I sit under my coats inside, listening. Something creaks, and there’s stamping in the doorway.
My recording goes quiet. It’s run out. I only hope they heard it.
Someone whispers.
“Shhh,” says another voice.
The door opens really slowly. I can just see it through a gap in the coats. The woman stands, looking around the tiny police station with a huge man I’ve never seen right behind her. I hold my breath.
They listen. My phone beeps.
It seems to take forever, but then they rush forward, both of them into the cell and I take my chance, shoving the door shut with my snow shovel. Someone screams and pushes against it, but the door’s heavy and I’ve got the advantage of surprise – and some big bolts.
“Hey!” shouts the woman as I turn the key.
Bang!
The sound of a gun going off inside the small space is massive. Deafening. But the old door holds. And there are no holes in it.
Or me.
And then I sit on the floor, my back buried in the police coats, and shake.
Chapter 28
About an hour later, when I’ve rung the police from the police phone and they’ve got confused before they’ve understood and told me that all available forces are at the farm dealing with the aftermath of a gun battle but they will send someone as soon as possible, Helen the policewoman turns up on foot.
Gethin’s with her – they’ve been searching for Ollie.
“You mean he hasn’t come down from the mountain yet?” I think of the gunshots. “Oh, no!”
“Don’t worry,” Helen says. “Ollie knows that hillside like the back of his hand.”
“And there’s no better horseman in the valleys,” adds Gethin.
“And there’s Samson,” I say.
“Who the ruddy hell’s Samson?” asks Helen, suddenly looking completely exhausted.
“The horse I came down on. They –” I point at the cell – “shot him. I had to leave him…” My voice trembles. Now I’ve said it out loud I’ve got this awful picture in my head of Samson bleeding away into the snow all alone.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” asks Gethin.
“I don’t know,” I say, trying and failing to hold back the tears.
Gethin looks embarrassed and Helen hands me a police-tissue.
“Right, I can’t deal with wounded horses right now – I’m sure he’ll be fine,” says Helen, taking her walkie-talkie from her belt. “And what about whoever you’ve got in there – armed is it?”
“Yes,” I say, sniffing hard. “But the door’s holding really well.”
“It would,” says Helen. “My pa made it. But it’s going to be a heck of a job getting them out. And I’m not paid enough to try.”
* * *
A little later, when Helen’s made about a thousand phone calls and fed me the police supply of emergency chocolate hobnobs, Gethin’s dad arrives on a tractor with Auntie V following behind on the quad bike. He announces that the village is reconnected to the main road.
But he hasn’t seen Ollie.
“What?” says Auntie V. She looks as exhausted as I feel. Blackened, sooty, wet and white-faced. “You mean my son’s up there on the mountain in a blizzard?” She leans on the tractor and I watch tears race down her face. And then she reaches her arms out to me and holds me tight in the strongest hug.
“Have you seen the stables?” I say.
She nods, her mouth wobbling.
“We got them all out. Ollie did.”
She nods again.
“Ollie’s very determined,” I say, mumbling it into her chest.
“I know, love, like you,” she says, her voice all high and unsteady. “He’s a chip off the old block.”
“He’ll make it safely down,” I say. Wishing I believed it.
“I’m sure,” she lies. “I’m sure.”
* * *
The mountain-rescue people arrive in four-by-fours to look for Ollie. They’re dressed in orange, scarily official. They talk about body bags and stretchers and I get images of Ollie dangling from a helicopter all broken.
“Don’t think about it,” says Gethin.
Auntie V sits in a car with the mountain-rescue coordinator. I sit there with her, but I can’t relax, I feel terrible about Samson.
“Go and look for him, then,” she says. “I want to stay here, but I’m sure Gethin will go with you.”
Leaving her white-faced and tearful in the car feels bad, but the vision of Samson bleeding in the snow won’t go away. I promise we’ll be as quick as we can, and Gethin’s dad says he’ll help.
We take an enormous blue tractor and trailer and all cram into the cab, something which at any other time would be really exciting. I tell them I came over a concrete bridge with no sides and past a barn and Gethin’s dad seems to know exactly where it is.
“So what did the place look like? Where you left the pony?”
I try to describe the stream, with the steep banks, and then big flat bits that I ran across and I realise that trying to find Samson is going to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“Lucky he’s a black horse, really,” jokes Gethin’s dad. But nobody laughs.
The snow’s still falling, but it’s lighter now, and I get a glimpse up towards a hedge.
I don’t know why, but somehow it feels right and I point. “That way, I think.”
Gethin’s dad stops the tractor and we pile out, searching.
“How much snow will have fallen since he was shot – I wonder?” says Gethin, asking the question that’s been running through my mind.
“He’ll shake it off,” I say, “and if I stopped the bleeding, then…” My voice catches.
We walk up to the stream and Gethin finds the place where Samson and I struggled out.
“Hoofprints!” yells Gethin’s dad, and then a second later. “I found him – bloody hell! He’s alive!”
