Untouchable (16 page)

Hex grinned. ‘Well, we’ve travelled approximately four hundred metres from where the factory is. Vertically.’

Li circled her arms. ‘Yes, I realize that.’ She grimaced and the cut on her cheek squeezed out a tear of blood.

Hex looked up. The ground formed a natural ridge. ‘If we stay in close to the ridge we should be out of sight from above.’

‘Better hurry,’ said Amber. ‘They could easily follow us.’

She forced herself into a jog and the others followed. They were tired and aching, but it was vital that they put as much distance as possible between themselves and the gamekeepers.

Paulo opened the front door of the hostel. ‘Well, poor Martin Fletcher’s had a day to remember,’ he said. He and Alex had been with the hiker to the police station to report the arson attack on the bothy. The police took statements and said they would send officers to inspect the site, but it was clear they were treating it as a simple case of vandalism.

From the kitchen came sounds of activity. Alex shrugged off his Gore-Tex jacket and hung it on the peg. ‘Let’s go and see if the others found anything.’

They were shocked at what they saw: Amber was dabbing antiseptic on a cut below Li’s eye; Hex was stretching his legs and arms as though his joints had seized up; and Amber’s fingers were wrapped in plasters.

‘What on earth have you been up to?’ said Hex. ‘You smell like a bonfire.’

‘You look like you’ve been in a bullfight,’ said Paulo. ‘All three of you.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Do you want to go first or shall we?’

They briefly summarized the events of the morning. Alex felt drained: it was good to sit down. Suddenly he had a thought. He sat bolt upright.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Li.

‘I don’t think we should be here,’ he said. ‘Look at us. Yesterday the gamekeepers were minding their own business, keeping their heads down. Now, they’re defending their patch. They’ve shot at us and tried to burn us to death.’

Outside, tyres crunched on the gravel.

The five friends ran out to the hall and grabbed rucksacks and boots. Hex rushed back and snatched up the map.

Outside, the car braked and threw a spray of pebbles at the front door.

‘Out through the back,’ said Amber, and led the way into the office.

Paulo raised the sash window and hopped out; the others followed. They heard the front door splinter as it was kicked open.

‘Down,’ hissed Alex. As they crouched down below the windowsill, footsteps echoed in the flagstoned hall.

A voice said, ‘Try the kitchen.’ The footsteps disappeared down the corridor.

Hex glanced up. In the window of the office he saw the reflection of figures moving through the hall. There were three of them. The one who had spoken was tall and wore a rough jumper and a blue-green kilt; one shoulder was hidden by the door frame. Then he moved and Hex saw something else. A stubby weapon.

Hex mimed holding a gun. Alex nodded. Sweat was running down his armpits and back.

Alex looked up at the hill that rose steeply behind the hostel. They couldn’t get away up there. It would be too slow and they would be easy targets.

They heard voices again: the man was coming back. Alex pointed along the outside wall down towards the kitchen. Paulo crawled quickly down to the end of the building and stopped under the kitchen window. As Alex, in the rear, moved away from the office he heard the men coming in. They had got away just in time. Thank goodness the gravel didn’t extend round the back of the building; here the ground was bare earth, easy to walk on silently.

They looked round the corner of the building. A battered red Ford Escort stood in the drive. It had a crumpled bonnet as though it had been used as a battering ram.

Hex spoke quietly. ‘The Range Rover. It’s in the garage so we’ll have cover while we get in.’

Alex nodded, but Paulo shook his head. ‘The keys are in the house. I’ll have to hotwire it. It’s got an immobilizer so it’ll take ages.’

‘How long?’ said Hex.

‘About fifteen minutes. Damn.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Hex. ‘The immobilizer wasn’t working last week.’

Paulo winced. ‘I know it’s working now because I fixed it the other day.’ He looked at the red Escort. ‘I could hotwire that in thirty seconds flat.’

Alex shook his head. ‘Too risky. They might see you.’

‘They won’t need to see you, they’ll hear you,’ said Li. She pointed to the gravel.

Paulo sighed. ‘We’ll have to hotwire the quads. But we need all three and by the time they’d heard the first one they’d be coming down.’

