by Frank Tayell
“One small act that changes the course of history,” Ruth said. “That was what Emmitt said. Longfield, too.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t what they were talking about.”
“No.” Ruth thought about what he’d said. “How would it be different?”
“Maggie and Isaac would have died soon after the Blackout. So would the Prime Minister and dozens of others. Someone else would have been in charge here. I don’t know whom. Wallace, perhaps. Maybe Longfield. Whoever it was, they wouldn’t have done as good a job at clawing something back from the devastation. Mine was a small part in history, but it was a significant one. That’s not false modesty, but none of it matters when set against that other thing I did. I rescued Riley. Right now, I’m trying to find comfort in the fact that I gave her nearly twenty years of as close to a normal life as anyone could have in these times. And she’s as close to a daughter as I’ll ever have. That’s something. Twenty years. It seems wrong to have it ripped away in such a pointless way.”
Ruth wasn’t sure what to say. “She’ll recover.”
“Probably. It’s just hospitals; they bring out the worst in me.” He sighed. “The world can change in a moment. But life is a succession of moments, one coming so fast on the heels of another that it’s impossible to pinpoint the precise point where change began. All you can do is try to identify the moment that it changed for you. My father told me that, it was about a week before he died, but it’s what I think of as his last words to me. Often, I think about what that moment was for me. Was it the car accident? Going to Boston? Taking that job with Maggie? I still don’t know. Whichever it was, it led me to this place. I helped bring law and order to the chaos that surrounded us after that nuclear holocaust. I will not let that be ripped asunder by the likes of Emmitt and Fairmont.”
“We’re going to find them,” Ruth said.
“I’m going to try,” Mitchell said. “It’s all I have left. You’re on two weeks of medical leave and won’t be allowed back until you’ve been signed off by a trauma specialist. The Serious Crimes Unit is going to be folded into the S.I.S., and Corporal Lin and her colleagues have been reassigned to patrol the Solent. Technically I’m on compassionate leave until Riley recovers, but what use am I here? I’m going to find Fairmont, and Emmitt, and stop them both.”
“I’ll help,” Ruth said. “I have to. I was the one he kidnapped. I won’t be safe until they’re stopped.”
Mitchell grunted. Ruth wasn’t sure whether it was in assent or refusal.
“Why did they kidnap me?” she asked. “I mean, if this was about stealing information from the embassy, then why take that risk? Do you think it is connected to Isaac, somehow? Or me, even?”
“No. I don’t think so. Did Emmitt mention that bear with the ribbon? Did he even mention the coin?”
“Not the bear, but the coin… wait, no, I brought that up first.”
“So he was just using information Simon had told him about your adoption to manipulate you into assuming he knew more. As for Isaac, he isn’t nearly as anonymous as he likes to think. Plenty of people know the name. Weaver for one, the Prime Minister for another, along with a lot of people who made it out of London just after the Blackout. To them, he’s the person who received a message saying that we would find food here, on the southern English coast. Because of that, his is a name they’re unlikely to forget, but I doubt that many know the face that goes with it.”
“Then Emmitt was bluffing,” Ruth said. No comfort came with the realisation. “That doesn’t explain why he wanted to kidnap me.”
“I think he’d have settled for any police officer. He wanted an insider in the police. Wallace had his own agenda, and Simon’s real loyalty was to his mother. Thanks to Simon, he saw an opportunity to turn you. As to why he wanted to kidnap a police officer, I suspect that was another distraction. We would have spent weeks looking for you. Our principal suspects would have been the Luddites.”
The memory of the torture came back to her. Ruth shuddered. “I suppose, if I’d not told him anything, eventually my body would have been found with a backward ‘L’ carved into it.”
“Don’t let your mind conjure images like that,” he said. “While you were sleeping, I went back to Police House. I looked again at the evidence. Do you remember that rifle that was pointed at you in Windward Square?”
“How could I forget?”
