Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (14 page)

‘I never killed anyone…’ Wade said, his voice breaking. ‘I didn’t kill my wife… My daughter…’ Tears formed in his eyes. ‘It wasn’t me…’

‘Like I believe that!’ Hartshorn said derisively. ‘A man who’d bust a cheek for the sake of a bar of Cadbury’s Dairymilk!’  He stepped through the doors, off the bus, Cheryl following him.

Steven Lindsey was standing by the small fire, his horrified face aglow with the licking flames. ‘What’s going on?’

‘There are wild animals out there, Hartshorn,’ said Bolan from the doors. ‘You have to believe us.’

‘There’s a wild animal right here,’ he responded. ‘I’m not falling for your lies, Bolan. And if the rest of you morons want to do that then that’s fine by me, but I’m not staying here a minute longer. I’ll take my chances out there.’ He went round to the side of the bus and unfastened the locker catch, dropping down the flap to reveal everyone’s neatly-stowed bags inside. By the light of the bonfire he scrabbled about trying to locate his own small suitcase.

‘I don’t like the dark,’ Cheryl pleaded. ‘I’m afraid. I don’t want to go out there…’

‘Don’t be stupid, woman. We’ll be fine. We’ve got to get you to the clinic as soon as possible…’ He patted her arm. ‘You’re ill. You need your treatment.’

‘I’m scared we’ll die, Keith!’ She resisted his tugging, broke free. ‘I want to stay here!’

Hartshorn glowered. ‘Fine, have it your way, you druggie bitch! I’ve had enough of trying to keep you clean. You’ve made your bed now you can lie on it!’ He pulled out his suitcase.

‘You’re making a big mistake, Hartshorn,’ said Wade. ‘You’re an arsehole, but I can’t let you kill yourself.’

‘Go ahead, stop me if you can.’

Wade pulled out the handgun and aimed it at Hartshorn, who dropped the suitcase immediately and backed away, his mouth falling open shock. ‘Get back on the bus,’ Wade insisted firmly.

There was a click from behind Wade’s head, and he felt something cold and hard pressing against the back of his skull.

‘Drop the gun, Wade,’ said Martin Bolan evenly. ‘That’s right, I’m armed. Drop your weapon at once and no one will get hurt.’

Wade let his gun clatter to the floor. It fell down the steps and landed on the dirt outside. ‘Who are you, Martin?’ he asked. ‘Really.’

‘DI Bolan,’ he said. Then louder, to everyone on board. ‘DI Bolan. I’ve been tracking this man down for a while. Hands behind your back, Wade.’ Bolan took out a set of cuffs as Wade did as he was told.

‘You’re making a big mistake, Martin. I didn’t kill my wife and daughter. I’m on the trail of the man who did.’

‘Tell that to the jury, Wade.’ He fumbled to open the cuffs.

In a split second, Wade sent his elbow crashing into Bolan’s chest, spun round and grabbed the hand that held the gun, sending the unyielding metal crashing into Bolan’s nose, finally wrenching the gun free from his grasp. It all happened so fast, Wade’s training so completely instinctive, that he was standing staring at Bolan with the gun levelled at the man’s chest before he’d had time to even think about what he was doing. The two men eyed each other fiercely. Blood poured down Bolan’s busted nose.

‘Don’t even think about touching that gun,’ said Wade to Hartshorn, without turning to face him, as Hartshorn bent down to pick Wade’s fallen weapon from the ground.

‘Go ahead, if you’re going to kill me, get it over and done with…’ said Bolan, panting, wiping away the blood with his sleeve.

The gun wavered slightly, like an animal about to pounce on its prey. Something in Wade’s head said
pull the trigger
. It screamed at him that this was the thing to do. The
only
thing.

Pull the trigger! Pull the trigger!

He lowered the gun. ‘I’m not going to do that, Martin,’ he said. ‘I’m not a murderer.’

The bloodcurdling scream that ripped through the night took them all by surprise. Everyone turned to see young Steven Lindsey being dragged sharply backwards into the black of the desert, his legs kicking as if he were deranged or in the grip of a fierce fit, his arms flailing madly.

