Текст книги "Stay Alive"

Автор книги: Simon Kernick

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Fifty

‘ARE YOU OKAY?’ asked Amanda over the noise of the Land Rover’s engine.

Jess nodded weakly in the passenger seat. ‘I think so.’ She didn’t want to look at her leg but she forced herself to. She knew a bit about entry and exit wounds from watching too many seasons of CSI, and she could see that the bigger hole where the bullet had exited her leg was only a couple of inches from where it had gone in. ‘I’m not sure how much damage the bullet did,’ she said, ‘but it’s bleeding a fair bit.’

‘We’ll get you help soon.’

‘Who was that guy? The one who helped us?’

‘I don’t know. He’s the one who got involved earlier, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah. That was him.’ Jess took a deep breath. ‘God, I can’t believe I almost got killed back there.’ She began shaking in the seat. She’d been hit by a car once while walking home from secondary school. It had been her own fault. She’d been texting someone and had walked right out in front of it. Luckily, it had only struck her a glancing blow and, having convinced the driver she was okay, she’d limped home, only to go into complete shock as she’d put the key in the lock, almost fainting on the doorstep. She had that exact same feeling again now, and it made it difficult to think of anything else. And yet something was bothering her.

‘We’ll be in Tayleigh soon,’ said Amanda. ‘Then we can get you to a hospital.’

‘What did they mean back there about you killing your husband? I thought it was The Disciple.’

‘Of course it was The Disciple,’ said Amanda, giving Jess a smile that looked way too condescending.

‘So why have so many people been chasing you then?’

The smile disappeared. ‘I told you. I’m just a normal woman trying to get over the death of my husband, who wants to be left alone. That’s all.’

As they drove through the darkness, Jess stared at her, thinking. ‘It’s just I can’t understand why they’d say all that stuff unless they were really sure of it.’

Amanda sighed. ‘Look, it doesn’t make any difference. They were still wrong.’

They fell silent for a few moments and Jess decided to let it go. All she wanted now was to be reunited with Casey, and put this whole nightmarish episode behind her.

Amanda took a deep breath, then another, before slowing the car.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ She pulled up at the side of the road, got out and staggered round the front of the car before bending over in front of a gorse bush, her hands on her knees.

Jess turned away, feeling nauseous herself. It was still almost impossible to come to terms with everything that had happened today. Her step-aunt and step-uncle were dead. So were many other people. Casey was still missing. And the whole thing centred round one person.

Amanda.

The door flew open fast and, before Jess could defend herself, she felt strong hands clamped round her neck, squeezing hard. She tried to struggle but it was as if all the strength in her body was sapping rapidly away and, as she was pushed back into the seat, her vision already blurring, she found herself staring into Amanda’s eyes. But they were different now. The expression in them was cold and determined.

Jess tried to struggle. She grabbed at Amanda’s arms, tried to get a grip on them, but they didn’t seem to move, and she was choking now, unable to breathe, feeling as if her lungs were going to burst.

Her last thought was that this was such an unfair way to die, after all she’d been through, at the hands of a woman she’d grown to trust, and then her eyes closed and she lost consciousness.

Fifty-one

SCOPE STOOD AT the open front door to the farmhouse, keeping out of sight of anyone who might be inside, listening hard. He could hear a barely audible moaning coming from one corner of the front room, but nothing else.

He remembered there being two gunmen in the forest earlier, just after he’d killed the one who’d shot at Casey, and he’d now killed them both. But someone had taken the big guy’s gun. There was no doubt about that. Scope had checked all round his body and there was no sign of it. But if there was a third gunman inside, then why hadn’t he taken a shot at Scope when he’d had his back to him?

But the gun was gone. So someone had taken it.

He looked back towards the other gunman, but he was still flat out on his back on the concrete.

