Heck jumped up first. The shotgun had come loose, so he grabbed it by the barrels and slung it, before swinging around. Holker got to his feet more shakily. He looked groggy; in fact his nose was bloodied – but the whiteness of his cheek and the glaze across his eyes owed to more than pain and shock. This was a seriously disturbed kid, Heck realised, who had finally reached the end of his tether.
Holker came at him with a wild right hook. Heck ducked and hacked a good one into his belly. Holker toppled forward, gagging. Heck followed it with a left to his kidneys, and then a karate blow to the nape of his neck.
Holker slumped to the ground, insensible. Heck landed on him from behind, knees first. ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he intoned, fixing the lad in a no-nonsense wristlock. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say …’ a local patrol car screeched to a halt alongside him; the blue flashing lights of an ambulance weren’t far behind it, ‘… may be given in evidence.’ Heck stood up as a clutch of uniforms spilled out of the car, dragging Holker up with him and pushing him into their hands. ‘This one’s locked up for attempting to murder two police officers. That shotgun needs making safe … better get the SFOs on it.’ He turned to the paramedics hurrying from the rear of the ambulance with their tackle bags. ‘The casualty’s inside. Hurry please …’ He grabbed his phone again, bashed in Gary Quinnell’s number and banged it to his ear.
‘You still on the west gate?’ he shouted.
‘Affirmative. What’s happened with Shawna …?’
‘She’s being attended to. You haven’t seen that HGV yet?’
‘Nothing yet, sarge …’ But in the background, Heck could hear a fast-approaching rumble. He went cold as he pictured the heavy wagon, all six or seven tons of it ploughing towards the lone CID car parked across the open entrance. ‘Hey, it’s here now!’ Quinnell yelled. ‘Jeeesu …’
The phone went dead.
‘Gary!’ Heck bellowed helplessly. ‘Gary!’
A rasping chuckle drew his attention to the patrol car, where Holker was now leaning against its nearside flank as the uniforms searched him. He smiled at Heck, bloody-mouthed. ‘Another one down, Sergeant Heckenburg? You’re not doing very well today.’
Heck approached him. ‘We’ve wrapped you bastards up, at least.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Your friends won’t get far.’
‘They won’t need to.’
‘We’ll get them all.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but will you get them in time?’
Heck was distracted from this conversation – mainly by the sight of Shawna being brought from the cottage on a gurney, but now he realised what the prisoner had said, and something in the way he’d said it made Heck’s sweat-soaked hair stiffen.
Holker’s battered face was written with a kind of devilish glee; his eyes, dead and black as buttons, only enhanced the effect.
‘Care to elaborate?’ Heck said.
‘Let me see, erm …’ the prisoner’s sickle grin broadened, ‘… no. Except to say good luck. Because, trust me, you’re going to need it.’
‘Get him out of here.’
The uniforms turned Holker around, and the patrol car’s rear door swung open.
‘Oh, there is one thing,’ Holker said. ‘This next one’s going to be a good one. It always had to be … the tenth one, you see. A real celebration.’
Heck strode away. ‘Try gloating when you’re watching the world from a one-by-two window.’
‘This time we’re going to do something special … with a very special victim.’
Heck ignored him, heading towards the ambulance.
‘Surprised you haven’t already missed her, to be honest.’
Heck halted in mid-stride.
‘She was on the telly often enough. Surely you haven’t forgotten her already?’
Heck spun slowly round, staring at the prisoner in disbelief. And before he could stop himself, he’d lunged across the two or three yards between them, grabbing Holker by the collar and ramming him back against the patrol car.
‘You’d better be lying to me!’
‘Yeah, of course … I’m getting beaten up for nothing!’
‘Where is she …
tell me now
!’
‘Not telling you where, I’m afraid.’ The demented youth cackled. ‘I’ll give you a clue, though … this next one’s all about treason. And traitors … just like your girl, eh, Sergeant Heckenburg? Because she betrayed the entire nation, telling those lies about us. Not letting the people know what they had a right to …’
Heck tightened his grip on Holker’s throat. ‘What are you going to do to her, you little shit?’
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out … if you’re good enough.’
They watched Claire with strange fascination.
