CRIME REPORTER, PETER Devlin, was definitely not feeling his best. The door of Duval’s Land Rover had missed his head by a fraction, but it had nevertheless bowled him over and he had struck his head on the pavement with some force. He now sported a nasty gash on his temple and a two-inch circle of rapidly worsening discolouration round the wound that resembled the skin of a bruised pear.
By rights he should have gone to hospital, but he had refused the offer from the young policewoman who had raced across the road from her station outside Kate Hamblin’s flat to help him. Now, sat on the low wall of an adjacent garden, he held a handkerchief to his head, scowling as he passed the information about the incident to his editor on his mobile phone, while his colleagues, standing around in a bristling group with notebooks or microphones in their hands, listened attentively to what he had to say.
The hatchet-faced woman in the suit pushed her way through the crowd as he returned the mobile to his pocket, and stood over him, studying him with the intensity of a vulture waiting for a potential meal to keel over.
‘DCI Callow,’ she introduced herself. ‘What was all that about?’
Devlin returned her stare. ‘Bloody maniac in the Land Rover drove straight at me,’ he retorted. ‘Snatched your DC Hamblin and drove off.’
Callow’s eyes narrowed. ‘Kate Hamblin?’
Devlin nodded. ‘Guy pointed a gun at her and told her to get in.’
‘A gun? What sort of a gun?’
Devlin shrugged. ‘Pistol of some sort, I think. Glimpsed the thing as I was trying to get up again.’
‘Dunno, only noticed the gun.’
Callow was unable to conceal her disappointment. ‘You sure it was a firearm and she didn’t just get in of her own accord?’
There was contempt written into Devlin’s expression now, as he dabbed the gash in his forehead again. ‘It was either a gun or the guy had one hell of an erection,’ he retorted with heavy sarcasm. ‘And before you ask, I didn’t get the Land Rover’s number.’
Callow nodded and treated him to a grim smile. She didn’t need it. Having seen the Land Rover mount the pavement, then roar away from her vantage point in Kate Hamblin’s flat, she already knew the number and who the driver was, but she had no intention of sharing that information with Devlin.
‘Thank you for your assistance anyway,’ she said and, moving away out of earshot of the reporters, she called up Detective Superintendent Davey on his mobile. ‘Where are you, guv?’ she queried.
There was a weary sigh. ‘Well, I was heading home for a bite to eat,’ Davey replied. ‘What’s up now? I only left you ten minutes ago.’
Callow smirked her malicious satisfaction. ‘Sorry, guv,’ she said without meaning it, ‘but we have a bit of a problem.’
And that really was an understatement.
Hayden Lewis was worried, confused and – yes – angry. Where the hell had Kate got to? He had left her at the café over an hour ago and had been fully expecting her to call in at the police station for her lift when she’d finished her chat with Pauline, but she just hadn’t materialized. Without a car though, where could she have gone? It would hardly be on a shopping trip, for Highbridge was pretty much the pits in that respect.
The sour-faced waitress wasn’t much help either. ‘Just upped and went,’ she said.
‘How long ago?’
‘Dunno. Wasn’t watchin’.’
‘Well, did she leave with anyone?’
‘Ain’t got the faintest.’
Lewis muttered an oath and stomped from the café, slamming the door behind him. Once outside, he paused a moment to study the street in both directions, but there was still no sign of her.
Fumbling in his pocket, he tore his mobile free of the lining and tried to dial her mobile number, but rang off again as the answer voice started telling him to leave a message.
Damn it! Now what?
For a few minutes he hung around outside the café, walking up and down in a state of visible agitation. Then abruptly, as another thought occurred to him, he swung on his heel and headed towards the Bridgwater Road.
Pauline Cross answered the door to him almost immediately and she looked surprised when he asked if Kate was with her.
‘She’s not here,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘I left her at the café. I did offer to call her a taxi, but she said she’d get you to run her home.’
‘Never turned up at the nick,’ he replied.
Pauline frowned. ‘Why don’t you ring her mobile?’
‘Tried that,’ he snapped irritably. ‘Not answering.’
Now Pauline looked worried. ‘I hope she’s all right,’ she said.
‘So do I,’ he agreed, then added as much to reassure himself as anything else, ‘Maybe we’ve crossed paths and she’s back at the nick now.’
But she wasn’t and Dick Stacey, the office manager, broke the news to him as he pushed through into the CID office.
