Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (26 page)

Adam groaned; Colin could ruin everything. He looked away quickly.

At exactly five minutes to eight, the mayor appeared at the edge of the square, surrounded by his henchmen. They cleared a path for him and he pushed through to the door. He dismissed the two Watchmen who were standing sentry, and they quickly disappeared into the crowd. That seemed odd to Adam.

‘Something’s not quite right,’ Dixon whispered. ‘Why did the guards run? And where’s the vicar? There’s always a vicar! Stay on your guard…’

Adam swallowed, and nodded. He pulled his jacket tighter around him, eyes darting hither and thither watching for the slightest sign of trouble.

The mayor reached the door and made a big show of taking the key from his pocket, placing it into the lock and turning it. He pushed the door open and disappeared inside.

For a moment, there was silence.

Dixon made a hand signal, and Adam noticed a series of slight scuffles as the thugs that he’d spotted earlier at the front of the crowd seemingly just crumpled to the ground.

‘We’re up,’ Dixon said, and Adam saw that her shawl had gone, and her gun was already in her hand.

Dixon had barely taken a step into the cordoned off area when there was an almighty roar, and Mayor Griffin stormed out of the jail, pushing several henchmen out of the way.

‘Where is she?’ he bellowed. ‘Find me those guards, I’ll have their hides for mincemeat!’

He grabbed the two nearest henchmen and shoved them through the door, ‘You and you, find out what happened.’ Then the next two henchmen he shoved into the crowd, ‘Get those guards and bring me their heads!’ he yelled. ‘And the rest of them too!’

Then he spotted the Kingsmen storming towards him. ‘You!’ he bellowed.

People in the crowd started screaming and shoving, and Adam found himself engulfed as the crowd surged forward. Then a shot rang out, Adam couldn’t tell where it had come from, and the crowd changed direction, carrying Adam along with it.

Adam found himself sprawled on the ground at the edge of the square, close to Church Street. He picked himself up. Most of the crowd had gone, fleeing into the side streets. The Kingsmen, the mayor and his henchmen were nowhere to be seen.

He looked behind him at the burnt out wreck of The Crown Inn, stark in black and white like a ghoulish spectre. Whitewashed walls contrasted with the blackened window holes like empty, staring dead eyes. A pile of burnt timber lay where the archway gates had been; he could probably climb over it, but he really didn’t want to. The door was completely missing from the bar entrance, either burnt or smashed in, Adam didn’t know which. He poked his head inside, being careful not to touch the burnt surround. He couldn’t see much detail as everything was blackened, but he could see through the collapsed ceiling right to the gaping hole where the roof used to be. And the stench of burnt wood and carpet and curtains and whatever else was making him gag.

‘Oi you, get out of it!’ someone behind him shouted, and he felt a rough hand grab at him and pull him back. He turned and saw it was one of the mayor’s thugs.

‘No one’s allowed in there. Mayor said so. Now push off!’ the man said. Adam didn’t recognise him; it wasn’t one of the old regular henchmen that Adam had seen around before he left. And neither did the henchman seem to recognise Adam. Well, Adam wasn’t going to enlighten him, so he just muttered an apology and sloped off up Church Street.

Adam hadn’t lived at The Crown for fifteen years without knowing the back way in, so once he was sure that the henchman wasn’t watching him, he slipped into an alley, towards a gap in the fence that he knew would get him into the back of the stables. He wanted another look. Maybe something would occur to him; maybe he’d see something, a sign that Rosie or Dad were still alive, anything.

He was about to push through the bushes that concealed the gap, when he heard something.
 

‘Pssst!’

He looked around. There was a hand beckoning him into the bushes, ‘Are you being followed?’ the voice hissed.

‘No,’ Adam hissed back.

‘Can anyone see you?’ the voice hissed again.

Adam looked around. The small alleyway was deserted, and there was no one in the road that he could see.

‘No!’ he hissed again.

‘Then come this way, quick!’ the voice hissed, and a hand reached out and pulled him through the gap. It was Lance Corporal Steve Barker.

‘Colin said you were back,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about your sister and your dad, but…’
 

‘Hang on,’ Adam said, ‘
Colin
said I was back?’ Colin again! Was there anyone he
hadn’t
told? So much for keeping quiet!

‘Yeah.’

‘Look, what the hell is going on? What are you doing here?’

‘Trying to avoid being caught,’ he said.

