The Soul Collector mw-2 Page 34

  “Let’s have a look at the cottage’s layout, Dodger,” I said.

  It appeared on his screen.

  “Single-story, but long-the two original cottages have been knocked together.”

  “What’s that?” Pete asked, pointing to a rectangular shape on the end of the building away from the village.

  “Shed or guesthouse, according to the spec,” Rog replied.

  “How do we do this?” Boney asked.

  I had been thinking about the training we’d got from Dave. “Pete, you’ve picked up some of Andy’s lock-picking skills, so you go for the front door. I’ll be right behind you. Dodger, you cover the rear in case someone makes a run for it.”

  “What if you guys come under fire?” Rog asked.

  “Blow the back door in with a grenade and take the shooter from behind,” I said.

  “And if the place is booby-trapped?”

  “Jesus, Dodger,” Pete said. “Improvise. Or run away.”

  “Screw you, Boney. Dave told us to take every possibility into account.”

  “You’re right,” I said, trying to calm them down. “But we haven’t much time. Who knows what kind of state Andy’s in by now?”

  They nodded, and Rog drove on. He stopped on the verge about a quarter of a mile before the cottage and doused the headlights.

  “Right, guys,” I said, “let’s get geared up. Keep the noise and lights down.” I opened my door carefully and got out.

  Pete swung open the rear door, and he and Rog started rummaging in their bags. I was wearing jeans and a donkey jacket. I fitted on the headset of my walkie-talkie and pulled a balaclava over the strap. I slipped off my belt and slid through the straps of my combat knife’s sheath. I stuck my second Glock 19 into my belt above my backside. The pistol with the silencer would be staying in hand.

  “Grenade?” Pete said in a low voice, holding out a bag.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I replied, taking three. I shone my torch on them. One was a smoke grenade and the other two were fragmentation. I hoped I didn’t have to pull the pins on any of them.

  We moved apart and checked that our communication units were working. Then Rog set off across a field, heading for the back of the cottage. Pete and I found a gap in the hedge and went into the large field that went all the way to Sara’s place on the other side of the road. We had good cover and were able to get right in front of the buildings. Parting the branches, I saw the property clearly. There were no lights on in the cottage or shed. The nearest streetlight was about fifty meters down the road toward the village, so we would be well obscured from passing cars.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered to Pete.

  He nodded and moved ahead to the gate. When he’d crossed the road and was on the short path to the door, I followed. By the time I got there, he already had the lock-breaking rods out. He fiddled with them for several minutes, but didn’t make any progress.

  “Looks like there are mortice locks near the top and bottom,” he said in a low voice. “Sara really doesn’t want uninvited guests.”

  “Any sign of an alarm system?”

  “Strangely, no.”

  “Rog?” I said.

  “Receiving. I’m in position. No lights or movement at the back.”

  “I’m sending Pete around to try the locks there.”

  “Okay.”

  I nodded to Boney, and he set off around the house in a crouch. I felt exposed at the front door, so I headed away to the right, thinking I’d check the shed. But when I got there, I found three heavy-duty padlocks on the bolts. Short of blowing my way in with grenades, I was stuck. Unless there was a door at the back. I pushed my way through the vegetation at the side of the wooden structure. There wasn’t a door, but a window had been boarded over.

  “Matt?” came Pete’s voice in my ear. “This door’s got mortices, too. We’ll have to cut the glass.”

  “Okay. Run your deactivation unit around it first.”

  “I was actually intending to do that,” Bonehead said snidely.

  I smiled, then took out my combat knife and started to lever away the boards. When I’d got one off, I looked in. Complete darkness. I listened carefully. Nothing. I decided to risk my torch, briefly at first. It was soon clear that the building was empty. It didn’t look like Sara was hiding there, but I had my Glock at the ready when I’d made a space big enough to clamber through. I dropped onto the floor on my hands, feeling hard earth on my fingertips.

  “We’re in,” Rog said through my earpiece. “No one around so far.”

