The Hireling's Tale

by Jo Bannister

  ‘No, don’t!’ Maddie was out of the car and backing away from it, one hand held up, the palm spread. ‘Don’t hurt him. I’ll do as you say. You can have the car. Just - don’t hurt us.’

  Donovan had served his purpose. Dodgson let him go and he folded bonelessly on the grass, too weak to move. Blind and disorientated, hearing was the only sense remaining to him.

  Dodgson stepped over him. His voice was calm, reassuring. ‘It’s all right, Maddie. Everything will be all right now.’ Then a shot rang out. Then, a few seconds later, another one.

  Chapter Six

  Liz knew every stable yard, every cross-country course, every saddlery and every stud within twenty miles of Castlemere. She knew this one. She led the way, and drove like Jehu.

  There’s always something happening around horses. Farriers coming, vets coming, owners coming, horses getting loose, dogs getting kicked. All that goes double for studs, where there are also mares arriving, foals arriving, stallions getting excited, mares getting bored, stallions getting kicked, owners getting cross and stud managers getting drunk.

  Even so, no one working at the Collington Stud could remember a day quite like this one. First an Arab princeling looking for a promising yearling or eight; then four cars, two of them in police livery, squealing to a halt in the yard; then a dozen police officers, some of them armed, fanning out in all directions. It was so interesting that even Collington Silver Superman, who was on top of Luckworth Lili Marlene at the time, stopped what he was doing to watch.

  Like many police officers, Liz had a sneaking fondness for cop-shows on television. Not because the realism was particularly impressive but because they made it look so good. Like a well-oiled machine. In actuality there were no rehearsals, so that there was less of the well-oiled machine about it and more of the blue-arsed fly. It was as much as you could do to ensure that everyone knew who the target was, what sort of back-up he was likely to have, if they would be armed, and how to put on body-armour.

  This one took place with more than the usual sense of urgency, not only because of what might be happening on the Bedford Levels but because Liz had gambled that the situation would not deteriorate significantly in the half-hour it took to muster a posse and get it here from Castlemere. There hadn’t even been time to talk it through except in shorthand. But nor had there been any need for detailed discussions: both she and Hilton understood the nature of the gamble. If Kendall phoned a warning to Siddiq, he might call off his mechanic but whether he did or not he would certainly make his escape. If the first thing Siddiq knew was that he was under arrest, the executive jet waiting at the nearby airstrip would do him no good at all. So he’d make the call, because if he didn’t he’d have to answer for two more lives - but that extra half-hour just might have made the whole thing academic.

  Hilton made sure Liz appreciated the implications of the decision, but he left the making of it to her. She knew things he didn’t: how quickly they could reach the stud if they really had to, and whether Donovan knew these fens well enough to still be ahead of the game. Of course, even she could only guess, and if she guessed wrong she would blame herself. But it was probably better than guessing right and having to watch a superior officer do it all wrong anyway.

  ‘We’ll go for the arrest,’ she decided. ‘If we don’t, he may think his best interests would still be served by silencing the witness.’ Eight minutes after that they were on the road, leaving DI Colwyn to locate a Saudi interpreter. She didn’t want anything she didn’t understand passing between the accused man and his entourage.

  She had no idea how much trouble they would have making this arrest. For all she knew, the personal bodyguard of a Saudi princeling might carry sub-machine-guns and use them at the first sign of trouble. But in the event there was no such drama. Ibn al Siddiq was taking tea with the stud manager and his wife when the cars arrived, and his bodyguard was in the bathroom. By such vagaries of fate are great events decided. If Castro’s poisoned milk shake hadn’t been left too long in the fridge … If the gallant six hundred had charged down the right valley … And if Ibn al Siddiq had been aware that there are parts of the world where even the potent combination of sex, rank and bank balance don’t guarantee immunity to a murder charge, he’d have been out of the country before the dead girl was found and never mind if it cost him the Dubai Cup.

