D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

Gareth had had enough. He threw his hands up in despair. ‘Cut the fucking charade, will you? Caroline, she’s admitted she’s a fraud, so don’t listen to her. For all we know she’s still in cahoots with them.’ Then he realised it might sound like an excuse for Caroline to pull the trigger. ‘Just leave the man be. Let’s get out of here and we’ll settle things later.’

Lambert-Chide, who had remained silent throughout the exchanges, now chose to speak up. ‘Well done, Tremain, you buffoon! How the hell did she get through security checks?’

‘She checked out!’ he retorted. ‘Her cover was good…’

‘Now’s the time to beg for your life, Tremain,’ said Caroline, her composure returned.

‘Never!’ he said.

She cracked him over the back of the head with the butt of the pistol and he fell forward, grasping the point of contact. He groaned.

‘You can’t!’ protested Gareth.

‘I can!’ she returned,’ her teeth gritted. ‘He took my mother from me. He deserves to die…’

‘Caroline…’ pleaded Erica.

‘Do it, why don’t you?’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘The man’s an inexcusable imbecile.’

‘You’re next!’ said Caroline, swinging the gun onto the old man. Only a flicker at the corner of his lip gave away any concern he had for his safety. She brought it back to point at Tremain’s back. Her trigger finger appeared to stiffen. Then, with a loud exhalation, she lifted the gun so that it pointed at the ceiling. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s go. You!’ she addressed Lambert-Chide, ‘You are coming with us. Tremain stays here.’ They filed out of the room, Caroline taking one last look at Tremain who sat on the floor rubbing his bruised head. ‘Consider yourself lucky,’ she said.

‘You won’t be so lucky when I catch up with you,’ he growled. ‘I’m going to find you, all of you, and one by one…’

Her expression was frosty. ‘Try it. I warn you, Tremain, if I ever see you again I will kill you. No more chances.’ She closed the door on his vehement protestations. ‘Have a taste of your own medicine,’ she said. ‘Right, there’s a car waiting for us out back. If anyone tries to stop us don’t hesitate to use that thing,’ she told Erica. ‘Move it, you old goat,’ she ordered Lambert-Chide.

The rear of the house was in almost total darkness. It had once been one of the many tradesmen’s entrances, tucked discreetly away so that the owners couldn’t see the comings and goings of the merchants. Caroline made them pause at the ivy-wreathed door whilst she checked everything was clear. A large black Bentley had been dutifully parked not far away from the door. Its gleaming paintwork reflected the stars in the crisp night sky, looking as if a piece of the universe had been laid at their feet.

‘You and Erica in the rear,’ Caroline directed Gareth. ‘You get the pleasure of my company, David. I’ll drive and all I ask from you is that you’re a good boy at the gates.’

‘We can still work this out,’ Lambert-Chide persisted, lowering himself into the passenger seat. We can come to an arrangement.’

She ignored him, or never heard him as she went through the plans in her mind. ‘Keep low, both of you. The windows are fairly well blacked out but we don’t want the guys on the gate suspecting anything.’ She started the engine. ‘Nice motor,’ she observed. ‘How many lives did this cost?’ Lambert-Chide chose to ignore her, his restless eyes looking for a way out, windows on a mind that was feverishly calculating, searching for a way out.

They drove down the gravelled driveway, Gareth looking back and half-expecting a shrill cry of alarm, lights to suddenly blaze around the house. But it remained quiet, the house in almost complete darkness except for one or two windows which offered a tiny warm glow against the night. They reached the twin iron gates. A bright halogen light came on as soon as they approached and someone stepped up to them out of the darkness. Erica let the passenger-side window scroll down, just enough for the security guard to see Lambert-Chide’s face. No words were exchanged. The man stepped aside and the gates swung silently open. Caroline sighed in relief as the window rolled back up again.

‘Where are we going?’ Gareth asked as the car sped away down country lanes, leaving Gattenby House far behind.

‘Somewhere safe,’ said Caroline.

Gareth snorted. ‘I seem to remember you saying something similar, just before you handed me over to Tremain.’

‘Necessity,’ she said.

‘Yeah, so you say.’

She checked the mirrors. Nothing on their tail. ‘I discovered Erica here had been taken by Tremain before I could get to her,’ she said, ‘so I needed to switch my plan around. I’d been trailing Muller for some time whilst tracking you and Erica down, wondering what he was up to. I figured he was planning to double-cross Tremain, so thought I’d use his deviousness to my advantage. I informed Tremain here about Muller’s intended double-cross, and then arranged that I’d hold you and Muller for him. Till I handed you over he didn’t really know what I was up to. I knew Tremain would have checks run on me, but I’d already thought about all that and put a suitably false trail in place. I knew he’d be so glad to get his hands on Muller and deliver you over to Lambert-Chide into the bargain that he’d forgive any slight discrepancies in my ID. Having delivered on my end of the bargain that was it; I was allowed access into their inner sanctum. The rest is history. Two birds, one stone and all that.’

‘Wait a minute — are you saying you used me as bait?’ exploded Gareth. ‘You fucking used me as bait just to get inside Gattenby House?’

She frowned. ‘So? What of it?’

‘What if you hadn’t managed to get us both back out?’

The frown deepened. ‘I did, didn’t I? So what’s your problem?’

Words failed him. He struggled to comprehend all that was happening. He turned to Erica. ‘OK, level with me, what is the truth? Who are you? Were you in on it with Muller or what?’

She looked at him briefly, her eyes tired and faintly sorrowful. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Sorry? Is that it?’

‘Time to cut the crap, Gareth and face facts,’ burst Caroline. ‘People have put their arses on the line for you. Both of you. There has to be a bloody good reason to do that, don’t you think? Work it out for yourself. Maybe you’d better leave it at that and we’ll explain later. We’re not in the clear just yet, so right now can I just concentrate on getting out of here otherwise it will all be a moot point.’

‘But…’ he began.

She reached into her jacket pocket and tossed something over her shoulder at him. He caught it before it hit him in the face. ‘Here, have some gum and get your mouth working around something else. I need to concentrate.’

She drove the Bentley deeper into the woods, the track narrowing the further in they went, even the suspension on the luxury car failing to dampen the effects of the ruts and potholes. Trees loomed out of the dark like spectral sentinels, their colour washed out in the harsh beam of the halogen headlights. They’d been driving at speed for a good forty-five minutes, but Caroline had been careful not to draw attention to the car should any on-duty patrol car lie lurking unseen and waiting to catch early morning drink-drivers. Her detour into the woodland had been unexpected and sudden.

‘Where does this lead?’ Gareth asked, but he didn’t get a reply.

Eventually she brought the car to a halt, the way ahead so narrow and choked with bushes that the car would not have got much further. ‘Everyone out,’ she said, ‘and down here,’ she aimed a flashlight ahead of them and they began to file down the overgrown track, Caroline in the lead, Lambert-Chide struggling to keep up behind her, Erica urging him on. Gareth brought up the rear. ‘It leads to a disused quarry,’ she explained, and as if to add weight to her words the track passed down a narrow alley formed of high, rough-hewn rock on either side. It eventually opened out onto a clearing, littered with the odd-tree, dense patches of shadowy scrub and long-abandoned blocks of stone. A sheer cliff rose about thirty feet ahead of them and formed a rough semi-circle topped with a dark ruff of trees. Above these the sky appeared a bleak shade of dark grey.