Fatal Legacy (42 page)

They laid his daughter down on a stretcher but she sat up again at once and held out her arms towards her father. He held her on his knee as one of the medics took her pulse, listened to her chest through a stethoscope and shone a bright light into her eyes.

‘She seems fine; lungs are as clear as a bell.’

‘I’m thirsty, Daddy, and I haven’t had my tea.’

The three grown men in the back of the ambulance stared at her in amazement then burst out laughing. Bess looked at them in confusion and they stopped at once. Someone passed her a carton of orange juice and she drank it down thirstily, followed by an egg sandwich from someone else’s lunch box. Fenwick’s mobile phone rang, and he answered it one-handed. It was his mother, calling from the police car that was escorting her to Harlden. She was on the bypass less than five minutes away.

As he told her the good news, Fenwick thought quickly. Bess was physically all right, eating heartily and showing no signs of
shock. She would need to be questioned by a specialist about the abduction, but that could wait until the morning. Right now what she needed more than anything else was her family around her and a good night’s sleep.

The fact that she was alive and well hadn’t reduced Fenwick’s intense anger towards Sally Wainwright-Smith. She was out there somewhere and he was consumed by a compulsion to find her. He told his mother to ask the police driver to come straight to Wainwright Hall. As soon as she arrived, he was going to rejoin the hunt.

Sally watched the sudden arrival of the police from the upper landing, where she had just lit the last of her many fires. There was a sound of breaking glass from the floor below and her heart somersaulted up into her throat, but the burst of adrenaline that came with it was as welcome as an old friend. There were footsteps on the floor below, pounding across to the tower and down the main staircase to the ground floor. Sally realised that she was still wearing her evening dress and those ridiculous gloves and shoes.

She knocked the last lighted candle on to its side, and watched briefly as the flame found the wallpaper and glue she had left to feed it. Then she removed her high-heeled shoes and padded over to the south-east side of the house, where there was a metal fire escape leading down to the kitchen roof. Her car was parked in the stable block on the opposite side of the yard from the kitchen, no more than fifty feet away. If she could climb down unseen, there was a chance that she would be able to reach it and escape using the track that ran through the woods.

She opened the small window that led out on to the ladder, then, with her left wrist threaded through the ankle straps of her sandals, climbed out into the chilly darkness. Her bare foot found a metal rung and her toes curled around it. She was easily forty feet above the ground, but the bulk of the Hall protected her from the wind that was gusting strongly from the west.

She eased her body down a few rungs at a time until she was no more than a few feet above the kitchen roof. She was just coiling herself to jump on to it when she froze. A single police officer, preceded by the bouncing light of a torch, was walking
from the kitchen door out towards the stables. Her car was in the outhouse in the furthest corner, opposite the large archway that led on to the track that ran through the kitchen garden and out to the woods.

Her feet touched the rough asphalt of the kitchen roof and she walked across it, as light on her feet as a cat. There was a ten-foot drop to the ground on to gravel, but she jumped down with confidence and dropped straight away into a crouch, barely making a noise. In her mind she was a child again, escaping from the house in the early morning to steal the neighbours’ milk and anything else that they had been stupid enough to leave out for her searching little fingers.

There was a wide yard to cover between the kitchen and the stables, and although there was little moon left in the sky, the lights from the Hall illuminated the gravel in a patchwork of yellow, grey and black. She had no choice but to risk the crossing. The bobbing firefly of torchlight in the stables was making its way steadily towards her car and she had no time left to work her way around slowly. She waited until the officer left one building and entered the next before dashing across the open expanse, her bare back and billowing skirt catching the light of the flames like some menacing gargoyle brought to earth.

Nightingale tried to put thoughts of Bess and Fenwick out of her mind, but she could hear sirens in the distance and the smell of smoke pervaded the yard. She flashed her torch into yet another empty corner of an abandoned stable. It was difficult for her to orientate herself inside the pitch blackness of each building. Heavy cloud was being blown in by westerly winds, obliterating the moon and stars. The Hall was behind her, and she seemed to be in some sort of stable block, long abandoned. She bitterly resented being this far away from the action, but she knew that she would be a liability, and an unshakeable sense of duty prevented her from doing anything but a thorough job.