Slowly, he crept round the front of the farmhouse and looked through the side window. The room appeared empty but he could just make out a pair of stout legs in a floral dress poking out in front of the sofa. The rest of the woman’s body was obscured by the sofa, but it was obvious she was the one whose moans he could hear. He continued further round until he was staring into the kitchen and the hallway beyond. But again it was empty.

Knowing he couldn’t leave an injured woman on her own, Scope crept back round and very slowly pushed open the front door with the barrel of the gun, standing off to one side, just in case there was someone there planning to ambush him. Then, when the door was fully open, he took a cautious step inside, keeping his finger tight on the gun’s trigger.

He now had a view all the way down the hallway to the end of the house. Confident that there was no one hiding there, he looked round, his gaze falling on the old lady lying on her back. She was a big woman of about seventy with her grey hair tied back in a large bun, and Scope was sickened when he saw that her face was a mass of bruises. Her nose was dripping blood down one cheek and it looked as if it was broken.

‘Jesus,’ he said under his breath, lowering the gun and crouching down next to her. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he told her, lifting her arm and establishing that she still had a strong pulse. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’ He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him, managing a weak smile.

‘There’s another one in here,’ she said quietly, her voice a hoarse whisper, the accent local. ‘He’s out the back, and he’s got a gun.’

Scope nodded and stood up, taking a step towards the door, the gun raised again now.

He heard movement behind him, as if the old lady was sitting up, and some deep-seated instinct caused him to turn round.

He just had half a second to process the fact that she was sitting completely upright, holding the missing gun two-handed and pointing it directly at his upper body, before she pulled the trigger.

Only the fact that he was already reacting and diving to one side saved his life, but the bullet still caught him somewhere in the midriff with a ferocious jolt, as if someone was driving a baseball bat into his ribs, and he fell backwards against an armchair, already aiming his own weapon and pulling the trigger before he even had a chance to think about it.

Scope’s shot was a lucky one. It caught the old lady in the mouth, sending a fine cloud of blood over the sofa behind her. At the same time, her gun discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and disappearing somewhere behind Scope, and then it slipped from her fingers and her head tilted back until it came to rest on one of the sofa cushions, leaving her staring upwards at the ceiling.

For a full minute, Scope didn’t move. He’d killed a number of times before, not just in the heat of battle, but also in cold blood, when he’d been avenging the death of his daughter. He’d never, however, shot an old woman, and he was having difficulty coming to terms with what he’d just done. It was surreal. Here was an elderly local woman in a print floral dress, her face battered and bruised as if she’d been the victim of a brutal crime herself, and then, just like that, she’d tried to kill him.

She’d come close, too. He put his hand on his shirt where he’d been hit and felt the wetness of the blood, before finding the exit wound on the left-hand side of his upper back, just below the shoulder blade. It had left a big hole in his jacket, and he was bleeding heavily. Slowly, taking a deep breath, he stood up, flinching from the pain. It felt as if a couple of ribs had been broken, but thankfully he could still move, although God knew what his insides were looking like. Often it was impossible to tell the seriousness of a gunshot injury for some time after it had been inflicted.

Still clutching the gun, he staggered into the hallway, spotting a telephone on a chest of drawers next to the staircase. He lifted the receiver and, after only the briefest hesitation, dialled 999, trying hard not to think about the fact that he’d killed five people that night, and that apart from Jess and Casey, who were still far from safe themselves, there was no one out there who could say whether or not he was one of the good guys.

Fifty-two

IGNORING THE MOANS from the back of the Land Rover, Amanda checked the phone she’d taken from Jess and saw that at last they had a signal, even if it was just two bars.

Slowing the car down, she glanced over her shoulder at Jess, who was tied up in the back, her mouth covered with a filthy rag to stop her crying out. It hadn’t been hard to overpower her, especially as Jess was in a weakened state anyway. Luckily for Amanda, whoever owned this old Land Rover Defender had left some interesting bits and pieces in it, including an array of tools, a couple of very new Stanley knives and, best of all, some duct tape. It was almost as if he was planning a kidnap himself.

