Catalyst

by Michael Knaggs

  Mags laughed.

  “Well, of course, compared to you, I guess he is. But isn’t everybody?”

  “I suppose it is a little bit unfair to compare the rest of the human race with me,” said Tom. “Everybody’s going to come up short, aren’t they? I mean, ask any of Katey’s friends at school.”

  “Anyway,” said Jack, “how come you haven’t seen him in all this time? I would have thought an experience like that would have bonded you for ever.”

  “It’s a good question. I was recovering at home for three months and Jad went to join Operation Ptarmigan, which was north of Kabul. Soon after I was back in circulation, he transferred to the SAS, and our paths just didn’t cross, did they, Mags? He was on leave when I wasn’t and vice versa. And then he joined this specialist group which kept him away pretty much all the time.

  “When I left the Forces, I was around more when he was on leave and we met up a couple of times – that’s when you remember seeing him. And then, of course… ”

  “You thought he’d been killed.” Katey finished for him. “Have you any idea why that was?”

  “None at all,” he said.

  “And it’s not important,” said Mags. “We thought we’d lost him. And I know it will be a long time before we get him back completely, but eight years is a lot shorter than forever.”

  The family home in the walled estate of Etherington Place, close to East Horsley, and a couple of miles outside the M25 ring road, had been vacated by Tom’s parents when his father retired and moved with his mother to the Lake District. It was there where Tom and his three siblings had been born and where he had spent his first seventeen years before joining the army. Tom, Mags and Jack had taken over the place just two months before Katey was born.

  The property was a grand Victorian mansion house which had originally stood in grounds of just over seven acres. Tom’s parents had retained a plot of two acres for themselves and developed the rest of the land by building five new properties each with one manicured acre of its own.

  Tom rose at 6.00 am and went out for his regular Saturday morning run. His route took him six miles, round the estate then the surrounding countryside, through a mature deciduous wood, past two ponds and across a rich meadow, before re-entering the estate, doing the same circuit of the five other houses in reverse, and home.

  On the way, he thought about their love-making the previous night. It had been the first time for several weeks and had been affectionate rather than passionate; more satisfying than exciting. But it was pleasing and somehow appropriate for the circumstances, their minds still numbed by the revelations of the day.

  It took him just under forty-five minutes to complete the run, a time he was reasonably pleased with, given the infrequency of his exercising these days. Back at the house, he poured himself fresh orange juice and went through to the living room where they had enjoyed the previous evening. Picking up the remote, he switched on the BBC News 24 channel. Just for a change, the story on the screen was as far removed from the Lorimar-Deverall saga as possible.

  It was a piece about oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico. What had been estimated as being the largest hydrocarbon discovery to date at the beginning of the century, with an anticipated extraction period of around twenty-five years, now looked like being exhausted six years sooner. The repercussions were staggering for Pet Euroleum, the main field operator, and its partner, Carbonium Oil. Tom watched in awe the pictures of a gargantuan platform, dwarfing the vessels anchored around it and reducing the personnel on its operations deck to virtual insignificance.

  When the story moved onto the financial aspects of the case, Tom’s interest gradually waned. Apparently, the implications for the partnership were huge, not least being the vast hardware commitment they had made for the full period, and the hit to pre-tax profits they would now take in depreciating the balance of its current value over a much shorter term. They would be seeking a buyer or buyers for the equipment, including the massive structure he had just seen, to reduce the overall costs of the operation down to manageable levels.

  He changed channels and found he was even less interested in the latest unknown celebrity to be voted off a small cruise chip languishing in the Caribbean. He switched off without trying any other alternatives, and returned to the kitchen to replenish his drink.

  It was just after seven o’clock, and Mags appeared in the doorway. In spite of her wearing no make-up, and her natural golden-blonde hair looking like she had been recently electrocuted, her overall appearance was stunningly beautiful, as always. She kissed him firmly on the mouth and helped herself to a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “You lucky, lucky boy!” said Tom.

  “What?” asked Mags.

  “Just looking at you and talking to myself,” said Tom. “Listen, that run has really wasted me. I’m thinking of going back to bed. What do you think?”

  “I think it might be for the best; you can’t be too careful at your age. I guess I should come with you to check that you’re okay.”

  “Oh, would you, please?” said Tom, smiling broadly. “That would make such a difference to the next half hour.”

  They went back to bed together, but the sound of Katey already up and moving noisily around further down the corridor, caused them to revise their initial plans and just lie together contentedly in each other’s arms.

  “What time are you leaving for the office?” asked Mags, twisting to look at the clock on her bedside table.

  “Taking a sicky today,” he said. “Phoned Jenny yesterday on the way home. To be honest, I should probably have gone in, but I really couldn’t face the thought of it yesterday afternoon.”

  “Good,” said Mags. “Then when you’ve recovered from your exertions – and as it seems unlikely you’ll be exerting yourself again in the next few minutes” – she added, as they heard Katey clumping about at the top of the stairs in her wooden-soled flip-flops – “ I don’t suppose you fancy a drive to the new nature reserve at Kings Leyburn? They’ve got over a hundred avocets that they think will be over-wintering there for the first time this year.”

