by David Hodges
Even as her mind wrestled with the terrifying prospect of her own imminent death, the staircase came to an end. She found herself staring into a large underground chamber, lit by moonlight, which penetrated what would otherwise have been a Stygian darkness through gratings in the floor of the church above. The low roof was supported in the centre by a row of stone pillars, stretching away into the gloom like those of an ancient cistern she had once visited in Turkey, and the lids of a number of stone sarcophagi were just visible close to the walls on each side – just visible because the place was flooded to a depth of at least two to three feet by still murky water, which swallowed up the lower steps of the staircase, preventing further progress.
Instinctively, she swung round to face her captor who had now stopped a few feet away from her higher up the staircase. He emitted a short humourless laugh, apparently guessing what was going through her mind. ‘Yeah, bitch, you’ve got it, this is where Ellie Landy went for her last swim. As the boss said, she tried to hide down here, see, but no one can hide from good old Tommy.’
‘So you held her down on these steps with her head under the water until she drowned,’ Kate summarized bitterly. ‘You’re no better than an animal.’
He deliberately shone the torch in her face, temporarily blinding her.
‘Should have been nicer to me then, shouldn’t she?’ he snarled, his inane mirth abruptly subsiding. ‘Just like you should have been.’
Kate swallowed hard. ‘Maybe I could be?’ she blurted in a last ditch effort to delay the inevitable. ‘But not down here.’
He snorted. ‘Like the last time, you mean?’ he sneered, lowering the torch and glaring at her. ‘Don’t give me that crap. Anyway, it’ll be more fun just snuffing your lights out and, as this piece is fitted with a silencer, no one will hear a thing, so I can take my time.’
Kate felt for the step below the one on which she was standing and winced as cold water began dribbling into her boots through the zips.
‘Where would you like the first round?’ he sneered. ‘The gut maybe? Or would you prefer a shoulder? I’ve got a full mag, so we can play for at least a few minutes. You up for that?’
‘Shoot me and my colleagues will know it was murder,’ she said, conscious of the tremble in her voice. ‘They’ll hunt you and your boss down, wherever you try to hide.’
‘That sounds like a line from an old movie,’ he sneered, ‘and I’m really scared.’
He advanced a few more steps towards her, his torch blinding her again. She retreated even further, the water now over her ankles and almost lapping her calves. She could smell the dankness of the stonework and the unmistakable odour of decay.
Tommy laughed again. ‘Thinking about going for a swim with your boots on?’ he mocked. ‘I wouldn’t bother. You’ll have so many holes in you from my Browning before you hit the water that you’ll leak like a sieve.’
Kate heard him rack the pistol. ‘Maybe I’ll just put one between your tits and have done with it,’ he said, then added harshly, ‘So, bye-bye, bitch.’
The sound of the pistol was very loud in the confined space, bouncing off the walls in an ear-splitting echo, and Kate instinctively flinched, wondering in a detached sort of way how it could be so loud when the gun was fitted with a silencer. But the anticipated impact of the 9 mm round never came. Instead, Tommy’s huge figure – backlit by a powerful beam issuing from a point much higher up the staircase – seemed to shudder as part of his skull disintegrated and the torch and the automatic pistol slipped from his nerveless fingers to clatter down the steps in front of him. Then, as if caught by a camera in slow motion, his legs buckled and he pitched headfirst down the steps and into the water right in front of her, his face and shoulders submerged and his lower body draped over the last few visible steps like a broken mannequin.
For a moment Kate just stared down at his prostrate body in a state of shock. Then, slowly climbing back out of the water, she stepped gingerly, disbelievingly over his body, as if half-expecting him to suddenly reach out and grab her ankle. The light still blazed at her from halfway up the staircase and she shielded her eyes as she made her way towards it, her feet squelching inside her sodden boots.
Horse waited for her to reach him, the smell from the recently fired automatic pistol in his hand still hanging in the damp air. He lowered his torch a fraction as she stopped a few steps below him.
‘Why did you do that?’ she said quietly.