The sound of a car engine misfiring then starting with a roar broke the silence of the yard. Nightingale ran outside, banging her foot hard against an old boot scraper as she did so. She
ignored the shock of pain and swung round to find the source of the noise. Twin main-beam headlights cut through the night, dazzling her, and she ran towards them, almost blinded. She could just discern a pale face behind the wheel, and then the driver found first gear and the vehicle lurched forward. Nightingale twisted sharply to her right in an attempt to get out of its path as the vehicle came straight towards her. She almost made it, but slipped in the mud of the yard and fell to her knees. The nearside wing smashed into her shoulder and sent her sprawling into the wall of the stable. She put her hand out to break her fall and felt her wrist crack, just before her head crashed heavily into the brickwork. There was a vicious light behind her eyes and then a blackness so absolute she felt herself suffocating in its depths as consciousness ebbed away.

A car drew up to the front of the Hall, and Fenwick watched with relief as his mother climbed out of the back seat with the stiffness inevitable after a high-speed seven-hour journey. He handed her his now sleeping daughter, kissed her cheek briefly and told the driver to take them both home. Then he turned at once to find Boyd. He was standing with his men in the yard at the back of the Hall, watching helplessly as flames engulfed the roof of the building, fanned by the strong winds that were gusting around them. As Fenwick walked up, Boyd turned and spoke to him.

‘If she’s still in there, Chief Inspector, she’s dead.’

Fenwick shook his head. He would have known if Sally was dead. Somehow she had escaped; he was convinced of it.

‘Are you sure she’s not hiding on the estate?’

‘Half my team have left to check the cottages, and your constable searched the outbuildings earlier.’

At the mention of Nightingale’s name, Fenwick felt his heart shrinking. He looked around. She wasn’t with the group.

‘Give me your torch.’

‘What?’ Boyd looked at him stupidly.

‘Give me your torch!’ Fenwick snatched it from him and ran towards the stable block, a terrible fear growing inside him. It was his own life he’d pledged in return for Bess’s; nobody else’s. The din of the blaze and attendant firemen dwindled as
he turned into the square stable yard.

‘Nightingale!’ He shouted out her name as he searched the first building. There were footsteps in the yard outside as Boyd sent men to join the search. He heard a shout: ‘Over here!’

Two of Boyd’s team were bending over a motionless figure lying on the muddied straw.

‘Sweet Jesus, no,’ Fenwick whispered to himself, feeling a terrible sickness.

He joined them and crouched down, shining his torch on to the bone-white face of the woman who lay on her side, half curled into a ball. A huge bruise was already showing on the side of her face, and blood trickled from her nose.

‘Get an ambulance here now!’ His voice was harsh, full of anger and hatred.

Nightingale didn’t seem to be breathing, and he reached out and felt at the base of her jaw for a pulse. There was the faintest beat, and he pressed harder, just to be sure, letting his hand linger on the smooth skin as if in comfort.

Then he felt the ground shudder, and two medics with a stretcher rushed into the yard. He stood back to let them reach her and watched as they strapped a collar around her neck and lifted her carefully on to the stretcher.

‘Will she be all right?’

‘No idea. She’s obviously taken a heavy blow all down her left side, so who knows what internal injuries there are, and with a head injury like this there’s no way of telling until she’s been looked at properly.’

Fenwick watched them take her away in the ambulance that his daughter hadn’t needed, and tried to rationalise the guilt he felt growing within him. He couldn’t and his thoughts would lead to madness. He focused his anger on Sally.

He examined the yard with new eyes; Sally must have had a car hidden out here. There were fresh scratches on one of the wooden gate posts, and traces of silver paint glinted in the light from his torch. Fenwick knew in his gut that she had come this way.

‘Her escape route,’ he said simply, and Boyd nodded, even as he shouted fresh instructions to his team. Four of them clambered into a sturdy four-wheel-drive car and raced off,
bouncing painfully along the track. Another brought a large Ordnance Survey map over and they quickly traced the route they believed Sally must have taken.

‘It comes out three miles to the south, here.’ Fenwick pointed to an edge of woodland on the map. ‘Just a mile away from the main A23. Once she hits that, she could go north to London or south to the coast and we’ll lose her.

‘We don’t know how long she’s been gone but it can’t be more than twenty minutes, and it will have taken her a good ten to fifteen minutes at least to clear the woods. We may only be five minutes, maximum ten, behind her.’

