Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (45 page)

After the first attack he had
been convinced that his brother-in-law had been the culprit, even recognising
his voice. But the second attack had made him wonder. By the time that had
happened Peter had been dead, so had the first attack not been by him either?

He was pretty sure that he knew
who had attacked him in the car park. But he could not admit that openly. How
could he have faced up to admitting he had stooped to using loan sharks,
especially when he was a respected businessman? Well that notion had gone up in
smoke for a start. From what Joan had said the business had been closed since
the attack, and if anything got out about his dealings then his respectability
would be shattered as well. Hells bells, don’t fool yourself Michael, business
and respectability were already down the pan.

Since regaining consciousness he
had listened to those around him. His wife had filled him in on things behind
the scenes at the art shop that he normally handled and of which she had no
prior knowledge. She did not know that he had heard. She thought he was either
unconscious or sleeping. When there had been a group around his bed he had feigned
sleep and they had talked over him. He had learned a lot from those
conversations. Too much perhaps. Now, knowing what he did, he wondered whether
he should ever be awake when visitors came. Life was an ass.

……….

Alison Wilson watched her husband as he pulled
on a red and black one-piece flying suit and pulled up the zipper. This would
be her first ever flight and the prospect of taking her maiden flight in a
flimsy little
microlight
aircraft had been an
exciting idea. Never having flown in anything smaller than an airliner on a
package holiday, now that the moment had actually arrived she wasn’t as sure.
Or more accurately, she was scared stiff.

Steve had borrowed a suit and
helmet for her from the flying club. Previously she had always shied away from
joining him, much to his frustration, yet he desperately wanted to share the
pleasure he derived from his flying. She had never seemed at all keen to join
him and on the odd occasion that he had thought she was ready to take the first
step, his flying had coincided with her needing to attend some conference or
education seminar. So the opportunity had never arisen. But at last she had
agreed. The whole escapade had been his idea, a get-away-from-it-all experience
to free them both from the aftermath of their ordeals with the police. She had
no events to attend and in her fragile state seemed to want to demonstrate her
solidarity behind he husband.

‘You look rather fetching in that
suit Ali,’ Wilson said, turning to his wife as she stood watching him in a matching
red and black one-piece.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘I
wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up fetching my dinner up. My knees are
shaking.’

‘Don’t worry my love,’ he said
comfortingly. ‘There’s nothing scary about it and once we are up you’ll find there’s
no sense of speed and you will love the view – it’s magical.’

She was doubtful. Joining her
husband when he went flying had seemed a good way of putting their marriage
back on track, though with a little luck he still didn’t realise that it had
ever been derailed. As they walked across to the frail looking little machine
she began to doubt that she could go through with the flight. Or if she did,
that they would actually arrive back on terra firma in one piece.

‘Are you sure that this thing can
fly us both?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Don’t be silly.
Look,’ he said with a smile, ‘there wouldn’t be two seats if it couldn’t, would
there?’

Taking her hand he showed her how
to climb in and fix her safety belt.

‘Yours is the back seat so you
will be high up and able to see over me. You’ll have a great view and will be
able to see everything I do to control the aircraft. Put one foot on this bar,’
he instructed, ‘then hold the back of the seat and pull yourself up.’

Following his instructions she
hauled herself into the seat, put her feet on the foot bars, clicked the seat
belt and finally pulled on a pair of thick gloves. After making sure that her
helmet was properly fixed and her intercom was working he turned and took his
place in the front seat.

Knowing that the take off from a
grass airstrip would necessarily be bumpy, Steve knew that he would need to get
the little aircraft into the air quickly if the experience was not to put his
wife off flying completely. He had never managed to get her into the seat of a
microlight
aircraft before, even when static on the ground
with the engine not running, so a good take off on this, her very first flight,
was essential.

Applying full power but holding
the
microlight
steady with the toe brakes, Wilson
allowed power to build before releasing the brakes to start the aircraft on its
take-off roll. Judging speed with care he rotated as quickly as possible,
climbing away from the airfield and banking to their right to head out over the
dual carriageway to the coast.

‘Oh Steve,’ he heard his wife
shout through the intercom. ‘Keep it straight. We’ll fall out if you lean it
over like that.’

Laughing, Wilson consoled her.
‘No problems Ali,’ he said, ‘that’s the way we turn, it’s like riding a bike,
we bank over in the way we want to go then straighten up when we’ve turned
enough.’

‘Well I’ve already turned
enough,’ responded Alison, clearly not at ease. ‘Just go bloody straight will
you, wherever it takes us.’