He grunted. ‘It was a good job I did,’ he replied. ‘I guessed Tommy would find you and knew what he would do to you when he did after your surgery on his face, so I made a point of following him.’
‘But why?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe because I’m not a murderer and I don’t go in for the killing of innocent people anyway – especially other cops,’ and he added, tongue in cheek, ‘even if they are blundering swedes.’
She ignored the dig. ‘What are you going to do now?’
He emitted a cynical laugh. ‘Run, seems to be a good idea?’
‘Where to?’
‘Wherever the Sandman goes – he’s already decided it’s time to clear out of here.’
‘What about the floods and all his merchandise?’
‘Sometimes you have to cut your losses and he reckons this place is getting much too hot for us now.’
‘Both good swimmers, are you?’
‘He has a fast boat in one of the barns and a plane ready at a private airfield not too far from here.’
‘And you’re going to stay with him after what you’ve just done to his favourite thug?’
‘No choice. He’s my only ticket out of the country.’
‘But he’ll kill you when he finds out.’
‘Hopefully I’ll have split by then – world’s a big place,’ and he laughed. ‘I might even find some rogue state that’s looking to recruit bent coppers.’
‘Give yourself up.’
He turned away from her. ‘Yeah, right. British justice and all that? No thanks.’
Then his torch was abruptly extinguished and with a soft, ‘Stay cool,’ he was gone, leaving her to stumble weakly after him, her body still shaking from the shock of what she had just witnessed and her feet inside the waterlogged boots fast turning into ice-blocks.
The crypt door had been left half open and she pushed through the gap like someone in a trance, straightening in the aisle beyond and standing there for a few moments, swaying drunkenly in a brilliant patch of moonlight, bewildered and uncomprehending.
And it was there that Hayden found her when he burst through the porch doors with the force of an express train to catch her in his arms as she collapsed in front of him.
Gabriel Lessing had phoned for breakdown assistance on his backup mobile half an hour ago, but so far no one had turned up. He was still sitting behind the wheel of his Volvo where Hayden had left him – crouched down as low as possible in the strengthening moonlight to avoid being seen – when Roscoe materialized through the patchy mist in his battered Honda Civic, a police Ford Transit filled with uniformed officers close behind him. As they clambered out on to the road, Lessing regained his courage at the sight of all the uniforms and scrambled from his car.
‘I want to make a complaint,’ he exclaimed, buttonholing Roscoe. ‘One of your detectives – a man called Lewis, I believe – assaulted me and threw my car keys into the water. I’ve been left stranded in this damned place ever since.’
Roscoe stared at him with open hostility, noting out of the corner of his eye people emerging curiously from the adjacent cottages, attracted by the sight of so many police. ‘Mr Lessing, isn’t it?’ he growled, turning his back on them. ‘What are you doing here?’
The agency man faltered, suddenly realizing he had dropped himself in it. ‘I – I was following up a story.’
‘What story?’
Lessing swallowed hard and tried to bluff it out. ‘That’s my affair,’ he replied with a resurgence of indignation, faltering again wh
en he saw a couple of fire service vehicles suddenly arrive, one pulling a trailer with a large rubber dinghy mounted on it.
‘What’s going on?’ he said, changing the subject.
Roscoe produced a cigarette and lit up, but ignored the question and, as he watched the fire service personnel off-loading the dinghy, he came out with another of his own. ‘Why did Lewis throw your keys in the water, Mr Lessing? And where is he now?’
Lessing stared at him blankly, suddenly stumped for an answer.
To his surprise Roscoe prodded him hard in the chest with one finger. ‘I know why he chucked your keys away, Lessing,’ he said, now dropping any pretence of politeness, ‘because he called me and told me how you had run out on Kate Lewis. You’re in deep shit, my friend, and I suggest you get yourself a very good publicist before your mates in Fleet Street hear about this and tear you apart.’
Then, leaving the little man babbling incoherently, he followed half a dozen of his officers down to the flooded section of the main road where the dinghy had been eased into the water and climbed aboard.
As the outboard motor sprang into life and the dinghy surged away from the bank into the patchy moonlit mist, Lessing stared after it, sensing that, far from landing the scoop of his life, when this story broke, he would be lucky if he even had a news agency left to run.