Amber said, ‘You tell us what to do and we’ll start them all together.’

‘That’s what we’ll have to do,’ said Alex. ‘Hex, what weapons did you see?’

‘Sawn-off shotguns.’

‘Right,’ said Alex. ‘Not very accurate at a distance. If they shoot from an upstairs window they probably won’t get us. But we’ll try not to make any noise. Ready?’

Four heads nodded back at him.

‘Alex, are you OK at the back?’

Alex nodded and watched as Paulo led the group along the edge of the gravel, running silently on the hard-baked earth. The garage was a big building alongside the hostel, butting up close to the steep slope behind.

Alex followed at the back. It was only a short distance but it seemed like the longest run of his life. He felt so exposed. Each moment he expected to hear the crack of gunfire. Sawn-off shotguns. Weapons of the underworld. He kept telling himself, They aren’t accurate at that range, but he could almost feel the shot spraying into his flesh.

In less than twenty seconds he felt the solid wall of the garage building against his back. At last he could breathe easily.

Paulo looked round the front of the building. The garage door was open. He could see the three quad bikes and the dark green Range Rover. The others were behind him, waiting for his signal. He nodded and they darted round the corner and into the garage.

Paulo wasted no time. He unfastened the tool kit he carried on his belt, went up to the first quad and jammed a screwdriver into the housing that covered the ignition system. Hex saw what he was doing, grabbed a large screwdriver from a rack on the wall and did the same with the next bike. The red cover clattered to the floor as Hex did the same to the third one. Meanwhile Li, Amber and Alex grabbed what they could: Amber and Li took loops of rope and hung them over their bodies diagonally; Alex reached into the Range Rover and pulled out a couple of rucksacks. He threw one to Hex and put one on himself. They were emergency supplies in case they got stranded on the moors.

Amber could sec someone else was needed on the third quad and climbed into the driver’s seat. Paulo passed a couple of nails to Hex, and Hex passed one to Amber. Li got on behind Amber while Alex got on the back of the middle bike, behind Hex.

Paulo straddled the first bike. ‘See the two little things that look like metal flowers? When I tell you, put the nail across them so that the little pointy things in the middle are connected. That will crank the engine. Then get out as fast as possible.’

Two faces watched him, serious.

‘Three, two, one – now!’

In perfect unison, the three quad bikes spluttered into life. Paulo immediately reversed his out; Hex nearly cannoned into him; Amber took hers wider and roared off onto the drive, her wheels spraying gravel up like water.

They were right not to hang around. Two shots rang out from one of the upper windows. All five friends ducked, the drivers lying almost flat on the handlebars as they roared away.

Paulo looked for a spot to leave the road. The quads weren’t road legal, and anyway the gamekeepers would soon be after them in their car. On the road, the car was much faster.

The road turned a corner. Paulo stood in the foot rests and swerved his bike round hard, onto the grass and up. Behind him, he heard the noise of the bikes change as the others did the same. But a manoeuvre like that would have left marks on the road. They had to vanish without a trace.

Paulo gunned the throttle and the bike climbed up and over the crest of a hill and then down again. They were off the skyline now. They could take a breather. He braked.

Amber pulled up alongside. ‘I know somewhere we can hide,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

A gentle pattering of rain started as Amber led the way into the ruined barn she had found when they were looking for Tiff.

It was just about big enough for three quad bikes. Half of the roof was still there and they managed to manoeuvre the bikes under cover. And it got them out of sight.

Paulo looked up at the sky. ‘Well, the rain should help cover our tracks.’

Amber slumped in her quad seat, exhausted. ‘That was horrible. They would have shot us. Alex, you must have sixth sense.’

Alex looked stunned too. ‘I suddenly thought – that hostel is owned by the laird. The gamekeepers knew where to find us.’

Hex kept seeing the figure mirrored in the window; the brutal sawn-off shotgun. He suddenly sat up, alert. ‘What if these bikes have got tracers on them? We hired them from the laird. I wouldn’t rent out vehicles without making sure I could trace where they were.’

