Death of a Raven (21 page)

“You interrogate suspected spies,” Hudson said, his voice sharper than usual. “What do you do to them?”

“Very little,” Patrick replied. “They do it to themselves.”

“Behind locked doors though.”

“No — I always insist on the door being left unlocked when I’m interviewing someone.”

“But there’s always a burly redcap on the other side of it.” 

“Not necessarily. I always arrange the room so that they have to get past me in order to escape.”

Hudson couldn’t help it. He smirked. “I seem to be sitting nearest to the door.”

“I didn’t realize that you were the one wanting to leave,” Patrick said coldly.

The pressure went up one inexorable notch and I found myself contemplating begging Hudson to help us. It must be hypnotism, my distracted brain decided when my cat Pirate jumped on to Patrick’s lap and his finger gently stroked beneath her chin. She closed her eyes, purring, not party to the conflict but somehow part of the threat. Perhaps it was magic. “Are the men guarding Fraser armed?” Patrick asked. “No — it wasn’t thought necessary.”

“But it was thought that you’d have
me
to contend with!”

“I assure you that everything’s in order.”

“Go and bloody check that they’re OK,” Patrick told him in a harsh whisper. “I’ll come with you if you like. Handcuff me to the barn door if you’ll feel happier.”

Hudson’s big red hands knotted and I did not have to be psychic to know that he was re-living those moments inside the ruined building. Almost certainly he had been haunted by them ever since he had received his orders. One does not easily forget the flash of broken glass used like a dagger nor the sound that a man’s neck makes when it is broken, akin to that of snapping a stick of seaside rock between gloved hands.

“Gut feelings,” I said, smiling at him. Not for Rachel nor any other child on this earth could Patrick justify passing Hudson and his men by using violence.

The Detective Inspector climbed slowly to his feet and took a set of handcuffs from his pocket. Then, startling even Patrick, he swore forcibly, threw them on the carpet at Patrick’s feet, wrenched open the front door and went outside. He was back very shortly afterwards. 

“Nothing.” He didn’t sound surprised, his voice flat, dead.

I reacted first. “They’re not in contact?”

Hudson took a jerky breath. “Perhaps I’m out of my depth. Perhaps I resent taking orders over the phone from some Smart Alec in London. I told them it stank and we were being used.”

I noticed that there was a sheen of sweat on Patrick’s forehead.

“I can’t guarantee your safety,” Hudson said. “I haven’t said a word. If you follow me I’m not looking in the mirror either.”

Chapter 22

“I don’t believe this,” said Patrick.

I wasn’t sure that I believed it either. We had driven just over four miles from the cottage along the Coryton road when Hudson’s Rover turned into an almost concealed driveway. Two overgrown hedges at least fifteen feet high virtually touched across the entrance.

I drove a little way further along the road and then pulled into the gateway to a field. I switched off the engine and wound down the window a little to listen. It was just possible to hear the other car’s wheels crunching on gravel. Then, silence.

Our two back seat passengers prepared to leave, pulling hoods over their faces that left just their eyes visible.

“It’s not for me to give you orders or even to say a word,” said Patrick, turning in his seat. “But you are not up against armed men of the sort that rob banks or hold up bullion vans. Pretend they’re the SAS and you’ll get it about right.”

“That’ll really put the wind up them,” I said when they had gone, disappearing silently into the night.

“It was intended to. Hudson should have said it to them.”

“He’s knowingly walking straight into a trap,” I pointed out.

“I realize that. He’s a brave bloke with the kind of courage that comes from total lack of imagination. But he still has responsibilities.” Patrick opened his door. “Coming?”

“Plan?” I asked, reasonably I thought, when we were standing by the car.

“The usual.”

“Is that wise?”

“All right — the unusual. I’ll go down the chimney and you drive the car through the living room window.”

“Please be serious.”

“I can’t,” Patrick replied. “If they’re already dead or I’m wrong on other counts I’m as good as finished. If I think about it too much I’ll get the shakes.”

With all my strength I slammed him up against the side of the car. “It’s a man’s world — remember?” I said, somehow keeping my voice to a whisper. “But today’s soldier has to contend with subversives and terrorists. Being a hero or getting the shakes under fire doesn’t come into it any more. We work in a grey area, with politicians and the police, against dreary small-minded traitors who want Moscow to pay off their mortgages. How dare you become totally duty-shy because a child’s been dragged into this assignment.”

I’d really hurt him I discerned with a pang when he turned to lean his arms on the roof of the car. The apology was on my lips, anger replaced by shame, when I decided not to utter it.

Even though it was dark I knew that Patrick had turned his head to look at me. But there was nothing else I wanted to say so I walked slowly down the track and on to the road.

