Rat Poison (29 page)

‘And Colin Andrews?'

‘He's here. Bleated to me that they'd kidnapped him for ransom and if I helped him he'd drop the charges against Matthew. I managed to throw a punch at him on the way out.'

‘How did they get hold of you in the first place?'

‘This is their bolt hole and I came along for the ride. But I was just a bit too slow getting out of the car when we arrived. She spotted me. How did you find this place?'

‘I exchanged a little info with Mick the Kick that resulted in his not going to the party. Matthew came up with the name Lock House from the computer info but it was the Keys Estate.'

‘Ah.' Patrick was over by the door again. ‘They're coming. I wonder what he's bribed them with this time? Three, no four. They don't look very keen.'

This was the other Patrick talking, of course, the ex-special services soldier. I dared not try to talk him out of what he was doing, for in my heart I knew it was the right thing. I was sure that this was as I had predicted, to protect his family for ever from the attentions of gangs, to etch into the underworld's mind that Patrick Gillard was not to be messed with. Not only that, he could imagine the sub-machine blazing from an upper window of the house – out of our sight – mowing down the police before they could get into position even if warnings had been given. Who knew what other weapons were indoors: high powered rifles with night sights, stolen hand grenades  . . .

‘What can I do?' I asked.

‘Stay where you are and if one gets past me do your best.'

I still had the torch and used it quickly to get my bearings and to look for a piece of wood or something similar that I could use as a weapon. It was just as well I did for there were low beams at one end of the loft, which was bigger than I had thought, on which one could comprehensively brain oneself. I also found some old implements: a wooden hay rake that was more woodworm holes than wood, a rusting axe that was too heavy for me to lift, several billhooks – too horrible – a jumble of small tools and that was all. Desperately, I went down to the far end and there, in a festoon of black cobwebs, spotted several newish pickaxe handles. Thus armed with the chosen weapon of the thug I trotted back, switching off the torch.

‘Fire if you have to – just don't hit me,' Patrick muttered over his shoulder.

‘It's almost impossible to see.'

‘That's good for us because they've been in a house with lights on. Hello, here's number one.'

I saw him duck and something heavy like a brick landed practically at my feet. I groped for it, found that it was, grabbed it, ran over to the door, leaned on Patrick to make him stay low and lobbed it in the general direction of the foot of the stairs. There was a yell and a general tumbling noise, like sacks of boulders going downwards.

There was a female scream of anger from below. ‘Louts! Idiots! He's unarmed but for a knife, weak with hunger and half-dead from thirst by now! Go in there and
get
him! You're just as much cowards as the morons who ran away.'

Two raced up the stairs with a view to hurling themselves through the door, hit what amounted to a brick wall, were grabbed, had their heads crashed together, one then kicked backwards so that he went straight through the handrail of the stairs to fall into the void beyond, the other savagely slammed into the door frame a few times before following the first.

There was another shout from below. ‘Go and get a car! Use the lights to see by. Get a
move
on!'

I heard thumps behind me and remembered that barns have trapdoors to enable fodder to be thrown down to animals below. Then there was a loud bang as though one had been flung open and back. I flicked on the torch for a second to see that a man was almost right on me, another appearing through the hatch. Using the pickaxe handle like a spear I ran at him and got him just below the ribs. He folded over and, guessing my exact target in the gloom, I whacked him on the head. He went over backwards and, judging by the noise, the other one fell over him.

It was the briefest of respites. They leapt up and came at me again. This time I had reinforcements, my only contribution being to switch on the torch again to locate the aperture in the floor so that Patrick could neatly bulldoze one of them through it, the second jumping down in utter panic.

‘There's two of 'em!' one of them yelled when he staggered outside.

‘Balls! You're just useless!' another man bawled.

‘They're both out there now – Uncle and Murphy,' Patrick said in my ear.

‘How long can you keep this up?' I asked.

