The Killing Club (26 page)

Gribbins remained asleep, but Fowler turned in her seat. ‘Toilet break?’

Heck shrugged. ‘Why not?’

She followed him through the station’s main doors, which made him a little self-conscious. He glanced over his shoulder, to find that she was glancing over hers.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing specific.’

‘Good … let’s try not to make it too obvious, eh?’

When he’d finished in the lavatories, he went into the shop, bought himself a sandwich, a bottle of water and an evening paper. ‘Not sure how much longer we’re going to be driving,’ he said, sensing her at his shoulder as he queued. ‘So I thought I’d get myself some nourishment.’

‘That’s fine,’ she replied, not lulled into revealing their destination.

They drove another thirty miles, finally leaving the motorway at the Chippenham turn-off, but heading north rather than south.

‘The Cotswolds, eh?’ Heck said. ‘Very nice.’

Fowler didn’t comment.

For the next quarter-hour, they toured a verdant landscape of rolling hills, thin woods and sumptuous quilt-work farmland – though all was now dwindling in the long, blue dusk. At last they swung onto a single-track country lane winding between deep hedgerows. Ten minutes later, they turned in at a narrow drive set in a hawthorn hedgerow. Fowler hit an electronic fob, and the tall, wrought-iron gate creaked open. Beyond that, they drove uphill through dense birch-woods, in whose shady depths gleamed the crimson eyes of multiple infrared cameras.

‘You got trip-wires too?’ Heck asked. ‘Pits filled with sharpened bamboo?’

‘We’re well protected,’ was all she said.

Three hundred yards up, they halted at another gate, an immense slab of timber, at least ten feet high and surmounted with steel spikes. Towering granite obelisks provided the gateposts, on either side of which twelve-foot brick walls led away through the undergrowth. These also had spiked railings on top, woven with strands of electrified wire.

‘The entire place is walled off,’ Fowler explained. She hit another button on her fob, and the wooden gate swung aside. ‘There are spotlights too, and CCTV checkpoints every thirty yards around the perimeter. No one gets in here, period.’

‘All this for me?’ Heck was genuinely incredulous.

‘It wasn’t built for you,’ Gribbins said, yawning and stretching. ‘But it’ll serve.’

They pulled onto a gravel lot alongside a lawn, in front of what had once been an old farmhouse. It comprised various wings and gables, and was built from gold-hued Cotswolds stone, but its mullioned windows were set into tough PVC frames and in all probability had been constructed from reinforced glass. Cables snaked unobtrusively around the exterior, suggesting alarms at the various entry points.

As Heck took his holdall from the boot, he glimpsed the back of the perimeter wall. It would be even more difficult to cross than he’d previously thought; as well as the spiked and electrical defences on top, it was double-skinned, with a high barbed wire fence on the inside comprising multiple strands and multiple barbs.

‘Someone tries to come over that wall from the other side, they’ll get nicely tangled,’ he observed.

‘Uh-huh,’ Fowler agreed.

‘Not to mention someone trying to go over it from this side.’

‘If you want to go out, you just ask us,’ Gribbins said.

‘You mean I can travel?’

‘No.’ Gribbins chuckled. ‘But you can ask us.’

‘You can go anywhere you want in the vicinity,’ Fowler said, shooting her partner a look. ‘For a walk, a drive, a trip to the pub, or just to the village to get supplies. So long as one of us is with you.’

‘Which village would that be?’ Heck asked. ‘You might as well tell me. I saw signs to Malmesbury. I know I’m in Wiltshire.’

‘The nearest habitation is the village of Lea,’ she replied.

‘Okay … I don’t know it, but as long as they’ve got a corner shop, I’ll be fine.’

The front door was another slab of timber, this one studded with iron nail-heads. Over the top there was a heavy granite lintel with the words
1705 AD
engraved into it. Somewhat anachronistically, there was no actual key-hole; this door too could only be opened by the electronic fob.

