Closer Still, page 19
part #8 of A Brodie Farrell Mystery Series
‘I mean it,’ said Stretton, his voice rising unpredictably. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere near her.’
‘Tough,’ grunted Deacon, unimpressed. He wasn’t a trained negotiator. Deacon’s idea of negotiation was giving people a choice between doing what he said and doing what he said with a bloody nose. But he was the one who was here, leaning his back against two tonnes of blasting explosives, so cards on the table was the only game in town. Criminals – and whatever else he was, Dev Stretton was certainly that – didn’t get pandered to on his watch.
‘Do you know how big a bang this’ll make if I detonate it?’
‘Don’t know,’ sniffed Deacon, ‘don’t much care. It’ll kill you and me, so whatever it does after that will be somebody else’s problem. You don’t get to say how we do this, Dev. All you get to say is when you’ve had enough. Say you’re coming out and I’ll walk you to the car. Say you’re staying in and I’ll keep you company. That’s all the choices you get.’
A trained negotiator would have handled it differently. But perhaps Stretton would have known how to deal with someone doing it by the book. It wasn’t going the way he’d expected. Everything he’d read, every film he’d seen, suggested that people did what they were told to by an armed man. He’d supposed that, if a revolver and a handful of shells would achieve that, two tonnes of high explosive would achieve a great deal more.
At first it had seemed to be working. Then Detective Superintendent Deacon arrived and the script went out the window. Stretton hadn’t gone into this lightly. He’d known what he was going to have to pay for it: years of his life or, if he got clumsy, the rest of it. He was ready for even that. He thought what he was doing was that important.
What he hadn’t expected was to be taken less than seriously. His sensibilities were offended. He didn’t too much mind being thought of as a mad bomber. He did mind being treated like a bolshy teenager who’s going to be in deep shit as soon as he puts the class hamster back in its cage. Deacon had sent for his mother, for God’s sake! He had to keep telling himself, That’s not the bit that matters. The bit that matters is happening elsewhere — but it wouldn’t be happening except for what I’m doing here. He thought, When Deacon realises what it was all about he’ll see me in a different light …
In a Damascus moment, suddenly he recognised what Deacon was doing. That off-hand manner was anything but arbitrary. He was goading Stretton. It took a leap of the imagination to suppose that a sane police officer would deliberately annoy a man armed with explosives, but that’s what he was doing. He wanted Stretton to feel misunderstood. He wanted him to vent his frustration in the few hot words that would explain what was really going on here.
A chill wave swept up Dev Stretton’s spine. He knew that, however much Deacon tried him, he couldn’t afford even those few words that would make him feel better. Detective Superintendent Deacon was a cleverer man than he appeared. If he guessed what this was really about, it was all over.
He said deliberately, ‘Then make yourself comfortable, because we’re staying where we are.’
Disappointment wrinkled Deacon’s lip. But if Stretton had figured out his game plan, Deacon had learnt something too. He’d learnt that Stretton had an agenda beyond simply martyring himself. Even without choices, Stretton still considered he had options. That was encouraging. He wasn’t going to pull the pin, or whatever you had to do to set this lot off, because he’d backed himself into a corner and couldn’t think what else to do.
Deacon shifted his back against the rough hardness of the breeze-blocks and complained, ‘My bum’s getting cold.’
Brodie raced upstairs. Marta and the children had lost interest in the chaos outside and were playing Scrabble, though not in a form the manufacturers would have recognised. As played by a seven-year-old, a blind baby and a Polish music teacher it sometimes involved stacking the tiles and sometimes having them leapfrog one another, like draughts.
‘Marta, I have to go out. Can you keep the kids?’
‘Sure.’ Unable to leave herself and with students unable to reach her, it wasn’t such an imposition. ‘But how? You can’t take the car. You going to run too?’ It was in her tone how improbable she thought this was.
‘No. That was my second question. Have you got the number of the world’s least talented pianist? You know – the guy who was here yesterday.’
‘Graham? Sure. But...why?’
‘Because he was here yesterday and now he isn’t. He can get through this stuff, Marta. He’s got a motorcycle!’
