Sins of the Fathers (22 page)

‘Don’t go in there,’ she said.

‘Of course not,’ Laura came back quickly. ‘I’ll just keep an eye on him.’ She watched as Janine picked her way back across the muddy yard and disappeared round the corner of the house. A few moments later she heard the car start and caught a glimpse of it as it reversed down the bumpy track. Laura took a deep breath and glanced through the window again. The man seemed to have curled up on himself, with his back to the door, and Laura wondered again if he was dead. Cautiously, she reached over and lifted the old-fashioned latch on the workshop door and
inched it open. The response, to what could only have been a slight increase in the intensity of the light inside, was immediate.

‘Is that you, Janine? I need some help here. Those bastards hit me.’

Laura opened the door more widely.

‘It’s not Janine,’ she said. ‘I’m Laura. She sent me instead.’

‘Jesus,’ the voice said, and then lapsed into a groan, which was followed by nothing more than heavy breathing from the far side of the room. Laura could see the bloodstains on the floor more clearly now and realised that Christie, if it was Christie, must be seriously hurt. Leaving the door open, she stepped into the workshop and walked slowly over to the corner. She recognised the man the police had been hunting for so long from his photograph, even though he was unshaven and pale-faced, and slumped with his eyes closed in the corner of the room behind his own workbench. A mobile phone lay on the floor beside him. The blood which had formed a pool by his left side had soaked his shirt and jacket and his left arm lay limp at his side.

Laura knelt down beside the injured man.

‘I’ll see if I can stop the bleeding,’ she said, but Christie moved with surprising speed with his other arm and she found herself facing the muzzle of a pistol held in a surprisingly steady hand.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Christie asked.

The report of Janine Foster’s call to the police took time to filter through to CID before landing like a detonating grenade on Michael Thackeray’s desk. He flung open his office door and went into the main incident room, where not much appeared to be happening, with the piece of paper crumpled in his fist and a look of fury on his face.

‘Kevin,’ he said. ‘Have you seen this?’ Kevin Mower looked up from his computer screen and shook his head.

‘A problem, guv?’ he asked. Thackeray smoothed out the paper as best he could and let Mower read it. The implications of what Janine Foster had reported hit him, too, like a blow in the stomach.

‘Laura’s there,’ Thackeray said, unable to disguise the note of panic in his voice. ‘And according to our enterprising PC Hewitt, it’s like the Wild West up there.’

‘I was working on that, guv,’ Mower said quickly.

‘Move. Now,’ Thackeray said. ‘Get an armed response unit organised, the chopper, the lot. I’m going up there to see what Mrs Foster has to say for herself. This whole thing’s running out of control and Laura seems to have walked right into the middle of it.’ He spun on his heel and hurried out of the room without leaving Mower any time to object. But Mower hardly needed the urgency of the
situation reinforced. If there had been a panic button to press he would have pressed it.

Thackeray drove to Staveley faster than the law allowed but more slowly than his fear demanded. He flung his car into the pub car park, noticed Laura’s car parked close to the gate and banged loudly on the locked pub door, hoping against hope that she would be safely inside. But Janine Foster opened the door quickly, looking terrified, and only glanced at the warrant card he waved in her direction.

‘You took your time,’ she said. ‘It’s more than half an hour since I dialled 999.’

‘Tell me what happened? Is Laura Ackroyd here?’ He waved at her car as if to explain the question. Janine shook her head.

‘She’s still at the cottage keeping an eye on things,’ she said. ‘I brought the car down. We thought it was urgent.’

‘You’re damn right it’s urgent,’ Thackeray said. ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’ So Janine did.

‘Could you see whether Gordon Christie was armed or not?’ he asked when she had finished, but Janine shook her head.

‘And how do you think he get hold of your husband’s mobile?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Janine said. ‘He certainly had me fooled.’ She stood on the pub doorstep looking desolate as the first flakes of snow began to fall from the darkening sky.

‘I’m sorry,’ Thackeray said. ‘It was a cruel hoax.’ He touched her arm lightly. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’m going up there to get the lie of the land and get Ms Ackroyd out of harm’s way. The heavy mob won’t be far behind me. If you could make sure they find the right lane to the cottage when they arrive, I’d be grateful.’

‘They’d best be quick before we’re snowed up again,’
Janine said glumly as Thackeray turned back to his car. He drove the last quarter of a mile to the turning to Moor Edge and parked his car on the verge. It would be safer, he thought, to walk the rest of the way and give Christie no hint of his approach. With luck Laura could walk back down to the hill and sit out the rest of what might turn into a long siege in the warmth of the pub. But as he approached the cottage and made his way round the side of the building to the yard, his heart began thumping uncomfortably again. He could see no sign of Laura and the windows of the house and the outbuildings were all in darkness, a gloom made more intense by the rapidly darkening sky and increasingly fierce flurries of sleety snow.