Wilson flew the craft out to the
coast and then took a very leisurely turn north with very little bank to make
it as comfortable for his passenger as he could, finally flying parallel to the
foreshore a few hundred metres over the sea so that to their right they had the
magnificent view of the beach and sand dunes he loved so much.

As they flew along he pointed out
various landmarks, the nature reserve at
Freshfield
,
Southport’s rebuilt Victorian pier and, after they had turned to make their
return, their own house.

‘I can see it!’ she exclaimed.
‘Steve, I can see our house.’

Happy that she was now, quite
obviously, enjoying the flight, Wilson flew a lazy full circle so that she
could experience the joy of flying over their house a second time.

‘Steve,’ he heard through his
headset, ‘there’s a car in our drive. Who’s at our house in a BMW sports car?’

Sitting high up behind her
husband she could not see Wilson’s expression as he smiled to himself. He knew
whose car was parked in their drive. He knew that when they returned it would
still be there. He also knew that under a windscreen wiper there would be an
envelope containing the gift card he had written just before leaving his office
to pick his wife up to go to the airfield. Today was turning out good.

……….

A black Mercedes G-Class turned onto the narrow
road. The German manufacturer’s top of the range 4x4 vehicle almost double the
purchase price of its more common ML models, turned right at a tee junction
after three hundred metres, picked up speed then slowed again to drive over a
rail crossing, before turning left a further half a mile down the road. Some
way behind, the driver of a Vauxhall hatchback had watched the big off road
vehicle as it had negotiated the rail crossing. Keeping a reasonable distance
behind he had then followed.

Travelling roughly parallel to
the train line, the G-Class followed the winding road between open fields and
over a humped bridge, slowing as it reached a crossroads. A short row of
semi-detached houses ran down the right hand side of the road for two or three
hundred metres, to where a small red brick church was located at the crossroads
itself. Turning left, the Mercedes was driven half a mile to where three
houses, an old dilapidated bungalow and a Post Office nestled next to a small
unmanned station. With just four dwellings at this point and eight semis near
to the crossroads, there seemed little need for church, Post Office or even the
station.

The Mercedes turned onto a gravel
access between the bungalow and Post Office, disappearing behind a large
building that had obviously at some time in the past been a transport or
haulage contractor’s depot. From start to finish the journey had been little
more than two miles and taken but a few minutes. Having followed at a distance,
the driver of the Vauxhall reversed into a small lane on the opposite side of
the road, where it was unobtrusive to general passers by, and then switched off
the ignition.

After five minutes, a black
Jaguar was driven out of the gravel access into which the G-Class had
disappeared. As well as the driver there were four passengers in the car. At
the crossroads the car turned right, forcing a grey Ford that was approaching
from the left to give way. Tucking in behind, the Ford gradually fell behind as
the two cars followed the same route taken minutes earlier by the Mercedes, but
in the opposite direction.

As the Ford was driven over the
rail crossing, its driver could see the Jaguar taking a left turn. By the time
the Ford turned, the Jaguar had already stopped on a concreted area outside a
large modern industrial building. Driving straight past, the Ford continued for
a quarter of a mile and over a bridge spanning a drainage culvert before its
driver pulled off into a passing point layby. Getting out, he walked back to
the culvert, where he was hidden by a row of trees yet could see the building
clearly.

The building had no windows,
though there were transparent panels in its roof. Its walls were of brick up to
shoulder height, above which they were of a corrugated pressed coated metal
material, presumably fixed to steel frames on a steel girder construction.
Typical of modern industrial construction, it would have been quick to erect.

In the centre of the long wall
facing the road was a big roller shutter entrance, with a small conventional
door at its side for staff access, through which the five men all entered the
building.

After a short while, the roller
shutter rumbled upwards and four cars were driven out. One by one they stopped
where the concrete met the road, then turned right and set off, the Jaguar
following at a distance. When all the cars had turned at the tee junction, a
car pulled up outside the building and a middle aged man got out. Then the car
drove off.

Thirty-One

The shrill sound of a horn brought Simon
Charlton out of his
daydream as the brightly painted boat sailed past.
Looking across to the canal, Simon recognised
the man at the rear of the boat, one hand on the tiller and the other raised in
a wave. Waving back, Simon smiled and watched the boat chug along at its
regulation four miles per hour. Quite how anyone could be content with such
slow progress was a mystery to him. He could, and did, enjoy beautiful scenery
and the English countryside – why else had he bought a house with
magnificent views? Yet spending four hours chugging upstream to travel a mere
sixteen miles when by car it would take less than half an hour and you could
spend the rest of the time enjoying your destination, was beyond him.

