by Susan Hill
She was not in fact meeting Hannah from any bus, Hannah was staying with a friend as she always did on Tuesday, while Cat went to St Michael’s Singers practice. When Richard and Judith were at home, Felix went to them at Hallam House, but now, and for however many weeks they were in France, Sam would babysit. He took his role as babysitter so seriously and responsibly that she sometimes wondered what she wasn’t being told. When she got back, he was always in bed reading, the kitchen had been tidied and the dishwasher loaded, Wookie and Mephisto fed. Sam earned his money.
She had a couple of hours in which to go through the score for tonight’s practice. The Delius, which she disliked, was not giving them many problems but a work by Peter Maxwell Davies certainly was. Most of them were up to the challenge but she doubted if she was – it would have to be a case of clinging on for dear life to the person standing next to her.
Not long after Cat got in, Felix was dropped off by the family with whom she shared school lifts. Sam walked from the bus stop a little later. Felix was allowed toast and Marmite and half an hour of television before ‘homework’, Sam the same, plus a mug of tea, but then he hung about, first wandering in and out of the kitchen, then going up to his room and coming down again and finally, swivelling round on one of the counter stools. Cat looked up twice from her score. He went on swivelling, then stopped and smiled at her sweetly.
‘What do you want, Sam?’
‘Nothing. Just, you know, being here.’
‘Right.’
‘Hanging.’
‘Fine.’
‘What time are you going out?’
‘Twenty past six. As ever.’
‘Cool.’
‘Do stop that. Stay here by all means, be my guest, but do not swivel.’
‘Gotcha. Mum?’
So there was something.
‘Here I am.’
‘When’s Uncle Si coming back?’
‘I’ve no more idea than you have – nor where he is or what he’s doing.’
‘Truly?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Don’t you think it seems odd?’
‘Not really. It’ll be something to do with SIFT, I suppose.’
‘Only he usually sends a message to one of us. At some point. From somewhere.’
‘Police for you. You know how it is, Sambo.’
‘Do I?’
Cat put down the pencil with which she was marking her score. ‘Are you worried?’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, a bit, I always am when he disappears, but worrying doesn’t help and chances are that he’ll just pop up again, say nothing, and carry on as if nothing’s happened. God knows what some of these jobs are about, but it’s what Simon loves, it’s his life, always has been. We can’t stop it.’
‘Maybe he ought to think a bit more about – you know. Us. And Rachel.’
‘He does think. But the job always comes first.’ ‘Time he married her.’
She hid her surprise. Sam had never made such a remark – she hadn’t thought he had registered Rachel much, though he had always appeared to like her when they met, which wasn’t often. It occurred to her that her son was in many ways as deep a pool as her brother.
‘You’d better get going.’ Sam swung off the stool. ‘I’ll start Felix’s supper.’
‘Make him finish –’
‘His omelette and drink his milk and do his teeth and wee and …’ He pushed her gently from behind. ‘Go.’
‘You’re taller than me now, Sam, did you know that?’ ‘Have you only just noticed? I’ve been taller for months … years even. Decades. Centuries …’ Gradually, he shunted her out of the kitchen into the hall.
‘OK, little bro, I’m coming to get you …’
Squeals from the den.
Just after nine, Felix was asleep and Sam had done most of his homework. He had to finish an essay, which was already late, on manifestations of evil in Macbeth, but decided it could wait another day, until he had fine-tuned his excuses, giving him an hour before his mother would be home. He opened up the file on his laptop called ‘Geography – Maps and Charts’ and began to scroll down the individual entries for guns, with detailed specifications and a photograph beside each one.
Glock 17 pistol
Glock 26 pistol
Walther P99 pistol
SIG Sauer P226 pistol
Heckler & Koch USP
Heckler & Koch MP5
Heckler & Koch G36 variants4
LMT Defender AR-15 variants
Heckler & Koch G3
Remington 870 shotgun
SIG 550 (553 variant)
HK417 marksmen Rifle
He knew most of them by heart now, but he liked to test himself on the detail, and make comparisons. He became so absorbed that when the car headlights flashed into the drive, he had to make a leap to close down and head fast for the bathroom and his toothbrush.
PART THREE
Thirty-eight
First shift started at half past five and went on until after lunch, with a half-hour breakfast at eight. It was a popular shift. The rest of the day was free, there were perks like extra snacks and hot drinks, there was good camaraderie, and because there were never quite enough hands, they were kept too busy to be bored. No time for brooding.
‘You’re with me,’ Will said. ‘Back stores.’
The supplies started arriving from six – milk first, whatever dry goods were ordered, vegetables and bread last. A row of sack trucks stood by the open hangar, the vans and lorries backed up right to the platform. Some of the work was unloading from the forklift, some was wheeling off the trucks. If you started off finding the lifting near impossible, by the end of a few weeks you had strengthened so much you could take double.
But there was not much breath left over for chat. Simon and Will worked steadily, passing this, moving that, crossing over to take a different side. There was constant noise from engines reversing, the whine of the lifting gear, the clatter of the trolleys, an occasional thud as something dropped. From behind the stores, the kitchen noise was just as loud.
