The Burning (45 page)

‘We’ve got it covered,’ Doyle said. ‘There.’ He pointed to a blue VW hatchback parked in a small lay-by at the side of the lane. Just beyond it was an open gate at
the end of a track she had occasionally walked along. It led through a copse and into a sloping field used for summer grazing.

‘Through that gate and keep going until I tell you to stop.’

Jenny had a very dark feeling as she shifted into four-wheel drive and slowed to turn into the track.

‘Don’t stop,’ Doyle urged, and jabbed her shoulder with the gun.

Turning into the narrow track and moving through the untouched snow, Jenny became aware of the sound of his breathing: it grew slower and heavier, and more menacing.

‘Stop there.’

Jenny came to a halt and pulled on the handbrake. They were out of sight of the road now and the Land Rover could probably remain here for several days before it was noticed.

‘Lower the windows,’ Doyle ordered sharply.

Jenny did as he asked, sensing another shift in his energy. They had climbed a further 200 feet since Melin Bach and the air was several degrees cooler still. Within seconds, the inside of the
car had turned into an ice box.

‘Hand me the key.’

Pulling the key from the ignition and handing it back between the seats, Jenny was aware of a feeling of unreality, as if she were withdrawing from her body and looking down on herself from
above. She heard Doyle fetch something from his pocket and the sound of him removing the lid from a container of some sort.

‘I forgot water. You’ll have to do your best.’

He flicked on the overhead light in the back and shoved a small white container forward to her. She dimly made out the word. ‘Elavil (amitryptyline)’ on the label. The generic name
of the anti-depressant drug was all too familiar to her. She had read it many times on the post-mortem reports of women – it was always women – who had taken their own lives. A dozen or
so pills and she’d be unconscious. In the freezing car she wouldn’t stand a chance.

‘Start swallowing,’ Doyle barked, ‘unless you’d prefer me to make a mess of you.’

Jenny reached into the container with fingers that no longer felt like her own, and pressed a pill to her lips. She swallowed, then hooked out another.

‘How are you going to clear passport control?’ Jenny said, no longer fearing that she had anything to lose. ‘Ryan will have put out an alert for her. It doesn’t matter
what the name on the passport says, there are cameras on every desk that will pick her out immediately.’ She was busking now, asserting as facts things she had no understanding of, but again,
what did she stand to lose? ‘And if Robbie’s with you it’s even more certain you’ll be picked up. You don’t leave the country with a child without its face being
checked against the database. You’ll be stuck in the UK with your pictures in all the newspapers and your images picked up almost every time you go outdoors.’

‘Shut up and swallow,’ Doyle hissed.

‘If you really want to get away, you’ll need a much better plan than that.’

‘I said swallow!’ He thrust the barrel hard into her ribs.

‘I know how you can do it,’ Jenny said, through teeth clenched against the pain. She steeled herself for another blow. ‘My boyfriend’s a pilot. Light aircraft. He can get
you out of the country unnoticed.’

Doyle fell silent. She could sense him brooding, thinking through his options.

‘How would that work?’

‘I’ll call him and get him to arrange a plane tonight. He can take you to the continent, drop you off at one of the private airfields he knows in France. He can get you a car at the
other end, whatever you need. If you give me my phone, I’ll look him up for you right now – show you I’m not bluffing.’

She could feel Doyle’s anger at having lost the initiative, but she could equally sense his interest. She believed he wanted to live; her very worst fear had been that he was beyond
caring. Wanting to live was good, something she could trade on. He was psychotic, but not suicidal.

‘I think we both want the same thing, Mr Doyle – to be with the people we love and out of harm’s way. Give me the phone. Let me show you.’

Grudgingly, Doyle retrieved her phone and passed it forward. The time it took to switch on and boot up felt like an age. Jenny silently prayed that when it did finally come to life there would
be a signal. Her prayer was answered: one bar, then a second. Not much, but enough. She clicked on the web browser and typed in his name: Flight Lieutenant Michael Sherman. An agonizing wait, then
slowly Michael’s image appeared on his company website, posing in front of a Cessna. The paragraph of biography beneath made it sound as if he had liberated Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq
single-handed.

Jenny handed the phone back to Doyle. ‘That’s him. He’ll do it if he knows I’m safe.’

‘Yeah?’ Doyle said distrustfully. ‘What guarantee do I have of that?’

