Heck and Mary-Ellen moved through the wood for about seventy yards, though it might have been further. Mary-Ellen admitted that she’d only guessed the actual distance. The first they saw of the wrecked police car were rotating spears of misted blue light flickering through the undergrowth.
They slowed down as they approached.
The vehicle, which was about three yards off the blacktop on this side of Cragwood Road, thinly concealed by leafy branches, was exactly as Mary-Ellen had described: a Ford Focus bearing Cumbria Constabulary markings, with extra roof details to indicate it was an armed response car. It was now sitting on four flat tyres.
Almost immediately an answer to one of Heck’s earlier questions struck him. Why had the killer not used a silencer before? Maybe because he hadn’t been able to – until a police firearms unit had provided him with all the additional kit he needed.
As with most of the other vehicles, the car’s tyres looked as if they’d been repeatedly sliced, reducing them to ribbons, negating any possibility it could be driven anywhere else.
Up close, Heck noticed the front passenger window had been powered down. Someone had probably appeared on the verge, waving to the vehicle as it had cruised through the fog. It had braked alongside them. Down went the panel as the firearms lads sought an explanation. Bang bang bang went the assassin’s gun.
Heck stuck his head inside.
It was another abattoir, blood and brain spatter streaking the dashboard, the upholstery, the insides of all the windows, even the ceiling. The officer in the passenger seat, a youngish, stocky guy with a shaven head, had taken one in the left temple and one in the throat. The officer behind the wheel looked about the same age, but was slimmer; his face was unrecognisable because most of it had been blown away. There was one other officer in the back, an older man with a mop of iron-grey hair. He’d taken one in the forehead and one through the cheek.
Head-shots in all cases, Heck noted. So the killer had expected an armed response, and had acted accordingly, even allowing for the body-armour they’d be wearing. He leaned further in, resisting the temptation to open the door and interfere with yet another crime scene. Despite the half-dark, he could see empty pistol holsters. He glanced towards the boot, realising it had been jacked open. No doubt the strongbox in there, used to transport additional arms and ammunition, would also have been pillaged.
‘Funny thing,’ Mary-Ellen said, sounding subdued. ‘Me, Gemma and Hazel walked down this road only two and a half hours ago … and, well, we didn’t notice this.’
‘Would you have noticed in the dark and the fog?’ Heck wondered. ‘With the blue light switched off?’
‘Probably not if the beacon was off, no.’
‘That’ll explain it. If this ambush had happened since you came past, we’d have heard the shots.’
Unless of course, the gunman had had access to a silencer before he’d launched this ambush. Heck no longer knew what to think on that score. He leaned further in and assessed several of the blood dribbles down the inside of the windshield. They’d congealed to the point where they were cracking and flaking.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘This incident happened quite a bit earlier. These lads got bushwhacked a good while ago. The car was then pushed into the bushes so they were out the way in time for you lot to walk innocently past. The beacon’s only been switched on in the last hour or so.’
‘Why?’
‘Presumably to ensure that this time we found it.’
‘Found it?’ Mary-Ellen sounded incredulous. ‘Again … why?’
Heck shook his head. ‘To let us know what our fate is going to be. And that now no one is coming to prevent it.’
Only the darkened outline of the police station was visible as McGurk and Gemma stumped towards it. They switched their torches on as they strode up the path, but with no power now to utilise, the key-pad was no longer functioning on the personnel door at the side.
‘Great, now we’re locked out of our own nick,’ Gemma said quietly.
If McGurk felt any responsibility for this, he didn’t show it. ‘They said we could get into the cellar from the outside, didn’t they?’
They followed the drive to the back of the building, the area that had once been a garden but was now an impromptu storage space for boxes, tyres and traffic cones. They searched the immediate area, but saw no entrance that might lead down to a cellar. McGurk shone his torch through an open door into the rear of the garage, which stood to the right. More bits and pieces met their gaze: a couple of rusty bicycles, and some ropes and harnesses that might be used in mountaineering, various spare parts for cars, plus several rolls of fibreglass lagging.
‘What’s all this for?’ Gemma toed the nearest roll. ‘Attic need insulating, or something?’
‘That’ll be for winter,’ McGurk replied. ‘It’s bad enough now, but get into December, January and February, ma’am, and it doesn’t get much over zero at this height. They get feet of snow as well … any time up to April.’