When they started, there was a chill in the air. An hour later, they were sweating with effort, and the sun was up.
‘Great,’ Will said.
‘What?’
‘Going to be a fine day.’
Serrailler shrugged, taking down a sack of carrots.
‘Just right.’
‘What for?’
Will put his finger to the side of his nose but then swung round to grab a swaying crate before it hit the side wall.
They worked on. It was a heavy morning. The domestic supplies normally came in to a different side but there had been problems with the ramp, and everything was diverted. After the carrots, potatoes and boxes of catering-size tins of tomatoes and sacks of flour, they had to deal with cartons of bleach, floor cleaner, scouring pads, toilet rolls. Simon wiped the back of his arm across his forehead every so often. He and Will had taken off their shirts and tied them round their waists.
‘Galley slaves,’ the last driver shouted, getting into his cab. Will chucked an onion, which missed the driver, hit his wing mirror.
‘Shit.’
But lorry mirrors were built to stay put. The vehicle went on reversing slowly out.
With luck, they’d have a few minutes before the bread van. Will moved to the back of the store, beckoning Simon to follow. The machines banged and whirred from the kitchens behind them but no one else was nearby.
‘Get your shirt back on. You’ll need it.’
His voice sounded odd, tense, almost excited.
‘What’s up?’
‘This is it. I’ve got it worked out.’
‘What?’
‘Getting out. This is it.’
‘Don’t be –’
‘Shut up and listen. Are you in with me or out? If you’re out, that’s your choice, but I need to know.’
Serrailler’s mind whirred. Whatever plan Will had made, he had
not said another word about it. Until now. His instinct told him not to ask, but he had to make a fast decision. If Will Fernley went on his own, that was that, his own reason for being in here would have gone without his being in possession of any information. When Will was caught, which he would be, sooner or later, he wouldn’t be back to Stitchford.
But if Simon managed to stick to Will for long enough, there was a slight chance that he might strike lucky and find out something vital.
‘Johnno?’
He almost failed to recognise his false name, hesitating before glancing round. But Will didn’t appear to have noticed. Simon’s adrenalin was punching round his system, he was on a high, wound up, going over and over his calculations, the sequence of events, their speed. It would have to be quick.
‘I’m in.’
‘OK.’ Will did not show any emotion, merely nodded. ‘Now listen hard.’
They were squatting on the dusty floor at the back of the loading bay, Will talking fast and low, as if in bullet points, close to Simon’s ear.
Will had been a Guards officer and the training showed. In any other situation, Serrailler would have been confident of his abilities. This was different. In the very short term, the scheme might succeed. In the longer, it was guaranteed to fail, but taking careful stock of the plan as Fernley put it to him, he saw that almost nothing had been left to chance. He made no comment, asked no questions, because he judged it better to stay silent, but in fact there was little he could criticise. It was the maddest of mad schemes, and yet it had been thought through comprehensively and coolly.
They might be on the run for days, during which time they would be totally dependent on one another and as close as they could be.
‘Got it?’
‘Got it.’
‘It should work.’
‘Livin’ on a prayer.’
Will shook his head.
He went to look out of the open doors. Nobody was about. The pod was noisier than ever as the peeling and chopping machines came on. Will had timed everything.
Three minutes later, he signalled. Simon moved to stand beside him in the shadow of the overhang.
The bread van slowed at the security post and the driver lifted his hand. The guard raised the bar for him to drive through, he came up at the statutory five miles an hour and then turned left at the top, and reversed slowly up to the store, the warning beeper sounding before the robotic voice took over.
‘This vehicle is reversing. This vehicle is reversing. This vehicle …’
The bread van was smaller than some of the trucks and took up less of the opening, but once it had backed right into the bay and touched the loading ramp, the daylight was pretty much blocked out.
‘Morning,’ Will said.
Some of the guys were friendly, some not, some cheerful, some not, some treated the men on work shift like normal human beings, a few didn’t. The bread man didn’t. He was small, sour and morose and barely gave any of them the time of day.
The van doors were opened onto the stacked trays. Will jumped in first, Simon stood on the tailgate. The delivery man had gone to get his load ticked off. They worked fast and in silence, their rhythm well established, barely glancing at one another, as the trays were rolled out and slid onto the ramp. Bread came in only once a week – two-thirds of it going into the freezers. Will kept one eye on the back of the hangar, until the driver appeared, carrying his signed docket. Will had been whistling ‘John Brown’s Body’, in time with his unloading movements, but as he saw the man, changed the tune abruptly to ‘Lili Marlene’.
Simon leaned over the tailgate of the van and shouted, ‘Something wrong up here, mate – this isn’t moving smoothly. Can you jump up and take a look?’
The man stopped. ‘Nothing wrong with it last load.’
‘Right, well, there is now and it could shunt down suddenly and catch someone below.’
Grumbling, stuffing the chit in his pocket, the van driver started to haul himself up beside Simon. As he was doing so, Simon stepped forward and trod lightly on the man’s thumb, not enough to do damage, but enough to distract him. The driver swore under his breath and went on swearing, holding his hand, shaking it, mouthing more obscenities. He did not notice that Will had slipped off the far side of the tailgate and run round in the shadow of the wall.
