Wild Justice (27 page)

Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Wild Justice

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âI
cannot understand why we haven't had the demand contact yet.' Inspector Richards ran his hand distractedly across his pate, disturbing the feathery wisps that covered it and leaving them standing out at a startled angle. âIt's five days now. Still no demands.'

âThey know where to contact Peter,' Colin Noble agreed. âThe interview he gave covered that.'

Peter Stride had appeared on BBC TV to broadcast an appeal to the kidnappers not to maim his daughter further, and to the general public to offer any information that might lead to her rescue.

On the same programme they had displayed the police identikit portrait of the driver of the maroon Triumph prepared by the one witness.

The response had been overwhelming, jamming the switchboard at Inspector Richards's special headquarters, and a mixed bag had fallen into the net.

A fourteen-year-old runaway had the police barge into the Bournemouth apartment where she was in bed with her thirty-two-year-old lover. She was returned weeping bitterly
to the bosom of her family, and had again disappeared within twenty-four hours.

In North Scotland the police sadly bungled a raid on a remote cottage hired by a man with the same lank dark hair and gunfighter's moustache as the identikit portrait. He turned out to be a cottage-industry manufacturer of LSD tablets, and he and his four assistants, one of them a young girl who vaguely fitted the description of Melissa-Jane in that she was female and blonde, had scattered across the Highlands before being overtaken and borne to earth by sweating pounding members of the Scottish Constabulary.

Peter Stride was furious. âIf it had been Melissa-Jane, they would have had fifteen minutes in which to put her downâ'He raged at Richards. âYou've got to let Thor go in to the next raid.'

Through the Thor communications net he spoke directly to Kingston Parker on the video screens.

ââ We'll put all our influence into it,' Parker agreed, and then with deep compassion in his eyes, âPeter, I'm living every minute of this with you. I cannot escape the knowledge that I have placed you into this terrible situation. I did not expect the attack would come through your daughter. I think you know that you can call on me for any support you need.'

âThank you, sir,' said Peter and for a moment felt his resolve weaken. In ten days he would have to execute this man. He steeled himself by thinking of a puckered deadwhite finger floating in its tiny bottle.

Kingston Parker's influence worked immediately. Six hours later the order came down from Downing Street via the Commissioner of Police, that the next raid on a suspect hideout would be conducted by Thor Command.

The Royal Air Force placed two helicopters at Thor's disposal for the duration of the operation, and Thor's assault unit went into intensive training for penetration and removal under urban conditions. Peter trained with them,
he and Colin swiftly re-establishing the old rapport of concerted action.

When they were not practising and refining the exit and assembly from the hovering helicopters, Peter spent much of his time in the enclosed pistol range, trying to drown his awareness in the crash of gunfire, but the days passed swiftly in a series of false alarms and misleading clues.

Each night when Peter examined his face in the mirror above the liquor cabinet, it was more haggard, the blue eyes muddied by fatigue and terrible gut-eroding terror of what the next day might bring forth.

There were six days left when Peter left the hotel room before breakfast, caught the tube at Green Park and left it again at Finsbury Park. In a garden supplies shop near the station he purchased a twenty-pound plastic bag of ammonium nitrate garden fertilizer. He carried it back to the Dorchester in a locked Samsonite suitcase and stored it in the closet behind his hanging trenchcoat.

That night, when he spoke to Magda Altmann, she pleaded once again to be allowed to come to London.

âPeter, I know I can be of help to you. Even if it's just to stand beside you and hold your hand.'

âNo. We've been over that.' He could hear the brutal tone in his own voice, but could not control it. He knew that he was getting very close to the edge. âHave you heard anything?'

âI'm sorry, Peter. Nothing, absolutely nothing. My sources are doing all that is possible.'

Peter bought the dieseline from a pump at the Lex Garage in Brewer Street. He took five litres in a plastic screw-topped container that had contained a household detergent. The pump attendant was a pimply teenager in dirty overalls. He was completely uninterested in the transaction.

In his bathroom Peter worked on the dieseline and the nitrate from the garden shop. He produced twenty-one
pounds of savagely weight-efficient high explosive that was, none the less, docile until activated by a blasting cap â such as he had devised with a flashlight bulb.

It would completely devastate the entire suite, utterly destroying everybody and everything in it. However, the damage should be confined to those three rooms.

It would be a simple matter to lure Kingston Parker to the suite under the pretence of having urgent information about Caliph to deliver, information so critical that it could only be delivered in person and in private.

That night the face in the mirror above the liquor cabinet was that of a man suffering from a devouring terminal disease, and the whisky bottle was empty. Peter broke the seal on a fresh bottle; it would make it easier to sleep, he told himself.

T
he wind came off the Irish Sea like the blade of a harvester's scythe, and the low lead-coloured cloud fled up the slopes of the Wicklow hills ahead of it.

There were weak patches in the cloud layer through which a cold and sickly sun beamed swiftly across the green forested slopes. As it passed so the rain followed â icy grey rain slanting in on the wind.

A man came up the deserted street of the village. The tourists had not yet begun the annual invasion, but the âBed and Breakfast' signs were already out to welcome them on the fronts of the cottages.

