Firetrap

by David Hodges

  ‘Have to kip sometime,’ he retorted, unrepentant. ‘Been up all night.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for you,’ the caller sneered. ‘Especially as you seem to have cocked up yet again. Papers are full of Hamblin’s miraculous escape.’

  Twister’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and a traffic warden making her way slowly along the pavement towards him. ‘Yeah, I know. Non-stop accident, they’re saying. At least they haven’t put it down to anything else.’

  The voice at the other end dropped to a hiss. ‘They’re looking for a bloody Land Rover, you prat. I told you to get rid of that thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Hamblin obviously didn’t get my number, otherwise they’d have said.’

  ‘But what if some bright spark makes a connection with the other job?’

  ‘What can they do? As I told you before, there are loads of Land Rovers round here and I’ve already replaced the dented bumper, so they’ve got nothing to go on. Anyway, if they do begin to suspect anything, it’s Duval who’ll get the blame.’

  ‘When they finally manage to catch him. He seems to have disappeared.’

  Twister’s jaw tightened as he remembered seeing the arsonist running away from Burnham pier. He should have said about that and about Kate Hamblin’s shenanigans at the murder scene, but he had enough on his plate at present without introducing complications. So he kept quiet.

  ‘What’s your marvellous plan now then?’ his caller went on.

  Twister smiled without humour. ‘I thought I might do a hospital visit – once I’ve got some grapes, of course.’

  There was a disparaging snort. ‘Just make sure the patient is not in a fit state to eat them, OK? Try to do something right for once.’

  He didn’t bother to reply, but cut the call and turned quickly as the traffic warden appeared at his window. ‘You’re illegally parked,’ the short, fat woman snapped, reaching for her ticket wallet.

  He forced a smile. ‘Sorry, love, just getting some chocolates for my good lady. Had an accident and she’s in hospital.’

  The traffic warden hesitated, then returned her wallet to her handbag, her disappointment showing. ‘Go on then, but watch where you park in future.’

  He nodded and started the engine. ‘You’re an angel.’

  His compliment was met with a scowl. ‘You just make sure you take good care of that lady of yours.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he replied over his shoulder as he drove off. ‘I’m going to take really good care of her.’

  chapter 12

  KATE AWOKE TO find she had another visitor – though this one was a lot more than welcome.

  Hayden Lewis had parked himself in the chair beside her bed, hair awry as usual and the frayed collar of his shirt crumpled by the V neck of a baggy sweater.

  ‘Hi, Kate,’ he greeted and smiled a little uncertainly. ‘’Fraid your car’s a bit of a write-off, old girl, but you’re OK, which is the main thing.’

  ‘The car’s the least of my worries,’ she said, thinking of Callow. ‘I had a visit from our lovable DCI earlier.’

  Lewis whistled. ‘What, the “Wicked Witch of the North” doing welfare? That must be a first.’

  ‘It was no welfare visit. She was in interrogation mode.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ he said ruefully. ‘Had me in a couple of hours ago. I got quite a grilling.’

  ‘You were grilled? Whatever for?’

  He shrugged. ‘She knows we’re – er – friends and suggested I might know why you were in the area of the crime scene when you had your TA.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her anything, did you?’

  He looked horrified. ‘What do you take me for? As I told you before, if it gets out that I caught you sneaking around Duval’s place and didn’t report it, I’m in very deep poo.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to say anything, now am I?’

  He gave a weak grin. ‘Well, that’s a relief anyway. So, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Rough.’

  ‘Hardly surprising really. It was a bad accident and you were lucky my relief came by and found you in time.’

  ‘It was no accident, Hayden,’ she said. ‘I was run off the road by the same arsehole who blasted the Transit.’

  His jaw dropped. ‘What? Oh come on, Kate, how can you possibly say that?’

  She tried to wriggle up into a sitting position, riled by his incredulity, but gave up when the pain in her head and ribcage started again.

