Authors: Margaret Duffy
“Delayed shock I should think,” he said solicitously, “pretty bad to be shot even when you’re wearing a flak-jacket.”
“That and malnutrition, living on his nerves for weeks, being beaten up and doped,” I declared, and then cursed my runaway tongue.
“Oh yes,” Daws responded quietly. “He mentioned on the phone to me that he’d omitted it in his report because he’d thought it irrelevant. Doesn’t do you any good, of course, but in some individuals can temporarily heighten awareness.”
“So you do believe him about Fraser?” I shouted.
“I’m not sulking.” Patrick broke in. “And I have forgiven you.”
I think it was the first time I had ever heard the Colonel laugh loudly.
Willsworthy, Dartmoor, is an army firing range. The only occasions when its several hundred acres of bog, rough grass and granite are brought to the attention of the general public are when it is actually in use. Prior notice of firing is published in the
Western
Morning
News
and red flags are flown from various tors. At other times local people tend to forget about it. I know I do. My cottage, two miles from Lydford, lies well within earshot.
Our Gazelle helicopter touched down. A small jolt and the fact that everything in the immediate vicinity became quite level again was the only clue that we had landed, that’s if you discounted the lights of a Land-Rover that had guided us in.
“Midnight plus two minutes,” said Patrick over his shoulder, shouting above the noise.
I nodded in what I hoped was a business-like fashion and wondered if I was now expected to synchronize my watch and then leave our transport in a forward roll hurling hand grenades. Neither, I saw when he grinned at me. Ye gods, how he loves night flights in helicopters.
I was still very surprised at his secondary reactions to the baby, imagining when the pregnancy was confirmed that I would be confined to barracks with orders to put my feet up. Not a bit of it. He was still overwhelmed of course and I sometimes caught him gazing at me as if I was engaged in great magic. But he had never fussed or been an overprotective person, definitely one to feign deafness, for example, when his spouse was squawking with terror at his side whilst abseiling down a cliff.
We had not discussed what my future role was to be but there was an unspoken understanding that I would see this job through. After this, and no longer quite so sylph-like for a while, I could retire to my writing room and try to pick up the threads of
Two
for
Joy
. Deep down, I had a suspicion that our Canadian frigate assignment might be our last.
“Wakey-wakey.” I was offered a hand to help me disembark. Once down a firm grip was kept on my arm until we reached the parked vehicle. Behind us the Gazelle took off again, nearly blowing us over, and was swallowed up by the night and a thin Dartmoor drizzle.
“I get the impression you’re dumbfounded that Daws left you with the authority to commandeer transport,” I said when we were seated inside the Land-Rover, the driver busy reporting over his radio.
Patrick smiled ruefully. “Officially I’m on sick leave.”
“But he is going along with you?”
“That’s a perfect way of putting it. He’s going along with me. Until I’m proved wrong. If that happens he’ll have no choice but to …” Patrick shrugged. “That’s how it is. It couldn’t be any other way. I’m bloody lucky he has so much faith in me.”
We bounced off at speed over what appeared to be open moorland, the driver receiving a sharp rebuke from Patrick who reminded him that there were no snipers with night sights on every ridge. The man was therefore slightly startled when we arrived at our destination and he was ordered to proceed with an armed reconnaissance before his passengers left the vehicle.
All having been pronounced safe we entered the cottage. My first, almost automatic, task was to light the Aga, left with kindling, logs and matches ready. The cottage is not quite home without its warmth and constantly simmering kettle, and after the heat of Canada’s spring we were both feeling cold.
“My kingdom for a bed,” said Patrick, sinking into an armchair. He reached for the phone and was brought up short, wincing.
I passed it to him. “Coffee?”
“Whisky.”
“You know you shouldn’t.”
His glare set me in the direction of the drinks cabinet but he softened it by saying, “I haven’t taken any of those damn pills today — they made me feel too sleepy.” I glowered myself. “OK. I should have told you. Sorry.”
“The medic would have given you a jab,” I protested.
“I’m sure he would. But I’d only just come round, hadn’t I? And there was Daws large as life in a room God knows where. Right then I didn’t altogether trust him not to send me off to somewhere with padded walls and blokes in white coats.”
