Dead People (26 page)

And I didn’t want to jeopardize his momentum.

He took his hand out of my pocket with the keys. I was conscious of him rearranging himself. He would have the gun under control again. This was the point, I recognized, where my forward planning had stopped. From here I had left it deliberately vague and fluffy.

‘Let’s move,’ he ordered.

He went down the tunnel backwards in front of me, keeping the torch pointed in my face. I had to shuffle along like a penitent on my knees, my hands still tied behind my back causing me to sway painfully against the walls.

He stopped before we reached the entrance. I saw the shotgun for the first time as he poked it into the torch beam. The barrel had been cut down. It was a vicious short-range weapon. ‘From now on you are going to be totally silent,’ he instructed. He pushed the gun forward. ‘Put your forehead against this.’ I hesitated, hearing the tension in his voice. He jabbed the barrel at me, barely missing my right eye. I leaned forward until I felt the metal pressing on my forehead. He lowered his voice. ‘I’m turning the torch off now. We’re going to continue in the dark, without a sound. If I stop feeling that pressure against this fucking gun, I’m just going to fire both barrels into the dark and leave what’s left of you here. Understand?’

‘Yes.’ I wasn’t going to argue. He had gone through a mood change. Now that we were moving, he had revved-up to righteous anger. He was cranking himself up for flight. Becoming more dangerous.

‘Your life is now in your hands. Just keep your head pressed to the metal.’

The light went out. The centre of my universe was now a painful pair of third eyes that felt as sharp as pastry cutters against my forehead, and I made them the focus of my entire being as we commenced our shuffle down the tunnel again, him in front of me, moving backwards, as before.

We emerged into the shaft. He removed the gun barrel from my forehead, and grabbed my bound wrists and pulled me upright. It took me a moment to realize that we were no longer in total darkness. I looked up. Above me it was more deep dark blue than black. As I adjusted I started to make out stars. The hatch on the sluice deck above was open as I had left it.

‘Turn round,’ he hissed quietly.

I complied. This was where he was going to hit me over the head and leave me. I clenched my eyes shut and tensed myself, preparing for the violence.

The sudden sense of a cord tightening around my neck was even more of a shock because of its unexpectedness. I started to throw my head around to stop him getting a strangulation hold, but stopped when I felt the now familiar gun barrel tighten itself painfully against the hollow in the back of my head at the top of my spinal column.

‘I’d stop struggling, if I were you,’ he advised with a chuckle, sounding pleased with himself, ‘the gun’s strapped to the back of your head, so you’ll either choke yourself to death, or you’ll cause my finger to jerk on the trigger.’

‘This is crazy, Owen,’ I whispered, trying to fight down the hysteria that a sawn-off shotgun welded to the top of my spinal column was creating, ‘I’m only going to slow you down.’

‘Shut the fuck up, and start climbing,’ he hissed, steering me over and pushing me against the metal rungs on the side of the shaft. He straddled me and pushed against my back in a tight creepy intimacy as we climbed up like a pair of conjoined and clumsy toads.

He stopped us just before the lip of the shaft, and, using the shotgun to control me like the stick on a Balinese puppet, he forced me to raise my head up over the rim. I was a human white flag. He was using me as a sounding board for either a searchlight or a shot.

But the night stayed still and dark.

‘Okay,’ he whispered when he was satisfied that the night was not going to break apart, and we continued the awkward stumble out of the shaft.

We stood there at the top of the shaft in silence as he took his bearings. The skewed geometry of the climb had caused the cord around my neck to nearly choke me, and I used the respite to haul in big reserves of air.

I was the only sound. I became aware of it. My heavy breathing was the only thing that was disturbing an otherwise total silence.

It was unnatural. The night seemed to be holding itself in an expectant suspension.

He pushed me forward, using the shotgun like a goad to the back of my head. There was no moon, but the cloud cover was light enough to navigate by silhouette, the track showing up as a lighter entity between the darker masses of Bruno’s twisted shack and the trees and matted undergrowth.

What was he going to do at the locked gate? I had mixed feelings about the problem that that was going to present to him. He was either going to have to take the risk of untying me to get me over, or he was going to have to abandon me on this side. But if he did that, what sort of a state was he going to leave me in?

We turned the corner on the track that led to the final approach to the gate. I did a double take. Was it a trick of the dim light?

The gate was open.

I tensed.

‘What’s the matter?’ Owen whispered angrily, picking up on my reaction.

I shook my head. I could make out the darker outline of a car on the far side of the gate.

‘Is that your car?’ he whispered tensely.

‘Yes,’ I lied.