Jess’s eyes were open but they weren’t really focusing on anything, and it was obvious she was in no state to free herself.

Amanda turned back to the road and punched a number she knew by heart into the phone.

It was answered on the third ring. ‘Where the hell are you?’ demanded her lover. ‘I got here more than an hour ago and you haven’t been answering your phone.’ He sounded worried, which pleased her. She liked to feel she had power over him.

‘It’s a long story,’ she said wearily.

‘Tell me.’

So she gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened since she’d left her house at four p.m. that afternoon for her walk.

‘God Almighty,’ he said incredulously when she’d finished. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m afraid so. I don’t know how the people chasing me found out about George and Ivana, but the fact is they did.’

‘I found out on the way up here that the police found The Disciple’s body yesterday night, and it showed signs of severe torture. I also heard that Ivana Hanzha’s old man may be some kind of gangster,’ he continued, sounding stressed. ‘This could be a real problem. He could be after us for years. Do they know about me?’

Typical, thought Amanda. After all this time together, he was still more interested in trying to save his own skin than caring about what happened to her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your secret’s still safe.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘I don’t think these people will risk coming after me again. Not after all this. My feeling is that whoever’s responsible will let it go. Then, we’ve just got to keep our heads down, and when the inheritance money comes through, we’ll take off abroad somewhere a long way away.’ Or I will, thought Amanda, because she was beginning to conclude that he was more trouble than he was worth. And, in the end, even after everything that had happened between them, she could never trust him entirely. ‘In the meantime, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Christ. What now?’

‘One of the girls I escaped with – the older one, Jess. She knows about us. I’ve got her trussed up in the back of the car now.’

‘Why don’t you just kill her and dump the body? You don’t want to be caught with her, do you?’

‘I can’t. I’ve got no gloves, and my DNA’ll be all over the place. You should know the problems of DNA after your fuck-up back at home.’

‘Does anyone know she’s with you?’ he asked, ignoring the jibe.

‘The guy who rescued us at the farm. He saw us leave together. We’re in his car now. But the last time I saw him, he was in a fight with two of the gunmen, so it’s possible he’s dead.’

There was a long pause while he thought this through.

‘Look, I’ve got an idea,’ said Amanda. ‘She’s injured. She got hit by a bullet. I’ll just say she collapsed, and that I couldn’t get her into the car, so I made her comfortable then went off to get help. No one’ll ever suspect anything, even if they can’t find her. They’ll think some other gunman came and took her. All we have to do is make sure she disappears. You’re at my place now, are you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Good. Stay put. I’ll drop her off with you, then drive to Tayleigh Police Station, and tell them all about what happened to me. I’m going the back route and avoiding Tayleigh, so I might be about half an hour.’

‘How old’s she?’ he asked, an undercurrent of interest in his voice.

Amanda had a flash of contempt for him then, knowing he was never going to grow out of his twisted habits. ‘Seventeen, and very pretty,’ she said coolly. ‘Looks a bit like Jessica Ennis. You’ll like her.’

Fifty-three

Today 22.41

MIKE BOLT PARKED the hire car on the road outside Amanda Rowan’s cottage, and he and Mo Khan got out. A full police cordon had been set up over an area of close to ten square miles on the other side of the river, where the shootings were alleged to have occurred, but the village of Sprey, where Amanda rented her cottage, wasn’t part of it, and DI Sally Miles had reluctantly given the two of them permission to come here in an effort to locate her.

So far, there was no proof that Amanda was involved. In fact, so far there was no proof that a series of shootings had even occurred. There’d been a second 999 call half an hour earlier from a farm three miles northeast of Tayleigh, reporting further shootings, including possible fatalities. But the caller had already been identified as the same individual who’d made the first 999 call from a house two and a half miles away, and since there’d been no other calls, there was still a great deal of confusion about what, if anything, was happening.

