Hot Pursuit (15 page)

Nimrod snorted. ‘What, and let her know I’d forgotten, God no – she’d never let me live it down.’

The woman laughed, too. ‘All right. Well in that case maybe I’ll see you later in the bar.’

It was Nimrod’s turn to laugh. ‘Maybe you will.’ He could almost hear the woman in the office purr. He hung up. ‘Number twenty-six and Ms Morgan is most definitely there.’

Beside him Cain grunted to acknowledge that he had heard. He indicated right and swung into the narrow roadway that led down to the campsite.

‘So,’ Nimrod said as they parked under a stand of trees close to the beach huts at St Elfreda’s Bay. ‘Number twenty-six. In, out, over and home in time for tea and buns.’

Cain pulled a face. ‘What, buns, for breakfast?’

‘I told you last time it’s just a turn of phrase.’

Cain thought for a few seconds and then said, ‘Bloody daft one if you ask me. And you still haven’t said if I can have the window seat?’

Nimrod pulled a face. ‘No. What the hell brought that up? It isn’t a done deal yet.’ He nodded towards the regimented row of huts and took a deep breath. Déjà vu. Photos, gloves, guns, Mintoes. Today’s mantra.

They were out of the car now and walking without apparent hurry through the crisp early morning light of a brand new summer’s day, every sense alive, sniffing the air like feral dogs.

‘But you promised,’ said Cain petulantly.

‘I did not,’ said Nimrod, all the while his eyes working over the little numbered plaques stuck into the verge beside each of the plots.

Just before they got to number twenty-six the two men fell silent. It was time.

As they stepped into the neat little garden of plot twenty-six, Nimrod took a deep cleansing breath; in and out, in and out, each breath rising in his chest seemed to take a week to run its course.

The two of them took up positions either side of the door. Pressing himself tight up against the bodywork, Nimrod gave an almost imperceptable nod and an instant later Cain slipped a jemmy bar down his sleeve and prised the flimsy door open. There was barely any noise, certainly no fuss, just a faint, satisfying thunk as the lock popped under the pressure. As it did there was the sensation of time rushing forward to meet them, catching them like elastic snapping back.

Silent as cats, despite their bulk, the two men sprung inside, covering each other’s backs.

Scanning left and right Nimrod’s senses burnt white hot; it was pure Zen.

The kitchen was clear; corridor, second bedroom, bathroom, too. The whole place smelt of toast and air freshener.

Cain pressed his ear to what had to be the master-bedroom door and with a quick glance at his partner kicked it open, covered by Nimrod, who then strode inside, his gun ahead of him like some dark divining rod.

‘What the fuck,’ grunted a sleepy voice from under a duvet.

Later, Nimrod would say it was prescience that stopped him from opening fire there and then, although actually it was an unnerving and continuing sense of déjà vu.

Cain whipped back the bedclothes.

There was a long thin hairy man in the bed, fully dressed except for his boots, which stood on the floor beside him.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Nimrod barked furiously.

‘I was only having a kip,’ the man spluttered after a second or two, ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he said as his focus sharpened. He looked anxiously from face to face and swallowed hard.

Cain looked at Nimrod and sniffed, ‘It’s not him, is it?’

Nimrod shook his head. ‘No it’s not,’ he snapped, bitterly angry in a cold, icy way. ‘But I get the distinct impression that our friend here knows exactly what’s going on. What’s your name?’

The man was wide awake now. ‘Bernie Fielding,’ he said quickly.

‘Really, so it was you they thought they’d caught on
Gotcha
last night?’ said Nimrod, pulling a photo out of his inside pocket. ‘Well, Bernie, you had better come up with a bloody good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you like a dog.
You can begin by telling me what you know about this man and where the fuck he is.’

Bernie, taking the photo, sniffed. ‘So you’re not really from the gas board then?’ he muttered.

‘So whereabouts did Coleman say we were supposed to meet him?’ said Maggie, driving round the roundabout that would take them down into Minehead town centre.

