Sacrifice (40 page)

Heck nodded, remembering. ‘Her name’s Jasmine Sinclair.’ He glanced through the files, looking at the attached photos. ‘We don’t need to worry about Latimer and Worthington – they’ve both been nicked.’ He swung back to the door. ‘You say you’ve tried breaking this down?’

‘It’s defied all our efforts so far.’ She pointed at the PC, a large, raw-boned young man, who rubbed at his shoulder with a pained expression.

‘We’ve been told there are racks of steel shelving in there, sarge,’ the PC explained. ‘He may have used them to shore up the door.’

Heck hissed through clenched teeth. ‘We haven’t got time for this.’

‘Hydraulic ram?’ Shawna suggested.

‘And how long until it gets here?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s not going anywhere.’

‘But these acolytes of his are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t think they’ve gone running off looking for their mummies and daddies, do you?’

Shawna looked stunned. ‘You think they’re gonna do another job?’

‘A grand finale.’ Heck thumbed at the locked door. ‘Of course, we’ll not know until we speak to the maladjusted freak in here …’ He turned and left the office, shouting over his shoulder: ‘Shift that desk, yeah?’

Shawna glanced at the nonplussed uniform. ‘Better do as he says.’

Enwright’s desk, which was large and rather grand and apparently made from mahogany, wasn’t particularly easy to shift, but at length – with much grunting and cursing – they were finally able to push/drag it to one side of the room. And just in the nick of time, because from the passage adjoining the office there was a shattering of glass – which sounded distinctly like one of the outer doors, and then the deafening clank and clatter of an engine that had seen better days. When Heck reappeared in the doorway, he was saddled on a motorised lawn-roller, which pumped fumes as he drove it across the office at top speed.

Its heavy steel roller slammed full-on against the locked door, the jamb of which buckled and split. The other officers watched in disbelief, as Heck rearranged the gears, reversed the machine, and drove it forward again.

The second impact was the one.

Heck was almost thrown over the handlebars, but this time splinters flew as the door cracked across its middle, its jamb shattering and hinges catapulting in every direction. Heck jumped off, ramming his shoulder against the sagging door, which gradually gave way to a complex mass of disassembled steel shelves erected as a barricade.

‘A little help, folks,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Shawna and the uniform joined him, as he yanked and pulled at the twisted metal. Within seconds they’d worked their way through it, but long before then it was obvious that the room on the other side – a ten by six storage chamber – was empty. It was equally obvious how this had come about.

Its high, letterbox-narrow window was still closed. But below that, at the foot of the far wall, Enwright had torn away a few carpet tiles, revealing a square aperture in the stone floor. This would normally be covered by planks, but these had also been removed, and below them a narrow shaft dropped into darkness.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Heck groaned.

‘What the hell is it?’ Shawna said.

‘A priest’s hole.’

She looked dumbfounded. ‘Leading where?’

‘There’s only one way to find out.’ He produced Gemma’s pen-light from his pocket, knelt and shone its beam as far down the shaft as he could. A floor of beaten earth was visible about ten feet below. A descending series of small niches had been cut in the stone on the right-hand side as hand and footholds.

‘Heck!’ came Eric Fisher’s voice from the office. ‘There’s all sorts of interesting stuff on this desktop.’

‘We haven’t got time for research, Eric!’ Heck called back.

‘This is important.’

‘Bag the hard drive, then.’ Heck seated himself on the edge of the aperture, and turned to the uniform. ‘Let your gaffers know what’s going on. Tell them the fugitive’s making his way out via a subterranean tunnel. It can’t lead too far, so the grounds need searching top to bottom.’

The uniform nodded and hurried away. Heck buttoned his suit jacket, winked at Shawna, and lowered himself down. The walls enclosed him tightly from either side and back to front, the air dank and stuffy, but at least he had full movement. When he alighted at the bottom, he shone the pen-light in front of him. Rather than a tunnel, it exposed a tight squeeze of an alleyway built from sweating, crumbling brickwork. It was less than five feet in height and so narrow that a man could only move along it sideways.

‘Bloody spider hole,’ Heck said to Shawna, who had stopped just above him.

‘So how the hell did Enwright get through it?’

‘He’s probably had lots of practice.’

