Hard Knocks

She paced across to the point where the car must have come to a halt, her brow furrowed in focus. “He is horrified that he has clearly hit someone. Maybe he sits there for a moment. He might have stalled his engine. His heart is thundering in his throat at what he has done.”

Jan threw me a sideways look at this flight of deductive fantasy. Elsa didn’t seem to notice her scepticism.

“Maybe he even gets out of his car, runs over to the barrier, and looks down at the wreckage he has caused. He looks and, like Mr Todd, he too assumes Mr Blakemore is already dead.”

Caught up in her snapshot of a life balanced on the edge of instant ruin, the picture began to unfold in my mind. “He thinks briefly of calling an ambulance, and the police, of facing the consequences of his momentary lapse of concentration,” I put in. Jan rolled her eyes as if to say, “Don’t you start.” I ignored her.

“Then it comes to him just how deserted is this stretch of road,” Elsa went on, nodding. She was right about that. During the time we’d been stopped not a single other car had passed us. “And he realises—”

“—There are no witnesses.” It was Jan who finished it, seeming to surprise herself as much as us. We turned to stare at her and she shrugged, embarrassed.

We walked back to where I’d first found the broken glass. There wasn’t much of it. Elsa nudged it with the toe of her boot.

“The damage to his car cannot have been severe,” she said. “He would still have been able to drive it away.”

“It wouldn’t have taken much to knock Blakemore off his line,” I said. “A glancing blow.” That was all it took to deflect something as narrow and jittery as a bike. To send it careering to disaster.

“So,” Elsa went on, her voice carrying contempt now for Blakemore’s unknown assassin, “he jumps back behind the wheel of his car and he runs like a rabbit.” She scanned the area again. “Haste makes him heavy- footed.” I followed her gaze and found two thick black lines to suggest that, in his efforts to escape the locality along with the blame, the scared driver had dumped the clutch and lit up his tyres like a drag racer.

We fell silent for a few moments while we replayed the scene, shaping it to fit the scenario we’d just created. It did fit, after a fashion. More off-the-peg than made-to-measure.

“We’re all assuming, of course,” I said quietly, “that this was just an accident.”

I felt their disbelief in the way they stiffened beside me. “What are you suggesting, Charlie?” Elsa asked. I tried to read an argument into her voice, but could only find surprise and not a little interest. Should I risk it?

“If you had to pick a good spot for an ambush along this road, where else would you go for?” I said. I paused while they thought about it.

We’d all driven this way several times during our rides out with the school instructors, who’d asked us all just such a question.

I couldn’t help the eerie feeling that somewhere along the line the men in the Peugeot had received the same training we had, and probably a good deal else besides.

They’d certainly seemed to know all about ambushes yesterday in the forest, even though that one had blown up in their faces. Perhaps they’d decided that taking the school men out one at a time was a less risky proposition.

But what about Blakemore’s threat?

Maybe they hadn’t taken his warning seriously. Or maybe they’d taken it very seriously indeed.

Fifteen

Blakemore didn’t make it.

He bowed out long before the emergency services reached the scene. He never regained consciousness, never made a sound, never made another movement. It was like his soul was out of there long before we ever reached the crash site. It just took his body a while to get the message.

Figgis stayed down in the ravine with him, laying blankets from the truck over the top of him, talking to him even though he was probably beyond hearing much of anything at all. The rest of us loitered up on the road, waiting for the ambulance. Waiting for Blakemore to die.

When Figgis finally stood up and called, “He’s gone,” to Todd, it almost came as a relief. I let a shaky breath out slowly, felt the implications sink in like heat on frozen skin, and wondered how this new death changed things.

It was at this point that Major Gilby arrived.

We heard the Skyline approaching for a good couple of minutes before the big silver-grey car snaked into view. The deep throaty growl of its exhaust rebounded through the valley and set up an echoing vibration like the onset of thunder.

Gilby pulled up fast by the side of the road and jumped out. He stalked over to Todd, demanding a situation report. Todd just waved a hand towards the barrier without a word.

When the Major went and leaned over it, he saw Figgis climbing back up the rocks towards the road, leaving Blakemore’s still figure lying in the stream at the bottom. After that, he didn’t need to be told the man was dead.

Gilby turned away and just for a second he let himself droop. Just for a second he let the mask slip and I saw the tension that was tearing him apart. The Major, I realised with no little surprise, for all his apparent icy cool, was feeling the pressure. And feeling it badly.

Then, as quickly as it opened up, the fissure was sealed. He was barking out orders for us to get back to the Manor. It was just a tragic accident. There was nothing to see here.

Sluggishly, we began to converge on the trucks. As I joined the others I watched the Major walk out the same lines that Elsa, Jan and I had taken on the road. He saw it all just as quickly – the skid marks, the broken glass – and from the way he was frowning I knew he’d put together a scenario that was very similar to our own.

So what was he planning on doing about it?

As little, it would seem, as he’d done about the ambush in the forest. If my suspicions were correct and he was behind the kidnappings, what could he do?

The Major stayed at the roadside waiting for the police and the now redundant ambulance. As we pulled away I watched him move across to talk to the elderly couple who were waiting stoically by their camper van. I had a feeling that by the time the police arrived he would have persuaded them to leave, too.

If you’re going to construct your own version of events, it’s always better not to have anyone around who might conceivably contradict you.

***

Figgis and Todd dropped us all off at the Manor’s front door. We had been posted to be doing unarmed combat in the afternoon, but even though Figgis was more than qualified to take over the class, they decided to let it drop.

Instead, they told us that after lunch we had the couple of hours to write up our survey reports on the village, while it was still fresh in our minds. By that time I’m sure the only thing that was fresh in any of our minds was the image of Blakemore’s broken body lying at the bottom of that drop.

Lunch was a sober and almost silent affair. The only noise that accompanied the meal was the clink of cutlery on china. Even Ronnie had forsaken his usual tuneless whistling as he served up dollops of pasta with meatballs.

McKenna made a reappearance towards the end of the meal, pale and subdued. He sat at a table as far away from me as he could manage, but after I’d dumped my plate onto one of the plastic waste trays I swung by where he was sitting. I quickly realised from his vague answers to the others’ questions that he was trying to make out he’d never left the Manor all morning.

“So you’ve heard about Blakemore?” I challenged.

He looked at me warily. Maybe because I could call him a liar in front of everybody else and know it was the truth. He shook his head even though it could have been the only topic of conversation.

“He’s dead. Got knocked off his bike and went off the road,” I said bluntly. “It was a long way down.”