Crossfire

12

Escaping from the stable building was only the first of the hurdles.

I didn't know where I was, and I could hardly hop very far, I was hungry with no food and, perhaps most important of all, I had no idea who had tried to kill me.

Would they try again when they discovered that I was still alive?

And would they come back here to check? To dispose of the body?

Why had they not made sure by bashing my head in rather than leaving me alive to die slowly?

I knew from my own experience that killing another person wasn't easy. It was fine if you could do it at a distance. Firing a rocket-propelled grenade into an enemy position was easy. Taking out an enemy commander from half a mile away using a sniper rifle and a telescopic sight was a piece of cake. But sticking a bayonet into the chest of a squirming, screaming human being at arm's length was quite another matter.

Whoever had done this had left me alive in the stable for their own benefit, not for mine. They had intended to kill me but had wanted time and dehydration to do their dirty work for them.

In that respect, I had an advantage over them. If, and when, we met again, they might hesitate before killing me outright, and that hesitation would be enough for me, and an end for them. Another Sandhurst instructor floated into my memory. "Never hesitate," he'd said. "Hesitate, and you're dead."

The falling rain did not give me anywhere near enough water to quench my roaring thirst, so I tried one of the taps that were positioned outside each stable. I turned the handle, but no water came out. Not surprisingly, the water was off.

In the end, I lay down on the concrete and lapped water from a puddle like a dog. It was easier and more fulfilling than using my cupped hands to try to lift it to my mouth.

Hunger and mobility were now my highest priorities.

What I needed was a crutch, something like a broom, to put under my arm. I crawled on hands and knees back along the line of stables until I came to the one I had been held in. I pulled myself upright, slid the bolts on both parts of the door, and opened them wide. I had become used to the fresh outside air, and the rank, disgusting smell in the stable caught me unawares. I retched, but there was nothing in my stomach to throw up. Had I really lived in there for two days? How bad would the smell have been if I'd died there?

There was no broom in the stable, I knew that, but I had decided to take the ring, the chain and the padlock away with me. If I did go to the police, I would have them as evidence. I also collected the bits of the plastic ties. One never knew, perhaps they were distinctive enough to point to whoever had bought them.

I looked around my prison cell one last time before closing the door. I slid home the bolts, as if wanting to lock the place out of my memory.

I hopped along the line and opened the next stable, looking for a broom, but I discovered something a whole lot better.

Suddenly things were looking up. Lying on the floor was my artificial leg, together with my overcoat.

Hanging me up to die had been a calculated evil. But removing my leg had been nothing more than pure malice. I resolved, there and then, that I would make the person who did this to me pay a heavy price.

I leaned against the door frame and put the leg on, rolling the securing rubber sleeve up over my knee.

I had always rather hated it, this thing that wasn't a real part of me. But now I gladly accepted it back as more than a necessary evil-it was a chum, an ally and a brother. If nothing else, the last two days had taught me that without my metal-and-plastic companion, I would be a helpless and incapable warrior in battle. But together, my prosthesis and I would be a force to be reckoned with.

The joy of walking again on two legs was immense. The familiar clink-clink was like music to my soul.

I picked up my coat and put it on against the cold. My shirt was still wet from standing in the rain, and I was grateful for the coat's thick, warm, fleecy lining. I put my hands into the pockets and found, to my surprise, my cell phone, my wallet, my car keys and the business card from Mr. Hoogland.

The phone was off. I'd switched it off for the inquest. So I turned it on and the familiar screen appeared. I wondered who I should call.

Who did I trust? I explored the stable block to try to find out where I was.

I could have probably used my cell to call the police and they would have been able to trace where the signal came from, but I really wanted to find out for myself.

I had visions of lying in wait for my would-be murderer to come back to check that I was dead. What chance would I have of getting my payback if the boys in blue arrived with flashing lights and sirens, clomping around the place in their size-ten boots, letting the world know I'd been found and frightening away my quarry?

But before all that, I desperately needed some food. And a shower.

There were no horses in any of the stalls. And there were no people in the big house alongside them. The place was like a ghost town. And all the doors were locked. So I walked across the gravel turning area, past the house and down the driveway.

For the umpteenth time I went to look at my watch, but it wasn't on my wrist. It was the one thing I'd had with me in Oxford that was still missing, other than my Jaguar. My would-be murderer must have removed it to tie me up. I had looked all around to try to find it, without success.