I stumble over the snow, running towards Gethin and his dad who are brushing at something. There he is. There’s Samson, still lying down, but very much alive having cleared a circle of snow and nibbling at the winter grass beneath. His coat is covered in a light sprinkling of snow, but still a long way from becoming an iceberg.
“Samson! Samson!” I yell and rush over to hug his black furry neck.
He snorts, shakes his head, and bites me full on the leg.
* * *
It takes an age to persuade Samson into the trailer, but Gethin and his dad seem to know exactly how to do it, and when we get him back into their village, it feels like a huge victory.
As we’re going into Gethin’s house, a helicopter arrives. It brings Inspector Khan and some police negotiators who will be able to get the woman and her accomplice out of the cell. But it flies away again because apparently it’s the wrong sort of helicopter for mountain rescue.
“But I want it to look for Ollie,” I say to the inspector when he comes in.
“There are plenty of people out there already looking on the ground.”
“Well, I want to join them.”
“No,” says Inspector Khan, searching the room for somewhere safe to sit. Somewhere free of food, animals, children and glass. “I need your statement – you’re tired, you’re in shock. It’s possible you’ve captured two members of a gang that Interpol have been looking at for years. I think you can drink hot chocolate and eat biscuits for now.”
“Don’t patronise me!” I snap, and for the first time since I met Inspector Khan, he laughs. Not in a bad way.
Auntie V comes back into the room and slumps into a chair.
“We found Samson,” I say. “He’s fine.”
Megan sits on the floor and puts her heavy head on Auntie V’s knee. Absently, Auntie V ruffles the dog’s brown ears. “Good,” she says, “that’s good.” But I can see it’s not what she’s been hoping to hear.
Gethin’s mum is busy trying to keep two little kids out of the way, and failing. They rem
ind me of Ishan and Precious. They’re little and ordinary and funny and I want to go home. I suddenly really want to go home.
“Can I ring home?” I ask Gethin’s mum.
“Of course,” she says, handing me the phone.
I get Granddad and give him a garbled version of the story – which probably sounds worse than it is. After all, the gunmen are safely locked away so Ollie’s only up against the blizzard now.
“Is your Auntie V all right?” he asks.
I glance over to where Auntie V’s sitting on the sofa, staring into a cup of tea, tears rolling through the soot on her face.
“I hope so – it’s awful, Granddad – the stables are completely destroyed, it’s her whole life.”
“And Ollie?” says Granddad.
“Yes – and Ollie.”
“But it’s not your fault, love,” says Granddad, quickly. “Not your fault at all. You tried to do the right thing.”
“Yes,” I say.
Granddad’s voice goes all gravelly. “I’ll have a word with her – if she’s up to it.”
I take the phone to Auntie V and go to the bathroom to wash my face.
* * *
We eat cheese sandwiches. Inspector Khan picks balls of cheese from his plate with the pad of his finger.
“What about Peter Romero?” I ask him. “Is he all right? I think he came to the top of the mountain. He was trying to keep them back.”
“Sergeant Lewis is in hospital – I didn’t know about Romero.” He heads off into a corner and starts typing things into his phone.
A snowplough arrives. And several teams of police people in more white suits to pick over the crime, the fire, the quarry.
Auntie V stands at the window and looks worried. They won’t let her look for Ollie either. “But it’s mad – I know the mountain so well – I’ve got the best chance of finding him.”
Gethin goes to search. And Helen, and most of the village.
Policemen and people in orange come and go, giving and taking messages from Inspector Khan.
An air ambulance hovers over the mountain for a while.
“Goodness,” says Gethin’s mum. “Exciting,” and then she looks as if she wishes she hadn’t said it and goes back to herding the little ones.
Inspector Khan beeps and goes outside to talk into a walkie-talkie. He looks very serious when he comes back in. “Peter Romero has been found. The mountain rescue have him. They’re bringing him here. He was in the quarry. But he’s sustained gunshot wounds.”
“Oh,” I don’t know what else to say. “Will he be OK?”
Inspector Khan shrugs, and picks cat hair from his trouser legs. “We hope so. Listen, there’s something you ought to know. About his job—”
“Art recovery?” I ask.
The inspector shakes his head from side to side.
“Not strictly,” he says.
“Is he a policeman?”
“Sort of…”
“MI something?”
“I never said that,” he smiles.
“Vermeer?” I say.
He nods.
“Did you know that all the time?”
“No – we didn’t,” he replies. “Not until last night. He was so deep undercover that we assumed he was one of the gang.”
“What are you two talking about?” asks Auntie V.
“Oh, nothing,” says the inspector, removing a curl of cheese from his shoelaces.
His phone begins to buzz. “Yes,” he says, standing. He glances across at me. “I suppose so.” He walks to the shattered window. “I see you. We’ll be out in just a minute.”
“Maya,” he jerks his head towards the door. “Come with me, please.”
Chapter 29
I follow the inspector over the snow. My borrowed outsized boots are doing better than his expensive London brogues and I feel a snap of smugness. We stop next to an ambulance. A collection of people in hi-vis jackets and huge boots part as we approach and I see that in the middle is a man on a stretcher.
