The Ring of Death

THE BUTCHER BEYOND

DANGEROUS GAMES

THE DARK LADY

THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

DEAD ON CUE

DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

A DEATH LEFT HANGING

DEATH WATCH

DYING IN THE DARK

A DYING FALL

THE ENEMY WITHIN

FATAL QUEST

GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

A LONG TIME DEAD

MURDER AT SWANN'S LAKE

THE PARADISE JOB

THE RED HERRING

THE RING OF DEATH

THE SALTON KILLINGS

SINS OF THE FATHERS

STONE KILLER

THE WITCH MAKER

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This first world edition published 2010

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2010 by Alan Rustage.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Spencer, Sally.

The Ring of Death.

1. Police – England – Yorkshire – Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation – Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9′14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-042-5   (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6868-8   (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-218-5   (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

PROLOGUE

F
or most men, suddenly finding themselves in this position would be a terrifying experience, Andy Adair thought.

As their minds slowly came back to life – as they began to hazily remember the blow to the back of the head which had robbed them of their consciousness – they would already be finding it hard to breathe.

And then – as they realized they were tied securely to a chair, and had a hood over their heads – they'd crap their pants.

But not him!

He was not that run-of-the-mill kind of man.

He was a
hard
man.

He
didn't focus on the pain from his head-wound, because he had been trained to
ignore
pain.

He
didn't waste his time wondering how he'd got into this situation.

None of that mattered.

What
was
important now was what happened
next
.

And the simple truth was that – in a
hard man
sort of way – he found the whole situation amusing.

The Enemy – and he was sure it was a
single
enemy – had put the sack over his head in an attempt to induce what Adair's instructors had called sensory deprivation.

And certainly that would work with some men.

It had worked with the wogs he himself had interrogated in the Middle East, during the Aden crisis, for example.

It had worked with the Catholic scum he had helped break down in the Northern Ireland conflict.

But it was not about to work with
him
.

And it was from that knowledge of his own sense of control over the situation that the amusement stemmed.

Because, even now, that invisible Enemy was probably studying him for signs of growing fear – and was being sadly disappointed.

He could hear the Enemy breathing, short, shallow breaths designed to conceal his presence.

But that wouldn't work, either.

Not with a man who'd been
trained
to listen.

Not with a man who'd spent so much time on the
other side
of the sack.

Slowly and silently, Adair started to count.

One hundred . . . two hundred . . . three hundred . . .

This was another technique he'd been taught in the army, and it had two purposes. The first was to enable him to calculate how long he had been held – which might come in useful later. The second was keep his mind occupied, so that no
unnecessary
thoughts came into it.

He had reached six thousand, seven hundred and twenty-six when the Enemy – admitting defeat, even if he didn't yet realize it himself – finally broke the silence.

‘Don't you want to know
where
you are?' the man asked.

‘Bloody amateur!' Adair thought, in disgust.

‘Don't you want to know
why
you're here?' the Enemy continued.

Pathetic! This feller wouldn't have lasted ten minutes in the hands of the Ulster Proddies.

‘I want some information,' the Enemy said.

‘Is that right?' Adair asked.

His captor spoke with a convincing Lancashire accent, he noted, but that proved nothing.

A lot of Irishmen who'd spent a few years in the area could put on the local accent when they needed to. And when you were working for the Irish Republican cause – when you were the
enemy within
on the English mainland – you did need to put it on, because you knew that sounding like a local was one of the best disguises you could adopt.

‘I want some information, and you're going to give it to me,' the Enemy said.

And now there was a hard edge – an almost iron-clad certainty – to his voice, which, despite everything, made his captive start to feel perhaps just slightly unnerved.

‘I'll give you some information, Paddy,' Adair said.

He spoke harshly, perhaps to show the Enemy he was not to be intimidated, and perhaps, also, to bolster up his own courage a little.

‘And that information,' he continued, ‘is that when I get out of here, your life won't be worth living.'

‘I want to know exactly what went on at Moors' Edge Farm,' the Enemy said. ‘And I want the names of the men who organized it.'