‘I’ll have road blocks set up on all the main roads and scramble the helicopters. Trouble is, there are so many minor roads, she could be anywhere … Chief Inspector! Where are you going?’

Fenwick was racing back towards the Hall and called to Boyd over his shoulder.

‘You’ve got this end covered; I’m going to speak to her husband. He may know where she’s gone. I’ll keep in touch through Operations.’

As he ran to find a car he could commandeer, Fenwick called Cooper in the operations centre.

‘I need to speak to Wainwright-Smith, now. Find him and have him call me at once on my mobile.’

Fenwick drove the strange car efficiently, delighted to feel the power of a two-litre engine surge when he put his foot down. At the entrance gates he paused – right or left, north or south: should he wait or guess? He turned south. She had spent more than five years on the south coast and he was willing to bet that she was heading for familiar territory.

His mobile phone rang and he snatched it up quickly. Cooper was on the other end of the line, calling from the station.

‘I’ve spoken to Wainwright-Smith and he’s going to call you direct, but he says his wife’s contacted him. She’s on her way to a harbour just outside Peacehaven, about nine miles east of Brighton. I’ve let Operations know, and the Superintendent has already briefed Brighton Division.’

‘Where in Peacehaven?’

‘At Halingford Harbour. Wainwright-Smith says they have a motor boat there. Apparently she plans to hide overnight, collect money from a private account and then take the boat over to France tomorrow.’

‘I’m on my way there right now. Get details to Boyd.’

He broke the connection, eager to keep the phone free for Alexander, and pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. Wind buffeted the car and he realised he was heading into a rising storm. Angry gusts were stripping new leaves off trees and snapping older branches that couldn’t bend to their sudden force. Five miles beyond Harlden, an old pine branch lay across the road and he had to brake sharply. He was drawing away from it when Wainwright-Smith finally reached him.

‘Chief Inspector, she’s just called me again and she’s changed her plan. She almost got caught in one of your road blocks and it spooked her. She’s cut across country.’

‘Which route?’

‘Towards Lewes, I think, but that’s not the point. She’s going to leave the country tonight. She’s asked me to join her – in fact, she thinks I’m already on my way.’

‘Surely she’s not thinking of sailing on a night like this? It must be blowing force six or more.’

‘More, I think, but she’s a competent sailor. One of her sugar daddies owned a launch down there and paid her to go sailing with him.’

Fenwick, driving at over seventy along the empty A23, now turned with a squeal of rubber on to the A27 that skirted north of Brighton. Sally was probably only a few miles ahead on the empty, orange-lit road. It was nearly three thirty in the morning, but he felt as alert as if he’d just had a good night’s sleep.

‘Where are you supposed to meet her?’

‘At Salingford Harbour. It’s two miles west of Peacehaven, little more than a cobb with a slipway into the water. We have our boat there.’

‘Did you say
Salingford
? My sergeant thinks you said Halingford.’

‘Good Lord, no. That’s miles away.’

Fenwick’s phone emitted a series of high-pitched bleeps. His battery was running low, not surprising given his usage of it that night.

Alexander heard it. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call him straight back. I have his number.’

‘What time is she expecting you?’

‘Between four and four fifteen. Chief Inspector?’

A sudden pleading in Wainwright-Smith’s tone immediately alerted Fenwick.

‘What?’

‘She told me what she’s done.’

‘Which is?’

‘How she killed Graham, the abduction of your daughter, and about shooting FitzGerald tonight.’

‘Nothing about murdering your uncle?’

There was a pause, then Wainwright-Smith said simply, ‘No.’

Fenwick suspected that he was lying, but realised that that was one crime they would never be able to prove now.

‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘I thought you ought to know!’ Wainwright-Smith sounded surprised. ‘It won’t affect her defence. With the lawyers I can hire, you won’t get a conviction. I’ve already received advice
that we have grounds for pleading not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility.’

Fenwick could feel his anger, present from the moment he had been told that his daughter had disappeared, growing in intensity. His chest, neck and face felt white hot and he was gripping the wheel so hard his fingers ached.

‘My job is to apprehend her, not try her, sir – so why don’t you give this a rest.’ He could hear his voice tight, hard, barely polite, and bit his tongue. His phone was wedged so tightly between his jaw and his shoulder that his neck muscles suddenly went into spasm. He asked Wainwright-Smith to repeat
directions
to the harbour and was glad when the battery finally gave out for he was no longer able to trust himself to speak.

