Blood Substitute (23 page)

‘But what about you?'

‘I'll hope to make it to the other end of the village across the field that runs behind the houses. Wait in the pub car park five minutes
only
for me, no longer, and don't even stop there if anyone suspicious-looking is hanging around. Take my gun. If anyone tries to stop you, use it.'

‘Keep the Glock – I have the Smith and Wesson.' I did not argue about anything else. The bag, actually a small rucksack, was upstairs. As I ran to fetch it someone started to pound on the front door.

‘All right, all right!' I heard Patrick shout in his Indian voice. ‘I am having to persuade this lady to leave. She does not want to and I cannot say I blame her!'

He waved his arms conductor-style and, taking the cue, I shrieked, ‘No, please! Please don't make me go out there!'

A shot was fired and there was the distinct thump of a bullet hitting the door.

‘I come out now with her!' Patrick yelled, panic-stricken-falsettto, rattling bolts.

I scooped up the rucksack and, downstairs, also Pirate from beneath the chair under which she had just gone to ground and tossed both, in that order with care but no ceremony, through the kitchen window. I was not worried about the cat, she goes to a neighbour when we're not at home, but could not leave her indoors where she might go very hungry. Moments later I was outside.

Out the front, Patrick, having opened the front door, was having a pretend argument with someone still inside, supposedly me. I could hear his entreaties to me to co-operate as I clambered over the fence – thankfully there was hazy moonlight now so I was not blundering blindly around in the mist and darkness – and then, in the lee of the hedge, I headed uphill as fast as seemed sensible.

There was still a lot of shouting going on – I also distinctly heard the front door slam – and then, heart-stoppingly, the sound of another shot. I hurried on, tripped over a protruding stone, fell flat, picked myself up and went on more slowly. Behind me the gun fired again. Another thirty yards or so farther on I could see the gate outlined against the distant and therefore faint illumination of one of Lydtor's only two street lights. No one seemed to be lurking there.

Having got over the gate, clumsy with nerves, I turned left. The top of the drive was a mere five yards away but I did not rush blindly, forcing myself to stop to watch and listen for a few moments. I could hear nothing for the pounding of my own heart so had to inch forward slowly until I could peer around the corner. In the distance were the lights of the cottage glimpsed around the bonnet of the Range Rover parked at an angle in a wider part of the drive. Cautiously, I walked towards it.

The drive is an ancient Saxon lane, the hedge at this point high and unclipped thus forming a tunnel making it very dark. I could see nothing but the lights ahead of me and there was now an ominous silence. These men must have arrived in a vehicle of some kind. Where was it?

‘Going somewhere?' said a voice from the shadows as I was approaching the vehicle.

‘I'm collecting for the church roof,' I squeaked, backing away.

‘Bit late at night for that, ain't it?'

He moved towards me so I could see him in silhouette – beer belly, bad breath, BO and all – lining himself up neatly for a sideways swipe with the barrel of the Smith and Wesson. Aided by a hefty shove he went down like an overturned roadroller into the nettles growing in the hedge bottom whereupon I abandoned caution and tore towards the car.

Praying that Patrick would be waiting for me in the car park – the distance across the field is a lot shorter than by road – I started the vehicle, stalling it in my haste by trying to drive away with next to no revs. With visions of hoodlums pelting along in my wake I roared up the drive, turned left at the top and made for the pub. It occurred to me that I must call the police: the house was unsecured.

With a pang I realized that my home was no longer the peaceful refuge that it used to be. I did not really want to live there anymore.

There was no sign of Patrick, no one was about, the only other vehicle a large red saloon that I had an idea belonged to the publican. Keeping a close watch on my surroundings – I had parked right in the centre of the small car park, facing the entrance – I duly glanced at my watch and then found my phone and dialled 999 to report what had happened. I was given to understand that other residents of the village had reported hearing shots. I had to explain that I would not be able to stay until the police arrived and was not prepared to say where I was going. This was in case anyone was monitoring my calls: I had not actually clapped eyes on the mobile phone Patrick had mentioned, never mind made a note of the number to enable me to ring it. Where the hell
was
I going?

