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Authors: Jo Bannister

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BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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Voss went on looking at him. ‘You're really going to let this happen?' he said at last. ‘You're going to let someone die rather than admit you could save him?'
‘Sergeant Voss, I keep telling you. I couldn't help your friend if I wanted to.'
And that was it: the first mistake, that Voss could use to pry open the oyster. ‘You keep telling me you do want to, Mr Windham. And why wouldn't you? If you're not involved in this, why wouldn't you want to help an innocent bystander? Why wouldn't you do everything in your power to save his life?'
They stared at one another for ten or fifteen seconds, which is a long time to share an enforced intimacy with a hostile individual. The atmosphere in the car around them crackled with electricity.
At the end of those fifteen seconds, Windham blinked.
For a man with no kindness in his soul, Deacon felt a curious impulse to dissemble when Voss called to say the white van was holed up at a place called Sparrow Hill not far from Petworth. Instead of saying, ‘Yes, we know, we're on our way there now,' he found himself beating around the bush in a most uncharacteristic manner, so that Brodie gave him a puzzled look that went on just a little too long for someone driving fast at night.
And in the end he had to come clean and never mind Voss's feelings. ‘The girl thought it was a possibility. Windham took her there once, years ago. She never knew the name. Brodie found it on the Internet.'
Voss knew better than to ask how. He firmly believed Brodie could find the date of the Second Coming on the Internet. He tried to hide his disappointment. For just a minute there he thought he'd cracked the case. ‘If we want him to, Windham will phone his partner and tell him we're on our way Do we want him to?'
That was a hard one to call. If the man was in his right mind at all he would immediately leave the van, the pony, the contents of its stomach and Daniel, and head across country until he found a busy road where he could start hitching his way back to a Channel port. Five minutes' head start was worth having, in the circumstances. Half an hour was a passport to freedom.
Which was the other side of the coin. If they warned him they wouldn't catch him. Whereas maybe, if Deacon timed this right and large officers in flak jackets sneaked up on him unawares, they could have him in custody almost before he knew he'd been found. But something could go wrong. With his back against the wall and only one shot left in his locker, the status of his hostage could rapidly deteriorate from unenviable to untenable.
Whatever Deacon decided he could be wrong, perhaps disastrously so. It was an uncomfortable position to be in. But he wouldn't have changed places with Daniel.
‘Ask him about this man. What he's like; what he's likely to do. Will he cut and run if we give him the chance? Will he hurt
Daniel if we don't?'
There was a brief hiatus in which Deacon could just hear voices offset from Voss's phone. Then the sergeant was back. ‘He says his name is Kant. He's the vet – the one with access to the tranquillizer. Windham says he's smart – a lot of this was his idea; of course, he would say that – and determined. If he's cornered, we shouldn't count on him coming quietly. If Daniel's still alive …'
The car swerved violently. Deacon didn't dare glance at Brodie.
“If?”
Voss ploughed on with the sentence, his voice doggedly expressionless. ‘If Daniel's still alive, he'll carve him like a Christmas turkey if he thinks it'll back us off long enough for him to get away.'
Deacon didn't ring off but let the hand holding the phone slump into his lap. He stared into the darkness ahead, the road a bright arrow in the headlights. He might have been thinking aloud, he might have been speaking to Brodie. ‘We can't let him go.'
She sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘He has Daniel. Because I put his name on the paperwork: that's all. That's the only reason he knew who to look for, where to find him. My fault. Again.'
‘You couldn't have known. You couldn't have guessed …'
‘Maybe not. But we know now'
Deacon squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He knew what this was doing to her. He knew it was in his power to lift her burden. It was a close call – he'd already recognised that. There were arguments for playing it either way. No one but him would ever know for sure if he'd let his relationship with Brodie Farrell, and hers with Daniel Hood, affect how he did his job.