We shuffled forward. The night broke apart. The car’s headlights erupted on main beam, pinning the two of us in the middle of the gate opening. The blue strobe light on top started flashing to reinforce the message. I turned my eyes away from the light onslaught and gagged as the cord tightened on my neck and the gun barrel gouged even harder into the back of my head.

‘You bastard,’ Owen hissed into my ear as he socketed himself against my back.

‘I didn’t—’ I started trying to tell him that I was as surprised as he was, but he cut me off with a twist of the gun barrel that tightened the cord like a garrotte.

‘There’s a gun tied to the back of his head,’ he yelled out.

The voice came out of the light. ‘You’re making things even worse for yourself, Owen.’

Kevin Fletcher. Of all the possible fucking saviours! What a bittersweet irony.

‘You are covered by armed police officers,’ he continued

‘And I told you, this gun’s tied to the back of his head. You can’t take the risk. I’m a trained fucking soldier,’ he shouted defiantly, ‘and I promise you, if you force it, my last reaction will be to squeeze the trigger.’ He twisted the barrel again. ‘Tell them, Capaldi.’

‘I’m strapped in pretty tight here, boss,’ I managed to wheeze, the cord cutting in savagely above my Adam’s apple.

Fletcher stepped out into the light, as if he had just walked into a photo opportunity.

This was going to be reported later as an incredibly heroic action on his part. But he had never been in any danger. I know because I was the dead meat between him and oblivion. The shotgun was secured so tightly to the back of my head that Owen had no field of shot. He had restricted his options. If he did shoot he wouldn’t be given the opportunity to get the gun clear and load again. Whichever way it went, I would be the only victim on the side of the angels.

Fletcher walked towards us slowly. He was wearing the same overcoat that he had worn at Evie’s funeral. I hoped that that wasn’t prophetic.

‘That’s far enough,’ Owen warned.

Fletcher spread his arms to show that his hands were empty, and kept on coming. He had a strangely satisfied smile on his face.

He stopped immediately in front of me and leaned forward slightly so that only Owen and I would catch his whisper. ‘We don’t care.’

‘What?’ Owen asked, puzzled.

‘We don’t care,’ Fletcher whispered again. ‘In fact, you’d be doing us a favour.’

‘He’s one of yours,’ Owen protested, not hiding his shock at the realization that Fletcher was talking about me.

Fletcher made a point of smiling at me. It felt like the equivalent of a final pat on the head. He turned to Owen and shook his head. ‘Only on paper. In real life he’s just fucking trouble.’ He contemplated it for a moment. ‘So there you have it. Your choice.’

He started backing away.

‘Is he serious?’ Owen whispered. I could hear the alarm in his voice.

‘Probably,’ I whispered back.

Fletcher started to raise his arm.

‘Okay,’ Owen yelled, ‘I’m backing off.’ I felt a painful whack on my back as the gun dropped free of his hand, and a sharp pain as if a long bamboo splinter had just been thrust down the length of my ribcage.

I caught Fletcher’s smile flash triumphant, and, out of the corner of my eye, to make my humiliation complete, saw Emrys Hughes and his sidekick, Friel, move in to take charge of Owen. Fletcher had been bluffing. There had been no armed-response unit.

It wasn’t in any training manual that had ever been devised. There was no such move as the deliberate place-your-colleague-in-jeopardy gambit. It was the sort of trick that, if I had attempted it, would have been condemned as irresponsible, dangerous and foolhardy. But he had the rank, the grooming and the PR nous, and I just knew that he’d be credited for a brilliant tactical move. Even if no one had bothered to consult the tethered goat.

But at least I had the consolation of knowing that it had worked. I had got Owen out of that mine, where he could have fucked up so many of us. And, as a reward, I was now left standing there with the gun still hanging from the cord around my neck with all the weight and psychological heft of a fucking anvil.

But what was perhaps even more disturbing was the expression that I saw on Fletcher’s face as he directed a glance towards me.

Regret?

Or was I only imagining it?

And of course, Kevin Fletcher was the hero of the hour, while I came across as the dumbfuck patsy plod who had allowed himself to get caught up in the situation.

But even all that glory didn’t stop him getting carried away with his metaphors and accusing me of being a fucking-vigilante-maverick-loose-cannon liability. Luckily, I was in the hospital at the time, getting checked out for various contusions and suspected cracked ribs, so I was able to work the sympathy vote. And even he had to grudgingly admit that I had produced the results. If I hadn’t prodded Greg Thomas with the shock of enlightenment, Fletcher wouldn’t have been able to sweat Owen’s hideout in the gold mine out of him. So, in the end, my merit badges balanced out my misdemeanours, and I found myself right back where I had started.

The second time round that is. Dinas, not Cardiff.

