Detective Inspector Skelgill Boxset 4

by Bruce Beckham

  He sees that what must be the pilot – an athletic-looking man in his thirties with close-cropped fair hair clad in a black flying suit – is waiting beside the chopper – presumably to receive the suitcases – for he has open a hatch inside which there are already bags. Joost Merlyn must notice Skelgill’s interest.

  ‘We are just organising the last of the luggage. About time that idle station porter lifted a finger – hah!’

  Skelgill observes as Ruairidh McLeod labours with the large suitcase, its casters useless in the snow, the man himself further hampered by the small hand-held valise. He is bent over and the effort on his reddened face suggests he has a ton weight in tow. When he reaches the helicopter there ensues some remonstration with the pilot – who gesticulates in frustration and puts his head in the door as if to consult with the passengers. Then he takes out two smaller cases from the hold and places them in the snow.

  Skelgill finds himself thinking there will be an issue over the payload. It is a subject he knows something about – indeed it arose with DS Jones’s visit by similar means. A small machine like this, four average persons and maybe a hundred and fifty pounds of cargo. And that oversized case – it looks heavy. In fact the two men are struggling to raise it – never mind that they will have to hoist it to shoulder height to slide it into the snug compartment. As he watches, a more profound unease possesses Skelgill. This is the suitcase that he saw DS Jones lift singlehandedly onto the train. And he witnessed something of its contents in its owner’s bedroom. Ruairidh McLeod changes position to get what must be his stronger left arm under the bottom of the case. And in recognising such sinistrality Skelgill’s troubled mind experiences a flash of clarity hitherto absent. It is as though a conductor’s baton has suddenly brought an orchestra of disparate instruments into fleeting unison.

  ‘Left handed.’

  ‘Come again, Guv?’

  Skelgill does not take his eyes off the scene of imminent departure.

  ‘Leyton – what did you just say?’

  ‘You mean about the chopper?’

  ‘No – in the tea room – the bath house.’

  ‘Oh – you mean – that there’s a tunnel connecting it to the cellar?’

  There is a short pause before Skelgill responds.

  ‘Leyton!’

  If Skelgill’s earlier exhortation was insistent, this one is do or die – and DS Leyton does – despite not understanding (but trusting), and he takes off after Skelgill, the pair of them slip-sliding across the icy snow towards the helicopter, where the pilot and the guard have the suitcase on the lip of the compartment and are about to heave it in.

  ‘Stop! What’s in that case?’

  They probably do not hear Skelgill exactly. But though they sense him coming they are trapped in their strained stances and are powerless to react when he launches himself arms outstretched to pull the suitcase crashing down, whereupon it bursts open like a great clamshell. And DS Leyton’s concomitant Anglo-Saxon outpouring proclaims the magnitude of the secret within – for, inside the case, curled into the deeper compartment, clad in a paintball overall, is the body of a female. Its hair covers the face, but there is no mistaking the distinctive honey blonde shade. Jenny Hackett!

  Skelgill is on his knees in the snow. He has lost his slippers. And he seems frozen as he stares at the unmoving figure. But it is the flotsam – the fragments that began to coalesce when he subliminally heard the helicopter and then his deputy mentioned the underground passage; they have taken shape. He does not see the whole picture – but he grasps its essence.

  DS Leyton suffers no such mental gymnastics, and where Skelgill’s impulse was to go on the offensive, his is to minister to the victim. He pulls away the hair and slides a hand onto the neck.

  ‘Guv! She’s alive! She’s warm – she’s got a pulse!’

  And, indeed, it is apparent that she is breathing – slowly and shallowly, as if she is consumed by the slumber of winter hibernation.

  ‘Get her inside, Leyton.’

  DS Leyton is not a tall man, but he could give a good account of himself against a charging bull, and with a grunt he has the limp form in his arms and is on his feet and stomping steadily back towards the inn. Subsumed in the snow and the dusk and the flashing lights and the rattling throb of the rotors, neither he nor Skelgill has paid attention for half a minute to their surroundings – but now Skelgill sees Samanta come down off the step and run to DS Leyton to offer him assistance. Amidst the blur-cum-whirr-cum-clatter he becomes vaguely aware now of the movements of others around him – and his senses sharpen to how they ought or might react in these extraordinary circumstances. But what happens next is less predictable – for suddenly the passenger door flies open and Wiktoria Adamska tumbles from her seat and pushes past him to get at the suitcase.

