Hands Down, page 27
Treading carefully and silently I made my way round the back to find Chico.
‘It went a bit quiet for a while,’ he whispered. ‘But they’re both still in there and they’ve started arguin’ again. So what do we do?’
‘Are you sure that the other two goons are not with them?’
I didn’t fancy taking on four of them but just two were manageable, especially if the two were Valance and Asquith. Chico and I had seen all too clearly at the Turkish Baths in Harrogate that Valance was considerably overweight, obese even, and very unfit, while Asquith must be in his mid-seventies, if not older.
‘A hundred per cent certain. I watched them drive away.’
‘I wonder where they went. I don’t really want them coming back.’
‘Why not?’ Chico asked in a whisper.
‘Because I think that the time for using the Red Telephone Hotline has passed. This situation needs to be concluded face to face.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just watch. But you stay here as backup.’
And, with that, I walked round from behind the building, opened the door, and went in.
* * *
Asquith and Valance instantly stopped shouting at each other, and both stared at me.
This section of the building was used as a storeroom of stock for the gift shop and for some outdoor tables and chairs. The two men were at the far end close to the back wall, but I stopped just inside the door, some six or eight feet away from them.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ I said into the sudden silence. ‘I think it is high time the three of us had a little talk.’
‘What about?’ Valance snapped angrily. ‘I ’ave absolutely no intention of ever speaking or listening to you. Go away.’
I could tell that Asquith was irritated. I wasn’t sure if it was with my arrival or because of Valance’s point-blank refusal to negotiate.
‘Let us hear what the man has to say,’ Asquith said slowly.
Valance clearly didn’t like it but he kept quiet. The pecking order between the two had become apparent, with, as I had suggested to Chico, Asquith as top man and Valance as the accomplice.
‘It is time for your fun and games to cease.’
‘Fun and games?’ Asquith asked in a sarcastic tone.
‘You know exactly what I mean. Messing around with the results of horse races and defrauding the public.’
‘And how are we supposed to be doing that?’ Asquith asked, all innocently.
‘You know perfectly well. By blackmail and extortion of jockeys and trainers, and then breaking their bones when they don’t do as you tell them.’
‘I think you must be mistaken,’ Asquith said. ‘I have no knowledge of any of that. How about you, Anton? Do you know what he’s on about?’
‘No idea at all,’ Valance replied, but he didn’t sound as convincing as his boss.
This summit meeting was not going quite as I had planned. But I wasn’t finished yet.
‘Funny that,’ I said, not laughing. ‘I have been outside listening to you two arguing for the past half an hour, so I know you’re lying.’ I held up my phone towards Asquith. ‘I have it all recorded, all that stuff about how angry you are that Anton here led me to your house in East Witton and what a mistake he’s made in breaking Marcus Capes’s collarbone.’
He wasn’t to know that I hadn’t actually been able to record anything intelligible from outside, but I was recording what was said now.
I turned towards Valance. ‘And that was, indeed, a big mistake, Anton. Marcus will never do what you say now, and if you publish the video you have of him, he’ll do the same with the one he has of you.’
‘But ’e ’asn’t got it any more,’ Anton replied triumphantly. ‘I destroyed ’is phone.’
I looked at Asquith, who obviously couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
I turned to Valance. ‘Do you really think the video of you on Marcus’s phone was the only copy? I have another one on here.’ I held up my phone again. ‘So let’s start this little conversation again, shall we?’
I looked from one to the other, but they said nothing.
‘Now where was I? Oh, yes. This game you are playing with fixing race results will cease forthwith.’
Asquith cleared his throat.
‘Hypothetically, if what you are saying is true, then what would we get in return?’
I stared at him. It was like a vandal asking what he would get in return if he stopped painting graffiti on trains or bridges.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Other than my word that what I have will not make its way to the authorities.’
‘It doesn’t seem like a very good deal.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I replied. ‘If you do nothing, then I will do nothing. That seems perfectly fair to me. Mind you, I’ll be watching you closely and checking. And the alternative is that I go to both the racing authorities and the police to lay before them everything I have. I assure you, even if it may not be enough to get you two sent to prison, I have more than enough to get you banned from being a registered racehorse owner, and Anton here would definitely lose his licence to be a jockeys’ agent. Remember, the BHA only needs to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities to act.’
‘And what assurances would we get that you wouldn’t go to the BHA anyway?’ Valance asked.
‘No assurances,’ I said. ‘That is a chance you will have to take.’
‘That doesn’t seem very attractive to me.’
‘Tough,’ I said. ‘That’s all you’re getting. In fact, you have no choice whatsoever in the matter.’
‘Oh, I think we do,’ Asquith said softly.
I switched my gaze from Valance to him and my heart missed a beat.
In poker terms, Harry Asquith had just gone all-in.
In his gloved right hand he held a pistol and it was pointed straight at me.
35
I forced myself to smile at him.
