Bad Blood

by Nick Oldham

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Just now, couple of minutes.’

  ‘OK. Where are you?’

  ‘Still at the hospital with Ginny. I’m expecting him to pick us up any time. Ginny’s been discharged, so, is he there, or do you know where he is?’

  Jake took a breath and said, ‘Look, Alison, Henry’s not here, but there’s a possibility he might have been involved in some sort of accident between here and Chalmers’ place, in Wellbeck Gulley. Doctor Lott’s seen a similar car to yours off the road, down in the river, and I’m just going to investigate now.’ He knew he was speaking bluntly but his voice was calm and he knew there wasn’t time to sugar-coat anything. Henry wasn’t here, there’s been an accident and a vehicle like the one he had been driving was upside down in the river.

  ‘Why was he in my car?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Er, he couldn’t use his for some reason,’ Jake said, looking over at Henry’s new Mondeo Estate with four slashed tyres. Alison did not know about this and he did not want to complicate things or worry her any further. ‘I won’t know anything more for about ten or fifteen minutes, but as soon as I do, I’ll call you, OK?’

  There was dumbfounded silence on the phone.

  ‘Alison?’

  He heard her suppress a cry.

  ‘Alison, I’m sorry to be so direct, but I need to get to the scene and whatever, I’ll let you know immediately.’

  ‘OK, Jake, thank you.’

  He pressed the end call button and handed the phone back to the waitress who, having heard his end of the conversation, had gone very sickly looking. To Rik and Donaldson he said, ‘Sounds like she got one of those phantom phone calls from Henry, no speaking, just rustling, then couldn’t get through when she called him back.’

  ‘So he could be OK,’ Donaldson said.

  ‘I’ll go find out, eh?’

  ‘Come on, let’s get moving too,’ Rik said, breaking the atmosphere of dread that had suddenly descended on them all.

  Jake walked back to Dr Lott and gave him his phone. ‘You lead, I’ll follow.’

  Seconds later they were all on the road, none of them knowing what they were about to get into.

  Alison looked accusingly at her mobile phone, now dead in her hand, then across at her pale stepdaughter slumped on a chair opposite. They were in the A&E waiting area at Lancaster Infirmary. Ginny was tired and still quite out of it but her bloods had come back normal. Although the sedative use had not yet been analysed, the doctors were happy to discharge her and also Alison, who had been treated for her facial injury where the intruder had stomped on her. She tried Henry’s mobile again but could not connect.

  She sighed heavily and her mind began to race because the only thing she could now speculate about was whether there was any connection between Henry’s accident and the assault. Could it have been more serious than they had thought? Supposing there was a bleed on the brain, or a clot? He should have come with her and Ginny for a check-up, she should have insisted on it, then at least they would all be here together, their little family unit with Henry the old silverback caring for them all.

  Her other thoughts concerned the unknown man who had attempted to take Ginny from her bed. Was he a sexual predator, a man who hunted and preyed on young women? Had he just lucked on to Ginny, seen her as his latest victim?

  Alison thought she could handle that.

  As traumatic and horrifying as it was, she could accept a dangerous opportunistic criminal on the loose, taking his chances as and when.

  The serious beating he had tried to inflict on Henry was an extra concern because it had been delivered by someone who knew exactly what he was doing, who knew how to put another man down at close quarters.

  No! she thought.

  It couldn’t be.

  She looked at Ginny and their eyes met. She might only have been her stepdaughter but she loved her like she was her own flesh and blood and would gladly have put her own life on the line to save her.

  Ginny smiled wanly.

  All Alison could now think was of that single word the intruder had spoken when he had stamped on her face.

  ‘Bitch.’

  Alison dropped her gaze, unable to look into Ginny’s eyes any more as she thought, ‘No, no, it cannot be.’

