“Yes, sir,” Omar said. “Got to go. They're stopped ahead of me.”
He slammed the brakes on as he realised the other two cars had pulled up at a point where the track drew close to the edge of the lake at a spot unusually secluded by bushes tumbling down a high bank. He swung his car hard into the undergrowth, hoping, as he got out, that it would remain unnoticed, at least for a time. Moving to the nearside, he eased himself forward until he could see both the stationary cars ahead and the two men who had now got out of them and were deep in conversation at the lake's edge.
Looking back through the slow-motion replay of recollection, Sharif would not have done anything differently but at the time everything happened so quickly that there was no time for thought of any kind. The two men on the edge of the lake evidently became aware of his ill-concealed presence at the same time as he, and they, heard the faint clatter of an approaching helicopter.
“Police,” Sharif shouted, hoping against hope that the chopper was in fact his back-up on the way. Pickles, his face dark with fury, ran towards Sharif, who met his bull-like charge full-on, answering force with force and knocking the older man to the ground as he headed towards the Volvo. But he was too late. Earnshaw by then had flung himself back into the driving seat of the estate car, its engine still running, and with a spray of dust and gravel from the wheels, accelerated the battered old car headfirst into the lake where it sank quickly in a swirl of oil and bubbles.
“You old fool,” Pickles shouted from behind. Sharif glanced round briefly to see Pickles scrambling into his own car and executing a hasty U-turn before heading off down the track along which they had all arrived. Barely thinking coherently now, Sharif pulled off his anorak and dived into the water where the car had disappeared, while above him the police helicopter approached in a steep dive.
The lake water was bitterly cold and Sharif surfaced after a few moments, his lungs bursting and his heart thumping painfully. The Volvo was no more than ten feet down on the sloping lake bottom but when he had tugged on the driver's door it had failed to budge and he had only been able to watch helplessly as bubbles rose from the George Earnshaw's mouth and eventually ceased. Sharif spat out a mouthful of bitter water and dived again, the helicopter low overhead now and breaking up the surface of the water with the downdraft from its rotor, but the interior of the car had filled up completely by now, and he knew that there was nothing more he could do. He clawed his way back up to the surface, and crawled up the steep bank, to lie spluttering and shivering on the grass for a moment before staggering back to his car where he wrapped himself in his anorak, started the engine and turned the heater full on. Reluctantly he picked up his mobile and called in.
“Do you think there was anyone else in the car?” DCI Thackeray asked, when Sharif had described what had happened.
“I can't be sure, sir,” Sharif said, trying to stop his teeth chattering. “But it's an estate, the boot's not completely separate, and I couldn't see anyone ⦔
Outside, the helicopter had landed, dust swirling and engine roaring, on a level patch of ground about a hundred yards away, and uniformed officers were running in his direction.
“Pickles got away, sir. I'm sorry,” Sharif said.
“The road's blocked. He won't get far,” Thackeray said. “Get yourself checked out by the medics, Omar. You did well.”
“Sir,” Sharif said, convinced he had not done well enough.
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Six miles away, Mower took the last steep bend on the hill to the centre of Broadley village and glanced cautiously at his companion. Thackeray had not said anything since Omar had signed off and was staring through the windscreen, his jaw clenched.
“Where to, guv?” Mower asked. “Do you want to go straight to the reservoir or to Earnshaw's house?”
Thackeray looked at the sergeant as if he had not heard him.
“Sir?” Mower prompted quietly.
“It'll take them hours to get divers or lifting equipment out there to pull the car out,” he said. “To be sure it was just Earnshaw in it.”
“The house then? We may get a better idea of what happened there.”
Thackeray nodded and five minutes later Mower pulled up behind two police cars which were already parked behind Laura's Golf outside George Earnshaw's house. The two officers were met in the hallway by a uniformed sergeant who had evidently not shaved that morning, and the local constable, John Moody, who looked as though he held Mower personally responsible for this disruption of his weekend.
Thackeray and Mower listened in silence as the uniformed sergeant described what they had found in the house. When they had finished their report the silence lengthened and Mower shrugged slightly, glancing at Thackeray's frozen expression.