‘Come on,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘What are you going to do? Kill me?’
‘That certainly has its attractions,’ Asquith responded. ‘But first I want your mobile phone.’
I didn’t move.
Was he holding a winning hand, or was he bluffing?
‘Is it even loaded?’ I asked. ‘Or is it a non-firing replica?’
He glanced down at the gun. ‘I assure you it’s very real and it is fully loaded. A Mark IV Webley service revolver. A genuine British army officer’s sidearm. It belonged to my great-grandfather during the Boer War and has been handed down to me through the generations, along with the ammunition. They may be old but, trust me, they still work. Chambered at .455 inches, this little baby could take your head clean off your shoulders.’
He sounded a bit like Clint Eastwood’s character in the film Dirty Harry – an appropriate title under the circumstances.
‘Give me your phone.’
I had once before underestimated someone with a gun and had walked straight into a .38 slug. The resulting damage to my small intestines had left me at death’s door for several days and consuming only liquefied food for months. I didn’t like to imagine what a .455 would do.
Hence, I threw my phone across onto the floor in front of him. I didn’t worry about breaking it – I was certain he would do that himself anyway – and I didn’t fancy getting too close to the dark circle at the business end of the Webley’s short stubby barrel.
At least that was in my favour. I knew that all handguns were notoriously inaccurate, especially those with short barrels such as the one facing me, and the old adage about them not being able to hit a barn door at ten paces had not been coined without good reason.
‘Now what?’ I said, doing my best to keep any fear out of my tone. ‘Shall I go?’
‘Not so fast. What do you suggest, Anton?’
‘Shoot ’im, ’Arry,’ Valance said in a matter-of-fact way, just as if he was suggesting that Asquith should step on a spider.
‘That really wouldn’t be a very clever move,’ I said as calmly as I could with my heart pumping fast. ‘As I told Anton in the Turkish Baths in Harrogate, I have lodged everything I have on you both with my solicitor, to be handed to the police in the event of anything happening to me. And there’s no way a corpse turning up with a .455 slug embedded in it would be considered by the police to be a suicide, even if you do type a fake suicide note into my phone, as you did with Gary Bremner.’
‘Don’t listen to ’im,’ Valance said. ‘If you let ’im go, ’e’ll go straight to the police. Kill ’im now. I’ll get the boys back to help clear up.’ He tapped his phone twice and then lifted it to his ear.
For some reason I looked down at the wooden floor and my mind began to wander.
‘Do you have any idea how difficult it will be to get my blood out from the gaps between these floorboards? Forensics will have a field day.’ I snapped my brain back into the awful reality, and looked up at Asquith. ‘Several people know where I am. If you shoot me, I promise that you will be arrested within hours and you will spend the rest of your life behind bars. Is that what you want?’
The gun still didn’t waver one millimetre.
‘And is that what you want young Henry Payne to live with as he grows up? That his beloved grandfather, after whom he was named, turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer? Do you think he’ll ever come to see you in prison?’
He didn’t react and I was beginning to fear that I wasn’t getting through to him at all. All I could see in his eyes was his absolute conviction that getting rid of me would also rid him of all his problems rather than simply creating many more new ones, and whatever I said wasn’t going to make any difference.
On my immediate right was a stack of four large cardboard boxes, each about eighteen inches high, with MARYLEBONE CERAMICS, FRAGILE CONTENTS printed large on the sides. Slowly I slid my transplanted left hand between the stack and the wall.
Just as I could tell that Asquith’s mental cogs were all lining up to produce a conclusive thumbs-down for my future existence, I pulled the whole stack of boxes forward towards him and Valance, and to hell with the fragile contents. At the same time I ducked down low and dived for the door.
The gun indeed worked, and it was definitely loaded.
Asquith fired it, and the noise of such a large-calibre weapon being discharged within the confined space of the building was incredible. Not that I cared much about that. I was just grateful that the bullet had missed me, and I wasn’t hanging around to give him another shot.
I flung the door open and went through it like the proverbial bat out of hell, running hard for some cover in among the dark castle ruins.
God knows what Chico made of it all but, wherever he was, I hoped he was keeping his head down. He must have heard the gun go off and perhaps, with luck, he had already called in reinforcements in the form of the North Yorkshire Police armed-response unit. I just hoped they might get here before the return of ‘the boys’.
I ran down the north side of the central keep and into the deep shadows beyond before stopping to catch my breath and listen out for any pursuers.
The daylight was now fading fast and the only sounds I could hear were the multiple sharp ‘kya’ calls of the jackdaws, eerily echoing, as they flew back to roost high up on the castle walls.
I knew from my previous visit that there were many places to hide out, not least in the cubicles of the western latrine tower. But those had only one entrance/exit and I didn’t much fancy being cornered in one by Asquith with his mark four Webley. Hence, I kept on the move through the ruins down the western side, trying to work out what Asquith and Valance might do next.
I soon found out.
