Gatecrasher (21 page)

‘You need to be sure.’

‘That too,
’ he said but looked her in the eye. ‘Do you…?’

‘What?’

‘Believe me? Are you sure?’

‘It’s the most preposter
ous thing I’ve heard in my life,
’ she replied, holding his gaze. ‘But I do believe you. How can I not?
It’s
too preposterous not to be true.’

Campbell
plopped himself back down on the sofa next to her and smiled wearily. ‘I think the phrase is ‘damned with faint praise.’

‘I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with your conclusions and certainly not your methods,’ she said taking a sip of wine. ‘I just mean that the whole idea is crazy and seems even more insane because we’re involved in it. A few days ago I was up to my eyeballs in filing bloody paperwork. And now…’

Her words trailed off and
Campbell
noted the expression on her face.

‘I’ve just remembered something.’

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Well, like I said, a few days ago I was sorting paperwork.
Griffin
asked me to go and sort through the paper archive to see if anything had been taken from there in the break in but it hadn’t been touched. Anyway, it’s a boring job you know, just making sure paperwork is all still there and in order. Especially when its all years old and you don’t recognise the names and the information and so on. So your eyes wander.’

Campbell
nodded.

‘Well I saw a few things that probably tie in with what you were saying earlier.’

‘Really?’
Campbell
felt both relieved and excited at the same time to hear some corroboration of his theory.

Sarah was staring up at the ceiling, her hand over her mouth. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. What you were saying about things getting shifted around before final delivery in
Liberia
? Well I saw records relating to goods shipments being delivered to
Tunisia
. Then right next to it there was some contract note for a different carrier, moving the same stuff from
Tunisia
on to
Guinea
. We didn’t actually ship it ourselves but we sub-contracted someone to do it for us. It didn’t seem strange at the time
I saw it
; that’s not unusual for us. Sometimes it’s easier to use established local firms. We’d done the main job of getting it onto the continent so after that we sometimes use other companies to do the next bit.’

‘Where does
Guinea
come in?’ asked
Campbell
eagerly.

She grabbed a map from the papers on the table and showed him. ‘
Guinea
is right next door to
Sierra Leone
. It shares a border with
Liberia
too.’

‘You sure? You saw all this in the records there?’

‘Yep! That’s straight from the bloody horse’s mouth Daniel.’

Campbell
nodded but said nothing. If he felt vindicated by what Sarah had said, he certainly didn’t feel all that pleased about it. In fact,
Campbell
realised, despite all the evidence he had uncovered, he was still wishing that he was wrong.

Another hard gust of wind banged against the walls and rattled the panes. And then there came a distant but unmistakable sound of glass breaking from somewhere outside.

Campbell
was upright in an instant, the wine almost spilling from his hand.

‘What the hell?’ Sarah mumbled and the two of them stared in the direction of the door and the yard beyond. ‘Probably a fox in the rubbish bins or
something
,’ she offered uncertainly.

‘Mmmn. Probably,’ he replied but stood up instead of sitting again. ‘I’ll just check it out. Breaking glass makes me nervous.’

She made to speak but remained silent and he was moving quickly across to the door, stepping into his shoes and shrugging his shoulders into his jacket.

Cold, wet air swept into the room and Sarah padded across to the door as
Campbell
stepped out into the gloom, her hands drawn up around her against the chill. Pushing the door closed until there was only a crack a few inches wide she peered into the night after him but he was out of sight quickly amid the darkness and the swirling rain. As she strained her eyes there was a sudden bright strobe-flash of lightning almost instantly followed by a sharp, loud crack of thunder. For a moment she thought she caught sight of a leg trailing around the corner of the cottage but the flash was startling and the image was gone as quickly as she had seen it.

Sarah closed the gap in the door a little more as she felt her skin pinch into gooseflesh and she wrapped an arm across her chest to try to block the cold.

Minutes passed. She began to shiver but opened the door a little wider to peer out. The soft light from the windows barely penetrated the darkness though she could make out the shape of her car and the high hedge lining the narrow lane beyond.

Suddenly there was a muffled sound off to her left, the opposite direction in which
Campbell
had gone. She hesitated and then opened the door wider, moving forward but instinctively moved back again as the wind whipped at her, driving cold rain into her face.

‘Daniel,
’ she called out but was drowned out by the hiss and fizz of rain against the ground and the low howl of the wind.

She began to move forward again but before she could the doorway was filled with the drenched shape of a man, rain streaming down his face, his dark hair plastered against his forehead and his hands in front of him were streaked slick with blood and water. Shocked, she stumbled backwards into the room, almost falling.

‘Cut my bloody hand on a broken bottle
,
’ said
Campbell
as he stepped inside.

Sarah opened her mouth to speak but said nothing as he slipped off his drenched jacket and backheeled the door closed noisily behind him.

‘W-what?’ she stuttered.

‘Wind blew some empty bottles over by the bins round the back. Cut myself on one
,
’ he explained and blinked hard at the water running into his eyes.

Both were on edge as she led him to the kitchen sink to rinse the cut but neither betrayed their nerves and
Campbell
was already eyeing another bottle of wine on the sideboard as Sarah played nurse.

