Against the Clock by John Carson (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📕

Thirty-Nine

The green house still looked black as Vern got up close to it. She supposed there had to have been a reason the RAF had chosen this olive colour. The colour of it wasn’t at the forefront of her mind, though, as she kept close to the walls.

It was how to get in.

The windows and doors had been boarded up and nature was slowly clawing its way back, covering some of the windows with trees and bushes. A wind was blowing off the airport, shaking the trees.

She walked round the perimeter, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She walked clockwise, figuring there was less chance of being seen from the airport side than there was from the road, although the traffic was very light.

She rounded the corner and approached the back of the house. She wondered what this had been, back in the Spitfire days. Further back, the old control tower sat at the front of some more old buildings.

Then she saw it: a loose board that was covering a door and was now hanging to one side. Not obvious if you were driving by this side but obvious close up.

She pulled it away a little bit further and slipped inside. She took out a small torch and shone it around. She saw a hallway in front of her. Paint was peeling like dead skin and some detritus was lying on the floor. Old newspapers and rubbish. It smelled musty and old, like it was a museum dedicated to the squadrons who had served here for years.

She thought she heard a noise upstairs and walked along as quietly as she could.

There it was again. She realised she was holding her breath as she walked along the hallway. It opened into a main hallway at the entrance to the house, with stairs to her left. She slowly looked round for any sign of the light she had seen at the window, but there was nothing.

She walked past the stairs and saw a door on the other side, leading down to what she assumed was a basement. It was slightly open. She thought she could see a faint glow, but then it was pitch black again.

Then she heard a sound behind her, rushing along the hallway she’d just come along, and she took her baton and flicked it open and held it above her shoulder.

Then she heard a familiar sound.

‘Jesus Christ, Sparky, I nearly peed myself there,’ she said as the dog rushed at her, wagging his tail.

‘Shug’s gone,’ Muckle said in a whisper. ‘He and Mann have both disappeared. I looked in the bus garage, but there was no sign of him. The only thing I saw was a half-eaten chocolate bar still in its wrapper.’

‘Where do you think they went?’

Suddenly, a light came on downstairs.

Forty

‘Are you okay?’ Harry asked Denise. The woman looked ashen, like all the blood had evaporated from her body.

‘I’m scared.’

‘It’s going to be alright,’ Dunbar said. ‘These officers here are going to escort you to a safe house, just for the time being.’ He nodded towards Eve Bell and Karen Shiels. ‘Two other officers are waiting outside for you. That’s four members of my team who I would trust with my life. Nobody is going to come near you, especially Marshall Mann.’

‘Thank you.’ She had stopped crying, but shock had set in. ‘Are you sure about all of this? There’s no room for error? Maybe a mistake was made?’

Harry could see the hope in her eyes, the faintest glimmer that she was holding on to. She was waiting for words of comfort that weren’t going to come.

‘I’m sorry, there’s no mistake. It was double-checked, and we had a computer expert run over the details and he was able to confirm what we thought. The man you moved in with isn’t what you thought he was. But let me ask you one thing: he said you rode the bus back to the garage with him at the end of a shift recently. And you were standing on the bus kissing him. Is that true?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I wasn’t on his bus.’

Harry knew then that what Dougal Dixon had witnessed was Mann taking a young girl back to the garage to have sex with her.

Denise left with the officers, then Harry, Dunbar and Stewart went through the door and down the stairs.

‘I thought these bastard things had lights in them,’ Calvin Stewart said as they walked along the tunnel, their torchlight bouncing off the walls. Pipes and conduits were high up and seemed to go on forever.

‘They do, but we can’t switch them on,’ Dunbar said in a tone that was normally reserved for somebody who was drunk and couldn’t understand why it was so difficult to get his trousers off.

‘I haven’t done this much walking since…well, maybe at Tulliallan. Not outside anyway. I walk on a treadmill at home. What about you, Harry? You a street or treadmill man?’

‘Street. I like the fresh air.’

‘I like to watch Netflix while I’m on my treadmill, and I can still walk when it’s pishing down outside. What about you, Jimmy?’

‘Do I look like I exercise?’

‘You do, actually. Skinny bastard. You make me fucking sick at times. Here’s me and Harry having to sweat like a pair of bastards to keep the weight off, while you eat all the shite under the sun and stay like a beanpole.’

‘I thought you said the doc told you that you have the metabolism of a furnace?’

‘I did. He did. But I still have to keep myself healthy. Especially now, since my wife fucked off. I’m thinking of going on that dating site – what’s it called again? Kindling or something.’

‘Tinder.’

‘Aye, I knew it had something to do with fire.’

‘As long as your baws don’t feel like they’re on fire after you’ve been out with some wee hoor,’ Harry said.

‘Thanks for that image, there.’

The three men were speed-walking and their breaths were coming