The phone rang and he snatched it up. ‘They’ve picked him up at the bridge,’ said Control. ‘Still following. He went round Edinburgh on the ring road and he’s heading south on the A Sixty-eight. There was a personal message to you. They said, “Leave it to the professionals.”’
So Munster was coming. Ian made coffee and paced the floor with the mug in his hand. The American was being given rope so that he could reveal his target. He might be heading for the target area now. But if he was coming to Newton Lauder to take action against Sheila Blayne – and himself, he recalled suddenly; another damning witness – the man would have to be pulled in, whether or not his ultimate target was known. In which case, there would be no point allowing an incident to develop at all. He kept telling himself that one unarmed officer, interfering with the actions of a trained team who had worked together in the past, could do more harm than good.
He looked out of the window. The sun was well up and the sky was clear. It was going to be another fine day and he wanted to be out in it.
He sat down and told himself to relax. He might as well have tried to fly. A glance at the phone directory would have given Munster Keith’s home address at Briesland House. And Deborah was there. He tried in his mind to visualise what was to come. Munster would spy out the land before approaching. Probably he would settle down in the woods, watching the house to see who emerged. From a distance, Deborah might be mistaken for Sheila Blayne.
With a shock he realised that, allowing for the time which the previous message would have taken to be relayed from the car via Edinburgh and Newton Lauder to himself, Munster and his shadows must be well on the way. The sting in the tail of the last message rankled. He decided to disregard the rule-book, to head for Briesland House and make sure that no arrogant nitwit waited that extra, fatal second for the sake of conclusive evidence. Leaving it to the professionals might mean giving Munster time to kill.
He was halfway to the door when the phone rang again. He hurled himself at it.
Control’s voice was troubled. ‘Urgent message,’ she said. ‘They’re held up. A tanker overturned, this side of Soutra. The road’s blocked but the suspect had already gone by.’
‘Tell them to commandeer a car on the other side.’ Ian could hear the shake in his own voice.
‘There are injured. Tailbacks are forming and the emergency services may not be able to get through. They say they must stay to help.’
‘Where’s the Chief Superintendent?’ Munro was the only person who could authorise the issue of firearms.
‘He’s out of touch until this afternoon.’
Ian thought frantically. ‘Is anyone available with a plain car?’ he asked.
‘According to the roster . . .’ She paused and he heard the rustle of paper. ‘Only yourself.’
‘When did the accident happen?’
‘The message was timed ten twenty-two.’
He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven. The men in the car had decided that the aftermath of the accident took precedence over reporting in. Ian took a deep breath. ‘Get on the phone to Briesland House. Warn Keith Calder that the assassin may be headed his way.’
He held the line. After several minutes, Control came back. ‘The number’s engaged.’
‘Any cars out that way?’
‘On a Sunday? You’re joking.’ Staffing was always cut to the bone on a Sunday, for financial reasons.
‘Keep trying that number,’ Ian said. ‘I’m going out there.’
He slammed down the phone, grabbed up his personal radio and ran for the door. His car was an oven after standing in the sun. The dashboard clock told him that Munster could have reached Briesland House, if that were his destination, half an hour ago.
The engine failed to start at the first attempt. He fought off an urge to get out and run. It started at the second spin. He jinked through the side-streets like a frightened hare.
The town road, usually empty on the Sabbath, was busy with churchgoers and Sunday drivers. He had to wait, drumming on the wheel, while a Land Rover rattled past. It was followed by a short string of cars. He made ready to dart through a short gap but was balked by a van coming the other way. The last car of the string went by. He nearly missed it but realised just in time that it was a grey Ford Escort with the blunt profile of Raymond Munster at the wheel.
He wanted to dash out to Briesland House to assure himself that no bloodbath had occurred, but he forced himself to let another car go by and then turned in pursuit.
His radio was making noises at him. He picked it up.
