Death Before Time (27 page)

“What sort of things?”

“Well, it comes down to the fact that an intelligent man such as yourself should be thinkin’ the things Mr Jones says you’re thinkin’.” He sighed. “I’d meet you halfway, but Marie’s out tonight and I’m babysitting. It wouldn’t take you much over an hour to get to me if you use the motorway.”

“You’re probably right there, except that I’ve already arranged to go out tonight.”

“It
is
important, Fraser. To you as much as me.”

He pretended to consider a moment, then said, “All right. Let me talk to them and I’ll come back to you in ten minutes, OK?”

He rang Tom, who answered almost immediately. “Is this it?” he said.

Tom hesitated. “I think it probably is … he wants to sound you out and set his weasels on you if you won’t play.”

“What do we do?”

“We were about to start back – is there anywhere we can meet near his place?”

Fraser thought quickly. “He lives just outside a village called Cotlake, there’s a square with a war memorial in the middle of it.”

“Hang on - ” Rustle of a page being turned … “Yeah, got it, can you meet us there - better make it an hour and a half, say nine?”

“Yeah, but what are we going to do then?”

“I’ll work that out on the way – ring him now and tell him you’ll be with him at 9.30. That’ll give us half an hour to sort something out …”

Chapter 33

Patrick, smooth as snakeskin, instantly agreed and Fraser, putting the phone down, found he was shaking.

He felt hot and clammy – it had been close all day (which might account for the irritation, he reflected) and now it was sultry.

He showered again, finishing with a spell on cold, then dressed in the jeans and dark sweatshirt Tom had bought him. He went down to the car.

So it was Patrick, he thought as he drove out of the hotel. The air was warm and thick ...

Good Ol’ Patrick, he thought, the original Irish joke.

And yet what he’d said on the phone was plausible, that the others had put him up to it, that he was worried about what Tom had said …

But what was it Tom had said to him, Fraser?
One
of
them
will
act
differently
from
the
others
– and that was just what was happening.

Another thought occurred to him, how the first of the attacks on the hospital playing field had been just after he’d taken Patrick into the Social Club and told him how he regularly used it.

It had to be. Was Marie in on it too, he wondered? What reception had they planned for him?

By now, he’d reached the outskirts of town. He crossed the motorway and took the Marlborough road. Ten minutes after that, he was on the narrow twisting road to the Wansdyke.

The murk had brought on an early darkness and the bushes and trees not directly in the beam of his headlamps were like the blobs in an impressionist painting, although there was still enough light in the sky for him to make out the ridge of the hill ahead. The car purred and seemed to float through the turbid air -

He braked as a sheep blundered into his path … it trotted up the road in front of him for a few moments before veering away to the left.

Would Tom be there yet? He glanced at the clock – no. What was he going to do?

The headlamps of another car flickered in his mirror as he approached the ridge, caught up with him …

By now he was nearly at the car park, so he slowed to let it pass, then another car pounced in front of him from the verge –

He knew instantly what it meant and slammed on his brakes - the car behind punched into him, shunting him forward … he rammed the gear stick into first, spun the steering wheel and pushed his foot down, lurching into the park …

He accelerated to the far end, jumped out and started running … over the stile and onto the Wansdyke and it wasn’t until he’d gone fifty yards that he realised he had the car keys in his hand – he must have turned the engine off.

Now, why had he done that, he wondered? Must’ve wasted nearly half a second … He glanced back, saw two figures about fifty yards behind, dressed dark like him, not shouting, just running after him.

He realised he was panting and tried to control his breathing, filling his lungs with each breath – then his foot caught a stone and he nearly fell … recovered, kept going, his trainers hitting the hard dusty ground with a muted scratch scratching. He kept running because he had to, like Old Man Kangaroo in Kipling – now why was he thinking about
that
?

Glanced behind again – they were closer now and the first rawness was whistling in his windpipe …

Thick bank of conifers on the right – the path down to the shepherd’s hut! Where was it, where was … ?

A shadow ahead, bigger than the other shadows between the rows of pine.

He lurched right, down into the ditch, up again, over the stile and into the silent trees, his footfalls intimate as they bounced among the trunks.

As he heard the hit men reach the ditch, he swerved into the bracken lining the path, but it was tougher than he’d thought and he had to tear his way through – then he ran, his feet making no sound at all now on the layers of dead pine needles …

He ran, the soft needles robbing his legs of energy, they felt like plasticine after all the exercise he’d had – then, through the darkness, he made out a fallen tree, altered course and fell behind it.

Silence.

Save for his breathing. And his heartbeat. And his blood shush shush shushing through his neck and head … an image of Helen with her slashed throat flickered in his mind and he pushed it away as he peered round the trunk of the fallen tree.

The rattle of a stone on the path, the glimmer of a torch moving down …

Keep
going
,
keep
going
… then the torch stopped, moved back - surely they couldn’t see where he’d come off the path … could they?

The bracken. The path was long and straight and they’d realised he was no longer on it and seen where he’d forced his way through - and now the torch light was coming straight towards him …

Because when you disturb a bed of pine needles, the darker layer underneath shows up very clearly … they were tracking him …

No ordinary hitmen these, not like the nerds in the hospital grounds.

Gotta
move
…

Maybe work his way back to the path …

He pushed himself up and crept away, keeping low, treading carefully so as not to leave a trail, watching the flickering beam of the torch … a twig cracked beneath his foot, but not loud enough for them to hear … forty yards, fifty –

A telephone rang and he froze –

Where -?
It
was
his
own
feckin’
mobile
–

Shouts from the hitmen –

He snatched it from his pocket, threw it as far as he could and ran …
Shouldn’t
have
done
that
, he thought … too late now.