‘Balloon’s gone up,’ he said. ‘Duval has Kate and he’s armed. Force chopper spotted them at an old pumping station near the Parrett and an ARV3 is en route.’
Lewis felt something crawl down his spine. Kate in the middle of a stand-off between Duval and an armed police team? The thought horrified him. ‘What pumping station?’ he demanded hoarsely.
‘Best you don’t get involved,’ Stacey advised. ‘Guv’nor won’t like it.’
‘What pumping station?’ Lewis almost shouted. ‘Come on, man, tell me.’
Stacey made a face and crossed to a map of the Levels on the wall. ‘There,’ he said, pointing a nicotine-stained finger. ‘That’s if you want your head blown off.’
But Lewis didn’t hear him. He was already crashing back through the door – for the second time since the investigation had begun bursting out of the office like a madman.
‘Bloody women,’ Stacey muttered.
Kate Hamblin heard the thud of rotor blades moments before Duval and she instinctively glanced upwards, even though she knew she couldn’t see anything from inside the building. She felt her heart start to race, sure in her own mind that it had to be the police chopper, and desperately hoping that if it was, the crew would spot Duval’s Land Rover parked in the open.
Duval’s face had once more developed a heavy scowl and there was a strange glint in his eyes that Kate read as a mixture of anger and panic as he also threw a swift glance towards the roof. ‘Get over here,’ he snarled, the pistol in his hand lunging towards her like a striking snake.
Faced with no other option, she did as she was told.
‘Turn around,’ he snapped and, when she did so, closing her eyes tightly for a second when the barrel of the gun pressed into her neck, he leaned close to her ear. ‘One silly move,’ he warned, ‘an’ I’ll blow your soddin’ head off. Got it?’
She nodded weakly and he pushed her forward. ‘To the door and let’s take a look,’ he said.
Keeping her in the shadow of the doorway, he peered over her shoulder to where he had left his Land Rover. The chopper was hovering directly over the vehicle, the big ‘Police’ sign clearly visible on the machine and a crew member leaning out through the open cockpit door to study the vehicle.
‘Should have put the bloody thing in the shed like I usually do,’ Duval breathed, then dug the pistol into her neck again. ‘Who would be in that thing then?’
Kate swallowed. ‘Pilot and observer,’ she said.
‘Would they be tooled up?’
‘I don’t know. Could be a couple of armed officers in the back.’ He thought about that for a second. ‘Then we wait to see,’ he said, ‘an’ if there are, you get it first.’
As he spoke, the helicopter suddenly lifted and began to circle the site, skimming the ruined buildings, then dropping between them like a giant flying bug searching for prey. Duval pulled Kate back as the machine turned its attention to the pump house, peering in through the door just above the ground and shaking the building to its foundations. Behind her, she felt Duval tense expectantly. But then the chopper had lifted again and was racing away across the fields before banking sharply and hovering at a distance above the road into the site. At the same moment she heard the sirens and, as Duval pressed her forward to the door again, glimpsed the flashing strobes through gaps in the buildings, apparently stationary at the entrance to the site.
‘What they doin’?’ Duval demanded. ‘Why don’t they jus’ drive in?’
Kate knew the answer to that, but decided it best not to enlighten him. The firearms team from the armed response vehicle would be making their way across the site, step by step, searching each building in turn, their Heckler & Koch sub-machineguns sweeping across doorways and windows as they advanced. The team would need to establish where their target was holed up before they could do anything. Then there would be the usual warnings and the instruction for Duval to come out with his hands raised. That was when she would be most at risk, for she knew deep down that her captor would not surrender now, even if the police decided to put up a hostage negotiator to try and secure her release before resorting to the final option. The police firearms officers would be highly trained professionals, of course, but things could still go wrong and if they did, whether the bullet came from Duval’s pistol or one of the H & Ks, it would make very little difference to her – she would still be dead and that was a sobering thought.
Duval was getting more and more twitchy as he peered through the doorway and that worried her too. She was well aware of the fact that just a few pounds’ pressure on the trigger of a pistol was all that was required to discharge the weapon and a nervous finger could easily do that by accident. So she forced herself to relax, praying that Duval would hold it together long enough for her rescue to be effected. But her captor had no intention of allowing her colleagues to call the shots and he suddenly dug her hard in the neck with the pistol. ‘OK, move.’ he rapped. ‘We’re going for it.’
