Arnie scowled at Claire. ‘She got away from me.’
‘So it’s only good fortune that she’s here at all?’
‘He tried to rape me,’ Claire said. ‘He’s not interested in playing your stupid game.’
‘If that was true, I wouldn’t have come at all,’ Arnie retorted. He turned back to his mentor. ‘We’ve got a problem … a car’s pulled up in a lay-by a few hundred yards away. I just saw it as I was on my way down here.’
There was silence as the group absorbed this. Enwright didn’t look alarmed or frightened, as much as frustrated. ‘Which direction?’ he asked.
Arnie pointed.
Enwright snorted. ‘Most likely a courting couple.’
‘All the way out here?’ Arnie said.
‘It hardly matters. There’s dense woodland between here and there. They won’t see us.’
‘What if it’s the police?’
‘Use your loaf, Arnold. How could it be the police?’
‘What if one of the others talked?’
‘Impossible.’
‘Are you so sure?’ Claire blurted out. ‘These are children you’ve got doing your dirty work for you … you really trust them that much?’
Enwright smiled. ‘Heather … gag this traitorous bitch!’
Claire squealed and struggled as the Tomboy slapped a sticking plaster across her mouth, then wrapped a scarf over the top of it, pulling it tight. But as she did, a distant repetitive thudding now intruded on them. They glanced skyward.
‘Chopper!’ Arnie said, darting towards the farm gate. ‘Into the trees!’
‘Stay where you are!’ Enwright shouted, with such force that even Arnie came to a standstill. ‘You bloody little fools … have you learned nothing!’
‘You’re right, we are fools,’ the boy whined. ‘We’ve lit bloody great fires to lead them right to us.’
‘They’ll have heat-seeking cameras … they’ll find you anyway.’
‘Let’s just get away then!’
‘No! We haven’t come this far to run like rabbits.’ Enwright turned to the rest of the team. ‘We carry on as planned.’
Claire struggled again, but with her hands bound there was only so much she could do as her captors again descended on her, fastening a belt around her legs, buckling them together. Only Arnie played no part. He backed slowly away.
‘Dr Enwright … we haven’t got time for this! Look … I always said this plan was too ambitious … that we’d be lucky to get away afterwards!’
‘Get away?’ Enwright snorted. ‘Surely you’ve realised by now, Arnold? This was only ever a one-way deal.’
The signpost was knee-high, so Heck had to crouch to examine it with his pen-light.
Here fell William, 2nd Duke of Hamilton
He straightened up again, none the wiser. A few yards away, though almost invisible in the darkness, Charlie Finnegan was on the phone to the Comms suite at Castle Street Police Station. ‘Sorry sir, I can’t give you the proper coordinates. Well … we haven’t got a real map. Yeah, I can hear India 99. Haven’t seen him yet …’
Heck walked back across the meadow to the shallow ditch, and stepped over this into the lay-by where his Volkswagen was waiting. Worthington was still in the rear seat, handcuffed to PC Mapling.
‘You sure you parked here?’ Heck asked him, leaning in at the window.
Worthington shrugged. ‘We stopped in lots of different places, but I think this was one of them. We walked for miles, I know that. We were setting up signs and stuff. Not real ones, just pretend. Dr Enwright said they were stage dressing.’
Stage dressing, Heck thought sourly. It gave him no consolation to realise how close to the button he’d been in his very first assessment of these murders.
‘Worcester think they know roughly where we are,’ Finnegan said, also stepping over the ditch. ‘They’ve got support units out, and dogs. So we just sit tight. Soon as the chopper spots us, the world and his brother will be here.’
Heck felt exasperated but helpless; as far as he could tell, the sound of the helicopter’s rotor blades was diminishing. ‘Sounds like he’s going the wrong way.’
‘He’s circling. Apparently it’s part of the search system they use.’
‘So we’re officially lost. Bloody great!’
Claire didn’t have much strength left, but she fought with every inch of it as they carried her towards the makeshift gallows.
With hands and legs bound, all she could really do was squirm – but she managed to get free twice, dropping to the ground on each occasion. They yanked her back up with increasing anger and violence. Heather, Luke and Susan did most of the work, while Jasmine covered them with her firearm. Arnie still hung back, glancing nervously onto the meadows beyond the oak tree.
‘If you open your ears, Arnold,’ Enwright said, ‘you’ll note the helicopter has gone.’