Men called Graham who are good at motorcycle maintenance but fancy themselves as Liberace don’t often have women like Brodie Farrell riding pillion behind them. His mouth was open to tell her he couldn’t help, that he was at work …and then he heard himself and stopped abruptly. ‘Be there in ten minutes.’
He stuffed his limbs back into his leathers, all the while trying to think up a plausible excuse for his boss. Then it dawned on him that no excuse would serve as well as the truth. He just might lose his job, but what he’d gain in respect would be worth it. He swaggered out of the garage where he worked to a round of applause from his colleagues.
Brodie was waiting outside her house. His heart skipped a beat. They weren’t proper motorcycle leathers, but when a woman looked that good in black leather jacket and trousers and high-heel boots, who cared? He passed her his spare helmet with a hand that actually trembled.
It was more than ten years since Brodie had been on a motorcycle. Somehow she expected that the instinct would still be there, but in fact she felt wobbly and vulnerable. She clung to Graham in a manner which, had he been there to see, would have made Deacon immediately go out and buy a Kawasaki.
It was no clearway even for a motorbike. But Graham weaved judiciously, and once rode across someone’s front lawn, and within minutes the jumble of metal blocking the road began to thin.
The obvious way to Chain Down was up the Guildford Road. But the only traffic on the Guildford Road now was returning to Dimmock: barriers and diversion signs met anyone trying to head north.
Brodie tapped Graham on the shoulder and pointed. ‘Try Cheyne Lane.’ It wandered round the southern side of Chain Down, serving the various farms and hamlets. The narrowness and the snakelike bends would have kept a car in second gear, but Graham rode with a skill he would never display on the piano and ten minutes later they crested a swell of the Down and saw the cluster of houses grouped about the crossroads that was Cheyne Warren. Faith Stretton’s cottage was halfway up the hill on the other side.
Faith Stretton’s car was pulling out of the driveway.
Brodie’s first thought was that the police had contacted her and she was on her way to the Crichton Construction site. But she was going the wrong way. Brodie tapped Graham’s shoulder again. ‘Follow that car.’
All his life Graham had waited for this moment. Tom Cruise? he thought. Too short. Tom Hanks? Too old. Daniel Craig! When they made the film, he wanted to be played by Daniel Craig. He set off in pursuit, and somehow resisted the urge to throw a wheelie.
Hugging Graham’s waist, Brodie felt her mind spinning as fast as the wheels – and like the wheels, spitting grit on the corners. It made no sense. None of it made any sense. If she was right about Dev, why was his mother now heading for Guildford? Or – no, not Guildford – further west. Basingstoke? Swindon? Her son was trying to blow up the Three Downs because he’d just found out he wasn’t a Moslem fundamentalist after all, and she was hightailing it to Swindon?
‘What are you on?’ gritted Brodie inside her helmet; and Graham, chastened, turned his head enough to say, ‘Nothing. I always drive like this.’
‘Sorry,’ said Brodie, ‘talking to myself. You’re doing great. Just — watch the road. Keep watching the road.’
So Faith wasn’t heading for Swindon. With everything that was going on at Crichton Construction there was still something important enough to take her in the opposite direction, north across Menner Down where there was next to nothing. Sheep farms. Wind farms. Little wooded copses, and villages that didn’t yet have proper sewerage. And that was all, until the swell of the Downs dipped and levelled out and …
And became flat enough to build an airfield.
Daniel was halfway down the long hill into Dimmock before things really started going wrong. Until then all he’d had to contend with was the sweat in his eyes, the knives in his lungs, the leaden ache of his running legs and the fact that his heart was playing ‘Chopsticks’ inside his ribs.
But halfway down the hill people started taking an interest in him.
Perhaps it was only natural. Everyone else on the road that day was trying to get out of Dimmock. By mid-afternoon, of course, many of them had given up and, abandoning their cars, were trudging back the way they’d come. Still the sight of someone in a hurry to get back to town was enough to attract attention and then concern. People don’t behave like that. They don’t run towards a known danger. Suspicions were aroused that he was Up To No Good.
