Resolutions

by Jane A. Adams

  For an instant he thought that it might be her. That this whole incident was a mistake and a normal, unpainful explanation would emerge. They’d all be relieved, all go home. He’d go home, tell Wildman he was right and he really couldn’t hack it any more, to count him out.

  He pressed the button to accept the call. The voice was not Miriam’s. ‘Hello, Inspector,’ Thomas Peel said. ‘I think I have something you may want back.’

  It was half an hour before anyone noticed that Mac had gone. At first everyone assumed he was just somewhere else in the building; then, as another fifteen minutes passed, it was obvious that he was not.

  The desk sergeant recalled him leaving. He said that Inspector McGregor had been talking on his phone and had seemed in a hurry.

  Alec tried Mac’s mobile number: no response, just straight to voicemail.

  ‘Peel made contact,’ Wildman said bitterly. ‘He went.’

  ‘What would you have done?’ Alec queried. ‘Or have you never cared enough about anyone for that to be an issue?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  The weather forecast had been right about the fog. It rolled in from a cold ocean and sat heavily upon the land. Mac had grown up not twenty miles from Pinsent and he remembered well the thick fogs that descended so suddenly on a previously clear day. Walking on the beach in winter, he had learnt early to keep one eye on the sea and watch for the mist that came in so often with the turning tide. Once it came down, even those familiar with the area could become disorientated, and Mac had learnt that listening out for the sound of the sea was no sure guide to finding your way off the beach. The north-east coastal fogs seemed possessed of an almost mystical power of deception. Mac remembered well the story of six children and their teacher from a local riding school who’d been lost one winter because the fog had come down and they had turned their horses out to sea, instead of heading back for the beach above the strand line. Three had been drowned, horses and riders. One was never found.

  The fog descended in thick blankets when he was only a few miles out of Pinsent, and Mac was forced to slow right down. He could, at times, barely see the front of the car, and oncoming vehicles slipped out of the gloom like diffuse ghosts, internally lit and seeming insubstantial.

  Peel had given instructions: where to go, how to get there, when to be there. To come alone. Mac knew this was foolishness, but what else could he do? A full-scale police operation would only scare Thomas Peel away, and Mac could just imagine that Peel would either take Miriam with him or leave her like Cara Evans. Mac could not bear to consider either scenario.

  Briefly, he wondered if he’d actually have a job to go back to after this, but it was a fleeting, unimportant thought.

  Rowleigh Bay was thirty miles from Pinsent and ten from the beach where he’d seen Cara Evans die. It should have been an easy drive, but the fog on the twisting coast road was daunting, taking every ounce of his concentration. Once, twice, he saw Alec’s name flash up on the caller display. Once, Wiseman’s. He let the voicemail take them. Wiseman left no message. The route was not a complicated one, but at each turn he had to stop the car in order to see the signposts. Twice he had to get out and peer through drifting cloud at the battered, rusted signs. Rowleigh Bay was a beautiful place in summer, though even then it was remote enough to avoid the glut of the tourist trade. This time of year, it was left to the seals and the birds, and the few brave walkers who came down from the cliff path to cross the rocky beach and maybe walk the mile back to Rowleigh village and the Cross Keys pub, though those that did were either local or frequent visitors: they had to be to know that Rowleigh village even existed, that Rowleigh Bay was even there.

  A mile to go. Mac glanced at his phone, telling himself that he could call for backup now, that this was the sensible thing to do. That he was an even bigger fool than he’d taken himself for when he’d left Pinsent almost an hour before. He was, though, unsurprised to see that he had no reception here. That his phone was useless. Did Thomas Peel know that? Likely so.

  Mac drove through the little village of Rowleigh, noting the absence of cars in the pub car park – still too early for opening – the lack of people in the street – too cold, too damp, too dark now – and parked his car at the break in the cliff, the dip that gave access from the village and the road on to the beach and into the bay. Once, he’d been told, there’d been a lifeboat station here. Once a jetty that took pleasure-seekers round the headland to watch the seals. Nothing here now but cold and damp and despair. No other cars parked either. Did that mean that Peel had parked elsewhere, had been delayed by the fog or . . . was not going to show after all?