Cautiously he made his way across the yard and, as Janine and Laura had done earlier, flattened himself against the wall and peered through the grimy glass into the interior of the workshop. He could see very little but even as he watched, his ears told him what he wanted to know and filled him with a cold fear that almost froze his brain. Someone inside the workshop spoke and another voice responded. There were two people inside and Thackeray guessed that for whatever reason, and he could not imagine a good one, Laura had gone inside and become, if Christie had a weapon, a hostage.

Thackeray took a deep breath and threw away in a split second years of training in risk assessment, hostage negotiation, not to mention his own natural caution. He reached out an arm and pushed the door open a couple of inches, knowing that whoever was inside could not fail to notice the slight increase in light.

‘Thackeray,’ he said loudly. ‘CID. I’m not armed and I’m coming in.’

For a second as he stepped inside there was silence, then two urgent voices at once.

‘Stay where you are,’ Christie said.

‘He’s got a gun, Michael, be careful,’ Laura added, her voice full of fear.

Thackeray stood very still, not least to accustom his eyes to the almost complete absence of light. Gradually he was able to make out the two figures on the other side of the cluttered room, both on the floor, Christie half lying with most of his body hidden by the workbench, and Laura seated close by him with her back to the wall beneath a shelf piled high with what looked like cans of paint, her knees drawn up beneath her chin.

‘You! Put the light on and close the door,’ Christie said unexpectedly. ‘The switch is on the right.’ Thackeray turned slowly and did as he was told, and then turned back. He could see Christie’s gun then, pointed directly at Laura’s head.

‘Take your jacket off,’ Christie said. ‘Shirt sleeve order. Drop your coat on the floor.’ Again Thackeray did as he was told with a shrug. He guessed the man wanted to be sure he was not carrying a weapon or a recorder.

‘Right,’ Christie said, the gun never wavering. ‘Light out. We’re like sitting ducks here with it on. Then walk slowly over this way and sit down beside little miss reporter here, where I can keep an eye on both of you.’

Thackeray took his time making his way across the room, not wanting to startle Christie by tripping over any of the clutter that he had glimpsed in his brief survey of the workshop. As his eyes grew used to the gloom again he was able to drop down beside Laura and quickly slip an arm round her. He could feel her trembling and knew it was with fear, not cold, although he could already feel the damp
chill of the workshop through his own cotton shirt.

‘What is it you want, Christie?’ he asked quietly. ‘This isn’t going to get you anywhere. Janine Foster tells me you’ve been hurt. Let’s get you to a doctor and take it from there.’

‘He’s been shot,’ Laura said. ‘I tried to stop the bleeding but I don’t think I did much good.’

‘Shut up,’ Christie said sharply. ‘I need to think.’

‘You’ve not got much time,’ Thackeray said. ‘There’ll be a couple of dozen armed police outside within ten minutes. We know your real name is Roberts and you were in the SAS. You know as well as I do that hostage-taking never ends well.’

Christie grunted, as if startled at that, and tried to push himself upright, groaning slightly with the effort.

‘You found out that much did you?’ he said. ‘Well, your lads may get here and finish me off, or it may be someone Weldon sends. His goons don’t know where I am but it won’t take them long to work it out. If you’re so clever, how come you didn’t know what that beggar and his son were up to right under your noses? Tell me that. How come it wasn’t until my wife and kids got caught in the crossfire that you took an interest in Staveley’s very own Mr Big.’

‘Drugs was it?’ Thackeray asked softly, not surprised. The horrific death of Gerry Foster had convinced him, as nothing else had, that there were serious criminals involved in what had been happening in Staveley, and that Christie himself was not likely to be in that league.

‘Guns,’ Christie said, his voice full of contempt. ‘Weldon’s the armourer for half the gangs in the north of England. And when he sussed out my background he couldn’t believe his luck, could he? Untraceable weapons,
untraceable killer with the best possible training, special terms for bulk orders.’ The voice was strained but oozed with bitterness.

‘Contract killing?’

‘Either Weldon’s very clever or you lot are very stupid,’ Christie said. ‘And I needed the money. Working as a bloody mechanic’s a dogsbody job. Killing people’s the only valuable skill I ever got. It could have gone on for ever if my wife hadn’t put two and two together and decided we’d better move on again. Spain, she thought, this time. Silly cow thought it would be that easy.’

‘Did you kill your family?’ It was, Laura thought, the question Thackeray needed an answer to more than any other. She felt for his hand and held it tightly.

Christie groaned again.

‘You’re not listening, Mr CID,’ he said. ‘Stuart Weldon killed my family and he would have killed me too if I hadn’t shot him first. What he didn’t know was that since we fell out over me refusing to do the next job they had in mind I hadn’t gone anywhere without a pistol.’

