The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths (45 page)

More fire.

The human eye can, I believe, see a single candle-flame from a distance of three miles and more. The helicopter pilot will be more than three miles away, but I’m sending up a thousand odd liters of kerosene, plus a farmhouse that’s already half ablaze.

How long before SCO19 arrive?

Not long, I’m guessing. Ten minutes? Fifteen?

I can’t see Roy failing to hold out that long.

As for me, I’m not quite certain what to do next. Assuming that Henderson and friends were first alerted by the smoke alarm, it’ll take them time to figure out what’s happened and who’s behind it. What’s more, I’m well concealed by darkness. I’m no longer in immediate danger.

So I stick around. I take precautions, of course. I move away from the farmhouse. Move into the trees, stay clear of the farm track. Keep an eye on the buildings behind me.

A whirl of activity.

Figures come streaming out of the farmhouse. It’s impossible to be precise about numbers, because the only light comes from my two fires and it’s hard to see anything beyond their orange hearts.

There’s also the sound of vehicles. A van – probably the one that brought me here – reverses swiftly towards the barn. The front door opens. Someone is there – Henderson? Geoff? – ushering people out. Light spills into the yard. The gleam of wet stone, trout-brown.

I can see Ram in his pajamas. Another man, protesting, being almost thrown into the van. But only dark skins, dark faces.

Wyatt doesn’t come out. Nor Terry. Nor the other Brits.

There are gunshots from inside the barn. Not the sounds of a firefight, but the orderly sounds of execution. The pace of the shooting is considered, almost stately.

I think Terry’s leaving party has come a day early.

Ram and his colleagues weren’t invited, but I was. I had a question mark by my name, but I was still on the list.

The six Indians are all out now. Inside the van. One of them, I couldn’t see which, was wearing underpants, nothing else.

The gunshots keep coming. I try to keep my imagination pulled back from what’s happening in there, but I can’t do it. A tide of blood. Wyatt’s arrogant face. Shoesmith’s more human one. Each obliterated because the project no longer requires them. Obliterated because Henderson’s security rulebook calls for the elimination of every risk, no matter how small.

What did I really think? That an organization which would kill Tania Lewis for almost no reason would leave me free to live? Would leave Terry and Wyatt and the others?

I think we’ve always underestimated Tinker. That
I
have. That we’ve never fully appreciated its rigor or its ruthlessness.

But I also remember those conversations with Henderson. Those conversations about the boat. I think if I’d said yes, if I’d agreed to be his brown-legged Caribbean boat-girl, I’d have been spared the massacre. His regret was genuine. Regret not merely that we wouldn’t become lovers, but that he’d have to slaughter me with the rest. No wonder he gave me sad eyes.

Even Geoff, a lesser man than Henderson, was the same. His ‘you’ve been great’ comment and that creepily lingering touch on my forearm: those were his way of saying, ‘So sorry I’m going to have to shoot you.’

The shooting inside the barn comes to an end. The van, with its cargo of Bangalore knowhow, has already vanished, screaming down the track. I didn’t get its number plate, but this mess is no longer mine to clean up. I hope to God that SCO19 manage to pick up the van as it escapes. Still, as Brattenbury would probably tell me, ‘Fiona, we
have
done this before. We
do
know how to do this.’

And he does. He really does. He’s never come across a Tinker before, though. I doubt if any law enforcement body has. This last year, it’s been a privilege. An honor, really. An honor and a privilege.

As I’m thinking these thoughts, I see what I expect to see next. A glow of fire from the barn itself. The simplest way to destroy evidence. Kill everyone you don’t want to talk, then burn the place down. It’s hardly going to stop our investigation, but it’s a pretty good delaying device. The flames grow big enough, fast enough, that they must have used petrol. They presumably had cars ready for just such a contingency.

More cars leaving the farmhouse.

Or no, I realize, not cars, but a pair of those four-wheel-drive mud-buggies that farmers use.
Crap
. They’re intending to avoid roads altogether. Will Brattenbury be ready for that move? I doubt it. SCO19 will have road vehicles aplenty and no shortage of air support, but that’s not quite the same thing as having vehicles which can cross field and mountain, no matter what the conditions.

