by Jo Bannister
He leaned down and put the knife against Ash’s cheek. Hazel saw a spot of blood well slowly from its tip. Ash gave a tiny moan, like a sleeping man bothered by a fly.
‘But suppose it was a different choice.’ Fisher was watching her closely. ‘A choice between a woman you hardly know and a man who seems to care about you quite a lot. This is a pretty small knife, but it’ll go through every part of a human body except bone. I can take him apart in front of you. I can give you a living anatomy lesson. This is the eye, and this is what happens when you cut into it. This is the heart: we’ll leave it pumping for now. Now, lungs – he’s got two of those …’
She wanted to believe it was just talk. It’s a lot easier to talk about butchering someone than to actually do it. Most people, even most bad people, don’t have the stomach. But this was someone who had pursued an innocent family for seventeen years, who had already killed, and Hazel had the sick certainty that John Fisher could and would carry out his threat. And Ash was unconscious – helpless. And something could happen in the next minutes or hours to keep Fisher from reaching Elizabeth Lim, but only the decision Hazel made now would keep him from blinding Ash. People would understand that it was only a betrayal if she’d had a genuine choice; wouldn’t they?
What she was fighting for was time. What had Ash said? – that when he failed to find her in the Clover Hill dam, Dave Gorman would follow him to Spell. Well, he wasn’t going to find her there, was he? He’d be here in half an hour.
But if she offered to take Fisher to Elizabeth Lim, they would none of them be here when he arrived. And if she told him where to find her, Fisher would cut both her throat and Ash’s, seal the ice-house and go to deal with Lim alone.
‘Well?’ demanded John Fisher. ‘What’s it to be? Your weird but obviously devoted friend, or a woman you hardly know?’
Hazel swallowed. If it really was a straight choice, her heart had no difficulty making it. ‘I’ll tell you. I will tell you. But you have to promise me that you’ll let us go. You won’t hurt either of us, and you’ll let us go.’ The whine of hope in her voice was only just the right side of pathetic.
‘You tell me where to find Felicity Cho, and I’ll leave you and – what’s his name? – Ash here, locked in but unharmed, and make arrangements for someone to free you in a few hours’ time. How’s that?’ He was watching her carefully. He knew he couldn’t trust her to do what he wanted just because she said she would. But he couldn’t resist the siren appeal of hope.
This vendetta had occupied and overshadowed all his adult life, and finally an end was in sight. And not just an end but a victory. The man he blamed for his father’s death was dead. The man who was actually responsible for his father’s death was dead. Edward Cho’s wife was dead, and his daughter was almost within his grasp. If he could persuade Hazel Best to give up Felicity Cho, he could persuade Felicity to give up her brother, and then it would be over. He’d have accomplished everything he’d been tasked with. He’d have eradicated the very names of those who had destroyed two families.
There had been times in the last seventeen years when he’d wondered if they must have been crazy to start this. When the chance of reaching this point had seemed vanishingly remote. When he’d been afraid he was going to waste his life in pursuit of the unattainable. But he’d been wrong. It had been attainable after all, and very soon now he’d be able to tie a ribbon round the last of it and present it as a thing complete. He knew the pleasure that gift would afford. He’d have been less than human if he hadn’t wanted to believe that Hazel was telling the truth.
It was that hope, that desperate desire to believe, that blinded him to the suspicion that she’d caved in too easily.
‘You have to promise,’ Hazel said again. ‘I want your word that you won’t hurt us.’
‘You have it,’ swore John Fisher. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘All right then. Have you got a piece of paper and a biro? There isn’t an address as such, or if there is I don’t know it. I’ll draw you a map. There’s a disused foundry behind Derby Road in Norbold. Meadowvale CID have fitted out a flat there for use as a safe house. Do you know Derby Road?’
Fisher had found an envelope in one pocket and a stub of pencil in another: he pushed them towards her. ‘I’ll find it. Where’s the foundry?’
