was not so much to fear about this man who was going to kill her.
She closed her eyes. Heard a double or treble gunshot. And a crashing of glass.
And heard nothing more.
Hazlitt had heard the first shot moments earlier.
‘What the hell’s that?’ he demanded.
‘The girl’s still with you?’ asked Campbell.
‘Yes.’
‘Not to worry. She’ll be okay.’ But he sounded very unconvincing.
‘I’m going,’ said Hazlitt, opening the car door. It was quite undramatic. Only a bullet would have stopped him. Campbell shrugged fatalistically and stepped out of the car also.
‘I tell you, it’s all under control,’ he said. Hazlitt did not answer, but began to make his way from the car park, towards the distant line of whiteness which was the sea.
Suddenly a flurry of shots rattled the air, their flashes quite distinct over the ruined village.
‘Caroline!’ screamed Hazlitt, and set off at a gallop over the field. Several times he missed his footing and fell, but always rose instantly and with scarcely any loss of speed. Campbell was more circumspect and dropped far behind.
Now Hazlitt was approaching the mound. He saw figures moving in the dim light, two of them or perhaps three.
He reached the small boundary fence, half leapt, half crashed through it, and scrambled up the mound. At the top waiting for him was a woman.
‘Caroline?’ he said, knowing he was wrong even as he spoke.
‘You’re making it bloody hard to mock-up an accident,’ said Cherry accusingly. She had her gun out and looked as if she were at the end of her tether.
He grabbed her by the ankles as he reached the top of the mound and dragged her feet from beneath her. She screamed as she hit the ground with a bone-cracking thud, but Hazlitt ignored her. He pressed on, narrowly avoiding falling into the first hut he came across.
Then in the moonlight he saw the glass dome with a great jagged fissure in it. Two steps took him to its edge and he looked down through the hole.
There below, frosted with moonlight, lay Caroline. She sprawled awkwardly across the ancient hearth. Her duffel bag had finally slipped from her shoulder, spilling its contents. Cheque book, American Express card, Diners’ Club card, travellers cheques, all lay scattered over this floor where three thousand years earlier a woman had crouched over her cooking pots and heard the gale gathering its strength outside.
She looked peaceful lying there in her red anorak. Except that her anorak should not be red, should not be patched and stained wi
th this still-spreading redness.
‘Caroline,’ he said. Somewhere close the guns started again, a giant finger flicked out of the night, striking him on the forehead, and he sank into a darkness as black as he himself would at that moment have chosen.
13
It was after seven o’clock in the morning and there were signs of activity in the Hamnavoe Hotel. Curious chambermaids glanced fleetingly through the open door of the room in which sat Lackie Campbell and a burly, slab-faced man whose only concession to being indoors was that he had unbuttoned his raincoat. They ignored the onlookers, concentrating on the whisky bottle between them, and made no attempt to close the door which gave them a clear view of the door opposite.
The view was momentarily blocked by the figure of the manager.
‘How is he?’ he asked sympathetically.
‘He’ll be all right.’
‘Good. Poor Mr Coleridge, he does seem to be rather accident prone. Here’s another of his friends come visiting.’
The two men stiffened, but relaxed as into the room stepped a very spruce and alert looking blond-haired young man.
‘ ’Morning, Smithson. Campbell. Found you at last. Where’s the action?’
‘The action,’ said Smithson, pouring himself another large helping of Scotch, ‘is over. You are too late for the action. Now we move on to the thinking. You are probably too late for the thinking as well.’
‘Droll. While you two have been enjoying yourselves playing cops and robbers with Hazlitt, I’ve had a hell of a time fending off that bloody girl.’
The other two exchanged glances. The door opposite opened and a woman in nurse’s outfit appeared.
‘He’s waking up,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ said Campbell. ‘Would you like to go and have a bite of breakfast perhaps? We’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘And I’d like a wash and change o’ clothes too.’
‘Take your time.’
Smithson and Campbell entered the room, the fair-haired man just behind them. He stopped short when he saw the figure in bed, half risen on one elbow. It was Hazlitt, his head swathed in a huge bandage.
‘My God! What happened to him?’
‘A bullet clipped him,’ said Campbell. ‘How do you feel, Mr Hazlitt?’
‘Rotten,’ was the groaned reply. ‘Where am I?’
‘The Hamnavoe Hotel.’
‘The Hamnavoe …?’ Hazlitt stopped short. The mists cleared and last night leapt up at him like a stand-up picture in a children’s book.
‘Caroline!’ he said wildly. ‘Where’s Caroline?’
Smithson and Campbell exchanged looks once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Campbell gently. ‘There was nothing we could do.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘She’s dead, Mr Hazlitt,’ said Smithson brusquely. ‘The man, Chuff. We got him, but it was too late.’
‘Oh Jesus!’ It was the fair-haired man who spoke. He collapsed heavily on to a chair and shook his head in disbelief.
‘Dead?’ said Hazlitt. ‘Oh, the bastards! The bastards!’
He sank back in the bed, turned his face to the pillow and wept.
‘Yes, Mr Hazlitt,’ said Smithson. ‘The bastards. You’ve been protecting these people …’
Campbell stopped him, shaking his head warningly.
‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later.’
They moved to the door, the fair-haired man following. Campbell turned to him and spoke lowly.
‘Stay on here, will you, Durban? Keep an eye on him till the nurse gets back. We need a bit of rest ourselves.’
Durban nodded and returned to his seat.
Back in their own room the other two finished their drinks.
