Reginald Hill – Arms and the Women (страница 3)
By now the loading of the truck was complete and the four diggers stretched their aching limbs in the mouth of the cave and unwound their protecting scarves. Two were ruddy-faced with their exertions, the other two flushed dark beneath their sallow skins.
The first pair went towards the jeep while the second pair joined the slim man who was securing the tailgate of the truck.
These two looked at each other, exchanged a brief eye signal, then reached for the holsters beneath their arms, drew out automatic pistols, and moved towards the jeep, firing as they walked. The two ruddy-faced diggers took the bullets in their backs and pitched forward on their faces while ahead of them the straw-haired man fell backwards, his eyes popping even further in astonishment under the fillet of blood which wrapped itself around his brow.
One of the gunmen continued to the jeep and leaned into it to retrieve the grip. His companion meanwhile turned back to the truck where the slim man was standing as if paralysed.
The slim man felt a whip of hot pain along his ribcage which sent him spinning like a top behind the truck. The rest of the burst went straight through the mouth of the cave where the bullets ricocheted around the granite walls and up into the high vault, triggering first a rustling ripple, then a squeaking, wing-beating eruption of bats.
The gunman paused, looking up in wonderment as the bats skeined out of their rocky roost and smudged the dark air overhead. So many. Who would have thought there would be so many?
Then as they vanished among the trees he resumed his advance.
But the pause had been long enough for the slim man to reach under the truck and drag down the weapon taped beneath the wheel arch.
He shot the gunman through the leg as he passed by the truck’s rear wheel, then through the head as he crashed to the ground.
The second gunman dropped the grip and crouched low with his weapon aimed towards his dying companion.
But the slim man came rolling out of the other side of the truck, and gave himself time to take aim and make sure his first shot found its target.
The second gunman held his crouching position for a moment, then toppled slowly sideways and lay there, gently twitching, his visible eye fixed on the trees’ high vault. The slim man approached carefully, one arm wrapped round his bleeding side, and emptied the clip into the watching eye.
Then he sat down on the grip and pulled open his shirt to examine his wound.
It was more painful than life-threatening, flesh laid bare, a rib nicked perhaps, no deeper penetration. But blood was pouring out and by the time he’d bound it up with strips of shirt torn from the dead gunman at his feet, he’d lost a lot of blood.
He opened the grip, took out one of the packets the pop-eyed man had nicked, poured some of the powder into his hand, raised it to his nose and took a long hard sniff.
Then he took out a mobile phone and dialled.
He put the phone away and picked up the grip, wincing with pain. As he moved away, he thought he sensed a movement from the vicinity of the jeep and turned with his gun waving menacingly.
All was still. He hadn’t the strength for closer investigation. And in any case, his gun was empty.
He resumed his progress to the truck.
Getting the grip into the driver’s cab and himself after it was an agony. He sat there for a while, leaning against the wheel. Did something move by the jeep or was it his pain giving false life to this deadly tableau? Certainly in the air above, the bats, reassured by the return of stillness, were flitting back into the mouth of the cave.
He dipped into the grip again, sniffed a little more powder.
Then he switched on the engine, engaged gear, and without a backward glance at the gaping cave, the gloomy lake or the bodies that lay between them, he sent the truck rumbling into the dark tunnel curving away through the crowding trees.
High on the sunlit, windswept Snake Pass which links Lancashire with Yorkshire, Peter Pascoe thought, I’m in love.
Even with a trail of blood running from her nose over the double hump of her full lips to peter out on her charming chin, she was grin-like-an-idiot-gorgeous.
‘You OK?’ he said, grinning like an idiot till he realized that in the circumstances this was perhaps not the most appropriate expression.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. ‘Is this going to take long?’
The driver of her taxi, to whom the question was addressed, looked from the bent and leaking radiator of his vehicle to the jackknifed lorry he had hit and said sarcastically, ‘Soon as I repair this and get that shifted, we’ll be on our way, luv.’
Pascoe, returning from Manchester over the Snake, had been behind the lorry when it jackknifed. Simple humanitarian concern had brought him running to see if anyone was hurt, but now his sense of responsibility as a policeman was taking over. He pulled out his mobile, dialled 999 and gave a succinct account of what had happened.
‘Better set up traffic diversions way back on both sides,’ he said. ‘The road’s completely blocked till you get something up here to shift the lorry. One injury. Passenger in the taxi banged her nose. Lorry driver probably suffering from shock. Better have an ambulance.’
‘Not for me,’ said the woman vehemently. ‘I’m fine.’
She rose from the verge where she’d been sitting and moved forward on long legs, whose slight unsteadiness only added to their sinuous attraction. She looked as if she purposed to move the lorry single-handed. If it had been sentient, she might have managed it, thought Pascoe.
‘Silly cow’d have been all right if she’d put her seat belt on like I told her,’ said the taxi driver.
‘Perhaps you should have been firmer,’ said Pascoe mildly. ‘Who is she? Where’re you headed?’
No reason why he should have asked or the driver answered these questions, but without his being aware of it, over the years Pascoe had developed a quiet authority of manner which most people found harder to resist than mere assertiveness.
The driver pulled out a docket and said, ‘Miss Kelly Cornelius. Manchester Airport. Terminal Three. She’s going to miss her plane.’
He spoke with a satisfaction which identified him as one of that happily vanishing species, the Ur-Yorkshireman, beside whom even Andy Dalziel appeared a creature of sweetness and light. Only a hardcore misogynist could take pleasure in anything which caused young Miss Cornelius distress.
And she was distressed. She returned from her examination of the lorry and gave Pascoe a look of such expressive unhappiness, his empathy almost caused him to burst into tears.
‘Excuse me,’ she said in a melodious voice in which all that was best of American lightness, Celtic darkness, and English woodnotes wild, conjoined to make sweet moan, ‘but your car’s on the other side of this, I guess.’
‘Yes, I’m on my way home to Mid-Yorkshire,’ he said. ‘Looks like I’ll have to turn around and find another way.’
‘That’s what I thought you’d do,’ she said, her voice breathless with delight, as if he’d just confirmed her estimate of his intellectual brilliance. ‘And I was wondering, I know it’s quite a long way back, but how would you feel about taking me to Manchester Airport? I hate to be a nuisance, but you see, I’ve got this plane to catch, and if I miss it, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
Tears brimmed her big dark eyes. Pascoe could imagine their salty taste on his tongue. What she was asking was of course impossible, but (as he absolutely intended to tell Ellie later when he cleansed his conscience by laundering his prurient thoughts in her sight) it was flattering to be asked.
He said, ‘I’m sorry, but my wife’s expecting me.’
‘You could ring her. You’ve got a phone,’ she said with tremulous appeal. ‘I’d be truly, deeply, madly grateful.’
This was breathtaking, in every sense.
He said, ‘Surely there’ll be another plane. Where are you going anyway?’
Silly question. It implied negotiation.
There was just the hint of a hesitation before she answered, ‘Corfu. It’s my holiday, first for years. And it’s a holiday charter, so if I miss it, there won’t be much chance of getting on another, they’re all so crowded this time of year. And I’m meeting my sister and her little boy at the airport, and she’s disabled and won’t get on the plane without me, so it’ll be all our holidays ruined. Please.’
Suddenly he knew he was going to do it. All right, it was crazy, but he was going to have to go back all the way to Glossop anyway and the airport wasn’t much further, well, not
He said, ‘I’ll need to phone my wife.’
‘That’s marvellous. Oh, thank you, thank you!’
She gave him a smile which made all things seem easy – the drive back, the phone call to Ellie, everything – then dived into the taxi and emerged with a small leather case like a pilot’s flight bag.