‘You’re right.’ Alex jumped up. ‘They don’t need to search for us, just track us. We’d better get moving.’ He swung the rucksack off his back, pulled out five pairs of thin waterproof trousers and handed them around. Swiftly they put them on.

Outside the rain came down harder; the kind of drenching storm you only got in summer.

Hex had the map he rescued from the kitchen and Alex checked the compass from his survival tin. ‘Best to head up as high as possible,’ he said.

They climbed up on top of the ridge fairly quickly. The rain brought the noise of traffic from the road far below. Three jets screamed overhead, making the five friends jump. Alex broke into a run. He was too wound up to keep still. Like spooked deer, the others followed. They ran up the slope and off into the hills.

After a good twenty minutes Alex slowed to a walk. They had probably gone far enough for now. The rain was teeming down, but they were warm from running.

‘They obviously intended to sort us out,’ said Hex. His short hair was even more spiky than usual in the rain. ‘What will they do now?’

Paulo said, ‘Maybe if they can’t find us, they’ll cut their losses and run. Before the police close in.’

‘If they do that,’ said Li, ‘they’ve got a big bad dealer who’ll come after them. I saw that guy and they are scared of him. I think they’ll do the deal before they get out.’

‘I saw a tall guy in a kilt,’ said Hex. ‘Not one of the gamekeepers. There are more of them than we think.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘I don’t know. I only saw him from behind.’

Rain was dripping down Amber’s nose. She wiped it away. ‘Hey, guys, reality check. Things have changed. Those gamekeepers are now out for our blood. We should go straight to the police.’

‘No,’ said Alex.

Amber stopped walking and stared at Alex. ‘No?’

Alex looked away into the distance, as if thinking. ‘The police don’t know where to find them. They’ve got the whole of this estate to search. The gamekeepers know every inch and they’ll probably get away – and then what? We might be safe in the short term, but there are a bunch of drug dealers out there with a score to settle. We don’t know if we’ll ever run into them again, but if we do our lives will be in danger.’

‘We’ve got to put them behind bars,’ said Li.

‘For a long time,’ added Paulo. ‘So we need the police to see all the evidence
and
catch all the dealers.’

Alex knew he was right, but he wanted to make sure everyone was with him on this. ‘Hex, what do you think?’

‘It’s a no-brainer,’ said Hex. ‘We go to the police now and look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives. We wait a few hours and set up a nice trap, and then we can all sleep easily. I say we have to stick to our plan.’

Alex looked at Amber again.

Amber nodded. ‘I’ve had school friends whose lives were ruined by drugs. And do you know what? I don’t like being threatened by guns. Let’s put them away.’

They started walking again slowly, still lost in thought. Over the top of a ridge they came to a single-track road. As they crossed it they took advantage of the view and looked carefully in both directions. The only moving things were two bedraggled Highland cattle in the distance, swishing their tails in the rain.

‘Next question,’ said Alex. ‘Where do we go from here? How do we find out when the buyers are coming?’

‘We need two teams,’ said Hex. ‘One to go close in, follow them around at the lodge, and one to stay hidden in the field. Which of us can they identify?’

Alex thought. ‘They might have seen me up close in the bothy this morning. I don’t know how long they were watching us for. Paulo, they’ll have seen you too.’

‘They could identify me anyway,’ said Paulo. ‘They saw me that day when I caught their pony.’ He turned to the others. ‘How close did you get to them at the factory?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ said Amber. ‘We were all running around. I certainly didn’t get a good look at them, so maybe they didn’t get a close look at us.’

‘I gave one of them a good kicking,’ said Li. ‘I don’t think he’ll forget me. And I was there when the pony bolted.’

‘What about that day when we took the dog into the yard?’ said Amber. ‘They must have seen all of us. Alex, you talked to one of them, when he wanted the ketamine box.’

‘Yes, but I’m out of the close surveillance team anyway,’ said Alex. ‘Did he talk to anyone else?’

‘He was looking at all of us,’ said Paulo.

‘But it was at a distance, right?’ said Hex. ‘With a complete change of clothes and context, there are two of us who could maybe slip past them unnoticed.’ He stopped and unfolded the map.