‘You turn off Derby Road between the scout hall and the chippie – see, there.’ She was sketching rapidly, Fisher peering over her moving hand. ‘The foundry is the last building you come to. The door will be locked, but there’s a keypad – you can let yourself in with the combination. Inside the door are some stairs, and the flat’s at the top, on the right. She’ll be on her own.’
Hazel started to pass him the envelope, then took it back. ‘Wait, you need the combination for the door.’ She started to write, then: ‘Damn.’
‘What?’
‘The point’s broken.’
He frowned. ‘What?’
‘The point. Of the pencil. It’s broken.’ She held it out for him to see. ‘You’ve got a knife – sharpen it.’
There are few tools as versatile as a knife. You can use it to kill an animal, to prepare it for cooking, and to eat it. You can take cuttings for your garden with it, cut a piece of ribbon to tie up a birthday present, make an extra hole in your belt if you lose or gain weight. You can threaten someone’s life with it, and you can sharpen a pencil.
But – and this is important – you can’t do any two of these things at the same time. The moment John Fisher took the broken pencil in his left hand and applied the blade to it with his right, he surrendered, if only momentarily, that command of the situation which the knife as a weapon had given him.
The moment would have come and gone, and left nothing changed, if Hazel hadn’t been waiting for it – hadn’t planned for it, and nurtured it like a gardener raising a precious orchid. That moment when Fisher had both hands and brain occupied with something other than the intention to hurt her, Hazel made a determined grab for control. She slashed the envelope across his eyes, more to shock than disable him, and dived for his knife hand. Like a sprinter coming off the starting blocks, her crouch magnified her momentum, and she slammed into him, shoulder first, both hands fastening onto his right wrist with all the strength she could still generate after everything she’d been through.
For another moment, or maybe three, the outcome was in doubt. They rolled together, a tangle of arms and legs, gasping and grunting and struggling for supremacy, a wrestling match in which the rules counted for nothing because another word for Winner was going to be Survivor. Hazel Best was tall and sturdy and fit, and she’d been taught how to disarm a violent man. But John Fisher was taller, heavier and stronger, and totally unhampered by the possibility that the Independent Police Complaints Commission might accuse him of using excessive force. Hazel could have won against those odds, but only in the first few seconds. A battle that raged for longer than that was always going to favour Goliath over David.
In the end, it wasn’t the knife which was the deciding factor, it was Fisher’s left fist. Dropping the pencil, it came round like a wrecking ball, slamming into her head and hurling her against the curved wall. Stars exploded in the dim cave. Long before she’d worked out which way was up and got her face off the stones, she knew it was over.
‘You bloody bitch!’ yelled Fisher, bubbling through the gore pouring from his nose. Hazel thought she’d managed to break his front tooth as well. It wasn’t a lot of consolation, but it was some. If nothing else, it might make Dave Gorman wonder how a man broke his tooth pruning rosebushes.
‘You bloody, bloody bitch!’ He came at her like a sumo wrestler, hunched under the low roof, striding over Ash’s prone body. Fisher wasn’t just angry, he was affronted: his rage filled the little stone igloo. There was nowhere to escape to, nowhere to hide, and Hazel had no energy left with which to fight. All she could do now was curl up tight against the wall, arms around her spinning head, and wait for him
to take his revenge. It was, after all, his currency of choice.
He still had the knife, but now it was almost an encumbrance. He was too filled with wrath to use it surgically, to extract payment from her in precise increments of pain; if he used it now he’d kill her instantly, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He still needed that number to access the flat. Fists were the answer. He could beat her to a bloody pulp and still leave her capable of telling him what he wanted to know. Begging to tell him what he wanted to know.
He folded the knife and stuffed it into his pocket, and fastened both big hands in her clothes and lifted her towards him, her legs dragging across the stone setts. When her face was level with his he snarled, ‘I can make you wish you were never born.’
‘No,’ whispered Hazel. ‘You can only make me wish you were never born.’
