by Nick Oldham
The inspector rose from behind his desk and said, ‘Sir,’ to Rik.
‘Where are we up to?’ Rik asked briskly, forgoing any niceties.
‘OK, last thing I know is that the chief and Mr Christie were looking at this large-scale map of the Whitworth area trying to find Britannia Top Farm—’
‘Which is actually Whitworth Top Farm,’ Jerry interrupted.
‘Yes, OK,’ the inspector said. ‘Then they went and I haven’t heard anything since. And—’ he tried to look pained and as if this was an excuse – ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Two cops not in contact,’ Rik stated coldly. ‘Priorities?’
‘I know.’ The inspector’s head dropped as he wondered what it would feel like to have it chopped off.
Rik regarded him stonily, then looked at Flynn and Tope.
‘What do you think, guys?’
‘Let’s go and follow the trail,’ Flynn said.
‘You don’t need to come along,’ Rik said to him.
‘I think I do,’ Flynn said in a tone that brooked no further argument. So that was settled.
‘I’ve got a double-crewed car on its way back from the custody office in Burnley after literally just dumping a prisoner; I diverted them to Whitworth.’
‘Good – at least that’s something,’ Rik said, unable to keep a tinge of sarcasm out of his voice. To Tope he said, ‘Are you all right to go in your own car?’
‘Uh – it’s a Smart car, not great on farm tracks.’
‘Here.’ The inspector tossed a set of keys to him. ‘Have my patrol car. I’ll jump in with a mobile if I have to.’
‘Have you got a PR?’ Rik asked Tope, who nodded.
Flynn said, ‘I haven’t.’
‘Fix him up with one.’ Rik told the inspector. ‘I need to make a call.’
After heaving Jake’s body into the back of the Land Rover, Charlie drove it on to the track outside the farm, then waited for Luke to get the old Range Rover out of the barn behind the farmhouse that was used as the garage. When the cars were ready to roll, the brothers then went quickly through the farm, turning off lights, locking doors and securing the premises, before jumping back in the cars and setting off down the track. At the point where they could have turned towards the main road, Charlie went sharp right on the lane that led up to Britannia Quarries. When the tarmac petered out and became a track, they kept going up towards Jackson’s Moor where they knew there was a deep, flooded and unused quarry.
On the rim of this, Charlie stopped and climbed out of the Land Rover, leaving the engine running, but in neutral and the handbrake off.
Luke drew in behind and the two of them simply pushed the police Land Rover over the edge of the quarry and watched it bounce down the almost perpendicular slope, hit a narrow ledge and somersault over into the deep water. For an agonizing minute it floated, then with an enormous gulp it sank quickly and joined numerous other stolen vehicles dumped there over the years.
They climbed into the Range Rover and without a word drove back towards Whitworth.
Henry was astonished at how utterly cold it was underground. He wrapped his arms around himself and squatted on his haunches next to FB, feet in the mud, a chill wind whistling around them. He had turned off the torch to preserve battery life and was reluctant to switch it back on.
Next to him, FB was also on his haunches, shivering terribly and, Henry suspected, lapsing into shock from his injuries.
Henry could hear FB’s ragged breathing and the scraping noise his lungs made as he inhaled and exhaled, his teeth chattering. He knew he had to make a move now.
‘Boss?’
‘What?’
‘Let’s get back to the entrance. They’re not going to be there now but we need to get moving while we can. Think you can stand up?’
Henry reached out blindly and slid his arm under FB’s armpit and was shocked that he could actually feel the way the man’s body was almost convulsing as he shivered with the cold. He tried to help him to his feet but, although FB tried his utmost to stand, his legs had lost all power and it was like lifting a dead weight.
‘Ugh, Jeez,’ FB said, sliding back down into a crouch. ‘I can’t do this, Henry … I can’t … my chest feels like it’s going to explode and my left arm is tingling all the way down to my fingers. I feel really ill – and I’ve been shot twice – I’m sorry. I know it’s no excuse.’