“It was strange how he knew you’d head for that doorway beneath the arch.”
“Strange nothing. It’s supposed to be one my traits. Something they try to train you out of. A habitual pattern of behaviour that can cost your life. ‘Oh yes,’ I can hear him saying to his bloody oppo, ‘given a spot of bother and none too strong, he’ll head for the nearest doorway. Always does, we’ve been telling him about it for ages.’”
I picked up the crumpled London evening paper I had brought with me. On the front page, below a leading article about a political scandal, was a picture of a man in uniform catching a rearing horse. The headlines read: “Falklands Hero Prevents Carnage.”
“Is this the real you?” I asked him. “Or the man with me now who seems to ask for whisky every time life gets a bit rough?” I knew I was being cruel but was only utilising his own methods.
“Neither,” he said after a silence. “Perhaps I’ll have the coffee.”
I gave him a small whisky, sitting on the arm of his chair and kissing his cheek.
“You’re coming over all broody,” he told me, kissing me back. The next moment the glass and phone had been thrust back into my hands and his gun trained unwaveringly in the direction of the front door.
We both sat quite still in a deathly silence. No, no sound, the ringing noise was in my ears. The front door opened directly into the living room and had a velvet curtain to keep out draughts. Outside it was a small porch, constructed by a previous owner to the same end. From the way the bottom of the curtain was eerily stirring I knew that the outer door was open.
Then, a light knock.
Patrick silently shooed me into the kitchen and stood behind the front door.
“Come in,” I called, following a signal from him.
Six months previously Detective Inspector James Hudson had walked blithely into a ruined building in Plymouth and a criminal suspect had leapt at him, armed with a broken bottle. Hudson had survived, saved by a kick in the small of the back that had sent him sprawling at the crucial moment. For reasons unnecessary now to recount the suspect had then died of a broken neck, the man who had saved Hudson being responsible — Patrick. Perhaps this encounter was the reason for Hudson’s starting violently when Patrick slammed the door behind him.
“Ye dinna learn,” said my husband affably, stowing away the gun.
“Are you allowed to carry that thing when you’re off duty?” the Detective Inspector enquired irritably.
“I’m never off duty in the same sense that you are.”
Hudson gave him a sour look and sat in the chair he had just vacated. “I understand that you’re looking for a man called Fraser?”
Patrick paused fractionally in moving towards the sofa. “What makes you think so?”
“I was told — by the highest authority. My orders are to make sure you stay right here until I say otherwise.” Hudson sat up quickly. “Where are you going?”
“To put the kettle on,” Patrick replied from his new course. “Oh heaven be praised — you’ve been told by the highest authority. Yours or mine, might I ask?”
“Yours. Why are you looking so damned smug?” Hudson was really alarmed now. “I’m warning you, there are two armed men outside.”
“I’ll make them some tea,” Patrick crooned. “Do they take sugar?”
It took a moment for the Detective Inspector to pull himself together and begin to use his brains. Although inclined to be intolerant and over-bearing when dealing with his own staff, he had learned at his first meeting with Patrick that this could be self-defeating with people from outside his circle. In a way I sympathised with him for he loathes the idea of military personnel being permitted to carry weapons on a day-to-day basis. I could imagine him bringing armed men only with extreme reluctance.
“Deny then that Fraser shot you and is responsible for you getting into a lot of trouble,” Hudson said, flinging himself back into the chair. “According to my source you’ve been threatened with court martial if you go after him.”
“Most of that is perfectly true,” Patrick said, sitting down when I’d intimated that I would provide refreshments. “I know you won’t believe it, but I was just going to phone you and ask for your help.”
Then he told Hudson everything that had happened in Canada.
Some time later, after several cans of beer, ham sandwiches made with tinned ham and by thawing four slices of bread at a time under the grill, everything had been said.
“How do I know …?” Hudson began, and then threw his arms in the air helplessly. “How can I be expected to know? It’s damned complicated and outlandish but has the ring of truth. But you can talk, Major. You’d talk yourself right off the scaffold. If it wasn’t the Colonel who spoke to me, then who the hell was it?”