Four minutes went by and still dead silence hung over the village. Then the quiet was broken by a car going by without stopping. A dog barked a few times. In the distance, probably somewhere out on the moor, a cow bellowed.

No one came.

I waited for seven minutes and then, utterly wretched, turned the key in the ignition and drove away.

There was only one person on the entire planet whom I could ask to look over a vehicle for tagging devices, who was suitably equipped and reliable, that is. The phone rang for quite a time without any interruptions from answering machines, which was what I was expecting, and then a recorded message did cut in. I said nothing, just pressed 4. There was another wait, a silence inhabited by occasional electonic clicks and mutterings.

‘Meadows,' said a voice I had not heard for a while.

‘Ingrid,' I said tersely. ‘I have a cuckoo clock that's suspect.'

‘Where are you?'

‘Not far from Exeter. I daren't go where I want to until it's checked over.'

‘Are you in danger?'

‘I could be.'

‘Is the governor not in circulation?'

‘No.'

‘I take it you're heading roughly east.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll meet you at Claridges.'

‘Claridges' was the code name for a truly dreadful pub on the outskirts of Shaftesbury that had been used as a drop-off point and meeting place in our D12 days. Terry Meadows had been Patrick's assistant, in the days before Steve's arrival, who had finally left MI5, married our then nanny, Dawn, set himself up in business as a security adviser and was living somewhere in Wiltshire. Last I'd heard he was doing very well for himself.

Expecting to see in my mirror at any moment a following vehicle, or vehicles obviously tailing me, I drove very fast, stopping only for petrol. It was well past midnight when I arrived and of course it was long after closing time so the pub's car park was shut off with large gates. I drove right by and stopped in a lay-by a short distance away.

I suddenly felt very tired, exhausted if I was honest. There was a car already in the lay-by and I had the hand gun securely in my grasp but out of sight when the driver's door opened and a man got out. He came over and I opened my window.

‘This is a bloody strange time of day to have trouble with cuckoo clocks,' said Terry cheerfully.

I got out, stiff, not a little scratched by brambles that I had not noticed at the time and gave him a hug. ‘I'm so very, very glad to see you,' I said.

He seemed surprised by the warmth of my greeting even though, a long time ago, we had fancied one another slightly, more than slightly on my part. But no, we had not gone to bed together and I now thought of him, although he was younger than me, as a big brother.

‘And a few tears,' he observed, giving me his handkerchief, not for the first time. ‘You sit in the back of the car while I fetch the gizmo.'

When Patrick looks for unwanted electronics he has to undertake screwdriver and spanner wrangling, having gone on a course to learn how to access and put back together again vital parts of our vehicle. The piece of equipment that Terry brought was a laptop computer in a small carrying case that he merely plugged into the Range Rover's own electronic diagnostic system. He soon found what he was looking for.

‘Patrick had trouble with the locking system in London,' I told him, having got out of the car to hold the torch for him. ‘He had to take it to a main dealer.'

‘Well, that was probably when this little job was fitted,' Terry told me, waving it under my nose, having briefly dismantled the front passenger-side doorlock to find it. ‘If Patrick wants to stay ahead of the game he'll have to get SOCA to buy him one of these detectors.'

I rather thought that SOCA would decline.

‘I've deactivated the bug. Do you want to take it to show somebody?'

‘Are you sure there isn't the smallest sign of life in there somewhere?' I enquired, looking at the tiny device dubiously.

He trod on it with a hefty boot and then gave me the flattened remains. ‘Quite sure. So where
is
Patrick?'

‘I don't know whether he's dead or alive,' I whispered, and then briefly told him the story.

When I had fallen silent, he asked, ‘Ingrid, is this new career of Patrick's really worth it?'

‘No, I'm beginning to think it isn't.'

‘Where are you going now?'

