by Jo Bannister
“See?” said Fletcher, pleased. “That’s not what a dummy would say. I won’t make the mistake of underestimating you.”
“Okay.”
The man gave a puzzled frown. “What, no arguments?”
Ash shrugged. “You’re asking me if I think I’m sane? What possible faith could you put in the answer?”
Fletcher chuckled, but there was a slight uneasiness behind his eyes that hadn’t been there when he came in here. “Lots of people talk to dogs.”
“Yes, they do.”
“It’s what you do if you’ve got a dog. It’s why you have a dog.”
“Do you have a dog?”
“Yes. For the kids, mostly. But you get fond of them, don’t you? I like a dog about the place.”
“Do you talk to it?”
“Course I do. It’s normal. I ask it if it wants its dinner. I tell it it’s a good dog for eating its dinner. I ask it if it wants a walk, or should we just go down the shed for a smoke on account of it’s starting to rain.”
As an insight into the home life of a professional thug it was fascinating. “So there’s nothing abnormal about talking to dogs is what you’re saying.”
“Exactly.”
“How about when they talk back?”
CHAPTER 25
ON GOOD GOING, you can cover a couple of hundred meters in a minute without much exertion. Two hundred meters over plowed fields was going to take longer than that. Hazel plugged on until her chest began to crack and her muscles burned. Glancing back, she saw no sign of pursuit, so she labored a little farther until she could drop into the shadow of a hedge, where she pulled out her phone. Her nice new phone that hadn’t protected them for a whole day.
How Argyle could have found them so quickly was something she’d have to think about, but not right now with her lungs trying to squeeze out through her ears. She’d thought she was fit. She was fitter than most of her colleagues. But running over broken land and burgeoning new crops was as much of a workout as Hazel could take.
Who to call? Fountain first, obviously—he needed to know they were in trouble. He’d mobilize help from somewhere closer than Meadowvale. But with her finger on the button, Hazel hesitated. Maybe she should take time to think this through. She’d taken every precaution to ensure Argyle couldn’t find them. The only person she’d called was Chief Superintendent Fountain. But somehow Donald Murchison had got hold of …
Of what? She hadn’t told Fountain where they were. If Murchison was listening at his door, or scanned his blotter with an ultraviolet lamp as soon as the chief went out, he still couldn’t have sent Argyle’s heavies after them.
Coincidence, then? They hadn’t left a trail a bloodhound could follow. Only the farmer knew they were in his cottage, and he didn’t know they were hiding, let alone who from. It didn’t seem possible. She even wondered for a moment if she’d misread the situation, overreacted to the visit of a particularly determined Jehovah’s Witness.
But in a way it didn’t matter. She had to get help. If it turned out she didn’t need it, she could apologize then. If she did nothing and that was the wrong call, it would be too late for apologies. So she called Fountain. She didn’t bother with subterfuge this time—the secret she’d been trying to protect was already out.
But Fountain wasn’t in his office. His secretary tried to raise him on his mobile, but it was switched off. “Shall I have him call you back?”
There wasn’t time. “Put me through to Detective Inspector Gorman.”
It was a gamble. She had no reason to suspect Dave Gorman of taking handouts from Mickey Argyle, but then, she’d had no reason to suspect Donald Murchison until someone died in his cells. If Gorman was involved as well, no help would come. If Gorman was involved and it really was a Jehovah’s Witness parked behind the cottage, Mickey Argyle would come.
Either she told him what was going on or she didn’t. Reduced to a choice that simple, Hazel decided to take the chance. When Detective Inspector Gorman came on, she gave him a zip file of the essential facts in less than a minute and the whereabouts of the cottage to the nearest half mile, which was the best she could do.
Then she went back.
She told herself it was the last thing Argyle’s men would expect. She told herself that she could creep up on the cottage from behind and work out what was happening while they were scanning the far distance with binoculars. But really, she was going back because she couldn’t face leaving Ash to whatever Argyle had in mind.