“For a start,” Patrick said, “you do know. You know I’m not the kind of guy to go blindly gunning for someone. As to the rest — did he give you a code word of any sort?”
“No — nothing that I can remember.”
“Think.”
“Something cryptic, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Then it wasn’t Daws. He would have given you his authority code for the day so that you could quote it to anyone who queried what you were doing.”
Hudson began to look a bit driven. “Look, I’m a policeman. All this information that you’ve given me is like news from another planet. On the strength of this phone call during which this character from London spoke to not just me but my superiors, I’ve been given orders. Those orders are to keep you away from Chris Fraser, a highly respected member of the community in Plymouth. Whether he had a row with you or hatched some plot in Canada is neither here nor there. I’m here to see that nothing happens to him, Rosemary or Rachel.”
“No, come to think of it you didn’t bat an eyelid just now when I mentioned Rachel,” Patrick said shakily. “Please tell me who she is.”
“She’s Rosemary’s young sister. Rosemary is Fraser’s fiancée. Their parents were killed in a car crash when Rachel was four years old. Now she’s six and Rosemary has to look after her as there’s only a brother of eighteen and he’s in the Merchant Navy.”
“Rosemary must be a lot younger than Fraser,” I said.
“She’s in her early twenties.”
“Rachel might already be dead,” I said to Patrick, but he was shaking his head slowly as I spoke.
“It’s a filthy wicked plan,” he muttered. “No — they’ll all stay alive until I get to wherever they’re being held. I assume that’s at a safe house somewhere not far from Plymouth. Then they’ll be killed and it will be made to look as though I’ve done it. DARE will be finished — or at least suffer a bad set-back — and D12’s name will be dragged through the mud. It’ll be the end of Daws for allowing me this much free rein.”
“I don’t get the reasoning,” Hudson said. “I’m here to prevent you doing anything, and even though you’re armed and I’m not there are two marksmen covering the only outside door.”
Despite everything, Patrick smiled. “One will be on the roof of the barn, the other just behind that handy forsythia opposite the front door. If I climb out of the kitchen window — and I can, I’ve run this through quite a few times in all sorts of weather — it’s possible to knife the man behind the bush before the other one has realized what’s afoot. He can’t fire at me from there because the angle’s all wrong so he’ll have to come off the roof. While he’s using both hands to come down quietly, I decide whether to finish him off or just hit him on the head with a rock.”
“Hypothetical thinking, of course,” said Hudson.
“Yes, but only because it won’t come to that. You’ll allow me to leave here when I want to.”
“Now see here, Major —”
“They don’t know we’ve already met,” Patrick interrupted in the same reasonable tones. “They can’t or they would have contacted someone else. You have a reputation for being tough, that’s all. If I’m shot trying to get away from you then so much the better — they fall back on an alternative plan and kill Fraser and the others anyway. Is this safe house in Plymouth?”
“In Devon,” Hudson replied urbanely.
“Can you contact whoever’s looking after them?”
“If I go out to the car. But I’m not going to — I’m going to stay here.” After a few seconds’ silence he said, “What did you hope to achieve by getting your name in the papers?”
“Mostly to shake my boss rigid — and to force certain peoples’ hands.”
“You’re really desperate then,” said Hudson quietly.
“Oh yes — there was nothing phoney about the tears in Fraser’s eyes when he told me about Rachel.”
Another silence.
“Come with me,” Patrick offered. “I’ll give you my gun and you can shoot me if I try to get another.”
“No deal.”
Patrick opened a tin of beer and poured the contents into his tankard with the finesse of a brain surgeon. He then placed the empty can on the table before him, took a sip from the tankard and fixed his gaze on Hudson, frowning slightly.
I have never been able to fathom how this air of brooding menace is achieved. Merely to occupy a room at the same time, even though one knows one is not the person under scrutiny, is uncomfortable. Everyone in the vicinity immediately thinks of small acts of selfishness and bad temper perpetrated over the past few hours and longs to unburden themselves. I am Patrick’s wife but suddenly he was too close, too strong and too damn dangerous.