Some of the boats were holiday
charters. High powered businessmen switching off from their everyday lives in
the fast lane and idling along in a backwater to recharge their batteries. He
could, with a little effort, understand that. But others, like old Amos, who
was still alternating between sounding his horn and waving, owned their boats
and sailed the same stretch of waterway time and time again. Liverpool to
Wigan. Wigan to Liverpool. Again and again. Simon’s view was that such a
schedule would be far too boring for words, a frustrating lifestyle with no
particular purpose, never reaching your destination and with no originating
point either, yet with no reason to stop. He supposed that Amos and his cronies
must find some enjoyment from continually sailing in one direction or the other
along the same section of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, but whatever that
enjoyment was, Simon was not privy. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, the
tight dimensions of the long slender boats – less than seven feet wide
and often sixty or more feet long – went nowhere to defining comfort.
Where would his big floppy overstuffed sofa fit?

But Simon had his own
frustrations. Filling his working day with constant activity, time to daydream
was usually not on his agenda. So the last few days had been difficult. After
the excitement of battling to get past vehicles in the
MotorFest
cavalcade then chasing after the Bentley, not to mention the sense of
involvement when he had recognised the poor bloke in the hospital, it had all
come to a stop. And he was on the outside.

He was sure that Debbie was
involved in something, though just what that might be he had no idea. After he
had identified Rick Worth he had been all for going out to the caravan park and
taking another look at the workshop but she had stopped him. In actual fact she
had been extremely vocal on that score; under no circumstances was he to go
anywhere near the caravan park, Kevin Archer or the hospital.

So here he was sat on his balcony
watching boring old Amos chug by in his boring old narrow boat. If Amos’
lifestyle wasn’t frustrating enough, being inactive and just watching the old
man chug by when there was something to be done was doubly so.

And then there was Debbie.

Dear Debbie.

She was special. Very special.
And he must be special to her also. After all, hadn’t she put her job on the
line for him? Nobody did that sort of thing if there was no feeling there, no
special attraction. She was, to put it mildly, very
very
special. More special than he had felt about anyone else. Even more special
than he had felt about his wife when they had been a newly married couple. Or
was that just falseness, a dulling of the memory by the passage of time? No. No
it wasn’t. He had been young and neither of them had been able to keep their
hands off each other – or their clothes on.
 
Yet Debbie had become the most important
person in his life, both before and now in the present. He was attracted to her
because she was different to anybody he had ever known. She supported him,
exhibiting an unfailing trust and ultimate loyalty. She enjoyed the same
interests. And though she had neither an hour glass figure nor fitted the image
of a size zero model, he loved everything about her appearance too, her looks,
the way she walked, her mannerisms and her smile. But despite how he was
attracted to her, was it love? And, as Prince Charles had said so many years
previous, what as love anyway

They had not slept together
because their relationship had not developed that far. Or had it? Not for the
first time he wondered if perhaps their relationship had actually developed
further, sexual inactivity being more a result of mutual respect and old
fashioned chaste beliefs than any lack of physical attraction. Certainly he was
attracted to her. Where others were flirty or erred on the edge of being common
just to attract male attention, Debbie managed to look elegant and classy
whatever the occasion and whatever she wore. Yet whenever they met and whatever
they did, she always left before nightfall. Was she afraid of something? Did
the existence of his wife in an earlier period make her hold back? Was she concerned
that his feelings might not equal hers or that he might still harbour some
unspoken
affection for his wife that might come between them or prevent him ever
being hers? And was all that real anyway, or plain and simple prevarication on
his part?

Whatever
it was, it resulted in frustration. Frustration at being on the outside of an
investigation to which he had contributed. Frustration at not knowing exactly
how Debbie felt or for what she was hoping. Frustration at not being in
control.

……….

Approaching the fly-over, a small convoy of
articulated trucks took the inside lane, then, after slotting into traffic on
the roundabout, took the third exit and entered the container terminal. Where
in past times the Liverpool docks had stretched for miles along the Mersey
estuary, with the advent of containerised shipping loads, many of the docks had
either closed or been redeveloped as tourist attractions, Albert Dock being the
most high profile. Virtually all sea-going activity was now centred at
Seaforth’s
modern container facility.

