He arrived at Inkpen village with three minutes to spare. The AID AN caller had not been specific about where he should stop, so he pulled over outside the first house of the village. It was a picture of rural tranquillity. Looking around he could see no sign of the terrorists’ presence. A few parked cars, a woman pushing a pram, a couple of elderly men gossiping by a cottage gate. He looked in his rearview mirror, saw a car and wondered. But almost immediately it pulled in, much too far away for him to identify the make.
The mobile rang and he snatched it up. ‘Harrison.’
‘You’re there?’
‘Yes.’ Irritable, angry and impatient.
‘Leave the line open. I’ll give you directions to Walbury Hill. Now start driving south through the village…’
He let out the clutch and pulled out. ‘Keep going… take a left, then a right.’ After a mile or so he was in open country, the road starting to climb, through a cutting towards the beauty spot and the viewpoint north over West Woodhay Down.
‘Turn left,’ ordered the voice and Harrison obeyed.
As he did so he spotted the Mazda saloon pull out from the cinder car park and fall in some fifty yards behind him. That was it, he decided. The instructions continued.
Minutes ticked by, the navigation tortuous as the terrorist slowly negotiated his way through myriad country lanes. It was only because the sun was mostly behind him that Harrison was able to establish that they were heading in an eastward direction. Place names vaguely registered. Woolton Hill. Penwood. Whitway.
They’d joined the A34, moving south, and now turned off left, moving east again towards Kingsclere.
‘Slow down,’ McGirl ordered, after they’d been travelling nearly forty-five minutes.
Crossroads ahead. Narrow farmtracks to either side.
‘Keep going.’
The road dipping now.
‘Pull over by the bridge.’
Harrison applied the brakes and steered into the grass verge, the Mazda pulling up close behind him.
Another car drove quickly past. Then nothing.
‘Get out, face away from the car with your hands behind your back.’
He climbed stiffly to his feet, noticed that there was now no other traffic on the road, just undulating farmland all around. Turning towards the bridge parapet, he could see that the road carried over a steep-sided cutting, part of a disused railway line. It was dusk now and he could just determine the overgrown track of cinders, brambles and weeds that curved away to the north.
Then he felt the cold steel of the gun muzzle in the nape of his neck. ‘Nice and easy, Harrison.’
A plastic loop was slipped over his wrists, the freezer tie rasping as it was locked tight. He was pushed sideways towards the broken wire fence at the edge of the bridge. He stumbled, slid on the muddy slope, his shoes slipping on the steep gradient of the cutting. He half stepped and half fell his way down, skidding on his bottom until he could regain purchase with his feet, the hand behind relentlessly pushing him on. By the time they reached the old railway track, his clothes were torn by brambles and caked in mud.
From somewhere in the twilight, perhaps from the bridge above, he heard the passing burble of a motorcycle exhaust.
‘I’ve lost them,’ Hal said.
‘Where?’ Casey demanded.
‘On the bridge where they stopped. Both cars are abandoned. There’s a disused railway line and I think they’re walking along it.’
‘Which way?’
‘North.’
She cursed. The narrow farm road she was on, didn’t even feature on her road map. ‘Look, Hal, they’re obviously not going to walk for long. See if you can pick up a road or something alongside the old railway track.’ But she wasn’t as optimistic as she sounded. ‘Meanwhile, Eddie and I will position at the next two main villages and hope we can pick them up on their way through.’
Casey was plunged into the depths of despondency as she called up Mercs and ordered him to Ecchinswell while she drove on to Kingsclere. The terrorists’ plan was clearly to switch vehicles and throw any would-be tail by using the railway line. So neither she nor Mercs would know what make of car they were looking for even if they saw it.
And, as it turned out, had it not been for their good fortune in having Hal Hoskins’s motorcycle, diat would indeed have been the end of the trail. But heading north along the narrowest of lanes towards Burgclere, which he reasoned could be running parallel with the railway, the photographer had passed a car parked on a short side road in the shadow of an industrial building. He glimpsed the dark shape of a man waiting beside it, looking anxious as he dragged on a cigarette.
Hoskins drove on for fifty metres, pulled over and, taking his mobile with him, retraced his tracks.
From a hidden viewpoint on the overgrown verge, he saw two figures approach the car: one man, looking dishevelled and exhausted, pushed along by the other.
The photographer pressed the dial code. ‘Casey, I think I’ve got them.’
Doran opened the gate and Muldoon drove through.
Sitting blindfolded in the back seat, Harrison could see nothing.
‘Out,’ McGirl ordered as Muldoon opened the rear passenger door.
The air was chill for the time of year, an eddying breeze sending an empty can rattling across an open space. Harrison smelt the decay, the atmosphere of abandonment and desolation. Felt the weeds underfoot, growing between cracks in the concrete. A derelict factory, he thought, or possibly a warehouse. Nearby he detected the gurgling rush of water. Somewhere an owl hooted, adding to his sense of isolation.
He was frogmarched forward. Suddenly there was a distinct stench of damp bricks and rotting garbage.
His blindfold was pulled free and instantly torchlight dazzled him, as rough hands pushed him into the entrance of the building.
‘Careful!’ someone warned. ‘She’s got booby traps everywhere. Turn that torch off until we’re round the bend.’
‘What?’ McGirl demanded.
‘A photo-slave cell. Shine a light on that and we’ll all go up.’
They stumbled forward in the gloom, Doran leading the way to the base of the stairwell. Then he turned on his torch and began climbing the first flight, glass crunching beneath their soles. Harrison could hear the distant drip of water, its melancholy plink magnified and echoing in the open body of the factory.
It was a wearying haul to the top floor. Eventually they followed the torchbeam across what was once a clerk’s office. A broken desk remained, an upturned chair and posters and charts hanging in tatters on the wall. Three doors confronted them. Only one was open, illuminated by the flickering light of a hurricane lamp. The unmistakable shape of a woman stood silhouetted in the doorframe, legs apart and a gun in her hand.
‘A present for you,’ McGirl said, pushing Harrison forward.
He stumbled and the girl stepped back, the light of the lamp catching both their faces.
She regarded him for what seemed like several long moments, her eyebrows arched in an expression of curiosity. ‘So you are Harrison,’ she said at last, as though she could not quite believe it herself. Or was she just relishing the words, savouring her victory. ‘Major — Tom — Harrison. The man whose evidence convicted my father…’
It had to be her, he thought. ‘Clodagh Dougan?’ She didn’t confirm it. ‘According to the papers we’ve been playing quite the hero, haven’t we? And then you deliberately set us up for an accident. I couldn’t believe that at first when I read it.’ She was close now, her eyes only inches from his own. They were dark and fathomless, burning with an intensity that was both beautiful and disturbing. He could see each pore of her skin, the whiteness of her teeth. Smell the shampoo she’d used on her hair. ‘I wondered what sort of man could do that? What he would look like.’