  Something very close to despair gripped Mac at the pit of his belly and cramped hard. What if Wildman was right and he had made the wrong call again? Could he live with that?

  No.

  He looked at the dashboard clock. With the engine off and the lights doused, it was hard to see anything. He could just make out that it was five fifteen. He rummaged in the glove compartment and found a torch, detached his mobile phone from its cradle, hoping irrationally that it might find a signal down on the beach, then left the comparative comfort of his car and began the long, painful walk down on to yet another lonely beach.

  Miriam was back in the boot of Thomas Peel’s car. She was cold and stiff and scared. He’d cuffed her hands again, behind her back, so that each time the car rounded a bend or took a corner she was rolled sideways with no means of controlling her momentum. Her shoulder was stiff and bruised from lying on it with her arms wrenched back, and her hands were now almost numb. What wasn’t numb was bruised and sore.

  He had fastened tape across her mouth, wrapped a blindfold around her eyes. Frantic rubbing of her head against the boot carpet had shifted the blindfold, and though there was nothing to see in a space that was too dark for vision anyway, she felt slightly better for having at least fought back in that small way.

  Peel had barely spoken to her. He had given instruction but that was all, and any attempt she had made to engage him in conversation had simply been ignored.

  When he had tipped her unceremoniously back into the car boot and slammed the lid down, her first thought had been to be thankful she was still conscious. The lingering smell of chloroform in the boot made her feel nauseous and helped to explain the massive, hangover-like headache that seemed a separate symptom to those simply caused by being hit about the head with the butt of a shotgun. Soon, though, she found herself wishing that she had been drugged. The sick feeling remained, the nausea worsening by the minute, the scent of chloroform exacerbated by the shaking and buffeting she experienced with each swerve and bump of the car. She was convinced he was doing everything he could to make her feel worse.

  Her biggest fear was that she’d be sick, vomit with the tape across her mouth, choke to death. She’d seen people who’d died that way, choking to death on their own stomach acids. The thought of it horrified her now.

  Miriam forced herself to breathe slowly. Having freed the blindfold by rubbing against the boot carpet, she now tried it with the tape. Gave up. The only result of that exercise was carpet burns. She then willed herself to listen out for anything that might give her a clue to the route they were taking, but apart from crossing a set of railway tracks, little seemed to vary. She then made herself count. Sixty. Sixty again. Counting seconds – one elephant, two elephants – just like she had as a child when she and her sister had tried to guess what a minute felt like. Kate, her sister, was always better at that game than she was.

  She kept losing count.

  After forever, the car slowed and continued to move slowly for what seemed like another term of forever. Miriam had hoped, briefly, that they would be stopping somewhere, that she could then make a lot of noise by kicking at the boot lid and that she might be heard. Would anyone hear?

  And then, another worry. She knew that some boots were airtight; what if she ran out of air? Angry with herself for not thinking of that earlier – though what
she could have done differently if she had, she didn’t know – she focused on conserving air, trying to breathe, slow and shallow, not easy when every minute or so a bump in the road jolted her and thumped the air from her lungs.

  That was different, she realized. The road had not been so rough before.

  Minutes later they had stopped and she heard the car door open and then shut. She braced herself, determined she would deliver at least one good kick before he got her out.

  The boot opened and Miriam lashed out, but Peel was ready for her. She kicked and he slammed the boot lid down on to her leg. Miriam howled in pain behind the tape, her throat clamping shut as the sound became trapped there and, for a terrifyingly long moment, she could not breathe. Then he dragged her from the car, forcing her out into a world that was chill and damp and dark, even when he fully removed the blindfold from her eyes.

  ‘Walk,’ Peel said and pointed the shotgun he was holding straight at her face. ‘That way.’

