by Chris Parker
‘It shouldn’t come as any surprise.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because my mentor here,’ Simon waved a hand in Marcus’s direction, ‘has gone to considerable lengths to instil in me that very fact. Straightforward honesty isn’t a method employed by the highly trained professional communicator, whereas well packaged honesty is.’
‘We’re talking about personal relationships of the most important kind, not work!’ It was Emma’s turn to redden as her teasing began to give way to anger. ‘No woman expects, wants or even needs deliberately planned professional communication from her partner. Honesty is a sign of commitment and trust and sharing and all those things that show love! Or hasn’t your mentor taught you that yet?’
‘In case you’ve forgotten we are in our workplace now,’ Simon said. ‘I am here to behave as a professional and to learn and practise my craft. To do anything else would be to take advantage of the boss’s time and money. And – and this is the most important part – it’s you that I wasn’t being open and honest with and you’re not my partner.’ Simon beamed, his confidence restored. ‘That, I think you will agree, is game, set and match to me!’
Emma whooped with joy, her anger dissolving as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Only a man can think he’s won when he has so clearly lost!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The point of this conversation was to make you admit how you felt about Cassandra,’ Emma said, ‘not justify your use of well packaged honesty – which, as an aside, I didn’t think was that well packaged at all. And you have indeed just admitted you think of her as your partner! So, the game is actually mine!’
‘Only in your dreams!’ Simon retorted. ‘I never said anything about Cassandra. Throughout this I have only ever being talking theoretically and hypothetically. All you are doing now is showing how desperate you are to feel superior.’
‘Only men feel the need for superiority! Women are far too busy trying to hold the world together…’
Marcus took another sip of his beer and used it to try and clear the memory. It seemed such a long time ago. A lifetime. A time when he had been certain of everything, a time before doubt, a time when fear had been another word for fun.
Marcus drank some more beer, fighting the pull of the empty table. As he was doing so, a woman entered the bar. He was grateful for the brief distraction. He used his peripheral vision to observe her, letting his professional mind come to the fore, making its immediate assessment.
She was five feet eight inches tall, with short mousey brown hair in need of a good, professional cut. She was wearing a short, scuffed brown leather jacket, an old pair of Levi jeans and a pair of training shoes in need of a wash. She was skinny with pale skin and light blue eyes that matched the colour of the vein standing out in her neck. Her eyes were open too wide and yet, from his perspective, they clearly saw very little, blinkered he was sure by some great, constant, urgency and something more – a shadow, heavy and frightening, pressing down on her conscious with suffocating force. A trauma from her past, he reasoned, or maybe, judging by the way her breathing came from high in her chest making her movements sharp and jerky, a series of traumas. She was definitely a single woman. A smoker. A drug taker. A heavy drinker – of cheap, strong booze, the sort that burns and rots your insides. In all likelihood she was an occasional prostitute. Easy to read.
He watched her order a large measure of the house vodka, drain it in one go and order a second. It was then she saw him. She did the kind of obvious double take most people do when they see someone famous in a place they don’t expect. Only seeing him forced her breathing even higher. It activated the flight-fight-or freeze response. Even though she didn’t know he was watching her. Even though she had nothing the be scared of.
Marcus kept his vertical vision low as if looking at his beer, watching her struggling to come to a decision; fighting to make herself do whatever she felt was right.
The second vodka helped her. Downed just like the first, she returned the empty glass to the bar top before taking the two steps necessary to reach his table.
‘You’re Marcus Kline.’
It was the second time he had been told that in a matter of hours. Only this woman wasn’t a reporter, and she clearly wasn’t a reader of his books or a business leader needing his professional help. He was careful to soften his face when he looked up at her.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘That monster, Ethan Hall,’ she said, unable to look at him for more than a split-second, her eyes flittering around the room, glancing out of the windows. ‘I just want to say the next time the police catch him they need to put a bullet in his black heart. They need to kill the bastard! They need to kill him stone dead for what he does to people!’
She turned abruptly, giving him no time to speak, and rushed out of the pub. Marcus made no attempt to follow her. No one else seemed to have noticed their brief interaction. The old men were still engrossed in their own conversation. The young man and the barmaid were still oblivious to the rest of the world.
Marcus didn’t know why the woman had said what she did. The most likely reason was that she had seen the story in the news and wanted to express her feelings. Only it had seemed more personal than that. She had sounded more like an angry, helpless and ignored victim than a social spectator who believed in execution. Once that insight would have been enough to make him get involved. He would have tried to prevent her from leaving, or at least gone after her. Today that just hadn’t felt right. He needed to focus his energy on what he knew for sure was happening. Besides, by the time he looked out of the window the woman had disappeared.
As people do.
Marcus tried the beer again. It really wasn’t to his taste. He pushed it away.
After Simon’s death, Cassandra had left for pastures unknown. Just like Emma. He, on the other hand, was staying here, in his hometown, with his wife. He had problems to solve and he was going to solve them all.