  ‘My papers!’

  Although clad in her travelling outfit of striped fur coat and platform shoes she drops undaunted to her knees and snatches up from the base of the case a translucent plastic folder that contains a bound document.

  Skelgill is about to restrain her, and they rise together – but at this moment the rear passenger window slides open and there is the face of Ivanna Karenina. Her narrowed gimlet eyes glitter as black as her hair, as black as hell; her thick mascara seems to drip with menace.

  ‘Wiktoria! Voyti v tebya durak!’

  Skelgill will later learn from Samanta that these words translate as “Get in, you fool!” – but he does not need the rendition to understand the sentiment. This is not some species of benevolent evacuation. It is an audacious escape.

  And instantaneously the idling engine erupts into full throttle. The noise becomes deafening and loose snow begins to swirl and fill the air like the visitation of a mini tornado. Skelgill realises that the pilot has abandoned the residual luggage, ducked under the tail and scrambled into his seat. And he sees that Wiktoria Adamska is rooted to the spot, staring uncomprehendingly at Ivanna Karenina. The latter fixes her with an unblinking stare for perhaps five more seconds, before she barks an unintelligible command and simultaneously slams shut the window. In response the pilot reaches to close the passenger door and takes up the cyclic. With a judder, the helicopter pries itself from the icy ground and begins to rise.

  For the second time in two minutes Skelgill’s instincts gain ascendancy. He leaps at the chopper, obtaining a tenuous grip against the smooth fuselage and a precarious foothold upon the skid.

  Whether he hears Wiktoria Adamska’s despairing protest, or feels her trying to get a hold on his jeans, there is only a fleeting moment in which he might consider that she is trying to save him from certain death – a fleeting moment because some alternative fate intervenes.

  ‘Boom – boom – boom – boom – boom.’

  The bangs that emanate in rapid succession from the direction of the inn are accompanied by a simultaneous sequence of cracks – the latter so very close at hand it seems to Skelgill as to be outrageously adventurous – and a neat ring of holes is punched into the aluminium bulkhead beside him – and instantaneously powerful jets of pressurised fuel spurt out.

  Skelgill hears a warning alert inside the cockpit – the engine dies and the helicopter drops back to earth with a jolt that throws him out into the deep snow. As he flounders about and gains all fours he looks up at the old building. There, in the strobing light, framed in an open first-floor window, calmly assessing the scene and holding an old-style military rifle at the ready, is the steely-eyed American, Bill Faulkner.

  He looses one more shot into the forest beyond; its echo reverberates around the clearing. But if it is intended as a deterrent to malevolent action it is not entirely successful. Skelgill, winded, now kneeling and spitting snow – sees the pilot leap out of the cockpit and hook an arm around the neck of the unsuspecting Wiktoria Adamska. She screams in horror – a vicious Bowie knife is pressed to her throat and the man – who has all the alacrity and muscle of a special forces operative, is using her as a human shield ag
ainst the rifle. He grunts some order in what must again be Russian and begins to thrust her before him through the snow as though he intends to take her into the hotel.

  Skelgill rises, preparing to intercept.

  The man snarls at him in English.

  ‘Keep back – or she dies!’ Then he calls out to Bill Faulkner. ‘Surrender the gun!’

  Skelgill is coiled – but he sees the risk before him. And sown in his mind there are seeds of confusion. Could the woman be acting? Is she in cahoots? It is her husband’s helicopter. But if she acts she excels. And his instincts tell him he must make a move before the man gains complete control of the situation. And then – and then his eyes tell him he is witnessing something that defies logic.