‘Mrs Calder answered,’ Control said. ‘Mr Calder had driven off a few minutes ago with Mr Cardinal and two ladies. They plan to visit Abbotsdale Castle. I thought I shouldn’t give her the message, but she’s guessed that something’s up. What shall I tell her?’
If Molly was at home, the two ladies were almost certainly Sheila Blayne and Deborah. The Land Rover leading the convoy had looked very like the tatty vehicle belonging to Keith’s brother-in-law. He decided that Munster must have arrived in time to see them leave and was now following.
‘Tell her from me that everything’s under control,’ Ian said. He hoped to hell that he knew what he was talking about.
*
At the junction with the main road, the Land Rover turned south. Ian watched from behind a Mercedes pulling a horse-box. Most of the other cars had stopped in the town and the Escort had dropped back. But, despite the blockage to the north, there was a steady trickle of traffic on the main road, of drivers who had given up the wait and were seeking an alternative route. Munster slotted himself into it, four cars behind the Land Rover. The Mercedes with its trailer had to wait. A placid grey horse studied Ian impassively over the tailgate as he fumed behind. The Mercedes moved at last and Ian started to carve his way through the traffic until he had the grey Escort in his sights again. The Escort seemed content to follow, a quarter of a mile behind the Land Rover. That made sense. Munster would have a better chance of attack and escape out on the moors. Ian had only a vague recollection of where Abbotsdale Castle was, but from a childhood visit he remembered that it was a desolate spot.
His car was not fitted with a police radio. He used his handset to report his position.
‘The officers from Edinburgh expect to be clear in another ten minutes,’ Control told him. Her voice was already becoming faint. ‘They’ll come after you.’
‘Tell them to hurry. He could turn off at any time.’
‘Noted. And there’s a message from Edinburgh. The body has now been identified as that of a David MacNair, missing since Tuesday. No connection with Robert Hall.’
The traffic rolled on, chrome and glass winking in the bright sun. Sometimes he could make out the Land Rover far ahead, but he concentrated on watching the Escort from three cars behind while turning over in his mind the meaning of the message. If Robert Hall was alive, where was he?
Ten miles further on, he tried his radio again. Control was unintelligible. He waited until the road climbed and tried again. Control answered, very faintly. ‘. . . coming now,’ said the girl’s voice. ‘About twenty minutes behind you.’
‘How do I recognise them?’ he asked.
‘Three men in a blue Vauxhall . . .’ The radio went dead. Ian said a very rude word. ‘. . . heard that . . .’ Control’s voice said indignantly. Her voice faded for the last time. Ian tried other channels, but the Border hills were around them and the radio remained silent.
In another few miles, when the hills to be seen ahead were in England, the Escort turned right and stopped in the mouth of a road which led across the moors in the general direction of Carlisle. The Land Rover was out of sight; presumably it had made the turn and Munster was idling to let it get ahead.
Ian drove past, keeping his eyes ahead and leaning back so that his face was in shadow. He turned in another road-end and came back. The Escort had gone. His first impulse was to race after it, but he parked where the grey car had been and tried h
is radio again, watching the main road for a blue Vauxhall and switching from channel to channel in the hope of raising the Vauxhall and its armed occupants.
Abbotsdale Castle was somewhere among the moors ahead, but it was doubtful whether the ruins were signposted. If the other cars turned off, he might not find them again in time. A five-minute delay meant at least ten before he could hope to catch up. He set off, driving fast but still managing the radio with one hand. Once he heard a few words in a Northumbrian accent but, before he could ask for a message to be relayed, contact was lost again.
The road was narrow but mostly straight, rising and dipping between the rolling moors. Miles fled by beneath him, so many miles that he was sure that the others must have turned off. Then he came over a crest to see a small grey car crawling along the road, half a mile ahead. He slowed to the other car’s speed, breathing more easily.
The Escort vanished from sight. When Ian came to the same place, the road ahead was empty for a mile; then, only a few hundred yards ahead, he saw the Escort. Once again it had turned off and stopped, this time a hundred yards into a rough track across the moors. A trace of dust hanging in the air suggested that the Land Rover had passed that way.