‘Not much longer, honeybunch. I should have noticed that hatch before but at least we can use it as an escape route.' He went over and shut it, having to scrape aside a couple of inches of dirt and semi-rotten hay that had concealed it in order to get it to fit properly. An empty oil drum was placed on top after he had established that I could shift it if necessary.

A vehicle approached slowly, bouncing on the rough ground and was positioned so that the headlights shone directly on the barn.

‘I'm not sure how this helps them,' Patrick whispered.

A voice high with terror screamed, ‘They didn't run, Brad, they're here, three of 'em under the hedge! Bleedin' dead! You cow, Murphy! You knew this man was a psycho, didn't you, and you're just getting your kicks while he finishes us off one by one.'

‘Shut up, it's his turn,' I distinctly heard Murphy say.

NINETEEN

‘
S
hall I phone?' I said.

‘Not yet,' was the terse reply.

The sudden illumination had revealed a tiny and filthy window overlooking the yard. Standing well to one side of it I scrubbed some of the dirt and cobwebs off with the sleeve of an ancient jacket hanging on a nearby nail and risked a look out. The view was a narrow one but even so I could see at least a dozen people in the headlights of the car. They were clustered around the couple, although at a respectful or nervous distance, and appeared to be receiving orders. This went on for another couple of minutes, during which I relayed to Patrick in a whisper what was happening, the men and, I thought, one other woman going off in twos and threes.

Silence fell.

Patrick stirred restlessly. ‘I don't like this.'

He had promised to make Uncle sweat and it seemed they hoped to do the same to him. Perhaps he was, I thought inconsequentially; he did not normally smell like this. Then my skin crawled and I stretched to touch his shoulder lightly as one might play a few notes on a piano as he stood motionless in the light breeze coming through the doorway. He immediately came to my side.

‘We're not alone,' I breathed.

He did not react, returned to his original position and another heavy silence followed. Then, at first very quietly, a dog began growling. Patrick can mimic all kinds of things and Elspeth still tells the tale of how when he was quite young he frightened off a man who was hanging around near the family car when John was away by doing just this through the letterbox.

The growl travelled, but in the shadows away from what light there was shining through the doorway and, weakly, through the window. I had an idea he was bent low, at dog height, the picture perfect in my imagination: fangs bared, hackles up. Down the barn the growl went. Fear was churning through me: some of these maniacs would probably be able to kill a dog with their bare hands without a second thought.

I then jumped out of my skin when there was a sudden shriek and someone came running. A very tall, seemingly scarecrow figure came thundering down the loft but was halted horribly when he went full tilt into one of the lower beams, going down as though poleaxed.

‘Torch,' Patrick said.

By its tiny light he moved away the oil drum, lifted the trapdoor, heaved the unconscious man through the hole through which he must have come with the others and then put everything back in place.

‘I'm done,' he mumbled. ‘Is there any more water?'

There was just a mouthful or so and although I had more purification tablets I could not go down to fetch water without being spotted. After he had drunk it Patrick checked that no one else had come up through the hatch with the other two. It was while he was right down the other end of the loft, as I kept watch out of the window, that there was a pounding of feet on the stairs and three men rushed in.

Somehow, we fought them off and to my shame my efforts seemed to consist of no more than pecking around, as it were, on the edges of the conflict where I could be sure of not hitting Patrick. Finally, one of them fled and Patrick grabbed my weapon, using it to batter down the other two. One of them had had a knife, leaving him bleeding from a slashed left arm, the only consolation two unconscious, or dead, men – I did not care which by now – on the floor.

‘Do I phone now?' I asked, very quietly, mostly because one of them had caught me with a fist on the side of my head.

‘No, not yet.'

I made no comment, binding up his arm with a silk scarf I had in my pocket.

‘Are you still there?' called a woman's voice from down in the yard, Murphy almost certainly.

‘I'm still here,' Patrick replied, going nowhere near the door – right now he did not have the strength to.

‘You only have your knife, don't you?'

‘You know that.'