  From a snowdrift just behind the pilot and his hostage rises a ghostly apparition that assumes the abominable limbed form of the sasquatch. But as it rises to its full height it is revealed to be a sasquatch that wears shocking maroon corduroys, and when the white bed sheet is silently cast aside not a sasquatch at all – but the imposing, indeed deadly figure of Richard Bond. In a flash he is upon the unsuspecting hostage-taker to snap back his head with an audible crack. The knife falls free into the snow. The body follows.

  Freed, Wiktoria Adamska flings herself at Skelgill. She wraps one arm around his neck and kisses him forcefully upon the lips. Pressed between them, hard, he can feel the document file that she has held onto so desperately throughout her ordeal.

  15. SHAKE HOLES

  Friday, 11.30am – four months later

  ‘Flippin’ shame we never found Mikal Mital’s manuscript, Guv.’

  Skelgill nods pensively. He has a stalk of common rush gripped between his lips; it is plucked from their surroundings, more abundantly herbaceous than on their last visit to the vicinity of Shap Fell. DS Leyton elaborates.

  ‘I feel like we’ve caught the monkeys but the organ grinders are still plying their trade.’

  ‘I thought we’d got it, Leyton – though I couldn’t understand why, when Wiktoria Adamska wouldn’t get in the chopper, they didn’t try to snatch the folder. I never imagined for a second that it were designs for a bunch of see-through kegs.’

  DS Jones appears mildly amused by Skelgill’s turn of phrase.

  ‘Her new collection has been a big hit on the catwalks. London. Milan. Paris. New York. She’s on the covers of all the glossy magazines. She would have lost a small fortune – not to mention months of original work.’

  Skelgill does not answer – he is wondering whether he can contrive a joke about the woman getting her knickers in a twist – but coincidentally DS Leyton wags a reproving finger.

  ‘That’ll teach her to make duplicates in future. Belt and braces – my old Granddad used to say. I always photocopy my notebook, the minute I get back to the office.’

  ‘Pity Mikal Mital didn’t employ the same philosophy.’ Skelgill’s tone is distinctly rueful.

  ‘Or that Jenny Hackett can’t remember anything he told her, eh, Guv?’

  Skelgill turns to DS Jones.

  ‘Is that still the latest?’

  DS Jones nods. Being author of their report she has the most comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge of the case.

  ‘As of her most recent medical, about a fortnight ago – I think we would have heard otherwise. She was lucky to survive – the amount of Rohypnol they gave her. And fortunate not to have suffered brain damage. She has no recall from the morning of the day she boarded the train until she came out of the coma in hospital a week later. The specialist believes the memories could be wiped permanently.’

  ‘Still – silver lining, Guv.’ It seems DS Leyton will put a positive spin on the news. ‘Remember she was threatening to write that article about us – Skelly’s Heroes? Hah! Least we avoided that.’

  Skelgill does not appear entirely relieved. Perhaps the images that come hustling back bring with them the frustration that DS Leyton has voiced – indeed, as he graphically put it, of caged monkeys and fugitive organ grinders. And so he does not exactly appreciate what ought to be a few moments of gentle contemplation, as a skylark regales them from on high, turning little cartwheels in the balmy April breeze. Indeed, more reflective of his unease, another sound, unearthly, begins to reach their ears – at first barely tangible, a queer resonance in the air, it seems to emanate from Shake Holes cutting, the chiselled canyon below their vantage point. It becomes a whirring, whining sibilance, growing in intensity until, with a sudden whoosh and the reverberating bass throb of diesel engines the blur of a northbound express train materialises beneath them. In just a few short seconds it slips away and around the bend, passing the spot where they had become stranded. And amidst the returning silence the sweet silver song of the lark regains ascendancy.

  ‘Cor blimey, that was shifting, Guv.’ DS Leyton puffs out his cheeks. ‘If we’d been doing the ton like that we might have burst through the drift and made it home.’

  Skelgill clicks his tongue disapprovingly and tosses away the chewed stem like it is a dart.

  ‘Aye – and then they’d all of them got away scot-free. We’d have hopped off at Carlisle. The rest at Edinburgh. They’d have found Mikal Mital later and put it down to an accident. No one would have thought twice about his manuscript being missing. Their plans would have worked out nicely.’