‘I'm not too sure. I can go to Hinton Littlemoor because there are members of an armed-response unit there. But I shall have to report to Greenway tomorrow. I'm very angry with him. This wouldn't have happened if he hadn't ordered Patrick to send me home.'

‘Look, it's already after midnight. You can't knock up the rector and his wife now. You ought to come home with me.'

‘It's all right, I have a key.'

‘Dawn would love to see you – she's expecting our second,' he said proudly.

I kissed his cheek. ‘Then I won't disturb her – she needs her sleep.'

I thanked him again, got back in the car and drove away.

I did not drive far, forced to stop to think over what I could only describe as the outrageousness of the situation. Terry's question still rang in my ears. No, it simply was not worth it. All we had done was to hold innumerable briefings with Michael Greenway and achieved absolutely nothing. These criminals had run rings around us and still appeared to be in a dominant position. While they had apparently been forced to abandon the Bristol area, temporarily or not, leaving more evidence behind than they might have wished, we were still no nearer to finding out who these people were.

And here I was, running back to tell teacher again.

No.

I did not go to Hinton Littlemoor, spending what was left of the night at an hotel in Shaftesbury. I hated having to stop but I was beginning to feel dizzy from lack of sleep and hunger. In the morning, and after a large breakfast, I headed back to Devon. To hell with scarecrows; dead or alive, I was going to find Patrick.

I rang Greenway near Okehampton, in the mood now to tell him go to hell as well, but desperate to know if he knew where Patrick was. He did not and, predictably, refused to say much over an ordinary line, even a mobile one, in the circumstances, and told me he would ring me back shortly. I waited.

‘There's no one been seen with gunshot wounds at any of the A and E departments of hospitals in the Plymouth and Tavistock areas and a search of the area around your home by local police found nothing suspicious,' he duly reported.

‘That means he's either dead in a ditch somewhere or this bunch of murderers has got hold of him,' I retorted. ‘Because he would have contacted me by now if he was living rough in the countryside or hitching a lift somewhere. I mean, I take it you've told him to disappear from your own radars now he's using a disguise.'

‘Yes, I have. Unless it's an emergency.'

‘By wrecking our working partnership you've compromised the work on the case,' I furiously told him. ‘You might even have been responsible for Patrick's death.'

‘Ingrid—'

I cut him off.

For the sole reason of looking for evidence – and what would the police have discovered by way of clues in pitch darkness? – I went home. I had seriously thought of asking James Carrick to come with me but that would have meant more delay until he arrived and remove a really useful person from the investigation.

With all due caution, the Smith and Wesson handy, I drove slowly down the drive in bright late-morning sunshine. I was banking on this being the last thing they – Ballinger, whoever – would expect me to do but there was still a chance that someone had been left on watch. No strange vehicles were in sight, nor had been parked in the village street, no oddly waving or weighted branches in nearby trees. No scarecrows. No van, which was interesting.

I turned and parked the vehicle so that it was positioned for a quick getaway and then, the full commando training kicking in, shot into the garden behind the barn, weapon two-handed at the ready. No one. Back in the courtyard the front door of the barn showed no sign of forced entry. Neither did the main house. I rang both doorbells, wary of possible booby traps should I just unlock the doors and breeze straight in. No one came. No blood stains.

Leaving the courtyard by the narrow pathway that runs around the other side of the barn I examined the ground-floor windows. Still no evidence of forced entry. I repeated this at the house with the same result. Then, standing in the small back garden of the cottage I searched the ground for anything that might tell me what had happened. If Patrick had got away and taken the route he had planned to it would have meant climbing over the low wall that separated the garden from the field and then heading west at the top of the long and quite steep slope that runs down to Lydford Gorge at the bottom. Examining every inch of the way I clambered over the wall, carefully surveying my surroundings before moving off. I then walked along what was, in effect, a meandering sheep path towards where I knew a stile gave access into a lane between houses that eventually led into the cark park where he had said he would meet me.