When Bolt and Mo had left Tayleigh’s tiny police station twenty minutes earlier, only one armed response vehicle had turned up, and the locals were still waiting for further reinforcements to arrive by helicopter from Glasgow and road from Aberdeen, before they were prepared to venture out to the farm, even though the 999 caller had claimed to have been shot and wounded himself. This, Bolt knew, was the way they had to do things these days. Thanks to the incredibly tight rules of health and safety, everything had to be done exactly by the book. Risk assessments had to be taken, and the police would only intervene when it was considered as safe as possible, even if it meant innocent people bleeding to death in the meantime. Nobody liked it, least of all longstanding career cops like him and Mo, who remembered all too well the days when an officer would be allowed to intervene, regardless of the risk to himself.

Amanda Rowan had still not responded to Bolt’s messages, and he’d tried her landline again ten minutes earlier without success, but he’d got sick of hanging round the police station and, if Amanda turned up at home, he wanted to be waiting for her. She had urgent questions to answer about the deaths of her husband and Ivana Hanzha, and Bolt was certain that if a series of shootings had occurred tonight, they had to be something to do with her.

As they stepped inside the front gate, Bolt could see that the lights were on behind drawn curtains on the cottage’s first floor.

‘Well, someone’s in,’ he said, stopping halfway up the garden path that led to the front door.

‘Or they’ve been and gone, and left the lights on,’ suggested Mo.

‘Maybe.’ Bolt pulled out his mobile and once again dialled Amanda’s landline. The phone rang for thirty seconds and went to voicemail, but he didn’t leave a message. He turned to Mo. ‘What do you think?’

Mo stared at the door. ‘It’s possible she’s in there under duress. When did you leave the first message for her on the landline?’

‘Hours ago. After we left Vlad’s place.’

‘It was daylight then and when we first came by, the curtains weren’t drawn. Which means she’s picked the message up.’ He looked at Bolt. ‘Or someone else has.’

‘I don’t like this.’

‘Me neither. Shall we take a look round the back?’

Bolt nodded, and they walked slowly round the side of the cottage. There was a small driveway at the back that led onto a single-track road, and a newish-looking Alfa Romeo was parked there, out of sight of the neighbours’ houses.

Bolt walked over to it, careful not to make too much noise on the gravel, and felt the bonnet.

‘Still warm,’ he whispered to Mo. ‘Do you remember if Amanda drove an Alfa Romeo? I don’t remember seeing one when we went to their house after the murders.’

Mo shrugged. ‘I honestly can’t remember.’

Bolt looked at the back of the cottage. The curtains were drawn there as well. ‘Can you do me a favour and get onto Grier, see if he’s still up, and ask him to run a check on these plates urgently?’

As Mo slipped into the shadow of an old potting shed to make the call, Bolt approached the cottage and listened at the glass. It was silent inside, but he maintained his position for a good minute, and then he heard the sound of a toilet flushing somewhere inside, followed by the sound of footsteps coming closer. Someone was coming into the room closest to where he was standing. Whoever it was cleared his throat, and it was definitely a ‘he’ by the sound he made. Then the room descended into silence once again.

So there was a man in Amanda’s house, and one who wasn’t prepared to answer the phone. Bolt decided it was definitely time to bring in reinforcements if they were available.

And it seemed they might be because, as he crept back towards the potting shed, he heard the distinctive sound of distant rotor blades. Turning, he saw two sets of red and white lights in the night sky a couple of miles away, heading in towards Tayleigh. The cavalry had finally arrived.

He turned back to Mo and, as soon as he saw Mo’s face, Bolt knew there’d been some kind of breakthrough. The excitement was written all over it.

‘You’re not going to believe this, boss,’ he whispered when they were both in the shadow of the shed. ‘The Alfa Romeo’s only registered to our esteemed clinical psychologist, Dr Thom Folkestone.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Bolt, his voice loud in the silence as, suddenly, for the first time, everything in this whole complex inquiry made sense.