It was only a glimpse before the young man was eaten up by the wall of solid blackness beyond the glare of the small bonfire, but they were all taken aback and horrified by what they thought they saw holding Steven Lindsey by his torn, bloodied throat.

It was the slavering jaws of a monstrous hairy black beast straight from the pits of hell.

‘Come in, Robert, sit down and make yourself comfortable. And don’t look so upset. It’s not good for the old ticker, getting yourself worked up like that.’

Dale Lindegaard was sitting in his office, legs crossed, on his cream leather armchair facing a huge screen on the wall. He motioned casually for Napier to sit in the armchair in front of him him.

‘I want him out!’ Napier said, barely able to contain his emotions.

‘Don’t be too hasty, Robert,’ Lindegaard said. ‘You look like you could do with a drink. Pour me one too, before you get comfortable.’ Lindegaard’s well-manicured finger, small, fat and slug-like, pointed out a decanter sitting on a cabinet.

‘You know what he’s done? I can’t have that! He’s murdered someone! In cold blood! A key informant!’

‘I can see you’re upset, and yes, it was a little unexpected…’

‘Unexpected!’ he blustered. Lindegaard’s finger remained poised, so Napier steadied his breathing and went over to the decanter and poured out two glasses. ‘It’s murder, Mr Lindegaard.’

‘It was an accident.’

‘Villiers killed the man in cold blood!’

‘It was his assistant Jungius, to be fair.’

‘That’s not even remotely funny, Mr Lindegaard. I don’t want anything to do with murder!’

‘But you’re already involved, Robert. Villiers works under your team, does he not?‘

‘You’re trying to hold me responsible for that? I will have no part in it.’

He smiled warmly. ‘Robert, Robert, I can see you’re upset, but if anything it will send out the right message to CSL.’

‘I don’t think you understand the seriousness of this, Mr Lindegaard. There’s a damn body…’

‘Which is unfortunate but will all be taken care of.’

‘Villiers planned it all along. He had a bag of cocaine…’

‘Yes,’ said Lindegaard. ‘A drugs deal gone terribly wrong, apparently.’

‘Christ, what a fucking mess!’ He downed a glass of whisky and poured out another.

‘Like I say, Robert, try not to get yourself worked up. Here, sit down, there’s a good man.’

Licking his lips of the sharp taste and feeling the alcohol creep warmly through his insides, Napier sat down opposite Lindegaard, controlling his breathing. ‘I knew he’d be trouble. Something told me. I had no idea…’

‘I know. I know,’ said Lindegaard. ‘But every cloud, and all that…’

Every cloud? What was the man going on about, thought Napier? He’d expected Lindegaard to have been furious.

‘So what would you do with him, with Villiers?’ Lindegaard asked.

Napier chewed at his lower lip. ‘I want him off my operation.’

‘Is that all?’

‘What do you want me to say? I want him dead?’

‘You’re thinking it.’

‘He’s trouble. I can’t operate with that kind of loose cannon. He’s a murdering bastard.’

‘So you want him dead?’

The man was testing him. Again.

‘I don’t care, as long as he’s out of my hair,’ he ventured.

Lindegaard gave a low chuckle. ‘You try to give the impression that you are a hard man, Robert, but deep down you are not as hard as you’d like everyone to believe. Villiers has stepped on your toes, gone over your head, call it what you will, and ordinarily I would have expected a man like you to be so mad you’d have taken the gun to Villier’s head yourself. But you carefully manoeuvre away from committing yourself to the blindingly obvious. Villiers should pay for his transgression. You’re getting soft as you grow older, Robert, I’ve seen it coming over you. Compassion is a wasting disease. Once it takes hold there is no preventing it from taking over completely. I remember smoking my first cigarette, thinking that one would not hurt, that I was in control, not the nicotine. But that one cigarette was all it took, and now look at me, like a starving babe needing to suck at the breast – I cannot do without them. Compassion – well, it’s like nicotine, Robert. My advice, don’t let it take hold, and to do that is to avoid it at all costs. Do I make myself clear?’

Robert Napier nodded, took a sip from his glass. ‘Very clear, Mr Lindegaard.’