Somebody shouted after him, ‘Where’s the fire then?’
And Daniel, who should simply have ignored him and kept running, tried to reply without wasting either time or breath that he could ill afford. ‘There’s no fire,’ he gasped.
But if he thought that would reassure anyone he was wrong. The Chinese Whispers travelled down the hill faster than he did. ‘What did he say? Don’t fire? Why would anybody be shooting at him?’ ‘Jesus – you don’t think it’s him, do you? The bomber?’ ‘That little runt? But he’s not …’ ‘That’s the bomber? The one on the news?’ ‘That’s him. That man there says so.’
At first it was only that the people he passed drifted together into watchful groups. They followed the running figure with their eyes, with pointed fingers and with nervous challenges Daniel was too preoccupied to hear. He thought lives depended on his ability to keep running. It never occurred to him that one of them might be his own.
Soon after that the little clumps of people gravitated – like star-stuff – into bigger, heavier agglomerations that acquired a momentum of their own. They began to follow in his wake. At first, because he was running, he left them behind. Then some of them started to run after him. And those further down the hill saw a man running towards them with a small crowd chasing him. Primed for disaster and ready to believe the worst, they moved to intercept him.
Daniel didn’t realise what they were doing, thought it was just his usual luck that put people in his way on the one occasion when speed mattered to him. He waved his arms frantically at them. ‘Please …I need to get through …’
He found his way blocked, unaccountably, by a brick privy. Except that it spoke with a Yorkshire accent. ‘What’s your hurry?’
Most satisfactory explanations are either very short or very long, a sentence or an essay. A middle-distance explanation can cause more confusion than it resolves. Because time mattered, and he was fighting for breath, Daniel went for the abridged version. ‘I have to get to the police station. Or people are going to get hurt.’
For once, brevity wasn’t a happy choice. People heard the word hurt. They heard the word police. They raced, whippet-like and in fact accurately, to the conclusion that Daniel knew more about what was going on than they did, and inaccurately to the supposition that this was because he was involved. The Chinese Whisperers took up megaphones.
‘The police are after him!’ ‘He says he’s going to hurt people!’ ‘Ask him about the bomb. Where’s the bomb?’ ‘He says you planted a bomb!’ ‘What do you want to bomb us for?’
‘I don’t want to bomb anyone!’ yelled Daniel. ‘Do I look like Osama bin Laden?’
‘He says he’s Osama bin Laden!’ ‘He doesn’t look much like him. He’s got yellow hair.’ ‘Who’s Osama bin Laden?’
‘Sonny,’ said the Yorkshire privy severely, ‘this is not a good day for teasing people. They’re ready to beat the crap out of someone, and if they can’t find the real Osama bin Laden they may decide you’ll do.’
‘I didn’t say …!’ Daniel heard the hysteria in his own voice and made an effort to calm down. ‘I think I know what’s going on. The phone system’s down and I need to tell the police. Help me!’
The man regarded him thoughtfully for perhaps another ten seconds. Then he nodded. ‘All right. Mind you, I’m taking a chance. If it turns out you’ve blown up the town hall after all, you’ll have me to answer to.’
Daniel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Fine. It’s a deal. Now please, let me through!’
One tweed arm spread wide like a door opening. ‘Let him through. Let him through, now. The man’s got urgent business. Terrorist? Does he look like a terrorist? He’s a … He’s a …’ Stuck for inspiration he looked down at Daniel and hissed, ‘What are you?’
Daniel hissed back, ‘I’m a teacher.’
The man looked shocked. ‘Ee, lad, are you sure you want to tell them that?’
A sense of the surreal washed over him and Daniel shook his head. ‘No. Silly me. Tell them I’m a competitor on a television game show. Tell them I’ve got ten minutes to get to Battle Alley. Tell them, if it takes fifteen I’ll still get the dishwasher but I’ll miss out on the cuddly toy.’
Even the Chinese Whisperers didn’t know what to do with that. They stared at Daniel and blinked. Then they stood back.
