No Mercy (46 page)

As they left and returned to the road, Paula gripped his arm. From the direction of the armaments plant they heard
a steady humming sound of machinery moving. It was quite
loud and then it stopped.

'What was that?' Paula asked, scared.

'My guess is it was good news. Newman's disarmed the
missile. Afterwards, he set the machinery moving to see what
happened. I think that was a good sign. Now for the church.
Maybe the vicar's inside.'

'Without a light?'

'I'll go in first,' Tweed said firmly.

He pushed open one of the double doors, paused,
listened. Not a sound. His expression was grim as he felt
around for the switch to turn on lights. The interior was suddenly flooded with light. He walked forward, step by
step. Ignoring his order, Paula followed, then froze in mid-stride.

289
On the altar, facing them, the Reverend Darkfield was
staring at them. At least his severed head was. Placed where
they had once found the head of a calf. Tweed went closer.
Blood dripped over the edge of the altar. The eyes were
open - someone had inserted matchsticks to keep them that
way.

29

Paula ran out of the church. She thought she was going to
throw up. Reaching inside her shoulder bag for a
handkerchief, her hand touched her water bottle. She
grabbed it, tore off the cap, inserted the neck in her mouth
and gurgled as she was swallowing. The water quenched the
queasiness in her stomach. She recapped the bottle, shoved it in her bag and began walking back and forth across the road, taking in deep breaths of cold air. Tweed's hand was
gripping her arm.

'Why?' she eventually asked, standing on the far side of the road, as far away as possible from the church.

'I had wondered,' Tweed said. 'I heard the bell clanging when I phoned Lucinda. You're just heard the noise the
armaments plant makes when it's operating. Someone paid
the vicar to ring
the bell nonstop to mask the humming
sound when the plant was working.'

'But why kill him?'

'The last witness left alive who might have let slip what was happening.'

'How the hell did they get rid of the body, then?'

'Coming back up the path beside Abbey Grange, I noticed
the marks of a heavy single wheel. My guess is the killer used
a wheelbarrow to transport the body on to the moor, then dumped body and barrow into one of those deep slimy marshes Dartmoor is notorious for.'

'It could have been the cult,' she said, her voice trembling.

'Forget the cult. That's a story spread by the killer to
mislead us.'

'What's happening?' Newman's voice called out. 'I
removed the lethal tip from the missile, found a strongroom
lined with steel and put it in there. Probably built for that purpose. Is something wrong?'

'Go inside the flaming church and you'll find out.'
snapped Paula, still not her normal self.

Newman, clearly surprised by her attitude, glanced at her,
then turned round and walked inside the church. He was
inside longer than Tweed would have expected. When he
came out he was holding his .38 Smith & Wesson in his hand. He walked up to Paula.

'I see now why you're upset. It's quite horrible. I've been checking every corner of the church in case the fiend who
did that was still there. The place is deserted.'

'Probably has been for some time,' Tweed commented.

'Why was there a light in the bell tower,' Paula asked, 'but
no light in the church?'

'The killer is cunning,' Tweed surmised. 'In case anyone
did come along - as we did — they would explore the bell
tower first, find the Reverend Darkfield wasn't there, and
walk away. Since the church had no lights they wouldn't
think of going inside it.'

'But you did,' Paula said.

'Yes, but I had certain data. Drago Volkanian told me he was in favour of conservation. This was proved by the
supermarket depot on the M3. It looks more like Wisley
Gardens than a plant. The linked-up cottages intrigued me.
Eventually I wondered if they housed his so-secret
armaments plant. He'd have had to get permission from the
local council for planning. The idea of making that plant
look like a typical Devonian row of thatched cottages would
have appealed to them. But they wouldn't want noise, not industrial noise. So someone persuaded the Reverend
Darkfield to ring the bell when it was operating. The killer
simply paid him larger sums while the production line was
secretly turned over to making missiles.'

'A feasible theory,' Newman agreed.

'Even more feasible when I noticed the oil tracks from
large vehicles of very recent movement. And more are there
now. Paula, you remember when Buchanan's assistant,
Warden, drove us ostensibly to Abbey Grange, then lost his
way and took us all the way across to the coast of North
Devon by mistake? I let him continue when I noticed oil
from large vehicles was marking the route we followed. You
remember that?'

'Yes, I do.'

'And later we drove along a promenade-like road with the
sea on our left? I got Warden to stop just past Harmer's
Head cliffs and we explored a deep gulch in the rock wall.
Inside we discovered something curious hidden away - a long railed landing stage with wheels to make it
easy to
move. Where else did we see something very similar?'

