He took the turn a little too sharply, overcompensated, and had to fight to maintain control of his mother’s car, which he was unfamiliar with. He still didn’t have complete control of the Jaguar when he took the next turn – his intention was to keep taking turns until he lost his pursuer and then leave town – and he nearly spun out. He was so intent on straightening the vehicle out, and stopping it fishtailing, that it wasn’t until he had succeeded that he heard the approaching sirens; the sounds were converging from all directions, and his eyes darted all around, as if he expected the approaching police cars to appear from within the buildings on either side of the street.
Despite the increasing volume of the sirens, which announced that the converging police cars were rapidly getting closer, Ryan was caught by surprise when one of them appeared from a side road, barely two dozen feet in front of him. He reacted instantly, slamming his foot down on the brake, at the same time he jerked the wheel to his left; his instincts told him he was going too fast and he wouldn’t be able to stop in time; all he could do, though, was hope that his jerk of the wheel was enough to steer him past the rear of the police car. It wasn’t.
He hit the rear of the car a glancing blow, spinning it round. The impact jarred Ryan’s arms and threw him forward into the steering wheel. He was surprised the airbag wasn’t deployed by the collision, but at the same time he was relieved; if the airbag had gone off he would have had a hard time continuing his escape. Since he still had control of the car, he moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator, shifted gears, and spun the wheel to take the car around the corner the police car had appeared from.
Ryan could see that the front wing on the passenger side had been crumpled by the impact, fortunately it was having no effect on the engine, and the car leaped forward as he accelerated. He was glad about that, since the police car that had been dogging him had closed the gap while he was slowed by the collision, drawing up to his rear bumper. The flashing light on the roof filled the rear-view mirror.
62
Stone scrolled through the pictures on Owen Keating’s phone and then held it out. “Is this the man you saw?” he asked of Nurse Regan, watching her face as she scrutinised the image he was showing her.
The nurse nodded. “That’s him,” she confirmed. “I’d recognise him anywhere.” Her voice was steady and confident, though her demeanour betrayed the shock she still felt.
“Thank you.” Stone locked the phone and slipped it into his pocket so he could return it to Owen Keating, he then left the nurse’s lounge, Burke on his heels, so he could coordinate the search for Ryan Keating. They still didn’t know if Ryan had been trying to kill his sister’s kidnapper out of a misguided, and belated, desire to protect his sister, or because he was involved in her kidnapping; it didn’t matter which was the case just then, in Stone’s opinion, that was something that could be sorted out once they had Ryan Keating in custody. He was sure his theory was right, though, and Ryan was involved, perhaps even behind, his sister being held for ransom.
Radioing Sergeant Wells at the station, Stone reeled off a list of instructions for him to disseminate to the officers out on patrol. That done, he contacted Inspector Evans, who was still at the Keatings’ house; Stone didn’t think it likely that Ryan Keating would return home, not when he had to know that doing so would result in his arrest, but he wanted Evans to find out everything he could about the young man, in case he could discover where Ryan might be going, and what his intentions might be.
Stone also hoped that Evans would be able to track Ryan’s mobile phone, as well as any activity that might have taken place on his bank account and credit cards, just in case the cars closing in on the borrowed Jaguar lost him – he sincerely hoped that wouldn’t happen. With the level of importance attached to the case, and the number of patrol cars heading towards Ryan Keating’s last reported position, it should be impossible for him to escape; he had enough sense not to rely on that, however.
His radio calls made, and Owen Keating’s phone returned, Stone left the hospital and, his partner behind the wheel again, headed for Ryan Keating’s position, which was being updated by Sergeant Wells as the patrols reported in.
63
Ryan’s flight ended with shocking suddenness. For a little more than three quarters of an hour, following the appearance of the first patrol car in his rear-view mirror, he had sought to evade the pursuing police - that was over now.
As he struggled against the airbag – this time it had deployed – which threatened to smother him, he couldn’t help thinking that life wasn’t fair; he had kept ahead of the police, and countered every attempt by them to force him to stop, for forty-five minutes, only to be stopped by a fox, a stupid, verminous, scavenging fox!
What made it worse was the knowledge that it had been instinct, nothing more than that, that had made him crash. Seeing something dart across the road in front of the car, his hands had twitched on the wheel, the result of which was that the front passenger wheel left the road and mounted a low grassy bank that ran alongside the tarmac.
By the time he realised the movement had been a fox, a creature he would have felt no compunction about running down - not that he would have felt much compunction about running down pretty much any animal that stood between him and his escape - if he had the time to think about what he was going to do, it was too late; his efforts to get the Jaguar under control resulted in it racing across the narrow country road, climbing the low bank at its side and then dropping down, nose first, into the muddy ditch beyond it. He was thrown forward, and then pushed back against his seat as the airbag exploded from the wheel, expanding in less than a second to fill the gap between him and the wheel.