Henry was just glad FB could not see his expression.
‘We have to get out of here now,’ Henry said firmly.
‘No, no, not me,’ FB said hoarsely. ‘You go and get help.’
‘Boss,’ Henry whined.
‘No, no I mean it. Leave me here and get help, OK? That’s a fucking order.’
Henry closed his eyes despairingly.
He turned on the torch, had a look at FB’s face and had to physically stop himself from emitting a squeak of horror. He switched it off, stood up and removed his stab vest and hi-viz jacket. A blast of icy wind hit him and he tried not to think about how cold it was as he wrapped the clothing around FB’s wide shoulders.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘which way?’
‘That way, you fucking buffoon,’ FB said, tugging on Henry’s leg. ‘The way we came.’
‘Oh yeah.’
They were in Whitworth less than ten minutes later, Rik and Flynn leading, Jerry Tope following in the cop car. They flew along the roads, ignoring the flashes of the speed cameras, even though they knew there was nothing they could do to prevent themselves from receiving notice of fines in the near future.
None of the three was familiar with the area. They had all done the majority of their coppering in and around the west of Lancashire, rarely having to travel east, which they viewed as a wild, untamed and uncivilized world.
Flynn read the road map and shouted directions. These weren’t too complex geographically and they soon found Cowm Park Way, then the road that ran past the Cock and Magpie and up to the moors.
Henry picked his way carefully along the tunnel, using the torch sparingly, progressing mainly by touch and feel and, he hoped, a half-decent sense of direction assisted by the wind in his face. He assumed it would be blowing in from the entrance, but when he reached a three-way junction he was immediately enshrouded by doubt. Straight ahead? Left or right? In his mind’s eye he tried to recall the journey he and FB had taken on their plunge into blackness. Straight in from the ledge, then left … was it? Christ, they hadn’t even gone that far, just a matter of yards. This, he thought, must be like flying a plane in thick fog. Problem was the only instrument that could help him out – other than his own five senses – was flickering and about to let him down.
Surely he had to turn left.
He turned left.
Rik bounced his car to a stop outside Red Pits Farm and peered through the gate posts at the sign that displayed the name of the farm.
‘This isn’t it,’ Flynn said, leaning over.
‘No, you’re right.’
Easing out the clutch he let the car move carefully forwards. Behind, Jerry Tope also stopped and looked at the sign, then followed Rik along a track never designed or intended for normal cars to use.
The farmer who owned Red Pits peered through his bedroom curtains at what on that track was a procession of vehicles.
‘More cars,’ he said to his wife who lay half-asleep in bed. ‘Summat goin’ on up there, summat not good. Might as well go and start the cows,’ he said. ‘Not going to get any sleep tonight.’ When the cops had gone by earlier he’d been up dealing with a sick calf.
His wife grunted.
The farmer, whose name was Pickersgill, closed the curtain and walked across the bedroom floor in his wellingtons, then tramped down to the huge kitchen where his sheepdog – Jessie – waited patiently for him, tail wagging.
He filled a pan with water – Pickersgill did not have a kettle – and placed it on one of the hot rings on the massive cooking range that occupied most of one wall of the kit
chen.
He was wondering what could be going on at Whitworth Top Farm. He knew it had not been a working farm for many years and had gone to rack and ruin after a scumbag family inherited it, then started selling off the land, of which Pickersgill had bought a huge chunk for a knock-down price. He had nothing to do with them but had watched their comings and goings with a detached interest. Fortunately, as scummy as they were, they kept themselves to themselves, so it suited him.
Next his mind moved to Abel Kirkman who lived on the next farm along the lane. What a tragedy had taken place there, but Pickersgill wasn’t surprised. Abel was a good farmer but a hothead, and had married a shagger.
He sighed and was so immersed in his thoughts that he didn’t take much notice of Jessie sniffing at the back door, her ears flat, eyes showing their whites.
‘What’s up, gal?’
She whined and gave a little yelp, still concentrating on the door.