Fifty-four

AMANDA ROWAN HAD always thought of herself as a good person, but also one who’d made some wrong choices. And one of those wrong choices was Thom Folkestone.

She’d first met him at university twenty years earlier. Thom had been a real charmer: good-looking; witty and intelligent; interested in philosophy. Amanda had been attracted to him immediately, although it hadn’t been until the second year that they’d started dating. Theirs was an intense relationship. Everything about it was full-on: the sex; the drug taking; and, of course, the arguments. Nothing and no one else seemed to matter when they were together. The whole world was just the two of them.

It had been fun – God, it had been fun – but there’d always been something unhealthy about their feelings for each other. During one of their more intense rows, Amanda had smashed a wine glass against the wall and tried to slash his arm with it. But Thom had been too fast, and he’d twisted her wrist viciously until she’d been forced to let go of the glass. He’d slapped her too. Hard round the face.

What followed had been one of the most savage, brutal and amazing bouts of lovemaking Amanda had ever experienced. Thom had had this way of tapping into her dark side, and bringing it further and further into the open and, in the end, it had only been a matter of time before they’d started talking about jointly inflicting pain on someone else. At first it was just that. Talk. What would it be like to kill a girl? Possess her, use her, then simply discard her, like a used toy. Thom had justified it using the Nietzschean philosophy he was so into, with its core belief that the weak were always going to be devoured by the strong. That was simply the way of the world and all she and Thom would be doing was following the path that nature in its wisdom had intended. If she wanted to go on seeing him, he told her, then she was going to have to be a participant, not just a passive observer. And she’d wanted Thom so badly, she hadn’t turned and run when she’d had the chance. He was like a drug to her. An addiction she couldn’t shake.

And then they’d chanced upon a young French student called Beatrice Magret. The year was 1998 and Amanda had been twenty-two years old. Beatrice had been hitchhiking as Amanda and Thom had driven past her on the way to Glastonbury festival. They’d picked her up, got chatting, and had decided to stop in some isolated woods en route for a joint and a late picnic. They’d smoked a hell of a lot of dope together and time had just seemed to run away from them. Thom had suggested a threesome and Beatrice, as stoned as they were, had agreed.

But Thom had got carried away and had started hurting Beatrice. Amanda had joined in, holding her down while Thom had finished her off.

Afterwards, she’d been in shock. They’d killed someone. Thom had told her not to worry about it, that this was nature’s way of natural selection – the strong ridding the world of the weak. But the guilt had preyed on Amanda and she was hugely relieved when it turned out that the police had no leads.

She’d also forced herself to leave him and break her addiction, and they’d ended up going their separate ways.

It would be many years before Amanda saw Thom again. By that time she was married to George, another relationship that had already run its course, thanks to the fact that there was no prospect of him providing her with children. She’d contacted Thom through Facebook, found out that he was single, and they’d arranged to meet for a drink in London. She knew in her heart that seeing him was a bad move, but she seemed unable to stop herself and, true to form, the intense relationship they’d had before was immediately rekindled.

Thom wanted her to leave George, but for a while she’d resisted, and it might just have remained an affair had she not found out about George’s own affair with Ivana, which was when events took a more lethal turn. Thom came up with the idea of killing them both and making it look like the work of The Disciple, using his inside knowledge of the case.

At first, Amanda had been reluctant, thinking it too risky, but Thom had persuaded her it could be done. After all, had they not got away with murder before? The more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea, and it would serve that philandering bastard George right.

So she’d agreed.

The plan itself was flawless. Amanda had got herself an alibi by travelling to London to see her father for the night, already knowing from his emails that George had arranged to spend the night with Ivana at their home. She’d stage-managed an argument with her father (never a problem given his cantankerous nature) and driven back home early. Thom had already let himself in the back door using the keys she’d given him, having earlier blacked out the CCTV camera so it couldn’t record him.

He’d wanted her to take part in the actual murders themselves, but she’d refused, not at all sure she had the stomach for them, and instead timed her arrival for just after they’d been committed.