Marcus left his unfinished beer on the table and walked out of the bar. He pushed away the lingering thoughts about the woman and imagined instead just how he was going to draw Ethan Hall out and capture him. And how he was going to save his wife from cancer. The notion of failure was terrifying, so he kept walking.
Action, he told himself again, cures fear.
31
Nicholas Evans knew something had to happen. More precisely, something had to change. Only he didn’t want to let his fear and his anger force him into an action from which there would be no turning back; an action he would regret for the rest of his life.
So Nic was doing his best to control his emotions. It was almost impossible, but he was still hanging in there, clinging for all he was worth, using a level of strength and self-discipline he hadn’t known he possessed. Clinging like a man holding on to a precipice and feeling his fingers losing their grip one by one, a man treating every second as if it was the most precious thing in the world, a man who could only be saved by a strong pair of hands reaching down and hauling him back to terra firma.
The truth was the decision that needed to be made, the decision that would determine the action he took, was not a one-person decision. It would come out of dialogue. At least, in an ideal world it would. Ideally it would grow from a sharing of truths and perspectives, from heartfelt communication and genuine concern each for the other. If, after all of that, the decision they came to was that the end had been reached, then at least it would have been reached in the best possible way.
Nic shuddered at the prospect. He didn’t want an ending of any sort; not the grown-up sharing of actualities and inevitabilities, and certainly not the isolated despair of realising there wasn’t even a conversation to be had. The worst of all worlds would be to have to do this alone, to end something so special unnoticed and unsupported, to fall without anyone watching, to scream without being heard.
Nic’s phone buzzed. He picked it up from the coffee table and
saw the text from Peter. He read it far more slowly than he needed to. It was not the response he had wanted, but it was a response nonetheless. More than that there was a promise to talk.
I will be home as early as possible.
It was an acknowledgement of their need; well, of Nic’s anyway. And it was a commitment, even though it was wrapped in the vague as-and-when timings Peter only ever offered when he was on a case. Timings that often drifted from one day to the next, from one week to another. But surely that wasn’t going to happen today, not with their relationship so close to collapse, when every second mattered?
As early as possible.
Better than nothing. Much better. He could have been ignored, but instead he had received a message, a sign that meant Peter was still there. A sign that said Hold on, I’m on my way.
Just knowing that was enough to give him the strength.
Surely?
Nic replaced the phone on the coffee table and sat back in the armchair, reflecting on how good their relationship had once been and how it had changed.
The problem hadn’t been caused by Ethan Hall’s escape from the hospital. It had started before then, on the night Anne-Marie had phoned Peter calling for him to save Marcus. Right there and then Nic had seen his partner transform in a way he could never have imagined, in a way that had terrified him. The image was still in the forefront of Nic’s mind, so clear it was undeniable.
A Komodo dragon.
A cold-hearted hunter at the top of its food chain. That’s what he had seen. His partner was not just the loving, gentle man who had said ‘Forever’. He was also that…that thing. Possibly, and this was the most terrifying thought of all, he was only that. Possibly everything else was the lie, the disguise he used to fit in and get along.
Nic pressed his head back into the chair. The questions thudding. What if he had fallen in love with the disguise and not the real man? What did that mean about him?
Answer: that he was so desperate to be loved he couldn’t see the truth.
What future could they possible have together?
Answer: none.
What, then, of the rest of his life?
Answer: a rapid descent into loneliness and despair.
Nic closed his eyes. Everything had seemed so safe. So perfect. How could it possibly have been so close to disaster at the same time? How could he not have noticed? His fingers gripped the arms of the chair. His heart pounded. The most important question of all kept hammering inside him: Just what are you holding on to?
It was the question he couldn’t – daren’t – answer. As he fought to ignore it the doorbell rang. For a brief moment his heart leaped as he thought it was Peter and then he realised he would have just let himself in. By the time he reached the door his focus was on dissolving his disappointment and looking as if everything was normal. That’s why he didn’t peer through the small glass panel to check the visitor in the way Peter always insisted he should.
Instead he opened the door without thinking about it. He said, ‘Hello. How can I help you?’ without studying the person fully. By then it was way too late.
‘You can’t help me,’ the visitor said. ‘I’m actually here to help you. Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘Of course,’ Nic answered without hesitation, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He let the visitor close the door behind him and then led the way into the lounge. Ethan Hall followed without saying a word.
32
Peter Jones wanted to make as much noise as possible. Noise and movement, if directed and coordinated appropriately, always brought the hunted out into the open. Peter had known that for decades. He had learnt it as a boy when his father had taken him on his first shoot.
Peter had grown up in the country and in many ways he still missed the simple village life. He felt that it, rather than city living, was the original backbone of the nation. More than that, he had realised a long time ago that a backbone was only as secure as everything else around it. Nothing existed in isolation. Everything was part of an interactive system. That was the most important lesson nature offered. Everything connects, even if you can’t always see the connections. Even if the flow of cause and effect takes time to manifest.