The buggies avoid the farm track, avoid the road. There’s a gate above the farmhouse. I can just see its weather-whitened timbers gleaming like bone in the dying firelight. The two buggies make for the opening. They’re not speeding. Just moving purposefully and without a single wasted moment.

Lower in the valley, I can see the orange glow of street lighting. The buggies are heading away from all that, into an area where there are no lights, no sodium glow.

As I thought, we’re in the mountains, or on their very edge. The ragged line between man and mountain.

Once again, Tinker is ahead of us. I see it as clearly as I see the last of the fires licking out the remains of the oil tank. A column of smoke, inky and foul, is lit in orange from below. A slow rain, quietly falling, murmurs regret.

Brattenbury will be coming, and coming fast, but I’m the officer in charge and on the scene. These are my decisions and I will make them.

Shotgun in hand, Glock in waistband, knife in pocket, I start to pursue.

53.

The night is dark. The moon is full enough, I think, but the sky is wadded in great rolls of cloud, unspooling from across the Irish Sea. As I move away from the farmhouse, my eyes grow used to the night, but even so visibility is very poor. I run up towards the gate, pass through to the fields beyond.

The buggies are unlit, but they’re diesel-engined and hardly quiet. I hear the thump of the motors. There’s a track, of sorts, cut into the field. Red mud and jutting stone. Coarse mountain grasses growing freely in between. A rising path, and moorland beyond.

My shoes are Jessica’s shoes. Ballet pumps. Black and white polka dots. Quite nice actually, and comfortable enough. But not well suited to running, or even walking, on this terrain. I lose one shoe almost straight away, and fall as I lose it. The other I discard on purpose, because the effort of trying to keep it was slowing me down.

No shoes, no problem.

I’ll do this barefoot.

I can’t see enough to be confident of running fast, but move at a pace I think I’ll be able to sustain. Far down in the valley, I hear the first wail of sirens. Blue lights on hedgerows.

I think about going back to the farm. Simply reporting to Brattenbury, or whoever is to be in charge of the assault. But as I’m debating this, I catch a momentary flash of lights up ahead. Not headlights. Just the quick dart of a torch, furtive and brief.

There’s a change in the sound too. Up till now, the two vehicles have driven fairly steadily, moving with a steady, puttering rumble. What I’m hearing now is different. A sudden revving. A low-gear yowl. Perhaps the sound of a wheel slippage.

Then headlights. Again only brief, but angled sharply upwards, at right angles to the track I’m on. An abrupt lurch forward, then the lights are killed.

They’re turning, I realize. Fighting to turn up the slope and double back on themselves.

They can’t want to return to the farmhouse. The sirens are close now, a minute away at most.
So why double back?

I’ve answered my question almost as soon as I’ve framed it. The track they’ve taken gives them the quickest, easiest access to the open hill. Once there, they have, in effect, the freedom of the Brecon Beacons. No hedges, no walls, no boundaries.

But that freedom comes at a price. The hills themselves are very open: bare and windswept. Henderson’s security brain will be keenly aware of the risk of pursuit from above. So the escapees have to get back to the broken ground of a valley floor as soon as they can.
But not the valley of the original farmhouse
. That’s their plan. Get out onto the hills. Skirt the base of the ridge until they can drop down into the adjoining valley. Then lose themselves in the woods. Or hide out in an outbuilding till dawn. Or switch vehicles and just drive calmly away.

That’s what
they’re
doing. But what is Brattenbury doing? What is his countermove?

And again: no sooner have I framed my question than I’ve answered it.

Priority one: find Roy Williams. Find me.

Priority two: secure the property. Put out the fires. Check on victims. Save those that can be saved. Secure any evidence that has escaped the flames.

Priority three: pursue and capture any suspects that have left the property
by road
: the type of pursuit that any police service handles as a matter of routine.

Nowhere on Brattenbury’s list will there be a memo item
Check to see if there are any all-terrain farm utility vehicles creeping, without headlights, on the margins of the hillside above
. Even if, in theory, Brattenbury had considered the possibility of such an escape, he couldn’t, given the tiny gap of time, have prepared a response. He’d need all-terrain vehicles of his own. Night vision equipment. A mass deployment of officers in this valley and the neighboring one. None of which could, realistically, be assembled in the time available.