  I shone the torch again. There were tools hanging from a row of hooks on the wall, but apart from that there was a strange absence of the gear you’d expect to find in an outbuilding-no logs, lawn-mower, old boxes or other junk. I walked toward the front doors, then stopped. The earth beneath my boots was less firm. I looked down and made out an area several yards long and wide, with a slightly different texture. I hadn’t noticed the three low posts that came out of the floor until then. They each stood about fifteen centimeters from the surface. I went over to the nearest one and kneeled down by it. In the torchlight I could see that they were circular plastic pipes, about five centimeters across. I shone my light down, but could make nothing out. Then I heard a sound that made my flesh creep-a kind of muffled screech. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it came from a human being.

  “Rog! Pete!” I said, forgetting to keep my voice low. “If there’s nothing in the cottage, get over to the shed. There’s a window I’ve cleared on the far side.”

  “What have you got?” Pete asked.

  “Someone who’s been buried alive. Out.”

  I shone the torch on the wall and took down a couple of spades and a snow shovel. One of the former had traces of earth on the head. Going back to the tube through which the sound had come, I hacked away at the earth around it. The surface had been smoothed down, but when I broke through the crust, I found that the earth shifted easily. By the time Pete and Rog arrived, I had already piled a heap by the wall.

  “I think there are three people down here,” I said, pointing at the pipes. “We’ll take one each.”

  It was hard work, but when I got about a meter down, my spade hit wood with a resounding thud.

  “Give me a hand here,” I said.

  Soon we’d cleared the earth from a roughly made rectangular box. We all climbed out of the hole and I inserted the spade beneath the lid. There was a loud creaking as nails came away from the wood, then the cover shifted.

  “Bloody hell!” Rog said, as we took in the diminutive figure.

  It was a young girl, her hands bound and resting on her abdomen. Her eyes were wide in terror. There was another piece of rope around her ankles, and her knees were raw from the countless times she had banged them against the coffin lid.

  I got hold of her shoulders and pulled her up as gently as I could, then handed her to Pete. When she was on the floor, Rog started cutting her bonds. That was difficult, because she was jerking around like a dying fish, croaking something that we couldn’t understand. Eventually I understood. She was desperate for water. Pete went back to the cottage to get some.

  “What’s your name?” I said, taking her in my arms.

  She continued to shudder violently, but she managed to speak again.

  “Am…Ama…Amanda Ma…Mary.”

  I smiled at her. “Hello, Amanda Mary. I’m Matt and this is Roger.”

  She stared at us as if we were aliens. When Boney came back with water and some bread that he’d found, she drank desperately, spilling much of it over her pink blouse. I reckoned she was eleven or twelve. I also had a pretty good idea who she was. To have got the former SAS men to ignore their training and allow themselves to be taken out, Sara had used their family members as leverage. The only question was, whose daughter was she? I couldn’t face telling her what had happened to her father now. I kept her in a tight embrace while Rog and Pete dug down to the next coffin. This time it was a boy, who did
n’t look more than six. He couldn’t speak at all-just drank and then stuffed bread into his mouth. Finally, Pete and I got a middle-aged woman out.

  As I’d suspected from the moment I saw Amanda Mary, there was no trace at all of Andy.

  Twenty-Eight

  Karen Oaten was driving down the fast lane of the M4, blue lights flashing and siren blasting.

  “Jesus, guv,” John Turner said, hands clutching his seat. “Can we get there in one piece, please?”

  “Come on, Taff,” she said, swerving inside an ambulance that was also in full emergency mode. “When have I ever put as much as a scratch on a car?” She sounded in high spirits, but it was only for show. Matt’s call, saying that he’d found three people buried alive in a property owned by Sara Robbins, had almost made her scream-not because he’d saved three people’s lives, but because he’d told her that he’d already left the cottage. She was sure he was in pursuit of Sara, but he hadn’t bothered to tell her where he was going.