For the next ten minutes he concentrated on nothing but the route ahead. He was driving on a minor road across the South Downs which descended into the silent village of Rottingdean. At the coast he turned left, through Saltdean, then was forced to cut his speed as he searched on his right for the road that would take him down to the harbour where Sally was waiting for her husband. He switched off his engine and lights and tried to call the Harlden operations centre. It was 04.08 by his watch; plenty of time had passed for Brighton Division to assemble a team and arrest Sally as she waited for her husband. His phone was dead but there was a call box not far ahead so he walked over and dialled the enquiries centre. He asked to be put through to Cooper.

‘What’s happening, Sergeant? I’m at the rendezvous and there’s no one else here.’

‘They are, sir! Brighton’s mobilised a full team and Inspector Boyd’s just joined them. Problem is, there’s no sign of Sally Wainwright-Smith.’

A horrible idea occurred to Fenwick.

‘Which harbour, Cooper?’

‘Halingford, about two miles east of Peacehaven.’

‘She’s at
Salingford
, not Halingford; that’s seven miles away. Alexander Wainwright-Smith was supposed to call you. Get the team over here right now!’

‘Are you sure she’s there, sir?’

‘I don’t have eye contact but she’s not where you are, and
I’ve just followed Wainwright-Smith’s exact directions, so yes, I am sure. Hurry them up or she’ll start to panic. She’s expecting her husband by quarter past.’

‘I’ll put you on to Inspector Boyd – hold on.’

There was a pause, then the familiar Yorkshire voice.

‘We’re sending half the team over, sir, and the coastguard is alerted too, but can you go and make visual contact? I don’t want to send the whole lot in case we miss her.’

‘OK. I’ll try and call you back within the next five minutes.’

It was 04.12 as he opened the door of the phone box. It was caught at once by the force of the wind. Each gust smelt of salt and rotting seaweed. It stung his exposed face and brought tears to his eyes as he stumbled down the unlit path to the sea.

Sally waited in the lee of an abandoned chandler’s stall, clutching the ignition key for the boat tightly in her hand. The harbour was empty except for half a dozen boats, which bobbed in the chop that found its way in despite the encircling sea wall. Tonight there were white horses even within its sheltering arms, and she hoped they would be able to put off the start of their journey until the weather had improved.

Sally looked at her watch, started to worry and then remembered that Alex had said he might be late. She would wait until five o’clock and then return to her car. She looked down at her feet as if to check that her suitcase was still there. It contained every single item of value that she owned. Of course there were millions in their joint offshore account, but this was hers, absolutely and in her own name. There was ten thousand pounds in cash that she had taken from the Hall safe that afternoon, the family diamonds and her Patek Philippe watch. On top were the few clothes she could fit in, plus toiletries and shoes. She had chosen a stout aluminium case in which to carry her worldly possessions. It was heavy but
waterproof
, and the sight of it at her feet filled her with an extraordinary feeling of security.

Fenwick stumbled over a stone that had rolled into the
single-lane
road that wound down to the shore, and paused for a full minute to let his eyes adjust to the dark. There were a few
houses around but they were in darkness, and thick scudding clouds covered the moon. As he waited he thought about the mix-up of names – Halingford instead of Salingford. It was a crazy mistake to have happened, particularly as it was
Operations
procedure to spell out the names letter by letter.

The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was no mistake. Wainwright-Smith had sent the full operations team to the wrong location, yet directed Fenwick with minute care to another one. If Sally was here, then Fenwick had been set up to meet her on his own. Why? He hunched down and crept along the narrow roadway. About thirty metres from the shore, the screening hedgerow petered out and he could see the beach ahead. Even in the pitch black the waves shone with an eerie phosphorescence as they crashed and broke on the shingle. To his right was the tiny harbour, with an electric storm lantern hanging from a post by the gate to the boat-owners’ moorings. At first he thought the place was deserted, but then the lantern swung in a wide arc and he caught site of a figure huddling in the shelter of a small hut. It was Sally.

He felt a surge of adrenaline. She was less than a hundred and fifty metres away; he could reach her within half a minute. Part of him wanted to rush out and grab her immediately, but then he remembered that she could be armed, and that he had deliberately been sent out here alone and without backup for a reason he couldn’t fathom.

