It wasn’t until he was in Broad Quay that he got his chance – a light on amber he could jump and leave his tail stranded behind the more law abiding citizens. Round past the cathedral, up Park Street, then left up a side road toward the Cabot Tower … he found a large van and tucked the MG behind it. Double yellows, but so what? He phoned Tom.
“Are you sure you’ve lost them?” Tom asked.
“Sure as I can be.”
“Trouble is, your car’s rather conspicuous, isn’t it?” He thought for a moment, then, “Phone Mary now, tell her to bolt her back door, put the chain on the front and not let in anyone she doesn’t know.”
“You think she’s in danger?”
“Very unlikely, it’s just a precaution. Do it now and phone me back.”
Mary was not amused.
“Fraser, what is going on?” she demanded as soon as he’d said his piece. “Is this connected with Tom?”
“I promise I’ll explain soon,” he said, “Please, just do as I ask.”
He rang off and was about to ring Tom again when he became aware of a shadow behind him … He jerked round – it was a traffic warden …
“You can’t park there,” she said.
“No, sorry … can I just make a phone call please? It’s very urgent.“
“Sure,” she smiled, “But if you do, you’ll get a ticket.”
It was almost worth it, but he didn’t want to attract attention …
“Is there anywhere near I can park?”
She sucked on her teeth, shaking her head … “Difficult at this time. And not really my problem,” she added.
He drove off.
If he stopped anywhere near, she’d get him … if he kept driving, his tail could pick him up again –
His mobile rang. Probably Tom. He kept driving.
Another side street. He found a place at the end, still a yellow line, but hopefully far enough away. He phoned Tom again.
“I think you’d better come to me,” Tom said.
“What if they pick me up again?”
“Could you recognise the car if you saw it?”
“I … think so.”
“Only think?”
“I’m fairly sure.”
“All right. Have you got a map?”
He found it. Tom said, “Don’t use the motorway. Can you see the A-road that goes to Wansborough from quite near the centre?”
“Yes - Oh, God … ”
“What?”
It was the traffic warden, she’d spotted his car and was walking purposefully towards him … “I’m on my way,” he said.
He took off before she could reach him.
He had to stop to check the map again, but then found the road quite easily. No sign of his tail. It took an hour and a half to get to Tom’s hotel.
“So there’s absolutely no doubt in your mind that someone was actually in your house?” Tom said as he handed him a coffee.
“None whatever. I wasn’t expecting anyone so soon ... ”
“Neither was I, or I wouldn’t have let you go.”
“Presumably, it lets Fleming out – they must have been put onto me before you spoke to him.”
“No, I’m certain one of the others had already told him, so he could have set it up yesterday.”
After a pause, Fraser said, “D’you have any idea yet? Who it is?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Maybe the shade of a suspicion, but nothing more.” Fraser pressed him, but he refused to say anything else.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We wait. Sooner or later, one of them is going to contact you.”
“Then what?”
“Depends on what they say.”
Fraser drank some of his coffee. He said, “You think it was the people who killed Helen who were in my house?”
“Probably.”
“Does that mean they’re out to kill me?”
Tom thought for a moment. “I hadn’t thought so - not yet, anyway … I thought they’d try and change your mind first, or maybe discredit you in some way. But the fact they were in your house does make me wonder ... ”
He phoned Marcus and Jo to let them know what was happening. Jo asked if there was anything she could do, but Tom said he couldn’t think of anything. After that, while he went out to buy Fraser a toothbrush and a few other basics, Fraser phoned his house to check for messages, and then Mary to try and put her mind at ease.
Tom came back and they began the waiting.
After dinner, in the bar, Fraser said, “D’you have to do much of this?”
Tom glanced down at his beer. “Drinking?”
Fraser grinned. “No, waiting around for something to happen.”
Tom grinned back. “Quite a bit.”
“How did you get into this?” Fraser asked, genuinely curious, and Tom told him how he’d joined the army to get away from his family, then the police, where a bad marriage had wrecked his career ...
“So when Marcus offered me this, I jumped at it.”
“Ever regretted it?”
“Never.”
The next day, Saturday, Fraser read every section of the paper, swam in the hotel pool, read a book from the hotel library, played chess with Tom (who won) and watched a mediocre film on TV. There were calls from his mother and Rob, but not the one they were waiting for.
The only item of interest was that someone had called on Mary asking for him. Polite and charming, Mary said, told her he was a colleague from Wansborough, but didn’t leave a name.
“What did you tell him?”
“Only that I didn’t know where you were.”
He was about six feet, well built and mid thirties, but she couldn’t remember anything about his face, except that it was “ordinary”.
By Monday, and he and Tom were beginning to invade each other’s nasal spaces. The inquest, on Thursday, was drawing nearer …
“Yeah, but what happens if they don’t phone?” Fraser demanded.
Tom swallowed and bit off the retort he was about to make. “I thought they would by now,” he admitted. “If they don’t by tomorrow, I’ll think of a way of stirring them up.”