  Jake thought if he stuck a breathalyser into Dr Lott’s mouth and asked him to blow there would be a positive result; he went on to think if he did the same for himself it would also be positive as both of them still had alcohol in their systems from the previous night’s revelry. Lott had actually been the wedding photographer – a sideline he was working on having just completed a photography course at a local college – but after he had done his duty in that respect following the first dance of the bride and groom, the doctor and his big friend, the local butcher, had got seriously pissed.

  That was of no concern to Jake.

  So long as Lott – or himself, even – did not have an accident whilst driving, he was happy. They had to get to the scene in one piece, which they did, some ten minutes later.

  The road was narrow and treacherous, rising, falling and winding, and in some places only just wide enough for one vehicle. The most dangerous section, maybe a quarter of a mile in length, was where it clung to a steep hillside and on one side was a sheer drop down into the river via a rocky scree. The only safety feature was a low dry-stone wall on the road edge, which was of no great use. The rules were simple – drivers had to take great care, otherwise the result could be disaster.

  The two vehicles, Lott’s Mercedes and Jake’s Land Rover, reached this section in one piece. Lott signalled that he was pulling in to stop.

  Jake braked and rolled to a halt behind him, then he and the CSI alighted. Lott climbed out of his Merc and beckoned Jake to come to him. He led the PC to the front of his car and showed him the gap in the low wall where it was obvious a car had gone through and over and down.

  With foreboding, Jake looked over the edge of the precipice, an almost vertical drop over a hundred feet to the narrow river below.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jake whispered in awe.

  At the bottom of the scree face there was an upturned vehicle which had left the road, crashed through the wall, bounced down, maybe overturned on its way down, and was now on its roof in the river.

  It was Alison’s car and Henry had been driving it.

  About the time Jake arrived at the scene of the accident, Rik Dean, DS Makin and Karl Donaldson got out of Donaldson’s Jeep on a woodland track. At the American’s suggestion they walked the last hundred or so metres to the murder scene with the CSI behind them.

  Donaldson held them back short of the crime scene and pointed out where Tod’s Land Rover had been parked, the tyre tracks up to that point and even some pieces of broken glass from the rear window he’d smashed to get the shotgun.

  He then indicated the point at which he had entered the woods.

  After this he moved on, keeping up a running commentary until they reached the edge of the trees, where they stopped again and Donaldson explained again what had happened from the moment he had entered the woods and described the location of Tod’s and his dog’s bodies and the VW camper van.

  ‘Think he’s still here?’ Rik whispered, suddenly very uneasy as he realized how vulnerable they were and slightly regretting his insistence that Donaldson should hand over Tod’s shotgun to the CSI for evidential purposes. It was the right thing to do, but having Donaldson armed with a weapon would have been reassuring. He doubted if his bosses at headquarters would have backed him up, though.

  ‘We can only hope he’s gone,’ Donaldson said, ‘because if he is still there, and wounded – which I think he is – then he’ll be one mad mother and this will be like going after a wounded lion in the bush. Not advisable.’

  ‘Something you have experienced?’ Rik asked.

  ‘Actually, yes.’ He hadn’t but it sounded good. He did, however, have familiarity with hunting down desperate murderers a
nd terrorists and had entered many places expecting to get his head blown off.

  The two men regarded each other, then the moment was interrupted by Jess Makin’s PR which was in her hand.

  ‘DS Makin receiving?’ It was Jake calling her up.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Are Superintendent Dean and Karl Donaldson in earshot?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  The two men gathered closer.

  ‘Just for your information I’m at the scene of the accident with Doctor Lott.’ Jake hesitated, then said, ‘I can confirm it’s Alison’s car, the one Henry set off in this morning. It is down a ravine. I haven’t managed to get down to it yet … it’s more than just a steep climb so I might have to find another way down, but I cannot see any sign of Henry, repeat, no sign of Henry.’

  Makin eyed the two men. Rik gave her a nod.

  ‘OK, keep us informed,’ she told Jake.

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Shit,’ Rik said. ‘Right, let’s get on with this.’