Before returning to the phone box to call Boyd, he took a moment to scan the scene. The coast here was long and featureless, marked only by the faint line of surf on the shore. To his left as he faced the sea he could see a few lights shining still in the centre of Peacehaven two miles away; otherwise, there was nothing but blackness. He was edging back towards his car when he noticed that one of the far lights seemed to be moving towards him, then another and another. As they came closer, he realised that they were the headlights of oncoming cars; it was Boyle’s team. Any moment now Sally would notice the sudden traffic and wonder at its significance. He hesitated only for a second before deciding what he needed to do.

Sally was scanning the western road, desperate to spot the lights from Alex’s car, and at first she ignored the cars to the east, but it was strange to see three cars driving together this late at night, and she watched them come closer with growing
apprehension
. The wind was screaming around the hut and she could hear nothing else, which made their steady advance almost predatory. She held a hand up to her eyes to shade them from the rain and peered into the distance, then a movement closer to her caught her attention and she swung round to face the landward road with its scattering of houses. She saw a tall figure enter the harbour and then start towards her. At first she thought it must be Alex and she almost cried out, but then stopped herself. Something was wrong.

Alex had said he would be carrying a torch and that he’d flash their signal of three dots – ‘S’ for Sally – to let her know all was well. This man walked with his hands in his pockets, head bent, and there was something wrong in that walk. This man was too tall. This man wasn’t Alex.

She realised in a sudden panic that this could be a trap. Alex had been taken somehow and this man had been sent in his place to capture her. She had left her gun to burn at the Hall. Unarmed, alone, there was no way she could fight him. He was still well over a hundred yards away, neither running nor ambling. If she moved quickly enough she could yet reach her boat. It was her only chance.

To her right, the chill black sea thrashed against the harbour wall. Ahead of her, away in the distance, her boat strained against its mooring, eager to escape. She picked up her case and ran towards it. The wind was ice cold, stronger now than it had been all day, and she could see white horses form and dissolve into foam in front of her. Her feet touched the wet stone of the lower wall and she was struck at once by the sea spray flung up into her face. She heard the man cry out her name and ran even faster. It was Fenwick! The weight of her case slowed her down, but it was her only lifeline and she couldn’t leave it behind.

She heard another shout behind her as she reached the boat. She turned on the petrol as a matter of habit but the night was so dark now that she could barely see the controls. By the
flickering flame of her lighter she pushed the key into the ignition. She turned it, and the engine spluttered then grudgingly coughed into life.

Fenwick looked along the harbour-wall, disappearing into the darkness. He could see Sally crouched in the cockpit of the sturdy sea-going boat but couldn’t believe she would be foolhardy enough to try and leave the tiny harbour and head out to sea. Waves were crashing over the top of the stout stone wall, leaving the rough concrete blocks and seaweed-covered rocks awash with spray.

He called out: ‘Stop! Halt! Police!’ but there was a sudden white swirl of foam and he watched as she yanked the mooring line free.

‘Sally, for God’s sake! Come back! You’ll never make it!’

He couldn’t tell whether his words reached her over the noise of the wind and engine, but she carried on relentlessly driving the boat towards the stormy waters at the harbour mouth. The protective wall was a long curving arm of stones and concrete blocks about five feet wide and twelve high with a flat, roughly finished walkway along the top. Fenwick started to run along its slippery cobbles and was drenched within seconds by the relentless pounding of the waves. Twice he was knocked off his feet as spray crashed over him, and he had to cling on to the slimy rocks to prevent himself from sliding into the water. Sally was close enough to see now, white-faced, wide-eyed, determined.

He watched helplessly as the small boat fought through the churning mass of water swirling around the rocks that marked the end of the harbour wall. At times the force of the sea was so strong that she appeared to go backwards, but eventually the nose of the boat crept forward.

‘Sally! Don’t do it. Come back!’

She turned to face him as if his words had reached her, and in the faint glow cast by the harbour light he was sure that he saw her smile and shake her head. He was almost at the end of the wall now. The waves here were higher and stronger than they were closer to land, and he could barely retain his balance, but he was still desperate to try and stop Sally from rushing
headlong into almost certain death. Her boat seemed tiny in the waves, and even with its powerful motor he could see that she was already in trouble.