by David Barry
Apart from a recent freak heat wave, it had been a lousy summer, the wettest on record; but at least it seemed to keep the crime figures down. Although the chief constable was pleased with the seasonal drop in crime, Lambert had to admit that he was bored. He hated run-of-the-mill offences, however violent, and wanted to get his teeth into something more demanding. The last case that had presented him with anything resembling a challenge was the ex-SAS man who shot the farmer without rhyme or reason. And he’d been told to drop any further investigation into that one. Inexplicably, he looked towards the cordless phone on the bedside table, almost as if he expected someone to call. There was a slight pause, time playing tricks, and he guessed it would ring. When it did, it sent shivers of anticipation through his nervous system. The shrill bleep made his lover cry out as she was startled awake. He pulled his arm from under her, stretched across the bed, switched the bedside light on and picked up the cordless.
‘I was fast asleep,’ she said crossly.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Lambert into the phone. ‘Yes, I was fast asleep.’ He glanced towards his bed mate as she pulled herself into a sitting position, plumping the pillows behind her. With a smile, he ran a hand along her thigh and said, ‘You disturbed a pleasant dream I was having, sir.’
His smile froze.
She was wide awake now. Something major had happened, she could tell. She felt Lambert’s body tense with excitement, and saw the euphoric gleam come into his eyes.
‘What? Of course I remember him. When? Right! I’m on my way.’
‘What’s happened?’ she asked as Lambert moved quickly across the room, pulled open a chest of drawers and grabbed a pair of underpants.
‘Remember that SAS man who killed the farmer? He’s escaped.’
‘You’re joking!’ she said, and swung her legs out from under the bedclothes.
‘That’s right,’ said Lambert as he slipped his underpants on. ‘I’m joking. That’s why I’m going out in the middle of the night in this filthy weather.’
As she rummaged frantically under the duvet for her underclothes, Lambert watched her for a moment, admiring her slim body, then said, ‘Get back to bed, Carol. It’s just gone three.’
‘You want me with you, don’t you?’
He avoided looking at her while he pulled his trousers on. ‘Not this time.’
‘Why not?’
‘I never mix business with pleasure. It’s one of my rules. You’ll be working on Geoff’s team from now on. Sorry.’
As he started to exit to the bathroom to splash cold water onto his face, she yelled out, ‘Bastard!’
Lambert popped his head back round the door, smiling weakly. ‘And you can see why, can’t you, DC Maynard? That’s no way to speak to a senior officer.’
He started to pull the door closed.
‘Just a minute, Harry!’
‘I haven’t got a minute, Carol.’
‘You owe me an explanation.’
She flushed angrily and thrashed around under the bedclothes until she found her bra and struggled into it.
‘I’ve given you good appraisals, Carol. A great recommendation. And Geoff needs a big team for that MP’s fraud scandal. I said I could spare you.’
Her face was like a mask staring at him.
‘So you already knew I’d be joining Geoff.’
He gave her the hint of a shrug. ‘We could never have slept together otherwise, Carol.’
He watched with astonishment as tears suddenly trickled down her cheeks like a tap had been turned on.
‘I’m sorry, Carol. I really am.’
He closed the door gently.
***
‘Come on, Tony. Come on,’ Lambert urged as he waited for Ellis outside his flat. Raising the collar of his raincoat, he stepped out from under the porch and glanced up at his bedroom window. The light was still on, and he wondered what Carol would do now. Would she go back to bed and let herself out at a more respectable hour? Or would she storm off into the night and have nothing further to do with him? Somehow he suspected it would be the latter. How could he have been so dense? He had been convinced she’d be satisfied with the opportunity of working on a high-profile case. He had made the stupid assumption that she was a go-getter, looking for ways to climb the ladder to promotion. But underneath she was like so many of the women he’d hurt along the way: vulnerable and trusting. As the rain lashed his face, he indulged in remorse and guilt for a moment. Then he saw the flash of Tony Ellis’s headlights and he brushed her out of his mind. He ran towards the car.
‘Nice night for it,’ said Ellis cheerfully as Lambert opened the door.
Lambert hesitated as he was about to climb in. ‘Would you like me to drive, Tony?’
‘I’ll be all right.’
Lambert didn’t push it. He knew Ellis had to prove to himself he was in control, in spite of the scars left by his parents’ motor accident.
‘You know where we’re going?’ Lambert asked as they took off.
‘I had a quick look at the map. It’s a place called Claywell, just the other side of the Brecon Beacons. Not that far from the English border.’
Lambert glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘At this time of night, shouldn’t take us more than an hour, I reckon.’
The rain lashed unrelentingly against the windscreen as they hurtled along the M4. They drove for miles without seeing any other vehicles on the motorway. Lambert experienced the weird sensation that they were drifting in water, lost in an uninhabited world. His imagination ran riot. He half expected to see a gang of Hell’s Angels coming towards them through the night. Every so often, he thought he saw figures dashing across the motorway in front of the car. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and when he looked again at the road ahead, the figures had vanished.