However, I judged from the light that it must be after five o'clock. There was just enough brightness for me to see where I was going, but full darkness would not be far away.

The driveway was long but downhill, which helped, and at the end there were some imposing seven-feet-high wrought-iron gates between equally impressive stone pillars. The gates were closed and firmly locked together by a length of chain and a padlock that both looked suspiciously similar to those in my coat pocket.

I looked up at the top of the gates. Did I really have to start climbing again?

No, I didn't. A quick excursion ten yards to the left allowed me to step through a post-and-rail fence. The imposing gates were more for show than for security. But the chain and padlock would have been enough to prevent some passing Nosey Parker from driving up to the house to have a look around, someone who might then have found me in the stables.

There was a plastic sign attached to the outside of one of the gateposts.

"FOR SALE," it said in bold capital letters, then gave the telephone number of a realtor. I recognized the dialing code: 01635 was Newbury.

The realtor's sign was nailed over another wooden notice. I pulled the for-sale sign away to reveal the notice beneath, and I could just see the painted words in the gathering gloom. "Greystone Stables," it read. And in smaller letters underneath, "Larry Webster-Racehorse Trainer."

I could remember someone had told me about this place. "The Webster place," they'd said. "On the hill off the Wantage Road." So I was back in Lambourn, or just outside. And I could see the village lights about half a mile or so away, down the road.

What do I do now, I thought.

Do I phone my mother and ask her to collect me, or do I call the police and report a kidnapping and an attempted murder? I knew I should. It was the right and the sensible thing to do. I should have done it as soon as I found my phone. And then my mother would simply have to take her chances with the tax man, and the courts.

Something was stopping me from calling the police, and it wasn't only the belief that my mother would then end up losing everything: her house, her stables, her business, her freedom and, perhaps worst of all for her to bear, her reputation.

It was something more than that. Maybe it was the need to fight my own battles, to prove to myself that I still could. Possibly it was to show the major from the MOD that I wasn't ready for retirement and the military scrap heap.

But above all, I think it was the desire to inflict personal revenge on the person who had done this to me.

Perhaps it was some sort of madness, but I put the phone in my pocket and called no one. I simply started walking towards the lights, and home.

I was alive and free, and for as long as someone believed that I was tied up and dead, I had the element of surprise on my side. In strategic terms, surprise was everything. The air attack on Pearl Harbor just before eight o'clock on a sleepy Sunday morning in December 1941 was testament to that. Eleven ships had been either sunk or seriously damaged and nearly two hundred aircraft destroyed on the ground for fewer than thirty of the attackers shot down. More than three and a half thousand Americans had been killed or wounded for the loss of just sixty-five Japanese casualties. I knew because at Sandhurst, each officer cadet had to give a presentation to their fellow trainees about a Second World War engagement, and I had been allocated Pearl Harbor.

Surprise had been crucial.

I had already shown myself to the enemy once, and I had barely survived the consequences. Now I would remain hidden, and better still, my enemy must surely believe that I'd already been neutralized and was no longer a threat. Just when he thought I was dead I would rise up and bite him. I wanted my Glenn-Close-in-the-bath moment from Fatal Attraction, but I wasn't going to then get shot and killed, as her character had been.

I walked through the village, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the busy center, where someone might have spotted me near the brightly lit shop windows. Only the damn clink-clink of my right leg could have given me away. I resolved to find a way to make my walking silent once more.

When I arrived at the driveway of Kauri House I paused.

Did I really want my mother and stepfather to know what had happened to me? How could I explain my dirty and disheveled condition to them without explaining how I came to be in such a state? And could I then trust them not to pass on the knowledge to others, even accidentally? Absolute secrecy might be vital. "Loose talk costs lives" had been a wartime slogan. I certainly didn't want it costing mine.

But I urgently needed to eat, and I also wanted to wash and put on some clean clothes.

As I approached I could see that the lights were on in the stables and the staff were busily mucking out and feeding their charges.

I skirted around the house and approached down the outside of the nearest stable rectangle, trying to keep my leg as quiet as possible. Only at the very last instant did I briefly step into the light, and only then when I was sure no one was looking.

I went quickly up the stairs and let myself in to Ian Norland's unlocked flat above the stables.

I'd taken a chance that Ian would not have locked the door while he was downstairs with the horses, and I'd been right. Now I had to decide what to tell him. It had to be enough to engage his help, but amongst other things, I thought it best not to inform him that his employer was effectively trading while insolvent, something that was strictly against the law. And I didn't want to scare him into instantly calling the police. I decided that I wouldn't tell him the whole truth, but I would try not to tell him any outright lies.