The dog was a problem. If Hazel let it go, it would run to the cottage and warn those inside that she was returning. She could keep it on the leash, but it’s hard to sneak up on someone with an excited dog bouncing up and down beside you. Or she could tie it to a fence somewhere, in which case it would almost certainly bark. In the end she did what Ash would have done: bent down, looked it in the eye, and whispered, “It is really, really important that you keep quiet.”
Patience returned her gaze in that solemn, down-the-nose way that only something with a greyhound’s face can, then fell into step at Hazel’s left heel, silent as a ghost.
Hazel looked at her phone. Five minutes since she’d spoken to Gorman. How long before she could expect help? Another twenty at least, and only then if there was a patrol as close as the nearest village. How long before these people gave up on finding her, bundled Ash into their car, and drove him off into the sunset, never to be seen again? Again, impossible to know, but maybe not too long now. She walked more quickly over the rough land.
Delay was the name of the game. She had to keep them from leaving while Gorman organized a relief squad. What would happen if she simply presented herself at the door? Would they grab her, grab Ash, and leave immediately? Or would they relax because their job was done and it was no longer a matter of urgency to be on their way? Would it be better to barricade the only exit? If this had been livestock country, she’d have opened every gate she could find and chased every animal into the lane. But it was arable, and you can’t herd turnips. She found a couple of gates anyway, cut the baler twine securing them, and threw them across the lane. But they weren’t long enough; all they did was turn a straight into a slalom. The car might have to slow down a little, but it wouldn’t have to stop.
The only ace left in the pack was Hazel herself. She leaned against the blind side of a tree, steadying her nerve. She could just hide and wait for reinforcements. But there was no knowing what orders these men had. They’d run Nye Jackson down with a car—quite possibly this car. They wouldn’t slap Ash’s wrist and tell him to mind his own business in the future. If she was with him, perhaps she could protect him.…
Or she could die with him. She thought about that for a moment. To her surprise, the mere possibility was not enough to end the mental argument. There are things worth dying for, and Hazel Best wouldn’t be the first police officer to decide that doing the job well was one of them. Johnny Fountain had the power to suspend her; he had no way to stop her from being a police officer, accepting the obligation to protect the public even at the risk of her own safety. Gabriel Ash was a member of the public, and he certainly needed protection, and unless DI Gorman had managed to whistle up a passing helicopter, she was the only member of the police service close enough to help. Looking at it that way, she really didn’t have much choice.
She was stepping out from behind the tree when she heard the car start.
They’d given up on finding her. Plan B began with manhandling Ash out to their vehicle. Fletcher checked that the car in the lean-to wasn’t going anywhere, not with knife slashes in two tires; then he got into his employer’s 4x4 and they set off.
Fifty meters down the lane the young woman they’d wasted the last half hour looking for stepped out in front of them.
“What do you want me to do?” asked the driver tersely. He was a much smaller man than Fletcher, and had answered to the nickname “the Rat” for so long that Fletcher could no longer remember his proper name.
&n
bsp; The big man thought, but not for long. “Flatten her.”
Hazel, waiting in the middle of the lane, expected them to stop for her, thought that was what they were here for. Only when the driver floored the accelerator and the big black car leapt forward did she realize that death was coming for her, right here, right now, and she’d never get the chance to help Ash. That she’d thrown her life away for nothing.
She jumped then, as far to the side as she could from a standing start; but it wasn’t far enough. The wing of the car, as high as her midriff, caught her in midair and tossed her like an angry bull, flinging her against the tree she’d been hiding behind. Not that she knew anything about it.
* * *
Gabriel Ash saw it from the backseat of the car, and something inside him snapped. It wasn’t a very robust something to start with. He hadn’t seen what happened to his wife and sons, he didn’t even know what had happened to them, but this was close enough to drive a dagger into the same coil of his innards that had been hacked apart when he lost them.