He ran, trying to dodge the trees as the thin lower branches flicked spitefully at his face, ran as his breath grew heavy. He
had
to …

A break in the trees ahead and more bracken – the path? No, the ground opened beneath him and with a cry, he fell into a ditch …

And onto something that squealed, kicked him in the face, jumped up and bolted away… he crawled further along the ditch, heard the hitmen jump over it, following the noise of the animal’s hooves …

A sheep? A deer? How long had he got?

Not long. He crawled as fast as he could, the ditch was dry and dark, the bracken curled over the top shutting out the light - he stifled a cry as a thorn dug into his palm, stopped and tried to pull it out …

Silence.

Why not just stay where he was? They’d never find him here … would they?

But they must have realised by now they’d followed an animal, that he must still be in the ditch …

He raised his head, straining his ears …

No sound. Absolutely nothing.

They could be a couple of hundred yards away … or just a couple, waiting for him to move …

He found himself picking at the thorn in his palm, made himself stop. How long should he wait? Sweat trickled from his pits down his sides and he itched to move, to get himself as far away as he could …

He started crawling again, very slowly, hand over hand along the ditch. The thorn jabbed and pricked. The bracken scratched faintly over his back. He kept going, feeling ahead in the darkness for anything that might make a noise …

Light ahead? The path?

Without warning, the ditch came to an end, it was above the level of the path and he fell into it with a clatter – a shout from behind and the flash of a torch …

He jumped up and ran downhill, the trees flickering past, the torch flickering behind him.

He ran, trying to empty and fill his lungs with each breath, trying to ignore the sand-blasting in his windpipe, his mercury filled legs, the stitch like a needle in his side … he
had
to.

A dog barked … the shepherd’s dog, had to be – he burst into a clearing, saw the caravan in front of him as the dog barked again, saw the door swing open releasing the light inside and a voice –

“’Oo’s there?”

A torch shone in his face, blinding him –

“’Oo’s there, wha’ d’you want? Stop or I’ll shoot – “

“It’s me,” Fraser croaked - he could see he was holding a shot-gun - “Doctor… the path … me and the girl, you gave us tea … ”

“Wha -?” the shepherd began – then the dog started barking again and he swung the torch round …

“’Oo’s that?”

“They’re after me,” Fraser managed.

“’Oo -?”

Then there was a flash and a noise like someone spitting as the torch disintegrated and the shepherd let out a yell, then he raised the gun to his shoulder and a rod of light speared into the darkness … in the aftermath of the blast, Fraser thought he heard the shepherd say “Inside” … he must have, because he turned and jumped for the door.

Fraser followed him, tripping over the dog which was trying to get in too … the shepherd grabbed his collar (Fraser’s) hauled him in and slammed the door.

“You all right?” he said.

“Yeah. You?”

“Me ‘and.“ He held it up, it was dripping blood. “ ‘oo
are
they?”

How
the
feck
do
I
explain
that
? “They killed my boss, he was in charge of the community hospital where I work and now they’re trying to kill me.”

“Why?”

“Because I know about them.”

The shepherd grunted. “We’d better get these lights out,” he said.

He crawled a little way along the floor, stood and turned a tap under one of them and Fraser realised they were gas. He got up cautiously and doused one himself –

A window smashed and they dropped to the floor. Then the shepherd started moving along the length of the caravan, reaching up to each light only when he was sure he was out of sight.

One left, in plain sight of a window. He grabbed a broom and poked at the mantle until it went out.

“I’ll turn ‘er off in a minute,” he said. “Don’t want no gas in ‘ere.”

He grabbed his gun, quickly stood and fired a shot out of the window before dropping down again. The blast in the confined space deafened Fraser.

Then the shepherd bobbed up again and deftly turned off the tap before ejecting the spent cartridges from his gun and stuffing in two more.

As Fraser’s hearing came back, he was aware of the whining of the dog.

“Have you got a phone?” he asked.

The shepherd shook his head. “Nah.”

“Is there another door?”

“In the kitchen. I bolted ‘er when I turned out the light.”

“Can we get out of it?”

“Faces the same way as this one – “ he nodded at the door they’d come through.

Fraser pressed his lips together, then said, “Can we get through the floor?”

Another shake of the head.

“Oh, shit … “ The enormity of their situation hit him – the men out there were armed, they could be anywhere and they knew exactly where he and the shepherd were …

He swallowed. “So we can’t get out?”

“An’ they can’t get in,” the other grunted.

As though in answer to this, a voice called from the outside – “We don’t want to hurt you, throw out the gun and – “

“Cunt!” The shepherd got up and fired in the direction of the voice before dropping to the floor and replacing the shell he’d used. The dog was barking.

Fraser said, “We can’t just stay here.”

“Why not?”

The dog was whining again, looking toward the kitchen.

“Are they trying to get in down there?”

“They do, they gets this,” the shepherd said grimly.

But nothing happened and after a few minutes, Fraser said, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

The other shrugged.

Bloody
stupid
thing
to
say
, Fraser thought,
so
why
did
I
say
it
?

I’m
going
to
be
killed
, he thought and dizziness prickled over his scalp and face … the dog went on whining.

A noise from the kitchen? The shepherd heard it too, he lifted his gun and fired, then fired another out of the window before reloading.

They waited.

Silence.

Then Fraser smelt smoke. They looked at each other, then at the kitchen where smoke drifted out and a yellow light flickered behind it …