A row of Calor Gas bottles stood against the far wall. They were made from moulded steel and beige in colour. The stencilled lettering on each one read:
3.9 kg Propane
‘Propane?’ she said.
‘Empty, most probably.’ McGurk pushed one of the canisters over. It rolled across the garage with a series of hollow clanks. ‘Yeah. Again, they’re for winter. Pipes freeze up here, power lines come down. You can end up with no heating, so a lot of the villagers in these isolated communities keep propane cylinders for gas appliances. There’ll be more of these in the cellar. Full ones.’
‘Interesting … if we could find it.’ They wandered again into the main storage area, spearing their lights back and forth. This time, Gemma’s beam alighted on a heap of bulging bin-liners at the southwest corner of the building. They wandered over there, threw some bags aside and exposed a small, letterbox-type window at ground level, its frosted glass thick with grime. ‘At least we know there is a cellar,’ Gemma said. ‘Won’t be easy wriggling in though …’
‘Door’s here, ma’am.’
McGurk had worked his way past the bin-bags to find a partially concealed recess just around the corner. The cellar door was set inside that. When McGurk tested it, it wasn’t locked. Beyond it, a flight of concrete steps dropped into darkness. He shone his torch down, illuminating another single door at the bottom. This one resembled a fire door; it was made from heavy oak with rubber seals around its trims.
‘Bingo,’ Gemma said – and then she glanced once over her shoulder. It had suddenly occurred to her that, during the course of their search, they’d neglected to keep a look-out for company. But the storage yard lay as dingy and motionless as they’d found it. There was still no sound in the foggy night.
‘You don’t feel a bit exposed out here?’ Mary-Ellen wondered.
Heck was busy circling the firearms car, shooting as much footage with Mary-Ellen’s mobile phone as he could, both inside and out, and at the same time relaying his on-the-spot observations. He glanced around at Mary-Ellen. She was standing rigidly a couple of feet away, breathing painfully, almost wheezing – clearly it wasn’t just the revolving blue light that left her a little off-colour. Only now did it strike him that the young policewoman hadn’t attended any other of the murder scenes in the Cradle thus far. In fact, she was only twenty-three and had done about four years in the job, so she couldn’t have attended too many murder scenes during her service. Almost certainly none involving the mass slaughter of fellow officers.
Mary-Ellen prided herself on being an energetic and resourceful cop, mentally strong and physically tough. But clearly and very abruptly, she’d discovered the limit of that toughness. And she wasn’t wrong about their vulnerable position either. Standing out here in this misty woodland, bathed in bright light, talking aloud – it struck Heck that he might have got too absorbed in preserving the crime scene.
‘You’re right,’ he said, handing her the phone. ‘Time to get back, perhaps. Our pal’s a bloody lunatic, but he’s also clever. The only way out of the Cradle before daylight now is to walk, and we’re hardly likely to try that after seeing this.’
‘So not only is no help coming,’ she said, ‘we’re not getting out of here under our own steam either.’
‘No.’ He pushed on through the undergrowth, heading back the way they’d come. ‘Best go and break the bad news.’
They descended the cellar steps with McGurk at the front and Gemma following close behind. She’d entered numerous dark, dank buildings in this way, but it never ceased to amaze her how such a confined space could swallow up so much light. Both their torch-beams had retracted into brilliant dots on the closed door below them.
And yet, she didn’t think this was the reason why she suddenly felt uncomfortable. It puzzled her. If anything, she should feel good. All they had to do now was push the breakers back into line, and the job was a good ’un. Heck would be back soon, maybe the firearms team as well. Then the odds would be back in their favour.
But wasn’t all this a little too easy?
Where was the killer while these measures were being taken?
She only voiced this fear when a sudden, sour odour pricked her nostrils.
‘McGurk!’
McGurk’s nose also wrinkled – as he pushed the door at the bottom open.
‘No!’ Gemma shouted.
In the flashing torchlight, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the five or six matchboxes that had been taped together along the door-jamb. She didn’t see the two dozen matches taped to the door itself, only heard them striking as they swept over the boxes’ coarse outer surfaces.
Heck and Gemma had progressed forty yards back through the woods when they heard a dull but resounding CRUMP from the direction of Cragwood Keld.
They stopped short, glancing around at each other.
Heck was long enough served to know exactly what he’d just heard, while Mary-Ellen, though a junior officer compared to Heck, had seen plenty of war movies. They could both of them identify the distant tone of a powerful explosion.