Riddled on the Sands (The Lakeland Murders) (34 page)

‘No, on the phone. He left a mobile for me to use.’

‘Do you still have it?’

‘No.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘Same as the knife. Walked out at low tide, buried it in the sand. You are a clever bastard, Andy.’

‘And when did he tell you it was tonight?’

‘Yesterday, tea time. About then, anyway. I got rid of the phone after.’

‘And what about Pete Capstick? What about that poor bastard?’

‘He was coming apart. I knew he wouldn’t hold out much longer. He didn’t want to grass me up, but he was going to, I could see it in his face. In his eyes. I told my contact, and he told me to kill him.’

‘Told you?’

‘Aye. He said I was in for Jack’s death as well, and if I didn’t kill Pete then they would. And it wouldn’t be quick.’

‘And then they’d come for you too, I suppose?’

‘Aye, something like that.’

‘Did you know he’d taken those pills? Pete, I mean.’

‘Not at first, no, but yes, I worked it out soon enough, like. He just lay there. Didn’t wake up, didn’t ever even see me, thank God.’

‘All right, we’ll get all this in a statement later. Is there anything else that you can tell me about tonight then, Geoff? Are they making for the same place as last time?’

‘Aye. Same GPS co-ordinates.’

‘And who will be there? How many exactly? Do you know? Did Pete tell you?’

‘Aye, he said he thinks there were five. One never left the boat.’

‘And two were armed?’

‘That’s what Pete said. But maybe that’s the only ones who fired. I don’t know, and Pete was in such a state after I don’t think he did either. Not for certain, like.’

‘OK. Jimmy Rae, the lad who’ll be driving the tractor, will be here in a bit. You’ll need to tell him everything you know.’

‘I don’t know him. Is he one of the firearms lads, then?’

‘You could say that’ said Hall. ‘But tell me this, Geoff, why didn’t you contact this bloke and tell him that you’d spotted our car?’

Atkinson looked away. ‘I did. I went to the pub at lunchtime and borrowed a phone, like.’

‘So why didn’t they abort? Or move the drop, at least.’

‘He told me I was imagining things. But he told me to check with Si, see if he’d had any alerts, but only to contact them again if he had. So I checked, and there was nothing. So I didn’t contact him again. But I knew, I knew bloody well. The more I sat and thought about it, the more certain I was. Like I say, you’re a clever bastard, Andy. And I guessed that you had me down as the prime suspect anyway.’

‘And so you thought that the only way of avoiding going out there tonight was by owning up? That’s why you did it?’

‘Aye, that’s about it.’

‘Jesus, Geoff, you’re going to be doing a lot of years, whatever the CPS decides to go for over Capstick.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘I thought you weren’t going to try anything daft? Even if you get away from here you know it’s all over. You let me make the call, for Christ’s sake. Everyone knows it was you, mate. It’s over.’

‘I’m not going anywhere, Andy.’

‘Have you taken something? Have you? Come on, let’s get it out of you.’

As Hall stepped forward Atkinson reached behind him. A wide muzzle pointed at Hall.

‘It’s only a flare gun, Andy, but it’d still kill you. It’d go straight through you from this range. So you stay where you are, while I sit down here.’

‘How long?’

‘Not long. It’s funny, isn’t it, looking back, like. When you’ve taken a wrong path, and you know it like, but you can never get back, can you? No matter how hard you try, you can never get back to the right path.’

Hall was angry. He surprised himself.

‘But you haven’t tried, have you, Geoff? Not really. You stabbed a friend, someone who only wanted to impress you, to do what you wanted. And you repaid him like that. You could have given yourself up at any point, given us the details of that first drop, but you didn’t. Why not?’

But Atkinson didn’t answer, and his arm dropped a moment before his head did. Hall ran forward, and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. He reached for his phone.

‘Vic, it’s Andy Hall. Can you get those paramedics who are with you down to the village right now. No sirens, no hurry. Geoff Atkinson has taken an overdose, and I’m sure he’s dead. But I need to be sure there’s nothing we can do for him.’

Hall sat and waited, trying not to look at Atkinson as the darkness settled around him, until Jimmy Rae knocked at the door. Hall let him in, and stood back.

‘Blimey’ said Rae, when he caught sight of Atkinson’s body. ‘Your interrogation methods are even rougher than ours. And Ian Mann told me that you were a bit of a big girl’s blouse.’

A mile and a half out on the Bay Ian Mann was too tired to think about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other. They’d had to take a long detour back along a channel until they found a spot shallow and safe enough to cross at. And his shoulders and knees were aching now, because of the weight he was carrying and the speed at which they were moving. And what made it worse was he knew that the pace had been reduced because of him. He’d felt old when they’d started, and he felt ancient now. He had no idea how much further they had to go, and he knew that questions weren’t encouraged. In fact, they weren’t permitted. They marched on in silence. They’d reach their objective, all of them, and it made absolutely no difference to anyone how much pain he had to go through before they did.

It was very dark now, and raining hard, and Mann had long since lost sight of the shore on the far side of the Bay. And he hadn’t looked behind him once since they’d set out. He just concentrated on the footprints of the man ahead of him, and tried to hit the same ones. It had been easy enough when they’d left, but now he was having to make an effort to keep his stride as long. He hoped that the man behind him, who he knew would be checking behind the group as they walked, hadn’t noticed. But Mann felt himself stooping under the weight of his pack, and he badly wanted a drink of water.