That meant the security and future of village life, his national backbone, was determined by what was happening around it, in the towns and cities. That was one of the reasons why he became a police officer. He knew that, if left unchecked, unacceptable noise and movement spreads. Criminals always seek to expand their areas of influence, to create an ever-greater domain. What starts in the city doesn’t stay there unless it’s contained or curtailed. The best way to do that was to organise specific, targeted noise and movement, to control the environment and drive your prey into a trap of your own making.
On those rare occasions when he had the free time, Peter still went beating. It was the job his father had taught him as a young boy, how to flush birds such as pheasant or partridge from cover and into the line of fire of the waiting guns.
Beating was an essential part of every shoot, and it had to be done well if the shoot was to be successful. Beaters worked as part of a team, often using their own well-trained dogs as support. Every shoot ground was divided into areas of countryside known as drives. The shoot manager decided which way he wanted the birds to fly and directed the beaters accordingly. The people with guns, those paying for the shoot, were then lined up along the edge of this drive whilst Peter and his fellow beaters created a line along the opposite end of the drive. Their job was to move forward towards the guns, maintaining the line, investigating every bit of natural cover, creating disciplined disturbance.
And the process needed to be disciplined throughout because there was always the potential for things to go wrong. If the line became uneven, if beaters took detours to avoid difficult undergrowth, if anyone stopped briefly for a chat, if the line moved too quickly or if some dogs became over-excited the birds could easily escape. Sometimes they would do so by staying on the ground and running back unnoticed between the beaters. Sometimes they would be startled into all taking flight at once and the shooters would find themselves firing at a great cloud of birds, having the opportunity to bring down only one or two.
When the beating was at its best however, when instructions were clear and the line managed its movement and noise well, the birds were flushed into the air in smaller, more easily targeted groups. Sometimes beaters would wave a coloured flag making the birds fly higher, giving the shooters more time to choose and hit their targets.
Peter loved beating. Not just because it took him back to his roots, but also because it was a team activity. There always more birds than there were men and dogs; the birds, though, were incapable of planned coordination. Even when they all moved as one, they were still essentially acting as panicked individuals. A small, well-managed team moving at the right pace in the right direction, making the right sort of noise always flushed out their target. And once they had them out in the open – bang! – they were quickly brought down to earth.
Noise and movement.
That, in part, was what he was paid to create and coordinate. Identify the culprit then flush them out. Or, in this case, create enough disturbance in the right places to ensure that either someone revealed Ethan Hall’s hiding place, or he felt the need to make a run for it.
Peter had his own team – his personally selected beaters – plus the support of a specifically commissioned Criminal Analyst and a couple of computer techies. The Analyst, a woman he had worked with before, was excellent at studying the incoming information, determining its credibility and creating link charts that showed lines of connectivity between relevant individuals and/or behaviours. Peter was keeping in touch with her on a regular basis.
Media stories about Ethan’s escape and the threat he posed had clearly struck a chord. The public had been, and still were, offering all sorts of feedback. So far it varied from the possible to the absurd. Ethan had been
seen supposedly throughout the city and in other parts of the country. One man had even phoned in from Tenerife, where he had just arrived on holiday, to say he was sure that Ethan had been disguised as cabin crew.
It had, though, been Peter’s visits to other police stations, talking directly to detectives there, that had created the potential breakthrough. The call from DC Brian Benson saying he had an address where Hall was supposed to be staying should have sparked a thrill of anticipation. Only it hadn’t. Somehow Peter just couldn’t see it. More importantly, he couldn’t feel it. Even though he couldn’t argue logically with Kevin McNeill’s observation that criminals always looked after themselves first and foremost and would do just about anything for easy money.
Peter was used to looking at a terrain filled with birds and not being able to see one of them. He understood that even if your target wasn’t in plain sight it could still be almost underneath your feet. So you had to have your line of beaters ready and your line of guns in the right place. You had to act based on what you had been told, not on what you could see at that precise moment in time. You had to make sure that if your target was there, you flushed it out according to plan, that you drove it in the right direction, that it simply couldn’t escape.
Right now everything was in place. McNeill had passed on the necessary messages. Benson had assumed control. He had, in turn, brought in the specialist team who would make the arrest. Peter knew the drill. He knew the roles individuals would play and the tactics they would employ. He knew how the team would function. It was, as McNeill had said, a situation he had organised and managed many times.
A couple of officers would have taken up temporary residence in a terraced house opposite Darren’s. It was usually an easy thing to arrange. Many people were willing to offer the police a room and regular cups of tea and a promise of secrecy, at least in the short-term. In Peter’s experience, people who welcomed you into their home wanted to feel the excitement of being part of something they would usually only see on the television; they wanted to be able to tell family, friends and neighbours they had played their part in a dangerous police operation. Hosting a surveillance team didn’t make you a hero, but it could make some people feel like one. And by the time those individuals had perfected their story, they would have at least convinced themselves if not others that they truly were.