Hayden settled Kate gently in an end pew, removed his Parka and slipped it over her shoulders, pulling it across her chest over her anorak as she shivered inside. Then he bent down beside her to stroke her hair and peer up anxiously into her face. ‘You OK, old girl?’ he said. ‘Gordon Bennett, I thought I’d lost you.’
‘I’ll be fine, Hayd,’ she whispered, then, forcing a grin, quipped wickedly, ‘But what took you so long?’
He snorted, missing her feeble attempt at humour. ‘Dashed red tape, old girl, that’s what,’ he replied, then massaged his jaw with one cupped hand. ‘And when I finally got here, I ran into that Gittings feller hiding in the shadows. Blackguard decked me before I even knew he was there, then ran off like the weasel he is.’
She grabbed his wrist. ‘He saved my life, Hayd,’ she said, shuddering as she thought of Tommy’s skull being blown apart, ‘and there’s a corpse in the crypt, which would have been me if he hadn’t turned up.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘I expect we’d find a few dead-uns down there anyway, old girl,’ he replied, ‘so one more won’t make any difference.’
She drew in her breath sharply, her frustration evident. ‘You have to listen to me,’ she said. ‘Horse killed one of the Sandman’s thugs to save me. We’ve got to bring him in before the Sandman finds out or he’s dead.’
Hayden shook his head. ‘No time for that,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ve got to get you out of here to safety. I’ve already been through to Roscoe and the troops are on their way, so we must leave it to them now.’
She put her hands against his chest and tried to push him away. ‘I can’t,’ she gasped, her natural stubbornness trying to re-assert itself in spite of her condition. ‘I know the house and I am the only one who can ID the Sandman. I have to be there when they go in.’
He stayed put, his bulk preventing her getting up. ‘You may be the sergeant here,’ he said with uncharacteristic firmness, ‘but I am your husband and I’m telling you, there is no way you are going back into that house and that’s final. I’ll give Roscoe another call and tell him where we are.’
She sank against the back of the pew, suddenly too exhausted to argue anymore. ‘So what do you suggest we do in the meantime, Mr Masterful?’ she said weakly. ‘Say a prayer?’
He released a soft chuckle. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but we could always take a look in the vestry to see if there’s any communion wine there worth sampling.’
CHAPTER 21
Roscoe was cock-a-hoop. ‘Got most of ’em, anyway,’ he exclaimed. ‘HQ brought in an armed response team in the chopper just as we got to the house and we caught the whole lot napping. Not a shot fired.’
It was now ten hours since the raid on the house in Lowmoor and watery sunlight stole into the conference room at Highbridge police station through the grimy windows. The wash-up – or preliminary debrief – had been set up in advance of a reluctantly convened press conference and the mark of exhaustion was clearly written on most of the faces gathered around the long shiny table.
‘Who exactly did we get, Guv?’ Kate queried tightly.
Roscoe frowned and glanced at both Hart and Ricketts before turning back to her. The DI had been against Kate being there at all, seeing her as a potentially disruptive influence after her ordeal, and he would rather have seen her packed off home to rest – Hayden’s view too. But she had insisted on attending the wash-up and Ricketts – showing his usual lack of empathy – had agreed.
‘We nicked five of them,’ Roscoe said awkwardly. ‘Two known faces from the Smoke – low-life enforcers – and three rogue pharmacists still in their bloody white coats.’
‘But no Sandman?’ Kate persisted.
Another deeper frown. ‘We found no one bearing the description you gave us, Kate,’ the DI said, then added, exuberantly slamming his fist on the table, ‘but we smashed the bloody gang, didn’t we? And we’ve seized the biggest stash of illegal drugs the UK has ever seen, plus all the kit they’ve been using. Not bad for a night’s work, eh?’
‘But that still doesn’t alter the fact that the Sandman got away,’ Hart commented drily.
Roscoe grimaced, suddenly deflated. ‘Yeah, it seems he had a dinghy of some sort in one of the barns and he and Gittings – and maybe another low-life scarpered in it across the flooded fields. The chopper lost them in the dark.’
