The Dead Lie Down (Adam Lennox Thrillers: Book One) (31 page)

A
cold feeling in one leg told him he had not been concentrating on where he was
going. They had strayed into a watery, mud-covered area, where grazing animals
had gathered and moved as one. A curse from behind him told him that Gerry
didn't appreciate it either. They stopped to take stock. They were dropping into
a shallow valley from where the ground rose again on the other side, giving way
to a grassy rise. Out in the open on top of the rise, showing clear in the
moonlight were the ruined walls of the old chapel silhouetted against the
star-studded sky. Adam wished that he had paid more detailed attention to the
layout of the chapel ruins on his previous visits. His memory was only general,
not detailed, and might be the difference between success and failure. He could
recall a grass floor, internal walls that had all but disappeared, scattered
boulders randomly perched on the grass like a giant Boule set.

They picked their way carefully down into the bottom of the valley and were
forced to ford the ankle deep water of the river, moving quickly into the
bracken on the far bank. Further cursing from Gerry was cut off by the sound of
Adam's mobile breaking into the silence. Adam hit the answer button to ensure
the ringing stopped and only then looked at the display to register the caller
ID.

His voice was a barely audible whisper when it came.

"Ford, what is it?"

Initially he thought the call had dropped out as there was no reply and was
about to hit call cancel when some garbled and broken words came over the
ether.

"...Fran.....shoplifter......Helen.... died. Suspicious circumst...."

Infuriatingly the call was lost, but within a few agonising seconds Ford tried
to reconnect.

"Yes?" Adam hissed, not wanting to waste time. Again Ford's distorted voice
could be heard uttering occasional garbled words.

"......death in custody.....vendetta...."

Adam's impatience broke through. "How does it relate to this?"

For seconds there was no intelligible response, and when it finally came it
consisted of two decipherable words.

"..Bel...Danger" and then the call dropped out again.

Adam tried to call out but his limited service wouldn't even make a
connection.

Adam, back in Commander mode, took two, perhaps three seconds decide that the
call had changed nothing, and put the phone away after switching it to
vibrate.

They moved to the edge of the bracken where the grass took over and the cover
ran out. The moon still gave reasonable illumination but a quick check gave hope
that the broken cloud would give some cover soon. Adam did not relish being
silhouetted against the moon.

He turned to Gerry who appeared to be shivering beside him.

"Are you okay?"

"Hell yes," came his response, "my training as a newspaper editor prepared me
well for this very eventuality." The sarcasm, far from being veiled, was
brightly lit with all the candlepower of a major rock concert.

Adam smiled. "I need you to move around the edge of this cover. You'll
eventually come to trees, and forty feet into the trees you'll find a track. If
I'm not back in twenty minutes then high-tail it down that track until you hit
habitation and raise the alarm."

"And you'll be where?" asked Gerry.

Adam avoided the question. "You're a good friend Gerry."

Gerry shammed affront. "I'm a great friend, what's all this 'good' shit."

Adam smiled despite himself. "Ted Danson, 'Three Men and a Baby', right?"

"Close. 'Three Men and a Little Lady', but in the circumstances I'll give it to
you," conceded Gerry, and disappeared into the gloom.

Chapter 42

Adam surveyed the ground between himself and the outer walls of the chapel and
decided to wait for cloud cover. As he recalled it, the chapel had originally
been a fairly simple square structure with three or four small rooms and a
larger sanctuary. It was originally meant for seclusion rather than worship.
Little remained of most of the inner walls. The outer walls, of undressed stone
, very little of the mortar remaining, stood some twenty feet high. He
desperately tried to remember if there was any way of climbing the walls and
failed to convince himself either way. The corners of the main walls had
crumbled away leaving four stretches of wall in a square. There was deep shadow
once below the walls but getting there was the issue.

He checked the progress of the cloud cover, which seemed to have thickened and
consolidated. In the distance a rumble of thunder forecast the promise of rain.
That could even up a lot of disadvantages, and Adam was well aware of it, but his
twenty minutes was running down.

