No Tears for the Lost

CHAPTER NINE

By eleven the following morning, Riley and Palmer were turning onto a rutted track leading through a thick belt of trees. Tetbury was five miles away in one direction, the village of Colebrooke three miles behind them. Riley was riding shotgun, which meant holding a map and singing out directions for Palmer to follow. Apart from acknowledging the instructions, Palmer was humming tunelessly and staring out at the greenery. There was a lot to stare at.

They were both clad in rubber boots, although Riley’s were Hunter green and fitted properly, whereas Palmer’s had come from a self-service station just off the M4. They were black and fitted like canoes. Not that it seemed to bother him.

Riley thought that London seemed far away and was wondering where this particular job was leading them. The idea of a boy’s body parts being sent to his father was horrible, especially when set against the backdrop of the shire counties, titled gentry and chinless wonders blasting holes in the sky in the name of sport.

‘Who are we meeting?’ she asked, as Palmer steered the Saab down a narrow, bumpy back-road bordered by thick hedges.

‘A man named Keagan. Major. Ex-military. He’s part of the Diplomatic Protection Group and runs the security detail responsible for Myburghe’s safety, among others. Sir Kenneth has instructed him to give us a briefing.’

‘So why out here and not at the house?’

‘It’s easier this way. There are too many people wandering around his place — builders, caterers, staff and wedding organisers. Sir Kenneth’s holed up indoors and some friends are acting as decoys for the day’s shoot.’

‘Really? Now they’ll know what a pheasant feels like. Nice to see they’re taking it seriously.’

‘They are at the moment. Some of Keagan’s team are with him, treating it like a training exercise. The rest are at the house.’ Palmer turned down a track, swinging past a stocky, Lycra-clad cyclist bent over a racing bike. The man didn’t bother looking up, intent on tugging at the chain which was hanging loose from the main cog.

Riley was surprised they hadn’t sealed up Myburghe’s house like a fortress with him inside. If it had been her under threat, she would have found the safest place available and locked herself in with a team of heavies at every access point until it was safe to come out. On the other hand, that was a way to grow old and grey, thereby missing some of life’s finer pleasures.

‘Thoughts?’ Palmer spoke as they cleared a tunnel of trees and turned through a gateway onto a gentle hillside with half of Gloucestershire spread out before them. At least Riley assumed it was still Gloucestershire; her geography was never too good once she was out of London.

‘I’m still thinking them,’ she replied.

Several gleaming 4WDs splattered with mud were parked on the hill, their occupants standing in a group nearby, guns at the ready. They all wore the uniform of Hunter boots, Barbours and peaked caps, and had that air of well-fed leanness which comes from good breeding, money and time spent in the great outdoors.

One or two men turned their way, but nobody moved to greet them. Palmer parked with the front of the car facing back the way they’d come. He turned off the engine and they sat waiting for Keagan to come forward. The tree line around them was heavy and dark, full of shifting shadows.

‘If you go down to the woods today,’ Palmer sang quietly. ‘I counted three.’

‘Three what?’ asked Riley.

‘Security men hanging around in the bushes. Four if you include the chunky individual mending his bike near the entrance to the track.’

Riley nodded at the men with the guns. ‘What about them?’

‘Strictly local colour. Keagan brought them in to make it look real.’

‘Risky, isn’t it? He could have all manner of collateral damage if anyone lets rip at them.’

Palmer grunted as one of the men suddenly swung round with scant regard for his companions and blasted away at a pheasant flying by. The bird didn’t even bother to duck and continued on its way, leaving the shooter looking red-faced and the other men laughing. ‘With shooting like that, any gunman showing up here is in more danger than the birds.’

‘If the bomb package was a hoax,’ said Riley, musing out loud about the series of threats, ‘then why not the finger, too?’

‘There was a family ring attached. No hoax.’

‘Oh.’ Riley fell silent. The implications weren’t good. ‘In that case, the boy won’t be coming back, will he?’

Palmer shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’

‘Does Myburghe realise that?’

‘I think so.’

Riley shivered at the idea. If it was a straight kidnap, even moderate statistics held that most victims died within seventy-two hours of being snatched. In some cases, this was due to inept or simply callous kidnappers; in others it was the fear of being identified if they let the victim go. In a minority there was never any intention of the victim surviving, anyway, and few of these made it past the first day.

Then there was the matter of the finger. Getting hold of a spare as a ghastly form of hoax was no simple matter. It wasn’t simply a case of tripping along to the local morgue and buying a spare body part. And grave robbing was a little too public to go unnoticed.

She felt sickened at the thought of someone cutting off a finger. But the cold brutality of the act didn’t end there; she was no medical expert, but she figured if the boy wasn’t in a proper hospital or at least being cared for by a professional medic when the finger was cut off, he was going to die from shock, infection or blood loss.

She looked up as one of the men left the group and walked towards them, waving a hand. He had a relaxed air of authority and she guessed he must be Keagan. Then she glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw a slight shift of movement in the trees behind the car. No doubt one of his watchers.

She hoped they weren’t feeling trigger-happy.

