“Sir?”
“That’s exactly what Frank Allardice could dump on us if we don’t handle this very carefully indeed, Vince. As you so rightly say—he knows where the bodies are buried,” Quinlan said. “Frank put a lot of people away who thoroughly deserved to be locked up,” he went on, “but sometimes his methods left something to be desired—as I’m sure you know better than most.”
“I was his DC for a while when I came up out of uniform sir, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well then you’ll know that Allardice was a great believer in the so-called Ways & Means Act—if he didn’t get them for something they actually did, he’d get them for something they might have done instead. Net result was the same.”
“Given the way half the little toerags bleat on about being under arrest as a ‘violation of their human rights’ sir, there are some of us who’d still agree with that today.”
“And to hell with the law, Vince?”
O’Neill coloured at the dry tone. “We have to be given some room to manoeuvre sir, or you may as well do away with all the real coppers and employ a bunch of trained chimpanzees.”
Quinlan gave a snort and ducked his head towards the two images on the flatscreen. “Sometimes I think we already do that.”
“I warned them he was canny.” O’Neill paused, chose his words carefully. “In some ways I can’t help hoping I was right.”
“Oh?”
“Well if it comes out that Frank Allardice is mixed up in anything dodgy we’ll have a wave of miscarriage of justice claims to contend with.” He wondered if he’d gone too far but Quinlan was way ahead of him.
“And if it all comes out just as I’m leaving then nobody will believe my retirement is voluntary.” He returned to the desk, slumped into his seat and leaned back a little. “You certainly know how to put a blight on a man’s day, Vince.”
“Sorry sir,” O’Neill said cheerfully. “Do you want me to recall Pinky and Perky—put some fresh faces onto him?”
“No, you may as well leave them in place. A visible deterrent might encourage him to keep his nose clean while he’s over here I suppose, although I’m not holding my breath on that one.”
O’Neill nodded, was about to turn away when he felt compelled to ask, “What about Kelly Jacks sir?”
Quinlan’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “What about her?”
“Do you think she was a victim of the Ways & Means Act too?”
The sudden stillness told O’Neill he had overstepped the mark. “Certainly not,” Quinlan said. “I was there, don’t forget. I remember how she was found—the state she was in. That’s one conviction I’d stand by with no qualms at all.”
O’Neill nodded. “Good to know,” he said.
91
Kelly came round to the smell of the sawmill and the violent clatter of iron on wood.
She was face down on a scratchy surface that gave slightly under her when she floundered up to hands and knees. That was as far as she got for a while, blinking as she tried to clear her head.
And all the time a voice in the back of her mind was wailing, Not again!
She forced herself to focus past the dull nauseating thump inside her head. Her jaw felt like she’d bounced off a truck and gone back for a rematch. She flexed it from side to side, brought a hand up. Her chin was tender and she’d possibly loosened a couple of teeth but the joint itself still seemed to be in one piece.
A miracle in itself.
She focused on the ground under her. Not soft earth or grass but wood shavings which accounted for the smell she’d recognised. She’d had an uncle out near Enfield—long dead now—who used to potter in his garden shed making furniture. During visits as a child Kelly had been fascinated by the pale curls of wafer-thin wood that fell like snowflakes with each steady pass of the plane.
The sound that had woken her came again, a sharply demanding scrape and thunderous bang. Like someone kicking a heavy wooden door with steel-toecap boots. It took her a moment longer to realise that’s exactly what it was.
Only the someone was actually a something instead.
A horse.
Kelly sat upright and scrambled backwards expecting to see some huge animal rearing over her but she was alone.
She was, however, in a stable—a loose-box about fifteen feet square with a bed of wood shavings spread across the floor six inches deep and banked up around the edges.
After another five minutes or so, when her heart rate had settled, Kelly was able to get to her feet and explore the parameters of her prison.
The stable was blockwork construction, lined to about four feet with vertical timber planks. There was a door and a window in one wall. The window had bars every three inches—narrow enough, presumably, to stop a horse getting its nose through.
When Kelly peered out cautiously through the grimy cobwebbed glass she could see a row of similar stables opposite, across a swept concrete yard. Behind the other stables was the roof of a substantial stone house. If she craned into the corner she could just see the back door. It was closed. There were no people about.
She gave the stable door an experimental rattle but both upper and lower halves were bolted from the outside. A bucket of fresh water and a filled hayrack suggested the box was in use or would be shortly.
So this was a temporary holding cell.
Is that good or bad?
Kelly could not remember being transported here from the woods but could only imagine that here was the trainer’s yard she’d been watching earlier. The buildings she could see looked similar.
And at least she could remember everything that had happened right up to the point she got herself clobbered. She touched a hand to her jaw again and reflected that having to eat soup for a while was a small price to pay.
It could have been worse.
She looked around her. The walls on either side of the loose-box did not go all the way up to the peak. They were flat—level with the eaves—so the row of stables shared a common open roof space. Above the walls were only dust-covered beams and the felt underside of the roof itself. Considering the walls and door were built to keep three-quarter-ton horses from straying, forcing her way out there was a non-starter.
The roof, however, might be a different matter.
Kelly dipped a hand into the bucket and splashed a little water onto her face. It was cold enough to have a wake-up effect. She was thirsty but not enough to try drinking it.
They’d taken her backpack and the keys to the Omega, which had been in a trouser pocket, but they’d left her boots. Not the best outcome but again, not as bad as it could have been.