“D'you want to have a look round, guv, while I listen to the tape?” Mower said. He could not be sure how the DCI might react to the sound of Laura's recorded voice. Thackeray nodded and allowed two uniformed officers to lead him up the stairs, leaving Mower to step into the front garden with Laura's mini-tape recorder in his hand. He skipped through her interview with Earnshaw, shaken, as she had been, by the depth of the old man's hatred, and then stopped the tape at the point at which the doorbell could be clearly heard chiming in the background. It was clear from the fading sound of their voices that both Earnshaw and Laura had gone to the front door, but after that nothing was clear at all. Frustrated, he turned up the volume but learned little from the muffled voices and what sounded like a single sharp exclamation from Laura. For seconds after that there was nothing but the faint hiss of the recorder itself, and he was about to switch off, frustrated, when his patience was rewarded as Ricky Pickles' voice emerged again, mainly muffled and incomprehensible but with three words distinguishable from some background movement. “ â¦the Golf later,” Ricky Pickles had said.
He put his head round the front door.
“Sarge. Have you searched Ms Ackroyd's car?”
“No one told us owt about Miss Ackroyd's car,” the sergeant called back, sounding aggrieved. “We didn't know it was here.” Any fool, Mower thought angrily, should have worked out that Laura must have arrived by car. And it was Thackeray who, having evidently overheard this exchange, came hurrying down the stairs two at a time even before the sergeant had finished speaking.
“Something?” he asked, just a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Mower shrugged, not daring to hope for anything at all. Together they ran to the gate and out into the road where Laura's car remained parked neatly beside the kerb outside
the house next door. They were followed by the local sergeant, looking anxious.
“Open the fucking boot,” Mower instructed the sergeant, his face as frozen as Thackeray's. The sergeant obliged with a heavy kick which smashed the lock and sprang the lid up, to reveal the shape of a body, half concealed by a rug, curled awkwardly in a foetal position inside.
“Laura,” Thackeray whispered as the sergeant pulled the rug away and loosened the gag which had been tied around her mouth. Her arms were fastened behind her and she did not move, but even as Mower grabbed his boss's arm, half afraid he would fall, Laura's eyes flickered.
“Am I glad to see you?” she said faintly, licking bruised lips.
“Likewise,” Mower said drily as Thackeray picked her up and carried her, head bowed, carefully back into Earnshaw's house.
“There are times, Ms Ackroyd,” he whispered as he put her down on a sofa, and untied her hands carefully, “when you stray a bit close to the edge.”
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Standing at the window of Thackeray's office the next day, watching the rain sweep across the town hall square, Laura sighed.
“Did we do Bradfield any favours after all that?” she asked the DCI who had been reading through the long statement she had come to police headquarters to sign after Bradfield Infirmary decided it was safe to discharge her.
He glanced at the dark bruise on her forehead where Pickles had struck her and knocked her unconscious and winced slightly. He had still not recovered from watching her carried away shivering with cold and shock by the
paramedics after her ordeal in the car, or from the near certainty he had felt earlier that she had been killed.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Apparently Earnshaws is closing at the end of the week,” she said. “Joyce rang me this morning to tell me. She's devastated.”
“You can't stop these things,” Thackeray said. “And at least we've got Pickles off the streets. And one of his biking friends is telling us everything he knows now there are two murder charges involved. Suddenly Mr. Pickles doesn't have nearly as many friends as he did. Omar has persuaded some of the lads in Aysgarth that they can remember far more than they thought they could about the motorbike attack and some very unexpected people are suddenly remembering a lot of things about his activities which should help put him away for a very long time.”
“Good,” Laura said.
“There is one thing I haven't told you,” Thackeray said slowly. “I didn't want to upset you.”
Laura wondered what could be more upsetting than being bundled unconscious into the boot of a car and left there for hours not knowing when captors would return to kill her, only that they would. Even when she had finally come to and heard voices outside she had been too terrified to make a sound in case it was Pickles. But Thackeray was looking at her with sombre eyes and she knew that she was going to like what came next even less.
“They found Saira Khan in the Seine,” he said. “They've done a post-mortem and found she was pregnant. That must be why she went to France so suddenly, and why Simon Earnshaw started pressing his grandfather for more cash. He was going to be a father and wanted to get Saira away from Bradfield quickly.”
Laura thought of the beautiful, vibrant young woman she had met on the banks of the Seine, a girl full of hope and happiness until she and her sister had destroyed it by bringing the worst possible news from Bradfield, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Shit happens,” she said bitterly.
Thackeray got up from his desk and came to stand behind her at the rain-streaked window, with his hands on her shoulders, feeling a certainty that had eluded him for months.
“There was one good thing that came out of Sunday,” he said quietly. “I thought for an hour or more that I'd lost you, Laura. And I knew I couldn't bear that. I want to marry you more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. Will you have me?”
She turned with a faint smile lighting up her bruised face for a moment.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Quite sure,” he said.