“I didn’t!” I protested feebly. “Uncle Danny knew all about this trip.”
From their seat on my bench, Jessica and Stewart had a fly on the wall’s view of her eye roll at that, even if Abby, sitting on the other side, missed it.
“As if he’d think to call anyone and let us know! Honestly, Sweetie, you know what Marie gets like. She totally freaked out when you turned up out of the blue this morning. Who are these people you’re camping with, anyway? I don’t like the sound of that at all. You’ll have Liam on at you next, you know.” My gloomy, resigned posture when Mair finally ended the call must have spoken volumes, but Liam’s opening bellow a couple of minutes later certainly made them all jump a little.
“What the hell, Shay?” His furious, purple face glared at me from my screen. “Marie just texted saying that she thinks some weird cult up there have got their claws into you. Where the fuck are you? I’ll go over to Jen’s, and we’ll come up there to get you right now.”
I calmed him down, eventually, and warned him I was going offline because I needed to get down to the village and check my stall space out. After slamming my laptop shut, I jumped out to ‘calm myself down’ in the sunshine, and the others tumbled out after me as I paced up and down. Then it had been Jen’s turn, and I’d had to get my phone out and explain myself all over again.
It was great fun.
Once Conall and his sidekick had finished with the students and cleared off again, I made a point of checking the time and told them all I should be getting down to the village.
“I can run you down there if you like,” Stewart offered. “Abby and I were planning on grabbing some shopping and then popping into The Ram, anyway. You can come and find us there when you’re done?”
A good offer. It seemed like a better idea than trying to park the van up anywhere near the village hall. The place would be a bit chaotic today, with all the setting up for the fair going on.
“That’d be great actually, thanks.” I locked up and went to join them, only to find that Jessica was tagging along now too.
“I’ll stick with Shay,” she told them when Stewart parked up outside the little Co-op on the high street. “Reverend McAvoy is running things in the hall this year, and I can make sure he deals with any little problems, if there are any.”
“Thanks for the lift, Stewart. See you in a bit.” I gave him a smile and a nod and fell into reluctant step with Jessica as we headed up to the nearby village hall. “I’m sure I’ve taken up quite enough of your time already,” I tried to deflect as we walked. “These events are usually very well organised.”
“Nonsense,” she assured me. “There’s always a bit of a last-minute scramble, or so Uncle Douglas says. Not enough extension cords for everyone, or a shortage of tables, that kind of thing. Once they know you’re our guest, they’ll make sure you have everything you need.”
Ugh! Prioritise the last-minute booking just because I was with the Kerrs? I hated that kind of thinking.
Fortunately, that wasn’t going to be an issue. There were only a dozen crafters booked in there this year. Plenty of space for everyone. I had a nice corner spot too, right by the back doors, very handy for unloading. After a while, Jessica told me she was just going to see how they were getting on out on the green and left us to it.
The Reverend told me I could get in any time after eight-thirty tomorrow morning, and the doors would open to the public at ten. The power supply was fine, for my modest lighting needs too. No, I hadn’t known the Kerrs long, yes they were lovely people, blah blah blah. After a few minutes of chatter, I managed to escape the tiresome little man and follow Jessica out. Time to get back to the camp and do some more digging for Conall while I ‘called my friends back.’ That should buy me a few hours alone.
There were a couple of kiddie rides going up on the village green across the road, and a collection of game and food stalls, as well as a big tea tent. A typical set up for places like this. I didn’t spot Jessica at first, because I wasn’t looking in any of the right places. There, on the far side of the green, being assisted into a car by a man who quickly climbed in after her, his companion standing by the driver’s door, scanning the area. I couldn’t be sure, not from that distance, but that could easily have been Mike Gordon. He climbed in hastily as I pelted across the field towards them and they drove off, not quite fast enough to stop me catching the number plate. He’d certainly seen me coming though. I headed for a group of boys who were staring after them.