  “What did the AC say about Matt pulling a gun on you?” The Welshman was still outraged by the writer’s performance.

  Oaten kept her eyes on the road. “He doesn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Calm down, Taff. I decided against publicizing that and I managed to get the PC to keep it to himself, at least for the time being.”

  “But why?”

  The chief inspector glanced at him. “Would you rat on your wife?”

  Turner sighed. “She’s hardly likely to wave a gun at me or anyone else.”

  “Matt left because I was taking him to the Yard.” Oaten’s hands were tight on the wheel. “What did you expect me to do? I love the stupid bugger. It’s not as if he’s a master criminal. And remember, his best friend was killed.”

  “The law’s the law, whoever you are,” the inspector muttered.

  “Oh, come on, Taff, how many times have you overlooked things team members have done?”

  He glared at her. “Involving firearms and murderers, none.”

  Karen Oaten took a deep breath. “Look, I didn’t say Matt was off the hook. At the end of these cases, I’ll review the situation.”

  “You’d better,” the Welshman said, “or the AC will tear your head off.”

  Oaten thought back to the scene in the house in Stoke Newington-blood everywhere, but no body. It was obvious it had been in parts, though. “Nice metaphor, Taff.”

  Inspector John Turner raised an eyebrow. “What? Oh, I see what you mean. Sorry.”

  They proceeded to the cottage at Oldbury, a truce of sorts established.

  It took us only half an hour to get to the railings that marked the limit of Earl Sternwood’s domain. The moon was casting a fitful light across the acres of parkland and forest. I got out of the Suzuki and listened. Apart from the faint noise of traffic in the distance, there was no sound. We checked our gear.

  “Oh, shit, I just remembered this,” Pete said, holding up a brick-size block wrapped in clear film.

  It was plastic explosive. Dave had trained us how to use it, but this would be the first time for real.

  “Yeah, take it,” I said. “We’re trying to get into a castle, after all.” I looked at the satellite photo I’d found of the estate. A faint line wound through the dark patch of forest in front of us. “This looks like a path. If we follow it, we come out right in front of the main buildings.”

  “Fair enough,” Rog said. “As long as His Lordship hasn’t had mines laid.”

  “We’ll just have to take that chance,” I said. “For Andy.”

  The others nodded and we set off. It was quiet in the woods, apart from the scurrying of small animals and the faint flap of owls’ wings. I was glad I had company. I wouldn’t have fancied walking through the ancient forest on my own-there were too many obscure places for enemies to conceal themselves. After about ten minutes, I made out the lights on the main house. There weren’t many of them. Either Earl Sternwood was strapped for cash-which seemed unlikely, given the drugs deal he’d done with the Albanians-or there wasn’t much going on. The area that the map showed as taken up by the castle was completely unlit. If I’d located it correctly, it was a brooding, shadowless presence.

  We reached the tree line. Now the mass of the old stronghold was visible, its vertical walls blocking out the stars and satellites that stood low in the northern sky. We squatted down behind a tree and looked at the photos that Safet Shkrelli’s investigator had obtained. They gave us an idea of the tower’s size, but didn’t tell us anything about the interior structure. On the other hand, the meetings of the notorious Sternwood Hell-fire Club had taken place in a subterranean cavern. I reckoned that the present earl kept his secrets down there and that Sara wouldn’t have been able to resist stashing Andy there.

  “The door’s at the back,” Pete said.

  “Right,” I said. “I’ll go first. If a motion-sensor turns on lights, I’ll see if I can spot it. We’ll need to shoot it out.” I racked the slide on my Glock, then nodded at the others.

  “Three, two, one, go,” I said under my breath, running across the gravel as fast as I could. I made it to the castle wall without anything happening-at least, anything obvious. I had no idea how good the earl’s security system was. I might already have been spotted.

  “One at a time,” I said via my cheek-mike.

  Pete came first, then Rog. I led them around the side of the tower, pointing to the two cars that were drawn up to the rear. It didn’t look like many people were around, though there was plenty of parking space on the far side of the house.