But he had left it too late. As Kate stumbled out into the gathering dusk, two figures in military style blue uniforms appeared round the corner of one of the derelict buildings and immediately froze into a combat stance, their weapons trained on them. ‘Armed police,’ one shouted unnecessarily as the other moved carefully to one side in a backup position. ‘Stand still.’
Kate cried out as Duval grabbed her hair and pulled her head down on to her shoulder, the pistol pressed against her temple. ‘Do anythin’ an’ I’ll blow her head off,’ he snarled. ‘Now get out of the way.’
The first officer glanced quickly at his companion and motioned him back as he retreated a few paces. ‘Don’t be a fool, Duval,’ he said, his tone hard and uncompromising. ‘Put down the gun.’
Duval released an unnatural snigger. ‘You throw yours down first,’ he retorted and pushed Kate forward in the direction of his Land Rover, which was just visible between two of the derelict buildings to their right.
The helicopter now thudded in towards them, adopting a holding position fifty feet above their heads. Duval threw an angry glance up at the machine. ‘Tell that thing to piss off,’ he yelled at the policemen.
The lead officer spoke quickly into his personal radio and seconds later the chopper veered away across the fields to hover over a distant clump of trees.
They were now within a few feet of the Land Rover and out of the corner of her eye Kate saw that the second of the two police officers had disappeared, while his colleague had turned slightly and was following their progress along the barrel of his H & K.
Kate knew that once she got into the Land Rover with Duval she was finished. He would have no need of her half a mile down the road and would simply toss her out of the vehicle with a neat little bullet hole in her head. She had to act fast – and she did that just as Duval, backing towards the vehicle and using her as a shield, released his grip on her hair to open the driver’s door.
How he had expected to be able to climb up and pull her in after him was difficult to fathom, but he never got the chance. Suddenly lurching backwards to knock him off balance, she threw herself sideways, hitting the ground with agonizing force as her already badly bruised ribs screamed their outrage in a silent mind-numbing white-out.
The shout of ‘Drop your weapon’ seemed faint and unreal as she fought against the waves of intense pain and nausea that tore through her like high voltage electrical discharges, but the double crash of the firearm was real enough. So was the figure, just feet away from her, slamming back into the Land Rover under the impact of the shells and slowly slithering down the side of the vehicle like a broken ragdoll. Duval ended up in a sitting position against the front wheel, head turned in her direction, eyes wide open and fixed on her in the shocked realization of death.
For several minutes she was unable to tear her gaze away from him or the two bloodied holes in his chest from which dark rivulets streamed like oil from a leaking barrel; staring at it with the same kind of morbid fascination that draws rubber-neckers to grisly accident scenes. Not for the first time since this horrific business had begun, she felt strangely detached from the reality of what was going on around her; lost in a macabre unreasoning world of her own in which the white bloodless faces of Andy Seldon, Alf Cross, her poor sister, Linda, and the hapless Ray Jury all jostled for a place. Now there was Terry Duval too – not much of a human being, but still another life brought to a violent end. So much tragedy, so many lives extinguished and each one linked directly to her. Irrational though it was, she couldn’t help feeling an almost overwhelming sense of guilt, a growing conviction that she was jinxed and the unwitting catalyst in it all. And as she stared at Duval, she imagined that his lips curled into a momentary sneer of satisfaction.
Then the horrific illusion was gone and one of the policemen was bending over her, gently but firmly helping her to her feet. ‘You OK, love?’ he queried, peering into her face.
For a few seconds she just stared at him, as if unable to comprehend what he was saying. ‘You shot him?’ she eventually managed to choke through the vomit welling up in her throat. ‘You killed him – just like that?’
‘Had to,’ he replied and he stiffened defensively before resorting to the standard response he would have to use later during the inevitable IPCC4 inquiry. ‘He was armed and presented an imminent threat.’
His colleague straightened up from the corpse, Duval’s pistol in his hand and his face grim. ‘Not that much of a threat as it turns out, mate,’ he breathed. ‘The bloody fool’s pistol was made of plastic.’
The red Mk II Jaguar didn’t like the narrow lane. Its low-slung body had been designed for smooth even road surfaces along which it could snarl at maximum revs, not the undulating ribbons of broken tarmac that looped their way across the Somerset Levels, and at over fifty miles an hour, it was a miracle that the Jag stayed on the road at all.
