Martin Edwards - The Coffin Trail

‘It’s just like being back in London,’ she said gleefully as a policeman waved away a boy who had approached the cordon for a dare.

Daniel gazed across the fields. Overhead, a helicopter circled; its din was deafening. As it banked, he heard sheep bleating in panic. On the ground, the police were setting up lights in the vicinity of the farmhouse.

‘You could say that.’

‘I mean, I know we wanted to get away from it all, but I suppose I never realised how quiet the countryside is.’

Daniel couldn’t think of an answer that didn’t trouble him.

‘Jesus,’ Nick Lowther breathed. ‘He’s coming out.’

‘Let me see.’ Hannah pushed past him and fixed her eyes on the farmhouse. Her palms were sweaty. She could see the front door opening.

‘Armed police!’ the senior AFO screamed. ‘Come out and put your weapon on the ground!’

Hannah could see Tom Allardyce, framed in the doorway. In his hand was a rifle. She was too far away to see the look in his eyes, but his body language wasn’t encouraging. He was rocking back and forth on his heels like a B-movie gunslinger.

‘Armed police! You are surrounded!’

Allardyce shut the door behind him. The unseen collie barked again, as if in warning. The farmer lifted his rifle, then brought it down again. He began to move, as if in a dream.

‘Armed police!’ Hannah could hear the AFO’s desperation. He sounded young. This might be his very first containment. ‘Drop your weapon!’

Allardyce kept walking. He seemed to be looking around, as if in search of a target.

Hannah retreated behind the wall. She was aware of Nick’s warmth behind her, she could hear his breathing quicken.

‘The stupid bastard. Surely he must realise…’

‘Don’t go any further! Armed police! If you move forward, we will shoot!’

For a long, terrible second there was silence. Hannah held her breath.

And then she heard machine gun fire.

‘Suicide by cop,’ Hannah said. ‘A fashionable way to die these days.’

‘I read up about it.’ Daniel savoured his last mouthful of lasagne. ‘Allardyce matches the profile. People who provoke armed police officers to kill them are usually white males of a certain age who have recently suffered an emotional trauma. And if murdering your wife doesn’t qualify as an emotional trauma, what does?’

She pushed her plate aside and leaned across the mahogany table. ‘You’re always very well informed, aren’t you?’

Off duty this evening, she was wearing a white fitted shirt and black trousers. Nothing glitzy, that wasn’t her style. They were nearing the end of dinner in a hot and crowded Italian restaurant in Kendal. There was nothing furtive or secret about their meal together; he’d even asked Miranda if she wanted to come along and be introduced. But she’d said no. A glossy lifestyle magazine had commissioned her to write eighteen hundred words on the pleasures and perils of downshifting and the deadline was first thing tomorrow.

Hannah hadn’t said whether she’d invited Marc — she hadn’t mentioned him all evening. Otherwise, she’d been more forthcoming than he’d dared to hope. It wasn’t down to alcohol; she’d only drunk sparkling water. He’d learned about Gabrielle’s dodgy past and her fling with Joe Dowling. About the money on her bed, which Dowling had no doubt pocketed when he learned his guest was dead, though nobody would ever prove it. About how Allardyce had avoided being tried for rape. And about how Jean Allardyce must have secretly feared that her husband was a murderer and how her inability to keep silent any longer had cost her life and ultimately her husband’s. It was as though, now that the case had come to an end, Hannah needed to sign it off in her own mind before moving on to the next cold file. Perhaps it was her equivalent of his habit, childish, but satisfying, of typing THE END in bold 24-point capitals whenever he finished a manuscript. He hadn’t expected her to speak so frankly about the investigation and its horrifying climax. Nor had he needed to do more than give the occasional prompt. A remark of his mother’s lodged in his memory; she’d once told him that all women love men to listen to them, really listen to them — because it doesn’t happen often enough. For a long time he’d assumed it was a sideswipe at his father, but in time he’d concluded she might just be right.

Yet he didn’t believe that Hannah would disclose so much merely because he was willing to pay attention. She trusted him to be discreet and he found that flattering, even if he did owe it to the trust she’d had in his father. And, maybe, she enjoyed his company nearly as much as he relished hers. When he’d heard the rifle shot that ended the siege, his stomach had lurched with fear. Allardyce had murdered Jean; he wouldn’t scruple at gunning down a police officer. When the news filtered through that the farmer was dead, he had to restrain himself from punching the air. It wasn’t the right reaction and it certainly wasn’t something he could confess to Hannah. He didn’t want her to misinterpret him, to jump to the conclusion that he wanted something more from her than friendship.

Savouring the last of his wine, he said, ‘That’s one thing Oxford gives you, a love of information. Of course, being a mine of facts and trivia is so much easier than being a man of action.’

‘Believe me, it’s no great shakes being a man of action.’ She sighed. ‘The poor sod who shot Allardyce has been suspended from duty. Routine procedure, but no joke. Neither was being stripped and debriefed. Now he has to wait to see whether the CPS decide to prosecute him for homicide.’

‘Surely they won’t do that?’

‘The smart money says you’re right, but with the CPS, you can never tell. The kindest thing to say is that they move in mysterious ways. The lad’s pretty traumatised, bound to be. He says he fired in self-defence, and who can blame him? Sometimes you have to make your mind up in a split second. He was afraid that Allardyce was going to kill him. Section Three of the Criminal Law Act says that’s a good defence. Even so, you wouldn’t want your whole career to depend on it. That’s the trouble with the laws in this bloody country. Everything’s weighted in favour of the wrongdoer and against the ordinary decent guy just trying to do his job.’

‘You sound like my father. That’s the sort of thing he used to say.’

She bit her lip. ‘Sorry. You think I’m ranting.’

‘Don’t apologise. We’re all allowed a rant every now and then. I can see why you and he got along, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘We got along pretty well. I only wish you’d had a chance to get to know him properly.’

‘Thanks to you, I have a clearer picture of what he was like.’

She let a bustling waiter clear their plates and take an order for coffee before saying, ‘And what do you see in the picture?’

‘A mass of contradictions.’

‘Same as the rest of us, then?’

He laughed. ‘Let me try again. No villain could ever bully him, but he let Cheryl twist him round her little finger. He was a highly disciplined officer who kept getting the wrong side of his superiors. An emotional man who bottled things up and never let his feelings show. A rationalist who relaxed by performing magic tricks.’

She smiled. ‘He never did tell me how he managed to transform one playing card into another, however many times I pleaded to be let into the secret. An awkward cuss, that was your dad. And a true friend, a man you could rely on.’

Daniel folded his napkin; much easier than ordering his thoughts. ‘Despite the fact he betrayed his wife and abandoned his family?’