The trucks trundled into the
terminal, their drivers parking them in a designated area. Familiar with the
system they booked the containers in and completed paperwork for the forty foot
long containers of personal household goods destined for expats fleeing
Britain’s harsh winters to live in the sunny climate of the TRNC, or, Turkish
Republic of North Cyprus. Within a couple of hours the containers had been
lifted off the trucks by huge cranes to join others destined for Egypt and
Saudi Arabia. Their job done, the trucks left the container base and trundled
up the M62 to their depot in Yorkshire.

……….

Walking back across the filling station
forecourt, DI Frank Davies felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his
pocket. Answering the call as he opened the car door and slipped into behind
the wheel, he found that Handy Andy was calling him back to Albert Road. He was
sorry to disturb him when he had been given the afternoon off
etc
, but it was important.

What a drag. Tied up on boring
work that uniforms should be doing, and then at the first opportunity to have
some time to himself, his boss phoned to spoil his afternoon. And all because
Handy Andy wanted some additional information before he met with the men from
the Home Office. What a waste of time. He had been tempted to ask Handley why
he didn’t just read the bloody report for himself – but you only said
that sort of thing to a junior, not your superior. Yet all the information was
in the report if only Handley just used his eyes and his brain. Oh well, that’s
what you did when you were a DCI he supposed. Roll on promotion time.

Davies checked his watch. From
when he had closed the call, the drive back into Southport and to the police
station had taken just a little more than ten minutes. If he could satisfy the
DCI quickly, he might still be able to surprise his new wife by actually
arriving home early.

But Handley insisted on going
through the report paragraph by paragraph, page by page. Still no more than
half way through the report more than a full hour after they had started,
Davies had never seen his superior officer appraise a document so thoroughly.

‘I’m not sure I take your point
on the vulnerability of delegates staying at the Prince,’ commented Handley.
‘The Prince of Wales Hotel is right on Lord Street. That’s Southport’s main
street and we can’t close it down and all the shops in it for more than half a
mile, just to get delegates to the Floral Hall.’

‘JFK was assassinated on a main
street,’ countered Davies.

‘But the main delegates will not
be at the Prince will they?’ observed the DI. ‘The PM and his cabinet will all
be staying at the Ramada where there is a direct link to the convention centre.
Are you not over reacting here Frank?’

‘That’s for the Home Office and uniforms
to decide,’ replied Davies as Handley paused to take yet another phone call.
‘What I have done is a basic appraisal using local knowledge so that HO can
have something on which to build,’ he said when he again had Handley’s
attention. ‘They can bin it and do something completely different if they want.
I don’t care.’

‘Well I think you should rethink
that one,’ said Handley. ‘The reason I brought you back in was that the Home
Office crew have already arrived. They called me and asked me to send you over
to give them a preliminary walk through before tomorrow’s main briefing so I
wanted to make sure that you were up to speed. They are staying at the Ramada
– which is quite fortunate because you can demonstrate your concerns
can’t you? You’ll have to put your skates on Frank, you are due there in
fifteen minutes.

……….

Two floors below Handley and Davies, all
interview rooms in the custody suite were in use. DI Don Radcliffe opened the
door and entered room two. Two men sat at a table with their backs to the door.
Although they knew somebody had entered, they had no way of knowing whom that
person might be, a technique often used by Radcliffe. Opposite them sat DS Kyle
Fraser. Radcliffe walked around and took the spare chair next to Fraser,
putting several manila files on the table in front of him.

‘Good afternoon gentlemen,’ said
Radcliffe appraising the two men in front of him. One was obviously subdued and
worried, while at his side a well-known local solicitor wore his usual
non-committal expression used at all official meetings. It gave little away but
probably enabled him to lengthen meetings and increase his fees.

‘Has Sergeant Fraser outlined why
we are here?’ asked Radcliffe, continuing after acknowledging nods of agreement
from both of the men sitting opposite, ‘then let’s get on shall we?’ Addressing
Fraser he added, ‘start the recorder Sergeant.’

Like a well oiled machine, Fraser
went through the same procedure he had done so many times before; inserting
tapes into the recorder and advising the two men of everything he was doing,
that they could have a copy when the interview had been completed and that the
others would be held on file.

‘This is outrageous,’ burst in
the solicitor once the tape was running. ‘My client is just an innocent bystander
caught up for no fault of his own. I demand that this fiasco stops immediately
and he is released.’

‘Let’s just get on shall we?’
replied Radcliffe. ‘Your client was observed driving a vehicle we have reason
to believe was stolen. If I can establish who stole it and when, perhaps your
client might be in less trouble than he appears to be at the moment.’