‘Watch what you’re doing,’ Shawna said, as he advanced at a crouch, left shoulder thrust forward.

The air became steadily more difficult to breathe and water dripped on his head; the geometry of the passage seeming to contract the further along it he progressed. At first he thought this an optical illusion, but soon his clothing was snagging on jagged bricks. His scalp scraped along the ceiling, making it ever more difficult to ignore the tons of rock and soil above his head. If this thing extended to inordinate length – for hundreds of yards, maybe thousands – Heck knew that he was going to have trouble. Close behind, Shawna, who was of considerably smaller frame than he was, was already grunting and panting.

‘How far do you think we’ve come?’ she asked in a strained whimper.

‘Not far enough. We can’t even be clear of the school yet.’

‘Bloody hell …’

They continued for several more minutes, cramped, sweating hard despite the chill. All the way of course, the thought that Enwright had done this before them was a motivator – it couldn’t just bring them to a dead-end. Even so, Heck felt a surge of relief when he spied a pall of natural light about fifty yards ahead. They accelerated, unmindful about scuffing and tearing their clothing. When they reached the end, the dusty light revealed that a modern steel ladder had been erected in the exit shaft, the upper section of which had been reinforced with recent brickwork.

Heck scrambled up towards another square aperture, through which he could hear the chugging of an engine.

‘The bastards are here to pick him up,’ he said urgently. ‘They haven’t even left the school grounds yet.’

He emerged at the top via a purpose-made trapdoor, and found himself in what looked like an old cottage kitchen, gutted of furnishings and filled with rags and dirt. The broken rear window had been covered on the outside with planks, though beams of sunlight slanted through. On his right, an arched internal doorway connected with another area, probably a living room. He ventured forward, peeking in. The living room was equally derelict, consisting of dust, crumpled newspapers and a couple of sticks of abandoned, mouldy furniture. The windows in here, which opened to the front of the building, were also covered with boards, but the entrance door, only six yards to his left, stood ajar. By the sounds of the engine, the lorry was just the other side of this. Heck heard voices – he fancied one belonged to Enwright, but he hesitated to dash out there. The phrase ‘this is too easy’ was unpopular with experienced coppers for good reason.

He moved to the window, but Shawna now appeared behind him and headed straight for the door. ‘Shawna, wait!’ he hissed.

BOOM …
the thunderous detonation blew the lower half of the door inwards, and the young policewoman’s legs were swept from under her.

Heck flattened himself alongside the window. Through the chinks between the planks he glimpsed the lorry pulling away along a narrow, wooded lane, though a single person had remained behind. It was Gareth Holker, the tall, spike-haired youth from the school photographs; but he’d given up his uniform for a hooded sweatshirt and, over the top of that, camouflaged waterproofs. He was also armed, carrying an over-and-under shotgun sawn down to half its normal length.

‘You want to save this soulless land, officers?’ he shouted, laughing. ‘You need to try a lot harder than that!’

Even with his restricted vision, Heck saw that the youth’s face was white as milk, his eyes gleaming like black jewels.

‘Heck …’ Shawna gasped.

He gazed over to where she lay amid smoking, splintered wreckage. Her slacks were torn to ribbons, blood soaking through them.

‘Don’t move, darling,’ he said quietly. ‘Play dead, okay?’

‘You dare call us desecrators!’ came the deranged voice outside. ‘You couldn’t have been further from the truth! We were venerating these special days … making them holy again!’

BOOM …
half the planking covering the window was blasted out. But that was the second barrel, so Heck chanced it and darted past the window, throwing a quick glance outside and seeing the youngster thumbing two fresh cartridges into the shotgun breech. Then he was down alongside Shawna, whose face was tinged an unhealthy green.

‘First they pummelled my pretty face,’ she whispered. ‘Now I’ve lost my lovely legs.’

‘You’ve not lost anything.’ He took her pulse, which, not surprisingly, was racing.

‘Bloody thick policemen! You dare complain that these festive occasions are being ruined, but what have we got at present?’

BOOM …
the outer wall took the brunt of this one, the whole cottage shuddering.

‘Vomit-inducing materialism all December! Pissheads falling out of pubs on St Patrick’s Day! Supermarkets selling corsets and fishnet stockings in time for Halloween!’