‘Well, they can’t have got far. They must be on foot somewhere out on the marsh?’ Hart continued.
Roscoe shook his head gloomily. ‘Just heard that a Traffic mobile has found an inflatable dumped in a gateway on some high ground above the flood level about two miles away and heavy tyre tracks leading out on to a drove that look like those made by a 4 x 4.’
‘It may not be the same boat. There are loads of them in use around here at the moment,’ Ricketts pointed out, running his long thin fingers through his thatch of blond hair.
‘Yeah, but it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it and it was a damned funny place to leave an inflatable.’
‘Then Pavlovic must have had access to a vehicle?’ Kate put in again.
Roscoe nodded. ‘Probably knew of some other local low-life he could call on his mobile to pick him and his crew up.’
‘Which means this Pavlovic character is free to start up somewhere else?’ Ricketts commented with more than a trace of critical acid in his tone.
‘We’ve put out an all-ports warning,’ Roscoe snapped defensively, ‘and Interpol will also be advized. Nothing more we can do at this stage.’
‘What about the private airfield Horse told me about?’ Kate asked.
‘Checks are being carried out as we speak,’ the uniformed chief inspector at the far end of the table put in. ‘But there are several operational and allegedly disused strips in the south-west, so it could take a while.’
‘By which time it will be too late – if it’s not too late already?’ Kate went on.
The chief inspector said nothing, but shrugged in helpless agreement.
‘And on top of everything,’ Hart added grimly, ‘we now have a prat of an undercover copper who’s got himself in the frame for murder.’
Kate’s eyes smouldered. ‘A prat who saved my life,’ she said pointedly. ‘The thug he shot was about to put a bullet in me. What else should Horse have done?’
Hart didn’t answer and there were a few moments of embarrassed silence, which Roscoe broke with a characteristic grunt. ‘That will be taken into consideration when we finally bring him in, Kate,’ he reassured gruffly, kicking the issue in to touch, ‘so let’s leave it there for the moment, shall we?’
He turned away from her, his boot-button eyes darting from face
to face. ‘And I suggest we leave everything else as it is for now too. Forensic teams are already on site, together with the drug squad, and Mr Hart here is arranging for a team from the NCA to attend later this morning. The pathologist and coroner’s officer are at the church dealing with the bloody stiff in the crypt and we’ve taped off the church and the house and put a cordon in place. So there’s nothing more we can do until the “woodentops” start making their routine house to house inquiries in a couple of hours.’
The uniformed chief inspector flushed at the uncomplimentary reference to his officers, but before he could cut Roscoe off at the knees, Hayden jumped to his feet with a wide grin. ‘Then maybe we should get some lunch?’ he said. ‘My stomach feels as though my throat’s been cut.’
Ricketts gave him an old-fashioned look, but nodded, shuffling a file of papers in front of him and also climbing to his feet. ‘There will be a full debrief at 1500 hours,’ he said. ‘Chief Super and ACC, Territorial Policing, will be here then with the force press officer. I suggest we get our heads down for a few hours’ kip in the meantime. It’s going to be another long day.’
‘Home then?’ Hayden beamed at Kate, easing her chair out from the table so she could climb to her feet as the others filed out of the conference room. ‘What’s it to be? One egg or two?’
She shook her head with a sour grimace. ‘You really are something else, aren’t you?’ she snapped.
‘I know,’ he said, totally unabashed. ‘But that’s why you married me, isn’t it, sweetness?’
Kate abandoned her big double bed just four hours after climbing between the sheets. She had turned down Hayden’s offer of lunch, but a hot shower had relaxed her to the point where sleep had come easily. Yet it hadn’t lasted. A succession of horrific dreams, coupled with renewed pain from the lacerations and bruises she had sustained in her escape from the house in Lowmoor, had given her no peace and in the end, she had decided to get up two hours ahead of the main operational debrief that was due to take place at Highbridge police station at 1500 hours, leaving Hayden snoring away as his stomach digested the mammoth helping of sausage, bacon and eggs he had put away.