  He turned to the trees, cupped his hands around his mouth to form a loudhailer and shouted, ‘This is the police. You should now give yourself up before any more violence is committed and people are hurt.’ He repeated the message, got no reply. ‘In that case we are now going to enter this area and I must warn you that any violence committed towards us will be met with all the force necessary to neutralize you. You need to understand that.’ Still there was no response. Rik gave Donaldson the nod to continue, which brought a cynical twist to the American’s mouth, but he still went ahead into the woods.

  Jake stared down the slope, although the word ‘slope’ very much underestimated the precipice he was looking over.

  He wondered why better safety barriers hadn’t been erected, though he knew this was not a frequently used route by the general public.

  To descend from where he stood would require a rope and the ability to abseil. He had both. A rope in the Land Rover and the skill of abseiling acquired when he was an authorized firearms officer. However, that method was not something he was terribly keen on. Too dangerous, not something to do without skilled help and Dr Lott and the CSI were not those helpers.

  His mind raced.

  ‘Other than jumping, what’s the quickest route down, Doc?’ he asked Lott. ‘You know the area better than me.’

  ‘Further along, the road veers away from the river, just before you get to Lord Chalmers’ place. The road drops and you can make it across to the river on foot. Take maybe twenty minutes to get to the river, then you’d have to make your way back up river, maybe another twenty minutes.’

  ‘No,’ Jake said, dismissing that instantly. If Henry was down there somewhere and needed help, that time could be crucial. Again he looked over at the upside-down car, the roof in the river. He imagined Henry half hanging inside, upside down himself, either dead or badly injured.

  There was only one way to do this quickly. He would have to go down by rope.

  The dog was there, dead. As was Tod Rawstron. Neither body had been moved.

  The flies were already beginning to gather in numbers, their buzzing loud and sickening.

  Donaldson, Rik, Makin and the CSI spent a few moments simply looking, trapped in their own thoughts about this unnecessary tragedy.

  A boy and his dog murdered for no good reason, it seemed.

  Rik angled to Makin. ‘Circus time – and that now includes more than one dog, more than one search team, and lots of bodies.’

  Rik followed Donaldson’s previous path to Tod’s body and crouched down alongside it, wafting his right hand to keep the bluebottles away.

  ‘Where the fuck do these buzzing bastards come from,’ he demanded angrily.

  ‘The smell of flesh and blood,’ Donaldson said.

  ‘It was a rhetorical question but it does tell us one thing.’ He looked up at Makin. ‘We need to get things moving as quickly as possible because these two bodies are going to start rotting sooner rather than later.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ she said.

  The rope was in the space underneath the passenger seat in Jake’s Land Rover.

  He had discovered it there soon after adopting the vehicle when he was first posted to Kendleton and had vaguely thought that one day it might come in useful. He had been thinking in terms of hauling some unlucky motorist out of a muddy field, not having to use it to shimmy down a rock face and take part in an activity well known for causing fatalities.

  He pulled it out, uncoiled and inspected it for the first time, a long, thin rope that could well have been used for climbing. It was maybe a hundred feet long, just about the right length to reach the gulley floor. He did not know why it was even in the car but he wasn’t too impressed by its condition. In several places it looked frayed, although when he tugged it to test its strength it seemed fine, but that could be a different story when a thirteen-stone guy was attached to it and was dangling over the edge. He winced at the thought.

  Dr Lott and the CSI watched him in concerned silence as he flicked the end of the rope around the sturdy front bumper of the Land Rover and tied a decent enough knot, which he then tested for strength.

  ‘You’re not?’ Lott said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Jake walked to the edge and dropped the rope over. It uncoiled with a hiss and the end reached the bottom with an audible slap.

  ‘I’m sure I used to do things like this when I was a kid,’ Jake said.