“What just happened?” I asked them. “Do you know where my friend Jessica’s going? Jessica Kerr?”
“Gary fainted. We were all chasing about, playing a game, but when I looked back, he was just lying there with those two blokes bending over him,” one of them offered. “They said they should get him to the hospital, real quick-like. Then Miss Kerr came over and said no, she’d call an ambulance if he didn’t come round in a minute. I don’t think she liked the look of them.”
“She changed her mind though.” another boy put in helpfully. “One of them said something in her ear, and she looked awful serious all of a sudden. Then they put Gary in the car. She went with them though, so that’s alright, isn’t it?”
“Gary? Gary Allen?” They nodded. “Well, I’m sure Jessica will call his parents. I think I’ll follow them to the hospital though, give her a ride home after. Thanks, lads.” I walked off at a fast pace but didn’t start running again until I’d gone round the hall and was out of sight. I’d seen my Ford as we walked up, parked on a handy side street. Thank you, Conall!
I dove in, shoved my phone into the hands-free holder and got moving. Once I’d driven round the green, I set off after them, punching up Jessica’s phone’s location as I went. A good, clear signal. They were a few miles ahead. I hit number one my speed dial.
“Con? Someone just snatched Gary Allen and Jessica Kerr from the village green. They’re heading west on the A862. Put out a call to all patrols, watch for and report sightings on a white Volvo XC90, licence plate Sierra Bravo sixty-four Whiskey Lima Bravo. No interference. And let them all know my Ford is following. I don’t want to get pulled over if I have to push at the speed limit.”
Conall swore softly. “On it. Keep this line open.”
I checked their location again and speeded up a fraction. I wanted to get into a spot about half a mile behind them and stay there. Conall came back on after a few minutes.
“What happened?” he wanted to know, and I related the little I knew.
“I’m guessing they were armed, Con,” I warned him, “She wouldn’t argue with a gun or even a knife, not with all those kids around.”
“Right.” He acknowledged that unhappily. “Wrong time, wrong place for her to find herself.” No, this wasn’t the ‘break’ either of us would have chosen, given the option. “I’ll be about half an hour behind you once I get moving, but we’ll hit the siren until we’re close, cut that down some.”
“Fine, just call out any sightings as they come in. I don’t know how soon they’ll think to take Jessica’s phone off her and toss it.” He just made a noncommittal little noise at that. He knew I had other resources at my disposal, if I needed them, even without my laptop. “I’m now onto the A833, going south,” I reported after I’d passed the junction. “What do you make of the timing of all this?” I heard a distant radio crackle from his end.
“They just went past a patrol car south of Tomnacross,” Conall advised. “Less than seven miles between there and our next team down in Drumnadrochit.” Then, “The timing? A bit too quick for them to have been reacting to a call from anyone we spoke with today. This was probably coincidental. They might have been looking for an opportunity to grab Gary for some time.”
“An easy way to keep the parents pinned down if they want to do an uninterrupted bit of digging,” I agreed. “Damn!”
“What?”
“They must have snapped Jessica’s card and tossed the phone. My blip just went. I’m going to have to c
lose up a bit.” The patrol car gave me a quick flick of their lights as I passed them. Just an acknowledgement, not a warning. Three miles further on, a vanishing flash of white to my left alerted me that my quarry had turned off the road. I kept on going for a minute, just in case they were watching for any sign of pursuit, before making a U-turn and heading back to follow them.
“You got your map up?” I asked Conall, as I checked my sat nav. “They’ve left the road. There’s a single file narrow lane here. You’d better just track my signal after you reach it.”
My eastward path soon led me north, then east, then north again. Eventually, I ended up, briefly, on a real road again. It even had a bus stop on it. But a glimpse of the Volvo climbing a hill to the east soon put me back on their distant tail again. This area of the countryside had a real maze of private tracks running through it. Lots of weekend homes and holiday lets scattered about and far too many possible turnoffs for comfort now. Better to be sensible. I muted Con, opened a second line up, and made the call.