  Skelgill lifts an oversized thermos flask from the cast-iron parapet of the bridge and offers to top up the tin mugs he has supplied for his subordinates on this little jaunt down memory lane. A lull in other operations has provided a small window of opportunity, and news of guilty pleas from the Crown Prosecution Service a timely reminder of all things Shake Holes. So he has cajoled his colleagues to join him for their lunch break, to fulfil his pledge to revisit the area when it is not cloaked in snow – to see it, warts and all, and to find out just how deeply he and Jenny Hackett might have sunk. So he has rallied his team and driven them the twenty minutes from Penrith to the point where the bridleway that passes Shake Holes Inn eventually intersects with the B-road, and they have come south on foot across the stretch of moorland pocked by actual shake holes – his explanation of such eliciting some reasonable degree of interest from his colleagues. “Time for a cuppa”, he had announced as their footsteps clanged onto the iron bridge. Now his sergeants acquiesce, perhaps largely out of politeness. They stand and stare and occasionally sip, as if mesmerised by the empty railway track, with its optical illusion of parallel rails that patently converge. It is DS Leyton who eventually breaks the silence by resurrecting his complaint.

  ‘Okay – we’ve got Ruairidh McLeod bang to rights. And that’s in order – the death of Mikal Mital was by his hand – if not by his intention. But whoever ordered it – they’re sitting pretty. Mikal Mital’s silenced. And his manuscript that might have pointed the finger – you know, Guv – I reckon it might even have gone up in smoke at the hotel.’

  ‘Didn’t you notice I kept checking the fires, Leyton?’

  DS Leyton looks at his boss with a rather anguished grimace – that he may share the view that the irreplaceable document met such a fate.

  ‘Why do you reckon they took Wiktoria Adamska’s designs?’

  Skelgill gives a shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘To make it look like Jenny Hackett had some reason to do a runner from the inn. Once they’d concluded that she knew something about Mikal Mital’s manuscript – maybe had read it and destroyed it – she became the manuscript. They had to take her. They wanted Mikal Mital silenced and they wanted to know what he’d written. When Ruairidh McLeod searched his compartment and found nothing – he suspected her – obviously he’d seen her coming out – although he denied that to us. So she was prime suspect. From then on they were thinking on the hoof. And they nearly succeeded.’

  ‘Except, as it turns out, Jenny Hackett wouldn’t have been much use to them, Guv.’

  ‘Aye – but they didn’t know that, Leyton.’

  DS Jones taps her mug experimentally on the dome of
a protruding rivet.

  ‘What do you think they were going to do with her, Guv?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, lass. Spirit her out of the country. Then something with Siberia in the title, I reckon.’

  DS Leyton makes a fearful intake of breath, but DS Jones is nodding.

  ‘When I was reviewing the background evidence for the trial of Ruairidh McLeod I came across a classified file. That suggested in the early 1980s he was recruited by communist Czechoslovakia – there’s a widespread view that they successfully infiltrated the British trades unions. And despite that his official union activities came to an end – reading between the lines – he has been supplying information ever since. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Czechoslovak intelligence networks were inherited by Moscow. With Ruairidh McLeod’s job on the sleeper – when you think about it – he was mingling every night with politicians and VIPs, serving their cosy little drinking clubs and eavesdropping on their conversations. The Crown submissions include an analysis of his bank account that showed he was receiving a regular monthly income from an anonymous offshore source. Naturally he has declined to explain that.’

  ‘He’s declined to say anything, ain’t that right, girl?’

  DS Jones turns and nods to DS Leyton.

  ‘It seems he decided that pleading guilty and otherwise holding his tongue is most expedient. Likewise Joost Merlyn for his role in the abduction and kidnapping.’

  Now Skelgill interjects, his tone cynical.

  ‘Think about it, Leyton. If McLeod serves – what – eight years for the manslaughter? He’s maybe got a light at the end of the tunnel. If he’d blabbed – assuming it’s who we think it is behind it all – it would be an express train coming the other way.’