‘That was when you had a row with the two of them in the lane?’ Thackeray suggested. ‘We found a witness to that.’

‘Well, good for you,’ Christie said. ‘I wanted out. I’d had enough. Two days later Stuart comes round to the house at breakfast time waving a gun about and shouting the odds. The kids were terrified and Linda starts screaming…’

Christie stopped, as if he was re-running the scene again in his head.

‘He lost it and shot Linda, the kids ran and he got them as well. I tried to get his gun but he bashed me across the head with it and I was stunned for a bit. Then he asked where Scott was and said we’d have to catch up with him.
I knew he was going to finish the pair of us off but he made me drive and had the gun pointed at the boy the whole way. In the end, when Scott had the sense to jump out of the Land Rover, Weldon fired off a couple of rounds into the snow to try and stop him, and I managed to get my own gun out.’

‘And then you drove him to Manchester and torched the vehicle?’

Christie grunted what his listeners took to be assent.

‘What about the weapon?’ Thackeray asked, not wanting Christie to stray too far from the point. ‘The one in the Land Rover wasn’t the one which killed your family?’ Thackeray pressed him.

‘I swapped weapons. I wanted you to think Weldon was me and I might have killed myself so he had to be found with my gun, the gun and the bullet had to match. And anyway I was running out of ammo. He had plenty in his pockets, so I took that.’

‘And what happened with your son back on the moors?’ Thackeray’s voice was gentle now.

‘I looked for Scott,’ Christie whispered. ‘Couldn’t find him…’ He groaned again.

‘I hunted for him until it turned into a total white-out. I just hoped he’d found somewhere to shelter by then.’ Christie stopped and Thackeray knew that he was trying to imagine what he himself had actually seen, a small body wrapped round itself in a vain search for warmth under the blanket of snow. ‘He didn’t make it, did he? I kept tuning into the radio when I could but I never heard…’

‘I’m sorry,’ Thackeray said, the words forced out of him. ‘He would go to sleep, they said, feel nothing.’

‘But those of us left don’t feel nothing, do we?’ Christie said vehemently, although the effort forced him into a
spasm of coughing and Thackeray wondered for a second whether the gun had wandered off target. He did not feel inclined to risk finding out.

‘We feel everything,’ Christie went on. ‘The ones who are left behind. We feel it all. We blame ourselves even if we didn’t pull the trigger.’ Laura felt Thackeray take a sharp breath. Laura knew that this was a line of questioning he should not be pursuing for a multitude of reasons.

‘Did you pull the trigger that time in Derry?’ Thackeray asked eventually, but Christie did not react as angrily as she feared he might.

‘I did not,’ he said softly. ‘And I should have finished that off properly too. Prison was too good for those bastards. I told the brass that the people I was with were mad dogs, they might go too far. But they wouldn’t listen.’

‘Who did you tell, exactly?’ Thackeray whispered.

‘You can work that out, Mr CID,’ Christie said. ‘You can work out who put me there, in that house, with those kids, and those lunatics with an Uzi. You might say there was some justice in the same thing happening to me.’

‘And after all that, getting as far as Manchester, you came back here?’ Thackeray said. ‘Why didn’t you get out of the country when you had the chance? You could have been long gone before the bodies were found.’

‘And leave that bastard alive? And Emma all alone? Stuart’s might have been the hand that pulled the trigger but the brain was his father’s. I wanted Bruce Weldon dead as well. I think he knew about Derry. He’d found out somehow. There must have been feelers out in Manchester from Ireland, maybe. There’s a lot of links between crime there and crime here, and enough people wanted to see me dead. And I think he just wanted to punish me for defying him, for refusing the next job, and the one after that, for
wanting to get out. I think he wanted to punish me in the way he knew would hurt me most. Perhaps Stuart wasn’t intended to kill me at all, just make sure that they were all dead and it was my fault they were all dead.’

‘He’s a sadist? Psychotic?’

‘Oh, he’s that all right,’ Christie said. ‘The son’s a pale shadow of the father, believe me.’

‘So you came back, and you shot at Weldon’s house? More than once?’

‘I’ve got a sniper’s rifle. There’s a spot on the moor where you can see right into the windows. I thought I had him today but I must have missed and he had his goons waiting. He’s a sharp beggar, is Weldon. He wouldn’t have survived so long if he wasn’t. Sharp and ruthless. And, as you say, a psychopath. One of the bastard’s hit me and I only just made it back here. They won’t give up. They’ll still be out there looking. The cavalry had better look sharp or we’ll all get it.’

‘And Gerry Foster? Did you kill Gerry Foster?’ Thackeray asked, wondering where Christie’s disregard for life stopped. He might call Weldon a psychopath but he suspected the former soldier came close to that himself. But Christie had fallen silent again, and his breathing seemed to be growing more laboured.