‘We should go too … while we still can. They’ll be setting up roadblocks.’
‘What does that matter?’ Jasmine snapped at him. ‘Gareth took a fall covering our backs. Are we going to waste that sacrifice?’
Enwright smiled at Arnie through the firelight, his gloved fingers laced together. His expression was almost fond, but again the flames writhed brightly in the lenses of his glasses. ‘Even Jesus found a Doubting Thomas in his circle. But in the end that fearful saint came good. He died by lance at the hand of a godless potentate.’
‘We’re not saints,’ Arnie said, retreating. ‘And I’m not dying by anyone’s hand.’
At which point a vehicle rumbled past on the nearby road. Everyone stopped what they were doing as they spotted it through the trees, catching fleeting glimpses of white bodywork, a thick black grille over its windows, the word POLICE stencilled in black lettering. The vehicle swept on up the narrow lane, the roar of its engine fading, but it was too much for Arnie.
‘Shit!’ he said. ‘Shit, shit, shit … we’ve got to get out of here!’ He wasn’t so much edging away now, as taking long strides.
‘Where are you going?’ Jasmine demanded.
‘You made me do this!’ Arnie pointed at Enwright. ‘You tricked me … I’ve had enough …’
He turned to run, but he stumbled first – and that slowed him down.
Fatally.
With a nod from Enwright, Jasmine fired.
Heck and Finnegan spun around alongside the car. Finnegan lowered his phone. He’d been about to contact Comms at Worcester again to tell them that a fast-moving unit had just passed them by in the dark without stopping and was now headed in completely the wrong direction, when both he and Heck had heard a gunshot – from fairly close by.
‘Don’t like the sound of that,’ Finnegan muttered.
‘Me neither,’ Heck replied. He yanked open the driver’s door, extracted the keys from the ignition and tossed them through into the back seat, where PC Mapling caught them. ‘You’re in charge of these two,’ he said. ‘If this thing cuts up, get them away from here as fast as you can.’ Mapling nodded, though he looked distinctly unnerved by the prospect. ‘In the meantime …’ Heck extended an empty hand, ‘I’ll need to borrow your baton and your CS canister.’
‘What are you doing?’ Finnegan asked as Heck pocketed the CS spray and snapped open the extendable baton to its full one and a half feet.
‘What are
we
doing, you mean.’ Heck stepped back over the ditch.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Finnegan said, reluctantly tagging along.
Heck struck off along the meadow. ‘We’re finding out what’s going on.’
‘But they’re obviously armed …’
‘Taking a look won’t hurt anyone. But if it bothers you, here …’
Finnegan snatched the baton that Heck handed to him, and got quickly back on the blower to Worcester Comms. ‘Tell those fucking hayseeds of yours to turn around and get back here!’ he said gruffly. ‘They’re going the wrong way! No, I don’t give a shit who I’m talking to … we need armed support pronto!’
‘Knock that crap off, Charlie!’ Heck said. ‘You’ll let the bastards know we’re here.’
‘They probably already know,’ Finnegan muttered. ‘What’s that light?’
They’d advanced into a copse of thinly spread trees, and were knee-deep in young spring foliage. The reddish glow of what looked like a fire was now visible over the tops of the hawthorn thickets about a hundred yards ahead.
Heck didn’t reply, simply filched his own phone from his pocket and punched in a quick number. ‘Yeah … Eric,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t speak any louder than this. I don’t care if the Deputy Chief Constable’s arrived, tell me where you’re up to … quickly!’
They didn’t bother to check if Arnie was dead. Even if he wasn’t, it hardly mattered: he wasn’t going anywhere. He lay face down, his back a jumble of mangled, smouldering meat. They were too busy lifting the struggling Claire onto the three-legged stool, finally planting her feet on top of it.
She still writhed in their grasp, though weakly, exhaustedly. It was astonishing how suddenly nothing else in her life mattered – all the usual worries: bills, mortgage payments, car insurance. None of that had significance any more; only the sweating and the grunting …
From somewhere close by came the sharp bleeping of a mobile phone.
Enwright and his acolytes froze, then gazed into the wooded area a few dozen yards to their left. It was all the distraction Claire needed; she jumped from the stool again, throwing herself full-length on the ground.
‘Mr Stapleton!’ Enwright snapped. ‘Miss Cavanagh! See what that is! Fix it!’