He cried out in horror and grief; and neither was inappropriate, because though Hazel Best wasn’t an old friend, he’d known her just long enough and well enough to feel a personal pain that went beyond the shock any decent man would have felt at witnessing a murder. In a way he could not have explained, the horror and the grief, and the rage, were compounded because he’d been here once before and the pathways of his brain were primed.
The men on either side of him took a wrist each and twisted them up behind him. But the elastic snapping in his head had catapulted him to a place where pain and fear and even the threat of death had very little meaning. He fought them with all his strength, a heart full of pain and a howling in his throat, and he succeeded in shaking off one of them and using the fist thus freed to cannon the other’s skull into the reinforced glass of the window. Then he launched himself forward, fists pounding on the head and shoulders of the Rat, who let out a yelp of shock and then cowered over the wheel with scant regard for the way bits of landscape that were racing at him at forty miles an hour.
If it hadn’t been for Fletcher, possibly all of them would have died, bent around a tree or somersaulting into a field. But Fletcher recovered quickly, and he had a gun. For half a second—and half a second was all he had—he considered shooting Ash there and then, and explaining to his boss how he’d had no choice. But in fact there was another option, and he took it. He palmed the gun and swung it as best he could in the confines of the rocking car.
Fireworks burst behind Ash’s eyes. He left off what he was doing with an odd little pant, and blinked, and his free hand moved uncertainly toward his head. It was halfway there when the blackness took him.
* * *
Not long afterward, the blackness that had taken Hazel began to thin. Not all at once. First she was aware of sounds—the sound of a car, then a man’s voice. Then she felt strong hands and thought of her father. But he didn’t know where she was, let alone that she needed him, so probably it was Mickey Argyle’s men come back to finish the job their big black car had started. There was nothing she could do to stop them. She waited, not resigned exactly, just too tired to help herself.
“Open your eyes.” Though it certainly wasn’t her father’s, it was a voice that she recognized, even if for the moment she couldn’t place it. “Hazel, open your eyes and look at me. I know you’re in there.”
She was also too tired to argue. She did as she was told.
Seeing the figure bent over her did nothing to dispel her confusion. She was still imagining things. If it couldn’t be Alfred Best, it couldn’t be Johnny Fountain, either. “Wha’…?”
“That’s better,” growled Fountain, straightening up. He’d eased her into a more comfortable position under the tree, his folded jacket under her head. “You’re concussed—you’ve had a crack on the head. And you’re going to be pretty sore all over, but I don’t think there’s anything broken. Do you think there is?”
“What?”
He sighed and tried again. “Are you in pain? Can you move your arms and legs? How are your ribs?”
When she tried, she found he was right—she was sore all over. But there was no sharp, unignorable pain that said something wasn’t going to be better after a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. “I’m okay,” she mumbled.
It wasn’t true, and Fountain knew it wasn’t true. He could see a glazed sickness in her eyes. “Don’t try to move. I’ll call an ambulance. They’ll get you checked out at A&E. I’m sorry, I can’t wait with you. I need to find Ash.”
“Ash!” She’d all but forgotten. “Mickey Argyle has him.”
“You saw him?” The lowering of his heavy brow concentrated his gaze on her like a searchlight. “Argyle was here?”
Hazel went to shake her head, then thought better of it. “His heavies. At least, I guess so. No one else had any reason.…” But the effort of putting the words together into sentences was helping to clear her head. She looked at Fountain oddly. “Nobody knew we were here. Even you didn’t know we were here. Only Detective Inspector Gorman, and that was after they found us.”
“I know. He called me. You got lucky—I wasn’t fifteen minutes away. Heading home from a working lunch in Leicester. I thought I could get here before the local CID.”
Against his advice, Hazel was struggling to sit up. Fountain let her, watching to see if she’d topple over again. She didn’t. “You’re going after them? Argyle’s men, and Ash?”
The chief superintendent nodded.
“I’m coming, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re waiting here for the ambulance. You’re in no fit state.…”
“I’m coming,” she said again firmly—so firmly it ended the discussion. “I’ll stay in the car. I’ll work the radio. But I am coming.”