The man passed the pub, in its coat of shocking salmon pink paint â and lifted his head to read the billboard above the empty car park. âBlack is Beautiful â drink Guinness' it proclaimed, and the man did not smile but lowered his head and trudged on over the bridge that divided the village in two.

On the stone balustrades of the bridge a midnight artist
had used an aerosol paint can to spray political slogans in day-glo colours.

âBRITS OUT' on the left-hand balustrade and âSTOP H BLOCK TORTURE' on the other. This time the man grimaced sourly.

Below him the steely grey water boiled about the stone piers before hissing down towards the sea.

The man wore a cyclist's plastic cape and a narrow-brimmed tweed cap pulled down over his eyes. The wind dashed at him, flogging the skirts of the cape against his Wellington boots.

He seemed to cringe to the wind, hunching down against its cold fury, as he trudged on past the few buildings of the village. The street was deserted, though the man knew that he was being watched from curtained windows.

This village on the lower slopes of the Wicklow hills, a mere thirty miles from Dublin, would not have been his choice. Here isolation worked against them, making them conspicuous. He would have preferred the anonymity of the city. However, his preferences had never been asked for.

This was only the third time he had left the house since they had arrived. Each time it had been for some emergency provision, something that a little more forethought might have prevented, which should have been included when the old house was stocked for their stay. That came from having to rely on a drinking man, but here again he had not been consulted.

He was discontented and in a truculent, smouldering mood. It had rained most of the time, and the oil-fired central heating was not working, the only heating was the smoking peat fires in the small fireplaces in each of the two big rooms they were using. The high ceilings and sparse furnishings had made the rooms more difficult to warm â and he had been cold ever since they had arrived. They were using only the two rooms, and had left the rest of the
house locked and shuttered. It was a gloomy building, with the smell of damp pervading it. He had only the company of a whining alcoholic, day after cold rainy day. The man was ripe and over-ripe for trouble, for any diversion to break the grinding monotony â but now he was reduced to errand boy and house servant, roles for which he was unsuited by temperament and training, and he scowled darkly as he trudged over the bridge towards the village store, with its row of petrol pumps standing before it like sentries.

The storekeeper saw him coming, and called through into the back of the shop.

âIt's himself from down at the Old Manse.'

His wife came through, wiping her hands on her apron, a short plump woman with bright eyes and ready tongue.

âCity people have no more sense than they need, out in this weather.'

âSure and it's not baked beans nor Jameson whiskey he's after buying.'

Speculation about the new occupant of the Old Manse had swiftly become one of the village's main diversions, with regular bulletins broadcast by the girl on the local telephone exchange â two overseas telephone calls, by the postman â no mail deliveries, by the dustman â the disposals into the dustbins were made up mainly of empty Heinz baked beans cans and Jameson whiskey bottles.

âI still think he's from the trouble up north,' said the shopkeeper's wife. âHe's got the look and the sound of an Ulster man.'

âHush, woman.' Her husband cautioned her. âYou'll bring bad luck upon us. Get yourself back into the kitchen now.'

The man came in out of the rain and swept the tweed cap off his head, beating the water from it against the jamb of the door. He had black straight hair, cut into a ragged fringe above the dark Irish visage and fierce eyes, like those of a falcon when first the leather hood is slipped.

âThe top of the morning to you, Mr Barry,' the shopkeeper greeted him heartily. âLike as not it will stop raining, before it clears.'

The man they knew as Barry grunted, and as he slipped the waterproof cape from his shoulders, swept the cluttered interior of the little general dealer's store with a quick, all-embracing glance.

He wore a rough tweed jacket over a cable-stitched jersey and brown corduroys tucked into the top of the Wellington boots.

âYou finished writing on your book, have you?' Barry had told the milkman that he was writing a book about Ireland. The Wicklow hills were a stronghold of the literary profession, there were a dozen prominent or eccentric writers living within twenty miles, taking advantage of Ireland's tax concessions to writers and artists.

âNot yet,' Barry grunted, and went across to the shelves nearest the till. He made a selection of half a dozen items and laid them on the worn counter top.

âWhen it's good and wrote I'm going to ask the library to keep a copy for me,' the shopkeeper promised, as though that was exactly what a writer would want to hear, and began to ring up the purchases on his register.

Barry's upper lip was still unnaturally smoother and paler than the rest of his face. He had shaved away the dark droopy moustache the day before arriving in the village, and at the same time had cut the fringe of his hair that hung almost to his eyes.

The shopkeeper picked up one of the purchases and looked inquiringly at Barry, but when the dark Irish face remained impassive and he volunteered no explanation, the shopkeeper dropped his eyes self-consciously and rang up the package with the other purchases and dropped it into a paper carrier.

âThat will be three pounds twenty pence,' he said, and closed the cash drawer with a clang, waiting while Barry
slung the cape over his shoulders and adjusted the tweed cap.

âGod be with you then, Mr Barry.'

There was no reply and the shopkeeper watched him set off back across the bridge before he called his wife again.

âHe's a surly one, all right, he is.'

