Resolutions (20 page)

Peel had barely spoken to her. He had given instruction but that was all, and any attempt she had made to engage him in conversation had simply been ignored.

When he had tipped her unceremoniously back into the car boot and slammed the lid down, her first thought had been to be thankful she was still conscious. The lingering smell of chloroform in the boot made her feel nauseous and helped to explain the massive, hangover-like headache that seemed a separate symptom to those simply caused by being hit about the head with the butt of a shotgun. Soon, though, she found herself wishing that she had been drugged. The sick feeling remained, the nausea worsening by the minute, the scent of chloroform exacerbated by the shaking and buffeting she experienced with each swerve and bump of the car. She was convinced he was doing everything he could to make her feel worse.

Her biggest fear was that she'd be sick, vomit with the tape across her mouth, choke to death. She'd seen people who'd died that way, choking to death on their own stomach acids. The thought of it horrified her now.

Miriam forced herself to breathe slowly. Having freed the blindfold by rubbing against the boot carpet, she now tried it with the tape. Gave up. The only result of that exercise was carpet burns. She then willed herself to listen out for anything that might give her a clue to the route they were taking, but apart from crossing a set of railway tracks, little seemed to vary. She then made herself count. Sixty. Sixty again. Counting seconds – one elephant, two elephants – just like she had as a child when she and her sister had tried to guess what a minute felt like. Kate, her sister, was always better at that game than she was.

She kept losing count.

After forever, the car slowed and continued to move slowly for what seemed like another term of forever. Miriam had hoped, briefly, that they would be stopping somewhere, that she could then make a lot of noise by kicking at the boot lid and that she might be heard. Would anyone hear?

And then, another worry. She knew that some boots were airtight; what if she ran out of air? Angry with herself for not thinking of that earlier – though what she could have done differently if she had, she didn't know – she focused on conserving air, trying to breathe, slow and shallow, not easy when every minute or so a bump in the road jolted her and thumped the air from her lungs.

That was different, she realized. The road had not been so rough before.

Minutes later they had stopped and she heard the car door open and then shut. She braced herself, determined she would deliver at least one good kick before he got her out.

The boot opened and Miriam lashed out, but Peel was ready for her. She kicked and he slammed the boot lid down on to her leg. Miriam howled in pain behind the tape, her throat clamping shut as the sound became trapped there and, for a terrifyingly long moment, she could not breathe. Then he dragged her from the car, forcing her out into a world that was chill and damp and dark, even when he fully removed the blindfold from her eyes.

‘Walk,' Peel said and pointed the shotgun he was holding straight at her face. ‘That way.'

Miriam turned and walked. The heavy fog closed about them, cutting them off from the world.

Mac stood on the beach and waited. He could hear the sea lapping a few feet away and, when the fog drifted, make out the high outcrop of the headland and the lower exit of the track he'd followed to get here. The fog swallowed every other sound and caused the sea to sound thicker than it was, more like oil than water, dragging against wet sand.

He strained his eyes, trying to see through the cloud that had settled all around him and soaked his clothes. His mind was barely aware of the chill, and it was only when his body reacted by violent shivering, taking his mind by surprise, that he was conscious of being cold.

He had expected Peel to follow the same path he had done and watched for movement from that direction, angry with himself for not getting hold of a map and studying the lie of the land. He was, therefore, taken by surprise when Peel – Miriam just ahead of him – appeared through the drifting fog, walking along the length of the beach.

There must be another way down.

Miriam halted at Peel's command, and Mac moved forward almost without thinking.

‘Stay where you are, Inspector.' The gun was now in Peel's left hand and pointed at Mac. He wondered if Peel could fire left-handed, but the thought was short-lived, replaced by a more pressing and familiar fear. Peel had moved closer to Miriam and now he held a knife in his right hand. His arm around her body, the knife at her throat.

‘I think we've been here before, Inspector,' Thomas Peel said.