  But he was used to having it all: to giving orders and making funds available, and leaving the rest to people whose life’s work consisted of smoothing his passage. He wanted a Derby prospect? - they’d find him a choice of three. He wanted pretty blonde girls to entertain him on business trips? - the question was not how but how many. He needed someone to tidy up after him? - that too was only a matter of paying the bill. It wasn’t bravado, it genuinely hadn’t occurred to him that the people he paid to protect him couldn’t protect him from this too.

  As far as Siddiq was concerned it was already history - an indiscretion that could have caused some embarrassment at home if he hadn’t taken steps to deal with it. But it was done. He’d put the girl he killed, and the one he was having killed, so far out of his mind that when police officers with guns burst into the living-room, his first thought was that they were here to save him from some unforeseen danger.

  Superintendent Hilton quickly disabused him. ‘Ibn al Siddiq, I’m arresting you for the murder of a woman, identity as yet unknown, in The Barbican Hotel, Castlemere, on Sunday evening. You do not have to say anything, but I must caution you that …’

  Siddiq heard him out in stunned silence. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand: his English was perfect. It was that he didn’t understand. ‘Superintendent - you do know who I am?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Hilton crisply. ‘You’re a man who hurts people weaker than himself for pleasure, who kills people when they become a nuisance, and who’s going to find Wormwood Scrubs something of a culture shock.’

  Carefully Siddiq put down his cup. ‘There must be some mistake,’ he said distantly. ‘I have killed no one. I was at the hotel. It was a business conference.’

  ‘It was business for the girl too,’ said Hilton. ‘But beating her up and pushing her off the roof weren’t part of the deal.’

  Siddiq still thought there might be some mileage in an outright denial. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Superintendent.’ But the beginnings of a shake in his voice suggested that he was seeing, for the first time, the possible consequences of his night on the tiles.

  Liz leaned over the table in front of him and slapped down her mobile phone. ‘Call him off.’

  Siddiq’s voice was reedy with mounting panic. If they knew that … ‘Him - who?’

  ‘You know who,’ she spat. ‘Call him off, now, and it’s worth about ten years to you. So far you’ve killed a prostitute - a good brief can argue that was consensual sex that went too far. You’ve also had someone shoot a detective superintendent; but we won’t get the mechanic so that’ll be hard to prove, plus Mr Shapiro’s on the mend so even if we do manage a charge it won’t be murder. But now your Mr Dodgson is after another of my colleagues and the girl he’s protecting, and if he kills either of them your defence goes down the tubes. Nobody - not your ambassador, not your second cousin the king - will lift a hand to help you then. Call him off, and you might get home before the oil well runs dry.’

  A lot of what Ibn al Siddiq had was because of who he was, but even without the silver spoon he’d have done well for himself. He wasn’t a stupid man. He was intelligent and astute, and no one knew better than he that a distant cousin who caused the king embarrassment abroad was unlikely to prosper further. He thought about it for perhaps half a minute. Then he picked up the phone.

  It rang; then it funnelled through some kind of electronic filter; then it rang some more. Then someone answered.

  Siddiq didn’t use a name or give his own. In a terse, clipped voice he said, ‘This is my cousin’s cousin. Come home; all is well.’

  There was a pause at
the other end. Liz waited, her ear close to the handset, not daring to breathe. When there was no response she looked questioningly at Siddiq and he gave a perplexed shrug.

  Finally the phone crackled to life again. It might have been interference, or the bleak chuckle of a craftsman constantly having to compromise his professional integrity to accommodate the vacillations of amateurs. The man who called himself Dodgson said, ‘It’s too late.’

  Half an hour’s head start was all he needed to be safe. In that time he could change the car a couple of times, change his clothes, take on a whole new persona. He knew from long experience that he could walk through a police checkpoint and never be spotted as long as his clothes were different and he didn’t look guilty. He never looked guilty, because guilt was something that he didn’t feel.

  The sheep had tired of being a roadblock and set about cropping an adjacent hayfield. He ignored them: whoever found them would swear a lot and then return them to their pasture. He might blame walkers or picnickers; he wouldn’t be looking for evidence of anything more sinister than that.