  ‘Hayden, it was the same Land Rover.’ she grated. ‘You must believe me. Someone is trying to shut me up for good.’

  He snorted. ‘Someone, Kate?’ he echoed. ‘Surely you’re not still hung up on this idea that Terry Duval is innocent?’

  She forced herself up on to one elbow, gripping his wrist tightly with her other hand. ‘Hayden, I saw the driver this time. He had a beard. He was nothing like Duval.’

  Lewis ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. ‘But – but even if you are right in what you say,’ he countered, ‘why would anyone want to kill you? You didn’t get the number of the Land Rover when the Transit was targeted and you said you couldn’t describe the driver, so you’re hardly likely to be seen as much of a threat to anyone.’

  ‘Maybe the killer doesn’t know that, or just isn’t taking any chances.’

  ‘Fine, but whether he is or he isn’t, if you didn’t get the number of the Land Rover in the first place, how can you know it was the same vehicle that ran you off the road this time?’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Callow, Hayden,’ Kate snapped. ‘But I’ll tell you what I told her – I would know that wagon anywhere.’

  Lewis hesitated, choosing his words carefully. ‘Listen, Kate,’ he patronized, ‘you’ve been through a lot lately, but don’t you think you’re seeing things that aren’t there? You were involved in a non-stop RTA, nothing more than that, and the driver probably didn’t stop because he was over the limit.’

  But Kate was no longer listening; something far more important had thrust itself into her mind like the point of an icy needle. Duval. What about Duval? And what about the note she had slipped into her coat pocket with her mobile? What if it had fallen out or been found by someone else?

  ‘My clothes, Hayden,’ she said urgently, trying to pull back the sheets, ‘where are they?’

  He placed a restraining hand on her wrist. ‘Steady, old girl. You’re in no fit state to get up yet.’

  She pulled her hand free, ignoring his concern. ‘Hayden, I said, where are my bloody clothes?’

  He flinched, taken aback by her aggression, and nodded towards a slim wooden locker next to her bedside cabinet. ‘In – in there I expect. Hospitals usually—’

  She clutched at the sides of the bed as her head swam. ‘Will you please check?’

  He looked shocked. ‘Check your clothes? I – I can’t do that, Kate. It’s not right.’

  She closed her eyes tightly for a second, her own frustration showing. At any other time she would have found his old-fashioned sensibilities endearing, but right now they irritated the hell out of her. ‘I’m not asking you to wear my bloody bra, Hayden,’ she said heavily, wincing as a sharp stabbing pain now lanced through her head and neck again. ‘Just take a look, will you?’

  With an unhappy frown, he stood up and crossed to the locker, opening the door as if he believed it might suddenly explode in his hand.

  ‘What’s inside?’ she demanded.

  He flushed with obvious embarrassment. ‘Just a pair of trousers, a sweater and – and other … sort of undie things.’

  Nothing else? She felt a stab of apprehension. ‘So what happened to my leather coat?’

  He shut the door in the manner of someone closing the covers of a dirty book. Suddenly he was back in his comfort zone. ‘Ah that. You should have said. Sorry, but I seem to remember it got badly ripped when the fire service had to cut you free. It must have been left in the car.’

  She stared at him aghast. Left
in the car? ‘And where’s my motor now?’

  ‘Jury’s Yard at Bridgwater. They’ll hang on to it until you sort out disposal with your insurance company.’

  ‘Hayden, I’ve got to get out of here – fast.’

  He looked annoyed. ‘Don’t be silly, Kate. Hospital will want to you keep you in under observation at least until tomorrow.’

  ‘Bugger the hospital,’ she retorted and, rolling over on to one elbow, swung her legs over the edge of the bed and forced herself up into a sitting position, fists clenched and face contorted in a fierce grimace as she waited a few seconds in the hope that the nausea and eroding pain would subside.

  He gaped at her in disbelief. ‘Kate, it’s a coat! For goodness’ sake, it’s only a coat.’