As Luke and Susan scuttled out of view, the other two girls – Jasmine and Heather – grappled with Claire even as she lay flat. She tried to roll away. Heather swore, landed vicious blows on her. Overhead, the orange silk noose swung wildly.
If Heck and Finnegan hadn’t been around twenty yards apart when Finnegan’s phone rang again – at full volume – Heck would probably have taken a swing for him.
‘Worcester Comms,’ Finnegan said, still not moderating his tone.
‘Turn the bastard thing off!’ Heck hissed.
Finnegan complied, shoving the phone into his pocket. The ferns they were wading through were filled with briars, and a massive hindrance to progress. The blackness among the hawthorns was cloying it was so deep, though sparkles of flames were clearly visible among the meshed branches ahead. Heck could hear what sounded like suppressed voices. He wanted to hurry, to go charging forward, but instinct again made him wary. He glanced left to right, seeing more swathes of undergrowth, more thick clumps of hawthorn – and then spied a hooded figure rise silently from the ferns just behind Finnegan.
Before Heck could shout a warning, what looked like a two-handed mallet had slammed into the back of the detective constable’s ribs; his knees buckled and he slumped forward, gasping. The second blow, a swinging underarm, struck the back of his head. Heck would have lurched over there to assist, but a second figure had now appeared – directly in front of him. Heck glimpsed camouflaged fatigues, a scarf over the lower face. The assailant was of slight build but this made him lithe; more important was the shiny steel cleaver he now struck with in a slashing backhand blow.
By combining muscle-power, Jasmine and Heather had finally scooped their victim up and placed her on top of the hanging-stool. Though it took all their strength, they held her in place there while Enwright fitted the silken noose around her neck.
He didn’t respond to the sounds of combat in the woods nearby. ‘Orange is your colour,’ he said matter-of-factly, as he pulled the noose tight around her throat.
Claire could still breathe, but only just. Suddenly there could be no more struggling. She had to stand perfectly still and maintain her balance – which wasn’t easy, because even as Heather and Jasmine stepped back, she could feel the stool shifting beneath her, as if the legs on one side were sinking into the meadow floor.
‘You’ve fought hard,’ Enwright said approvingly. ‘You’ve earned your Parliamentarian sash …’
Heck had ducked both the first and second blows of the cleaver, but now his legs tangled in strands of briar and he toppled backwards, falling full-length into the ferns. The hooded figure dived down on top of him, determined to seize the advantage, pressing the cleaver’s blade with both hands towards his throat. Only Heck’s left elbow prevented him ramming the blade down with guillotine force. The assailant was wiry and strong, but young and inexperienced; though they were nose-to-nose for several seconds, grunting, covering each other in sweat and spittle, Heck still managed to free the CS canister from his pocket with his right hand, and ejected its entire contents into the glaring, fanatical eyes.
The youngster jerked backward, gasping and choking, then disentangled himself entirely and rolled away, gloved fingers raking at his face. Heck followed, scrambling to his feet and dealing him two swift blows; a left to the gut, a right to the side of the jaw, before spinning around – just in time. The other one came to a stumbling halt some ten yards away, mallet in one hand, baton in the other.
They watched each other across the darkened clearing, breathing hard.
Even in the dimness, Heck could tell that he was facing a female. She too was clad in bulky waterproof coveralls, but her hood had fallen back and straggles of long brown hair hung from under her woolly cap. A scarf covered her mouth, but though her eyes were wild and dangerous, her brow was damp with the sweat of fear.
‘And which one are you?’ Heck wondered. ‘Heather or Susan? My name’s Mark. But no, I’m not telling you that to try and humanise myself … to prevent you attacking me. I’m just letting you know who’ll be clubbing you unconscious in one minute’s time if you don’t drop those fucking weapons.’
Her eyes widened even more – as if she couldn’t believe she was being spoken to that way. Then she reached a decision, flinging the extendable baton at him before racing away. It spun through the air. Heck deflected it with his forearm, though it still stuck him a stinging
thwack
. He didn’t give immediate chase, but lurched over to Finnegan’s prone form, crouching and checking for vital signs. The idiot was out cold, but breathing.
With a groan, the lad whose face Heck had sprayed rolled over – and promptly began gasping again. ‘Shit!’ he groaned in a thick, mucus-laden voice. ‘My eyes!’
‘They’ll be nothing compared to your arsehole after a year in the lifers’ block,’ Heck said, walking over there.