Thom had been insistent that when Amanda came in the house, she should act as naturally as possible. He wanted her to put all thoughts of what they’d done out of her mind. She had to play the part of an innocent woman right down to the last detail, because that way, when she recounted what had happened to the police, there’d be no way she’d contradict herself. So they’d acted out the whole thing. Her calling out to George as if she was expecting him to answer; the ambush on the landing; her fleeing down the stairs and out through the front door, even the fake tattoo on his left arm. Just to add to the authenticity, Thom hadn’t even warned her he was going to cut her with the knife. Although she’d been furious at the time (as well as in a hell of a lot of pain), Amanda had had to admit it had been a masterstroke on his part. As had been the chase, which had totally fooled the police.

In the end, there’d only ever been one hitch, and that was the fact that Ivana had managed to scratch Thom’s neck, drawing blood, before he could restrain her properly. Even though he’d done everything he could to clear it up before it contaminated the scene, he hadn’t been successful, and the police had managed to get a DNA sample.

Although Amanda didn’t like to admit it to herself, she knew it was only a matter of time before the police caught up with Thom, and then her. The problem was that the intense attraction they’d felt for each other all those years ago was still there, which was why she’d arranged for him to drive up to see her tonight, even though they both knew they were taking a huge risk contacting each other at all.

But, as she backed the Land Rover down the track and into the entrance to her rear garden, her heart still thumping from the ordeal of the last few hours, she knew she was going to have to do something about him, and sooner rather than later.

Turning round in the driver’s seat, she held up the Stanley knife, using her thumb to expose the blade, so that Jess could see it glinting in the darkness. ‘Make another noise and I’ll kill you, understand?’

Jess nodded, her eyes wide with fear, and Amanda slipped out of the car, checking her neighbours’ windows to make sure no one was snooping on her. There were old people on either side and, although nosy, they tended to go to bed early, which suited her fine. She was annoyed that Thom had parked his car there, though. She’d told him to park out of the way so that no one would know he was here. Her plan was to spend a couple of days in bed with him, then have him slip away under cover of the night and head back down south. Now it was obvious she had a visitor.

She was about to phone Thom and tell him to help her with Jess when the back door to the cottage opened and he stepped out into the darkness.

It had been three weeks since Amanda had last seen him, but the sight of him standing there – tall, broad, hair tousled – sent shivers down her spine. He was her one true weakness.

Thom came over and they embraced, holding each other tight, her head buried in his neck, taking in his smell.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ he asked.

She sighed, amazed that she hadn’t gone into shock yet. She knew she was tough but, even so, the ordeal she’d experienced had taken her right to the edge. ‘I think so. I just want to make my report to the police, and come back here and be with you.’

‘Have you got the girl?’

‘She’s in there. Can you deal with her before I get back?’

He smiled. ‘With pleasure.’

She opened up the back of the Land Rover and the two of them looked down at Jess, who was shivering on the floor, hands trussed behind her back, mouth gagged.

Thom let out an appreciative murmur and reached out for Jess’s legs. ‘Now this really is a nice surprise. You’ve surpassed yourself this time, Amanda.’

The terror was coming off Jess in waves. The woman she thought was her friend had changed into a monster, and there was no one left to help her. She had no idea where she was, just that whatever she’d been brought here for, it wasn’t good.

Now she was staring up at Amanda and a big, good-looking man in his thirties. The man was smiling at her, and making a satisfied, grunting noise, as if he’d just been presented with a really good meal. He leaned in, grabbing Jess’s ankles, and said, ‘Now this really is a nice surprise. You’ve surpassed yourself this time, Amanda.’

Jess tried to move away from him, but he dragged her out of the back of the Land Rover easily.

Then, as they sat her down on the edge of the vehicle, with Amanda holding the Stanley knife close to her face to prevent her doing anything stupid, Jess caught a blur of movement behind them as two figures approached, running.