‘I’m carrying his child,’ Jenny said.

‘That’s sweet,’ Doyle said. ‘Though I’d say you were a little old for that.’ He thought briefly about her offer, then handed back the phone. ‘Call him.
It has to be tonight. No tricks. No police. Any problems,’ he touched her cheek with the gun, ‘you know what happens.’

Jenny found the last text Michael had sent her and dialled the number. There was an agonizing time-lag as she waited for it to connect, and an even longer wait for him to answer. Jenny pictured
him looking at the screen and weighing whether he could face talking to her.
Please, Michael! Please!

She had imagined wrong. He answered breathlessly, as if he had run from the other side of the house. ‘Jenny. Thank God. Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ Jenny said, painfully aware of the thinness of her voice. ‘I need you to do a favour for me.’

‘You don’t sound all right. Where are you?’

‘Michael, listen. Just tell me whether you can do this – yes or no. I need you to take two friends of mine and their child to France, tonight – to one of those private landing
strips you were always flying to. They need to travel urgently. I’ll come with them to the airfield and you take them from there. Can you do that for me?’

Michael answered without hesitating, switching spontaneously into professional mode. ‘Of course. I can book a Cessna out of Bristol. What time would they like to leave?’

Jenny turned to Doyle. ‘He can fly you from Bristol. What time?’

‘Tell him an hour.’

‘An hour?’ Jenny said.

‘I can do that – just,’ Michael said. ‘Tell them I can put them down near Rouen. There’s a field there, a couple of kilometres out of town.’

‘One more thing,’ Jenny said, ‘this is a private arrangement. No one’s to know. We can’t afford any hitches. Of any kind.’ She glanced at Doyle. ‘Or you
won’t be seeing me again.’ Jenny added. ‘Is that clear?’

‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ Michael said. ‘You know where to go.’

When she had ended the call, Doyle took the phone from her and ordered her to sit tight. He climbed out of the back, came round to the driver’s door and made her step outside.

‘Stand against the car.’

She leant against the rear door, telling herself it would be OK. He wouldn’t kill her here. She had given him an escape route. Keeping the gun pressed to her stomach, Doyle pulled a pair
of thick cable ties from his jacket pocket, looped them both around her outstretched wrists, then pulled them tight to make handcuffs that cut into her flesh. Next he pushed her into the back seat
and put ties around her ankles, trussing her up like a bird.

‘Now shut your mouth,’ Doyle said, and smacked the tip of the shotgun barrel against the bridge of her nose.

Streaming tears, Jenny crumpled against the door and silently sobbed.

Indifferent to her pain, Doyle climbed into the front, rested the gun against the passenger seat and backed out of the track. He turned left on the lane and drove with reckless speed towards the
road at the top of the hill that would take them down the side of the valley to Chepstow.

Slumped in the back seat, her nose clogged with blood, and losing all feeling beyond the tight bands around her wrists and ankles, Jenny could do nothing except close her eyes and continue to
pray. Her only consolation was that the two pills she had swallowed had left her feeling strangely disembodied, a spectator to her own nightmare.

Doyle drove on in determined silence, following a route through the back roads that he must have carefully memorized. He emerged on the fringes of Chepstow and headed for the bridge, moderating
his speed now he was amongst traffic. It a was a small mercy and Jenny clung to it.

Ten minutes later he was turning off the motorway into the grey, rundown streets of Patchway on the outer fringes of Bristol. Jenny lost her bearings as he turned off the main road and threaded
through an estate of ugly, prefabricated houses interspersed with low-rise blocks of even more dismal flats. He pulled up into the small car park outside a particularly brutal, concrete-sided
building. He tucked the gun under his coat and disappeared inside, leaving Jenny imprisoned in the car. A short while after he’d left her, a group of hooded teenagers wandered past. Jenny
struggled with all her strength against the urge to beat her bound hands against the glass and cry out for help, knowing that if Doyle appeared he wouldn’t think twice about shooting at them
then killing her. That was why he had left her there, of course: it was a test to see if he could trust her.

The youths drifted out of sight. Several more minutes passed before Doyle emerged from the building, lugging a holdall. Kelly came after him wearing her pink anorak with the hood pulled up.
Clinging to her front with his arms looped around her neck was a small child in a blue snowsuit: it was Robbie. Doyle slung the holdall into the passenger seat and put the sawn-off shotgun on top.
Kelly came around to the opposite side of the back seat and climbed in with Robbie, who looked as if he had been dragged unwillingly from his bed.

