Loose Ends (The Acer Sansom Novels Book 2) Read online

  He cast his mind back over the last few weeks since he had started the secretive, bureaucratic and investigative ball rolling on Bishop’s activities. He struggled to remember anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious, anyone suspicious hanging around. Had he felt eyes watching him? There was nothing. There was nothing because he had not been looking for it. If they knew information as sensitive as the details of Sansom’s return then they would easily know where to find him. The thought was a sobering one, but also brought a new problem – where would he take Sansom, if his home was compromised?

  There could be only one place that would not only be safe for him, but also in the best interests of all concerned: a police station. He thought at first that, in light of the geography of the day’s events, the main offices of Berkshire County Constabulary would be the most appropriate, but this notion was quickly scotched by the knowledge that in doing so he would, as an officer from another county, relinquish all influence over subsequent proceedings. He decided that he would collect Sansom and convince him of the sense and need to walk him into his own police station. There Tallis would have control; there Sansom would be safe. And with the testimony of the soldier to the events of the day and the official explanation of the reasons and arrangements for Sansom’s return, coupled with Tallis’s concerns surrounding his safety as a witness, the police hierarchy would protect them. Bishop surely couldn’t risk trying to get to him in those circumstances.

  Out of necessity on several levels, Sansom’s return had been all about stealth and security. It was part of the strategy that Martins had insisted on so as not to alert the former Minister regarding the trouble that was brewing for him. It wouldn’t do to forewarn a man as powerful, connected and ruthless as Bishop. But that approach, that stratagem, was now out-dated. It occurred to Tallis as paradoxical that while it had been agreed that absolute secrecy should surround Sansom’s return, now his best chance of survival would be about exactly the opposite: publicity.

  After a few more miles of anxious worrying a sign indicating that he should leave the Newbury bypass at the next exit for the town centre brought him out of his reverie. He felt fully alert now; the effects of his earlier evening tipple had worn off.

  He followed the well-signposted route for the main railway station as it took him on a winding course through the town centre. The rain was heavier now, which made navigation in the dark that much more problematic. He checked the time. It had been nearly two hours since he and Sansom had spoken.

  Eventually, he entered a road that led as a dead end to the station. He parked off to one side and looked around. He could make out little in the dimly-lit turning area. He rang Sansom. It was answered at once.

  ‘Stan?’

  ‘I’m here. Where are you?’

  ‘I can see you,’ said Sansom. ‘Green estate?’

  ‘That’s it. Sorry, I should’ve told you what to expect.’

  ‘No problem, I’m just glad you made it.’

  Through the clunking of the windscreen wipers, Tallis saw Sansom emerge from the shadows of a railway building and walk towards him. Despite the rain, he got out of the car to greet the man, his friend, his ally.

  As he took a few steps towards him, he saw two figures round the corner of the street. What concerned him was that they didn’t appear to be making a course for the railway station entrance but towards him. Because of the angle of their approach, he doubted that Sansom had seen them. With a warning stuck in his throat, they broke into a run. Too late Sansom turned to see how he had been trapped.

  ‘Armed officers,’ shouted one of the men, simultaneously extending a firearm in Sansom’s direction. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’

  The second man altered his angle, pistol extended, to quash any thoughts Sansom might have of flight.

  Sansom faltered in his step but kept his hands well out to his sides. He didn’t doubt the threat at his back. With an unfathomable dread, he recognised the voice of Osman.

  Tallis reacted quickly, moving to converge on the tableau of the three men who were now standing in a pose that could have been contrived on a film set: the dangerous suspect and the law illuminated from behind by the weak orange concourse lighting diffused by the heavy rain. Maybe it was the weather or the time of night but they were the only sign of life. ‘Wait,’ he called. ‘I am a police officer. This man is surrendering himself to me.’

  ‘We know who you are,’ said Osman. ‘An interfering old copper pining for his dead daughter. Good of you to lead us here.’

  Osman cast a brief look around and, returning his focus to Tallis who was less than ten feet from him, shot him twice in the chest. The spitting of his silenced weapon was barely audible over the falling rain.

  Tallis was thrown back on to the tarmac. His head bounced up from the sickening impact on the hard surface. Impulsively, Sansom ran to him, threw himself down at his side, incredulous at the needless act and with total disregard for his own immediate safety. He understood instantly as he stared down into the rain-spattered face that his friend was dead. The blood welled out of his chest, encouraged in its flow by the dilution of the downpour, to saturate his shirt like cheap kitchen-towel. It was the image imprinted on his mind as he was struck a blow with such force to the back of his head that he was pitched forward to lie across the dead man in a macabre parting embrace.

  *

  He couldn’t have said with any certainty what brought him out of his unconscious state. It could have been that he had just come round naturally after being knocked out by the hard blow. It could have been the inner turmoil of his tormented subconscious badgering for the reinstatement of his senses. Most likely, it was the extreme jolting and discomfort of being thrown around in the boot of a vehicle that was clearly on some rutted and potholed track.

  As the fog cleared from his mind, he became aware of the physical damage to the back of his head; the intense throbbing and acute pain, magnified by every bump and lurch as his head was lifted off the fabric surface to crash down again a split second later. As his consciousness slowly ebbed back, he remembered the horrific scene in front of the railway station.