Inside, the porch was floored with stone and walled with hand-painted tiles depicting eighteenth-century hunting scenes. The downstairs rooms beyond were low-beamed and furnished in the style of a bygone age, though there were newish fixtures too: a modern central heating system; a large, flat-screen television in the lounge, with a satellite receiver box and Blu-Ray player; desktop computers in several rooms; full Wi-Fi, and of course security cameras mounted on the ceiling in almost every room. The kitchen, which was enormous, was pristine. There was scarcely a mark on its parquet floor or pine worktops; the large kitchen table, which could have seated twelve, was of polished teak – again there wasn’t a mark on it. It was a similar story upstairs, where the oak-panelled bedroom he’d been allocated, aside from its sumptuous four-poster bed and rich, hanging tapestries, boasted a granite hearth without a smear of soot. The bathroom attached to this was particularly elegant: done out in painted ceramic tiles, the bathtub sunken, the electric power-shower combining a steam-room facility.

Heck wandered back downstairs, fascinated but bemused.

He peeked into the security booth, which was located in a triangular cubby-hole that had once been the under-stair closet. It consisted of a central swivel chair, a bank of intercom/radio controls and wall-to-wall VDU screens, on which black and white images flickered back and forth. Gribbins was already installed there, stripped to his shirtsleeves and checking electrical systems. His holstered Glock hung from a hook on the wall behind him.

‘Everything you could want,’ Fowler said, approaching. ‘You’ll find the fridge-freezer in the kitchen fully stocked. Same for the kitchen cabinets. If you want some fresh air, feel free to mosey about the grounds.’

‘There are grounds?’ Heck asked.

‘Extensive at the rear. We’ve got a croquet lawn, tennis court, an orchard, lots of shady walks. They’re walled off from the front and side of the house, just for security. But there’s plenty of room back there. Even a swimming pool … though I guess you won’t want to be using that with autumn coming.’

‘I’m not planning to be here that long,’ Heck replied.

‘Well, if you do want to use it, you’ll be the one who has to scoop the leaves out,’ Gribbins said. ‘We may be your bodyguards, but we’re not your servants.’

Heck mused. ‘I notice there’s no phone?’

‘You’ve got your mobile,’ Fowler said.

‘Yeah, but why’s there no landline?’

‘Landlines are easy to tap or trace. If any of us, for any reason …’

‘Mobile phones can be traced too,’ Heck said.

‘The people who’ll normally be held here won’t have mobile phones,’ Gribbins answered. ‘The internet link will be cut on those occasions too.’

‘Let me guess,’ Heck said, ‘super-grasses?’

‘Something like that,’ Fowler said.

‘You guys have turned a few players in your time?’ Heck asked, thinking that he hadn’t heard about a single incident of SOCAR managing this.

‘Come on,’ she replied. ‘You know we’re not going to talk about that.’

Heck shrugged. ‘It’s just that this place looks new to me.’

‘Look on the lintel over the front …’

‘Yeah, I saw that. 1705. Pretty impressive. But I meant the refurbishments. New kitchen, new bathroom. The desktop in the study’s still got a shipping tag attached. What are the odds I boot it up and find it’s never been used?’

‘What difference does it make whether the place is new or not?’ Fowler said.

Heck shrugged. ‘None, I suppose. I guess I should be grateful I’m one of the first to sample such comforts.’

Gribbins sniggered. ‘Don’t get too cosy. Soon as we catch Mike Silver, you’ll be out of here and back on Shit Street.’

‘I hope you do catch him,’ Heck said.

‘We will.’

‘I mean
catch
him … as opposed to slotting him.’

‘We’re not animals, Heckenburg.’ Fowler moved off along the hall. ‘Whatever you may think … whatever provocation he’s thrown at us, we don’t do stuff like that.’

Gribbins smirked. ‘You really don’t want him blown away?’

‘I said I don’t want
you
to blow him away,’ Heck replied. ‘That pleasure should be mine.’

Chapter 21

‘This brings the murder spree in central and southern England to an astonishing thirty-three in the last week,’ the BBC Scotland anchorman said. ‘Speculation is rife as to whether this is the result of terrorist activity, or whether a gangland war has erupted in consequence of the escape from prison last week of syndicate organiser, Peter Rochester, better known as Mad Mike Silver, who was serving a life sentence for multiple counts of kidnap and murder. Meanwhile, the British Home Secretary has assured Parliament that all necessary resources and personnel are being placed at the disposal of the police unit charged with halting the carnage. The Prime Minister himself commented while en route to chair a meeting of COBRA, offering his personal assurance that those responsible for the crimes will be brought to justice …’

The Most Reverend Desmond Docherty, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Fife, stood up, walked across his small, neat apartment and switched off the portable television. He gazed from his window. The monastery’s vegetable garden was directly below. The sounds of the brothers working down there had often been a source of relaxation to him; the soft thump of the hoe, the gentle scrape of trowels as they turned the peaty Highland earth. It was all quiet now at mid-evening. The sky over Sàil Ghorm was streaked in salmon-pink. The sun would soon be down.