The man in the lead must have been a mind-reader, because he stopped, and everyone sunk to their haunches. ‘Two minutes’ someone said, and Mann slipped off his pack and reached for his water bottle. No-one asked him if he was OK. He looked at his watch. If everything was going to plan Jimmy Rae and the Police firearms team would just be leaving the shore somewhere behind him, but when he looked back he couldn’t see anything. And ahead of them the Bay and the sky had merged into one. Mann put his bottle away. He noticed that none of the others had even bothered to take off their packs.

Jimmy Rae had watched, amused, as the armed Police Officers climbed onto the back of the trailer. They looked scared, but Jimmy doubted that they had much to worry about. Because if the gang decided to shoot it out the whole thing would be over before they’d even been authorised to fire. His only real concern was that they didn’t shoot at any of his men.

But he was driving now, and as soon as they hit the sand, and he felt the heavily loaded trailer swaying behind him, Rae stopped thinking about anything but navigating his way out to the rendezvous. He’d walked it several times, always at night, but now, high up on the tractor and with the headlights casting a pale yellowish light, he wasn’t so sure. But according to the GPS route he’d plotted he was on the right route. He just hoped that the sands hadn’t shifted significantly since the last high tide.

Rae eased the hand throttle back as he approached the edge of a channel, carrying rain water down from the fells and out into the Bay. It seemed deeper, faster than it had been before. Rae made a decision, and pressed the throttle forward, and watched as the headlights played across the rippled water. The angle seemed steeper than it had before, and he felt the rear wheels slip sideways as the trailer followed him down. And a second or two later the tractor was stuck fast.

It took almost twenty minutes for Rae to get the tractor free, and safely onto the other side of the channel. The Police officers were wet through, but the air was becoming warmer all the time. The rain had eased off, but Rae still saw the occasional distant flash of lightning and thought, for a moment, that he caught a glimpse of the Blackpool Tower, lit up by nature’s illuminations.

He knew that he’d be late to the rendezvous now, because it was too dangerous to try to increase his speed even more, but Rae had no intention of radioing the lads to let them know. He knew they’d wait for as long as they needed to, and if needs be they’d be picked up by the rib that he knew was circling quietly far out in the Bay.

Rae glanced down at his GPS. It told him that there were only a few hundred yards to run, and he couldn’t see any sign of a boat pulled up on the sand. He couldn’t see his own guys out on the sands either, but that was no surprise. As he reached the target area and throttled back he heard a powerful outboard being gunned, somewhere nearby, and a spotlight flicked on just offshore, pointed his way.

Rae was wearing Atkinson’s oil skins, his hood was up and he had a beanie hat on too. There was no way that anyone on the boat could identify who was on the tractor, nor could anyone be heard over the sound of the engines, or the wind. Rae waved, and drove forward slowly, trying to encourage the boat to beach before he came too close. He needed to leave his guys a safe firing angle.

But the boat didn’t beach. Rae heard the engine throttle up and for a moment he thought that the gang had been spooked by something. Had they caught sight of one of his team? But the spot light was still on him and the tractor, and now he could see a figure standing in the boat, beckoning him forward. And Rae could clearly see the weapon in the man’s other hand, too.

He was almost sure that he was reducing his team’s safe angle of fire too much now, but he had no choice. So he drove forward again, then turned sharp right, so that he could swing back round and stop parallel to the water’s edge. As he did so the boat turned again, and came straight towards him. As it beached two men, both armed, jumped into the shallow water, and started to move toward him. They were barely fifteen yards away.

As the first thunder-flashes and smoke grenades went off Rae jumped down from the tractor, and heard the first volley of bullets pass by his head. He heard shouting, just for a second, but the firing didn’t stop, and then he could see the team firing at the two men from both sides. One of them went straight down, and the other tried to get back in the boat. He didn’t make it.  The rib’s outboard was in reverse now, and it shot backwards, it’s wake white in the gloom, and it span in the water in much the same way that Rae would have turned it himself. The firing had stopped now, but Ian Mann was launching flares out to sea, as he’d been told to, so that the other boat could close with the target.

Mann listened as everyone shouted their names. And he found himself shouting his own too, as he ran towards the two bodies on the edge of the water. Two of the guys were there before him though, kicking the weapons away from the bodies.

Jimmy Rae hadn’t fired a round, but his ears were ringing as he ran round to the rear of the trailer. All the cops still had their heads firmly down in the trailer, waiting for the all-clear.

‘All clear. The only men standing are ours’ Rae shouted, when he reached the bodies on the beach.

‘What happened?’ shouted one of the cops. ‘Where have they gone?’

‘Two are shot, and the rest are just about to be given a choice. Heave-to, or their engines will be shot off their brackets.’

‘What about the drugs?’

‘They’ll dump them overboard. They probably have already. But we’ll recover the lot, don’t you worry.’

Ian Mann walked over, with the two automatic weapons slung over his shoulder. His aches had all gone, at least for now, and he was smiling broadly.

‘Did you enjoy that then, lads?’ he said to the Police on the trailer. ‘I’m sorry that your uniforms got so wet. And we’ve got a couple of extra passengers for the trip back. They won’t say much though.’

Andy Hall was standing on the shore when Rae, Mann and the rest returned.

‘We’ve got the lot’ said Hall, when Rae jumped down from the tractor. ‘Or at least your lot have.’

‘And the gear?’

‘It was all floating. The bales were wrapped in polystyrene, just in case any went overboard.’

Rae nodded. ‘Good. Both of your shooters are dead though. Sorry about that. We had to recover them from the Bay and bring them in or they would have just drifted away on the tide.’

‘I know. Our SOCO team is on its way now, and we’ll take statements from a couple of your lads, as well as Ian. That should do it. It’s a shame that they opened up on you like that. I hear that the rest gave up without a fight.’

‘They did fire first. One of them must have realised that something was up. Don’t know what it was, though.’