While I waited for him to finish with the horses, I raided his refrigerator. Amongst the cans of beer there were precious few food items, so I helped myself to a two-liter plastic bottle of milk. It had been as much as I could do not to go into The Rice Bowl Chinese takeaway in the village on my way through. But I had every intention of convincing Ian that he needed to go there for me the minute he came up from the stables.

I'd completely finished his two liters of milk by the time I heard him climbing the stairs.

I stood tight behind the door as he came in, but he saw me as soon as he closed it. After the cut-bridle altercation of the previous Saturday, I wasn't exactly expecting a warm welcome, and I didn't get it.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demanded loudly.

"Ian, I need your help," I said quickly.

He looked at me closely, at my filthy and torn clothes and the stubble on my chin. "Why are you in such a mess?" he asked accusingly. "What have you been up to?"

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just a bit dirty and hungry, that's all."

"Why?" he said.

"Why what?" I said.

"Why everything?" he said. "Why are you lurking in my flat like a burglar? Why didn't you go to the house? And why are you hungry and dirty?"

"I'll explain everything," I said. "But I need your help, and I don't really want my mother to know I'm here."

"Why not?" he demanded. "Are you in trouble with the law?"

"No, of course not," I said, trying to sound affronted.

"Then why don't you want your mother to know you're here?"

What could I say that would convince him?

"My mother and I have had an argument," I said. I'd clearly failed dismally in my aim of not telling him any lies.

"What over?" he said.

"Does it matter?" I said. "You know my mother. She can argue over the smallest of things."

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But what was this particular argument about?"

I could see that he was going to be persistent. He needed an answer.

"Over the running of the horses," I said.

Now he was interested.

"Tell me."

"Can I use your bathroom first?" I asked. "I'm desperate for a shower. I don't suppose you have any spare clothes my size?"

"Where are yours?"

"In the house."

"Do you want me to fetch them?" he asked.

"How could you?" I said. "My mother would surely see."

"She's out," he said. "She and Mr. Philips have gone to some big event in London. Saw them go myself round five o'clock.All dressed up to the nines, they were. She told me she'd be back for first lot in the morning."

"But there are lights on in the house."

"For the dogs," he said. "I'll go over and let them out before I go to bed. I'll turn off the lights and lock up, then."

So I could have probably gone into the house all along and never bothered Ian. I remonstrated with myself for insufficient reconnaissance of the place before I'd come up to Ian's flat. I'd assumed my mother was at home, but I should have checked.

"But my mother's car is in the driveway," I said. I remembered having seen it as I rounded the house.

"They were collected by a big flashy car with a driver," he said. "Seems like Mrs. Kauri was the guest of honor or something."

"Will they be back tonight?"

"I don't know," he said. "All she said was she'd see me at seven-thirty in the morning."

Maybe I hadn't needed to involve Ian at all, but now that I had, could he still help me?

"Right, then," I said decisively, using my voice-of-command. "I'll go over to the house to have a shower and change while you go to the Chinese takeaway and get us both dinner. I'll have beef in black bean sauce with fried rice." I held out some money from my wallet. "And buy some milk as well. I'm afraid I've drunk yours."

He stood silently, looking at me, but he took the money.

I glanced at the clock on his wall. "I'll be back here in forty-five minutes to eat and talk."

It was nearer to fifty minutes by the time I climbed back up the stairs to Ian's flat, having enjoyed a long soak in a hot bath to ease my still-aching shoulders. And I'd brought some of my stuff with me.

"What's in the tube?" Ian asked.

"My sword," I said. "I thought it might be useful."

"For what?" he said in alarm. "I'm not doing anything illegal."

"It's OK," I said. "Calm down. I promise I won't ask you to do anything illegal."

"How about you?" he asked, still disturbed.

"I won't do anything illegal either," I assured him. "I promise."

Another of those promises that I wondered if I could keep. In this case, I was rather hopeful that I wouldn't be able to, but I decided not to tell that to Ian.

He relaxed somewhat.

"So can I stay here?" I asked, placing my bag and the tube on the floor.

"What? Sleep here?" he said.

"Yes."

"But I've only got the one bed." From his tone I gathered that he had no desire to share.

"That's OK," I said. "I only want the floor."

"You can have the sofa."

"Even better," I said. "Now, how about that food? I'm starving."