What happened then? Only with hindsight was she able to figure it out. All she was aware of in the moment made no sense. The dim light from the door dropped abruptly towards darkness; she caught a glimpse of movement over Fisher’s shoulder; then the man let out a startled grunt and hurtled backwards, ending up like a beached crab, on his back on the floor where Ash had lain.
Because Ash wasn’t there any more. Ash had moved. Recovering his wits at the last best moment – or possibly, lying quiet and biding his time until that moment came – he’d risen behind Fisher like an avenging angel, occulting the light, and hooking a powerful arm round Fisher’s neck had swung him hard against the wall. Hazel heard the collision of his skull with the stones as a sick dull thud.
Gabriel Ash spent so much time trying not to loom over people that it was easy to forget he was a big man. Now he was eating properly and taking some exercise, he had recovered much of his strength: when he hurled someone into a wall, they stayed hurled.
But he was taking no chances with Fisher. Perhaps he was concerned that, given a second’s respite, the gardener might draw his knife again. Perhaps he was aware that Fisher was a little younger, a little bigger and probably a great deal fitter than he was. Perhaps he felt that, given the stakes, it was important to render the man incapable in the shortest possible time.
In fact Hazel didn’t think that any of these considerations, all of them valid, was uppermost in his mind. They were rational judgements, capable of being defended rationally, and right now Ash was not a rational being. Consumed by fury, he hauled Fisher to his knees and hit him in the face, again and again and again. The man was fifteen stone of dead weight in his hand, offering neither resistance nor defence, but Ash went on hitting him as if stopping was not an option. As if a dam had breached somewhere in his head and the turbid waters would have to drain before it would be possible to contemplate an end.
‘Gabriel. Gabriel,’ insisted Hazel. ‘Stop it! You’re going to kill him.’
But Ash didn’t stop, until she had crawled over on her hands and knees and taken hold of the bloodied fist that was a hard knot of bones tight-packed by muscles and tendons into a convenient battering ram.
‘It’s all right,’ she panted, moving his hand back to his side. ‘He can’t hurt either of us any more. Let him go.’
After a moment he did. John Fisher’s unconscious body slid down the slope of the wall and lay still.
Finally Ash looked at Hazel as if he’d been away and was only now finding his way back. ‘He … I …’ He tried again. ‘Are you all right?’
Hazel managed a feeble smile. ‘More or less. You?’
‘I … I’m not sure.’ He looked at the man crumpled at his feet. ‘I did that.’ It was half a question.
‘He was armed,’ said Hazel flatly, ‘and he was most certainly dangerous; and anyway, the broken tooth is down to me. Anyone who thinks we used unnecessary force can’ – the ghost of her mother wagged an admonitory finger just in time – ‘try to prove it.’
Ash looked again, wincing. He couldn’t see a broken tooth, only blood. He looked at his own knuckles. More blood; belonging to both of them, probably. ‘Do you think we should have another go at calling Dave?’
‘I do. Just as soon as I’ve done this.’
For a bizarre moment, as she bent and rummaged through Fisher’s pockets, Ash thought she was looking for money. She must have realised, because she straightened up – or half straightened – with a tired grin, waving the knife under his nose. ‘In case he starts feeling better before Dave gets here.’
‘Unless he’s coming the scenic route via the North Yorkshire moors, I doubt that’ll be an issue.’
Hazel stepped over Fisher and into the low doorway, looking for the phone. Ash had had it when he was knocked down: she’d no idea where it was now. ‘If he’s lying on it, you can move him. This is my best shirt. Well,’ she added more realistically, ‘it was.’
Ash looked round on the floor and couldn’t see the phone either. He was as reluctant as Hazel to wrestle with the consequences of his handiwork; when he looked up and she’d continued on outside, he said hopefully, ‘Found it?’
‘No,’ said Hazel. Her voice sounded odd. She came back into the ice-house, walking backwards, both hands in the air.
For a couple of seconds Ash couldn’t see why. Then he could see why – the shotgun Fisher had leaned against the outside wall of the ice-house – but not who was pointing it.
And then he could.