  ‘Kids bounce,’ Lott said. ‘Blokes just plummet.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  Jake looked over and felt slightly queasy, but nevertheless was determined to go for it. What bothered him most was his level of strength and fitness. Having been off work for such a long time after being assaulted he had stopped fitness training for a big chunk of that period and only as he recovered had started training again, using the bench press and weights in his garage, and running. This would be his first real test of strength.

  He scanned the rock face, looking for the likely slipping points and the best places to put his feet. He turned and faced the doctor then took the tension of the rope.

  ‘I’m going to do this quite quickly,’ he said, ‘because my arms will let me down first, so I don’t want to give them that chance.’

  Dr Lott rolled his eyes and looked on fearfully as Jake backed slowly out. He had considered running the rope around his body to act as a pulley, but visualized himself being hung halfway down.

  ‘I can do this,’ he told himself, wound the rope around his wrists, gripped it tightly.

  ‘Gloves?’ the doctor suggested.

  ‘Good point.’

  Jake found his leather gloves in the car and set himself up to go again and reversed out into space and started to lower himself inch by inch and nowhere nearly as quickly as he had envisaged.

  Stones did dislodge and crumble away under his feet, but he kept hold, kept steady, concentrated, believed in himself and eventually he stepped backwards onto horizontal ground. He looked all the way back up the rope and waved at the doctor and the CSI, who waved unsurely back.

  Jake flicked his hands and rubbed his fingers, getting movement back in them, then went towards the overturned car. It was a mangled, battered mess with smashed windows, crushed bonnet and side panels. Jake could tell it had somersaulted down.

  He waded into the river and the chill of the water coming down from the fells made him gasp.

  He sidled around the Navara and bent to look into the driver’s window, saw the roof had been crushed and pounded low and the steering wheel was twisted out of shape. The remnants of the airbag hung uselessly from the centre of the wheel like some huge condom.

  ‘Shit.’ He stood upright. ‘DS Makin receiving?’ he called on the PR.

  ‘Go ahead, Jake.’

  ‘I’ve managed to get down to the car. No trace of Henry,’ he said.

  Makin, Rik Dean and Donaldson, huddled around the ra
dio, looked nonplussed at each other.

  ‘Tell him to repeat what he just said,’ Rik told Makin, which he did.

  Jake came back. ‘Confirming, no trace of Henry – or anyone else.’

  Rik snatched the PR from Makin. ‘In that case you’d better get looking, Jake.’

  ‘That’s my intention.’

  With one hand clutched to the flesh wound in his side, the sniper watched and listened to the scenario being enacted less than twenty metres from where he was hiding amongst a clump of large ferns.

  He knew they would return. They had to. The American, Karl Donaldson, would lead them to the scene of the crime as well as to the VW secreted in the woods, which was essentially the sniper’s home base when not lying out in position.

  Following his confrontation with Donaldson – who had moved with stunning speed, faster than he had anticipated and at the same time returning fire with a clumsy shotgun which had ripped off a section of his skin over his ribcage – the sniper had treated the wound, which was not serious, but stung and hurt like nothing he’d felt before. Donaldson had almost killed him, and he gave him credit for that.

  When the Yank had left in the dead gamekeeper’s Land Rover, the sniper had returned to the VW hoping he could simply drive away and be gone before the cops returned en masse.

  The vehicle did not start and a glance into the engine compartment revealed why.

  ‘Son of a bitch.’

  The sniper tried to keep a level head, something he had been able to do in some of the most dangerous situations in the past – that ability to keep calm in the midst of chaos, then fire off that one decisive round to take down his allotted target. The sniper knew this well but also that this ability had started to desert him. He could not always keep his focus on the job in hand. He had started to think about other things and also do rash things – such as killing five villagers in West Africa just because he thought they deserved to die, innocent or not.

  And other thoughts began to surface, the thoughts that had brought him to this area.

  He patched himself up with an antiseptic pad and plasters from a first-aid kit in the car. He then took the ammunition from the hidden compartment in the kitchen area and retired to a position from which he could watch the return of the cops.