He moved slowly to his right, keeping in semi-cover and before he had gone far
the aroma of garlic reached his nostrils. Gerry detested garlic so either this
was an innocent out for a late night stroll, or one of the opposition.

The automatic rifle slung over the shoulder suggested the latter. Adam pulled
the knife from his belt sheath and moved out over the soft ground. As he
approached he recognised the bullet head and broken nose of Holt. As soon as he
was in range he lunged forward, swinging the knife. He pulled him backwards off
balance and brought an arm around the throat forcing the head back and letting
him feel the edge of the knife blade.

"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way," hissed Adam.

His opponent voted with his feet, and with surprising force pushed Adam
backwards, swivelling round to face him in one movement. The lunge was his
undoing. Adam brought the knife down and as his opponent moved in towards him
the knife blade slipped between the appropriate ribs.

The body dropped satisfyingly quietly to the ground. Adam wiped the knife and
put it away.

Fifteen minutes in, and his cloud cover arrived. Anticipating the darkest point
he weaved his way across the open ground, changing shape to avoid foreign eyes
pattern detection. Well that's what someone had told him once anyway. Working
his way around the base of the walls, searching for a way through that would
lend him advantage he detected light within the ruins somewhere. He encountered
no one on his recce which struck him as odd. Sitting in a lighted enclosed area
whilst an adversary can attack from the shadows were never good tactics, but
Reilly had never struck Adam as a dumb tactician, still he could be wrong and
there was always a first time for everything.

He decided on his preferred way in when a voice stopped him in his tracks.
Reilly the tactician.

"Lennox." he called. "I think you should come in and join us, me and your friend
Gerry here."

Clever ruse or trump card? Adam risked a sneak view around the corner of a wall
and dismay filled him like a cold shower in the Arctic. In the largest room, lit
by two electric lanterns, stood Reilly, gun in hand. At his feet knelt the
aforementioned Gerry, hands tied behind his back, secured by the modern-day
handcuffs, tie-wraps. Behind them stood a big man, six-six, two hundred and
fifty pounds at least, and he too was armed. His face seemed vaguely familiar to
Adam but he couldn't place where from.

In his current position Gerry was between himself and Reilly, giving Reilly the
advantage of being able to cover them both. Adam moved slightly away from the
wall and moved slowly around the outside to the opposite corner. Reilly grew
impatient.

"I know you're there Lennox. Come in where I can see you. Keep the gun above
your head and then toss it away from you. Do what I say or he dies."

Adam weighed up the odds of either of them surviving this, and the result wasn't
worth betting on even for an addicted gambler.

"Kill him, and there's no way you're getting the package," he yelled.

Reilly assimilated the change of position and moved appropriately.

"You're forgetting I've also got your girlfriend," responded Reilly.

The last word grated coming from his mouth. Adam moved yet again to a third
corner, aiming to disconcert those inside.

"I think you're bluffing. I think you've killed her already. Where is she? I
want to see her."

Reilly swivelled yet again and started to show some exasperation.

"I'm afraid I didn't bring her to this party, but never fear, she's close
by."

This time Adam moved all the way around to the corner behind Reilly. He assessed
Gerry's chances if Adam blew Reilly's head off from where he was. Yet again the
odds weren't good enough for his liking.

"That's strange because I didn't bring the package with me either, so where does
that leave us?"

Reilly spun round to assimilate the new position.

"Don't play games with me Lennox. I don't play games."

"Neither does your friend with the rifle that I met on my way in," declared Adam
as he continued his move around the outside of the walls.

There was the crack of a shot from within the room.

Adam stepped into the room, gun cradled in both hands, pointing at Reilly's
head.

Gerry was still in one piece, physically at least.

"That was below the belt, Reilly," accused Adam.

On his first syllable both Reilly and his henchman were quick on their toes. The
former hiding behind Gerry whilst the latter brought his high calibre pistol to
bear on Adam.

There was a moment's silence which Reilly was the first to break.