The house stood completely on its own. I could remember passing it in the daytime and seeing little more than ornate chimney pots jutting above tall trees. From hazy recollection the drive was semi-circular with two openings on to the road, one of these closed off by rusting wrought iron gates chained together. If my memory was correct, I would reach this one first.

The rain had ceased but the rank grass growing in the disused driveway was soaking wet, instantly drenching the bottoms of the legs of my dark tracksuit. By the gates I stopped, gazing through them up the weed-covered drive, a watery moon illuminating neglect and decay. The detached inner woman who watched, listened and wrote books gave a wry smile at reality’s Gothic setting.

I could not see the house from where I stood. There was just the awareness of a dark solid mass in the dense trees and shrubs before me. Then, as I moved slightly, I caught a glimpse of a light. It was not at ground level, perhaps illumination in a first floor room.

Stepping back on to the edge of the road I looked for Patrick. There was no sound, no sign of movement, not even a brief signal from his pencil slim flashlight. I went back to the car but he wasn’t there either.

Sixth sense told me that he had climbed over the gate into the field. Carefully avoiding the barbed wire fixed along the top I clambered over and found a lot more wet grass, a patch of stinging nettles and, by one of those crazy shafts of humour that breaks through even murder and mayhem, a ring of about twenty cows all solemnly watching Patrick spending a penny in the middle. They lumbered away as I approached, one lingering animal veering away from me, snorting, after I’d waved my arms at it.

We walked in the lee of the hedge towards the rear of the house. There were no trees hiding it from view here, just overgrown privet and hawthorn, the latter raking us with its thorns as we crawled through.

“Straight in via the weakest door or window,” Patrick said in my ear. “A place this size can only be borrowed from time to time so be prepared for outraged residents.”

I couldn’t stop thinking that this might be the last walk we would take together. There was a clarity in my mind that was recording every detail. Perhaps in the years to come my last memory of Patrick would be this stealthy progress just before dawn in the English countryside.

Dead leaves in the hedge rustled as a breeze wafted through it and my cursed writer’s imagination thought of bones and dead things. Patrick was right at my side, I could feel the warmth from his body.

“If anything goes wrong …” he whispered.

My heart missed a beat. “Yes?”

“Don’t go back through the field. That last one you shooed was a bull.”

We went right round the house. It was a rambling two-storey brick dwelling, its brooding Gothic appearance dispelled by the addition of two modern extensions, a kitchen at the rear and a sunroom at the side. The lock on the kitchen door, a cheap alloy device, yielded to Patrick’s persistence in about ten seconds flat, causing him to click his tongue disapprovingly.

There was evidence of a meal having been cooked and cleared away afterwards, Tandoori chicken unless my nose deceived me. I shut the door behind me and we both stood motionless, allowing our eyes to adjust to the darkness. After a minute or so Patrick moved carefully to close the slats of the blinds at the two windows. From there he went towards the door, a glass-panelled one through which light shone from a corridor beyond.

In the centre of the kitchen, a large room even by modern standards, was a free-standing breakfast bar and hot plate. This much Patrick’s flash lamp had revealed in one quick surveillance. To cross the kitchen one had to go either to the left or right of it, the right being a more direct route. Patrick, being good at his job, went to the left.

I came to the conclusion afterwards that the man hiding behind it refrained from uttering a warning shout to the rest of the household because of supreme confidence he could handle the intruder on his own. Patrick didn’t risk a close encounter, just felled him scientifically by a blow to the neck with the edge of one hand. Together we lowered him soundlessly to the floor. There we came upon one of Hudson’s men.

“Only knocked out,” Patrick reassured me barely audibly. “They must still be using expendable local louts — that lunatic was only armed with a chopper.” He had caught the weapon before it crashed to the floor, a wicked-looking thing in the glimmer of the flash light, its blade honed sharp.

We went out into the corridor, Patrick seeking and finding the switch that turned off the light. Once again we were in darkness and once again we waited. Murder in the Dark has never been one of my favourite games.

No one came to investigate who had switched off the light. Still we waited. Contrary to some peoples’ opinion Patrick does not storm buildings firing from the hip. When engaged in this kind of operation he has the patience of a hunting cat. Over the months I too have learned patience. But I am the fretting sort. I was fretting now.

The corridor in which we stood led into a large, and as far as I could see, rectangular hall. The floor was thickly carpeted and as we moved slowly towards it our feet made no sound. Then I heard muted voices.

I was wondering why no one had been left on guard in the hall when, only feet in front of us, a man crossed from one side of it to the other and went into a room. Light streaming from the door revealed him to be wearing the same kind of clothing as the members of the anti-terrorist branch whom Hudson had brought with him. But this man carried a Russian sub-machine gun.

