“Precisely.” He smiled again, then said abruptly, “Still, enough of this. I’m afraid it’s time to stage Michael Brewer’s final murder. Sorry you’ve got involved, Carole – though it is, it has to be said, completely your own fault. If you and your chubby friend had not stuck your noses into other people’s business, then your quiet little life in Fethering could have continued uninterrupted. But, as it is, I’m afraid you have got involved, and there’s no way I can allow you to live to tell the tale.”
Carole made a sudden dash for the entrance to the copse, but it was pathetic how short a distance she had travelled before Robert brought her down in a rugby tackle. “No. Sorry. You’re not going to get away.”
Trying another escape seemed pointless. She looked hopefully at Michael Brewer’s prone form. He was breathing, but showed no sign of consciousness. My own bloody fault, thought Carole savagely. Why did I have to hit him so hard?
“Do you have a petrol can in the car? I have my own supplies, but…”
There was no point in denial. Robert Coleman would find the can in the boot, anyway. So much for prudence, thought Carole. Though she’d never had cause to use it, she’d always carried a spare can of fuel in the Renault. In case of emergency. Now it was going to be the cause of an emergency.
The keys were still in the ignition. Robert Coleman ripped them out and opened the boot. Then he opened the two doors on the driver’s side of the car. He unscrewed the top off the petrol can, and began to pour.
“No,” said Carole instinctively. “Not over the upholstery.”
He laughed at the incongruity of that, but she couldn’t see the joke.
Robert Coleman splashed some more petrol over the Renault’s bodywork, then cruelly over Carole’s front. He trickled a trail across the ground to where Michael Brewer lay, and upended the remains of the can over the unconscious man. The drenching did nothing to bring the victim round. Brewer lay there, unmoving except for his shallow breathing.
Robert Coleman took a disposable gas lighter out of his jacket pocket. “After I’ve set fire to the car, I’ll leave this beside dear old Mick. Serve him right, the police will say. Hoist with his own petard.”
He faced Carole. “Get in the car.”
Numbly, she moved towards the open driver’s door.
“No, in the back.” They were the most chilling words she had ever heard.
The petrol fumes were disgusting, burning the back of her throat as she slid inside the Renault. She felt the slime of the fuel penetrating her skirt. In her mind the fatuous thought formed that she’d never get the upholstery properly clean again.
Robert Coleman slammed the front door shut. She looked up at him through the other door, the only opening in her private crematorium.
“Aren’t you going to strangle me?” she asked. “Like the others?”
He chuckled. “Only if you try to escape. Otherwise, I don’t think I need bother.”
He slammed the remaining door shut. The petrol fumes were so intense that Carole could hardly breathe.
Through the car window, she could see Robert Coleman hold up the lighter as he backed away towards Michael Brewer’s body.
“I’ll light it from the edge,” she could just hear him saying with a silly giggle. “Don’t want to get my fingers burned, do I?”
Robert Coleman had already destroyed Michael Brewer’s life once. And now, as he stood beside the man’s prone body, he prepared to do it a second, more permanent, time. He flicked the lighter flame into life.
Carole Seddon held her breath, not only to shut out the fumes, but also as though in some way that might lessen the inevitable agony.
What happened next was so fast as to be almost a blur. Michael Brewer’s body jerked into action. From the ground his legs scissored and slammed against Robert Coleman’s knees, sending him flying away from the petrol-soaked area.
Immediately, Michael Brewer was on his feet, grabbing his quarry once again by the lapels, lifting him up like a rag doll and slamming his back against the broad trunk of a tree. As Robert Coleman sank dazed to the ground, Brewer reached in and removed the gun from his pocket.
Keeping the gun trained on his enemy, he backed towards the Renault and opened the back door.
Carole Seddon burst out of her malodorous prison, and in sheer relief pressed herself against her rescuer. Fumes of petrol rose around the two of them.
Forty
Robert Coleman’s eyes opened, and took a moment to focus on the tall man with a gun who faced him. “What are you going to do, Mick? Kill me?” The question was almost a sneer.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. Often, over the last thirty years. And don’t think I’m not tempted now.”
He pointed the gun at the heart of the crumpled man on the woodland floor. Carole saw the finger whiten as it tensed against the trigger, and she could feel Michael Brewer’s desire for the purgation that this death would bring.
A long moment elapsed. Then, his inner demon vanquished, he lowered the gun. “But no. I want you to be punished as I was punished.”
Half an hour later, Carole and Michael Brewer stood in the petrol-reeking clearing. Robert Coleman was safely tied up in the old cellar, with the metal lid firmly closed on him. It was nearly dark. Through the gaps in the trees they could see the daylight dwindling over the Downs.
“So what do we do now?” asked Carole. “Call the police?”
His response was an automatic and distinctive “No!”
“But this is a police matter. We’re both witnesses to what Robert tried to do to us. He should be in custody.”
“I’m not questioning that, but I’m not going to let a policeman get near me.”
Carole tried to soothe the paranoia she saw in his eyes. “Michael – Mick, it’s all right now. Your nightmare’s over. We know the truth. And we can tell the truth. At last justice can be done.”
“I’m still not going near the police,” he insisted doggedly.
“Mick, the police are on your side. On the side of justice.”
He barked out a bitter laugh. “You dare tell me that? I had my bellyful of the police thirty years ago. On the side of justice? They didn’t listen to me. They believed what was easiest to believe. The police stitched me up.”
“It was Robert Coleman who stitched you up.”
“The police helped. They wanted me sent down. They were part of the conspiracy with all the other authorities: the judges and banisters who convicted me; the judges who rejected my appeals; the prison officers who made my life hell. I’m never again going to get close enough to the police for them to arrest me. Because experience has taught me that, with my record, that’s the first thing they would do.”
Carole wanted to argue, but she knew that the long build-up of distrust would not easily be shifted. And, insome ways, she could not help feeling sympathy for his view. Given what had happened in his life – spending thirty years under a brutal prison regime for a crime he did not commit – Michael Brewer was entitled to be paranoid.
“That’s presumably why you didn’t approach the police after Howard’s murder? You must have known Robert had done it.”
“Of course I did, but there was no way I was going to put myself at risk. Robert’s framed me once, and he’s quite capable of framing me again. Come on, if it came to a choice between him and me, who would the police go for? Ex-copper and bloody Justice of the Peace? Or the lag who’s just done a thirty-year stretch for murder?”
Carole could see his logic, and part of the reason for his instinct to hide himself away. She felt enormous pity for the man, the way his trust in everything had been destroyed. “Listen,” she said, “what you need is legal representation.”