Reginald Hill - Midnight Fugue

Then they’d driven past the Lost Traveller over the brow of the hill, and a couple of hundred yards ahead of them there she was, just reaching her car.

Fleur had worked things out instantly.

She’d met Wolfe at the pub. They’d talked and separated. She’d walked back to her car, he’d driven off in his. They’d probably crossed with him as they drove towards the pub. She tried to remember the cars they’d passed after they left the arterial. There’d been two, maybe three. A year ago she’d have remembered details, but not today.

Anyway, it was too late and she had to decide what to do next.

Following the blonde was an option, but not an attractive one. If she’d just been talking to Wolfe, she was hardly likely to lead them back to him now.

As she braked alongside the Nissan she said to Vince, ‘We take her.’

There had seemed no choice.

But now, looking at the terrified woman as she lay on the ground before them, Fleur knew she’d somehow reached a very wrong place.

Soon as Vince had shot the young journalist and laid out the policewoman, she should have followed her instinct and got out, to hell with The Man!

Her whole strategy, not just on this assignment but ever since the day she got the fatal diagnosis, had been based on a false premise.

Head for Spain, get Vince settled there before she died, and he’d be safe from The Man.

Maybe.

But there was nowhere in the world she could put Vince where he’d be safe from himself.

She looked at him now, standing astride the blonde, his sawn-off held in one hand, waiting for his sister’s instructions.

She’d driven a couple of miles from where they’d snatched Gina Wolfe, looking for somewhere quiet and secluded to stop. At the T-junction she’d turned left. Right would take them south. Back towards suburban spillage from the city. North would be lonelier, emptier.

She was right. Half a mile on, she’d spotted a small quarry, not much more than a slice dug out of a hillside by some farmer looking for hard-core, its upper edge visible from the road but with enough of a scattering of scrubby trees at the lower level to hide a car from passing eyes. In the dusky light, it was a desolate spot, fit for foul deeds.

Fleur stooped over the blonde and looked into the woman’s fear-dilated pupils.

‘All we want to know is where we’ll find him,’ she said. ‘Tell us that and…’

She paused… and we’ll take you back to your car and let you go… No, this was a bright woman, she wasn’t going to believe that.

‘…and no harm will come to you, I promise.’

Pretty feeble, but it might provide enough straw for a terrified woman to grasp at.

The dark blue eyes moved from hers to the shotgun barrel and back again.

‘I don’t know where he is,’ gasped Gina. ‘Yes, he rang me, or someone saying it was him, and he told me where to go, but when I got here, nothing happened. So after a while I walked up to the pub just on the off-chance he might be there, but he wasn’t, so I went back to the car…’

‘Vince,’ said Fleur.

Her brother raised his right foot and stamped down hard on the blonde’s left hand.

She screamed in pain.

‘Look,’ said Fleur, ‘the more you make us hurt you, the harder it’s going to be to let you go. I mean, once you can’t move around by yourself and drive your car, what the hell are we going to do with you? All I want is to talk with Wolfe, find out what his plans are. If he’s going to keep his head down and you’re going to keep your mouth shut, then we’re sorted.’

There were tears in the blue eyes now, and Gina Wolfe’s voice trembled, but her words showed a mind still holding itself together.

‘That’s just what he wants…no fuss…me too…I just want things to carry on…no waves…I’ll go back to London and that’ll be an end to it…’

Fleur almost believed her, but she knew she’d never sell that to Goldie. He wanted closure, and closure did not mean leaving Wolfe alive to tell the tale.

Or this woman either.

There. She’d reached a decision that had been inevitable the moment they’d grabbed her.

She said, ‘Vince.’

‘What this time?’ said her brother, grinning. ‘Do her kneecap? Or mebbe…’

He reached down and flicked her skirt up around her waist with the gun barrel, revealing skimpy panties with a lace edging.

‘None of that, Vince!’ snarled Fleur, pulling the skirt back down.

For a moment this display of female sympathy brought a flicker of hope to Gina, but it was snuffed out immediately as Fleur Delay continued, ‘We’ll do her kneecaps if we have to, but let’s give her a foretaste.’

She kicked her square-toed shoe violently against the woman’s left knee.

Her scream echoed around the little quarry.

‘Bad?’ said Fleur. ‘Imagine what it’s going to feel like when he blows it to pieces. Come on, dearie. What do you owe that lousy bastard anyway? He dumped you, he walked away, the only reason you got anywhere near him was us, and you want him dead so’s you can marry your other copper. Don’t be a stupid bitch all your life. Talk!’

She drew back her foot in preparation for another kick.

‘Please, no!’ cried Gina, pushing herself into a sitting position. Her gaze flickered desperately around the quarry as if in search of some impossible escape route, then her eyes focused on her captors.

‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know,’ she gabbled. ‘I’ll do anything you want…anything!’

She was looking up at Vince now. Her hands went down to her skirt and she dragged it even higher than he’d pushed it with the gun barrel. Then she slipped her thumbs inside the waist of her panties and began to ease them down. As her bush started to come into view, as vigorous and blonde as the hair on her head, a broad grin stretched Vince’s lips.

What the hell’s she doing this for? Fleur asked herself. Not only was it out of character, but even if she let Vince fuck her, she must know that, once he was done, the questioning was going to resume. So why…?

The answer was obvious. So obvious that on top form she’d have got there seconds earlier.

Distraction!

She turned in time to see a figure coming towards them at a dead run. In his hand was a jagged stone.

She had time to scream, ‘Vince!’ before the man’s shoulder hit her and flung her aside. Vince turned, the shotgun came up, Alex Wolfe swung his right arm and brought the stone crashing against the side of her brother’s head.

His legs folded, his arms flung wide, the gun sailed through the air, he collapsed on to his knees then fell slowly forward till his head rested against the ground in a grotesque parody of a Muslim at prayer.

Wolfe dropped the stone and knelt beside Gina.

‘You all right?’ he said.

She fought to control the sobs that were suddenly fountaining up through her chest and gasped, ‘Fine…oh Christ…I thought I was going to die…’

The sobs won and she leaned against him, crying uncontrollably.

He said, ‘It’s OK, I’m here, it’s OK. I saw them as I drove away. I thought, I know those faces…I couldn’t be sure, but I turned round anyway…things are going to be fine…you’re safe now…’

As he threw words at her to calm her down, his thoughts were racing in furious counterpoint. Seven years ago his life had disintegrated and he had fled into a saving darkness. He had emerged to find that, somehow, with only the most shadowy awareness of how it had happened, he had created a new life, patterned on the old, but with promise of greater durability.

He had checked out that old life and, though he did not doubt that his actions had left scars, he had been able to convince himself that he would do more damage by re-entering it than by staying out of it.