Mac froze. He did not have to ask himself if Thomas Peel was capable of carrying out his threat; he already knew the answer to that. Miriam's eyes were wide with fear. Tape covered her mouth and her arms were pinioned behind her back. Peel's face was expressionless as he studied Mac. Experimented with him, pushed him to the limits of what he could endure.

Mac breathed deeply, the chill air filling his lungs. He kept his gaze fixed on Miriam, willing her to know how much he loved her, that he wasn't going to let her down. ‘Why are you doing this?' he asked quietly, surprised at how normal and controlled his own voice sounded.

‘Why? Because I can. Because it gives me pleasure.'

‘What kind of pleasure? Is it just the power you think you have over people?'

‘No,' Peel said. ‘It's the power I
actually have
.'

Mac eased closer. He had no idea what he was going to do, but for now just engaging Thomas Peel was a beginning.
Miracles can happen
, he thought.
Miracles do.

‘Did you tell Billy Tigh to kill Philip Rains?' he asked and was shocked to see a flicker of surprise cross Peel's face.

‘Rains is dead? Pity; he was once a friend of mine.'

‘Until you gave him to us. Is that what you do with your friends – keep them while they're useful and then sell them out to the highest bidder?'

Peel cocked his head to one side and looked thoughtfully at Miriam. ‘I think your policeman is trying to annoy me,' he said. ‘We should tell him that's not such a good idea.' He brought the knife up, pressing it more tightly against Miriam's neck. Mac could see blood seep from behind Peel's hand.

‘No,' he said quickly. ‘I'm not trying to make you angry. I'm just trying to understand.'

Peel laughed. ‘Now you're sounding like a shrink. Forget it, Inspector. I'm way off the scale of your understanding. Way, way above you.'

I'm losing him
, Mac thought.
I'm losing him again
.

He tried another angle; mention of Rains and Billy Tigh had at least elicited a response, however slight. ‘So, if you didn't have Rains killed, who did?'

‘You're asking me? A man like Rains made enemies. I could make you a list, I suppose. Could be any one of a dozen people. More, maybe.'

‘And was Billy Tigh his enemy? Was Tigh a victim?'

Peel laughed. ‘How the hell should I know? I didn't keep a list of Rains's conquests. Like I said, a lot of people would want him dead.'

‘Karen Parker among them?'

Peel laughed again and tightened his grip on the knife.

He's scared of her
, Mac thought.

‘Our little Karen might have Rains killed just because she'd like to piss me off. She doesn't have to have a better reason.'

‘And does it? Piss you off, I mean. Someone killing your friend.'

‘No,' Peel told him. ‘I'd outgrown Rains long ago. He was fun for a while. No one lasts, though. I use them up and throw the husks away; you know that, Inspector.'

Peel smiled, and Mac knew for certain he was failing. Peel was bored and time was running out.

He risked another look at Miriam: no fear in her eyes now, just resignation. She wanted this to end, could not see how they could win, had all but given up.

Mac saw – or thought he saw – a movement behind Peel, but when he focused it was gone. Just drifting fog and enclosing, greying dark. He looked again: a whisper of movement, there and then gone. For a mere instant he allowed the fantasy that Alec or Wildman had tracked him down and they had come to the rescue. He cursed himself for not accepting Wildman's insistence that what mattered was the team.

‘You finished, then, Inspector?' Peel said.

‘No, I've not . . .' Mac began, but he got no further. A blade flashed, a body fell heavily on to sand and Mac was screaming and running. And all the terrible memory of that other night was falling in on him again.

TWENTY-FOUR

B
y midnight the fog had lifted and the sky was clearing. Dragon lamps illuminated the beach and the cordoned area where the body lay. Mac still did not understand what had happened.

Someone from the pub had brought hot soup, and Mac held a mug between his hands, sipping cautiously. Beside him, in the back seat of a police car, Miriam, swathed in blankets but still shivering, held her own portion and tried hard to show interest in drinking it.