Simon heard Will jump up into the cab, and immediately pushed the van driver down to the floor hard, hauled the doors shut and dropped the bar across. Will had started the engine and was swinging the bread van round and then going forward. He hooted as he made for the security gate. This was the moment when it could all go wrong before it had started, but the guard on duty must have lifted the barrier without bothering to check the driver and van which he had let in fifteen minutes earlier and which had been in his sights the whole time. Simon had his hand over the bread man’s face as he felt the van swing out of the main gates, and turn left. Will accelerated and they were moving quickly and smoothly down the road.
The man had been spluttering and groaning underneath Simon’s hand, but now, terrified, he went silent and limp. Serrailler leaned forward. ‘Now listen. You’re not going to get hurt if you do exactly as you’re told. If you don’t …’
The man nodded.
‘OK. You’ve got a watch. When we stop, you lie right there, and you don’t move a muscle and you don’t speak – for an hour by the dial. If you do, if you try to get out, if you try to raise the alarm by banging on those doors, you’re a dead man. I’ve got a tracker which will tell me exactly what’s going on – it’s placed where you’ll never find it and even if you did you couldn’t disable it. If that goes off, I’ll know and I’ve got lads on the other end who’ll be only too delighted to come and find you, get it?’
A sound in the driver’s throat, like a sob.
‘After an hour, we’re long gone and out of reach, so you can make whatever din you want.’
A slight pause. Simon lifted his hand. The man’s eyes were wide with fear, shifting from Serrailler to the van sides, roof, floor, and back.
‘I don’t suppose this van carries an alarm – not for bloody bread.’
Shake of the head.
‘There you are then. No, lie there, don’t say anything, don’t stir.’
Simon’s hand moved as if to his inner pocket. The man drummed a foot on the floor, shaking his head to and fro in panic. Simon moved his hand away from the pocket. Now that the driver believed at least one of them carried a gun, the driver would hardly dare to breathe.
It was uncomfortable in the back of the van, and because he didn’t know the area, Simon had no sense of the direction in which they were heading. They bumped and bounced, swung and lurched, for what seemed like an hour. And then they slowed finally, and stopped. The engine died.
‘Out, Johnno.’ Will had opened one of the rear doors a few inches only. He looked at the driver on the floor. Simon nodded. The man did not stir.
The next minute the doors were shut and locked and Will had pocketed the keys.
‘Maybe chuck them somewhere they can be found?’
‘What for?’
‘Look, we want to get away and stay away – we don’t want a death on our hands.’
Will snorted, ‘He’s not going to die. They’ll find the van before long and crowbar it open. Worst that’ll happen, he’ll pee all over the floor. OK, now we move.’
‘Where the hell are we anyway?’
‘Middle of nowhere, west of the back of beyond.’
Simon looked round. They were on a lane which swerved sharply just ahead. To the right, there was a verge and a ditch but no hedge, and beyond, nothing for miles. It was flat field after flat field, with what looked like abandoned farm units just visible. Nothing else. No building, no traffic, no trees. Just a vast sky, silver blue but with puffs of cumulus on the horizon.
‘We’ll be seen for miles,’ he said. ‘We’re sitting ducks, Will.’
‘Not the way I’m going.’
; ‘Food?’
‘Bar of chocolate in my pocket.’
‘Drink?’
‘No, but farmyards have taps.’
‘Tell me where you’re planning for us to end up. Give me something to hope for.’
‘You’ll find out.’
‘No, sod it, Will, I came with you, I’ve got a right to know.’
‘Andrew’s.’
‘Andrew …’
‘Morson.’
‘QC?’
‘Yup.’
‘And does Andrew know he’s having the pleasure?’
‘He does. He isn’t there, never is midweek, but we’ll be looked after royally. He’s left instructions.’
‘Who with?’
‘Housekeeper. Who gets paid fat chunks of cash as a reward when she keeps her mouth shut.’
‘Shit.’
‘We should move. You all right?’
‘Never better.’
Will turned through a gap in the hedge, Simon following. The field ahead was flat, but crossed by a deep ditch, like the waterways of the Fens. They made their way to it and Will dropped down, so that nothing of him was visible, Simon after him. There was barely a trickle of water in the bottom, but the vegetation had grown thickly, narrowing their route so that they had to walk single file. They went on steadily, not speaking, saving their energy.
At one point, the drone of an aircraft made Will drop onto his stomach. Serrailler did the same. They waited, but the plane was over to the west and the sound of its engines faded quickly. They waited a couple of minutes more, then went on. It was tedious and, as the sun rose higher, steamy and close. The ditch smelled of damp greenery and earth and they began to sweat inside their thick shirts until the cotton stuck to them. Simon saw the dark patches on Will’s back. All they could see over the bank was flatness, acre upon acre, mile after mile, broken only by the dykes and a few spindly trees, a half-yard of stunted hedge. Far on the horizon, a single ugly house. To the south, a distant church spire, blending into the paleness of the sky. There was little sound. No major road anywhere near, no habitation.
‘How long does this go on?’
