54
Crash ended the call with a satisfied smile, pleased with the news he had just been given. He jammed the phone into a pocket, turned to Lewis, and declared eagerly, “Payday.” He then left the living room and strode briskly down the passage to the kitchen, where he threw open the back door so he could cross the yard to the barn.
Lewis felt relief surge through him like a tidal wave crashing down on an isolated beach. It wouldn’t be long now until Crash left to go and collect the ransom, then he could save himself and Alice, He had decided earlier in the evening what he was going to do; his plan was simple - put Alice into the van, drive it into town and park it, and then head to his place so he could grab some things and make his escape in his car. He would call the police and let them know where they could find Alice when he was safely out of town.
Anxiously, he waited to hear the throaty roar of Crash’s motorbike as he left the farm, he didn’t want to waste a moment. When several minutes passed without any engine noises, Lewis started down the passage so he could find out what was going on.
Crash made his way round to the rear of the already unlocked van once he reached the barn. He collected a long plank of wood that sat at the side of the barn, angled it against the floor of the van and then manoeuvred his motorbike up it. His leathers and helmet followed his bike into the back of the van, and with that done he climbed behind the wheel.
He stopped the van a short distance from the front door of the farmhouse and got out.
Lewis was bewildered when his partner left the barn in the van, rather than astride his bike; not sure what it meant, he hurried back along the passage to the living room, reaching it just before Crash strode through the front door. His bewilderment turned to alarm when Crash started up the stairs. He couldn’t think why Crash was doing that, and the surprise of it worried him so much that he felt compelled to follow.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his alarm magnifying significantly when he saw Crash unbolt and unlock the door to Alice’s makeshift prison. “I thought you were going to collect the ransom.”
“I am,” Crash said, turning from the door, though he kept hold of the handle. “I’m taking her with me.”
Standing a couple of steps below Crash, Lewis’ eye-line was just about level with his partner’s waist, which gave him an excellent view of the handle of the pistol, only partially concealed by his leather jacket, he had tucked into the waistband of his trousers. The sight of the weapon, which he hadn’t known Crash possessed, made Lewis’ alarm tip over into full-blown panic – it was clear to him that Crash was taking Alice with him, because he intended killing her once he had the money from her father, rather than collecting the money and then coming back to kill her.
As much as he disliked violence, and had no faith in his ability to beat his partner in a purely physical contest, Lewis knew he had to stop Crash before he could take Alice away and hurt her. Unsure how he could stop the bigger man, he did the first thing that popped into his mind, he leaped onto Crash’s back as he swung the door open and entered the room.
The momentum of his attack carried them both across the room, and almost into the wall opposite the door.
“Get out, run!” Lewis shouted at Alice, who was, as usual, huddled against the wall near the lamp, a look of fear and confusion on her face as she watched the two men. As he called out to her, he fought with Crash, who had twisted round and thrown himself against the wall to crush him and make him loosen his grip; the move worked and Lewis found himself winded and sliding to the floor.
Lewis didn’t stay on the floor, he reacted instantly to Crash’s movement towards Alice, who hadn’t yet stirred from the wall. Pushing himself up he wrapped an arm around his partner’s legs in an effort to slow him, or, better still, stop him; at the same time, he reached up to grab Crash’s right hand so he couldn’t draw his gun. He clung on with all his strength, and called out again for Alice to run as Crash tried to wrench himself free.
Alice didn’t move in response to the first call, she remained huddled against the wall and watched the fight between her kidnappers, wondering fearfully what it meant for her, and what had caused it. The sight of the weapon in the waistband of the rough-looking figure closest to her, combined with the second shout from the man who had been nice to her over the last two days, galvanised her into action. Surging to her feet, she darted for the door, which stood open. She hesitated when she reached it so she could look back into the room.
Both men were on the floor, rolling around and wrestling for control of the gun, which she could see in the hands of the man whose very appearance frightened her. Seeing that, she turned away and left the room so she could hurry down the stairs in her bare feet. She was almost at the bottom of the stairs when a loud, though strangely muffled, bang sounded from the room where she had been held prisoner; it was not a noise she had ever heard for real before, but her mind recognised it immediately from the films and television shows she had watched – it was a gunshot.
The gunshot pushed her to move even quicker, and she jumped the last few steps before darting through the partially open front door. As she did, she wondered which of her two kidnappers had been shot, if either of them had. Despite her natural curiosity, she didn’t stop, she didn’t even slow, not even when she felt the small stones that littered the yard digging into the soles of her feet.
Crash and Lewis remained unmoving, one on top of the other, for several long moments. Finally, Crash shifted under the weight of his partner; one of his hands was trapped between the two of them, but with an effort, which involved much heaving of his body and hauling with his free hand, he managed to get out from beneath Lewis’ body. He looked down on Lewis, who remained unmoving, as he pushed himself to his feet; he was about to shoot him for a second time, having managed to keep hold of the gun, to make sure he was dead, when he remembered Alice Keating – he couldn’t afford to let her get away.