  Dodgson dragged the body of Maddie Cotterick into the field and bundled it into the ditch under the hedge. Then he went back and looked down at Donovan. ‘Can you walk?’

  Donovan didn’t reply. His heart raged within him that if he’d been able to walk, if he’d been able to do anything, he wouldn’t have sat by and let someone put two bullets into the girl’s brain. He knew, in his head and in his heart, that he’d done everything in his power to keep her safe, that she’d died in spite of his best efforts not because he hadn’t tried hard enough. Soon that would be a consolation, as would the fact that the man who defeated him was an expert who was being paid more for this day’s work than Donovan would earn in three years.

  But now all he felt was a sense of loss. He hadn’t known Maddie Cotterick very long, he hadn’t known her very well, but he’d liked her, admired her resilience, her determination to make a good job of the lonely furrow she’d chosen to plough. And now she was gone, her life judged an embarrassment and erased as a careless typist might erase a slip of the finger. It wasn’t good enough. It was an offence against natural justice and human worth, and the impotent fury he felt was not just because he hadn’t the strength left to do anything about it. He’d have been helpless to avenge her if he’d come this far without a scratch on him. He was outclassed. He’d been outclassed all along. Dodgson would get away with her murder, as he’d got away with all the others, because it was his job and he’d take whatever steps were necessary to get it done.

  ‘No, of course you can’t,’ said Dodgson, weighing him up. When he wasn’t actually killing anyone he came across as a serious, thoughtful, intellectual man. It wasn’t concern in his eyes as he took in the blood that had already soaked the dressing Maddie had fabricated from her underwear - her last, or rather her last but one act of kindness in this world - but it was understanding. He knew Donovan wasn’t going to jump him and wrestle his weapon away again. The policeman was a threat whose bolt was shot.

  ‘All right. Bottom line? The bottom line is, I need half an hour’s head start. After that I don’t care who knows what happened, or how good a description you give them. It won’t make any difference. Every police computer in the civilized world has a description of me, but I go where I like.

  ‘Now, I can make absolutely sure you don’t talk to anyone, in the next half hour or indeed ever. Or I can take the small risk of leaving you here. The chances are it’ll be all of half an hour before you’re found: it could be a lot longer. The way you’re bleeding it could be too long.

  ‘Or I can take you with me and leave you at the first service station. They’ll call you an ambulance. But I’ll need your word that for at least half an hour you won’t give any information that’ll help catch me.’

  ‘My word?’ Donovan’s voice was sunk to a whisper. It was only the surprise that wrung any response out of him at all.

  Dodgson gave a little smile, ruefully lopsided. ‘Oh yes, Sergeant Donovan, I’ll take your word. Look what you did to keep your promise to Miss Cotterick.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ whispered Donovan.

  Dodgson breathed heavily at him, impatience tempered by respect. ‘Donovan, you don’t need to die over this. There’s nothing more you can do for the girl: all that’s at stake now is your pride, and it’s not a good enough reason to watch your life seep away. Nobody - nobody - would want you to do that. But we have to reach an understanding, and soon. I have a plane to meet. God damn it, man, give me your word and then break it if that’s what it takes!’

  There are times, as a Hollywood film-maker once observed, when nothing is a real cool hand. Donovan shook his head. Then his eyes slid shut and he keeled over slowly on the grassy bank, denying the professional killer scowling down at him even the satisfaction of bawling him out.

  The cream estate car didn’t seem to want petrol. It pulled up at the far side of the forecourt, where the air pump and jet-wash machines were. The attendant looked up from his paper but there was nothing for him to do so he stayed where he was in the garage shop.

  There was a pause while the driver made or answered a call on his mobile phone. Then he got out of the vehicle, walked round to the back and opened the tailgate. Reaching inside he dragged something heavy out on to the tarmac. Then he got back into the car and drove away.