None of them spoke, even though they were fixating on her. There appeared to be four of them in total. She’d thought there’d be more, but one of them was presumably driving the vehicle, the steel floor of which juddered beneath her as they followed endless, winding roads. The lorry’s sides, which enclosed them in sepulchral dimness, vibrated.
Still they said nothing.
Though they’d now removed her blindfold and gag, she was kneeling painfully upright, hands and ankles bound together behind her. Her captors knelt too, surrounding her in a perfect circle. The half-light rendered their features ghostly and indistinct, which was much the way she’d seen them the last time – in that derelict petrol station, where they’d come at her like spectres through the shadows and moonlight.
It still seemed incredible to Claire that they were teenagers – little more than children.
First there was the pretty blonde girl who’d clamped her in a choke-hold in the station storeroom. After her came the girl Claire thought of as ‘the Tomboy’. She was stocky, with short, raven-black hair and a permanent pugnacious sneer, but she too was athletic and strong; Claire knew this for a fact because it was the Tomboy who’d dragged her around the most. Last in the command structure came two boys. One was short and dumpy, with curious rat-like features; she imagined he’d been the butt of many jokes. The other was taller and leaner; he had a head of tight brown curls and the angelic looks of a choirboy, yet there was something menacing about him – perhaps his frozen half-smile, which she belatedly realised was not a smile at all, but some kind of facial flaw.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asked quietly.
‘Nothing,’ Claire replied, half mesmerised. His gaze was so forceful that she fancied she could feel it on her skin. It was the same with all of them.
They didn’t seem angry with her, though there was an undisguised urgency when they’d dragged her up from that pit. At the time, somewhere in the near-distance, she’d heard male voices shouting. She’d wondered if that was Heck and the rest of them, closing in … but ultimately it hadn’t mattered. Her abductors had flung her into the trailer of the articulated lorry, climbing in with her, and closing and bolting the doors. The vehicle had then rumbled away, swerving, stopping and starting up again, and experiencing at least one road accident, but not letting that slow it down. It had been on the move ever since, and still was.
‘Miss Moody?’ came a voice from somewhere else in the lorry’s interior.
This was an adult voice, and Claire knew immediately who it belonged to. She glanced left, to where a fifth figure emerged from the darkness. It was the older bespectacled man, the one with the grey frizzy hair, the one whose car had pulled up on the petrol station forecourt. He smiled at her as he shrugged his large frame into an oversize camouflage jacket.
‘My apologies for the roughness of your experience so far,’ he said. ‘It’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid … but at the very least we can be courteous. I am Dr Enwright, but you may call me Leo.’ He indicated the blonde girl. ‘This is Jasmine.’ Jasmine neither smiled nor nodded. ‘And this is Heather.’ The Tomboy did smile, but it wasn’t pleasant. ‘And these two reprobates,’ Leo indicated the rat-faced boy and the taller one with the leer, ‘are Luke and Arnie.’
‘What do you …’ she stammered. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘You’re here to pay your dues,’ Enwright said simply.
‘Why?’ she pleaded. ‘In heaven’s name, what have I done to you?’
‘Not to us. To the nation. You told them we were gangsters, criminals.’
‘But you are!’ She couldn’t help saying that, even though her voice had diminished to little more than a whine. ‘You kidnap people … you murder them.’
‘You called us desecrators,’ the boy called Arnie accused her. ‘That was an insult.’
‘But I didn’t invent that name …’
‘Nor did you deny it,’ Heather said.
‘Listen, please … stop this madness.’
‘You transmitted a message to the nation that we are its enemies,’ Enwright pointed out. ‘That we seek only to damage, to hurt …’
‘I think they can draw that conclusion for themselves,’ she interrupted, fear and pain hardening her tone. This old crackpot … and these stupid kids, these stupid bits of bloody demented kids! The vibrating steel floor was agony under her knees. Her wrists and ankles ached in their bonds. ‘And you’re hardly likely to make them think differently with this kind of behaviour, are you!’
‘Quite the opposite, actually.’ Enwright took two items from a haversack. One of them rattled – it sounded like a box of matches. ‘Because of those offerings we’ve already made, yours, I think, will be the most appreciated.’ He glanced at her with apparent interest in her viewpoint. ‘The British are a sporting set, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t know what you mean …’
‘But they’re a contrary lot too. With the same cynicism that has enabled them to stand back and watch, even while disapproving, as the spiritual life of this land has turned to ashes – they’ll enjoy the irony that the one most deserving of their vengeance, the traitor who lied and misled them, is to be given a chance the others never had.’