‘You heard what Voss said. This is a dangerous man. A vicious man engaged in a bloody, immoral trade. And we have him cornered. In all likelihood we can take him down today and he'll never hurt anyone else ever again. We can't let him go.'
‘You found him once, you'll find him again.' Her voice was a plea. ‘You don't even need to let him go – just let him
think
he's getting away. Pick him up again after Daniel's safe.'
‘And what if next time he's cornered it's somebody's child he
takes hostage?'
‘I don't care!' she cried. ‘Jack, I don't care! There aren't half a dozen people in the world I care about, and he's got one of them right now. Because I got cocky, and careless, and stupid, my best friend's in mortal danger. Maybe he's in pain right now – maybe he's dying right now, Jack, and there's nothing I can do to help him. But there is something
you
can do. You can tell this man he has an hour to run as far as he can if he leaves this very moment. You can tell him you know everything Daniel knows and more; and anyway the biggest threat to him isn't what Daniel might say, it's what Windham might say, and he'll still be in custody whatever happens to Daniel. Tell him that. He'll see there's no point hurting Daniel now. He'll drop everything and run.'
‘I can't,' said Deacon dully.
Brodie took her eyes off the road long enough to risk all their lives. Her voice cracked. ‘Jack …!'
‘Brodie, I can't. You know that. If I do as you ask, maybe it'll help Daniel but only by risking other people's lives. When we reach Sparrow Hill, we'll have to cordon it off and search it. Everyone engaged in that will be in danger. They have the right to expect that I made it as safe as I could. That I didn't warn a dangerous man they were coming. And particularly not because my girlfriend asked me to.'
If her voice had fallen any lower it would have been inaudible. ‘I will never ask you anything else,' she said. ‘If you do this for me. And also if you don't.'
‘I'm sorry.'
He was fourteen years old when Deacon first noticed that people had started walking round him. At first it was other schoolboys, then other rugby players, later it was drunk-and-disorderlies on street corners who took one look at him and sobered up fast. Of course, in 26 years as a police officer he'd been involved in some major punch-ups; but not as many as colleagues who were less well equipped to deal with them and – let's be honest here – got less enjoyment out of them. When you're built like a brick privy, even desperate men look for an alternative to taking a swing at you.
So it was the last thing he expected when Brodie, still with one
hand on the wheel, snatched for his phone, shouting into it even as she did. ‘Charlie! Do it. Tell him …'
But by then Deacon had taken it back, and had it out of her reach in his left hand. His voice was terse, the words clipped. ‘Sergeant. Don't let Windham anywhere near a phone. Under no circumstances. Get him to Battle Alley and book him in. I'll see you there when this is all over.'
‘Sir,' said Voss, expressionless, and the phone went dead.
Brodie had tried and lost. She concentrated on her driving. Except to say: ‘I shan't forget that, Jack.'
‘No,' he said gruffly. ‘I don't suppose you will.'
 
Two hours ago, though this turn of events had startled him, as the shock wore off Daniel had felt largely optimistic about his situation. Nothing he knew was worth protecting with his life, and though the man with him was undoubtedly ruthless, he wasn't the sort to overreact out of panic. He'd do what, and no more than, was necessary to protect himself, and Daniel had thought that left him with every chance of walking away from this.
It would have been possible to think so still. Apart from a sharp blow with a blunt instrument and the discomfort of the plastic string — in fact it was baler twine — lashing his wrists, he was still largely unhurt, and the natural human desire to avoid unpalatable conclusions might have persuaded him that his captor did not in fact want to harm him. He'd said as much: it was tempting to believe him. If he had, Daniel would have done nothing to provoke the man to rethink his approach. Nothing to make it harder for him to finish his job and return safely home. He would have kept quiet except to answer, accurately and politely, any questions he was asked, and still until he was told to move.