  Miriam turned and walked. The heavy fog closed about them, cutting them off from the world.

  Mac stood on the beach and waited. He could hear the sea lapping a few feet away and, when the fog drifted, make out the high outcrop of the headland and the lower exit of the track he’d followed to get here. The fog swallowed every other sound and caused the sea to sound thicker than it was, more like oil than water, dragging against wet sand.

  He strained his eyes, trying to see through the cloud that had settled all around him and soaked his clothes. His mind was barely aware of the chill, and it was only when his body reacted by violent shivering, taking his mind by surprise, that he was conscious of being cold.

  He had expected Peel to follow the same path he had done and watched for movement from that direction, angry with himself for not getting hold of a map and studying the lie of the land. He was, therefore, taken by surprise when Peel – Miriam just ahead of him – appeared through the drifting fog, walking along the length of the beach.

  There must be another way down.

  Miriam halted at Peel’s command, and Mac moved forward almost without thinking.

  ‘Stay where you are, Inspector.’ The gun was now in Peel’s left hand and pointed at Mac. He wondered if Peel could fire left-handed, but the thought was short-lived, replaced by a more pressing and familiar fear. Peel had moved closer to Miriam and now he held a knife in his right hand. His arm around her body, the knife at her throat.

  ‘I think we’ve been here before, Inspector,’ Thomas Peel said.

  Mac froze. He did not have to ask himself if Thomas Peel was capable of carrying out his threat; he already knew the answer to that. Miriam’s eyes were wide with fear. Tape covered her mouth and her arms were pinioned behind her back. Peel’s face was expressionless as he studied Mac. Experimented with him, pushed him to the limits of what he could endure.

  Mac breathed deeply, the chill air filling his lungs. He kept his gaze fixed on Miriam, willing her to know how much he loved her, that he wasn’t going to let her down. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked quietly, surprised at how normal and controlled his own voice sounded.

  ‘Why? Because I can. Because it gives me pleasure.’

  ‘What kind of pleasure? Is it just the power you think you have over people?’

  ‘No,’ Peel said. ‘It’s the power I actually have.’

  Mac eased closer. He had no idea what he was going to do, but for now just engaging Thomas Peel was a beginning. Miracles can happen, he thought. Miracles do.

  ‘Did you tell Billy Tigh to kill Philip Rains?’ he asked and was shocked to see a flicker of surprise cross Peel’s face.

  ‘Rains is dead? Pity; he was once a friend of mine.’

  ‘Until you gave him to us. Is that what you do with your friends – keep them while they’re useful and then sell them out to the highest bidder?’

  Peel cocked his head to one side and looked thoughtfully at Miriam. ‘I think your policeman is trying to annoy me,’ he said. ‘We should tell him that’s not such a good idea.’ He brought the knife up, pressing it more tightly against Miriam’s neck. Mac could see blood seep from behind Peel’s hand.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m not trying to make you angry. I’m just trying to understand.’

  Peel laughed. ‘Now you’re sounding like a shrink. Forget it, Inspector. I’m way off the scale of your understanding. Way, way above you.’

  I’m losing him, Mac thought. I’m losing him again.

  He tried another angle; mention of Rains and Billy Tigh had at least elicited a response, however slight. ‘So, if you didn’t have Rains killed, who did?’

  ‘You’re asking me? A man like Rains made enemies. I could make you a list, I suppose. Could be any one of a dozen people. More, maybe.’

  ‘And was Billy Tigh his enemy? Was Tigh a victim?’

  Peel laughed. ‘How the hell should I know? I didn’t keep a list of Rains’s conquests. Like I said, a lot of people would want him dead.’

  ‘Karen Parker among them?’

  Peel laughed again and tightened his grip on the knife.

  He’s scared of her, Mac thought.

  ‘Our little Karen might have Rains killed just because she’d like to piss me off. She doesn’t have to have a better reason.’

  ‘And does it? Piss you off, I mean. Someone killing your friend.’