“How?”
“I said I’d think about it, OK?”
Jo rang again. “D’you want me to come down?” she asked when Tom told her how things were.
“It might help actually,” Tom said slowly, “Might get Fraser off my back, anyway.”
She joined them twenty minutes later.
“What worries me,” she said after they’d brought her up to date, “Is that they don’t want to talk to Fraser, they just want to kill him. Thus, the men at his house.”
“Even if that were true,” Tom said quickly, “Which I don’t believe, they’ve got to find him first.”
“They will, if they look here.”
“They still think he’s in Bristol, that’s where they’ll be looking.”
“As long as they don’t go back to Mary,” Fraser said.
“Does she know you’re here?” Jo asked him.
He shook his head. “My worry is that they’d try and get at me through her …”
“They won’t,” said Tom.
“How d’you know that?”
“Because it would give them away – Ray, I’m talking about. He, she, wants to hide the fact of the euthanasia, and that would confirm it.”
“I wish I could be so sure …”
“C’mon Fraser,” said Jo, “Didn’t you say this place has got a pool? Give Mary a ring, and then we’ll go for a swim …”
Tom found them later that afternoon and took them to his room.
“I’ve just had an interesting phone call,” he said. “One of the people I wanted to speak to at Southampton had left the hospital without leaving any forwarding address. Also changed her name, which didn’t help – anyway, we’ve traced her to Bournemouth, but she won’t speak to me on my own. Doesn’t trust men, app
arently.”
“Can’t really blame her there,” murmured Jo.
“But she will talk to you, Jo. I said we’d meet her at seven, so we’d better get going.”
Fraser said, “What if they contact me while you’re away?”
“Stall them and phone me.”
“And if they want to meet?”
“Agree, but stall. Say you’ve got something else on you’ll have to rearrange, then call me. Don’t, whatever you do tell them you’re here – “
Fraser let out a snort. “What d’you take me for?”
“OK, sorry ... ”
“When’ll you be back?”
“Depends … say two hours to get there and find the place, an hour with her – say around ten.”
Five minutes later, they were gone.
Fraser mooched around, then rang Mary again, and then his mother. He checked the messages on his land line – nothing.
To try and work off his frustrations, he went down to the gym for an hour, and then to the swimming pool again, where he swam alternate lengths on the surface and underwater until he was exhausted.
A touch of cramp suggested he’d overdone it, so he showered and went to dinner.
It wasn’t until he was on his way back up that he realised he hadn’t taken his mobile with him. It was ringing as he unlocked his door …
“Fraser? It’s Patrick,” the voice in the ear piece said … electricity crawled over his head and down his neck ... “You’re a hard man to get hold of, are you back at home now?”
“No, I’m staying with a friend - in Bristol.”
“Ah.” Pause. “Listen, Fraser, I know it’s late, but is there any chance you could you come and see me tonight? It really is important,” he added.
“Why tonight?” Fraser asked, trying to keep his voice level.
“If we left it till tomorrow, it would have to be at the Trust with the others and I’d really rather not.”
Don’t seem too eager … “What’s it about, Patrick?”
“Well, to be honest with you, I’ve been put up to it by the others – “
“What others?”
“George, Patricia and Nigel – but the point is, I’ve been thinking all weekend about what Mr Jones told me, and there are some things that really bother me.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, it comes down to the fact that an intelligent man such as yourself should be thinkin’ the things Mr Jones says you’re thinkin’.” He sighed. “I’d meet you halfway, but Marie’s out tonight and I’m babysitting. It wouldn’t take you much over an hour to get to me if you use the motorway.”
“You’re probably right there, except that I’ve already arranged to go out tonight.”
“It is important, Fraser. To you as much as me.”
He pretended to consider a moment, then said, “All right. Let me talk to them and I’ll come back to you in ten minutes, OK?”
He rang Tom, who answered almost immediately. “Is this it?” he said.
Tom hesitated. “I think it probably is … he wants to sound you out and set his weasels on you if you won’t play.”
“What do we do?”
“We were about to start back – is there anywhere we can meet near his place?”
Fraser thought quickly. “He lives just outside a village called Cotlake, there’s a square with a war memorial in the middle of it.”
“Hang on - ” Rustle of a page being turned … “Yeah, got it, can you meet us there - better make it an hour and a half, say nine?”
“Yeah, but what are we going to do then?”
“I’ll work that out on the way – ring him now and tell him you’ll be with him at 9.30. That’ll give us half an hour to sort something out …”
Chapter 33
Patrick, smooth as snakeskin, instantly agreed and Fraser, putting the phone down, found he was shaking.
He felt hot and clammy – it had been close all day (which might account for the irritation, he reflected) and now it was sultry.
He showered again, finishing with a spell on cold, then dressed in the jeans and dark sweatshirt Tom had bought him. He went down to the car.