‘There will always be casualties in a game where the monetary and power stakes are so high. Players should refrain from joining the table if they are unwilling to shoulder the costs of losing. Anyone would think you had feelings for this Roland Fuller.’

‘I have a job to do, and people like Villiers and his hired henchmen get in the way,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘For now Mr Villiers will have to stay. His methods, though undoubtedly crude, have yielded results, and for that I must give him the benefit of the doubt.’ He lifted a remote control and aimed it at a screen to the left of them. ‘I would have liked to have kept Roland Fuller alive a little longer. But Villiers has ensured Fuller’s limited contribution was valuable. We have live feed coming through as we speak from the location given by Fuller to Villiers.’

The screen flickered on. The image looked to be coming from an unsteady head-cam, someone walking through a darkened corridor, bare concrete walls, metal pipes criss-crossing the ceiling, puddles of water on the floor.

‘Where is this?’ said Napier.

‘South London.’

‘A warehouse?’

‘Factory – used to be a sweatshop, mainly illegal immigrants putting together cheap clothes, till they closed it down. This was CSL’s latest operational base, courtesy of the late Roland Fuller. In use until just a few hours ago, my team reckon. Unfortunately they managed to scurry away before we arrived. They didn’t have the time to destroy or shift everything, though. Guess this time we took them completely by surprise, eh?’

As if to illustrate this the camera went through an open metal door that looked as if it had been forced. The room beyond was dark until someone hit a light switch.

‘Are you getting this okay, Mr Lindegaard?’ a disembodied voice said.

‘Show me the setup again,’ Lindegaard ordered, and the camera swivelled unsteadily to reveal a number of desks, on top of each a number of screens that had been laid into with something heavy, smashing them to pieces. ‘This is what remains of their equipment?’ he asked, leaning forward, his eyes narrowing.

‘They’ve taken some of it with them,’ said the voice behind the camera. ‘They’ve attempted to physically destroy the remainder, and I’m certain they’d have hit a self-destruct button to clear any hard drives they couldn’t haul away. It’s a mess. But it’s a better mess than any we’ve found previously. We calculate they had little more than fifteen or twenty minutes to clear out.’

‘No sign of anyone?’

‘No, Mr Lindegaard. We had all the exits covered but it looks like they’ve used another exit as yet unknown to us. We’re scouting the place to see if we can locate it.’

‘Forget it. They’ll be long gone by now,’ said Lindegaard. ‘Like rats scampering through sewers. They always make sure they have an additional bolthole in case of emergencies. I’ll bet we scared them real good this time. Whoever our moles are didn’t have time to get out a warning.’ He chuckled. ‘See, Robert, Villiers did good after all! Fuller was true to his word.’ He turned to the screen again. ‘I want every scrap of equipment brought back to base so that we can take it apart and see what we can learn from anything we can salvage.’

‘Will do, Mr Lindegaard.’

Another, altogether more familiar, voice crackled in the background. ‘Get this, will you?’ he said.

The camera swung round to reveal the man. It was Villiers. He was smiling broadly.

‘What the hell is he doing there?’ said Napier, rising from his chair.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Napier,’ said Villiers. ‘I hope you’re enjoying the show.’

‘You little shit!’ he said. ‘You have no business being there.’

‘He did lead us to it,’ Lindegaard said evenly. ‘Let him enjoy the fruits of his labours.’

‘Who exactly is in charge of this operation?’ Napier hissed quietly to Lindegaard. ‘Why wasn’t I informed of all this before it happened?’

‘There, there, Robert,’ soothed Lindegaard. ‘Don’t let your pride get in the way of business. We didn’t have time to tell you before the raid took place. And in truth it was me that put an embargo on telling anyone until such a time as we’d carried out the raid. Under no circumstances could we afford to accidentally leak anything out. Walls have ears, and all that, you know.’