“Yes?” the human robot on duty asked disinterestedly.
“Hawk, satellite, track.”
“Acknowledged. I have your phone location. Distance?”
“Give me a mile or two with a clear view.” A brief silence.
“Locked to your signal in three, two, one, locked.”
I hung up, unmuted Con, and swiped my phone screen over. Oh, that was just lovely. A drone’s eye view of the surrounding area from the fantastic digital imaging system on my new friend in orbit. Now I could relax and hang safely back without worrying about being spotted. The clear blue sky above could not have appeared on a better day.
“You’re tracking my route?” I asked my cousin.
“Yes. We’re about twenty minutes behind you now. Just wait for me if they go to ground before we reach you, okay?” Sometimes, he said the most redundant things.
“I’m hardly about to charge in there alone, Con. Hostages? Possibly guns? Be serious.”
A few miles more of constant changes of direction and the Volvo finally parked up outside an isolated little building. I stopped for a moment to consider my options, then drove on to the turning immediately before the one they’d taken. I took the car a couple of hundred yards up that one before driving it off the track onto a flat spot under the trees. Good enough.
“Ignore that last turn,” I told Conall. “I was just dumping the car out of sight. I’m going to have a bit of a look around from a good distance, and then I’ll meet you back where I left the main track.”
“Just be careful!” he warned.
“Gosh! I’d never have thought of doing that, thanks,” I told him nicely. “Putting the phone on silent now.”
If I climbed the ridge on my right, according to the image I was seeing, I should be in the trees above their house. Good cover from there most of the way to the back of the building by the looks of it. I took the rise slowly and carefully, keeping as quiet as possible and dropping low as I neared the top. Soon I was lying full length, peering down through a good screen of undergrowth. Not what I’d been expecting to see at all. The tiny cottage below me looked as if it had been left abandoned for decades, wooden boards nailed up where windows must once have been and only a few patches of stained, crumbling plastering left, here and there, on the exposed stone of the walls. The roof was sagging precariously at one end, where the slats for the tiles must have rotted and bent, and the garden, if there had been one, had long since disappeared under a thick blanket of weeds and brambles. No sign of anyone outside. I decided it was worth trying to get closer.
A low murmur of adult, male voices from inside as I eased myself along the back wall, one carefully placed movement of hand or foot at a time. I risked a lightning-fast, sweeping glimpse through the lowest gap in the boards covering a window hole and immediately ducked down again to process the image. They’d lit a few lanterns in there.
Little Gary was bundled up in a blanket on a camping mattress on the floor, Jessica huddled by him, arms pulled back as if bound, looking about as scared as you’d expect a girl in her position to be. I’d got a clear look at one of the men too, Jimmy Crawford, beyond any doubt. I’d be surprised if the one with his back to me, the driver, wasn’t Mike Gordon. The height and build matched perfectly. Those two were big, well-built bruisers.
I inched my silent way to the end of the wall and around the corner. Another fast glimpse. Just a small, empty room with chunks of fallen ceiling plaster littering the rotting floorboards. The old bedroom, I guessed. There must have been a wooden outhouse out here somewhere once; long since rotted away.
I edged away again as slowly as I’d approached. Anyone looking closely might have noticed that some animal had passed that way recently, but I doubted they would. The few plant stems I’d been unable to avoid damaging were now being propped up by their neighbours. While I was there, I checked out the crumbling ruin of what may have once been a goat or donkey shed, about thirty metres from the main building. The dirt floor in there had recently been disturbed, and there was a trace of a familiar, sickly sweet scent in the air. Right. Well, that would have to wait.
Clear and free, on the far side of the ridge again, I grabbed a couple of items from the small case I’d moved to the Ford that morning and jogged back down to the main track to find Conall and Caitlin Murray waiting for me by their car.
“The Allens?” I asked.