Frowning, Pickersgill went to the door, unlocked and opened it, staggering backwards in shock at the sight of the blood-soaked figure of a young woman who crashed in, her red hands reaching for him like a zombie.
They drove on further to Whitworth Top Farm and both vehicles drew into the spookily empty, unlit farmyard.
Rik and Flynn jumped out in the rain and walked over to the front door of the farmhouse. Tope climbed slowly out of the police car and headed to the stable.
Rik pounded on the front door.
‘No sign of life here,’ he commented, continuing to bang. He glanced around the yard, seeing Jerry Tope testing the stable door.
‘Right place, you think?’ Flynn asked.
‘Who knows … shhh,’ he said, cutting himself off, holding up a finger. ‘Hear that?’
Flynn frowned.
‘Listen – from the inside.’
Both men tilted their heads to the door, though their concentration was interrupted by Tope, who had taken it upon himself to use an old pitchfork to lever the stable door open. It gave with a crack and Tope leapt back with a yelp of surprise.
Rik banged on the door again with his knuckles – rat-tat-tat – whilst peering through the frosted glass panel in the door, but seeing only darkness.
Then: ‘There! Hear that?’
He banged the same rhythm, rat-tat-tat.
And from somewhere within the house came an exact echo: rat-tat-tat.
He glanced at Flynn, who said, ‘I heard that.’
Rik stepped back, said, ‘Bollocks to this,’ and flat-footed the door. But it was heavy and secure.
It took a joint effort by him and Flynn to burst it open, step into the vestibule, then into the hallway, with Rik calling, ‘Police. This is the police,’ and brandishing his warrant card ahead of him.
He stopped suddenly, holding out an arm to keep Flynn still.
There it was again, the banging noise. With Flynn at his shoulder, he walked along the hallway and came to the cellar door under the stairway, behind which someone was banging.
Rik and Flynn looked at each other.
Rik drew back the bolt, then slowly opened the door and found himself at the top of steep and narrow cellar steps on which two wide-eyed and terrified women perched, shivering and scared.
Before he could say anything, Jerry Tope skidded into the house, a worried expression on his face.
‘Rik, you need to come and see this – now.’
Rik placed his feet carefully on the stable floor, looking at the blood on it and smeared on the walls of a loose box. The discarded, used shotgun cartridges and the broken remnants of two police radios and two mobile phones, crushed and kick-scattered across the stable.
He bent down and picked up a broken piece of a mobile phone, his heart beating hard as he plotted the implications of what he was seeing here.
‘Fuck,’ he said, his eyes combing the walls and floors.
He placed the broken phone down, stood up slowly and saw something on the floor of the loose box.
He swallowed, knowing instantly what it was.
He walked carefully over, stepping as if he was walking on very thin ice, then picked it up – a piece of laminated card – and looked at Flynn and Jerry, angling his find so they could see it clearly.
Henry Christie’s blood-smeared warrant card.
FIFTEEN
‘Where the hell are they?’ Rik demanded of himself, of everyone.
Flynn and Tope looked blankly at the DCI.
‘Shit, shit,’ Rik said desperately, wanting to run around in a circle. ‘Where’s the Land Rover?’
No one had any answers. He threw up his arms.
He tried to call Burnley comms on his PR and his mobile, but could not find a signal.
‘Right, right,’ he said, trying to reach a decision. He looked at Tope. ‘You stay here,’ he told him. ‘I need to get to a phone.’ They had found a landline in the farmhouse, but it was dead. A look of horror crossed Tope’s face which said, What, me? Out here? Alone?
However, he managed to control himself and say, ‘OK.’
Rik had seen the look of fear. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. I need a phone or a signal, either will do. Steve?’ He looked at Flynn. ‘You stay here too?’
‘Can do.’
Rik flicked his fingers at Tope. ‘Car keys.’ He wanted to move as quickly down the lane as possible but despite the urgency of the situation he did not want to rip the bottom out of his own car on the track. He didn’t have such qualms about a police car. Tope tossed the keys to him. ‘Be careful, you guys,’ he said and ran to the inspector’s car, jumped into it and reversed out of the farmyard.