CHAPTER 26
FOUNTAIN HELPED her into his car, and by the time she’d remembered how a seat belt works they were on their way. She’d no idea how far ahead the 4x4 was, nor where it was heading. Back to Norbold? To a rendezvous elsewhere? Her hands dropped helplessly in her lap. “I don’t know where they’d take him.”
“I have an idea,” grunted Fountain. “Mickey has a workshop outside Liddam, this side of Norbold. I think it was a blacksmith’s shop. He took it in settlement of a debt years ago. Most people don’t know it’s his.”
“You think that’s where they’re going?”
“Nobody lives there and there are no passersby. If I wanted to talk to someone who didn’t want to talk to me, that would be my choice.”
Hazel tried not to focus on the implication that a meeting between Mickey Argyle and Gabriel Ash could get noisy. And messy. “Maybe Alice is there, too.”
Fountain shot her a sideways look. “You still think she’s in danger?”
Hazel made her protesting body swivel sideways on the car seat. She knew she must look like death warmed up. “He killed Jerome. He killed Nye Jackson. He thinks he killed me, and he means to kill Ash. Why would he draw the line at Alice?”
Fountain made no reply.
As her wits found their way back, like swallows settling on a telegraph line, Hazel remembered Patience. “The dog, sir! Ash’s dog. What happened to her?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see it. It wasn’t there when I arrived. Did they take it with them?”
“I don’t think so. She was with me, until … unless they came back for her, and why would they do that? It’s not like she can be a witness against them.”
“It must have run off.”
Hazel shook her head slowly, the picture unfolding behind her eyes. “No. She’s following them. She’s following the car.”
“Then she’s got a long journey ahead of her,” grunted Fountain. “We’ll probably catch up with her on the road.” But they didn’t.
* * *
Ash, too, woke to a sensation of hands. One hand, anyway, slapping his face—not gently, but with an insistency that rocked his battered brain. A voice
was calling him, though not by his name. “Hey, dummy! Wake up. I want to talk to you.”
Brain damage, which is what concussion is, surprises even the professionals with its puckishness, the way it may affect one faculty profoundly and leave another untouched. Ash couldn’t see for the constellation of stars exploding in the dark room, and couldn’t move for vertigo even though he was lying down. But he could hear, and he could think, too. He knew what had happened. He knew what was happening now, and he knew what was going to happen. He knew his ability to influence what was going to happen was limited by the proximity of a number of men, all of whom were stronger, fitter, and tougher than him.
“Mr. Argyle,” he slurred, mostly into gritty concrete. He concentrated all his efforts on getting his face off the floor. “About time, too. Now, where’s your daughter? You’d better not have hurt her.”
It was a long time since anyone had surprised Mickey Argyle. No, that wasn’t true. His daughter Alice had surprised him—shocked him to his foundations—only a couple of weeks ago, but before that he couldn’t remember the last time.
Men like Argyle can’t afford to be surprised. They need to know what’s going on around them all the time. They need to know how the people they’re dealing with will react in any situation. If they get it wrong, they can pay with their lives, literally or at least in a penal sense. Mickey Argyle didn’t like anyone saying or doing something unexpected. He spent serious money surrounding himself with the kind of help that could keep the unexpected at bay.
Sprawled on the floor of his blacksmith’s shop, grime on his tramp’s clothes and blood on his hands and face, was the Norbold village idiot, beaten helpless, his long, thin limbs as capable of doing his bidding as bits of well-chewed string. His eyes were sunk deep in a gaunt face masked by dirt, blood, and bruises; he was struggled to keep them open. And yet he knew things that nobody should have known. That his wife didn’t know. Things that existed only in Mickey’s head. For all that she’d done, he hadn’t laid a finger on Alice. He’d only thought—briefly, guiltily, dismissing the idea almost if not quite entirely—that he might have to. How could the village idiot know that?