‘And why might that be?’

‘Well, your sister, Flick…’

‘Yes?’

‘She escaped. Last night.’

‘WHAT?’ Adam almost shouted. Now he understood why they had been keen to be somewhere that the mayor wasn’t. ‘When? Where did she go?’

Just then the town clock struck the half hour.
Shit!
Oh eight thirty: He’d missed the rendezvous.

‘Listen,’ he said urgently, ‘we’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got some mates waiting, and I was supposed to meet them at oh eight thirty. We were here to bust Flick out. Where’s Jim? We need to get him too.’

‘I’m here,’ said a voice from behind a stable door. ‘We didn’t want to both show ourselves, you know, in case.’

‘Ok, good. Thanks for what you did guys, but I don’t know if the team will wait for us or for how long, so we’ve got to skedaddle. Top of Southampton Street; there’s transport waiting. Come on!’

The three men crept out through the gap in the fence and back into Church Street.

‘Okay, now they are looking for two men in Watch uniforms, not two men in civilian clothes and one in black…’

They had strolled down into the market square and were well on their way up Southampton Street, when they heard something in a side street. Two voices arguing, one of them shouting. It was Mayor Griffin.

They pressed back against the wall.

‘What the hell is the mayor doing down there, and who’s that with him?’ Ross whispered.

‘It sounds like… Joe?’ Adam whispered back.

‘Oh crap. Joe was the one who gave Flick the key so she could escape. This is bad. This is really bad.’

Adam peered around the corner.

‘Shit,’ he whispered. Two of the mayor’s heavies were holding Joe down while Griffin yelled at him. Something glinted in his hand as he waved it around.

‘What’s he doing?’ Barker asked.

Before Adam could answer, Mayor Griffin thrust his hand at Joe, who gargled briefly before slumping to the ground.

‘Fuck!’ Adam realised what he had just seen.

‘Oi you! Come here!’ Griffin must have spotted them.

‘Run!’ Adam yelled, and the three of them set off at full pelt. They had a head start over the two thugs now chasing them, but it was not a long one, and the thugs were closing the distance to Steve Barker, who was starting to lag behind. As they broke out of the street onto the grass, Adam saw the APC. It was already moving off.

‘What the hell is that?’ Jim Ross yelled, slowing down.

‘Keep running,’ Adam yelled, waving his arms frantically.
 

The truck swung round, the rear door already opening. As it approached them, eight Kingsmen in full battle armour disgorged from the back, hitting the ground running. They quickly surrounded the three men, guns raised, and ordered them to stop and put their hands up.

‘What the hell have you done?’ Steve Barker shouted, looking wildly around. The two thugs were still coming.

‘In the truck, quick!’ one of the Kingsmen ordered.

‘It’s okay,’ Adam hissed, ‘you’ll see.’

Four of the Kingsmen prodded the three men into the back of the truck, and the ramp came up behind them. That left four men outside to deal with the two wheezing heavies, and Adam pressed his nose to the window to watch.

‘Mayor wants those three,’ one of the heavies wheezed. ‘They let the prisoner escape.’

‘Yes, well, we’ve got them, thank you very much.’ Adam realised that it was Dixon speaking. ‘And we have our own… methods… to extract information, which I’m sure are more reliable than your…
mayor’s
.’ She said that last word with disdain.

Adam turned to the two Watchmen. ‘Scream,’ he hissed. ‘Scream like they’re really hurting you bad.’

‘Why? Oh…’
 

They caught on, and screamed for all they were worth. After a minute, Adam hissed again, ‘That’s enough, don’t overdo it!’ Then he giggled, falling back against the side of the truck in relief. ‘You should have seen their faces!’

The ramp dropped open and Dixon climbed in.

‘That was quick thinking,’ she said. Then she turned to the two Watchmen, ‘You the two that were guarding the jail?’ she asked.

They nodded.

‘Good. We need to talk…’

‘THERE ARE TWO things we need to know as a matter of urgency,’ Lieutenant Dixon addressed her small band of Kingsmen. They were all in the back of the armoured truck, along with the two Watchmen that Adam had rounded up. It was still parked in the same place. ‘First, what are Griffin and his gang of thugs going to do next. Second, where has Felicity Carter gone. Then we have to find her before she either does something stupid, or Griffin and his thugs find her, whichever comes first. Now, what do we know?’
 