  “Avocets?” said Tom, furrowing his brow. “That’s a type of missile, isn’t it? Very popular back in the Falklands War – or unpopular, depending which side… ”

  Mags pulled away and hit him with a pillow. Tom responded in kind and very quickly they had both rolled off the bed and were toe-to-toe swinging at each other, both with eyes closed and giggling like small children.

  “What’s going on in there?” shouted Katey, from behind the closed door.

  “Your father’s attacking me,” Mags shouted back.

  “Oh, right.” They heard Katey going down the stairs, as if reassured by the statement.

  They looked at each other and shrugged, then laughed.

  “Look,” said Mags, pretending to be serious again. “Surrender now or I’ll start fighting my best.”

  Tom threw down his pillow and raised his hands.

  “Okay. I give in on one condition. We have to consummate the cease-fire.”

  “Sounds fair,” said Mags grabbing the front of his tee-shirt and pulling him on top of her as she fell back on the bed.

  “What’s going on in there?” It was Jack’s voice outside the door. “Can I come in?”

  “No!” they shouted in unison.

  “Thought not,” said Jack and clumped off down the stairs as well.

  “This is hopeless,” said Tom, shaking his head, and then kissing Mags long and tenderly. “Let’s have breakfast and go and inspect these exocets. Just a minute, don’t we have to go through Little Winton?”

  “Well, I suppose we could go that way,” said Mags, wide-eyed with innocence. “Or we could take a massive detour and go round by Dorking… ”

  “I love Dorking at this time of year… ”

  “… and the reserve closes at eleven,” added Mags.

  “Why?” said Tom, frowning hard. Mags thought for a moment.

&nb
sp; “Missile practice,” she said. Tom burst out laughing.

  They both suddenly became serious, as if this last remark had reminded them of something.

  “You know we haven’t mentioned Jad yet?” said Tom.

  “I guess we covered just about everything last night. What are you going to do about him?”

  “Well, firstly, I’d like to understand what was behind his disappearance. I thought I’d make a few calls this weekend, you know, to try and find out what happened. Still got plenty of contacts in the SBS; that would be a good place to start. And if no joy there, Dad might be able to pull a few strings with his old top brass buddies, at least get a few leads to follow up. Failing that, then… ”

  “There is another way,” Mags interrupted.

  Tom looked at her.

  “You could ask Jad,” she said.

  Tom continued to look at his wife, shaking his head and with a smile spreading across his face.

  “Who needs a brain when I’ve got you? Of course I could, and I will.”

  Jackie Hewlett phoned Tom at around midday, her name coming up on the display on the mobile which was sitting in the hands-free. He chose not to answer. He was currently showing off in his R8 with the top down weaving through the country lanes en route to Kings Leyburn via Little Winton. He looked in appreciation at the beautiful woman beside him. Mags was wearing the loose chiffon dress which Tom had always said was his favourite. Pulled in with a matching belt around her slim waste, it lifted the hemline to just above her knees. Right now, reclining in the passenger seat, she had pulled it up higher, revealing nearly all of her long slender legs. Tom reluctantly switched his attention back to the road.

  “By the way,” he said, as they squeezed through the narrow main street of the allegedly-threatened village past the Saturday market, “are you for or against a by-pass?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” said Mags.

  Tom turned to look at her. She seemed deadly serious.

  “You are joking?” he said.

  She laughed.

  “Yes, of course I’m joking. We’re against it.”

  “Why? This is a gorgeous little village. Why wouldn’t you want to divert the traffic round it?”

  “Because just ahead is a notorious bottleneck at the junction with the A30, and it is absolutely certain that a by-pass will encourage far too much traffic for the junction to cope with and people will come through the village to avoid tail-backs on the new by-pass and try to join the A30 just north of… ”

  “Okay, okay, I give in!” said Tom. “That’ll teach me to ask an open question. Anyway, good for you. It’s obviously been argued through very thoroughly, and all I can say is, if it saves this village from the sort of stop-start we are experiencing at this precise bloody moment getting any worse, then I wish you every success.” He leant over, gently patting her knee, and leaving his hand there. “I do actually mean that, you know.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “Now will you please move your hand?”

  He laughed and pulled his hand away. She grabbed it and placed it back on her knee.

  “I didn’t say remove it,” she said, seductively. “I said move it. Perhaps a bit higher?”

  He obliged, albeit quite a lot higher.

  David returned from the gym at 4.30 pm and, with a bottle of Stella at his elbow, set out to read the Guardian cover to cover. His living room was not quite as spartan as his office, but still fairly minimal in its furnishings. A sofa and armchair were placed at ninety degrees to each other with a long low table in front and a matching side-table in the angle between them. The main feature of the room was a large multi-fuel burning stove at the side of which, in one alcove, was a drinks cabinet and in the other a forty-two-inch television. So far, his weekend had gone exactly to schedule – his every-weekend schedule. Saturday was the only day he bought a paper; never seeming to have time to do justice to one during the week. On Sunday he finished reading all the sections from the previous day.