Paramedics had treated the cuts on her head and throat and the bruising on her wrists. One side of her face was rubbed raw where she'd struggled with the blindfold and the gag, and around her mouth the skin peeled and oozed blood where the tape had ripped it sore. She looked a mess and she was the most beautiful thing Mac had ever seen.

‘What happened?' she whispered. She had asked this same question at least a dozen times. Each time his answer had been the same.

‘I don't know. There was someone else there.'

He had watched the shadow move behind Thomas Peel. Seen the hand, the knife; seen Peel fall on to the sand, Miriam taken down by the weight of the man as he collapsed. He had thought the worst, been convinced that Miriam was dead, and only when he'd hauled her out from beneath Peel's body, held her close, run careful hands across her body, looking for blood, was he convinced that she had survived.

The keys to the quick cuffs had been in Peel's pocket and he had released her, then rubbed her hands and arms, wincing as she moaned relief and pain as the blood returned, though even now her hands felt chilled and numb.

They had left Peel's body on the beach, hoping the tide would not come in before the police and CSIs arrived, and returned to the village to find a phone. The Cross Keys pub was now the centre of operations in a murder case.

Wildman had arrived and statements had been made, and Mac knew that his story had not been believed.

He didn't care.

Miriam was safe and Peel was dead, and he could think no further than that, not now, not tonight.

There was, however, one thing that had permeated his cocoon of pure relief. He had seen the knife that had killed Thomas Peel and recognized it. One from a set he had in a block in his kitchen at the boathouse. One of those or one just the same, and he knew that Miriam had seen it too.

‘It's going to be bad, isn't it?' she said, as though tracking his thoughts.

‘Yes.'

‘They'll think it was you.'

‘Yes, yes, they will.' He had said in Wildman's presence that he wanted revenge. That would be remembered.

‘But you didn't do it. There was someone there.'

‘Yes, there was.'

‘But they'll still think it's you.'

Mac slid an arm around her shoulders. Miriam shivered and laid her head against him. ‘What do we do?'

‘We tell the truth,' he said. ‘That's all we can do.'

‘They'll still think it was you.' She closed her eyes and Mac took the mug from her hand as she slid into sleep. He drank his soup and watched the figures moving on the beach, and knew that this time, even more than when Cara Evans had died, everything would change. He was not the man he had been then, not even the man he had been when he returned to Pinsent. There had been a shift in his thinking, in his being. That sense that he no longer wanted to be doing this – putting those he loved or, indeed, himself in harm's way – had crystallized, though he had more than a suspicion that the decision was now well and truly out of his hands.

TWENTY-FIVE

B
y one o'clock they had been returned to Pinsent police headquarters and Mac taken off to one of the interview rooms. Wildman looked angry and Alec grave.

‘I need to phone my sister,' Miriam said. Kate knew by now that she was safe, but Miriam badly wanted to hear her voice and give her own reassurance.

‘I'll find you a phone.'

‘It's OK, I've got Mac's. Alec, what will happen now?'

‘What
should
be happening is me taking you to the hospital,' Alec said.

‘I'm all right. The paramedics checked me out.'

‘Even so. If not that, then at least to a hotel.'

‘I want to stay here.'

Alec nodded. ‘Look, wait in the briefing room; there's a comfortable chair in there and you can make your call in relative peace at least.'

‘Thanks,' Miriam said. ‘Alec, can you tell me where the loo is first?'

He pointed out the briefing room and then told her where to find the toilets. A quick glance at the briefing area as she passed by confirmed her anxiety that there would still be people about in there. Clutching Mac's mobile in her pocket, she went to the toilets, taking refuge in a cubicle, hoping no one would come in to overhear. Would anyone actually be up at Rina's this time of night?

To her profound relief, Tim picked up on the third ring. He had just returned from work ‘Mac?' he demanded. ‘What's the news? Is Miriam all right?'