  ‘No,’ Peel told him. ‘I’d outgrown Rains long ago. He was fun for a while. No one lasts, though. I use them up and throw the husks away; you know that, Inspector.’

  Peel smiled, and Mac knew for certain he was failing. Peel was bored and time was running out.

  He risked another look at Miriam: no fear in her eyes now, just resignation. She wanted this to end, could not see how they could win, had all but given up.

  Mac saw – or thought he saw – a movement behind Peel, but when he focused it was gone. Just drifting fog and enclosing, greying dark. He looked again: a whisper of movement, there and then gone. For a mere instant he allowed the fantasy that Alec or Wildman had tracked him down and they had come to the rescue. He cursed himself for not accepting Wildman’s insistence that what mattered was the team.

  ‘You finished, then, Inspector?’ Peel said.

  ‘No, I’ve not . . .’ Mac began, but he got no further. A blade flashed, a body fell heavily on to sand and Mac was screaming and running. And all the terrible memory of that other night was falling in on him again.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By midnight the fog had lifted and the sky was clearing. Dragon lamps illuminated the beach and the cordoned area where the body lay. Mac still did not understand what had happened.

  Someone from the pub had brought hot soup, and Mac held a mug between his hands, sipping cautiously. Beside him, in the back seat of a police car, Miriam, swathed in blankets but still shivering, held her own portion and tried hard to show interest in drinking it.

  Paramedics had treated the cuts on her head and throat and the bruising on her wrists. One side of her face was rubbed raw where she’d struggled with the blindfold and the gag, and around her mouth the skin peeled and oozed blood where the tape had ripped it sore. She looked a mess and she was the most beautiful thing Mac had ever seen.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispered. She had asked this same question at least a dozen times. Each time his answer had been the same.

  ‘I don’t know. There was someone else there.’

  He had watched the shadow move behind Thomas Peel. Seen the hand, the knife; seen Peel fall on to the sand, Miriam taken down by the weight of the man as he collapsed. He had thought the worst, been convinced that Miriam was dead, and only when he’d hauled her out from beneath Peel’s body, held her close, run careful hands across her body, looking for blood, was he convinced that she had survived.

  The keys to the quick cuffs had been in Peel’s pocket and he had released her, then rubbed her hands and arms, wincing as she moaned relief and pain as the blood returned, though even now her hands felt chilled and
numb.

  They had left Peel’s body on the beach, hoping the tide would not come in before the police and CSIs arrived, and returned to the village to find a phone. The Cross Keys pub was now the centre of operations in a murder case.

  Wildman had arrived and statements had been made, and Mac knew that his story had not been believed.

  He didn’t care.

  Miriam was safe and Peel was dead, and he could think no further than that, not now, not tonight.

  There was, however, one thing that had permeated his cocoon of pure relief. He had seen the knife that had killed Thomas Peel and recognized it. One from a set he had in a block in his kitchen at the boathouse. One of those or one just the same, and he knew that Miriam had seen it too.

  ‘It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?’ she said, as though tracking his thoughts.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ll think it was you.’

  ‘Yes, yes, they will.’ He had said in Wildman’s presence that he wanted revenge. That would be remembered.

  ‘But you didn’t do it. There was someone there.’

  ‘Yes, there was.’

  ‘But they’ll still think it’s you.’

  Mac slid an arm around her shoulders. Miriam shivered and laid her head against him. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We tell the truth,’ he said. ‘That’s all we can do.’

  ‘They’ll still think it was you.’ She closed her eyes and Mac took the mug from her hand as she slid into sleep. He drank his soup and watched the figures moving on the beach, and knew that this time, even more than when Cara Evans had died, everything would change. He was not the man he had been then, not even the man he had been when he returned to Pinsent. There had been a shift in his thinking, in his being. That sense that he no longer wanted to be doing this – putting those he loved or, indeed, himself in harm’s way – had crystallized, though he had more than a suspicion that the decision was now well and truly out of his hands.