‘Hi,’ Kelly said matter-of-factly, then turned her gaze out of the window as Doyle got behind the wheel.

Robbie peered warily at Jenny from beneath his bleached-blond fringe, then buried his face in his mother’s coat. Kelly wrapped a protective arm around him and stroked his back. By the time
they had turned out of the car park and reached the end of the street, Robbie had his thumb in his mouth and was drifting back to sleep.

They travelled in silence towards the airport, passing unnoticed through the late-evening traffic. Jenny kept her eyes front or angled away from Kelly, but from occasional sideways glimpses saw
that she was cradling the sleeping Robbie’s head as lovingly as any other mother would. She exuded an aura of tranquillity that seemed also to have settled on Doyle. Neither spoke to the
other, but Jenny sensed that they didn’t have to; it was as if they had a complete understanding that transcended the normal modes of communication.

They were less than half a mile from the turn-off to the main passenger terminal when Doyle spoke for the first time since leaving Patchway.

‘Where to?’

Jenny told him to continue onwards to the next roundabout. From there she directed him along the unsigned road that led to a parking area next to a cluster of buildings that housed airport
administration and the offices of the smaller freight and private-charter airlines. Among the handful of cars parked outside at this late hour, Jenny spotted Michael’s Saab. He was here. She
instructed Doyle to drive close to the gate in the wire perimeter fence, through which they would have to pass on foot in order to reach the aircraft. As they drew nearer, she could see that
Michael was already waiting on their side of the gate.

‘That’s him,’ Jenny said. ‘Straight ahead.’

She felt Doyle’s tension rise as they came to a halt and reversed into a space no more than thirty feet from where Michael stood.

‘Tell him to come over,’ Doyle said, and wound down Jenny’s window.

Jenny called over to him. ‘Michael, could you come here, please?’

Doyle lowered the front passenger window and reached for his gun as Michael approached at an unhurried pace.

Michael glanced first at Jenny, registering her damaged face, then turned his gaze to Doyle, giving every impression of not having noticed the gun pointing at him.

‘Good evening,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve managed to secure a six-seater Cessna. I’ve registered a flight to Rouen, but we can stop short and land at a field next to a
village that lies just outside the city. Would that suit you?’

‘We’ll need transport.’

‘Of course. I can phone through and book a taxi into town while we’re in the air. That’s probably best. I do it all the time.’

Jenny couldn’t help but admire his calm. He even managed to smile.

Michael nodded towards the gun. ‘If you’re planning to bring that with you, I’d suggest you put it in the bag for now.’

‘Go back to the gate,’ Doyle said.

Michael cast another glance at Jenny then went back the way he had come.

Doyle produced a small pocket knife and reached back between the seats. ‘Give me your hands.’

Jenny held out her wrists. He cut them loose, then reached down and did the same to her ankles. The blood rushed painfully back into her hands and feet.

‘We all go together. You carry the bag.’

Following his instructions, Jenny climbed out of the car and fetched the holdall from the passenger seat. Doyle motioned for Kelly to go first, Robbie clinging to her waist with his legs, his
face still buried deep in her chest. Jenny followed several paces behind, with Doyle bringing up the rear. He had the gun in his right hand concealed under the flap of his coat. They passed through
the gate without incident, then Doyle gestured for Michael to lead off at the front of the procession where he could see him.

Michael took them around the front of the building then struck out across an open expanse of tarmac that was only dimly lit by lights buried in the ground, towards a small hangar. A
single-engine aircraft stood outside it, a single set of steps set out beneath its open door. A nervous flier at the best of times, Jenny prepared herself for the ordeal that lay ahead. She knew
enough to understand that a night flight in winter was hazardous, and that trying to land on an unlit airstrip in the pitch black was close to impossible. Then there was the question of what
happened once they were on the ground. A feeling of dread swept over her as she imagined what Doyle would be planning: two barrels – one shot for her and one for Michael. And if his previous
actions were anything to go by, he’d set fire to the plane and leave them to burn up in the wreckage while he and Kelly vanished into the night. It would take accident investigators days to
figure out what had happened.