“The propellant in those cartridges had been replaced with sand and dust. The weight was perfect, but that’s why the weapon didn’t fire. I assume that was the reason the assault rifles were in the house. Fairmont would have hoped that Frobisher and the rest would have used them for defence when the police came in. He was trying to ensure that no police officers died, since a dead copper would have made us reluctant to agree to his deal.”
“Those discarded cartridges I found in the cellar of the church, they must have been taken apart for the same reason.”
“Probably.”
“So they weren’t after the propellant,” she said. “It’s so much effort, so much planning, all for a robbery?”
“Fairmont’s dedicated, I’ll give him that. But it wasn’t just a robbery. Whatever information he has with which to blackmail the presidential candidates, he also wanted to disrupt our society here. That’s part of his long-term aims. Considering the time that went into it, there are plenty of other ways to have stolen the information from that safe. But he wanted the chaos of the assassination, the counterfeiting, the sabotage, and even the murder of the passengers on those trains. Perhaps he knew, if not precisely what secrets were in the safe, at least whom it implicated. By destabilising Britain in this way, he can ensure that only a candidate he can blackmail will win the election. Or perhaps not. Perhaps, to him, this was the simplest course of action. Hell, perhaps he enjoyed creating all this chaos.”
“But none of that will matter,” Ruth said. “Not if we can stop him.”
Mitchell gave a weary nod of his head.
“Right,” Ruth said, forcing herself to be proactive. “What do we know, and what do we have to ignore? Windward Square, and everything else Fairmont told us, was a lie, right? It was all so he could escape. What about the coins?”
“The conspiracy was as counterfeit as those twenty-pound notes,” Mitchell said. “It made us search for conspirators rather than thieves.”
“It had to serve some purpose,” Ruth said.
“Oh, the story of a grand conspiracy was probably a way of persuading Longfield and Wallace to be part of this. Make them think they were dealing with some powerful group rather than a couple of conmen. It probably helped give them some control of DeWitt, too, though we’ll never know.”
“Right. Right,” Ruth said, trying to force some enthusiasm back into her voice. “So what’s left? What’s real? The ambush? The Luddites? No, they were scapegoats. Wait. The fifth. The fifth of November!”
“A date he picked out of a hat because it has historical resonance,” Mitchell said. “It would make the Luddites seem far more terrifying than they were.”
“But Ned Ludd said the wires were going to be cut three times,” Ruth said.
“Just because that was what he was told, doesn’t mean it would happen.”
“But what about the placards and the pamphlets? Why bother making them if they weren’t going to be used?”
Mitchell sat up. “Possibly to keep people like Frobisher and Ned Ludd occupied,” he said, but there was more life to his voice now.
“What if it wasn’t?” she asked. “What if there was going to be another act of sabotage, one to tie in with a public demonstration?”
“On the fifth of November?”
“Right,” Ruth said. “It probably wasn’t going to be anything more than a few dozen people marching in the street.”
“Okay, but why?” Mitchell asked.
“For the same reason he’s done everything else. It’s a distraction,” Ruth said.
“But from what?”
“You know how I told you I like mystery novels,” Ruth said. “Well, think of this as a heist. The information in that safe is the loot. He’s stolen it, and now he has to get away.”
“On the fifth of November?”
“When there was due to be a bunch of Luddites marching through the streets,” Ruth said. “All the police would be busy arresting them.”
“Not just the police,” Mitchell said. “Ned Ludd was meant to be caught, wasn’t he? We were meant to know about the fifth. What did we do? We brought in the Marines to guard every viable target, and those are all in Twynham. There’s only one place Fairmont and Emmitt can go. Only one place that they would want to go because the robbery is only the start of their plan. The blackmail comes next, and for that they have to be on the other side of the Atlantic.”
“How do they get there?” Ruth asked. “By boat? It has to be.”
“That gasoline had to come from America. What if they were planning to get out on the same ship?”
“Aren’t people looking for the ship?” Ruth asked. “I mean, you did tell someone, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and they’ve searched all the ones currently in dock. Hmm. Why the fifth?”