But Hayden Lewis didn’t care. Kate was far more important to him than even his beloved classic car and the news flash he had just picked up on his car radio about a reported shooting on the pumping station site had scared the hell out of him.
A police road block had been hastily set up a couple of hundred yards from the site entrance and he only just managed to pull up in time, the Jaguar lurching to a stop inches from the marked police traffic car parked broadside across the lane.
The uniformed sergeant wore an angry scowl as he marched up to the car. ‘Bit of a hurry, were you, sir?’ he rapped, then stiffened when Lewis thrust his police warrant card under his nose. ‘And you should certainly know better anyway,’ he added, his face darkening even more.
Lewis almost knocked him over as he flung his door wide. ‘What’s happened?’ he exclaimed, making to push past him.
The sergeant threw an arm out to bar his progress, his eyes glinting. ‘It’s an armed incident,’ he snapped. ‘No one’s allowed through – not even you.’ He nodded towards the mouth of an intersection to his right. ‘You can rejoin this lane further along if you turn right at the top.’
Lewis made no move. ‘Is Kate OK?’ he said, a stubborn set to his jaw.
The sergeant took a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t know any “Kate”,’ he retorted. ‘I was pulled off the motorway to set up this bloody roadblock and that’s all. Now, I suggest you Foxtrot Oscar, OK?’
‘Sounds like good advice to me,’ another voice joined in and Lewis turned sharply to meet the cold stare of DCI Callow who had suddenly materialized at his elbow.
‘Ma’am,’ he acknowledged without enthusiasm.
Callow treated him to a frosty smile. ‘So why are you still here, DC Lewis?’ she queried.
Lewis stood his ground. ‘I want to know if Kate’s all right,’ he persisted.
Callow raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you now?’ she replied. ‘How very touching. Well, for your information, she is absolutely fine, which is more than can be said of Terry Duval. He got a fatal dose of lead poisoning, courtesy of the ARV team.’
Lewis felt her eyes boring into him and sensed she was looking for a reaction from him in relation to Duval’s death. But he made sure he disappointed her. ‘I want to see her,’ he said instead.
Callow frowned. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, DC Lewis, but weren’t you assigned by DI Roscoe to incident-room coverage?’
‘Yes, ma’am, but—’
‘Then what are you doing swanning around the countryside?’
The traffic sergeant sensed the escalating antagonism between the two and discreetly edged out of the way.
‘I wasn’t swanning around – with respect,’ Lewis contradicted. ‘I heard Kate was in trouble and came straight out here.’
‘So chivalry is not dead then?’ Callow sneered. ‘Well, let me set your mind at rest. DC Hamblin is currently en route to Highbridge for a debriefing with Detective Superintendent Davey.’ Her chagrin at not being part of the debrief was clearly evident in the spiteful expression on her face. ‘But that has nothing to do with you, so I suggest you return to your assigned duties immediately before I lose what little patience I have left.’
Lewis glimpsed movement across the adjacent field and saw a big 4 x 4 he recognized as one of the force’s ARVs emerge from among a collection of buildings on the pumping station site and turn towards the entrance gate.
He tensed and Callow stepped smartly in front of him. ‘One more step,’ she warned, ‘and you’ll be off CID and back to wearing a funny hat.’
Lewis hesitated, watching the ARV bump its way along the track at a crawl. He knew that the threat of being returned to uniform patrol duties was not an idle one and he checked himself in time. He would be no good to Kate off the department and if she was to be debriefed at the station, then there was every chance he would be able to see her there anyway.
Unfortunately, however, Callow was ahead of him and, as he climbed back into his car, she leaned on the sill of the open window, her frosty smile back with a vengeance. ‘In fact, DC Lewis,’ she said, ‘with Duval now sadly demised, I expect the incident room to be run down very soon, which means we don’t really need you there anymore. So take the rest of your shift off – you must have quite a few hours’ overtime left on your card.’
Lewis shook his head as he started the engine. ‘I’d rather work on, if you don’t mind,’ he replied.
She leaned right into the car. ‘Read my lips, Lewis,’ she rasped. ‘You are off duty as of now. Go anywhere near the nick and I’ll have your balls. Capiche?’
Lewis glared at her. ‘I don’t think you can force me to take time off,’ he said.
Another humourless smile. ‘I can do anything I like,’ she said. ‘And you’d better believe it.’