Just as my eyes were beginning to adjust to the deepening darkness, my night-vision was destroyed by a dazzling high-intensity torch beam that caught me unawares in the open space of the apron between the keep and the outer ranges of the south-west corner.
There was a shout and a second torch beam appeared from where I had just come from, down the western side.
Casting any remaining caution he might have had to the wind, Asquith loosed off another shot at me. For an instant, I thought that he had missed me again, but my right hand suddenly started hurting as if it had been stung by a large hornet.
I ran fast for the opening into the bottom floor of the keep, jumping through the space into the former state kitchens and nearly tripping straight into one of the wells in the floor.
Once inside, I reached down with my new transplanted left hand and was amazed that I could actually feel the warmth of flowing blood. The bullet had just clipped the fleshy part of my palm, beneath my little finger. It was sore but not life-threatening.
So now where?
I tried desperately to remember the castle layout from my brief visit in the daylight the previous week. I did not want to get trapped and, as Asquith had arrived with a key to the gate, he would almost certainly know the castle layout better than I did.
Maybe I should have run straight to the castle exit when I escaped from the wooden building, but that would have given Asquith a clear shot at me. Now, getting well away from here alive had become my main priority.
My right hand started hurting like hell but it seemed still to be working okay, even if I was dripping my lifeblood onto the earth beneath my feet. But it wouldn’t kill me and it was the least of my worries for the moment.
I could recall from my previous visit that the north, west and south outer walls were intact at ground level, meaning there was no way out except either through the main gatehouse in the north-east corner or through the missing sections of the east wall, and that would involve crossing the dry moat and scaling the boundary wall beyond. And all in the dark, with a bad and bleeding right hand and a transplanted left one.
It seemed to me that I had only two choices – either to get out through the main gate or to survive long enough in here for Chico to summon the cavalry to come and save me.
But there was also the problem of ‘the boys’.
I thought that I could remain ahead of Valance and Asquith among the dark castle ruins, although the torches certainly didn’t help my cause, but against four I’d have absolutely no chance.
Chico had said that he had seen ‘the boys’ drive away, but where to?
It had been no more than twenty to twenty-five minutes between them leaving and Valance calling them to return. Had they been driving away all that time or had they stopped only a mile or so down the road? At best, I had only twenty minutes or so before they would be back, and then this deadly game of hide-and-seek would quickly reach a finale – and I would be the loser.
But my immediate prime concern was to keep out of the torch beams.
I decided against going up.
There were two staircases to the upper levels – the stone spiral in the south-east-corner tower of the keep and a modern straight wooden structure that now stood on the site of the original external entrance staircase on the east side.
Two staircases and two assailants didn’t seem like a very good bet to me. They would simply need to take one stairway each and move up together, leaving me no way out, and those parts of the upper levels that hadn’t already collapsed were very small with precious little space to hide.
I felt I could easily overpower Valance, if only I knew which one was him, but I had no wish to rush at one of the torches only to find another .455 slug coming rapidly in the opposite direction.
The two of them still seemed to be moving around outside the keep. I could tell by the light from their torches that shone through the opening in the walls, which had once held leaded-glass windows.
Originally, for added security, there had been no entrances to the keep on the ground floor, access only being into the first floor via the external staircase, but, over the years, several holes had been punched through the ten-feet-thick walls. It was only a matter of time before Asquith and Valance came through them, and there was nowhere in there for me to hide either.
I needed to get out of the keep, and fast.
Down the centre there was a dividing wall and I went through an opening in this wall from the old kitchens to what had once been a large vaulted cellar.
In the southern wall of the cellar were two ways out, one with a modern wooden raised walkway to help visitors gain access over the uneven stones underfoot and the other an almost circular hole beneath what had once been a window. This second one was smaller but still easily big enough for me to get through if I crouched.
I could hear Asquith and Valance talking outside without being able to actually hear the words but, presently, I could tell from their torches that one of them had moved round to enter the keep on the western side while the other seemed to be coming directly towards me.
But which of them was which?
The torchlight coming into the keep got brighter and then I could hear footfalls on the wooden walkway.
I inched myself up and silently crept through the circular hole, moving my body outside at the same instant that the person holding the torch moved in, using the thick wall between us as cover.
Now where?
I continued anticlockwise, feeling my way in the dark up the eastern side, past the ruined chapel. It was the route back towards the wooden building and the castle exit beyond.
I could hear Asquith shouting for Valance from within the keep.
‘Anton, where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Have you seen him?’
There was no reply.
I was inching my way silently towards the castle exit, alongside the new wooden stairway, when, quite suddenly, a torch came on not six feet in front of me and it was shining straight into my eyes.
Bugger!
36
I decided to rush it, just hoping it was Valance with only a torch and not Asquith also with his gun.
But, as I bunched my muscles for the attack, with my heart rate rising to near two hundred beats a minute, the light pointed suddenly upwards showing me the face of the man holding it, and he was grinning.