‘He’s going to go after her for sure,’ said Corporal Ross, the senior of the two Watchmen. ‘One thing Griffin really likes to do is gloat, and Flick escaping has rubbed his face in it. Of course that puts a lot of us in the firing line too…’ He looked from face to face, ending up staring directly at the lieutenant.

‘You’ll stick with us for now,’ Dixon replied. Then she looked at Adam, ‘Do we know which way Felicity is likely to have gone?’

Ross answered. ‘Stanley–that is, Constable Wilder–was convinced that she would go south. He was on duty at the south gate. He won’t tell you if she went that way; he probably won’t even tell me if he thinks I’m working for you.’

‘If she went south, I think I know where she will have gone,’ Adam said.

‘Where’s that then?’ Dixon prompted.

‘There’s an old abandoned village at the bottom of the ridge, close to the white horse. There’s a cottage; when we were kids we used to go out there on our bikes to play. It’s a good two hours on foot though, even in daylight. But I’m sure that’s where she’d head.’

‘And does Griffin know about this place?’

‘Not unless somebody told him. His son Joe might… Oh.’

‘Joe was Felicity’s… friend, yes?’ Dixon asked.

Adam nodded.

‘He organised the escape,’ Ross said. ‘Got the key and tossed it through the window. Being the mayor’s son didn’t count for much where Griffin was concerned, and we watched him murder him in cold blood. His own son! What sort of a man does that?’ Tears rolled down his face.

There was silence as they all contemplated that thought.

‘So what resources does he have? Vehicles? Dogs? Men? Horses?’ Dixon asked.

‘He did have a steam powered Daimler,’ Ross said. ‘But it was a real old banger, literally. Wouldn’t do more than ten miles per hour, and the boiler gave out after about ten minutes.’ He looked round the inside of the wagon, ‘But it’s not been seen for a few years. There are horses in the stables and he’s got dozens of men. There are attack dogs up at the house, but I don’t know how many, and I don’t know how good they are for tracking. We’ve never had a manhunt before.’

‘I think our first port of call will be the cottage that Cadet Carter spoke of, but let’s see what Griffin does first. That’ll tell us a lot about him and his capabilities.’

‘I still need to know what happened to Dad and Rosie too,’ Adam said.

‘Yes, I haven’t forgotten. Corporal, what can you tell us about the night of the fire? And don’t forget, the mayor can’t get at you or your family for anything you say in here.’

Lance Corporal Steve Barker described the events of the past few weeks, before turning to Adam. ‘Sorry, mate. Really, really sorry.’

Adam nodded.

‘Do you know what became of the others? Rosie and Nicholas?’ Lieutenant Dixon asked.

‘We never saw no bodies, if that’s what you mean. When the fire was out, nobody could get near–there was always a thug there telling us to get lost.’

‘Any chance they could have got out?’

‘Well, it’s always possible. If Flick did, they could have. But then where did they go? Somebody must have seen or heard something, or looked after them.’

‘We’re assuming that they were inside. Any chance they weren’t?’

‘Just went for a stroll in the middle of the night, you mean? I suppose it’s possible, but not likely.’

‘Maybe some guests turned up and they had to see to them?’

‘The gates were locked, so nobody had just come or gone that way. Anyway, the mayor did a right number on them a few days before, turned them over with his thugs. Said it was an “inspection”. After that all their guests left in a hurry, and there was nobody staying, far as anyone knows.’

‘So we need to get inside that inn and see for ourselves; figure out what really happened?’

‘I’d say so, yes.’

‘Okay, I need two volunteers… Socko and Barnes. You’ll stay here and get access to the inn. I want to know everything about what happened by the time we get back with Felicity.’

‘I want to stay too,’ Adam butted in. He saw the withering look that Lieutenant Dixon gave him, and added a belated ‘ma’am.’

‘I’m sure you do, cadet,’ she replied. ‘But it’s better for everyone if you stay with us. You know your sister and what she’s likely to do. Plus she’s more likely to give herself up if she sees you with us.’

‘Yes, ma'am,’ Adam agreed reluctantly.

‘Ma’am, they’re on the move!’ Sergeant Wailing interrupted.

They turned their attention to the windows. Sure enough the mayor and his thugs were riding out. At least, the mayor was riding out on a chocolate brown horse; his thugs were walking, or trotting to keep up. One of the thugs had a German Shepherd on a long leash, and it was leading them out towards the south gate.