Just before Newport, they came off the motorway and headed north. Because the road was flooded in places, the going became tougher, so that by the time they reached Claywell it had taken them almost an hour and a half.
Claywell was a small, nondescript town, and they drove down its main street and out the other side almost without noticing it. Ellis had been given directions from staff at the Claywell Hospital and easily found the light industrial estate about a quarter of a mile outside the town. He took the small turning opposite and drove carefully down a steep hill. At the bottom was an H road sign, and round the next bend a high brick wall which they followed until they reached a heavy metal gate.
Ellis gave their names into the intercom and the gate swung open. ‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed as they drove into the hospital grounds. ‘This is a hospital?’
‘I think lunatic asylum is the proper name for it,’ Lambert said with a grim laugh.
Ellis clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘It’s bloody disgraceful.’
‘What is?’ asked Lambert, though he could guess what Ellis was going to say.
‘Treating people with mental health problems as if we lived in the dark ages.’
‘Mental health problems is an understatement, Tony.’
‘Even so,’ continued Ellis indignantly. ‘I mean, look at it. Talk about a building being typecast.’
The building, which had not been visible from the road because of the high brick wall surrounding it, seemed to grow out of the dark rocks of the surrounding hills. This was an early Victorian, Gothic monstrosity, as forbidding as it would have been almost two hundred years ago when it was a workhouse. Now it was lit by halogen security lights, giving it an even more eerie appearance, as if the building was being held under scrutiny by some invisible and malignant entity.
Two police cars were parked near the main entrance and Lambert saw a uniformed policeman on the front steps, talking to DC Wallace, who was inhaling deeply on a cigarette. Wallace gave them a cursory wave as they parked, then flicke
d his cigarette butt across the gravel drive in a shower of sparks.
As Lambert strode towards the building, Wallace rushed down several steps to meet him. He twitched his shoulders audaciously. Street credibility was part of his act. He was quite good looking in a chubby sort of way, giving the impression he had been pampered as a child, probably well into his teens. He sported a moustache, recently grown because of his baby-face looks. He greeted Lambert with, ‘Lights out at ten o’clock, sir.’
‘What the bloody hell you talking about, constable?’
Without waiting for a reply, Lambert barged through the front door. The sound of a forced laugh greeted him incongruously, as if he was a comedian making a stage entrance. That and an overpowering smell of bleach. He wheeled round on DC Wallace, waiting for an explanation.
‘Ten o’clock. That’s what time the inmates are bedded down for the night. So Evans could have had a four-or-five hour start.’
‘And where’s the idiot who’s in charge of this open prison?’
Wallace tried to suppress a grin. ‘Down the hall, sir. First on the left.’
***
Evans walked down the main street, keeping to the shadows of the shop doorways. His shoes squelched on the rain-soaked pavement and he stopped for a minute, thinking he heard approaching footsteps. He slid into the doorway of a gift shop and waited, straining for the sound of feet on concrete. The only person who would be likely to be walking about a small Welsh town at four in the morning would be a policeman, so Evans braced himself for a confrontation. But, apart from the splash of rain and the distant gurgling of a river in full flood, the town slumbered comfortably. Even the houses seemed to snore. Perhaps the footsteps he could hear were the echoes of his own, or a trick of the mind. He sidled out of the doorway and continued walking stealthily along the street. This was a tourist spot, nestling in the mountains, so he guessed that there would be just the sort of shop he needed here. He found it, bang in the centre of the main street, next to a Copper Kettle tea room. The shop sold camping equipment, and here he would find everything he needed to survive. His hospital clothes were soaked and he looked forward to a change into dry clothing. Now all he needed to do was find his way round to the rear entrance of the shop and disable the alarm.
***
‘Why did no one tell us?’ Lambert demanded.
The hospital governor, clearly ill at ease, fiddled with a ballpoint pen, clicking it open and closed. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and his face reminded Ellis of Bill Sykes’ dog. ‘It didn’t seem significant,’ he replied, avoiding eye contact with the detectives.
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’ Lambert threw Ellis a look of stunned disbelief. ‘Evans began talking again after he’d been here for only a month but you failed to inform us?’
The governor coughed nervously. ‘Well, he’d been tried and sentenced. I...er...I thought he was going to be with us for a very long time, so there didn’t seem much point in contacting the police.’
The governor gave Lambert a lop-sided smile, a point-scoring expression that was half apologetic.
‘Well now,’ Lambert said, squeezing the last drop of drama out of his delivery, ‘he’s been with you for only a short time. I appreciate the case was done and dusted, but we have no idea why he killed that farmer. And if Evans started speaking again...’
Lambert let the unfinished sentence hang like a portent over the governor and waited.
‘He refused to speak of his crime.’
‘Refused, sir?’
‘Well, yes. Any mention of his crime and he shut off completely. But in all other respects he became a model prisoner.’
‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that Evans deliberately chose not to speak? That he might have been planning something? The man is bright. You must have known that.’