  But she took no notice and, levering herself up off the bed, swayed past him to her locker, where she paused with one hand on the metal door and her head leaning weakly against her forearm. ‘Hayden, you’re very sweet,’ she said with an effort, ‘but I am going to get dressed, so would you mind leaving.’

  He shook his head defiantly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you do this.’

  She closed her eyes again for a few seconds, feeling too ill to argue the point. ‘Suit yourself then,’ she breathed and, pulling her nightdress up over her head, tossed it on to the floor and reached into the locker for her underclothes.

  Lewis simply stood there, transfixed, unable to take his eyes off her slim naked figure.

  ‘Kate,’ he protested finally when he managed to find his voice. ‘This - this is just not on. I mean …’

  ‘Told you to leave, didn’t I?’ she muttered, pulling her sweater over her head with great difficulty and stumbling back against the locker before managing to regain her balance. ‘Now, you can take me to Jury’s.’

  Lewis shook his head again. ‘Jury’s? Not a chance.’

  She studied him for a moment, her leather boots in her hands. ‘Then I’ll get a taxi.’

  He stepped in front of her. ‘You’ll have to get past me first,’ he said.

  Her jaw hardened. ‘You can’t stop me, Hayden, and if you try, I’ll scream the place down.’

  The flush drained from his face and there was panic in his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he exclaimed. ‘No one even knows I slipped in here.’

  ‘Then don’t interfere.’

  Lewis capitulated with a groan. ‘OK, OK,’ he said hastily. ‘I’ll take you there, damn it – as if I’m not in enough trouble over you already.’

  For the first time there was a hint of mischief in her blue eyes. Straining on tiptoe, she grabbed his arm to steady herself and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Hayden, I owe you.’

  He nodded, the sulks still written into his expression. ‘Let’s just get out of here, if we’re going,’ he growled. ‘That bitch of a DCI might decide to come back.’

  She glanced down at her bare feet and slapped her boots into his chest. ‘Then you’d better help me on with my socks and boots, hadn’t you?’ she replied.

  chapter 13

  LEWIS HAD AN old red Mk 2 Jaguar, much like the one used by the fictional police detective, Inspector Morse, and he had parked it in the hospital car-park, close to the exit. With characteristic old-fashioned courtesy, he opened the front passenger door and stood to one side, holding on to Kate’s arm, as she carefully climbed into the seat.

  The man in the Land Rover saw them leaving as he turned into the car-park and he swung in quickly alongside the first double row of parked cars, out of sight, until the Jaguar had gone through the exit barrier towards the main road. Twister realized his mistake when he got to the barrier himself, staring with barely suppressed fury at the red and white arm, which came down blocking his way. He had been to the hospital before and should have remembered you had to pay for the car-park and validate the ticket in the hospital foyer before you could exit.

  Lost them, sod it.

  Reversing into a nearby car-parking space, he sprinted across the service road through the automatic doors and into the building itself, inserting his ticket into the machine just inside the entrance. It seemed to take ages to respond, then the illuminated display told him there was nothing to pay; the first twenty minutes were apparently free. Snarling his frustration, he snatched the ticket back when it grudgingly reappeared and brushed roughly against an elderly man with a stick as he swung for the doors.

  Even as he sprinted back to his car, however, he knew he was wasting his time – the Jag was long gone – and, finally driving out through the hospital exit, he cursed his luck and the fact that this time there was no tracking device fitted to the target vehicle to enable him to keep tabs on his quarry. Then his stomach practically slammed up into his ribcage, suddenly reminding him of something else.

  Bloody hell, the tracking device on the MX5.

  If it hadn’t fallen off into the rhyne with the force of the collision, it had to be still attached to the underside of the vehicle – almost certainly busted as it was not registering on his monitor – and just waiting for some plod traffic accident investigator to spot it. And that was the last thing he could afford to happen.