He came out of the room again and closed the door behind him. His eyes affected by the light in the room he did not see us, but must have heard a faint sound as Patrick stalked him. He began to turn, thus positioning himself for a savage chopping blow to the throat. Within the room the voices murmured on.

Patrick handed me the sub-machine gun and I saw his teeth flash white in the dark as he grinned broadly at me. Oh yes, Ingrid Langley knows how to use one of these too.

We stood one on each side of the door. It wasn’t very difficult to picture what was going on inside. A man’s voice-no particular accent, ill-educated, amused but tense — was telling Hudson what he would do to Rosemary if the Detective Inspector’s men didn’t beat up Fraser. My head swam. The threat was quite unspeakable.

The voice was not David Hartland’s.

“It’s only a matter of time before —” Hudson began.

“Your reinforcements arrive?” a woman finished saying for him. “How predictable you are, Inspector. Are they all as efficient as the ones who were guarding this house? Or the man who, for all his training and equipment, succumbed to being hit over the head with an axe?” She laughed. “I can’t get over what you’ve just told us — Gillard putting himself back in hospital over that stupid publicity stunt.”

“I earnestly advise you to abandon this dangerous and stupid undertaking,” Hudson said furiously. “There’s absolutely no chance of it succeeding.”

The woman laughed. “Listen to the man. We
have
succeeded. This is the final stage — the rewards after all the risks and hard work. Do as my friend says or I’ll fetch the brat myself and pull all her hair out.”

“He’s taking his time,” someone grumbled.

Soundlessly Patrick left my side.

“Rachel’s done nothing to hurt you!” cried another woman, at a guess, Rosemary. “You’ve got what you want. You’ve ruined DARE. Killed all those people. Why does she have to suffer too? She’s only a little —” She shrieked, and there was the sound of a blow.

“Bastard!” yelled Fraser. “You stinking yellow bastard!” Then Rosemary began to scream.

“Stop it!” Hudson roared. “All right! Only leave her alone.” All at once I felt so weak my legs nearly gave way. I turned and was confronted by a dark figure, the head hooded with just two eye holes. By the time I had controlled a cry of pure terror I realized that it was Patrick.

He laid a restraining hand on my arm as Hudson was forced to give orders. The Detective Inspector had to repeat them, shouting, and there was a protest from Fraser.

“You disobeyed orders,” the woman said. 

The sickening sounds commenced and it seemed as though hours passed as we stood there having to listen to them. Then the man spoke, harshly, telling the policemen to hit Fraser harder.

Patrick’s grip on my arm tightened but I knew that this was involuntary. He was hardly aware of me, concentrating instead on reactions and mood inside the room. The grip became like a vice when one of the policemen swore in protest and then cried out as he himself was struck.

Patrick turned the handle of the door and pushed it wide and they were all so engrossed in what was happening that for a moment or two no one noticed him. Then Rosemary gave a little scream of fright.

“Where is she?” the man said.

“Hiding,” said Patrick in his own voice but so cold-bloodedly that Rosemary began to cry.

“Isn’t the door locked? What the devil do you mean she’s hiding?” shouted the woman.

From my position to one side of the door I could see Patrick and now, as he turned to face the speaker, the expression in his eyes was unreadable.

“The door’s open. There’s no key in the lock,” said Patrick. “Perhaps you didn’t …” He left the rest unsaid, shrugging disinterestedly.

“Go and find her,” the woman spat. “If you come back empty-handed consider yourself fired.”

Patrick shrugged again and turned on his heel. As he came through the doorway he switched off the light. He dived to one side as the shooting started.

Shoved backwards by my working partner I made myself very inconspicuous in one corner of the hall, the one I had chosen while we were waiting. This was necessary as the individual firing through the doorway was doing so utterly at random. My mind seemed to be lull of stabbing jets of dame and the sound of bullets tearing into woodwork and smashing glass.

Silence but for Rosemary’s sobs. 

The one who had been firing walked into the hall to see who he had killed.

“Get him,” Patrick said in a low cold voice.

I thought of Rachel and aimed low, scything the man’s legs from under him in a short burst. He crashed down. I ran and picked up the fallen weapon by its webbing strap and was just behind Patrick when he burst into the room and put on the light.

Images crowded into my brain. A beautiful black-haired young woman crouched over Chris Fraser who was lying on the floor. Two men dressed in dark blue sweaters and jeans steadying between them another with blood running down his face, but just about to let him go and tackle the fourth man swinging a gun in Rosemary’s direction. And Hudson, already launching himself at the armed man.