The governor waved an uncoordinated hand about, searching for an excuse. ‘Well, yes, but I don’t see...’
Ellis, who was making notes, interrupted him. ‘You say he became a model prisoner, sir. Was he allowed certain privileges?’
The governor hesitated slightly before replying. ‘Well, he communicated with a librarian at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.’
‘Someone he knew?’ Lambert asked.
‘No, I don’t think so. You see, Evans began to show a keen interest in Celtic mythology. We encourage our inmates to communicate with the outside world whenever possible. And this lady seemed to show a keen interest in Evans. They struck up quite a friendship.’
‘Have you got copies of the letters she sent him?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think you’ll find anything in them that will shed any light on his escape. It was just an interest they both shared in all this New Age traveller stuff. Ley lines. Celtic stones and all that mumbo jumbo.’
‘Ley lines?’ Ellis said. ‘Isn’t that a sort of networking of ancient sites?’
The governor tugged his earlobe. ‘If you believe that sort of thing. Personally, I don’t. But it provided a focus for Evans. He practically papered his room with charts, maps of ancient sites and monuments that she sent him, and...’ He broke off as the realisation caught up with him. His mouth opened, his eyes widened and the exclamation seemed to stick in the back of his throat. ‘Oh, Christ Almighty!’
Now he knew it was going to be early retirement.
Lambert pounced. ‘Exactly. You might as well have provided him with an Ordnance Survey map.’
***
During his time at Claywell Hospital Evans managed to steal a pen torch and a cigarette lighter from the orderlies, which he concealed in the grounds. He also openly acquired some bulldog clips, saying he needed them to keep his Celtic notes in order. These, along with the appropriate tools, wire and a battery he had appropriated by breaking into a garden tool shed, would enable him to break into the shop. He managed to pick the lock without too much trouble. But he still had to smash the glass in the back door as there was a bolt holding it. Before entering, he paused for a moment to see if any lights came on in any nearby houses. But, apart from a row of cottages about a hundred yards away, most of the buildings nearby were mainly shops, and nobody seemed to have been disturbed by the noise. He pushed open the shop’s door and slipped inside. Immediately the alarm began bleeping prior to going off - he probably had about thirty seconds. He ran his hand up and down the wall just on the inside of the door, found the light switch and risked switching it on. He was in a small room, used as a kitchen and partly for storage. The alarm setting was close to the back door, just above a draining board by a sink. He worked quickly to undo the screws on the box and this must have taken him about ten seconds - maybe more. Not much time left. Soon all hell would be let loose. Sweat began to run from under his arms and he tried to remain calm. He had less than ten seconds left. This was an alarm system with which he was familiar, but he needed to identify the sounder wire before he could cut it and attach it to the bulldog clip and battery. Using the cigarette lighter he burnt through one of the wires and, as luck would have it, the sounder wire was the first one he’d picked. Just as the alarm bell started its shrill jangling, he clipped on the bulldog clip wired from the battery and it was silenced. He’d made it. Breathing a sigh of relief, he wiped his sleeve across his forehead and mentally thanked Her Majesty’s government for teaching him a few dirty tricks.
Another hour perhaps, and then milkmen, newsagents, and any other early morning risers would be starting to surface. He switched off the light, groped his way through to the shop and risked switching on the torch to find what he needed as quickly as possible. He found some military surplus clothes and a good pair of walking boots and quickly changed into them. He crammed a sleeping bag into a medium-sized backpack, along with a compass, a small cooking pot and a Swiss Army knife. And he couldn’t believe his luck: in a drawer behind the counter he found a bar of chocolate. He s
tuffed it into the bag and began to pick up his discarded hospital clothes, intending to dispose of them in a dustbin along the way. But what was the point? As soon as they discovered the break-in, they would know who it was. Today was Sunday. With any luck it wouldn’t be discovered until Monday morning, which would give him time to get well clear of the area. He dropped his old clothes onto the floor and began to fumble his way to the room at the rear of the shop. Some distance behind the shop, he remembered, was that row of cottages that looked like pensioners’ houses, and he took the precaution of switching off the torch before going through to the back room, in case one of them got up to use the toilet and spotted the light. He crept forward, feeling his way in the dark, avoided knocking the tea and coffee mugs on the draining board by the sink, and was about to open the back door when he froze, his hand poised in the air as he reached for the handle. He thought he heard a human sound close by. A snuffling, padding noise, as if someone was creeping towards the back door. Someone who had seen the light from the torch and had decided to investigate? He had left the door slightly ajar and it seemed as if the person was starting to ease it open ever so slowly. His heart pounded against the wall of his chest. He took a deep breath and braced himself. He had no weapons he could use, other than the Swiss Army knife, and he cursed his stupidity for having put it inside the backpack. By now his eyes were used to the dark, and he saw the door open slowly another inch. This was someone trying to surprise him, he was sure of it. His right hand clenched into a fist, his body tense, but his mind high and clear from the rush of adrenaline, he flung open the door.