‘Thank you.’ He took a deep breath and started running again. A shy voice called after him, ‘Good luck …’
Three hundred metres further down the hill he thought he was in trouble again. The log-jam of cars was gradually being broken up, and one of the few he’d seen moving this afternoon slowed to keep pace with him. He stole enough breath from his running to yell plaintively, ‘Leave me alone! I’m not hurting anybody.’
And Detective Sergeant Voss leant across the passenger seat and said in a puzzled tone, ‘I can see that, Daniel. But what exactly are you doing?’
Daniel staggered to a halt against a lamppost, relief all but sweeping the legs from under him. ‘Charlie! I was never so glad to see anyone in my life! But why aren’t you in the hospital?’
‘Because I’m fine,’ growled Voss. ‘And because, with all this going on, there’d be something I could do even if I wasn’t. Get in. Where are you going?’
His knees still bending both ways, Daniel fell in rather than got in. ‘Battle Alley. Unless you’ve got a radio.’
‘Of course I’ve got a radio. Why?’
While Voss was raising Battle Alley, Daniel explained.
Superintendent Fuller didn’t ask constables to do something he wouldn’t do himself. When he got the message from the Battle Alley radio room he gave it a little thought, offered up a little prayer and stepped out of the cordon, squelching across the mud towards the blockhouse. It was the longest hundred metres he’d ever walked.
Deacon looked up as he approached. ‘Hello,’ he observed to the man inside the bunker. ‘Developments.’ He got up stiffly and went to meet his colleague.
‘There’s no need to look so nervous,’ he said when they were out of earshot. ‘He’s not blowing up anything.’
‘I know he’s not,’ said Fuller. ‘He’s the decoy.’
Deacon’s eyes drilled into him like diamond-tipped bits. ‘What?’
Fuller passed on the message he’d received, and where he’d received it from. ‘They could be wrong, of course.’
‘Of course they could,’ acknowledged Deacon. ‘They very often are. Just, not quite as often as they’re right.’
‘Is that what he’s waiting for? The bang, the puff of smoke.’
‘He was waiting for a phone call. When I told him he wasn’t getting one, he was a bit put out – but not enough to rethink the whole thing. If Brodie’s right, we can guess why. He knows I’ll tell him when the middle of Dimmock hits the stratosphere.’
‘What do you want to do? If this makes sense to you, we can leave a reduced presence here and pull everyone else back into town. Or we can split our forces and try to cover both scenes.’
Deacon had no idea. ‘What’s the situation in town? I mean, if it’s already empty – if the evacuation is pretty much complete …?’
Fuller shook his head. ‘People found they couldn’t reach a safe distance and now they’re drifting back. I can keep them out of the town centre. I probably can’t keep them from returning to their homes. And if there is a bomb, it could be anywhere.’
‘Have you told Division?’
‘Not yet. I only just got the message. I wanted to ask you how seriously we should take it.’
Deacon frowned pensively. ‘They’re not jerking you around, if that’s what you’re wondering. If they went to this much trouble getting you a message, they think it’s a clear and present danger. If we can do anything about it, I think we should.’
‘All right,’ decided Fuller. ‘Will you stay with Stretton? I’ll leave you enough men to keep him contained, take the rest of them back to town. If there’s an explosion, at least we’ll be there to control the situation. Maybe when Stretton sees we’ve twigged his little game he’ll give himself up.
‘Maybe,’ said Deacon doubtfully. ‘I can’t quite make him out. I’m not sure why he’s doing this. I’m not even sure what it is he’s doing.’
Fuller shrugged. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, one way or another. It just may be too late.’
Deacon’s eyebrows climbed. ‘Too late for what?’
‘Too late for him. When I tell Division, their response will be to send a marksman.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
She was fleeing the country? Faith Stretton was leaving her son sitting on two tonnes of dynamite and getting away while the police were whistling up a SWAT team? Brodie didn’t believe it. Maybe she didn’t know Faith well, but she knew her better than that. She was sharp, snippy, independent, defiant of convention, impatient of constraint. She was …
