In the Blood (34 page)

“Can I see your train ticket, sir,” Bastion asked.
 
“Or a receipt.
 
Usual formality.
 
I just need to confirm your whereabouts this evening.”

Chapter Forty-One

B
y the time Tayte got back to his hire car it was gone midnight.
 
He climbed in and set the rucksack down onto the passenger seat and seconds later he was following the glow of his headlights away from Treath.
 
His mind raced with questions that all asked just one thing.
 
What the hell was he going to do now?
 
He arrived slowly at the top of the lane where it joined the main road, indicating left, away from Helford, back towards his accommodation where he hoped he might be able to clear his head and come up with some answers.
 
He paused at the junction, listening to the indicator tick-ticking as he watched the flashing green light in the dash.
 
Waiting...
 
Thinking...

His eyes wandered down to the passenger seat foot-well.
 
His briefcase was open, his assignment papers ruffled.
 
He was confused momentarily.
 
He knew he hadn’t left it like that.
 
Then as he reached across to retrieve it the left side of his neck began to sting like a paper cut.

His hand never made it past the gear shift.

Jefferson Tayte felt his hair jerk violently back, pulling his head into the headrest, exposing his fleshy neck to the blade that was almost too sharp to feel at first.
 
Then an unnaturally deep voice close to his ear sent a chill through him.

“Mr Tayte.
 
At last.
 
Now slowly reach across and pass me that rucksack.”

It was obvious to Tayte that the speaker was manipulating his voice so as to disguise it.
 
It sounded throaty and strained.
 
His heart was racing.
 
He could feel the blade pressing at his throat now, threatening to break the skin.
 
The sting on the left side of his neck where the knife had first slid into place began to burn.
 
He thought of Schofield and the body bag - reminding himself what this man was capable of.
 
Then he thought about Amy.

“You’ve got some balls!” he said, finding some of his own.
 
“The place is crawling with cops.”

Tayte felt the blade bite into his neck.

“Just do as you’re told and you’ll get through this.”

Tayte seriously doubted it.
 
No immediate way out presented itself.
 
He handed the rucksack over, trying to glimpse his attacker in the rear view mirror as he did so.
 
But it was too dark back there and his movements were restricted by the blade at his neck and the hand tugging at his hair.

“Now what?” Tayte said.

“Now drive!
 
Go right.”

Helford,
Tayte thought as he pulled out and turned the car down the hill.
 
He went as slow as he dared.
 
He needed time.
 
It was too quiet here.
 
No other cars around.
 
No people.
 
A canopy of trees shrouded the road.

“Where’s Amy?” he said, but he got no reply.

A moment later he heard a line spoken softly as though in self-gratification.
 
“I knew they’d bring you here.”

Tayte felt the pressure on his scalp ease off a little.
 
“Why are you doing this?” he said.

The man continued to ignore him.
 
“At the bottom of the hill take a right into the car park.”

Tayte didn’t like the sound of that.
 
In his headlights he could already see the parking sign.
 
It looked so dark down there with all those trees.
 
The car arrived too soon at the turn off.

“Here,” the voice said.

Tayte turned in.
 
To his right a small fire caught his eye.
 
It was a good two hundred
metres
away on the other side of an otherwise empty car park that was essentially a grass field in the woods.

“Take it down there on the left.
 
Then shut off the engine.”

A dusty track circled the car park like a speedway circuit.
 
Tayte took the clockwise route, crunching loose stones beneath the
tyres
.
 
It led the car down towards the perimeter of trees.
 
Through them he could just see the Helford River’s dull highlights, shifting with the current beneath a hiding moon.
 
He sensed he had little time to act now.
 
If he was going to do anything it had to be soon.
 
A small voice in his head tried to tell him it would be okay; that the man with the knife to his throat had what he’d come for.
 
As Tayte killed the engine, a far bigger voice in the sudden darkness told him otherwise.

“That note I pinned to your chest...
 
You should have taken my warning more seriously,
Mr
Tayte.
 
Before it became necessary for me to kill you!”

Before the man’s words had faded, Tayte’s head was back against the headrest, chin proud, like he was waiting for a shave.
 
He winced as the man’s hand knotted through his hair, straining his scalp as he brought the knife into position further around his neck, ready to slice it back again.

At that moment Jefferson Tayte knew his life was over.
 
He was unprepared and constrained by his assailant’s grip and a tight seat-belt.
 
He’d had no time to react, and although agnostic as far as religion was concerned, the only thing on his mind right now was the Lord’s Prayer.
 
He pictured the Gideon bible he’d found in the bedside drawer back in his room at St Maunanus House: the bright cross emblazoned on the cover.
 
Then he remembered the broken display cases at Bodmin Jail.

“Why d’you steal that crucifix?” he blurted.
 
He swallowed hard.
 
His throat felt like blotting paper.
 
“And the verse book?
 