Ian had no option but to drive on, past the grey car and the silhouette of Raymond Munster. He watched in his mirror. The grey car moved off along the track. When it was out of sight, he turned in the road and went back.
The track was rough. It had never been planned but followed an ancient route where horsemen had found it easiest to pass, avoiding rocky terrain and sudden patches of peat-bog. Heather had re-established itself along the central hump between wheel-ruts, so that he could hear it dragging against his sump. The Land Rover would be making better time here than either of the following cars.
*
The landscape was becoming more broken. The track, which had been made by horses and since little used except by the occasional naturalist, archaeologist or hiker in search of history, was so irregular that even the Land Rover had had to make small detours.
Raymond Munster, in the Escort, decided that the car had come far enough. There would be no profit in doing what he had come to do unless his retreat was secure. He wondered for a moment whether the occupants of the Land Rover had chosen this method of shaking him off and were now descending to another road by some other track, but he decided to ignore that risk. He had been careful and they had no reason to expect a follower.
On the seat beside him was the shell of a large tape-recorder. He had spent much of the previous day in his hotel room, transferring the modified rifle out of the camcorder case, which had been much too clearly represented in the girl’s sketch. But there was no need for such refinement at the moment. It took only a minute or two to demount the gun from the case and pocket the weight of the spare magazines. He now had a small submachine-gun in his hands and more than enough ammunition for his purpose. At close range, it would be devastating.
Fifty yards ahead, the track crested a saddle between two low hills. He left the Escort in the middle of the way and walked forward until his view opened up. Ahead, the track wound its way to another hill which rose sharply out of flat bogland. A ruin topped the hill. Most of the walls were tumbled, but from fragments of battlement and the corner of a tower it seemed to have been a small castle. The Land Rover stood below the hill and small figures could be seen climbing towards the ruin.
There would be no chance of approaching the ruin unobserved. Very well, let them come to him.
Near the car was the remains of a sheiling, a rough cottage built by a shepherd or drover as a summer shelter. Being of no importance, it had not been razed by Sussex’s troops and most of the dry-stone walls stood at least waist-high. Even the Land Rover could not pass his car where it was. It made a perfect site for an ambush.
Luck, he decided, was now making amends for the ill chance that had brought the artist to Broughty Ferry and a rescuer close behind. Reassured by the gunsmith, who had certainly been too terrified to lie, he had decided that his mission could go ahead. But, having a day or two in hand, he had nevertheless also decided to visit Newton Lauder. If the man Calder, who had advertised for a gunsmith, had taken on Bruce Ailmer’s decamping employee, it might be interesting to see what other involvement Calder might have.
He had barely settled into a hiding place in the woodland overlooking Briesland House when the Land Rover went by and he had recognised the woman. With a sudden jolt, he had also recognised Paul Cardinal – a much more interesting target. Two for the price of one, he told himself. It only needed the third, the red-haired man who had assaulted his wedding tackle, to make his day.
*
The third enemy had nearly blundered within sight of Raymond Munster, but caution and instinct had combined to save him. Ian’s car was out of sight beyond an earlier hump in the track and from behind a haphazard rocky outcrop he watched Munster settle down to wait. Above and far beyond the sheiling, he could see the ruins on their small hill.
He tried his radio again. It was no more than a useless plastic box tarted up to look as though it had a hi-tech function.
If he went back to try to establish contact with the officers in the blue Vauxhall, God alone knew how long it might take or what might happen in the meantime. Munster’s view forward was cut off by a swell of the ground. It might take him an hour to work his way through dead ground to where he could break cover and run for the castle, but an hour might be enough . . . and if it was not, would the outcome be any the worse? With luck, he should at least be in time to intercept the Land Rover on its way back.