Forgetting about Lewis, and ignoring the blood that stained his Pink Floyd t-shirt, Crash hurried from the room. He descended the stairs two and three at a time, almost falling a couple of times, and then raced out through the still open front door. The moment he reached the yard, he saw Alice running down the dirt drive towards the road.
Automatically, his arm came up so he could fire his gun. Alice flinched, and Crash thought he had hit her, though from the way she continued, with only a slight slowing in her pace, he suspected that whatever injury he had inflicted wasn’t serious. His finger tightened on the trigger again, but he stopped himself before he fired – he doubted his ability to hit her from that distance, he was not that good a shot.
Lowering the gun, he started after the girl, knowing that the only thing in his favour just then was the fact that the road the farm was on was quiet at the best of times, and at that time of the day – gone ten in the evening – there was very little chance of anyone passing by.
Alice heard the second gunshot, louder than the first and un-muffled, in the same instant she felt a stab of pain in her right arm. Her mind had no problem connecting the bang with the pain, and she stumbled for a moment, before regaining her footing and continuing down the dirt drive. A quick glance at her arm revealed an ugly red wound, and twin lines of bright blood that ran down her arm. She went cold, and the blood drained from her face, leaving her white, as though she had seen a ghost, but she pushed on, ignoring the blood, and the pain in her arm, as well as that in her unprotected feet – she knew she had to keep going, if she didn’t she would be killed.
She was limping by the time she reached the end of the drive, and she could hear the heavy footsteps of her kidnapper as he pounded after her, closing the gap between them. The rhythmic noise encouraged her to neither stop nor pause as the drive terminated and she arrived at the road.
55
The long road through rural Hampshire was devoid of any other traffic, and John Wilkins’ mind began to wander. Increasingly it focused on the meal he had waiting for him when he got home,
not to mention thoughts of a nice glass of cider, rather than on the road ahead of him, or on his surroundings.
He was snapped out of his reverie by a noise that dragged his attention back to the here and now, a noise he recognised all too well – a gunshot.
Though he was sure of what he had heard – he had heard enough gunshots during his time in the army to recognise one when the sound of it reached his ears – his brain reminded him that he was no longer in the military, no longer in Afghanistan or Iraq; no longer did every noise signal a threat to his life. Just to be sure, he reached down to turn the radio off; no sooner had he done so than he heard a second report. This time his brain didn’t try to convince him that he was wrong. His head snapped round as he searched his surroundings for the source of the gunshots, at the same time he tensed, ready to react the moment he detected danger to himself.
He could see no-one, though that didn’t surprise him; to his right was woodland, it wasn’t dense, but there were enough trees and bushes to provide concealment for anyone who didn’t wish to be seen; while on his left was a four-foot-high hedge, which made it all but impossible for him to see anything of the farm on that side of the road.
His eyes had just returned to the road ahead when a figure appeared from behind the hedge. John slammed his foot on the brake, and spun the wheel in a desperate bid to avoid the figure, which he realised was a teenage girl when his brain caught up and processed what he was seeing. He missed the girl, to his enormous relief, but there was no way he could avoid the man who ran out after her – he didn’t even see him until the moment of impact.
The man was caught a glancing blow by his Audi, and he spun away before collapsing to the ground, where he lay, unmoving. The moment his car stopped, John released his seatbelt, threw open the door, and got out. A small part of his brain was concerned about possible damage to his car from the collision, it was overridden, however, by worry for the girl he had almost hit and the man he had hit. He looked around for the girl, but quickly turned his attention to the immobile figure in the middle of the road when he didn’t see her.
Unsure what sort of situation he had found himself in, but certain that it was a dangerous one, John approached the man cautiously. He stopped a dozen or so feet from the prone figure when he saw the gun on the ground and turned slowly on the spot, his instincts and his senses in overdrive as he searched for an ambush, or some other hidden danger, like someone else with a gun.
His heart raced as he mentally returned to his tours of duty in the heat and the dust of Afghanistan and Iraq. Everything and everyone there, at least everyone who didn’t wear an Allied uniform, was a potential threat, including – especially – the environment.
It was a good half a minute before his brain and his body accepted that he was no longer in danger from either the Taliban or IS insurgents hiding amongst the local populace, and he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of stumbling on a hidden bomb that was going to tear his body apart.
Slowly, he approached the prone figure, stopping when he reached the dropped gun. He bent to pick up the pistol and examined it quickly – the muzzle was warm, and there were traces of gunpowder around it, which told John it had been fired recently, and was the source of the gunshots he had heard. Hoping that there were no other gunmen around, he slipped the safety catch on, and then ejected the clip followed by the round in the chamber. Once he had made the gun safe, he tossed it and the clip in opposite directions, before moving on to check the man he had hit.
He had studied first aid, both before he joined the army and while he was in uniform, but his medical knowledge was still limited. As far as he could tell the man had, miraculously, suffered no major trauma, though there was still a chance of internal injuries – it was impossible for him to tell. It was no consolation to know that there was no way he could have avoided the collision, and he wasn’t legally culpable.