Why did you steal them?”

Tayte felt an arm tighten around his shoulder as the man’s muscles contracted.
 
The knife pressed closer to his skin but it was steady and Tayte knew that his questions had struck home.

The man scoffed in Tayte’s ear.
 
“I didn’t
steal
them,” he said.
 
His voice rose then for the first time.
 
“They were mine to take!”

“They belonged to a man called Mawgan Hendry,” Tayte said, as assertively as he could manage.
 
“That was two hundred years ago, so unless you’ve returned from the dead, I’d say you
stole
them!”
 
Tayte knew he was playing a dangerous game, but what did he have to lose?
 
He’d bought himself some time, that’s all, and he had no idea how much.
 
If he had any chance of getting out of this alive, he had to keep the man talking; keep him worked up until some opportunity presented itself.
 
His eyes were all over the car, looking for something he could use.

“They should have been
given
to me,” the man said.

“But they weren’t, were they?
 
So you stole them.”
 

“They were stolen from Mawgan.”

“Stolen after he was murdered?” Tayte said.
 
“And you think the box will tell you who really killed him?”

“I already know who killed him.”

Tayte could feel the man’s breath, hot on his sore neck.
 
“But you want to know why, right?”
 
Tayte wanted to know why,
and
who, but now was not the time to ask.
 
After ruling out trying to burn the man with the cigarette lighter because it needed to warm up first, he considered trying to stab him in the eye with the car key.
 

“And I suppose you already know why, do you,
Mr
Tayte?”
 

Tayte shook his head.
 
It was a mistake.

“Then it’s as I thought.
 
You’re no further use to me.”

Tayte felt the skin on his neck break and knew he was bleeding.
 
It was like he was sitting next to himself watching a slow motion re-run that he was helpless to stop.
 
He saw his own hands reaching for the knife in defence, but the man’s hold on him was too strong, the knife, too close.
 
Then a face at his window startled him.
 
It was surreal.

A long-haired man in need of a wash and a good meal was staring at him through the window.
 
Then behind him he heard a metallic, tapping sound.
 
By the time he fully registered what was going on, the knife had suddenly pulled away, not across his throat, but away, catching his left hand as it went.
 
Then he heard one of the rear doors open.

He unclipped his seat belt and spun around, aware now that he was losing a significant amount of blood from both his neck and his hand.
 
The rear seats were empty.
 
The man who’d come close to killing him - close to finishing what he’d set out to do at Nare Point - had fled, taking the rucksack and the box with him.

The tapping at the window drew Tayte’s attention.
 
Then he saw why he was still alive.
 
Another man, not unlike the first, had his face pressed to the rear window, staring in.
 
The metallic, tapping sound was coming from a can of Carlsberg Special Brew that he was clanking against the glass.
 
Tayte
realised
then that the fire he’d seen when he’d first entered the car park had to be their camp fire.
 
They were unlikely
saviours
, but
saviours
nonetheless.

Tayte leapt from the car and the strangers backed away, observing Tayte as he looked frantically about.
 
His right hand clutched the wound on his neck to stem the blood-flow and his left hand hung loose, dripping.
 
His suit was a complete mess.
 
In the darkness there was little to see; no sign of his attacker.
 
Then away beyond the trees, lost to the night, he heard a distinctive engine note and a screech of
tyres
- a V12.
 
He recalled hearing a similar sound recently, altered through his cellphone speaker, but the sound was unmistakable to him.
 
The last engine like that he’d heard was when he’d called Schofield on the train back from London.
 
It was playing over Schofield’s voice in background.

It forced him to recall the last conversation he’d had with Peter Schofield.
 
He heard himself asking him to go to Nare Point in his place - to his death.
 
He remembered how excited Schofield had been.
 
How energized.
 
Schofield had spent his last hours prowling graveyards at Tayte’s behest and he’d come up with something big.
 
Now he’d taken it with him to his grave.

The man with the beer-can staggered closer, studying Tayte.
 
“You should see a doctor,” he said, slurring every word.

Chapter Forty-Two

F
our hours after Jefferson Tayte almost died, he was sitting in the passenger seat of a strange car, parked somewhere equally unfamiliar to him.
 
He had no idea where he was and the only light he allowed himself came from the glow of his laptop screen.
 
Bastion and Hayne had been shocked to see him again in such a state, but the staff of the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro soon had him patched up.
 
After he’d given a statement and was allowed to go, having refused the offer of any direct police protection beyond the usual point-of-contact phone number, he just got in the courtesy car that was waiting for him and drove, heading anywhere just to lose himself; as much as he needed a change of clothes he knew he couldn’t risk returning to St Maunanus House.

Tayte was sitting somewhere off a single lane track by a galvanized farm gate, punching names into database fields as fast as his bandaged hand would allow.
 
He was glad he had a power supply he could run off the car; he knew it was going to be a long night.