"So where is the package?"

No one moved a muscle although Gerry appeared, to the keen eye, to be
shaking.

"It's in a safe in London, for which I alone have the combination." Nice touch
thought Adam, good words, very Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps his nerves weren't
holding up as well as he thought.

Some Irish explicatives spewed out of Reilly's mouth, not that Adam was familiar
with the language but some things you just couldn't miss.

"Your friend with the rifle," said Adam, "he's making his excuses to St. Peter
even as we speak."

There was the merest flicker in Reilly's eyes before he fell back on his
original plan.

"Lennox, you have a count of five to drop the gun or I blow your friend's head
off."

Adam indulged himself a smile. "At which point I blow your head off and your
friend blows my head off. A bit of a lose/lose situation n'est-ce pas."

Reilly wasn't impressed with the reasoning or couldn't calculate the odds. One
way or another he started to count, and Adam lifted himself onto the balls of
his feet.

Reilly got past two but didn't make it to three before all hell broke loose.

On the stroke of two Adam took a dive to his left, keeping Reilly's head on
target but before he could squeeze the trigger a shot rang out of the darkness
and the henchman dropped like a stone, or a boulder at least. Reilly reacted
fast, dropping Gerry and bringing his gun to bear on the new threat, but before
his gun was level three more 'cracks' boomed out into the night and he went down
backwards, pole-axed with three shots in the chest.

With reactions unbecoming a publicity agent, Adam was at Reilly's side before the
echoes died.

Blood was flowing fairly freely from the wounds in stomach and chest. Adam
turned Reilly's face to meet his eyes.

"Where is Bel? What have you done with Bel?" he demanded.

Reilly's eyes were having trouble focussing and breath was slipping away from
him.

He opened his mouth but Adam had to lean down to hear him. "That's not fair. You
didn't say you had help," he murmured. "Fran, we didn't kill Fran." He coughed
up some blood, and seemed to gather some strength as a result. "Fran, we didn't
kill Fran," he repeated. He met Adam's eyes for a final time and muttered,
"Didn't kill Fran." His voice almost pleaded but the effort had been too much.
His eyes glazed.

Adam shook him. "Where is Bel?" he shouted.

Reilly appeared to lose consciousness. Adam desperately picked him up and Reilly
coughed up some more blood. A weak crooked smile played on his lips and he
muttered in no more than a whisper. "The sluice. She's in the sluice, unless the
sea has her already."

Reilly's body relaxed and then shuddered before going limp and his eyes rolled
into his head.

Adam dropped him. He became aware of Gerry's voice for the first time.

"Don't worry, don't mind me, I'll be fine," came the caustic remark. "Do you
think we better scarper before someone starts taking pot shots at us as
well."

His emphasis on the word 'us' brought Adam back as he realised they didn't know
who had done the shooting. He snipped Gerry's bonds with his knife and they
moved out of the light and into the shadows.

The sluice was no more than three hundred yards away downhill and yet it seemed
an eternity to Adam before they reached the walled surround. He climbed up and
sat astride the wall using his flash-light to play over the sluice itself.

Confident expectation turned to ice. The sluice was empty, save for water
rushing through to the sea as the water level was lowered inside the nature
reserve. Adam was speechless as turmoil consumed his brain. He continued to
search the utmost corners of the sluice in desperation, calling out Bel's name,
and almost missed the sight of her jacket caught on a nail protruding from the
wall. Far from being an encouragement it seemed to be the seal on her fate,
whether she had been alive or dead when the gates had opened there was no hope
for her now.

He had lost. He had lost Bel, others had died and for what? It all seemed
pointless now. Weariness overtook him and he slumped forward on top of the wall.
It was only because of the fact that he was leaning on his phone that he
realised it was vibrating. Somehow anything now seemed pointless to him but
sheer habit made him pick it out of his pocket and read the text message on the
screen. He frowned for a few seconds before lifting his eyes to the horizon and
jumping off the wall. He scrambled over to Gerry who was still trying to get his
breath back.