'My Lord! I've got it. On that island in the Med - where
beyond the edge of the landing platform the
Oran
had used there was a very similar landing stage under the water.'

'So you know our next objective?'

'To drive the same route Warden took us by mistake. Because that could be the landing point for the
Oran
on its
way here from Angora to collect the missiles needed for the
long-range rockets obtained from that madman, Kim, of
North Korea.'

'And Drago's armaments plant here has very recently produced a large number of the missiles they need.'

'To fire at which target?' Newman asked.

'I can only guess. Paris, London, Berlin?' He checked his
watch. 'Now we must head fast for Harmer's Head, hoping we're in time . . .'

As they hurried back to where the Land Rovers were
parked a question struck Paula. She asked it as they hustled
along.

'You said "our next objective", as though there will be then a final one. What is that?'

'To return to Abbey Grange so I can attempt to identify
who is what the newspapers, in their lurid way, have called
the Skeleton Killer.'

30

Tweed, with Paula and Newman, ran quietly back to where the two Land Rovers were parked with the rest of the team.

'This is the plan,' he told them. 'We will now drive with
me in the lead to the coast of North Devon. We drive a short
distance past the row of cottages, then we turn right on to a
rough wide track across the moor.'

'Who drives which vehicle?' asked Harry.

'I was coming to that. I will drive the first Land Rover
with Paula by my side and Marler in the back. Harry, you
drive the second one behind me. Newman and Nield will be
your passengers. It will be a rocky ride over rough territory
and I'll be moving as fast as I dare. All clear?'

'There's going to be a firefight?' Harry suggested.

'Maybe. If so it will be a murderous one. Depends on the
situation when we arrive at Harmer's Head.'

He jumped in behind the wheel of the Land Rover as
Paula joined him, and Marler dived into the back seat.
Marler was carrying his Armalite. He'd brought it with him
concealed under his overcoat from Stonehenge.

Tweed crawled past Abbey Grange, the bell tower and the
church with its hideous altarpiece. He pressed his foot down
as soon as they were beyond the cottages. He turned his
headlights on full beam. On the road ahead were clear oil marks of trucks with a wide span.

'Their maintenance is lousy,' he commented. 'Fortunately,
we can follow them.'

At the point where, near a side road, the marks
disappeared he swung the Land Rover along the track
Warden had mistakenly driven along. It had been another piece of luck. The marks continued along the side road, which was little more than a wide lane bordered on both
sides with gorse hedge.

In his rear-view mirror he saw Harry's vehicle close
behind him, but not so close that it couldn't pull up if Tweed
suddenly stopped. Tweed lowered his window and cold air flooded into the vehicle. Although now feeling very fresh, Paula welcomed its stimulus. She glanced at Tweed, whose
expression was very grim.

'You're hoping the
Oran
will be there, collecting that huge collection of missiles?'

'Yes. Again, we need luck. At Park Crescent I phoned a marine expert, gave him enough data to make a calculation.
If he got it right, tonight is when those missiles go on board.
Again, we need a lot of luck.'

'You said we're heading for Harmer's Head. That isn't
where we found the landing stage.'

'No, but it gives us the best viewing point where we can
look down and see what - if anything - is happening.'

'So what do we do then?'

'I have no idea. I'll decide when we get there.'

Earlier the freighter had arrived off the North Devon shore.
Abdul had first signalled the agreed code - four flashes,
followed by three, followed by the final four. The skipper
then waited tensely on the bridge, staring at the mighty cliffs
above the landing point.

It was a relief when the same signal, the same sequence of
flashes, was repeated from the coast. It was safe for him to
steer his vessel into the difficult landing point. He steered
through ninety degrees, heading for the shore.

He then went down to the stern end of the bridge, looked
down at his men crowded on deck. He shouted his orders.

To encourage them he threatened to cut off their heads if
they messed up.

All of his men were on deck with the exception of those
needed to attend to the engine room below decks.

There was a small group waiting ashore with the large
trucks carrying the missile cargo. They were the loaders, the
men who had carried the missiles from the Dartmoor plant
to their trucks.

One man, the commander, spoke perfect English with a hint of an American twang. With an expertly created fake
passport he passed as coming from the Lebanon. He had taken a military engineering course at a certain institution in Maryland. At the Dartmoor plant he had specified the
materials needed to convert the conveyor belt from artillery-
shell production to the system creating missiles.