I see all this, with the same clarity as I see the yard in front of the farmhouse now filling with blue lights and armed officers. See it and think,
We’ve blown it
.
After all this.
They’re getting away
.

Only my feet are moving faster than my thoughts.

I’m scrambling directly uphill. There’s no track here, just roughly thistled grass. This isn’t a place where you want to be barefoot but then Ernest Shackleton probably didn’t want his ship to sink under him in the Antarctic. Those guys in Apollo 13 probably weren’t best pleased when they found themselves in a crippled ship two hundred thousand miles from Earth.

Shoes, schmoes. We don’t always get what we want.

I go on jogging upwards.

Jogging up, until I see a hedge looming black against the skyline. Hawthorns, stunted by the wind. Barbed wire. Blackthorn and maple. A couple of fenceposts, softly lichenous and rotten at the base. The sigh of open moorland.

It’s too dark to tackle the hedge with any strategy, so I just shove myself into what looks like a weak spot. I flail around for a few moments, struggling for a foothold in the jumble of black branches and wet leaves, but I push through somehow. Emerge into the sudden wideness of the mountain proper.

As I do so – face flat on the muddy ground, legs still thrutching free of the hedge – the beat of a diesel engine draws near. So near, I can feel the stones in the ground shaking under my cheek. I’m half lying on my shotgun and can’t get the Glock out from my wet jeans.

I heave forward on my elbows. Heave and roll. Get the shotgun free.

Fire.

Not
at
anything. The gun is still half under my body and I can feel the blast of shot and escape gases warm beneath my face. I just want to cause havoc. Disrupt the smooth ease of this escape.

Want to, and do.

I think the buggy must be a few yards from me when I pull the trigger, no more. The detonation – its sight and sound – acts like a stun grenade discharged at point-blank range.

I don’t know if I’ve hit the driver. I don’t think so. But the buggy veers from the blast, lurching uphill. A hard right-angled turn at speed and on a nastily climbing slope. I hear, and half see, the buggy’s engine shriek as its left-sided wheels lose contact with the ground, as it bucks up on its side.

There’s a moment of astonished equilibrium. The vehicle held in temporary balance, a mountain trapeze.

I’m urging it to overturn. Urging it to continue its toppling curve.

But it stands steady against the night, then lurches back. Jounces hard on its springs. Hits mud and stone, slithers down a small bank, and ends, still pointing up the mountain, perpendicular to its original direction. It took a hard knock or two, for sure, but the engine is still running and those damn things are made for rough ground, rough use.

I seize the moment. Fire the shotgun flat and low into the nearest tire. I’m not much of a markswoman, but at this range it’s impossible to miss. Fire a second shot to be sure. The gun takes five cartridges and I want the last two available if I need them. Wrestle the Glock out of my waistband – cursing Jessica for the needless skinniness of her skinny jeans – and fire that too. Into the air. I’m not trying to hit anyone. I just want the confusion. The confusion and the noise.

Down at the farmhouse, they will hear the shooting and be starting to respond.

As all this is happening, I can hear people clambering out of the buggy. The driver – Allan, maybe? Vic? – is swearing as he tries to get the thing into gear and back onto the level. Whoever it is, he can’t do it. Not with one tire blown out, the slope and mud against him.

But I’m not the only one who can play at this brutal, muddy, rain-blunted game.

A shotgun blast, not mine, roars out into the night. A second shot follows, then a third and a fourth. An arc of fire, splitting the air. An arc that would threaten to saw me in half, except that I’m lying face down in the mud and whoever’s shooting will be seeking a chest shot. The lethal stroke.

I try to wriggle forward and sideways, but my leg is caught in something. A twist of wire, a loop of root. I’m not sure. Either way, I’m stuck and lying flat, when another voice – male, rough, not one I recognize – shouts, ‘Leave it! Leave it! Just run!’

Two men – perhaps three or four – stampede past me. They pass so close in the darkness that one of them hits my head a glancing blow with his boot. The blow makes me drop my guns momentarily. When I recover myself, I fire low with the Glock, hoping to hit a foot or a leg. Don’t know if I succeed. Blaze off the shotgun at the same flat angle, the muzzle flash so bright that I have to close my eyes against the glare.