‘No quotations?’ enquired Smithson dryly.
‘Burns knew nothing of this kind of vileness,’ said Campbell.
‘You Scots are all sentimentalists at heart,’ said the other. ‘Give him an hour, shall we? He’ll be ready to tell us everything.’
He turned and threw himself full length on one of the two beds in the room. Campbell looked down at him, shrugged, closed the door and lay down on the other bed. Soon they were both asleep.
The siren of the departing ferry woke Campbell some time later and he lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling for half an hour or more.
There was a gentle tapping at the door. Quickly he rose and opened it. Outside stood the nurse.
‘I’m sorry I was so long,’ she said.
‘That’s all right. There’s a friend with him.’
‘Is there?’ she answered, looking relieved. ‘The thing is, I’ve tried the door and can’t get in. And no one comes when I knock.’
Campbell was across the corridor in two strides. He banged hard on the door.
‘Durban!’ he said. ‘Durban! Are you there?’
Further down the corridor a chambermaid appeared carrying bed linen. Campbell approached her smiling. Even more than royalty, men in his job were trained not to panic in public. When he returned with her master key, Smithson appeared blearily at the other door.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Campbell, turning the key. Carefully he opened the door and peered in, then turned round, chuckling.
‘Both fast asleep,’ he said, returning the key. ‘That’ll be all right, Nurse. Had your breakfast yet?’
‘Yes,’ said the nurse.
‘Fine. Then why not run along and try a coffee?’
Reluctantly the nurse left with one or two backward glances.
‘What’s going on?’ said Smithson, fully awake now.
Campbell opened the door again and drew him inside.
On the bed, stripped to his underpants and bound and gagged with lengths of curtain cord, lay Durban.
‘You bloody half-wit!’ cursed Smithson.
‘What happened?’ demanded Campbell.
‘I thought he was supposed to be ill!’ answered Durban between great gasps of air. ‘I’m nearly choked! The sod took my clothes. What made him do it?’
‘And your gun?’
Durban looked around.
‘Yes. He must have done. But he can’t hope to get far, surely.’
‘Only to Lincoln. The ferry! He must be on the ferry!’
‘That makes it easy. That bluebottle, what’s his name, Servis. He’s still in Thurso, isn’t he? Nice discreet kind of fellow. We’ll ring him and ask him to meet the boat.’
Campbell nodded, but looked unconvinced.
‘He’ll have to be sharp. Hazlitt’s learnt a lot very quickly. But we’ve got to get him!’
‘Why?’ asked Durban. ‘What’s all the fuss?’
‘We just wanted names from him,’ said Campbell grimly. ‘But he’s not giving us names. He’s gone to sort out his ex-masters for himself!’
It did not take long to confirm that Hazlitt had been seen on the pier shortly before the ferry left and a phone call to Thurso alerted Servis, who spent the next hour grimly pacing up and down on the pier at Scrabster, determined that he was not going to be made a fool of again.
Two hours later, as the last car off the ferry pulled away and the two constables who had been searching the ship reappeared shaking their heads, he began to have an uneasy feeling that it had happened once more. But just in case Hazlitt were still aboard, waiting for a chance to slip ashore, Servis stood opposite the ship till, shortly after midday, it headed back to the islands.
He watched it sink beneath the horizon and said, ‘Well, if he’s on it, they can bloody well find him for themselves!’
But by this time Hazlitt’s plane had already landed in Edinburgh and he was boarding a south-bound train.
Campbell was right. Hazlitt had learned a lot. The dangers of the ferry had been very apparent to him, so after making himself very prominent on the pier, he had slipped back into the town and caught the bus to Kirkwall. A plane had been ready to leave on his arrival at the airport. But i
t was completely booked up. It was, after all, the holiday season. Only a cancellation could help …
Hazlitt had not even had to think. Something inexorable was in control of him, something almost as tangible as the heavy automatic resting inside his waistband on his right hip.
He had looked around the small departure lounge. A man had just come in with his family. His wife had a small airline bag in which clearly he kept the family’s tickets and spare cash. The children ran around playing. One came near Hazlitt, his foot snaked out, the girl tripped, fell and began to cry noisily over her cut knee. Mother came to the rescue. When she had finished first-aid, her bag had gone.
Hazlitt left it on the cistern in the Gents’ a few minutes before departure time and approached the desk. Yes, there had been a cancellation. Four, in fact. He was lucky.
As the plane lifted from the runway, he hoped someone honest would find the bag. But it didn’t bother him much.
Curiously there was no element of impatience in this terrible concentration of feeling. The train snaked south through the Border Country, on to Newcastle, Darlington, York, and he felt no resentment of its stops, its delays. At York he got out. No plan. He just knew this was the right thing to do. Lincoln station would be watched, and perhaps the main-line stations at one of which he would normally expect to change—Doncaster, Retford, Newark.
He hired a car. The deposit took nearly all that remained of Caroline’s money. Fortunately there was a driving licence among the other things in the suit he had stolen from Durban. His old antipathy to cars seemed to have disappeared, just as his old absorption with food and drink had done. He had eaten nothing since he and Caroline had sat by the sea near Skara Brae, sharing a pork pie and some apples.
He found he could recall the scene without emotion. It was like thinking about some completely different person. He smiled to himself, pleased with the change. For he knew that that completely different person who had sat by the girl, and made love to her, and woken with her head on his chest, could not have taken a gun and walked into a room and shot a man between the eyes as he rose with a friendly smile to meet him.
Death Takes the Low Road Page 14