They were trying to force open the trapdoor from below again so I went and stood on it with the oil drum.

Footsteps approached: she was mounting the stairs. If I stayed quite still she might not spot me here in the shadows. I saw that Patrick was holding his knife, having not resorted to use it in the hand-to-hand fighting, and had seated himself on one of several large chunks of wood. In the next moment Murphy appeared framed in the doorway.

Someone shouted at her not to be a fool.

‘Still getting your kicks?' Patrick said softly. He was in full view of her, in the light.

‘You have to get them where you can,' the woman drawled with the merest hint of an Irish accent, raising the gun she was carrying.

‘You and your filthy brood are under arrest. If you resist arrest  . . .' He left the rest unsaid.

Predictably, Murphy laughed. ‘Perhaps I'll just trim you off a little at the edges first, make you a bit kinda frilly.' She laughed again and I detected a hysterical note to it.

Patrick released the blade of his knife, that horrible slicing click.

‘Sadly, no match against a bullet,' she sighed and I was sure I saw her finger tense on the trigger.

‘I could always throw it.'

‘That's really kinky,' she said in mock admiration and then uttered a shriek as his arm swiftly moved. Then she fired, wildly, and I heard the bullet thunk into the roof somewhere.

‘I thought you liked knives,' Patrick said, still speaking very quietly, seemingly addressing the blade before him. ‘The ones in your kitchen  . . .'

‘They weren't mine. The previous tenant left them behind. Just things for cooking. I don't cook. Yes, I like knives, but—'

‘But not when in the hands of other people?' Patrick interrupted softly. ‘You're an exception as the Brits don't usually like them at all. This one's Italian. They're very serious about things like this in Italy. The man who made it for me promised I'd be able to slit someone from throat to belly with it.' He held it up for her to see. ‘But it
is
a throwing knife and if I got you from here it might go right through.'

Perhaps her hand was aching, perhaps not, for she lowered the gun a little.

‘What the hell are you doing up there?' another man shouted. ‘Just kill the bastard and be done with it.'

There were sudden crashes and bangs as tiles began to be wrenched off one corner of the roof behind me and thrown down to the ground. By the sound of it several people were tearing them off and almost immediately I could see quite a large rectangle of light shining through. I decided that enough talking had been done and put a shot into that general area, hearing a yell of fright, a scrabbling noise and then a thud as someone jumped off the roof. There was another shot and I dived to the floor.

Peeping around the oil drum through the swirling cloud of dust I had created I could see neither Patrick nor Murphy so crawled towards the doorway, aware that the roof tiles were still being torn off. Brad Northwood, or whoever, was shouting at them to get on with it.

In view of this I risked raising my voice. ‘Patrick, are you all right? Patrick!'

An arm appeared from somewhere to the rear of the log pile and waved weakly. I crawled over there. Patrick looked to be jammed in a small space on the floor between the wood stack and the eaves of the roof.

‘Are you hit?' I asked, heaving away at the stack, actually heavy sections of a tree branch, while trying to watch the door. Above the sound of the tiles crashing down I thought I could hear vehicles.

‘I don't think so. Just  . . . too weak to get out.'

Frantically, I searched through my pockets and came up with a battered half-bar of Kendal mint cake, thrusting it at him while I hauled away the wood surrounding him with the other hand, sending it bowling across the floor. The vehicles I had heard were arriving, their headlights beaming around and then coming to a stop, revealing, for a moment, that my husband's face was as white as chalk under the dirt and that his left arm resembled an uncooked joint of meat, scarf and all.

The sound of gunfire burst out, galvanizing Patrick to free himself from the last of the logs. Then, a shot having smashed through the tiny window, showering us with glass, he grabbed me and hauled me back into the space with him.

‘What on earth's going on?'I said.

‘Well, it isn't the cops, that's for sure. They wouldn't behave like this and have the wrong kind of hardware.'

‘Shall I phone now?'

‘Being as you're on top and I can't move  . . .'