The collision left Ryan stunned, and it was more than a minute before he moved again. With the airbag deflated, and able to move again, he threw open the driver’s door and climbed out, falling into the ditch in which his mother’s car was now stuck. It wasn’t a long fall, just a few feet, but he landed heavily, twisting his ankle and falling forwards; he managed to get his hands out just in time to stop him smashing his face into the muddy ground at the top of the ditch.
Slipping and sliding, he climbed from the ditch, while frequent profanities, caused by the pain in his twisted ankle, escaped his lips to drown, momentarily, the quiet engine noises of the Jaguar. Once he made it back to the road, and was standing on firm ground, he straightened up and brushed himself off. Fastidiously, he removed what mud and dirt he could before wiping his hands clean, not that they were all that clean when he was finished; despite his efforts, and his dislike of being dirty, there was nothing he could do just then about his dirty shoes or his sodden socks.
“Ryan Keating.”
The loud voice diverted his attention away from his dishevelled appearance and onto the police cars stopped a short distance away, and the uniformed officers closing in on him.
“You’re under arrest; keep your hands where we can see them.”
Ryan’s immediate reaction was to look around for a means of escape; the road leading further out into the country was clear, but he quickly dismissed any thought of making a run for it. Even if he hadn’t twisted his ankle - a constant throbbing made him all too aware of the futility of trying to run on it - he didn’t think his chances of getting away, when there were so many officers waiting to give chase, were good enough for him to try, and he didn’t fancy the humiliation of being caught by a group he didn’t respect and which he considered useless.
All he could do was surrender with as much grace as possible, and hope that his father’s solicitor could put up a good defence on his behalf. He felt reasonably confident on that score, Harvey Langstrom was, after all, one of the best and most expensive solicitors in the county, if not the country.
64
A step ahead of his partner, Stone entered DCI Collins’ office, where he was glad to be waved straight to a chair. He sank gratefully onto the first one he came to while Burke took the other – they were bot
h exhausted after a very long night, which they had only survived thanks to a constant supply of coffee made by Burke to his exacting standards; exhausted, but happy now that the investigation into Alice Keating’s kidnapping was over, at least as far as they were concerned. All that was left was for the forensic investigators to come up with the necessary corroborating evidence to ensure convictions.
“Coffee?” Collins asked of his detectives, a question that told them he was very happy with them and the work they had done. He only offered drinks to his subordinates when they had pleased him, and that only happened when they solved a particularly tricky case, and did so quickly, or did something else that boosted his reputation with regional headquarters.
“No, thank you, sir,” Stone said with a quick shake of his head. “I’ve had so much coffee in the last twelve hours, if I have any more I’ll either burst or float away. I don’t think I could bear to even look at another cup of coffee right now.” Next to him, Burke nodded in agreement.
“Fair enough.” Collins gave an indifferent shrug and settled into his chair. “How’s Miss Keating?” he asked, getting down to business.
“She’s going to be alright,” Stone answered. Thanks to the painkillers he had taken not long before, he was troubled by no more than a dull ache from his ribs and his shoulder; he was glad about that, but looking forward to finishing up and going home so he could rest, for a considerable amount of time – not that he thought that was likely to happen, given he had two children, one of whom was ill. “All of her injuries are minor, mostly just scrapes and bruises from being handled roughly; her most serious injuries are the scratch where she was shot, that might leave a faint scar, though the doctor hopes to be able to avoid that, and her feet – she cut them up quite badly by running barefoot from the farmhouse. She’s going to be kept in today for observation, she’s suffering from mild shock.” In his opinion, Alice was taking what she had been through a hell of a lot better than he would have, had he been in her place. “But should be okay to go home tomorrow.”
“That’s good, though I saw in the paper this morning that someone has already leaked the fact that Alice Keating was shot at, and that her brother is under arrest for trying to kill one of her kidnappers.” Collins was not pleased that the press and television news knew so much about things that should have been known only to the police and the Keating family; the only positive he could find in the situation was that Stone’s suspicion about Ryan Keating’s motives hadn’t leaked – if it had, it would have been disastrous, especially while it was unproven. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who’s responsible for the leak, do you?” he asked hopefully.
Stone wished he did know, he had a strong dislike of people who leaked information to the press, a dislike that was exacerbated when the person responsible for a leak was a police officer, as he suspected was the case on that occasion. “No idea right now, but I intend finding out.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Now, what’s the situation with Ryan Keating? So far this morning, I’ve had the superintendent on the phone, and I’ve had to field calls from just about every newspaper and news program you can think of. Do you know yet why he tried to kill Constable Flowers, and his sister’s kidnapper? I know you have your suspicions, but have you got a definite motive for his actions yet?”