Friday. 1.30 am.

The bottle
sat on the hearth
was empty and glittered the fire light into the dark room.
Campbell
lay on his back on the floor in front of the dying flames. Sarah was stretched out similarly on the sofa above him her feet level with his head. They both stared up at the ceiling, both silent, both deep in thought.

Sarah would be, he knew, extremely apprehensive about what he had asked her to do. It meant abusing her position in the worst way and she could, very likely, lose her job. The only thing that seemed to quiet her own fears were the risks that Campbell himself was prepared to take. Sarah could, for the most part remain anonymous and hidden whilst Campbell was already known to at least one group with a vested interest in getting hold of the disk and who would do almost anything to get it.

He knew also, that in order to get himself out of this situation he would first have to stick his head further above the parapet. The only bait he had was himself.

He wondered who else wanted this thing? To whom was the information valuable? If Gresham and his cronies were so keen on getting it then it followed somebody else must want it too otherwise how else would it have any value to them in the first place?

Would Sarah go through with what he had asked of her? She seemed as if she knew what he was going to ask before he had even said the words, knew that by letting herself become as involved as she had that she was all the way in now, all or nothing. In the short time he had known her he thought he saw a strength and determination in her character, a goodness and sense of right and wrong that gave him faith that she would not walk away without helping.

The thought comforted him and for the first time in days he felt the burden he carried lighten a little as he shared it. It was too late now to wonder if he should have involved her
–
if he even had any right to
–
but somehow he knew that he’d had to do so. He knew that he really did not have anyone else to turn to. Since
Gresham
knew everyone that was important to
Campbell
, the only thing he could really do was to get himself away from them all, to remove them all from the firing line. To put Sarah in it was terrible he knew, but she did, he reassured himself again, have her anonymity. There was no reason for anybody to link him to her, no reason for anyone to ever know who she was or what she knew.

Gradually they drifted into a not-quite-awake, not-quite-dreaming state, on the cusp of sleep and his thoughts drifted and became irrational and surreal as his subconscious began to overlap. He tried to fight it back, feeling somehow protective and duty bound to look after her now that he had put her in harm’s way. But what could happen here in this warm, safe place? And what could he do in this state anyway, utterly exhausted and beaten up?

And then the fire in the grate wasn’t dying down any more, it was growing and licking up around the walls and there was somebody with them in the room but it wasn’t Sarah he saw moving. Did he see her moving? No, that was a man over there, and he had moved back away to the stairs and was climbing them again and was this real? Was this the dream now? Had he begun to dream? Was it really this hot?

Campbell
’s eyes snapped open as his instincts kicked in and told him something was wrong. The fire in the grate was still fading away and the room was quiet but for the sounds of the storm outside. He looked around, saw that Sarah’s eyes were closed, saw the soft orange light of the fireplace and the glint of the glasses and bottle. The dream had set him on edge.

The figure moving up the stairs flashed again through his mind and he snapped his head round in that direction to see the black shape of a man at the top of the staircase. The top half of his body was obscured by the ceiling, but his lower half was visible and his right hand gripped an enormous knife, its curved edge serrated.

Campbell
sprang up and gripped Sarah’s arm without looking and he bolted for the door.

Thursday.
11.45pm
.

She followed him without question and she matched his pace because she was fit and because her whole body was alive with the alertness that fear and shock give. They didn’t go for the road or the car and somehow, as he pulled her in the other direction toward the field away from the lane and toward the coast, she knew he was right. They would never have time enough for opening the car doors, for climbing in, starting up, pulling away.

That afternoon, as the light left the day,
Campbell
had stared through the windows of the cottage and could see the coastline not two hundred yards away. Sarah had told him that they were some hundred feet up and that the cliffs to the sea below were steep and sheer. But in places there were gaps where the gradient was more forgiving and you could climb down, and that further along there were even steps cut into the rock and mud leading down to small inlets and intimate little coves and beaches.
Campbell
had intended to walk there after she had left him but had got no further than the chair at the table where she found him on her return.

She didn’t look back as she ran. Keeping up with
Campbell
was enough of a task as it was. His eyes were focused dead ahead of him, checking the ground and trying to read the surroundings in the dark.

The pain in his bare feet was sharp and
Campbell
felt the cold rain slashing against him as he sprinted and the wind came at him and he knew that Sarah must have felt worse even than he did. Her soft feet and the flimsy clothes she wore, the thin cloth of her top, its short sleeves and scoop neck. But to stand and fight whoever that had been in the cottage, whatever grave threat he brought to them, would have put her in yet more danger.

His mind was clearing by the second now; the sleep and the drink suddenly vanished as he ran through this icy night. The path he had seen earlier was not too far in the distance. He thought maybe they would find one of those coves or beaches to slip down into or perhaps it would lead them to another house or cottage or even a town.

Looking behind him he noticed how much faster they were moving than he realised and how much ground they had already put between themselves and their pursuer. But he knew he couldn’t keep moving like this much longer and he knew that Sarah probably couldn’t either at this pace but whoever was chasing might be able to go all night. No, they would have to use the darkness to their advantage and they would have to find a place to hide and wait it out in the cold and wind and wet and hope that he didn’t find them.