  Reaching the roundabout and the junction with the A370, he deliberately cut up another car on the roundabout itself, furious with himself for his stupidity and determined to take it out on anyone in the vicinity. How could he have forgotten about the blasted tracker? He was supposed to be a professional. This business was doing his head in. One thing was clear, however: he had to get to the car before anyone had a chance of examining it too closely. According to the picture in the paper it had been collected by a breakdown truck from Jury’s of Bridgwater and he just hoped that was where it had been taken. A prayer might have helped had he been vaguely Christian, but in addition to being a non-believer, he knew that, with his record, he could hardly expect to find a listening ear above, even if there was someone in residence to pray to.

  In fact, as he took the third exit off the busy roundabout, a disjointed assortment of pictures flashed through his brain; gruesome images he knew he would never forget – would never want to forget. He had been an assassin most of his adult life and though he liked to blame the SAS for that, his penchant for murder had actually started long before he’d reached adulthood and joined the army.

  A quiet retiring boy with few friends, there had never been anything in his behaviour to suggest he was other than a normal teenager who simply preferred his own company. He was always polite, never got into trouble with the more rebellious crowd at school and consistently achieved good examination results. Though an only child, he also enjoyed an apparently happy stable family life, with all the love and support that went with it, even after the death of his mother when he was ten. On the surface then, he had everything going for him.

  But beneath the inoffensive wholesome persona that Larry projected lurked the seriously deranged mind of the psychopath; a cold, calculating mentality driven by absolute self-interest, a complete lack of empathy towards anyone or anything and an inbuilt ambivalence towards basic moral norms – including the sanctity of human life. Unlike Terry Duval’s motivation for arson, for Larry killing was not an overtly sexual or vengeful thing. True, it imbued him with a sense of power and fulfilment, and he took great pride in doing the job properly, but he did not get a hard-on from the act – any more than he felt the slightest remorse for carrying it out. He killed because it fitted in with what he wanted to do at the time and if a psychiatrist were to have asked him why he had taken the life of another human being, he would probably have shrugged and answered simply: ‘Why not?’

  During his early childhood, he had actually managed to resist the strengthening voice in his head urging him to kill someone, contenting himself instead with shooting birds, cats and small rodents with his airgun or incinerating them with a blowtorch after they had been trapped. But by the time he reached his last year in school, this no longer satisfied him and the voice had become so painfully insistent that he knew it could
no longer be ignored.

  As a result, he befriended a lower year fat boy, named Jerome Cassidy, and, luring him to the municipal park near the school on the pretext of showing him some dirty pictures, he plunged a chisel he had stolen from the woodwork class into the boy’s throat. Then he sat quietly on a tree stump and, with dispassionate clinical interest, watched him die in a bubbling choking haemorrhage, feeling no connection between himself and his victim, other than through the experiment he had set up.

  He killed twice more after that in separate parts of the county, first a young woman out jogging in a lonely country lane and then a middle-aged hospital nurse on her way to work. Both victims were selected at random and strangled. Both were pretty too, but neither the nurse or the scantily clad jogger stirred his juices and he made no attempt to interfere with either of them sexually. It was the act of killing that interested him, plus the satisfaction he gained from watching the light go out in the eyes of his victims as they choked their last; rape was nowhere on his agenda.

  More murders would undoubtedly have followed too, had he not spotted a railway hoarding bearing an advertisement for the army with its apparent limitless opportunities for legalized murder. His application was in within four days.

  Soldiering – and more particularly the SAS – taught him how to kill silently and efficiently: to slice through someone’s windpipe from behind with a length of wire, to crush a target’s Adam’s apple with the edge of the hand, or – his chosen method – to snap a spinal cord with a sharp powerful twist of the neck.

  But while he proved to be a ruthless and dependable assassin, supremely fit and very quickly combat hardened, it soon became apparent to his lords and masters that he was a loose cannon; someone for whom the kill was more important than the purpose of the operation and whose reckless disregard for rules and adherence to orders put others in jeopardy. Inevitably, he messed up in a big way during a key training exercise, which resulted in the death of another soldier, and, following a court martial, he was dishonourably discharged from the service.