‘Wrong question!' Adair thought, slightly knocked off balance.

Or, at least, he corrected himself, not one of the questions he'd been
expecting
.

‘You can get stuffed,' the hooded man said.

He concentrated on his breathing, forcing it to be regular and calm, knowing that would help steady his pulse and his heart-beat.

The threats would come soon, he told himself.

‘
I can hurt you, you know. I can hurt you in ways you could never even imagine
.'

That was what
he
would have said in this situation. That was what he
had
said, in situations just like it.

But there were no threats. Instead, all he heard was a match being struck, followed by a roaring sound.

And then he felt the pain in his arm – an agonizing pain as the flesh was burnt away.

He screamed, and the immediate pain stopped, though a secondary pain – less intense but no less horrendous – continued.

‘In case you're wondering what I'm using, it's a blow-lamp,' the Enemy said casually. ‘Nasty things, blow-lamps. They can burn their way through a solid oak door in less than a minute – so just imagine what this one could do to you.'

Adair let his head slump to one side, as if he'd lost consciousness, though it was a hard act to maintain when all he really wanted to do was scream again.

‘If you're faking it, you're just wasting your time and mine,' he heard the Enemy say. ‘If you're
not
faking it, I'll just wait until you come round, and then start again. Because I
will
have the information I require.'

Adair could still hear the blow-lamp spitting out its flame in the background. Nothing he'd ever been taught – nothing he'd ever had to endure – had prepared him for this.

He remembered something else his instructor had said.

‘
In general, you need to dominate the Enemy, even when he seems to have the upper hand
but there are a
few
occasions when it might serve you best to put on a show of cooperating.
'

‘All right, I'll tell you what you want to know,' Adair said, pretending to be panicked, yet not really
having to
pretend any more.

‘Start with the names,' the Enemy ordered him.

‘There's a man called Wally, who I met in a pub called the Flying Horse,' Adair began. ‘I don't know his other name, but he's about thirty-five and—'

As the flame brushed against his arm, he stopped speaking and started to scream again.

‘Do you think I'm a complete bloody fool?' the Enemy asked, contemptuously. ‘Wally, who you met in the Flying Horse! That won't do at all. I know who all your friends and acquaintances are. What I
don't
know is which of them are involved in what's been going on at Moors' Edge Farm.'

It was hard to think with the pain, Adair thought.

So very, very hard.

But he had to try. He had to find some way to get through to this Paddy – to reach some sort of temporary compromise. Then, later – when this was all over – he'd track him down. And that would be when the bastard would learn what
real
pain was.

‘I . . . I . . . could give you a couple of names, and you could get more names from them,' he said.

‘I want the names of everybody involved,' the Enemy said unrelentingly. ‘And I want them from
you
!'

‘Be reasonable,' Adair said, aware that his tone had become a whine – and no longer caring. ‘If I give you
all
the names, I'll have no future in this town.'

‘You still don't get it, do you?' the Enemy asked.

‘Get what?' Adair asked tremulously.

‘It's no longer a question of you having a future
in this town
. You have no future
anywhere
. And why do you think that is?'

‘I . . . I don't know,' Adair croaked.

‘You have no future because when you've told me all I need to know, I'm going to kill you.'

He had never
really
been a hard man, Adair realized – not in the way that
this
man was hard. He felt tears forming in his eyes and snot start to trickle over his upper lip.

‘Please!' he sobbed.

‘After what you've done, there can be no pity and no mercy,' the Enemy said coldly. ‘The best you can hope for now is a
quick
death. And that's what you'll get, once you've given me the information. It won't be a gentle death – you've lost the right to that – but at least it will soon be over.'

The threats could still be no more than part of the interrogation technique, Adair told himself.

They could be no more than part of the interrogation technique . . . they could be no more than part of the interrogation technique . . . they could be no more . . .

‘I'm waiting,' the Enemy said.

‘Tom Harding,' Adair gasped.

‘That would be Thomas W. Harding, who lives at 93 India Road, Whitebridge?'

‘I . . . I don't know if that's his exact address, but, yes, he does live in India Road.'