“Don’t ask me,” Turner replied, raising his shoulders. “I skipped chapel every time I could.”
“We’ll run it through the computer,” the chief inspector said. “All that stuff’s in digital form now.”
“Sounds like someone really had it in for this Father Prendegast,” Turner said.
Karen Oaten looked back at the mutilated body on the altar. “I think we already knew that, Taff,” she said, shaking her head at him slowly.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling his face begin to glow, “I suppose we did.”
The two heavily built men came over the ridge in the gloom, five meters between them. The last of the sun had disappeared into the clouds over the Atlantic and it was chilly on the moor-chilly enough for the hardiest walker to have headed back to the warmth of civilization hours ago. A damp wind was coming off the sea. Upland Devon was as unforgiving as ever.
“Anything, Rommel?” the man on the left said in a low voice.
“Fuck all, Geronimo,” his companion grunted, checking the luminous compass on his right wrist. “According to the coordinates you worked out, we should have found him by now.”
The first man looked around stealthily. He was wearing muddy camouflage fatigues. “To hell with this,” he said, drawing his combat knife from the sheath on his belt. “I’m not having him do us again.” The honed blade glinted in the light of the full moon that was rising in the east.
“Wolfe’s never been caught, Geronimo.” Rommel wiped moisture from his crew-cut hair. “Not by anyone.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“And it’s not tonight,” came a voice from behind them.
The two men spun on their heels. Rommel’s arm was grabbed and the knife chopped from it in a practiced karate move. He was jerked round to face Geronimo, a blade at his throat.
“Game over,” said the assailant with a dry laugh. He released his captive and pushed him forward. “Christ, guys, I could hear you coming a mile off.”
“Bollocks,” Geronimo said, twisting his lips beneath a drooping mustache. “We took all the necessary precautions.” He shone a torch on the ground between them.
Wolfe shrugged. “Okay, from five hundred meters, then.” He glanced down at his victim. “You all right?”
Rommel nodded. “Take more than that to break any of my bones,” he said, glaring at the taller man.
“Good. The Special Air Service is proud of you.” Wolfe slipped his knife back into its sheath. “Well, slightly.”
“Can we get back to the Land Rover now?” Geronimo asked.
Wolfe’s expression grew more serious. “You must be joking. We’re staying on the moor for another night. Don’t worry. It’s only a six-mile hike to the bivouac.”
The other two exchanged glances and then grinned.
“Better get going, then,” Rommel said, picking up his blade.
Wolfe nodded. “Good. I reckon you two are just about ready for our little jaunt to the big city.”
They took a bearing and started walking northeast.
“How did you do it?” Geronimo asked after several minutes of rapid movement over the sparsely covered plateau. “How did you creep up on us?”
There was a long silence as their leader sniffed the wind. “I used all my experience and fieldcraft.” He looked down a long valley, apparently sensing something in the dark. “And I had a purpose. You know that training ops like this are useless without a purpose.”
“And the purpose is to track down the bastard who you reckon did for one of us,” Rommel said.
“Correct. No one, repeat no one, fucks with an SAS sergeant, even if he’s retired like Wellington was. Whoever it was is going to die in agony.” Wolfe cocked an ear and raised his right arm. “They’re down by the stream. Two of them. They must have got separated from their little friends.”
Rommel and Geronimo drew closer.
“Exmoor pony for dinner again?” the latter asked, his voice level.
“Unless you’ve got a better idea,” Wolfe replied.
The three men whose combat names had been chosen from warriors of old moved silently down the track in search of prey, their eyes reflecting the moon’s cold light.
6
I looked at Sara, my lower jaw dropping. The five grand. What the hell was I going to tell her?
“I’m waiting, Matt,” she said, her eyes locked on me. Sara had a disconcerting way of going from very loving to dead serious in a split second.
“Ah, right.” I went over to the bed. “It’s…it’s money.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Very funny. Is it yours?” She glanced down. “There must be thousands here.”
“Um, five,” I said, racking my brains for a credible explanation. “Five thousand.”
“Five thousand pounds in cash?” Sara picked up one of the bundles and sniffed it. “What did you do? Rob a bank?”
“No, of course not. It’s…it’s a down payment.”
“On what?”
I had it. “Actually,” I said, sitting down beside her, “it’s a bit embarrassing.”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a laugh. “I love embarrassment.”
“Bloody journalists,” I said, receiving an elbow in my ribs. “Ow. Bastard journalists.” I gave her a playful push.
“I’m waiting,” she said, her expression serious again.
I looked her in the eye. I’d read how FBI agents were trained to do that, how it put them in a position of strength. “Well, I’ve been asked to ghostwrite the autobiography of a gangland enforcer.” I’d also read somewhere that, if you’re going to lie, you should keep as close to the truth as you can.
Sara seemed to have bought it. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’ve been sworn to secrecy until the book’s finished.” I clenched my fists and raised them. “And you don’t want to mess with this guy, know ‘wot’ I mean?”
A smile spread across her lips. “I might be prepared to pay for the information,” she said, sliding a hand across my thigh. “Up front, know ‘wot’ I mean?”
“That is an atrocious attempt at Cockney.”
She slapped my leg. “And yours was better?”
I started to collect the bundles.
“He paid you in cash?” she said, looking dubious again. “Did you sign a contract?”
“No. His is a cash business, innit?”
“All right,” she said, after giving it some thought. “I won’t tell the Inland Revenue.” She grabbed my wrist. “But I want first option on any juicy bits, okay? The paper will pay well.”
“I’ll see,” I said noncommittally. “That’ll be up to the man himself.”
Sara watched as I put the money in a holdall. “You’d better bank that tomorrow,” she said, stretching her arms behind her head. “You know how unsafe this place is. You haven’t even got an alarm.”
I nodded. I knew only too well how unsafe my flat was. And how unsafe Lucy and Caroline were in our former family home. But the sight of the woman I loved waiting to be undressed on my bed drove away the fears. I brushed away the realization that my sparring with the lunatic and the disposal of Happy had aroused me, too. I didn’t know what that said about my psychological condition.
Afterward Sara fell asleep quickly-she’d been away on assignments a lot recently. That left me on my own and anxiety gripped me again. What was I going to do about the White Devil? I wrestled with the problem for a long time.
The last time I looked at my watch, it was three-thirty. Sleep wasn’t coming, and neither was anything like a plan of action.
Sara left first thing, after giving me a kiss and ruffling my hair. She was going to her place in Clapham to change for the office. I had a shower and got dressed, then headed off to pick up Lucy. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing how she was taking Happy’s disappearance.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Caroline and Shami had concocted a story that the dog had gone to dog hospital and that the dog doctors were taking care of her. My ex-wife told me that in a whispered conversation before she went to catch her train.
“Daddy?” Lucy said as we walked away from the house.