‘Somewhere called Blenheim Gardens? It’s a park. Do you know it? There’s meant to be a café there or something?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Oh yes, I know exactly where that is. It’s beautiful. We shouldn’t be too much longer. I reckon about another ten minutes or so by the time I’ve found somewhere to to leave the car.’

Nick stared at the passing lamp posts, every single one of which was decked with great festoons of summer flowers and tumbles of greenery cascading from enormous hanging baskets. Then he looked at Maggie and for an instant she saw his gaze darken and deepen again like it had when they were at St Elfreda’s. ‘I want you to know
that I really wish we could have met each other some other way, Maggie,’ he said, and then after a second or two continued, ‘I know that it’s crazy but –’

Afraid of what he might say, Maggie held up a hand to silence him. ‘Please don’t. You freaked me out when we came up from the beach – I thought you were going to say you were sorry you’d kissed me and that you really didn’t mean it. I don’t want you to do the “but” thing, Nick. Whichever way you look at it, it’s crazy – can we leave it at that while we’re ahead on points. Is that okay?’

He laughed. ‘No, I wasn’t going to say sorry, I’m not sorry I kissed you. What I was going to say was I know it’s crazy but can we drive down along the front? You know, along the prom? I’ve always loved the seaside.’

Maggie shook her head, laughing, too, now – he was right, it was crazy. They headed off towards the Esplanade, although it did feel a little like giving the condemned man one last cigarette.

‘It’s a really nice place, isn’t it? I’ve never been here before –’ Nick said, with his face pressed to the window like an over-excited eight-year-old. ‘Oh look, they’ve got a railway station – oh and there are steam trains. God, I’ve always loved trains.’ He sounded so happy it was ridiculous.

Even so, Maggie got caught up in the spirit of it. ‘There’s a much older part to the town, too –
up there – it’s lovely, all whitewash and narrow steps, and little streets running down to the harbour –’ she said, pointing towards the tree-covered slopes of North Hill that rose sharply to shelter the bay.

‘I only wish we had a bit more time,’ Nick murmured.

With her eyes firmly fixed on the road Maggie cursed whatever obscure deity it was who thought it was a good joke to dangle the best man she had met in years under her nose with such a short sell-by date. Not fair didn’t even come close to how she felt about it.

‘I wish –’ Nick began again, turning to look at her, and then just when he had Maggie’s full and undivided attention thought better of it and fell silent, but that look, that brief glance, told Maggie everything she needed to know. Nick Lucas wanted her in all the ways that she wanted him. Turning her attention back to the road Maggie felt a weird little kick in the bottom of her belly and found herself struggling not to fill up with tears. Fate could be such a bloody cow at times.

Hovering somewhere over the Bristol Channel, Danny Coleman could barely hear his thoughts above the ungodly roar of the helicopter’s engine and rotor blades. He pulled his coat tight around him. Stiltskin didn’t normally run to helicopter rescues but he had pressurised the people at the
top, pointing out that it didn’t look very good for other would-be prosecution witnesses if their system fell down at the first hurdle. That and an oblique reference to the fact that Minehead and St Elfreda’s were very close to Hinkley Point – the nuclear-power station just a few miles up the coastline – had clinched it. Coleman had just dropped the information into the sentence while they were discussing transport; that and the fact that the people chasing Nick Lucas had used a rocket launcher to blow his car up.

Coleman slipped his mobile back into his pocket and then glanced down at the screen on his lap-top. He’d had to get some sort of special gizmo fitted to both so that he didn’t press Send and accidentally plunge the whirly-bird and its occupants screaming into the sea.

Lucas’s two calls into the office had already been logged into the computer, that and the place where they were due to meet. Normally Coleman wouldn’t accompany the crash team, just send the lads in and let them do their job, but this time it was different. Nick Lucas had evaded pick up – he was careful not to use the word capture – once before. It wouldn’t do for them to let Lucas give them the slip again.

And – wherever the leak was – maybe, just maybe, bringing Nick Lucas in was the very thing that would flush the system through – maybe. That’s what his bosses thought anyway and if that
was the case they wanted Coleman there; in at the kill, as it were. He smiled; it was an interesting choice of words. That was something he really didn’t want to miss. The chopper swung in low over the sea, the down-draft from the blades cutting the grey water into mare’s tails of foam.

