October Skies (54 page)

You know what needs to be done.

‘Perhaps, Mr Cooke,’ Shepherd continued, ‘you should gather up the other two and we shall celebrate this find properly.’

‘Yeah.’ Julian grinned. ‘Yes, of course.’

Shepherd’s slack face came to life with a generous smile. ‘Then, I think you and I should discuss how much money you’re going to need for your documentary. How does that sound?’

Cooke’s grin widened. ‘That would be good.’

‘Excellent,’ Shepherd replied, pulling himself up out of the muddy trench. Carl reached out a hand to help him. ‘Off you go and get the others, then.’

Julian turned away and headed back towards the tents. Shepherd watched him silently for a moment, the false smile draining away swiftly.

‘Carl,’ he said, ‘you know what needs to be done?’

‘Now?’

He nodded sadly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

 

Julian picked his way slowly across the clearing, confused. By all rights he figured he should’ve been tap-dancing across to tell Rose the news. But he wasn’t. Instead his mind was on something else, something that was troubling him . . . something he’d just caught a glimpse of - the faint flash of a dull blue tattoo across the back of Agent Barns’s hand.

I’ve seen that tattoo before.

It was distinctive: a fox.

Damnit, where’ve I seen that? On whose bloody hand did
I
. . .

A cold loop of realisation suddenly curled through his stomach.

That man was at Heathrow.

He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Barns watching him. If Barns was in London . . . ?

He’s been following me.

Other things that he had almost managed to forget about, to dismiss as the product of an over-active imagination, came back to mind: a noise on his phone line, the suspicion that somebody had entered his flat. The unsettling curl of anxiety in his stomach turned into something more acidic and uncomfortable.

And Sean, dead twenty-four hours after doing lunch with me.

He remembered Tom’s caution about looking for skeletons in the closets of the powerful.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he muttered to himself as he stepped across a gentle hump in the ground. He knelt down outside Rose’s tent and fumbled for the zip.

Or am I being paranoid? Shit. I dunno . . .

‘Rose?’ he called out softly.

There was no answer, no noise at all coming from inside.

‘Rose, it’s me . . . coming in,’ he said, pulling the zipper up.

 

Rose looked up at him as he stooped inside her tent. Still snuggled up in her sleeping bag, she had her laptop on and was staring intently at the screen.

‘Jules, there’s something that isn’t right.’

He squatted down beside her. ‘Rose, I need to—’

A slither of bright morning sunlight streamed across the floor and into her eyes. ‘Close the zip - I can’t see anything.’

He reached round and pulled it down.

‘Jules, you have to see this,’ she said, turning the laptop round so he could see the screen.

She moved the mouse across to the tab of another image. ‘I got an email back yesterday morning before we set off to meet Grace at the camp. I just didn’t have the time to read it and open the attachment before we set off.’ She waved her hand at the unnecessary digression. ‘Anyway, there’s a small museum, well . . . it’s nothing more than a photographic archive in Fort Kearny.’

Julian shook his head impatiently. ‘Rose, look can this wait a—’

‘Jules, just listen! It’s an archive of portraits taken of groups of settlers on the eve of departure. It seems nearly everyone at the point of stepping out into the wilderness had one of these portraits done.’

‘So?’

She clicked the mouse button on the image tab and a muddy brown portrait of a group of people, standing proudly in front of a wagon, filled the screen.

‘They had one image in their database of a certain Preston party, stepping out in 1856, which they kindly sent me.’

Julian studied the group portrait; several dozen men and a few women, all of the men bearded, the women wearing bonnets that modestly covered their hair. Each had a face betraying grim determination, and a readiness for everything nature could throw at them. Clearly not the entire group, just those elders senior enough to warrant being in the photograph. To one side stood another man, tall and gaunt.

‘My God!’ he whispered. ‘That’s Preston?’

Rose nodded. ‘And who do you think he looks a helluva lot like?’

‘Oh, shit, yes, he does,’ he whispered.

Shepherd.

It was the eyes - unmistakably deep and intense, the distinct brow above and the long, clearly defined jaw. She flipped the screen of the laptop down. ‘I’m really not comfortable with this, Jules, getting so into bed with this guy—’

Julian raised a finger to his lips to shush her, and then spoke quietly. ‘I think we’re way past not feeling comfortable.’

‘What do you mean?’

Julian pulled off his glasses and wiped the lenses, a stress habit he was vaguely aware of, but he felt too distracted to correct himself right now. Rose studied him with a growing expression of concern. ‘Julian?’

‘Shepherd is Preston’s descendant.’

Rose nodded. ‘Yes. That means he’ll want to bury this story.’

He looked at her. ‘I think we might need to leave.’

‘Leave?’

‘As in drop everything, no explanations, just leave.’

‘Julian? Why . . . what . . . ?’

‘It’s something our friend, Dr Griffith, said,’ he whispered. ‘Something he said that’s really, really spooked me . . . and I want to get out of here, like, right now.’

‘Julian? You’re spooking me now.’

‘Get dressed. I’ll explain this all later on.’

 

Julian pulled the zip down slowly and peered outside. There was now no sign of Shepherd in the ditch, nor Agent Barns, although he wondered whether the ID badge was genuine, and whether Barns was really his name.