“We didn’t want to tie their phone line up, so McKinnon called Alex Cameron instead. They’ll be frantic but will follow whatever instructions they receive.” I imagined that would be along the lines of, ‘Get everyone into the house and don’t move. We’ll tell you where to collect your boy when we’re done.’ Something like that, anyway. “What have we got here?” Con wanted to know. I told him what I’d seen.
“And something dead has been very recently buried in the floor of what’s left of the old animal shed,” I added. No, Conall wasn’t inclined to waste time speculating about that either, not now. We stared at each other unhappily.
“What are we going to do?” Caitlin asked us.
Conall shrugged wearily. “I’m not sure about the boy, but they’d kill Jessica Kerr out of spite, the minute they realised they were trapped. What have they got left to lose?”
“Agreed.” Those two wouldn’t give a damn, not with the sentences they knew they’d be facing after this mess. “So, no Special Ops team. You’re both wearing vests?” He nodded. “Hide your cuffs in the car.”
I fished the replacement sets out of my pocket. Conall wordlessly unhooked his, took Caitlin’s, and opened the boot. They disappeared into the spare tyre well, and I demonstrated the replacements for her. If you pushed the rigid central bar hard enough from both sides in a certain way, the locks disengaged. Something in the psychology of the average thug gave them great satisfaction in turning the tables on the arresting officers by putting them in their own cuffs. Better safe than sorry. Caitlin practised with the new ones behind her back.
“Ingenious,” she allowed, satisfied. I showed her how to set them to behave normally too. “Why aren’t we all issued these?”
“Because once it became an open secret, they’d be of no use to anyone,” I told her as I slipped my miniscule tracker into the modified top fastener on my jacket. A tiny cutter went into a hidden pocket in my cuff too. I’d thought about arming myself but decided it was just asking for trouble. We didn’t know if they had guns or not, but it would be stupid to hand them another one, if things went badly.
“How do you want to do this?” Conall asked.
“Mike Gordon, if it was him, saw me running across the green, back in the village. Enough of a sighting to recognise these clothes, anyway.” They’d start wondering how I’d found them if they had a minute to think clearly though. “If I burst in yelling for Jessica, I don’t think they’ll consider me any kind of a threat, not fast enough anyway. You two stay flattened to the wall until I’m in. The hostages were on the right side of the room from t
he doorway. Sergeant Murray, you move as soon as I’m in and shield them as best you can whilst Con and I try to subdue the other two. Alright?”
There was no point in pretending it wouldn’t be risky, but they both knew that Jessica Kerr was a dead woman if we didn’t get her out of there. She could identify both men.
We followed my prior route and edged around the house to take up our positions. I risked another quick peep and signalled their positions to Conall. Mike and Jimmy, and this time I was sure it was Mike, were lounging in folding chairs on the left side of the room, their phones on the table between them. I didn’t like the way Mike was eyeing Jessica Kerr either, building himself up to doing something about that itch he was dying to scratch. Jimmy was playing with his knife, flipping it idly, looking bored and impatient.
The lock on the door had rotted long ago, it wouldn’t take much force to get it open, but I wanted to go in at what seemed to be an uncontrolled running stumble. I gave Conall the nod and backed up, so I could gather a bit of speed.
I squawked out a questioning, “Jessica?” as my shoulder slammed the door open, managing to trip on the step and lurch a few staggering steps to where I could grab desperately at Jimmy’s knife arm for balance as he rose, his chair toppling behind him.
His fingers spasmed open as my frantic clutch found the right pressure point on his biceps and my leg somehow tangled with his, toppling the pair of us and giving me the chance to let my wildly flailing free arm accidentally deliver a well placed, temporarily incapacitating blow as we fell. So far, so good. I kept the roll going, sending the dropped knife across the room with my foot, and slamming Jimmy into Mike’s legs. He stumbled, but didn’t go down; not that it mattered. Conall was on him before he managed to straighten, delivering a cracking punch to his jaw as he came up again and sending him sprawling.
Dark of Night Page 23