“Yes, sir.” Stone was pleased to be able to answer the question. “He isn’t speaking at the moment, not about his reasons for doing what he did anyway; he’s been very vocal about just about everything else, from the poor treatment he’s receiving, to his legal representation – his father is very unhappy with him, and has made it clear that he’s not paying for the family lawyer to help him, so he’s been forced to make do with a duty solicitor, whose best advice seems to have been for Ryan to say nothing, especially when it comes to what he was arrested for. Keeping him quiet on any other subject seems to be difficult.
“Fortunately, we don’t need him to confess.”
Collins looked quizzically at his subordinate and Stone’s amused expression grew.
“His partners are falling over themselves to pin the blame on Keating,” Stone explained. “Lewis Rice, whom Ryan tried to smother last night, is willing to tell us everything we want to know without conditions, he seems to be suffering an attack of conscience over the kidnapping. Callum Marshall, AKA Crash, on the other hand wants to make a deal - he has a record, he’s done time on three occasions, so he knows he’s looking at a very harsh sentence for this.
“To begin with, he was asking for immunity from prosecution for what he knows. When he heard that we already had Ryan Keating in custody, and Lewis Rice was singing, he changed his tune; now he’s saying he’ll testify against Keating in return for us going easy on him.”
“So you were right, Keating tried to kill his sister’s kidnappers to cover up the fact that he was behind it.”
“Yes, sir.” Stone nodded, though he evidenced no pleasure in having been proved right.
Collins was silent for a few moments, his expression thoughtful, finally he asked, “Have you been able to find out what motivated Keating to kidnap his sister? I can’t see what he’d gain from it.”
“A lot sir,” Burke answered a heartbeat ahead of his superior. “Upwards of a hundred million pounds.”
Stone immediately stepped in to answer the unasked question on the DCI’s face. “Owen Keating was on the verge of writing his son out of his will – Ryan’s caused a lot of trouble, not to mention public embarrassment, for his father – Ryan knew that, and figured the only way to protect his inheritance was to get rid of his sister. Obviously, Ryan hasn’t confirmed any of this, but based on what Lewis Rice and Callum Marshall have told us, Ryan’s plan was to kidnap his sister, and to have her killed once the ransom was paid. Callum was to kill Alice, and he was to get half the ransom in payment, he was also to kill Lewis Rice because he was a weak link they wanted rid of.”
“What went wrong? Clearly something did, because Mr Rice was shot, Alice escaped, and Mr Marshall got run down, when he should have been collecting the ransom. Not that I’m complaining, obviously, since things turned out for the best.”
Stone had to stifle a yawn, which he was only partially successful in doing, before he could answer that. “Rice overheard a conversation Marshall had with Ryan Keating on the phone, he couldn’t hear it all, but he heard enough to conclude that Marshall had orders to kill both him and Alice – I’m not sure which he was most upset by – and he decided that he had to save her. Kidnapping was bad enough, it seems; he didn’t want to be involved in murder. I don’t suppose he wanted to be killed either.
“When Marshall announced that he was taking Alice with him to collect the ransom, Rice decided he had to make his move; he fought with Marshall and got himself shot, while Alice ran from the farmhouse. Marshall chased after Alice then, and tried to shoot her before he was hit by John Wilson’s car.” Next to him, Burke yawned, his mouth stretching into a cavernous black hole, and that set Stone off, in moments it was like they were in a competition to see who could yawn the widest.
“Alright, I can take a hint,” Collins said, watching his detectives yawn, one after the other. “Both of you are off duty as of right now. I want you to go home and get some rest, especially you, Nathan – I don’t want to see you until the doctor has cleared you for duty. Don’t worry, I’ll finish things off on the Keating case,” he assured his subordinate, who was certain he would also make sure to take as much of the credit for the case’s successful conclusion as he could.
“Thank you, sir.” Stone was grateful for the opportunity to recover from his injuries, and not bothered about losing out on the credit, and quickly got to his feet so he could leave the office before anything new could come up.
About the author
After working in the clerical, warehouse and retail industries over the years, without gaining much satisfaction, Alex R Carver quit to follow his dream and become a full-time writer. Where There's A Will is the first book in
the Inspector Stone Mysteries series, which is set mostly in the fictional English town of Branton; An Eye For An Eye, the second book, will be out in September. In addition to writing crime and thriller novels, he writes sci-fi, with the first book in his Casimir Dragunov series due for release in either late 2017 or early 2018, and childrens’ adventure; the Curious Cousins series, the first book of which is due out in 2018 has been inspired by Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books.
When not writing, he is either playing a game, dreaming of a return to Egypt where he enjoyed exploring the tombs and temples, or being distracted by Molly the Yorkie, who is greedy for both attention and whatever food is to be found.
You can find out more about Alex R Carver at the following links
Alex R Carver's Website
Twitter
Or you can contact him at
[email protected] Also available
Inspector Stone Mysteries
Where There’s A Will
Novels
Written In Blood
Short Stories
Obsessed
Exposed
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