Fumbling in his haste, he hunted until he found paper and a pencil. He scribbled a hasty warning of an ambush ahead, stuck it under a windscreen wiper and set off at a determined jog-trot, trying simultaneously to watch for sudden bog-patches and to keep an eye open in Munster’s direction to ensure that there was always a hill, or at least a fold of ground, between them. As he jogged he sweated and the midges came out of the damp ground and dined royally on him. He slapped at them and damned his luck and the midges and the warm sun, but most of all the danger to Deborah. And the others, he reminded himself.
*
Keith’s party arrived, panting gently, at the level of the castle. Much of the stonework had been blown or tumbled outward so that the small hill was peppered with masonry blocks, almost lost in rank grass and heather. Between them they were carrying two spades, a crowbar and a sledge-hammer, but there were other tools waiting in the Land Rover.
Sheila looked around the barren countryside and shivered. ‘What a desolate place!’ she said.
‘It was never meant to be welcoming,’ Deborah said. ‘Just impregnable.’
‘And it was already a ruin when Laird’s Tam visited here, more’n two hundred years ago?’ Paul said. ‘If I got you right, it had already been a ruin for a hundred years. We don’t have anything that old in the States. The fights this old place must have seen!’ He moved through the remains of a doorway into what had been the base of the tower. There was a deep recess in the remains of the corner wall. ‘Would this have been the fireplace?’
The others had followed him. Keith took a quick look and shook his head. ‘The loo,’ he said. Paul looked blank. ‘The john,’ Keith explained. ‘Just a shaft coming down with a slab at each floor level. The more senior you were, the higher you lived. Those below had to look out for themselves. Which suggests that the private apartments were over here. We’ll try the far side.’
He picked his way carefully to the other end of the tower. The walls were lower. A drift of fallen stones gave him a start and he pulled himself to a seated position above head-level. ‘Here we are. There’s the remains of a flue in this wall.’ He turned to look behind him, almost losing his balance. ‘I thought so. Most of the wall went outward into the courtyard – it must have done, if the hearth was exposed when Laird’s Tam visited. There’s been another fall since, or else he pulled some more wall down to cover his hidey-hole. We’ve go
t some stone-heaving to do.’
They set to work. Deborah and Sheila tossed the smaller stones away while Keith and Paul, aided by occasional use of the crowbar, rolled the larger masonry aside. The top of the fireplace opening emerged but, as they progressed, the heaps of discarded stones became more intrusive and the work more laborious. It was another half-hour before they came down to a solid slab of stone and traces of ash from a long-dead fire.
‘Looks as though it’s been here for ever,’ Paul said doubtfully.
‘It’s been here a long time,’ Keith admitted. ‘Of course, there may have been another fireplace. Or Deborah’s reconstruction of the message was speculative. We may have got some of it wrong. Or Aikhowe may have beaten us to it. But I’m damned if I’m giving up just yet.’
‘Me neither,’ Paul said.
Keith seated himself on a large stone block. ‘Take a rest while one of the girls goes back to the Land Rover for the jack.’
When they resumed work, they managed to get first the crowbar and then the jack under a corner of the heavy slab. At last it came upright. They jumped away as it toppled back against the tumbled masonry.
Underneath was sand. Keith ran his fingers through it. ‘Bone dry,’ he said. ‘Thank the Lord!’ He wiped his forehead with a moist handkerchief, leaving a trail of dirt.
‘You two men sit and rest,’ Sheila said. ‘You’ve worked hard. We can do this bit.’
Paul and Keith were happy to cool off while the two girls scraped the loose sand aside with their hands. Keith went down to the Land Rover for beer.
Deborah stopped work suddenly. ‘He wouldn’t have buried a dead sheep here, would he? There was something about a widow’s ewe in the letter.’
‘Fish it out,’ Keith said. ‘They’ll have sewn it into a sheepskin so that the tallow would protect it. That’s what they wanted the widow’s sheep for.’
Deborah placed a bundle in his hands. ‘So Aikhowe never found the message in the Bible.’
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