  For seconds, as he had often had to do in his recent past, he shut his eyes tightly and fought the images, knowing that such horrors were the typical figments of his distressed subconscious. But these didn’t evaporate. His physical situation now – confinement in a moving vehicle’s boot, with his hands and feet bound; his soaking clothing, the pain in his head – pressed in on him to demand his acceptance of the reality of Tallis’s death. The devastation surged through him as might an electrical charge, shooting into every extremity and centring in his guts. He could have sobbed at his sense of grief, the needless, pointless waste of a good man’s life. The loss of a friend. For his own welfare, he spared not a thought, so consumed was he by his sorrow and his anger.

  He became aware of the vehicle climbing upwards for some distance. It levelled out and then came to an abrupt halt. He heard muffled voices the other side of the rear seats, car doors opened and slammed. Now that the engine was off, he heard the true intensity of the rain as it hammered down on the boot lid.

  The boot opened and he feigned unconsciousness. Rain needled his face. A powerful torch beam illuminated him.

  ‘Let’s do him now,’ said a voice that wasn’t Osman’s.

  ‘And what, carry him and the shovel in this fucking weather? I don’t think so. Besides, if he’s dead, who’s going to dig his grave? You?’

  There was laughter. He was shaken vigorously. Someone slapped his face. He showed them that he was conscious.

  ‘Wakey, wakey,’ said Sharp.

  Sansom felt himself roughly pulled out of the boot by two pairs of hands and stood upright.

  They were in the heart of darkness. The only light was the torch beam being shone in his face. Sansom played down his state of wakefulness. It wasn’t difficult to do. Upright, he felt light headed and suddenly weak and sick. He swayed forward and was caught by
one of them.

  ‘If you’re going to be awkward, we might as well slot you now,’ said Osman.

  Having heard their plans for him, he doubted that they would be keen to do such a thing.

  ‘We’re going for a little walk in the woods. You think you’re up to that, Mr Toughguy?’

  Sansom remained silent, his head hanging down.

  One of them drove their fist into his stomach, almost lifting him off his feet. Oblivious to the danger, he had been unable to prepare his stomach muscles for the impact. Utterly winded, he collapsed into the mud and wet, fighting for breath. The torch lit his face. The shoe caught him below his left eye, sending his head back as though it were on a hinge. He felt the blood and a dislodged tooth slosh about his mouth.

  ‘Just in case you get any fancy ideas,’ said Sharp, an inch from his face.

  Something gave at his ankles and he realised that his binding had been severed. Once again he was hoisted to his feet.

  ‘Follow the light,’ said Osman.

  The beam of the torch illuminated the way in front of him. He felt the stab of the business end of a shovel in his back and staggered forward, almost losing his balance as the feeling returned to his lower legs.

  Resistance, he knew, would bring only a quicker death. He considered it briefly, the blessing of it. But it was not in his nature to give up. It never had been. He’d been pushed to experience levels of physical and mental pain and endurance that few had had forced upon them. While there was the glimmer of hope that he could extricate himself from his position he had to prolong and explore it, no matter how remote and unlikely. He owed it to Tallis now. He was always owing something to someone dead. If he let them kill him now, it was over.

  The thought of Bishop sitting in his warm expensively-furnished comfortable family home waiting on news of his eradication gave him the strength that he needed to put one foot in front of the other and follow the yellow, mud road.

  At shovel point they prodded him into a forested area. He felt the pine needle bedding under his tread, smelt the loamy fragrance released and exaggerated by the falling rain. As he staggered along, he could have wept for the beauty of it – an England of his past. The two men behind him seemed in good spirits. It was clear from their conversation that they were pleased with themselves. Tallis was dead. The final loose end was about to be tied.

  Above the rain, Osman said, ‘This’ll do.’

  Sansom turned to face them, the torchlight full in his face blinding him. He felt the shovel land at his feet and bounce up painfully into his shins.

  ‘Now, you have the choice and you’ll get it once,’ said Osman. ‘You can dig your own grave and enjoy a little more life in this world or you can refuse; procrastinate and I’ll send you off to meet your loved ones without a second chance. I’ll give you five seconds to make a start.’

  Sansom bent down and picked up the shovel. He began chipping away at the soil. He was doing the best he could but with his hands bound his efforts were bordering on ineffectual.

  He had read something about this in his dim and distant past. Death-sentenced men would do anything to prolong their lives, even if it meant digging their own graves. Initially hindering them in the action was a tactic used by many unpleasant sadists to make the condemned more compliant and desperate to please with their efforts. It was all psychological. The point being that when little progress had been made the soon-to-be-dead would be all the more energetic, almost grateful, when their captors cut their bonds and allowed them full physical freedom to dig, thereby saving them the trouble and effort.

  Sansom dug away as best he could, knowing that the offer would come.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Osman, after a minute. ‘Your heart’s not in this, is it?’ He stepped forward and raised his pistol.

  ‘I can do it,’ shouted Sansom, genuinely desperate to prolong his life. ‘Cut these,’ he said, gesturing to the bonds, ‘and I can do it. There’s only one thing I ask in return– back of the head and quick.’