Big deal.

I never did get round to asking Owen Jones how he had killed. Something warned me off. He was okay handling what he had done in the abstract, where he could convince himself that he had acted nobly for his sister’s memory, and had been inventive in diverting our attention. But I had got the impression that if, while he had a gun to my head, I had brought it round to the practicalities of blood and butchery, his state of denial could have turned demonstrative.

We never found any of the heads or the hands. Portable and easily disposable, I suppose. We had had to satisfy ourselves with the theory that he would have used a shot to the head. It was a good one to adopt. It salved something. Death would have been quick.

The house at Port Eynon turned out to be Evie Central. He had been too cocky; he had assumed that we would never be knocking on that particular door. He hadn’t cleared anything. The broad outline and the minutia of her life were still there. He was linked to her on every level, from the macroscopic down to fibres and mingled fluid stains on his mattress. And then we got really lucky. His cottage wasn’t on mains drainage. We found blood, bone and soft-tissue residues that matched Evie’s in both the pipe work and the septic tank.

Forensics revisited Bruno’s treasure chest and started to find cross matches with fibres in the Port Eynon cottage.

He wasn’t talking. But we had the victims and the motives and were building up evidence to place and fix him at the scenes where both Evie and Bruno had been murdered. The CPS was going to let us run with it. And I was going to be the star witness. Tidied up and popped into a suit, I was going to be the unfortunate hostage who had been held at gunpoint while Owen spilled his guts out to me.

I asked Jack Galbraith if I had a choice in the matter. This was too reminiscent of the PR fiasco they had woven around my fall from grace in Cardiff. That memory was still a raw wound. He had looked hurt, and then mean, and told me that my presence was so vitally important that unless I went forward voluntarily, he was prepared to personally upgrade the damage that Owen Jones had inflicted, to improve my credibility on the stand.

Because we were only going after him for Evie and Bruno.

Jack Galbraith and the Chief Constable had been summoned up to the MOD. The other three bodies were going to remain a closed book. Stormont was going through one of its periods of seismic activity, and it was deemed politic to keep old wounds firmly sutured. It was assumed that Owen Jones would not be loudly confessing to the additional murders.

I made a point of keeping away from the Barn Gallery. I was too keenly aware of the focus on the place, and would have felt like a rabbit in the cross hairs. Not that I would have been welcome. The few times I saw Gloria after that in Dinas, she was polite, but distinctly standoffish. Either I had outlived whatever usefulness she had seen in me, or Clive had put in a good word for me.

David Williams got his wind-farm workers back in The Fleece. Although he confided in me that he was surprised that Tessa and the Redshanks crew had moved to another pub. I said nothing. That one still hurt. And then I heard that the Redshanks carnival had upped sticks and left town. Shortly after that, unmarked furniture vans were seen at the Barn Gallery, stripping the place, and the Fenwicks disappeared into folklore.

Tessa never did get round to taking the memory pill. Or if she did it was some other lucky bastard that she forgave.

I went round to Fron Heulog to try to make my peace. They never raised the barrier for me. Their loss. It means the local weed will continue to arrive on the shithouse windowsill on Tuesday mornings.

The one piece of bright news that finally made spring blossom for me was that Justin brought Mary Doyle up to visit. She had made a complete recovery, apart from a small burn scar on her left temple, which she was happy to describe as ‘funky’. And she and Justin had turned from casual friends into an item, and were now sharing a flat in Hereford, which had had the mains gas disconnected.

Justin still hadn’t gone back to see his mother or his father. Although he did get me to go round to his father’s to pick up his cat and to deliver it to the home that he and Mary were now able to offer it. And he was a regular visitor at Mackay’s farmhouse, where he and Mary had been commissioned to paint a mural on the wall of the barn that was used to put corporate executives through their paces.

I stood at the back of a pleasingly large congregation of well-wishers and relatives when Anthea Joan Balmer was reinterred in the Bluebell Sector on a beautiful late-spring morning. I wished her a peaceful and undisturbed eternity.

And Gerald Evans?

Well, Gerald Evans was a case of slowly maturing vengeance that I was working on.

The big consolation I had on returning to normal cowboy duty was that my sheep molester had turned himself in. It transpired that he felt that his work was now done. He had been a breed fanatic who had been on a crusade to preserve the genetic purity of Badger Face Welsh mountain sheep.

And I had just taken a call from Emrys Hughes and agreed to help make up the numbers on a nocturnal stakeout that Inspector Morgan had organized. Normally, I would have told him where to stick his stakeout, but I was feeling the need to rehabilitate myself with the local force.

How was I to know that this was going to be the start of another terrible chain of events?