He did ‘ground’ it several times, but it kept going, so he wasn’t too concerned, but he had to slam on when a man stepped out unexpectedly into his headlight beam and put up the equivalent to the police number one stop signal.
Rik cursed, but wound down his window.
‘All right?’
‘You a copper?’ the man asked.
‘Yes.’ Rik didn’t have time to be sarcastic – he was driving a cop car after all.
‘You need to see this, then,’ the man said dourly.
Annabel Larch did not understand why she was not dead.
By rights she knew she should have been, but it was only when she had heard the words, ‘She’s dead,’ spoken fearfully by Johnny that she knew she was alive and realized that the only way she could stay that way was to play dead.
She thought she was dead for certain, could not believe her terrible misfortune when, after she had duped Jake to get away and initially escaped Charlie’s clutches, she and that useless cop had stumbled across Johnny being attacked on the farm track and Charlie had dragged her back into the Range Rover. Then, following Charlie’s failed attempt to get at Johnny in hospital (foiled again by the same dumb cop, apparently), he had returned to the farm where she had been locked in the bedroom, pumped up, violent, ready to do her harm.
It had been the most terrifying moment of her life when Charlie had come back in through that door.
His eyes had been on fire when he used the word ‘betrayal’.
That first punch to her guts had been hard and dreadful, aimed at destroying the actual living thing that was proof of her and Johnny’s love – or, as Charlie called it, betrayal.
The baby.
Even on that first blow, she instinctively knew that severe damage had been done inside her.
Charlie had then set about beating her up very badly and strangling her into waves of unconsciousness, then allowing her to breathe again, gulping for air, then putting the pressure back on her windpipe, stopping the blood and air to her brain until she passed out. She did not waken instantly, but when she did, Charlie stood towering over her. He had then set about punching and kicking her about the head and body, aiming long, accurate kicks into her stomach.
Suddenly he stormed out of the bedroom, leaving her curled up on the floor, gasping and bleeding, with a vicious burning sensation in her lower abdomen. This was when she r
ealized the miscarriage was happening.
She had hardly even noticed Luke step into the bedroom as she pulled herself pitifully across the floor. Luke had not tried to stop her and only as she clambered on to the toilet did she see the trail of blood she had left behind her. She felt a griping, twisting, wrenching contraction in her stomach then which made her howl in agony.
She knew she had lost the baby.
Luke had subsequently taken her over to the stable where he had tied her to a ring in the wall and where, overcome by weakness, stress and loss of blood, she had passed out.
She stirred fleetingly on hearing Johnny’s words – ‘She’s dead.’
She drifted in and out of consciousness, but was aware of a scuffle, then the blast of the shotgun and a heavy weight falling across her like a log, but she wasn’t totally sure what had happened. It was only when Luke dragged her across the stable into another loose box that she opened her eyes and found herself looking into the also open, but dead, eyes of Johnny.
And the horror wasn’t over.
She wasn’t certain of the passage of time as she faded in and out, but then she was aware of being dragged bodily across the stable floor again, lifted and then dumped into the back of a van or something. The same was done with Johnny’s body. He was thrown in on top of her and once again she found herself nose to nose with the young man she had fallen for, who was now dead because of that liaison.
Then – the passing of time was vague – there was more shouting, shots being fired, running, more shouts and then silence.
Her head cleared and her survival instinct kicked in.
The fools thought she was dead. They hadn’t checked – wouldn’t know how to check – and had treated her limp body as if she was a corpse, and she had survived long enough to be dumped in the back of the van.
Even in this state – she was certain she could feel herself bleeding internally still – she knew this was her last chance to live.
Using every speck of strength left inside her, and despite the horror, she wriggled and pushed and forced her way out from underneath Johnny, rolled out of the back of what she saw was a police Land Rover and stood up on shaky legs.