  We reached the door. It was a great wooden thing with metal studs all over it, but it didn’t look old. The locks were also modern and solid. I wouldn’t have fancied trying to pick them. Pete moved past me, heading for a square ventilation panel. It was about a meter above ground level, with each side measuring about three-quarters of a meter. It would be a tight fit, but I reckoned we could make it-if we managed to separate the louvered panel from its metal frame. Boney set about it with a chisel, cursing under his breath. After five minutes, he had to admit defeat. I had a go, but the join was tighter than a banker’s lips.

  “Only one way to go now,” Rog said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Pete whispered. “The plastic.”

  I nodded. “Who wants to lay it?”

  Rog was already rummaging in Boney’s pack.

  “Not too much,” I said. “Maybe the explosion will be muffled by the stone walls. In any case, we’ll have to get inside very quickly after it blows.”

  Pete and I watched as Rog rolled out four strips of the explosive, and then molded them around the frame till they joined up. He pushed a detonator in and set the radio-controlled fuse. He ran back and we retreated behind the cars, an old Land Rover and a Citroen minivan. That made me wonder how many were in the opposition team.

  “Ready?” Rog asked.

  Boney and I nodded, then put our fingers in our ears. Rog pressed the button on the control unit. There was an explosion that wasn’t as loud as I’d expected-the walls must have absorbed a lot of the noise. When I looked up, I saw the remains of the panel hanging down.

  “Nice one, Dodger,” I said, getting up and running toward the hole. Dust and smoke were still rising when I reached it. I pulled myself over the rough edge and dropped into the tower. It was dark as the devil’s armpit, but I couldn’t hear any of the sounds people usually make after explosions, such as loud screaming or shouted orders. I moved aside as the others came through.

  “What now?” Pete asked. He shone his torch around the square area. There was no furniture or anything else in it, just bare stone walls and a few arrow slits. Stone projections showed where the castle’s upper floors would have once been. The only direction to go was down.

  “There,” Pete said, pointing to a large flagstone that had initially looked the same as the others. There was a small indentation on the right side, and in it had been fixed a well-disguised steel ring.

  I
went over and got two fingers under the ring. Then I looked at the others. “Ready?”

  “Let’s roll,” Pete said, brandishing his pistol.

  Rog shook his head in disbelief. “Just do it, Matt.”

  I nodded. “Lights out.”

  We switched the torches off. In the darkness, I braced my back and heaved.

  The stone panel came up with surprising ease.

  Now came the difficult part.

  Andy had been using the vibration of the van, which was being driven at high speed again, to help him edge his fingers around the small knife. Finally he managed to grip it and slide it out of his pocket. Now he had to be seriously careful-if he dropped it, he’d lost the game. After a struggle with his damaged nails, at last he succeeded in levering the blade out. He stopped to rest his quivering fingers, then started to saw through the ropes that had been looped tight around his wrists. He felt the point jab into his skin several times and blood began to run, but he was glad he always kept the knife sharp-that meant he got his hands free quickly. He removed the gag and breathed deeply through his mouth. Then he cut through the bonds on his ankles and then stretched his legs without standing up-he wasn’t sure if his shape might be visible in the rearview mirror. Besides, his only chance was to play possum until Sara or the old woman got close. He flexed his fingers and toes, feeling the pain of his blood circulation returning to normal. It was a good pain.

  He was about to lean over the motorbike and see who was wrapped in the blankets when the van decelerated and took a left turn. Only a few seconds later, it pulled into the side and the engine was killed. Andy heard the driver’s door open, followed soon after by the rear doors. The interior lights came on in the cargo space. He was leaning forward, feigning unconsciousness and waiting until his captor came close. When he heard movement on the other side of the bike, he opened one eye slightly and saw the back of a figure wearing black leathers. He took a deep breath and decided to go for it, in case the person he assumed was Sara was about to harm the other captive.