He served it out onto two fairly clean plates on his tiny kitchen table, and I tucked in to mine with gusto. I suspect a doctor would have told me that a bellyful of Chinese was not really the best medicine for a starved stomach, but I didn't care. It tasted pretty good to me.

Finally, I sat back and pushed the plate away with a sigh. I was full.

"Blimey," said Ian, who had only just started his sweet-and-sour pork. "Anyone would think you hadn't eaten for a week."

"What day is it?" I asked.

He looked at me strangely. "Wednesday."

Had it really only been on Monday that I'd gone to Oxford for the inquest? Just two and a half days ago? It seemed like longer. In fact, it felt like half a lifetime.

Did I want to tell Ian why I was so hungry? Did he need to know why I hadn't eaten since Monday morning? Perhaps not. It would take too much explaining, and he might not be very happy that I hadn't called the cops.

"Not too many restaurants about when you're living rough," I said.

" ' Living rough'?"

"Yeah," I said. "I've been up on the Downs for a couple of nights in a shelter I made."

"But it's so cold, and it's done nothing but rain all week."

"Yeah, and don't I know it. I couldn't light my fire," I said. "But it's all good training. Nothing like a bit of discomfort to harden you up."

"You army blokes are barmy," Ian said. "You wouldn't catch me outside all night in this weather." He poured more bright pink sweet-and-sour sauce over his dinner.

So much for not telling him outright lies; I'd hardly uttered a word that was true.

"So tell me," he said. "What was it about the running of the horses that you argued with your mother about?"

"Oh, nothing really," I said, backpedaling madly. "And I am sure she wouldn't want me talking to you about it."

"You might be right there," he said, smiling. "But tell me anyway."

"I told you, it was nothing," I said. "I just told her that in my opinion, and based on his last run at Cheltenham, Pharmacist wasn't ready for the Gold Cup."

"And what did she say?" Ian asked, pointing his fork at me.

"She told me to stick my opinion up my you-know-where."

He laughed. "For once, I agree with her."

"You do?" I said, sounding surprised. "When I was here, you know, when we watched the race on the television, you said that he couldn't now run at the Festival."

"Well," he said defensively, "I may have done at the time, in the heat of the moment, like, but I didn't really mean it. One bad performance doesn't make him a bad horse, now, does it?"

"But I only said it to my mother because I thought that's what you thought."

"You should have bloody asked me, then." He speared a pork ball on his fork and popped it into his mouth.

"Looks like I'll have to beg forgiveness and ask to be allowed home."

"Did she throw you out just for saying that?" He spoke with his mouth full, giving me a fine view of his sweet-and-sour pork ball rotating around like the contents of a cement mixer.

"Well, there were a few other things too," I said. "You know, personal family things."

He nodded knowingly. "In a good row, one thing just leads to another and then another, don't it." He sounded experienced in the matter, and I wondered whether there had once been a Mrs. Norland.

"You are so right."

"So, do you still want to stay here?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said. "I'm not going home to my mother with my tail between my legs, I can tell you. I'd never hear the end of it."

He laughed again and took another mouthful of his pork. "Fine by me, but I warn you, I get up early."

"I want to be gone before first light."

"The sun comes up at seven these days," he said. "It's light for a good half an hour or so before then."

"Then I'll be well gone by six," I said.

"To avoid your mother?"

"Perhaps," I said. "But you can ask her where she thinks I am. I'd love to know what she says, but don't tell her I've been here."

"OK, I'll ask her, and I won't tell her you're here, or what we talked about," he said, "but where are you going?"

"Back to where I've been for these past few days," I said. "I've some unfinished business there."

I took my sword, still safely stowed in its tube, when I slipped out of Ian's flat at just after five-thirty on Thursday morning. I also took the uneaten remains of the Chinese takeaway, and half the milk that Ian had bought the night before.

In addition, I took my freshly charged cell phone and the card from Mr. Hoogland. I might need something to pass the time.

I retraced my path from Kauri House, through the still sleeping village, and down the Wantage Road to Greystone Stables. One of the major successes of the night was that I had managed to stop my leg from clinking every time I put it down. The problem, I discovered, had been where the leg post met the ankle. The joint was tight enough, but the clink was made by two metal parts coming together when I put my weight on it. I'd eventually silenced it using an adjustable wrench and a square of rubber that Ian had cut from an old leaking Wellington boot. Now I relished being able to move silently once more.