‘How long before we get there?’ Coleman shouted and mimed, stabbing one finger furiously at his watch. ‘ETA?’

A man on the far side of the cabin, dressed in combat khakis and with a helmet and headset on, held up his hands, palms flat forward, fingers outstretched, and mouthed ten minutes, then shrugged, implying a minute or two either way. The rest of team, six square-shouldered, cleanshaven young men dressed in neat and unremarkable suits, looked calm and cool and as if dropping out of helicopters was something they did on a daily basis. Two of them were wearing headsets, which implied they knew what they were doing.

Coleman glanced down at his watch, willing them to arrive soon. He hated flying and always felt air sick in helicopters however many little white tablets the doctor prescribed for him. The fleeting thought was enough to remind him. He swallowed back a great wave of nausea. He tried running through the plans he had discussed with his superiors as a way of stopping him from throwing up.

Dorothy Crow had taken the file from his hand as soon as he had walked back into the office from the Nick Lucas emergency meeting.

‘It’s a go,’ was all he had said to her.

Dorothy had nodded and with a smile not unlike his own, added, ‘I know. The helicopter is already on its way.’ As she spoke she had handed him a glass of water and two Quells.

Hunched and trapped now in the uncomfortable helicopter seat, Coleman nipped the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. It wasn’t meant to be like this; he was supposed to be a desk jockey these days not hurtling round the country like some stupid bugger out of
Mission Impossible
. Across the cabin two of the crash team appeared to be talking in sign language, hands a blur, the flash little gits. He was about to curse under his breath until it occurred to him that they could probably lip-read as well – he wondered if they did ESP.

Coleman settled back, trying to find some way to stretch his legs, struggling to ignore the headache cradled deep in his forehead and avoid vomiting. Only a handful of people had access to the information about Nick Lucas’s whereabouts and they were being watched and monitored. Most of them were the same people who knew about the error that Stiltskin had thrown up – but only Coleman knew what connected them together and what was planned.

Today was rather like the children’s game of Mastermind, played out with people. The solution might well show itself; the players in their various positions finally revealing their true colours. Maybe. And if he was lucky today everything would be sorted out once and for all. If he was lucky. Across the cabin one of the signlanguage guys was laughing at something his companion was spelling out. Coleman sighed and closed his eyes. Bloody kids.

Bernie Fielding, his arms and ankles tied tight to one of the chairs in Maggie’s beach hut with a length of guy rope, was busy explaining to Nimrod exactly how very, very well he and Maggie got on, still friends after all these years. Amazing, really. How she would do anything for him, anything at all. No question. Maybe if he rang her, maybe he could persuade her to tell him where she and Nick were, maybe even persuade her to give him up. It was worth a try, surely. Wasn’t it? He whimpered.

Nimrod considered the prospect for a few moments. He had certain standards; even though he was angry and frustrated it didn’t do to pop too many civilians when you were on a job. He was, after all, a paid assassin not some amateur thug. Despite some of his baser instincts he didn’t do freebies these days, unless it was very special circumstances – and he didn’t like mess.

He was just about to suggest Bernie improved the strength of his argument when there was a short series of beeps announcing the arrival of a text message for one of them.

All three men looked from face to face.

Bernie shrugged. ‘Not me, mate,’ he said, eyebrows raised in a gesture of surrender. Slowly, Nimrod pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket, flicked through the screens and then smiled as the message appeared.

‘Well, well, well. Seems we haven’t lost our friend Mr Lucas after all,’ he said to Cain. ‘Which means that we won’t be needing you, Mr Fielding. Pity about that but there we are.’

Bernie blanched to the colour of skimmed milk, fear strangling his breath in a rasping, ragged, gasping sob.

‘Blenheim Gardens, Minehead, it says here,’ said Nimrod glancing down at his watch. ‘There we are, then. I think we need to be gone, Cain. Apparently the crash team are already on their way to pick Lucas up. So –’ he turned his attention back to Bernie, wondering what was the best course of action. Leave him tied here or dump him in the middle of nowhere and hope he didn’t blow the whistle before it was too late? It was painfully obvious that Bernie thought that they had a more permanent solution in mind. Nimrod sighed and shook his head; hit men always got such a bad press.