They climbed out to meet the security man. He had a shotgun tucked under his arm and looked as if he’d been born holding it. He was in his early fifties and built like a battle-tank, with weather-beaten skin and short grey hair beneath a tweed cap. Even without knowing who he was, or seeing the gimlet-like eyes appraising them, there was no mistaking the bearing of a former military man.

‘Palmer,’ he said crisply. His eyes swept across to Riley and hovered momentarily. ‘I didn’t realise you’d have company.’

‘My associate,’ Palmer replied. ‘Riley Gavin.’

The two men exchanged handshakes with wary civility. Riley received a curt nod. The look on Keagan’s face said he was unhappy with their presence, but that Palmer had passed muster, so he wasn’t about to complain.

‘You may have seen my three men on the way in,’ he said, eyes flicking past them toward the trees.

‘Four, actually,’ Palmer told him. ‘The man on the bike could lose a bit of weight. That Lycra’s deadly with a beer gut.’

Keagan’s face went tight around the mouth and Riley tried not to laugh. The major had been testing them and had tripped over his own arrogance. He either didn’t know or hadn’t believed that in Frank Palmer he was dealing with someone experienced in the game of spotting covert surveillance. She decided it didn’t augur well for any future working relationship.

‘Sir Kenneth wanted you brought in,’ he huffed, changing the subject, ‘against my advice and official suggestions.’

Palmer looked at Riley. ‘He means there are lots of hairy-chested ex-Special Forces people out there who are better qualified than me…which is almost true.’

‘So why not get them in?’ Riley asked. It had been puzzling her, too. She assumed that Myburghe, as a former diplomat under threat, would have access to some expert assistance, especially since the threats he was receiving might be coming from his last posting in Colombia. It wouldn’t be total cover, but better than nothing.

‘Sir Kenneth’s personal wishes,’ Keagan told her. ‘I’ve advised him — that’s all I can do.’ His tone indicated he was about to perform a hand-washing exercise, and if Sir Kenneth wanted to put his trust in a pair of amateurs in mismatched wellies, there was little else the official establishment could do but step back smartly and wish him good luck.

Riley couldn’t help but sympathise. Nobody likes having the rug cut from beneath them. But she had no doubts Palmer would have been checked out carefully first.

‘What about your men?’ Palmer queried. ‘How long will they be around?’

‘Not long. We’re over-stretched as it is with the terrorist situation and we’ve got more assignments than personnel. The letters and fake bomb here could just be the work of a nutcase. God knows, there are plenty out there.’

No mention of the finger, Riley noted. Either he didn’t know or it was being kept under wraps like a nasty family secret.

‘And the party?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know. We’ll be there, but in the background. Unless we’re pulled off for something else.’ His tone indicated that he meant for something more important. ‘Again, Sir Kenneth’s express wishes.’ He hefted the shotgun to change the conversation. ‘He’s not here this morning, on my advice. But I can give you a briefing. Do you shoot?’

The question was lobbed vaguely between them, but Riley knew it was for Palmer more than her. She shook her head. ‘Not me. But you boys go and play with your guns. I’ll try not to frighten off the birdies.’

While Palmer followed Keagan across the grass towards the other men, Riley helped herself from a flask of coffee in the car. One of the men handed Palmer a gun and a handful of cartridges, then they turned towards the open field before them as Keagan signalled to an unseen beater.

Riley wandered along on the fringe of trees near the car, sipping her coffee, turning with a start as a barrage of gunfire erupted. She watched as Palmer waited for the others to finish shooting, before turning and casually bringing down a pair of shapeless birds without even shouldering his gun. It earned him a startled look from Keagan and a scowl or two from his companions, but Palmer ignored them and re-loaded.

Riley bit down on her distaste at the firepower and the loss of wildlife. She and Palmer had a job to do; throwing a moral snit right now would merely get in the way.

She began to think about what they had taken on between them. At best, they might end up supervising a pleasant party and picking the odd guest out of the ancestral fishpond. At worst, they might find themselves up to their elbows in something nastier, a situation Palmer had once equated bluntly with having to pick their teeth out of the wallpaper.

If Myburghe was using his daughter’s wedding as an exercise in false bravado after admitting to himself that his son wasn’t coming home, he might have become blind to the real dangers. And they might surface only when Keagan and his security team disappeared, leaving Palmer and Riley to deal with any opposition.

A flicker of movement drew her attention to a beech tree several yards inside the wood. Riley stopped and sipped her coffee. She was no security expert, but she knew that protection was mostly about setting perimeters: outer ones to deter the half-hearted and to act as a filter; inner ones to catch the badly trained or the inept amateur. Finally — and most critically — there was the very innermost circle of close protection which nobody liked to think would ever be needed if the other two were doing their job.

Was this one of Keagan’s men standing close to the shooting party instead of covering the ground further out? Or someone else? An univited guest, perhaps. She scanned the area again in case she’d made a mistake. Maybe what she’d seen was a leaf falling, a swaying branch or even a foraging squirrel. Any or all three, possibly. She was about to move on when she caught her breath and felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. A man was standing a few yards away, watching.

**********