A match sparked to life, and he inserted it into an oil lamp, which he then lifted above his head, casting them all in a faint, flickering luminescence. They were clad for the outdoors; she saw green and black waterproofs and leggings, lace-up hiking boots, gloves, more camouflaged jackets. The girl Jasmine was equipped with a firearm; it was strapped to her back, its carved wooden hilt visible over her right shoulder.
‘Are we all going hunting?’ Claire said, trying to sound scornful.
Enwright smiled. ‘Some of us.’
A heap of neatly folded garments was flung down: a white chemise with frill cuffs and collar; a buff, hook-fronted tunic complete with a broad belt to be worn across the shoulder; a pair of baggy maroon breeches, and some gauntlets. As an afterthought, a pair of heeled, leather thigh-boots were placed on top.
‘It’s unlikely to be a perfect fit,’ Enwright said. ‘But needs must. As long as you wear it with pride, the illusion will be complete.’
Claire gazed at the outfit, uncomprehending. She said nothing as the boy called Luke shuffled behind her. With a rasp of steel, he drew his knife and sawed through her bonds. When both her hands and feet were free, she slumped down onto her hip, rubbing at the weals on her wrists and ankles.
‘Take your clothes off,’ Heather instructed her.
Claire glanced up at them. ‘Forget it.’ She indicated the costume. ‘I’m not wearing that stuff, if that’s what you mean. This insanity has gone far enough.’
‘Take your clothes off,’ Enwright reiterated, blank-faced.
‘No. You’re going to hurt me anyway, so why should I?’
With deliberate slowness, Jasmine drew the firearm from her back. Claire stared aghast as what looked like a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun was levelled at her face.
‘Why?’ Jasmine said without emotion. ‘I’ll tell you … because the small chance you have – and it is exceedingly small – will disappear entirely if you fail to cooperate.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Claire said more boldly than she felt, because in truth she had no doubt that this girl would dare.
‘The only thing I’d regret is the waste of good material.’ Jasmine squinted along the barrels – as if she needed to from three feet away. ‘But we can always find more of that. We’ve always been able to find more.’
The others watched, eyes shining, mouths wet with excitement. Jasmine smiled too, for the first time; it was a Satanic vision, her lips a crooked curve, her glassy eyes boring straight through Claire; it could have been anyone she was about to execute here – literally anyone – and it wouldn’t have mattered to her one iota.
Hurriedly, Claire slid off her jacket and blouse, unfastening the button at the front of her trousers and turning slightly to wriggle them down her bruised legs. She sat shame-faced in knickers and bra, arms folded across her midriff in an attempt to cover herself.
They regarded her dispassionately.
‘Everything,’ Jasmine said.
‘Why everything?’ Claire said tearfully.
‘Because, my dear, humiliation is part of the ritual,’ Enwright explained.
‘Everything,’ Jasmine said again, nudging her shoulder with the gun.
‘So you’re perverts as well?’ Claire wept as she unhooked her bra and raised her bottom to pull her knickers down. ‘I might have guessed …’
‘Defending your dignity will cut no ice here,’ Enwright said. ‘Jasmine had to give up far more than you.’
‘Nice pussy,’ Arnie commented, though a fierce glare from Enwright prevented further crudity from him.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Jasmine asked, gesturing at the pile of clothing.
Scarcely able to believe what was happening to her, Claire clambered into the garish costume. As Enwright had hinted, it wasn’t a perfect fit – a little on the large side, but if she tightened the belt to its last notch, it just about held together. She looked around at them. Again they were watching her in silence, but now it was the silence of approval. Luke lifted something into view from the darkness behind him: a cardboard box, overflowing with greenery. He turned his eyes to Enwright, who nodded once, and then smiled, as, with hoots and gibbers, the rest of them fell upon her.
Shrieking, Claire was borne to the lorry floor. The box of greenery contained nettles and thistles. With exaggerated laughs, they grabbed up handfuls of these and began stuffing them inside her costume.