Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

‘He’s not up to any good, sergeant. I know that much.’

‘And Walker had nothing to give?’

‘You heard?’

‘I spoke to the superintendent. She was quite pleased to hear you were on a pointless mission. Glad to have you out of her hair for a while.’

I had briefed DI Rob Walsh as soon as I had left the prison. He seemed a bit put out that I hadn’t told him earlier, felt that he should been there for the interview. But I wasn’t going to worry about stepping on people’s toes. I didn’t have time. He accepted it, but I could tell he was far from happy. Antagonising the local police seemed to have become something of a hobby for me. But then again, as the fellow said, a man should have one.

‘Where’s Kate?’ asked the sergeant.

‘She’s safe.’

‘Where, Jack? We should be keeping an eye on her.’

‘The fewer people know, the better, Harry. I’ll check in when I get back to town.’

‘Fair play.’

I hung up and slammed my foot on the accelerator just as a large crack sounded overhead and the skies opened.

It took me another two hours, as I had predicted, to get back to Thornage. I checked in with Kate every half-hour. Quarter of an hour out from the village I tried again but the signal was down.

I drove my car into the long gravel drive, ran up to the door and leaned hard on the bell.

The security guard opened the door. As soon as I saw the look on his face I felt the world slide away beneath my feet.

Siobhan came running up to me and hugged me round my legs as I came through the door.

‘How long are we going to stay here, Daddy?’ she asked.

I shook the rain from my hair and pointed at the window in the door. It was awash with streaming rain, and a thunder crack sounded in the air again as I did so, almost on cue.

‘Do you really want to go out in this?’

She shook her head. ‘Kate did, though. She said she wouldn’t be long. She took the man’s car.’

‘OK, honey, you go and see that the baby is all right and I’ll have a quick word with the man here and see you in a bit.’

‘Sure,’ she said and ran off into the lounge where I could see the baby asleep in her cot. I closed the door and turned back to the security guard who was looking at me, a little shamefaced, in the hallway. He was big, about six foot four and broad-shouldered, somewhere in his late twenties. I felt like breaking his nose with the butt of the pistol that was once again holstered under my jacket.

‘Well?’ I said instead.

‘She got a call.’

‘Who from?’

‘I don’t know. It was a woman. A patient. She said she had to go and see her.’

‘And you just gave her your keys and let her go?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I said I was under strict instructions not to let anyone out, including her.’

‘And she went anyway?’

‘She told me a patient’s life was in danger. That she was seriously ill. I told her to call an ambulance but insisted that she had to remain in the house.’

I could imagine what Kate would have thought of that, but I had told her the same thing. I tried her phone again: no answer. I clicked off angrily.

‘So how did she get out?’

‘She called an ambulance. They said it was going to take a while. She seemed to accept it.’

I could tell that he was holding back on something. ‘And. .?’

His face flushed. ‘I needed to go for a piss. My car keys were on the kitchen counter.’

‘Jesus!’ I said, my hands involuntarily balling into fists. ‘And you can’t remember the name of the patient?’

He brightened a little as he thought back. ‘It was Ruth somebody. I remember her saying, “Calm down, Ruth. Try and breathe.” After she answered the call.’

I pulled out my phone again. Maybe I should have called the police but I didn’t. I didn’t like what Walker had been hinting at back in the prison interview room. I called Amy instead and told her to put Laura in a car to come and stay with the girls for a while.

‘Have you got a shotgun?’ I asked the security guard.

‘The boss has a gun cabinet in the house. I know where the keys are.’

‘A young woman about so high,’ I said, gesturing, ‘with purple or black or some kind of long punky hair will be here soon in a taxi. I want you to get a shotgun and stay by that front door. If anybody other than that girl, Kate, myself or your boss attempts to come through it I want you to shoot them. Do you understand.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded.

‘Man, woman, police, I don’t care. You pull the fucking trigger and keep pulling it.’

I went into the lounge to tell Siobhan that Laura was going to be here soon, and that I’d bring Kate back as soon as I could. She could pick up from my body language that something was wrong but she didn’t know what. I did what I could to reassure her but I don’t think she was convinced.

She knew fear when she saw it.

I ran through the pouring rain and jumped into Kate’s car, pushing speed dial on my phone as I started the car’s engine, slammed it into gear and tore out into the country lane that was running with water now. The car fishtailed and I righted it one-handedly as I gripped my mobile, waiting for the call to be answered.

God help any 4×4-driving muppet who got in my way.

The receptionist at Kate’s surgery answered and I asked her for the addresses of any of Kate’s patients whose first name was Ruth. She said she wasn’t allowed to give out such information and I told her to put Ruth’s colleague on. She would have fobbed me off at that but I explained in colourful Irish vernacular what I would do to her if she didn’t get him on the phone.

‘What’s going on, Jack?’ said Doctor Hugh Anderson, the senior partner at the practice. ‘Lillian seemed very upset at the way you spoke to her.’

‘Fuck Lillian,’ I said. ‘Kate’s in danger, very serious danger. She has had a call-out to see a patient. I don’t know if it is genuine or not.’

I could hear the phone muffling as he cradled it to his stomach and spoke with the distraught Lillian.

‘It didn’t come through here, Jack,’ he said when came back on line. ‘Maybe the patient called direct, which we discourage for obvious reasons.’

‘It was a woman called Ruth — she was having breathing difficulties, as I understand it.’

‘That’s most likely Ruth Bryson. She only has a nephew who is elderly himself to look after her. Kate checks up on her once a week or so.’

‘Where does she live, Hugh?’

‘Weybourne. She has a caravan in a field on the right-hand side of the road by the entry to the beach.’

‘I know it.’

‘What’s going on, Jack?’

But I clicked the phone off and punched Kate’s number again. The message came back saying her phone was disconnected.

I switched mine off again, put my headlights on, peered as best I could through the windscreen wipers that were going at full tilt and floored the accelerator again.

I prayed that there was a God and that he was looking over us as I hammered through Holt, round the roundabout and then went as fast as I dared on the Cromer road. There weren’t many cars out and it was easy enough to overtake any that got in my way. I went past the turning to the hospital, ignoring the thirty mph speed limit as I came to High Kelling, and then turned left. Downhill along a more narrow country road, flashing past Holt rugby club, through the woods and dropping down towards the coast. I came out eventually by the Weybourne church, another All Saints, fishtailed round another corner or two and headed for the beach.

My mind was racing. I was thinking about a man who had been stabbed and then thrown into the sea like slops from a bucket, about another man who had been buried up to his neck in sand, his mouth taped shut and exposed to an incoming unstoppable tide. And I thought of Kate in the hands of the madman who was seeking revenge on progeny of the perpetrators of a seventy-three-year-old murder.