Heck glanced towards the door. What remained of it hung from a single hinge – only this was masking Shawna from Holker. There was no option but to try and drag her further in. Heck got straight to it, lugging her by the armpits, despite her choked gasps of agony. Her shredded legs smeared trails of gore behind her.

BOOM …
the remaining planking blew in through the window frame. Heck ducked as he pulled the casualty around the corner and into the kitchen, where he fished the radio from his pocket.

‘This is DS Heckenburg … we’re under fire again!’

‘We’ve drawn a line in the sand, copper!’ Holker shouted. ‘We’re marking these feast days properly … by taking out the trash!’

BOOM …

‘This is DS Heckenburg, any units to respond?’ But all he was getting was static. The air was probably jammed with messages.

‘Marking them indelibly …’

BOOM …

‘So that no tin-pot entrepreneur will ever again stick cartoon images of Santa all over the discount beer shelves in his shop without someone jogging his memory that a man died in a chimney precisely because of idiots like him!’

Heck dragged his phone out and stabbed in a quick number.

‘Heck?’ came Eric Fisher’s voice.

BOOM …

‘So that no sleazy nightclub owner will ever again host a wild party on New Year’s Eve without someone mentioning that, thanks to his attitude, a student was once forcibly drowned in a tub of Scotch whisky … oh yes, Sergeant Heckenburg, there’s lots more to come!’

‘Eric!’ Heck jabbered. ‘We’re being shot to pieces here. Shawna’s down … severe gunshot wounds to both legs!’

‘Where the hell are you?’

‘I can’t say … some kind of gamekeeper’s cottage. But we can’t be too far from the main building. Tell everyone to shut their bloody gobs and listen for the shooting. And get another ambulance!’

BOOM
…

He glanced into the living room. More splinters, more smoke. Only fragments of the front door remained. Outside, there was a clunk-clack as the shooter reloaded.

‘It’s a pity lives need to be lost!’ Holker shouted. ‘But that’s always the way of it, eh? Blood must be shed if a point is to be made.’

Heck lurched to the kitchen window, glancing out between the planks. An old yard lay on the other side, hemmed in by a high brick wall, and filled with tyres, tangled weeds and corroded bicycle frames.

BOOM …
more exploding timber, more shattering glass.

Heck kicked and punched at the planks in the kitchen window, until one by one they were knocked out.

‘Hey,’ Shawna moaned, ‘hey … don’t even think about leaving me in here …’

Heck didn’t look back; there was nothing to be gained from hunkering down and waiting for the cavalry. If that nutcase Holker decided to come inside, they’d be easy meat. The last plank fell, and he clambered outside. The house was a free-standing structure – there was nothing even near to it, just woodland on all sides – and no way to slide around the front without being seen. He glanced upward, seeing that the eaves were low; no more than eight feet in the air.

‘We may die too!’ came Holker’s voice from the other side of the building. ‘We don’t care. We’re ready to sacrifice ourselves. Clearly you’re not!’

Heck scrambled up onto the wall, and from there over a rotted guttering onto the lower slope of the roof, which was loose and mossy, especially difficult in his lace-up leather shoes. Slates broke and slid away as he yomped his way up.

‘But we’re going to save the soul of this sterile, chav-ridden country and remind them what made it great!’ Holker bellowed. ‘What made it one of the best and most pleasurable places in the world to live!’

BOOM
…

Why he hadn’t yet entered the cottage to finish his victims off, Heck couldn’t imagine, but maybe his brief was not to kill the cops, just hold them at bay. He’d now reached the apex of the roof and peered down the other side.

The youth was in the same position where he’d been in before, but prowling a little to the left and then a little to the right. He pumped another shell into the building, more glass and woodwork erupting inwards. Somewhere below Heck’s feet, Shawna was sobbing.

‘We’re going to shame this land into realising that life isn’t just one fucking party,’ Holker shouted. ‘That prayers need to be said and offerings made. We’re going to remind them what matters … by showing them the price of forgetting.’

He triggered his shotgun again, before breaking it and digging in his pockets for more ammo. Heck threw himself over the central ridge, and slid downward on his ankles and backside. Holker only sensed the danger and looked up when Heck was in free-fall. He had no time to raise the weapon before the cop had slammed on top of him, flattening him on the ground, the impact of which was enough to knock Heck sick never mind the schoolboy.