So it was Patrick, he thought as he drove out of the hotel. The air was warm and thick ...
Good Ol’ Patrick, he thought, the original Irish joke.
And yet what he’d said on the phone was plausible, that the others had put him up to it, that he was worried about what Tom had said …
But what was it Tom had said to him, Fraser? One of them will act differently from the others – and that was just what was happening.
Another thought occurred to him, how the first of the attacks on the hospital playing field had been just after he’d taken Patrick into the Social Club and told him how he regularly used it.
It had to be. Was Marie in on it too, he wondered? What reception had they planned for him?
By now, he’d reached the outskirts of town. He crossed the motorway and took the Marlborough road. Ten minutes after that, he was on the narrow twisting road to the Wansdyke.
The murk had brought on an early darkness and the bushes and trees not directly in the beam of his headlamps were like the blobs in an impressionist painting, although there was still enough light in the sky for him to make out the ridge of the hill ahead. The car purred and seemed to float through the turbid air -
He braked as a sheep blundered into his path … it trotted up the road in front of him for a few moments before veering away to the left.
Would Tom be there yet? He glanced at the clock – no. What was he going to do?
The headlamps of another car flickered in his mirror as he approached the ridge, caught up with him …
By now he was nearly at the car park, so he slowed to let it pass, then another car pounced in front of him from the verge –
He knew instantly what it meant and slammed on his brakes - the car behind punched into him, shunting him forward … he rammed the gear stick into first, spun the steering wheel and pushed his foot down, lurching into the park …
He accelerated to the far end, jumped out and started running … over the stile and onto the Wansdyke and it wasn’t until he’d gone fifty yards that he realised he had the car keys in his hand – he must have turned the engine off.
Now, why had he done that, he wondered? Must’ve wasted nearly half a second … He glanced back, saw two figures about fifty yards behind, dressed dark like him, not shouting, just running after him.
He realised he was panting and tried to control his breathing, filling his lungs with each breath – then his foot caught a stone and he nearly fell … recovered, kept going, his trainers hitting the hard dusty ground with a muted scratch scratching. He kept running because he had to, like Old Man Kangaroo in Kipling – now why was he thinking about that?
Glanced behind again – they were closer now and the first rawness was whistling in his windpipe …
Thick bank of conifers on the right – the path down to the shepherd’s hut! Where was it, where was … ?
A shadow ahead, bigger than the other shadows between the rows of pine.
He lurched right, down into the ditch, up again, over the stile and into the silent trees, his footfalls intimate as they bounced among the trunks.
As he heard the hit men reach the ditch, he swerved into the bracken lining the path, but it was tougher than he’d thought and he had to tear his way through – then he ran, his feet making no sound at all now on the layers of dead pine needles …
He ran, the soft needles robbing his legs of energy, they felt like plasticine after all the exercise he’d had – then, through the darkness, he made out a fallen tree, altered course and fell behind it.
Silence.
Save for his breathing. And his heartbeat. And his blood shush shush shushing through his neck and head … an image of Helen with her slashed throat flickered in his mind and he pushed it away as he peered round the trunk of the fallen tree.
Th
e rattle of a stone on the path, the glimmer of a torch moving down …
Keep going, keep going … then the torch stopped, moved back - surely they couldn’t see where he’d come off the path … could they?
The bracken. The path was long and straight and they’d realised he was no longer on it and seen where he’d forced his way through - and now the torch light was coming straight towards him …
Because when you disturb a bed of pine needles, the darker layer underneath shows up very clearly … they were tracking him …
No ordinary hitmen these, not like the nerds in the hospital grounds.
Gotta move …
Maybe work his way back to the path …
He pushed himself up and crept away, keeping low, treading carefully so as not to leave a trail, watching the flickering beam of the torch … a twig cracked beneath his foot, but not loud enough for them to hear … forty yards, fifty –
A telephone rang and he froze –
Where -? It was his own feckin’ mobile –
Shouts from the hitmen –
He snatched it from his pocket, threw it as far as he could and ran … Shouldn’t have done that, he thought … too late now.
He ran, trying to dodge the trees as the thin lower branches flicked spitefully at his face, ran as his breath grew heavy. He had to …
A break in the trees ahead and more bracken – the path? No, the ground opened beneath him and with a cry, he fell into a ditch …
And onto something that squealed, kicked him in the face, jumped up and bolted away… he crawled further along the ditch, heard the hitmen jump over it, following the noise of the animal’s hooves …
A sheep? A deer? How long had he got?
Not long. He crawled as fast as he could, the ditch was dry and dark, the bracken curled over the top shutting out the light - he stifled a cry as a thorn dug into his palm, stopped and tried to pull it out …
Silence.
Why not just stay where he was? They’d never find him here … would they?
But they must have realised by now they’d followed an animal, that he must still be in the ditch …
He raised his head, straining his ears …
No sound. Absolutely nothing.
Death Before Time Page 24