âHe's got him a girlfriend down there.' The shopkeeper was bursting with the importance of his discovery. âHe's up to a nice little bit of hanky-panky.'

âHow do you know that?'

âHe was after buying women's things â you know.' He hooded a knowing eye.

âNo, I don't know,' his wife insisted.

âFor the curse â you know. Women's things,' and his wife glowed with the news, and began to untie her apron.

âYou're sure now?' she demanded.

âWould I ever be lying to you?'

âI think I'll go across to Mollie for a cuppa tea,' said his wife eagerly; the news would make her the woman of the hour throughout the village.

The man they knew as Barry trudged into the narrow, high-walled lane that led up to the Old Manse. It was only the heavy boots and voluminous cape that gave him a clumsy gait, for he was a lithe, lean man in prime physical condition, and under the brim of his cap the eyes were never still, hunter's eyes probing and darting from side to side.

The wall was twelve feet high, the stonework blotched with silver-grey lichen, and although it was cracked and sagging at places, yet it was still substantial and afforded complete privacy and security to the property beyond.

At the end of the lane there was a pair of rotten and warping double doors, but the lock was a bright new brass Yale and the cracks in the wood and the gaping seams had been covered with fresh white strips of pine so that it was impossible to see into the interior of the garage.

Barry unlocked the brass Yale lock and slipped through, pulling the latch closed behind him.

There was a dark blue Austin saloon car parked facing the doors for immediate departure. It had been stolen in Ulster two weeks before, resprayed and fitted with a roof rack to alter its appearance, and with new licence plates. The engine had been tuned and checked and Barry had paid nearly twice its market value.

Now he slipped behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired and caught immediately. He grunted with satisfaction; seconds could mean the difference between success and failure, and in his life failure and death were synonymous. He listened to the engine beat for half a minute, checking the oil pressure and fuel gauges before switching off the engine again and going out through the rear door of the garage into the overgrown kitchen yard.

The old house had the sad unloved air of approaching dereliction. The fruit trees in the tiny orchard were sick with fungus diseases and surrounded by weed banks.

The thatch roof was rotten-green with moss, and the windows were blindman's eyes, unseeing and uncaring.

Barry let himself in through the kitchen door and dropped his cape and cap on the scullery floor and set the carrier on the draining board of the sink. Then he reached into the cutlery drawer and brought out a pistol. It was a British officer's service pistol, had in fact been taken during a raid on a British Army arsenal in Ulster three years previously.

Barry checked the handgun with the expertise of a long familiarity and then thrust it into his belt. He had felt naked and vulnerable for the short time that he was without the weapon â but he had reluctantly decided not to risk carrying it in the village.

Now he tapped water into the kettle, and at the sound a voice called through from the dim interior.

âIs that you?'

âNone other,' Barry answered drily, and the other man came through and stood in the doorway to the kitchen.

He was a thin, stooped man in his fifties with the swollen inflamed face of the very heavy drinker.

âDid you get it?' His voice was husky and rough with whiskey, and he had a seedy run-down air, a day's stubble of grey hairs that grew at angles on the blotchy skin.

Barry indicated the package on the sink.

âIt's all there, doctor.'

âDon't call me that, I'm not a doctor any more,' the man snapped irritably.

âOh, but you are a damned fine one. Ask the girls who dropped their bundlesâ'

âLeave me alone, damn you.'

Yes, he had been a damn fine doctor. Long ago, before the whiskey, now however it was the abortions and the gunshot wounds of fugitives, and jobs like this one. He did not like to think about this one. He crossed to the sink and sorted through the packages.

âI asked you for adhesive tape,' he said.

âThey had none. I brought the bandage.'

âI cannotâ' the man began, but Barry whirled on him savagely, his face darkening with angry blood.

âI've had a gutsful of your whining. You should have brought what you needed, not sent me to get it for you.'

âI did not expect the woundâ'

âYou didn't expect anything but another dram of Jamesons, man. There is no adhesive tape. Now get on with it and tie the bitch's hand up with the bandage.'

The older man backed away swiftly, picked up the packages and shuffled through into the other room.

Barry made the tea and poured it into the thick china mug, spooned in four spoons of sugar and stirred noisily, staring out of the smeared panes. It was raining again. He thought that the rain and the waiting would drive him mad.

The doctor came back into the kitchen, carrying a
bundle of linen soiled with blood and the yellow ooze of sepsis.

âShe is sick,' he said. âShe needs drugs, antibiotics. The fingerâ'

âForget it,' said Barry.

From the other room there was a long-drawn-out whimper, followed by the incoherent gabble of a young girl deep in the delirium induced by fever and hypnotic drugs.

âIf she is not taken to proper care, I won't be responsible.'

âYou'll be responsible,' Barry told him heavily. âI'll see to that.'

The doctor dropped the bundle of linen into the sink and let the water run over it.

âCan I have a drink now?' he asked.

Barry made a sadistic display of consulting his watch.

âNo. Not yet,' he decided.

The doctor poured soapflakes into the sink.

âI don't think I can do the hand,' he whispered, shaking his head. âThe finger was bad enough â but I can't do the hand.'