Docherty’s gaze roved along the whole of the Quinag range with their jagged, granite peaks, their hints of mist. He’d been living here like a hermit for two years, and only now did it strike him how picturesque the world could be. All these simple things – the rocks, the heather, the sweeping purple uplands – they cost nothing; any man could enjoy their innocent splendour. Yet their constant availability was their undoing; only those shortly to be denied such things would appreciate their worth.

He opened the slide door on his walk-in wardrobe. There was a washbasin in its right-hand corner and above that a mirror, in which he assessed himself. For a man in his late fifties, he was well-kept: tall, broad-shouldered, and still with a head of naturally black hair, cut short and parted on the left. With his clear grey eyes and cleft jaw, he’d always been a handsome chap.

Though he’d been dismissed from his post two years ago, he still affected a neatly ironed black shirt and white clerical collar. And why not? Earthly titles might be rescinded, but one never ceased to be a servant of Christ. The rest of his attire comprised neatly pressed black slacks and a pair of black leather shoes. As he glanced down at the toes of those shoes, an amusing thought struck him.

All these decades later, it still made him smile.

While still a young seminarian – a good few years ago now, 1973, perhaps earlier – a question had been raised in class about temptations of the flesh.

‘But how do we resist these feelings, Father?’ one boy had asked their venerable old tutor. ‘It’s not as if they’re unnatural. They’re programmed into us as male animals. The rest of one’s life is a long time to remain chaste.’

‘You are right of course,’ the tutor had replied. ‘These are natural feelings, but they are feelings bequeathed to us as part of God’s great gift … so that procreation, which is essential for our species, may be a pleasurable experience. However, we few are special. We have taken a vow to forgo that pleasure … to stand aloof from it and serve God in other ways.’

‘But Father …’

‘I understand. These feelings will come to you. They come to all of us. It is an easy thing to say, but we must deny them.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘There is no easy answer. What works for some fails for others. I can only recommend that when these feelings tempt you, put your mind to something else. Some ordinary thing, which nevertheless will distract you. Perform a mundane task … something simple and routine, but which will occupy your thoughts. Polishing one’s shoes for example. An easy thing, but it requires care and attention.’

As though some hidden signal had been given, young Docherty and the rest of his colleagues had instinctively glanced down at their tutor’s shoes, and found them, without doubt, the most fastidiously polished pair they had ever seen.

Docherty smiled again, but it was easy to mock these things now.

The reality of life as a celibate clergyman was impossibly challenging. Had he known the trials to come he might have left the classroom there and then. He took a waterproof coat from its hanger, folded it over his arm, closed the wardrobe, checked his apartment was smart and tidy, and left. He walked along the passage and down the rear exit stairs to the monastery car park. His rickety orange Volkswagen Beetle was waiting there. The engine coughed and sputtered, but somehow Docherty knew there’d be sufficient life in the old vehicle to take him where he wanted to go.

The scenic vistas of the Stoer peninsula flowed past as he drove west: rolling, boulder-strewn glens, deep tracts of pinewood.

So beautiful, so unspoiled, so virginal.

Virginal.

Not a good choice of phrase really, though in some ways, despite feeling it perverse of himself, Docherty was starting to resent the well of guilt-ridden despondency he’d dwelt in for so long now. The Roman Catholic Church hadn’t just been his home; it had been his strength, his courage, his innermost being. He loved her deeply, believed in her absolutely – and yet now felt far removed from her, and even though he had undoubtedly disgraced her and had rightly been punished for that, he blamed the Church herself, at least partly.

How could she ask so much of her children? How could she expect strict adherence to impossible rules and not understand that attempts to observe this law in public would only lead to private defiance, which, owing to its hidden nature, would run without limit? How could the Church be so blind to the errors she herself had made?