Still tied to the chair, Bernie wriggled frantically. ‘But you need me, I know where the gardens are,’ he stammered. ‘Please, I can show you the way. I can lead you straight to them. Let me help you,’ he implored. It was quite touching really.

‘We’ve got a map in the car,’ said Cain laconically.

Bernie swallowed hard; Nimrod could almost see his mind working, like the fingers of a drowning man desperately grabbing hold of something, anything that might keep him afloat. ‘Yes, but what if Maggie is hiding him somewhere – you have to admit she’s a smart cookie, is Maggie,’ Bernie said. ‘She gave you the slip before. I wouldn’t put it past her to do it again – you’ll need me to point her out.’

Nimrod considered for a moment or two; there was a certain kind of warped logic to Bernie’s suggestion and the woman was certainly sharp enough to come up with something out of left field. And maybe, if she was as fond of Bernie as he said, they could use him as a bargaining chip.

It also struck Nimrod that Bernie Fielding was the kind of greasy little low life mammal that it was best to keep an eye on. Instinct told him that Bernie Fielding would sell his granny for chops and dog mince if he thought it would save his own hide. It made sense for Nimrod to keep Bernie where he could see him, at least until they caught
up with Mr Lucas and then he would have to reconsider the position.

Nimrod nodded to Cain. ‘Okay, untie him. We’ll take him with us.’

‘You sure?’ said Cain.

Bernie whimpered and tried hard to make himself smaller and more appealing.

Nimrod slipped on his shades. ‘And you’d better know where this frigging park is, Bernie, or you might find yourself in deep trouble.’

Bernie Fielding’s expression implied that he thought he was in quite deep-enough trouble already.

‘Robbie, if you are so unhappy about my directions why don’t you let me drive for a while and then you can navigate?’ said Lesley coolly. She still had the road atlas balanced on her lap, currently unopened.

Robbie Hughes didn’t even bother gracing her words with a reply. This was not how he had imagined the last couple of days going at all. Not at all. His big moment bringing Bernie Fielding to book had turned into a complete fiasco and overnight Lesley had transmogrified into an ice queen from hell. He would seriously have to reconsider her position as his PA once they got back to the studio. There was a nice little brunette in reception who always blushed when he arrived at work and who looked as if she might be just
ripe for promotion. Besides, on top of everything else, thanks to Lesley he had missed breakfast. Robbie was hungry and when he was hungry he was bad-tempered.

What he wanted was a mug of tea and a decent fry-up, but Lesley had refused to go into a transport café with him. Robbie had always loved rubbing shoulders with the hairy-arsed hoi polloi, it reminded him vividly of his roots when his dad had a bread van and did the rounds at the back of the gasworks and down by the railway station. Robbie often imagined how it would look with a sepia-coloured tint if they ever showed the footage on
This is Your Life
. Since his first big break in TV, Robbie had kept a Dinky car – a battered red Montego glued onto a mahogany plinth – in front of him on his desk to remind him of what he would be driving now if he had stayed at home and taken over the family bread round.

Even so, those good working-class roots were there, buried deep in his bones, and he felt it was important to go back, to remind himself once in a while of how life might have been. And Robbie always enjoyed the big mugs of tea, and the plate of egg, bacon, beans, black pudding and a fried slice, and the surreptitious glances from the drivers as they worked out whether or not he really was that bloke off the telly. Every so often one of them, some big bluff chap in overalls smelling of diesel oil and cheap aftershave, would amble over and
ask for his autograph – almost always for the wife or the girlfriend – and pat Robbie on the back or shake his hand to say what a good job he was doing, fighting crime and righting wrongs, leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

But oh no, the bloody ice queen wanted to come off the motorway and look for a decent restaurant, complaining that she hated the way men in transport cafés always leered at her, and so as a result they had reached a bad-tempered impasse and were now both hungry. He knew that because Lesley’s stomach kept rumbling furiously and he was glad, it served her right.