  For several seconds the garage attendant went on staring at the abandoned object. He was a man of the world. You see a lot of things dumped on garage forecourts: unwanted hitch-hikers, unwanted dogs, he’d even had a baby left in his washroom once. But he still didn’t believe that someone had left the main road for just long enough to dump a body here.

  It took a moment for what he’d seen to filter through into some action. Then he put the paper aside - carefully, he might still be able to sell it - and, moving like a sleepwalker, went outside. Maybe it was just a bundle of rubbish - grass-cuttings, something like that … But he knew it wasn’t.

  But it wasn’t a corpse either, at least not yet. When he was close enough the attendant extended a tentative foot and nudged it, and it responded with a moan and a lax, uncoordinated movement of one hand that revealed a slash of dark blood all the way down its right side.

  Chapter Seven

  Liz delayed telling Shapiro until there was confirmation. It would be bad enough when they knew it was true; the uncertainty was a burden a sick man could do without.

  Hilton was dealing with Siddiq. He offered her the chance to be involved, but though she appreciated the gesture she doubted she could do it justice. Besides, if it was anybody’s triumph it was James Colwyn’s. She was happy for him to take the second seat while she sat by the phone in her office, thinking of all the times Donovan had driven her to distraction and wondering how on earth she’d replace him.

  When the call came saying she wouldn’t have to, that DS Donovan had been found unconscious on a garage forecourt and was currently on a drip in Peterborough District Hospital, she was hit by a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. Donovan was safe: he’d lost a lot of blood, but he’d be back on his feet in a day or two. He’d returned from the dead, Liz thought with relief, more times than Dracula.

  But there would be no resurrection for Maddie Cotterick. Even when he was able to talk Donovan wasn’t able to give a clear picture of where Dodgson had finally caught up with them, and Peterborough police were still searching for the body. But he had no doubt that she was dead; and what Dodgson told Siddiq on the phone confirmed it. Liz had thought he’d killed them both. A fresh cause for guilt was the way her heart lifted when she knew that, though the girl was dead, Donovan was safe. It was only natural - she told herself anyone would have felt the same - but it was no cause for celebration that the disaster had been a little less than total.

  Maddie had known she was in danger. She’d turned to Queen’s Street for help, and they’d failed her. Liz couldn’t see what she should have done differently, and clearly Donovan had done his leve
l best, but the unavoidable fact was that a witness in a murder case had been eliminated after she’d put herself into the hands of the investigating officers. An inquiry was inevitable. Even that didn’t bother Liz as much as wondering if they should, or even could, have done better.

  Shapiro. Time to tell him how things stood. Like her, his first reaction would be relief; and his second, like hers, a pang of remorse that he was more concerned about his sergeant than the woman he’d been sent to protect.

  There was more good news than bad. Donovan safe; Ibn al Siddiq in custody; Philip Kendall in custody. But the bad news weighed heavier. A second girl had died. Even knowing all they did by then, they hadn’t been able to prevent another murder.

  Perhaps because he’d been on the periphery during later events, Shapiro managed to be philosophical. ‘We can’t change the world, Liz. We do our best. We all did our best: me, you, and Donovan who if he’d tried any harder would have ended up on a slab. Sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes the odds are just too great. We were up against a man with a bottomless pocket and no conscience, and I can’t imagine a more lethal cocktail. You got to the bottom of it. It has to be enough.’

  It didn’t feel enough. Maybe if they’d got the mechanic as well, but although every airport and ferry terminal was being watched, Liz wasn’t optimistic. If he could be picked out of a crowd he’d never have stayed in business long enough to reach the top. The man who called himself Dodgson had disappeared back through the looking-glass.

  She tried to look on the bright side. ‘We’ve evidence enough for the first murder charge to stick. What about conspiracy to murder Maddie - will the CPS have any trouble with that?’ She meant, would their nerve fail them. The Crown Prosecution Service was notorious for backing off any case that didn’t more or less make itself, as if the cost of losing one would be deducted from the Directors’ pension fund.