But Daniel was not a fool. He was in many ways a simple man - in others a strangely complicated one – and his open, honest face often led people to underestimate him. People who knew him a little tended to think him a bit dim. But they were wrong. Daniel Hood was a highly intelligent man, and not just with facts and figures. He was astute, and he always knew the
difference between what he wanted to be so and what was likely. It wasn't likely that a professional drug-runner, far from home and with a hugely profitable enterprise to protect, would free someone who could identify him. He was pretending he might solely to encourage good behaviour. In fact, as soon as he had what he was waiting for, Daniel knew the pantomime would be over.
Knowing that was oddly liberating. If this man had purposed his death from the moment he answered his door, nothing Daniel had or hadn't done, or would or wouldn't do, or could have done, was a factor. He hadn't read the situation wrong or made the wrong choices. There were no right choices. All that would have saved him from this was being somewhere else when the white van pulled up at the shore. Sheer luck: and luck alone stood between him and the Grim Reaper now. If he'd been missed, and if he could be found before nature took its course with this pony's digestive system, perhaps he would live. If not he expected to die.
He wasn't afraid of dying. He was afraid of pain, but everything this man had done so far had been efficient, professional: there was good reason to hope he'd do the thing cleanly. Daniel resented being robbed like this — of the chance to grow old, bald and querulous, of the chance to have a comet named after him, of the chance to tell Brodie how he felt about her in a way that she couldn't misunderstand — but the prospect of death was not so much a horror to him as an unknown, a black hole. And Daniel was an astronomer: black holes fascinated him. He was curious to know what was on the other side.
Werner Kant was curious about Daniel. He couldn't seem to pigeon-hole him. They'd spent some time together now, with nothing happening and no suitable subject for small talk, and he was getting bored. He'd given the pony an injection to speed things up a bit, and at intervals there was a sound like a small avalanche from the back of the box and he went to poke through the detritus with a stick. But it wasn't much to occupy the mind of an intelligent man. He found himself wondering about his hostage.
‘You're not a policeman,' he hazarded.
‘I teach maths,' said Daniel.
That didn't help. ‘If you're not a policeman and you know nothing about horses, how did you become involved?'
Daniel had wondered that himself. ‘They needed a name for the paperwork, that's all. If they'd said the pony was for Detective Superintendent Deacon, Windham might have got suspicious.'
Kant chuckled. ‘It's possible. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but I think even pretty Johnny would have wondered about that.'
‘Is that any way to talk about your employer?'
Kant laughed out loud. ‘Johnny Windham? I don't think so. Windham is hired help: he does what he's paid to do.'
‘Including taking all the risks.'
‘Of course. There's very little point being a criminal mastermind if you're going to take them yourself.'
Daniel blinked, taken aback by his honesty. ‘So you're not going to claim it's all an unfortunate misunderstanding.'
‘It's a little late for that,' admitted Kant. ‘It's a great pity. It was a good idea – almost foolproof. Moving production to England put distance between me and how the tranquillizer I was signing for was being used. I knew a carrier who was greedy and dishonest but reliable enough in his way. It all came together more easily than I expected.' He sighed. ‘And now I have to start again. Such is life. What you can do once you can do a second time.'
‘The police are onto you. They're looking for you right now.'
‘But they aren't looking here. And when my consignment reappears and I deliver it and leave, there will be nothing to tell them if they were even on the right track.'
Daniel caught his breath. He thought he'd come to terms with the idea. But hearing your own death spoken of as a fait accompli will always cause a little
frisson
of shock.
The man noticed. ‘I'm sorry, that was – tactless. You should forget I said it.'
‘Oh yes,' said Daniel, recovering sufficiently for sarcasm, ‘that's going to happen.'
The man was watching him with a puzzled half-smile. ‘You — confuse me. You are different.'
‘Different to who?'
‘I think, to most people. Certainly to me.'
‘I should bloody well hope so!' exclaimed Daniel indignantly. ‘You're a drug baron! You killed Stanley Barker, and you're going to kill me. For money. As epitaphs go, there are worse ones than
He was different to the man who killed him.'
BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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