‘This is me you’re talking about!’ Napier said. ‘It’s people like him,’ he said, pointing at Villiers, ‘that should be nowhere near such an operation. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on, Mr Napier,’ said Villiers, coming up to the camera and staring in to it. ‘No disrespect, sir, but I did what I thought necessary to secure the information we needed. And look at this…’ The camera followed his slender form as he wandered by the desks to another door at the far end of the windowless room. He pushed it open and the camera went through the doorway. There were two dentist’s chairs sitting side by side, a small table on either side of them. More broken equipment lay strewn across the tables and bits of motherboard and plastic casings had been strewn across the floor near them. Villiers stepped over to one of the tables. There were coffee cups and a half-eaten sandwich on a plate nearby, left in a hurry. He picked up something small and metallic, lifted it to the camera to show his audience. ‘An ampoule,’ he said, sniffing at it. ‘Tremethelene,’ he explained.

‘Tremethelene substitute, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Lindegaard. ‘Have the men bring it in along with anything else they can lay their hands on. As usual, the chairs and tables must be dusted for fingerprints, and any DNA material carefully bagged for analysis.’

‘Will do, Mr Lindegaard,’ said the voice behind the camera.

‘I don’t know, Mr Lindegaard…’ said Villiers.

Lindegaard frowned as the camera turned to Villiers again. ‘You don’t know what?’ he asked.

‘This smells like pure tremethelene. Trem substitute has an altogether different, distinctive odour.’

‘So now he’s an expert on tremethelene?’ muttered Napier, rolling his eyes.

‘It has to be substitute,’ said Lindegaard, his eyes widening – widening not by much, but Napier could tell he wasn’t pleased by the revelation. ‘Not unless they’re getting it directly from us, and given our tight security surrounding the production and circulation of tremethelene that’s impossible.’

‘Nothing’s impossible, Mr Lindegaard,’ said Villiers.

‘Bring it in and we’ll do an analysis before we jump to conclusions. In the meantime, well done, Mr Villiers. But please, include Mr Napier in any future operation to save nasty altercations. I applaud your aptitude and your willingness to apply yourself to the situation, but if you do such a thing ever again you will feel the full force of mine and Mr Napier’s wrath. Do I make myself clear, Villiers?’

‘Very clear, Mr Lindegaard.’

Lindegaard turned off the TV and faced Napier, whose expression was one of simmering anger. ‘I want you to supervise the analysis of what we found there. Is your new man, Levoir, as good as you say he is?’

‘I hope so, Mr Lindegaard. He’s better than anyone else I have in being able to spot CSL’s incursions into the Heights. He’s got special skills.’

‘Then put him to good use. Like you planned, let him go through the equipment and winkle out any data we might use to locate Charlie Sharland.’

‘And Villiers?’ Napier spat the name out like it was a bad taste in his mouth.

‘Meet with him.’

‘What? I don’t want anything more to do with the man. His attitude is dangerous, you know that.’

‘I want you to meet with him. He has another name for us.’

‘Who?’

‘He says he’s only willing to tell you, even when I insisted. Now a man who refuses me is either foolish or brave. But to do it on your behalf… How’s that for loyalty? See, you misread him. He looks up to you.’ He downed his whisky and coughed lightly on it. ‘Meet with him and see what more he has to offer. We can always take care of Mr Villiers later. And pray your man Levoir can make good any corrupt data on those hard drives we found.’ He smiled, sank back into the leather chair, a satisfied smile on his face. ‘Every day we are getting closer, Mr Napier. One day soon we will crush CSL forever. I feel it in my water.’ Then his face fell serious. ‘We still have the issue of our mole or moles, Robert…’

‘I’m working on it, Mr Lindegaard.’

‘Information is leaking out somewhere. And now the possibility that CSL might be using our very own tremethelene – that really pisses me off, Robert. If that’s so, then it goes deeper than merely a mole or two. To get hold of our product means our security is being totally undermined. I have a nest of moles at the heart of my business. That cannot do. I want them removed. Spend as much as you like in tracking the perpetrators down, but do it and do it quickly. I’m relying on you, Robert, like never before.’

Robert Napier nodded. ‘I’m onto it, Mr Lindegaard.’

‘You may leave now,’ Lindegaard said, but as Napier rose from his chair Lindegaard held up a hand. ‘This Levoir…’

‘Adrian Levoir? What about him.’