“Peter Romero?” is all I can think to say as we approach.
He’s lying slightly propped, strapped down and with a bag of clear stuff piped into his arm. The white snowsuit is torn and bloody, and there’s a huge rosette of crimson across his shoulder. He looks broken.
I don’t feel that I should go anywhere near, but Helen appears at my elbow and propels me closer.
“This is Maya,” she says, as if my dark skin and white streak weren’t enough of a clue.
“Hi!” I say. “You’re Peter Romero.”
He turns his head. His face is almost as white as the snow, which makes his red hair redder and his blue eyes brighter. “I owe you an explanation,” he says. His voice is Scottish. Of course I knew that, but somehow it makes him seem softer.
“Make it quick,” says one of the mountain-rescue team. “We need to get you in the helicopter – don’t want you dying here.” They all laugh, but someone adjusts the drip and someone else jams more green things that look like hand towels from the school toilets on to his chest to absorb the blood.
Peter Romero ignores them. “I need to apologise.”
“Why?” I say.
“For landing you in all of this – and for telling her you had the painting.”
“Yeah – what was that about? She nearly killed Ollie.”
Peter Romero bites his lip. “Sorry – but you were the perfect excuse – the perfect way to get her to give herself away.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You saw me, I saw you, but she saw you too. At first I just wanted to warn you about her. You were easy to find, with your white streak and your school uniform, and I knew she’d come after you because you had seen her there, with the gun.”
“I thought it was you that had the gun?”
“It was her that pulled it. We’d planned a handover – she’d give me the painting, I’d give her the money. But she tried to double-cross me, we fought over the gun, but it was too dangerous there in the street, so I grabbed the painting and ran.”
“I saw you run,” I say.
“And then I found she’d killed my brother.”
“She was the one who killed him?” interrupts Inspector Khan. “Why did she do that?”
“Her or one of her meatheads. She knew Georgio’s heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t really a thief, he was really an art historian.” Romero goes quiet and looks at the pile of bloody handtowels on his chest. The inspector and I wait. “And I knew I needed to draw her out, that the promise of getting the painting back would be too tempting for her to resist. I needed to tell her that a third party had it, a soft target. I’m sorry, but you were that soft target.”
“What? But I haven’t got it.”
Romero coughs and I don’t know if it’s because of the pain or because he’s embarrassed. “Actually, you do. I put it in your bag when you were down by the river, the day they found Georgio’s body. I sat next to you and your sister on a bench.”
I’m almost speechless. “But – I mean surely I’d have found it?”
Inspector Khan starts texting someone from his phone.
“It’s tiny, just a roll. I took it off the frame, and rolled it. I slipped it in the front pocket of your bag. You’d think it was a pencil. I knew you were under police observation the whole time. It was the safest place I could think of. I thought she’d shoot me next. You’d have found it in the end.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asks the inspector. “We could have retrieved it.”
Romero sinks deeper on to the stretcher and his face tightens with pain. He ought to go to a hospital or somewhere but I want to know everything.
“I shouldn’t have done it. It was stupid,” he says. “But I needed her out in the open. I’ve worked on this for years and I knew the painting would be irresistible.”
“But I took it to school and everything.” I imagine my bag swinging through the corridors, me sitting on it – all of that stuff. “I might
have trashed it.”
“It’s in a fireproof plastic tube. It’s practically indestructible.” He pauses. “I wanted her to come after you at the farmhouse, I was going to get her then.”
An incoherent bubble of fury builds in my chest.
I stare down at Peter Romero, bleeding on a stretcher.
“You used me as bait?”
“Yes,” he says. “But it didn’t go as I thought. I got arrested instead.”
And suddenly I’m furious. “I could have been killed, my sister could have been killed! Ollie’s still missing! And all over a stupid––”
I raise my arm to hit him, but the inspector stops me.
“Maya––” says Romero.
“We need to take you off now,” interrupts a woman in a green jacket. “Sorry – you’ll have to come to Birmingham if you need to talk further.”
“Of course,” says Inspector Khan, stepping back from the trolley as one of the paramedics slaps another dressing on the wound.
“Is it still there?” I shout, as a man in an orange jacket shoos me away. “The painting?”
But Peter Romero doesn’t answer.
* * *
We retreat to the house, watching through a helicopter-induced blizzard as the stretcher is loaded in. The helicopter takes off straightaway.
As it sails up into the grey sky, I’m just thinking it could have spent a couple of minutes looking for Ollie when the door bursts open. Megan leaps from the ground as Ollie, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket, charges in through the door and throws himself on to the sofa. “I see you’ve eaten all the sandwiches,” he says.
* * *
“I hid in an abandoned mine until the snow and the gunshots stopped.”
“With an entire mountain-rescue force looking for you?” says Auntie V.
“I know, but I’m good at hide-and-seek.”
Auntie V cuffs him over the back of his head.
“And then, later on, I heard the helicopters,” says Ollie. “And thought I’d better come out.”
Auntie V hugs him for about the millionth time and Gethin’s mum offers us more food.
Murder In Midwinter Page 13