‘If you have killed my son,’ said Margaret Fisher in a low, oddly level voice, ‘I will blow your brains out.’
THIRTY
Hazel fought to keep her own voice clear of any trace of panic. ‘Detective Inspector Gorman is on his way here right now. He’ll arrive at any moment. There is no chance whatever that you could get away with it. You would go to prison, for most of the rest of your life.’
‘You think I care?’ There was a note almost of outrage in Mrs Fisher’s tone now, as if she’d been accused of something disgusting. ‘You people took my husband from me seventeen years ago. If you’ve taken my son as well, what possible reason could I have for caring how or where I spend the rest of my life? John is my life. If you’ve killed him too, nothing anyone can do to me will stop me blowing your heads off.
‘Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve been handling shotguns longer than you’ve been alive. One barrel each will smear your stupid, ignorant heads all over that wall.’
It had worked once before: Hazel tried again. ‘If you use a shotgun in a confined area …’
‘… Some of the shot will ricochet back at me,’ finished Mrs Fisher. ‘You think that’s going to stop me? If you’ve left me nothing to live for, how can a bit of shot possibly matter to me? If I can face twenty years in prison, I can certainly face a trip to A&E.
‘So tell me: how do we stand? Is John alive or dead? Is there anything left to talk about?’
Hazel weighed the options carefully. But in the end, all she could offer was the truth. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I do.’ It was Ash’s voice, but it didn’t sound like Ash. Or rather, it sounded like Ash as Hazel had heard him only a couple of times before: Ash with his back against the wall, capable of anything. She turned her head slowly to look over her shoulder. Mrs Fisher edged sideways, to look past her.
In many ways Gabriel Ash was a deeply conservative man. He wore a collar and tie in circumstances when most men of his generation would wear T-shirts; he didn’t own a pair of jeans; and although he possessed trainers for quasi-sporting occasions like long walks with his dog or park football with the boys, he generally preferred a good brogue. A well-made leather shoe with a sturdy heel.
Behind Hazel, inside the ice-house, crouching under the low roof, he had the heel of his good sturdy brogue on John Fisher’s throat.
‘He’s alive. He’s got a broken nose, and a broken tooth, and tomorrow his face will be up like a melon. But he’s alive now and he’ll still be alive tomorrow, as long as you do the sensible thing and hand that gun to my friend Hazel.
‘You’re wondering,’ he went on before Margaret Fisher had time to refuse, ‘why,
when you’re the one with the weapon, I’d expect you to comply. The answer is simple. I have your son’s larynx under my heel. If I shift my weight, even slightly, I’ll crush it. You can’t breathe through a crushed larynx. Nothing you could do will save his life if I do that. No more air will reach his lungs, no more oxygen will reach his blood, and brain death will commence in about three minutes. A surgeon could, just about, insert a breathing tube in three minutes – but then, who suffers a crushed larynx with a surgeon that handy?
‘Give Hazel the gun. Then we can talk. Or you can head for the hills – whichever you prefer. Either way, we’ll get help for John while his injuries are slight enough for him to benefit.’
Mrs Fisher couldn’t drag her eyes away from the heel of his right foot. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘To save your own life, or someone else’s, there’s almost nothing that the law won’t sanction,’ said Hazel. ‘In all the circumstances – your son has killed two people to my knowledge, Mary Cho and Lester Pickering; and he was threatening my life and Gabriel’s just a few minutes ago – he’d probably get a medal.’
‘John didn’t kill Mary Cho!’ said the housekeeper scornfully. ‘He was seventeen when his father was murdered. A boy. He couldn’t have done it, then.’
‘But somebody did.’ Hazel had the sense of creeping up to a cliff-edge, that in a moment she would peer down and all the explanations would be laid out below her.
‘Who do you think?’ The years had done nothing to salve Margaret Fisher’s anger; perhaps they had stoked it. ‘Mr Harbinger? You could say he was responsible for what happened to Cho, though he never laid a finger on him, but after that he sort of … ran out of steam.’