‘Shit, where are they?’

He turned round. Rose was dressed now, ready and crouching anxiously behind him.

‘Where’s Grace?’ she whispered. And then as an afterthought, ‘Grace has a gun.’

‘I can’t see her . . . or them.’

‘Jules? I said Shepherd might want to bury this, that’s all. Why the hell are you so jumpy all of a sudden?’

He turned round. ‘I was being followed in London, Rose. I just recognised that guy Barns. I think he was tailing me. I think he might even have broken into my apartment and bugged the phone.’

She froze. ‘Seriously?’

‘And now Sean’s dead,’ he added, ‘killed the day after I had lunch with him.’

Rose’s jaw slowly dropped open. ‘Oh fuck.’

He nodded.

‘So, what are we going to do? We can’t just run out into the woods without our stuff - we’ll get lost, and this isn’t the time of year to go doing that.’

‘Rose, consider where we are right now. We’re alone in the deepest, darkest wilderness with a man who stands to lose everything if we emerge from these woods alive with this story. I can’t be a hundred per cent sure that Sean’s stabbing is linked, but you know what? I’m not prepared to hang around here a moment longer and, you know . . . ask.’

‘Jules, I’m scared.’

‘Me too.’

She placed a hand on his back. ‘Okay, I’ll go with the leave idea.’

‘Right.’ He peered out again. ‘We’re going to climb out very calmly and casually make like we’re going to the trees for a toilet visit, okay?’

‘What about Grace?’

‘She’s out there collecting firewood. We’ll try to find her and explain we need to make a sharp exit.’

‘All right.’

‘Ready?’

‘Not really.’

Julian lowered the zip the rest of the way, pushed himself out through the flap of the tent and stepped into the morning sunlight, dazzled and blinking. He stood up slowly, stretching and yawning, half-aware the whole routine looked pathetically theatrical.

Rose stood up beside him, shielding her eyes from the morning glare. ‘Where are they?’ she muttered quietly.

‘We’re right here,’ replied Shepherd flatly, standing to the side of the tent.

 

Julian spun round at the sound of his voice. ‘Oh,’ he gasped, and then managed a faltering smile. ‘I believe we were all going to celebrate finding Preston’s things, weren’t we? Shall I brew us a nice pot of coffee?’

Shepherd cocked his head in an odd, unsettling way, a distracted, far-off expression on his face. Barns looked at him, one hand sliding discreetly into his jacket pocket for something.

‘Mr Shepherd, sir?’

Shepherd shook his head silently, his lips fluttering in silent debate.

‘Rose and I will get some firewood,’ Julian added, reaching for Rose’s hand. ‘Get a nice fire going for the coffee? Have some breakfast too . . . okay?’ Julian wondered if Shepherd had heard any of that, but then the man’s troubled eyes returned from far away and locked onto his.

His thin lips spread slightly with a hard-fought and weary smile.

‘Yes,’ he said, his face flinching and flickering. ‘Do that. Go get some firewood.’

Barns’s hand hesitated in his jacket pocket. He looked confused. ‘Sir?’

Julian turned to Rose and mouthed, ‘Let’s go.’

They backed away from the two men, turned and walked, struggling with an instinctive urge to break into a desperate run.

Julian heard Barns’s voice again. ‘Sir? Are you sure about letting them go?’

Rose whispered from the side of her mouth. ‘Shit, Jules, I’m sure they know. They know we know.’

‘Keep walking,’ he hissed back.

Behind them, Barns’s voice came again, insistent. ‘Mr Shepherd, are you all right?’

They stepped a little more quickly over the undulating mounds of moss, both desperately trying not to give in to the growing rush of panic. For some reason Shepherd seemed to have slipped into a listless state. Right now he was letting them walk. Julian figured if they started to sprint, that might snap him out of it.

Twenty yards ahead of them were the first saplings that marked the edge of the clearing and the start of woodland rising from it. To their left, in amongst them, making her way down the slope, weaving through the trunks, he caught the briefest glimpse of Grace’s red anorak.

‘Look, there’s Grace up ahead—’

His words were interrupted by a high-pitched shriek of rage from behind them. It was Shepherd’s voice . . . but somehow not Shepherd.

‘KILL THEM!’

Julian turned to see Barns react instantly, whipping out a gun and adopting the well-practised firing stance of a trained killer.

‘Oh shit. RUN!’

He heard several cracks of gunfire and felt the throb of a bullet passing his ear an instant later. Rose yelped beside him as they raced for the trees. The sound of two more cracks came in quick succession.

He felt the sleeve of his jacket tugged viciously and saw the white puff of inner lining exploding from a ragged hole.

‘Shit!’

They reached the first narrow tree trunks as a third double-tapped volley was fired, sending splinters of young wood into the air. Julian and Rose ducked down and scrambled under the low branches into the undergrowth.

He lost his footing on a root and tumbled over.

‘Jules! Get up! Get up!’

Rose held out a hand; he grabbed it and pulled himself up just in time to see Grace emerge from the trees, clearly confused by the ruckus. She started jogging towards the two men, unslinging her rifle. Julian realised that, in all innocence, she must have been thinking the shots were being fired at a bear.

‘GRACE! RUN!’ Rose screamed.