“Longfield was going to be in Scotland,” Ruth said. “And you know, thinking about it, wouldn’t we have eventually been led to her?”
“Possibly,” Mitchell said. “Probably. You think she planned to escape with them?”
“By ship, from their place in Scotland. She said it was near the coast.”
“Right. But why the fifth? Why not sooner? Because,” he said, answering his own question, “the ship is on some expedition, and won’t reach the Scottish coast until then. Okay. That’s a theory. It doesn’t help us find them, does it?” He slumped into his seat. Ruth felt like doing the same.
“If the conspiracy was never real,” she said, “then there really is no connection between them and my parents. Emmitt really was lying.”
“I’d take that as good news,” Mitchell said. Ruth wasn’t sure she agreed.
Silence settled as both lapsed into thought.
“No matter how fake the conspiracy was,” Ruth finally said, “there were five of them.”
“And lots of hired help,” Mitchell said.
“Exactly,” Ruth said. “We can’t trust anything that Fairmont said, right? But according to Frobisher, Emmitt was someone who came to the house in Windward Square a few times. According to Turnbull, he was the only one who knew how to fix the printer. When it broke, and if he wasn’t there, they had to wait for him to return. Didn’t Turnbull say that sometimes he was away for a day or two?”
“And that he took the cart. He took it into Twynham to drop off the finished money. Presumably he used some of it to pay off others. That must have been when he visited the people in Windward Square.”
“Right, but there would be other things for him to do,” she said. “I mean, he’d have to do pretty much everything else. Fairmont couldn’t do it because, if he went missing for more than a few hours, someone would notice.”
“Unless it was at night,” Mitchell said.
“Even then, people might spot him sneaking around, or being exhausted at work the next day. After that, he was in custody. It’s the same for Wallace and Longfield, people would have noticed if they disappeared. As for DeWitt, well, she was in the cells in Police House, wasn’t she? So it all had to be done by Emmitt.”
“Not necessarily. Everywhere connected to this case is within a few miles of Twynham.”
“It’s not,” Ruth said. “Not everything. What about the house where we found the bodies of Dr Gupta and Marcus Clipton? That was in Southampton. How could they move those two there with no one seeing? They didn’t use the train, did they? And it was done with only a few hours’ notice.”
“By truck,” Mitchell said. “The same one they used to drive to the ambush.”
“And the same one that they’ll use to get to the ship,” Ruth said.
“It would have to be nearby, somewhere within a few hours journey from the house we found the printer in.”
“They were storing the petrol at the church,” Ruth said,
“But there were no tyre marks outside. I think that fuel was to keep the generator running, but that gasoline came from somewhere. There were no tread marks outside, so they brought it by cart. Hmm. Emmitt went to check up on the people in Windward Square. I can’t imagine he left the people with the truck on their own, either. So, yes, it has to be somewhere he can get there and back within a day. But an engine is a noisy beast, so wherever it is, has to be somewhere secluded. That house was chosen for the printing because it was close to the electrical grid. There’s too many workers in the immediate vicinity, but the New Forest isn’t far away. Few people live there, but there’s plenty of abandoned houses and hamlets.”
“The New Forest?” Ruth asked. “It’s a big place,”
Mitchell looked at the door to Riley’s room. “It’s where I rescued her,” he said. “And it is a big place, but what else can we do but look?”
Chapter 19
The Forest
But they did need better weapons. The only place Ruth knew that had them, and the same place Mitchell knew, was the funeral home.
“Where are you going, Henry?” Isaac asked from the doorway.
“We have a lead,” Mitchell said, opening a coffin. It was empty. “Where are the weapons?”
“Can’t you wait for dawn?” Isaac asked.
“It’ll be light by the time we get there.”
“It will? Great.” Isaac closed the coffin. “Do you think you should deputise me? Formally, I mean. Give me a badge, perhaps.”
“This is police business,” Mitchell said.
“Which is why I asked whether you should deputise me,” Isaac said. “We can argue over whether I’m coming with you, but since Kelly and I followed you from the hospital, I don’t see the point. I’m coming with you, Henry, just tell me where to.”