  In the darkness Sansom could not make out Osman’s facial expression but he would have put money on his textbook compliance bringing a wry smile to the man’s face.

  ‘Fuck me around, Sansom, and I’ll put one through your face like you did to that poor bastard in Portsmouth. Very messy by all accounts.’

  With unconcealed confidence, he stepped in and cut the binding with the knife. In one swift movement, Sansom brought both heels of his palms up to connect with the underside of Osman’s chin. Even in the pounding rain, Sansom heard the man’s teeth smash together as he fell backwards. He dived to one side, briefly out of the spotlight of the torch beam. A bullet whizzed through the air inches from his face.

  He sprang to his feet, zigzagging into the undergrowth. A branch whipped his face and another tripped him as a second bullet smacked into the trunk of the tree and then a third split the air above him. Scrambling to his feet and with total disregard for the dangers of his environment, he fought his way through nature’s hidden obstacles.

  The torch beam picked him out again and he heard another bullet fracture something close to him. He heard them shouting and understood that they were coming quickly after him. With no choice, he put his head down and ploughed on. He felt the branches opening up his face, but his progress, more desperate as it was compared to theirs, appeared to open a gap between him and his pursuers. Aware that he had not been illuminated for some seconds, he crouched down and risked delaying his escape to assess the positions of his executioners and catch his breath.

  He saw the sweeping movements of two torches, perhaps twenty yards apart. Both were off to his right. He heard them calling to each other. Feeling around himself, he laid his hand on a length of broken branch, stubby and solid. Grateful for the covering noise of the rain, he began to converge on their paths.

  Time spent learning special forces techniques was time he would never forget. Part of his mind was screaming at him to make good his escape, live to fight another day. But a bigger part knew that he would probably never again get such an opportunity to avenge his murdered friend. He had no doubt that they were intending to lay the blame for that at his door. They put him beyond the law and now they would have to answer for it.

  He worked his way behind them, knowing that sooner or later they would give up their pursuit. They would know that if they didn’t locate him quickly then they had little hope of doing so at all. Sansom also believed that if they thought him escaped then they would expect him to have simply kept going, put as much distance between them and him as he could. He doubted whether they would expect him to try to take them with no weapon to their two.

  He followed them. Eventually, they slowed to a stop, stood for a few moments, no doubt deciding that they’d lost him, and turned to retread their paths. He heard raised voices and took satisfaction from the probability that they had argued over responsibility for his escape. He noticed that the torches did little panning around now. They were almost constantly focussed on the ground in front of them.

  They slipped into single file. He estimated ten yards between them. He took up a position behind a thick trunk to intercept them and crouched down, hiding his face.

  He heard the cracking of the forest floor and the disturbance of the spindly undergrowth as they approached. The beam of the torch played out in front of the leader. Sansom let him pass, huddling himself down in the brambles. He lifted his head only when he was some feet past him. The darkness descended again like a thick blanket pressing in on him. He flexed his grip around his weapon and waited for the second man, counting the seconds off in his head to help him judge the distance between the two.

  He got to fifteen before the second man came abreast of his position, his torch playing on the undergrowth ahead of him. As the man passed Sansom’s hiding place, he sprang up, delivering a satisfying roundhouse whack to the man’s head. He heard the grunt of expelled air, as the man crumpled to the forest floor. Sansom pounced on him, wrestling the silenced pistol from hi
s unconscious grip and collecting up the torch. Touching the elongated barrel to the back of the man’s head, he ended his life.

  The torch beam ahead stopped and swung around in his direction. Sansom raised his own and, as he had seen them doing, swept the beam around to either side, his breath held. Apparently satisfied that all was well, the first man continued on his way. Sansom was relieved that he had not called back. He set off in pursuit, picking his way through the thick foliage, gaining on his target.

  Sansom was five yards behind him when the man stopped, turned and called out something. Unwilling to push his luck further, he aimed at just above the level of the torch beam and fired. There was a cry in the dark and the torch fell to the ground, the static beam pointlessly illuminating the treetops. In one fluid movement, Sansom extinguished his own light and dived to the side in case of returning fire. There was none. He waited, counting out the seconds as the rain maintained its constant patter.

  When he got to sixty, he began to crawl a wide circuitous route in the darkness to approach the light beam from another angle. There was no rush; he had all night. Taking his time, he eventually got to a position ninety degrees from where he had fired. He began a slow, silent approach, grateful again for the covering noise of the rain.

  Twenty feet from the torch beam, he heard him – the careless, desperate, injured crawling of a wounded animal – Osman or Sharp. Sansom estimated him only yards ahead. Mindful that the man was still potentially armed, Sansom retreated until he felt it safe to stand. Still in pitch darkness, he pushed his way through the dense and clawing undergrowth. Less focussed on desperate escape, he felt it clutching at him, snagging his clothing, pulling him back and delaying him. He arrived at a position that he felt would intersect the man’s path. Patiently, he waited, straining his senses for a sign of his approach. The soldier, the avenger in him, relished the change of roles, his new position of power, and savoured the inevitable retribution that he would be able to dispense.