His nose tingled at a faint but familiar aroma. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Sofi. Could she smell it too? Did she possess the olfactory senses to smell anything?
She spoke inside his head. ‘What’s wrong?’
He dabbed his tongue on the TC switch at the base of his tooth. ‘Is it me, or can I smell weed? Until now, it’s been nothing but burned-out buildings, dead dogs and rotting vegetation.’
She shook her head and moved back into the shadows out of sight from the road. Helix joined her. ‘There are no prints.’ Maybe he’d imagined it. He loosened his jacket, feeling the reassuring grip of his P226 resting under his arm. He sniffed the air again in the river’s direction. The familiar sweet funk had been displaced by the cloying hum of mud at low tide.
Cycling to thermal imaging, he stole a glance down the road confirming the absence of any warm bodies. The metal railings of the bridge, now more rust than white, stretched back toward him as he made his way down the left side of the street. Step by cautious step, he planted his feet in the crumbling snow. An evergreen bush, tumbling over a low stone wall, forced him into the middle of the street, Sofi a few paces behind. Each step revealed a wider view over the river. The Regency period bridge rose towards the English bank, five cast-iron arches and 124 yards ahead over the boiling brown waters of the River Wye.
Helix froze, his right hand held back to still Sofi. ‘There’s a bloody horse tethered to a willow tree on the right.’
No sooner had he thought the words, the horse neighed, its bridle rattling. A movement on the bridge to the left had Helix sprinting towards it, his gun out in the open, the targeting system focused on a pile of rags stumbling to its feet.
Dropping his fishing pole and raising his hands, the ragman shouted. ‘Who are you?’
Helix grabbed a handful of rags at the cowering man’s throat. ‘Are you armed?’ He snatched the hash pipe from the man’s mouth.
‘No.’ Ragman swept his filthy long hair from his ruddy face. ‘Armed? With what?’
Helix shook him free and patted him down. ‘With what?’ he said, lifting aside layers of threadbare clothing.
‘It’s just a knife. Not a weapon.’ He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘You’re not from around here, are you? City folks, I’d say. Looking at the state of you. Everyone out here carries a knife.’
Helix pulled the blade from the man’s belt and tossed it ten feet away into the snow. ‘Do you live here? In the town?’ He sniffed the contents of the pipe. Weed. He hadn’t imagined it. The pipe landed in the snow close to the knife.
‘What’s it to you?’ Ragman replied, rearranging his loose collection of clothes. ‘You got anything to eat?’
‘I’m not hungry, but thanks all the same.’ Helix nodded.
‘I weren’t offering, I was asking.’ He glanced at Sofi. ‘How else you going to pay?’
Helix holstered his weapon. ‘We haven’t and we’re not.’
‘Everyone who crosses the bridge has to pay.’ He leaned back against the railing and leered at Sofi. ‘If you haven’t got anything to eat, I’m sure we can work something else out with your lady friend.’ He tugged at his beard.
‘What’s your name?’ Helix asked.
‘Brunel. My friends call me Issy, you know after—’
‘Whatever, Issy. If we had time, I’d like to see you try to extract payment from my friend, but we’re on the clock.’
‘Where are you going?’ He glanced past Helix into the distance. ‘Maybe I can show you the way.’
Sofi had noticed the man’s attention wandering and swung round in the direction he was looking. Helix kept his eyes on Brunel. ‘Anything moving about, Sofi?’
‘The castle. See what you think,’ she said exchanging places with Helix.
‘Friends of yours, Issy?’ Helix said, looking back at him.
‘Dunno what you’re on about.’
‘There’s someone in the castle.’ Helix sighed. ‘Smoke and a faint heat source.’
Brunel’s eyes darted between them. ‘I don’t know them. Not really. I keep myself to myself. I was just fishing.’
They were wasting time. Getting spotted wasn’t ideal but it was too late for that. ‘Can you swim, Issy?’ Helix said, grabbing Brunel by the scruff and heaving him out further onto the bridge.
‘Fuck off, the water’s bloody freezing. And the tides going out,’ he protested, sliding on the snow as he squirmed. ‘The current’s vicious. I’ll drown.’ His eyes widened as the blade between Helix’s knuckles glinted in the pale moonlight. ‘What the fu—’
‘Drowned or stabbed to death?’ Helix raised his eyebrows. ‘You decide.’
The wait wasn’t a long one. He didn’t see Brunel hit the water, but he heard the splash.
Jogging over the bridge, Helix paused at a curve in the road as it climbed uphill.
Sofi tapped him on the shoulder and nodded towards the river.
‘Seems he can swim,’ he muttered. Zooming into the bank, he watched as Brunel heaved himself out of the water and across the mud. It took the waterlogged man two attempts to mount his horse before he turned and galloped along the narrow bank in the direction of the castle. Helix shrugged. ‘I should have stabbed him.’
Two miles further on, they left the road through a wide gap in the hedge. ‘Judging by the number of hoof prints, I’d say Chepstow is more than a one-horse town,’ Helix observed. ‘The snow hasn’t quite covered their tracks.’
‘Working horses, looking at the size of the hoofs.’ Sofi said, brushing aside some of the new snow. ‘They go in both directions.’
Helix shifted his bergen on his shoulders. ‘I doubt we’ll be seeing Sheriff Issy and his posse tonight, but we should stay sharp,’ he said, sliding the last few feet down the slope through the leaf litter and onto more solid ground. The silver surface of the river glinted in the moonlight to their left, its current more serene than it had been in Chepstow. ‘That smell reminds me