Ruth had had enough. “The New Forest,” she said. “That’s where the truck is. We find that, and we find Emmitt.”
“That’s a big place,” Isaac said.
“It won’t be near the railway line,” Mitchell replied. “Either the one that cuts through the southern part or… look, do you have a map in here?” One was found. “This is the railway line,” he said, tracing a line along the map, “running northeast from Christchurch up to Southampton. The truck will be hidden north of there, and at least four miles from the western edge of the forest, otherwise someone might have heard the sound of the engine.”
“That still leaves about twenty square miles to search,” Isaac said. “And how many hamlets and villages would we have to search? How many houses?”
“We don’t look for the truck,” Ruth said, “but the road it’s driven down. How many roads are there? Five?” She peered at whisker-thin lines. “And are they even proper roads?”
“Find the road, find the truck. Fine. Can we wait until tomorrow?” Isaac asked.
“Why?” Ruth asked.
“I’ve some more people arriving.”
“And I thought you said they’d be here by now,” Mitchell said.
“People get delayed,” Isaac said with a shrug.
“We can’t wait,” Ruth said. “We might know what their plans were, but those might have changed.”
Isaac nodded. “I moved the guns, they’re in the back.”
“Afterwards,” Ruth said, taking a shotgun “You’re going to tell me why you brought these weapons to Twynham.”
“I’d be glad to,” Isaac said.
“We’ll follow this road east toward Normansland, and… see what we find,” Mitchell said. The uncertainty in his voice was palpable.
They’d gone to the railway station and pressed Rebecca Cavendish into providing them with a train. It had taken them north, past the power station built on the site of the old Bournemouth Airport, leaving them at the northerly edge of the New Forest. Mitchell
had given the train’s driver a note to be taken back to Weaver. Ruth wasn’t sure if that was an afterthought, or if Mitchell was second-guessing the plan.
Standing in the damp woodland, she understood his uncertainty. The trees were densely packed, spreading far beyond the clear lines marked on the old-world map. Beneath them the ground was littered with mud mixed with multi-coloured threads of shredded plastic. The rusting, tyre-less car was the only clue that there had been a road here. Ivy had wrapped around the engine with a tenacity that forecast it wouldn’t be too many more seasons before the car was entirely hidden by evergreen leaves.
“Was ever a place better suited to a conspiracy than this?” Isaac asked, and even his usual sardonic tone was edged with doubt. “Shall we?”
Kelly took the lead, walking soft-footed across the loamy soil, her rifle half-raised, the barrel swinging left and right like an inaccurate pendulum. Mitchell went next, his fingers rolling over the grip of a pistol the size of a hand cannon holstered at his hip. His shoulders were stooped, his head jutted forward, tilted to one side, as if he was listening more than looking for signs of their prey. She glanced behind. Isaac, cradling the shotgun across his arms, looked more like a hunter out to bag a brace before breakfast than a law bringer on a quest for justice.
And then there was herself. She was dressed in faded jeans, a worn jacket, and her least worst pair of trainers. The only clue as to her profession was the word ‘police’ stencilled on the borrowed bulletproof vest. Somehow, she felt more like an officer of the law than ever before.
Mitchell stopped.
“We’re doing this wrong,” he said. “Nothing’s used this road for a decade. We’ll cut due east.”
Ruth agreed, simply because she hadn’t a better idea. Haystacks and needles came back to her. Was Emmitt still here? Or had he already fled north? The silent forest gave her no answer. No, there, a bird’s call cut through the damp, expectant air. It was as if the trees themselves were waiting for the coming confrontation. She told herself that was nonsense.
Even without the shotgun in her hands, it wouldn’t have been a pleasant walk. The trees thinned, replaced by a thick carpet of leaves overlaying an even thicker layer of mud. They reached a stream swollen almost to a river, and had to backtrack before they found a way around it. Ruth was certain they were lost, but after another five minutes Mitchell came to a halt.