  He, like so many others that day, noted the similarity, now they were both set down in print, of Deverall’s speech to the one delivered by George Holland just two days earlier. What made the likeness even more remarkable was the enormous difference in the two people themselves. They were as diametrically opposite as it was possible to imagine two human beings to be. One, an open, mild-mannered retired school teacher; the other a cool, calculating killer with a mysterious past.

  His reflections were shattered by the arrival, unannounced, of his daughter, Linny. Belinda Louise Gerrard was very tall and ‘well-made’ as she described herself. She had a plain but laughing, friendly face and exuded energy and joie-de-vie. She wore a loose dress over jeans, and her mass of hair was barely restrained in a make-shift ponytail. She was accompanied by her latest male exhibit, an even taller, good-looking young man whose natural expression appeared to be a wide beam. He was called Caz and seemed likeable enough, if not a little subservient, addressing David as ‘Chief Inspector’.

  After an hour of relaxed conversation, during which time his host on numerous occasions insisted Caz called him David, they rose to leave. Linny gave her father a big hug and an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Caz shook his hand warmly.

  “Great to meet you, Chief Inspector.”

  “I give up,” said David.

  Linny laughed.

  Caz beamed.

  After they left, David microwaved and consumed a Cumberland Pie and settled himself in front of the television to watch High Noon on Sky Western Classics. To get himself suitably in character, he placed a newly-opened bottle of Bourbon and a shot glass on the side table next to him.

  As he watched the approaching climax, with the Frank Miller gang walking line-abreast through the deserted streets of Hadleyville seeking their quarry, he imagined how similar the scene might have been in the minutes before the killing of the Bradys. The gang facing the cornered man in the cul-de-sac, believing there could be only one outcome to the encounter; the stranger’s gun blazing, too quick for Jimmy to fire his own.

  He checked his watch as the ex-Marshall and his new bride left town leaving his discarded badge in the dust. It was almost half past ten, and he was almost half-way down his bottle of whiskey. He decided to head for the bunkhouse.

  As he switched off the set, his mobile rang.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Dog and Duck had been busy all day; there had hardly been a lull between the normally distinct lunchtime and evening sessions. A large number of the midday personnel, including all the Village Ramblers, returning from their regular Saturday walk, had stayed the course and, a little worse for wear but buoyant and happy all the same, had gathered themselves for the push to dinner and beyond. The atmosphere was one of celebration, with George still the centre of attention and enjoying his luminary status.

  At just after 8.30 pm the pub phone rang in both bars and the dining room, like a warning bell in a fire station. One of the waitresses in the dining room picked up the receiver on the wall near the kitchen entrance. The diners listened to her half of the conversation with increasing interest and alarm.

  “Hello, Dog and Duck… Sorry, could you speak up, please, it’s really noisy here… Settlement Road?… What’s happened?… Blocked off?… No, I don’t know anything about that; it was open before. We’ve had a lot of people come… He’s not here at the moment, just tell me again… Oh, right, blocked off by hay bales… Rolled across the road… You have?… Yes, okay, I’ll find him and tell him… Yes, I’ll do it right now… Yes, right away.”

  By now she had the attention of everyone in the room.

  “What’s happened, Lisa?” asked Alistair Neville, a local farmer, almost certainly knowing the answer.

  “That was Redburn. He said someone has blocked off Settlement Road; rolled a load of those big round bales out of a field and – Redburn says – sealed off the village. He said tell Jed as quickly as possible, get everybody out… he said he’s already phoned the police, but they won�
�t be able to get through.” She was starting to sound panicky herself, reflecting the looks of the people in the room listening to her. “What’s it about?”

  “Trouble, Lisa,” said Alistair. “Find Jed, I’ll warn them in the bar.”

  Most of the diners had risen from their seats. Alistair rushed out of the room, shouting as he went.

  “They’re back! They’re coming! They’ve blocked off the road!”

  As he was speaking, Fred Dawson came rushing in through the entrance from the car park at the back where he had been having a smoke.

  “They’re coming over the fields – hundreds of them!”

  “Right!” Alistair Neville shouted above the increasing noise. “Everyone stay inside and lock and bolt the doors! Come on, Ben!” he turned to his brother who was leaning against the bar, a position he had occupied for several hours.

  “What? Where’re we going?” he slurred, eyes widening and struggling for balance and focus.

  “Back to the house. Come on!” he repeated.

  The two men left hastily through the front double-doors, Alistair half-supporting his brother. He turned back briefly.

  “Don’t forget, lock the doors. Do it now!”

  They did as he said, then everyone crowded to the back room, looking through the rear windows at the gently rising field with the faint red-orange glow of the lights of the estate beyond and below it silhouetting the brow of the hill. The darkening skyline was broken by the bobbing shapes of figures descending towards the pub, getting shorter as they dropped below the brow, closing on their target. They re-appeared as the watchers’ eyes adjusted and picked them out again, now against the backdrop of the slope.

  Jed Smithers the landlord arrived, sweating, from the cellar. He pushed his way to the windows through the watching people. Talk amongst them was rising in volume with the increasing panic. Some seemed determined to make a run for it to the relative safety of their homes. Others were pointing out, rightly, that it was too late.