The gates at the bottom of the driveway were still locked together with the chain and padlock, and they didn't appear to have been touched since I'd left them the previous evening. However, I wasn't going to assume that no one had been up to the stables in the intervening twelve hours; I would check.

I stepped back through the post-and-rail fence and climbed carefully and clink-free up the hill, keeping off the tarmac surface to reduce noise, listening and watching for anything unusual. Halfway up the drive, I checked the spot where the previous evening I had placed a stick leaning on a small stone. A car's tire would have had to disturb it to pass by, but the stick was still in place. No one had driven up this hill overnight, not unless they had come by motorbike.

I wasn't sure whether I should be pleased or disappointed.

Even so, I was still watchful as I approached the house, keeping within the line of vegetation to one side of a small overgrown front lawn. The sky was lightening in the east with a lovely display of blues, purples and reds. In spite of being completely at home in the dark, I had always loved the coming of the dawn, the start of a new day.

The arrival of the sun, bringing light and warmth and driving away the cold and darkness of the night, was like a piece of daily magic, revered and worshipped by man and beast alike. How does it happen? And why? Let us just be thankful that it did. If the sun went out, we would all be in the poop, and no mistake.

The rim of the fiery ball popped up over the horizon and flooded the hillside with an orange glow, banishing the gloom from beneath the bushes.

I silently tried the doors of the house. They were still locked.

I went right around the house, across the gravel turning area and back into the familiar stable yard beyond. In the bright morning light it looked very different from the rain-soaked space of the evening before. The stables had been built as a rectangular quadrangle with stalls along three sides, with the fourth open end facing the house.

First I went down to the far end of the left-hand block, knelt down, and carefully picked up all the shards of glass that still lay on the concrete below the window I'd broken. I placed them all carefully back through the window and out of sight. I had no way of replacing the glass pane, but one had to look closely to see that it was missing.

I walked down the row of stalls to my prison cell and opened both leaves of the stable door, hooking them open so that no one could quickly shut me in again before I could react.

I searched around the stall once more, mostly for my watch, but also in case I had missed anything else in the murk of the previous evening. I found nothing other than the small pile of my own excrement nicely drying next to the wall beneath where the ring had been secured. I knew that Special Forces teams such as the British SAS or the American Delta Force, when dropped in behind enemy lines, were trained not to leave any trace of their presence, and that included collecting their own feces in sealable plastic bags and keeping them in their packs.

In the absence of a suitable plastic bag, I decided to leave mine exactly where they were.

I quickly searched the stall next door, the one where I had found my prosthetic leg and my coat. My watch wasn't there, either. Damn it, I thought. I really liked that watch.

I closed and rebolted the stable doors and spent a moment or two checking that the positions of the bolts were precisely as I had found them. Now all I needed was a place to hide and wait.

I thought of using one of the other stables farther along, but I quickly rejected the idea. For one thing, I would have had no obvious route of retreat if things started going badly. And second, I really did not want my enemy to spot that the bolts were not properly shut and simply to lock me in as they passed, maybe even unaware that I was waiting inside. I'd had my fill of being locked in stables for this week.

In the end I found the perfect location.

Across the concrete stable yard, opposite the block of stalls in which I'd been imprisoned, there was a second row of stables facing them. In the middle of the row, there was a passageway that ran right through the building from front to rear. The passage had a door in it, on the stable-yard end, but the latch was a simple lever, not a bolt. The door was made from slats of wood screwed to a simple frame, with inch-wide gaps between the slats to allow the wind to blow through. The door had a spring near the hinge to keep it closed, but that would have not been there as a security measure, merely to keep the door shut so as to prevent any loose horses from getting through and escaping.

I lifted the latch, pulled open the door and went through the passageway. Behind the stables was a muck heap, the pile of soiled straw and wood-chip bedding where the stable staff would dump the horse dung ready for the manure man to collect periodically and sell to eager gardeners. Except that this muck heap hadn't been cleared for a long while, and there were clumps of bright green grass growing through the straw on its surface.

The passageway had obviously been placed there to provide the access to the muck heap from the stable yard. And it made an ideal hiding place.

Out the back, I found an empty blue plastic drum that would do well as a seat, and I was soon sitting behind the door in the passageway, watching and waiting for my enemy to arrive.

I longed to have my trusty SA80 assault rifle beside me, with fixed bayonet. Or better still, a gimpy with a full belt of ammunition.

Instead, all I had was my sword, but it was drawn from its scabbard and ready for action.