His brief and, he was sure, inadequate examination completed, John stood and reached a hand into his pocket for his phone. The emergency operator answered almost immediately, and John quickly explained the situation and gave his location – he couldn’t be exact since he was on a back road between two villages with no real landmarks or signs, but he was sure the ambulance and the police would find him without too much difficulty; it would actually be harder for them to miss him than to find him so long as they were on the right road.
When a second examination of the man he had hit revealed he was still breathing okay, and was not about to die, or suffer complications from his injuries in the immediate future, John went looking for the girl he had somehow managed to avoid. He had seen no sign of her since she ran across the road in front of his car, but he was sure she was still nearby; the road they were on ran for almost four miles, with only a few farms, and a single stretch of half a dozen houses along its length. The nearest place the girl could make for, other than the farm she had run from, was about half a mile away.
He searched the woods around where the girl had disappeared with his eyes; it wasn’t easy, for the only light came from the headlights of his car and the pale moon overhead, which was alternately concealed and then revealed by the wispy clouds being blown across the sky by the brisk breeze.
He saw movement out the corner of his eye, but dismissed it as just the breeze playing with the foliage; when the movement came again, he turned towards it and spotted the girl, who was hiding behind a tree and using a bush to conceal herself, not very well, as she peered out in an obvious effort to see what was going on.
“Hello,” John called out, keeping his voice as friendly and non-threatening as possible. “Are you alright?” There was a quick rustling and the girl’s eyes disappeared. He wasn’t surprised by that – he didn’t know who the girl was, or what had happened to her, but it was clear that something serious had. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”
John waited a few moments to see if the girl was going to respond, when she didn’t he called out again. “It’s okay, you’re safe now, he can’t hurt you anymore.” The girl still didn’t respond. “What’s your name?” he asked, trying another tack.” I’m John, John Wilkins,” he said, hoping that by giving his name he would appear less threatening to her, which would encourage her to speak – it worked.
“Are you one of them?” she asked. Her eyes, the only part of her that was visible, were filled with fear, while the concealing bush shook in time with the trembling of her body.
“No,” John called back with a shake of his head, not that he had the first clue who ‘they’ were. The news that there was more than one person to worry about had his eyes darting all around, searching again for any possible danger; the figure in the road hadn’t moved, and was, apparently, still unconscious, and John couldn’t see anyone else, despite that he remained alert. “I was driving home when you ran out in front of my car – as he said that he couldn’t help wishing that he had stuck to the dual-carriageway, instead of leaving it to avoid the chaos caused by a three-car pileup – what happened? Who are you?”
“Alice Keating.”
The reply came after a silence that stretched on for long enough that John thought she wasn’t going to answer him. He knew the name, he had heard or seen it somewhere recently, he just couldn’t remember where.
“I was kidnapped, I think it was a couple of days ago,” Alice said uncertainly. She wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed since she was taken from the back of her family’s Bentley, she had lost track of how long she had been locked in the room she had escaped from.
The moment she said that, John remembered where he knew her name from – he was surprised he hadn’t remembered it straight away, after all, her kidnapping had been all over both the local and the national news the last few days.
56
Stone was still in the back of the van, wishing the painkillers he had taken a short while before would kick in and make it easier for him to breathe, and watching Owen Keating, who remained on the bench in the play area,
when his phone rang. He gave a sharp gasp as he reached into his pocket for his phone, though the pain was driven from his mind as he answered the call and listened to what was being said – he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, it was so unexpected that it pushed aside not only the pain of his injuries, but everything else that had been occupying his thoughts as well.
When the call was finished, Stone set the phone down in his lap and sat for several long moments, his astonishment so great that he couldn’t speak. He found his voice presently, and immediately addressed the constable who was behind the wheel of the van. “Slater, go and fetch Mr Keating, tell him there’s no need to remain there, no-one’s coming to collect the ransom.”
“What’s going on?” Evans asked as Slater left the van.
“We’ve had a break,” Stone told him. “The best we could have hoped for.” The excitement in his voice made it clear to the others in the cramped van just how good the news was, even if it gave no hint of what the news was, fortunately he didn’t make them wait to find out. “I don’t have all the details right now, but it seems that Alice Keating has escaped her kidnappers.”
It was Evans’ turn to look astonished, a look he shared with his partner and with DS Burke. “Where is she?” he asked, curiosity and relief fighting for dominance over his features. “Is she alright?”
Stone shrugged, a move he immediately regretted. Once he had a measure of control over the pain, he said, “Wells didn’t say; she’s alive, and she’s free of her kidnappers, but I don’t know much more than that right now. I do know that uniformed officers and an ambulance have been despatched to Andrews’ Tor Road, that’s apparently where she was found.”
“A bit out of the way,” Burke remarked. “A good area to hide someone who’s been kidnapped, no-one’s going to think of looking out there without a good reason. I’d guess she was being held on a farm.”