The Siren (34 page)

He started the engine, and checked his watch before he pulled out on to the road, continuing in the same direction as before. As he changed up through the gears, crunching into second and again
into third, he shook his head and indulged in a little smirk. He was entitled to suffer from some nerves, after all, and as much as this part of it was risky, it was also the climax of his plan.
Nerves were good: they kept the mind in focus and the adrenaline pumping – and never had his mind been more focused. This, finally, was his endgame, and the prize was almost within his
grasp.

Kincaide passed Burwell and reached the outskirts of Fordham, with the marked car in tow and a helicopter overhead. The Transit van seemed to have vanished into thin air, and
the worry that it was somewhere behind them was beginning to niggle at the back of Kincaide’s mind.

He pressed on, desperately hoping that he’d round the next bend to find the van had crashed, involving only a minor RTA and a humiliating arrest. There would be good coverage from that,
his friends in the press would want pictures and then, as far as the police shots went, it would be him.

He approached a T-junction but there was still nothing in sight. Left or right?

Where the fuck was that van?

Better look decisive. He turned left.

Kincaide considered the report of the blood on the wall at Viva Cottage. He hoped it wasn’t Kimberly’s, since rescuing a dead mother wouldn’t have the same impact.

But then, again, he’d get the credit for apprehending a killer.

He uttered one word aloud, ‘Cool.’

The following police car was approaching tight in his rear-view mirror, so he squeezed the steering wheel and leant forward, trying to see further up the road. He was definitely the man of the
moment.

Another hundred yards and the radio crackled.

‘
All units. Renault Megane involved in suspicious behaviour on the level crossing between Burwell and Fordham. Please respond.
’

Perhaps there was no connection? ‘Shit.’ Of course there was a connection.

The railway line was about half a mile behind him.

He slammed on the brakes and immediately swung across the road and into a wide driveway on his right, mounting the pavement in order to make the turn. As he suspected, PC Rimes, driving the
other car, knew the area less well. Rimes now shot past him, fumbling through a turn further up the road.

The chopper banked sideways and would have the crossing in sight almost instantly.

Kincaide screeched back up the same road. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to reach the vehicle first.

No. No. No.

He turned right, back on to the Burwell road. The level crossing was ahead, the gates open, traffic flowing freely.

‘They’re not here,’ he yelled as he drove across it.

Marks replied, ‘There’s another crossing. Can you see it?’

Kincaide looked, and immediately spotted it to his right.

‘It’s about half a mile.’

The next right-hand turn led to nothing much except the railway itself and the adjacent but unoccupied crossing keeper’s cottage.

The helicopter hovered above, and straddling the tracks was a dark-blue Renault.

Marks spoke again. ‘If they are in the car, get them out. There’s a train due in three minutes, and we can’t seem to make contact with it.’

Kincaide pulled up at the side of the road, and leapt from his vehicle at a run. He scrambled to the top of a grassy mound rising ten yards back from the track. The car had three occupants:
Stefan Golinski in the driver’s seat, Kimberly Guyver sitting next to him, and PC Sue Gully in the back.

‘There’s a train coming. Move the car,’ he shouted. ‘Move the fucking car.’ Kimberly turned her head in his direction, but no one else moved.

Kincaide looked along the track in both directions. There was nothing in sight. But he’d heard of trains gliding silently into groups of railway workers and he stayed put.

He didn’t yell again, just stared down into the car. Stefan stared at the middle of the steering wheel, content to wait. At peace with the decision that they all should die.

But Kimberly never looked away from him, her eyes pleading with him, begging him to help.

Gully lay in the back of the car, but it was hard to see her clearly.

He could pick out the blue of her uniform, and the white of her upturned palm. And the rust-red smears that soiled it.

He saw her fingers move, folding in as if to grip another imaginary hand.

He looked up and down the track once more. There was still nothing to see. But, even so, he knew the helping hand wouldn’t be his. His feet had become rooted, and the pounding of his heart
had overtaken his ability to act.

He looked away again. The field next to him was part of a nursery growing ornamental trees that were trained up bamboo canes. In one row were slender shrubs with weeping pink leaves. They looked
like stick men draped with occasional chunks of flesh.

He felt sweat squeezing out on to his forehead and he hoped he wouldn’t throw up.

FORTY-FOUR

It was one continuous road to Burwell, and Goodhew knew it well. A few twists through village streets then the open countryside: centuries old farmland with small communities
gathered every few miles along the old highway.

The road zigzagged through ninety-degree bends in Swaffham Bulbeck, and on past the white sails of the windmills at Swaffham Prior.

Then fields. Immense flat fields that stretched out towards the distant low horizon.

The rain had stopped at the outskirts of Cambridge. Here there was mellowing sunlight, and the dome of the sky was skimmed with grey cloud combed into parallel lines, like ribs.

In the far distance, the sky seemed to exaggerate the earth’s curve. pushing it downwards.

Pylons strode from right to left, like giants disappearing into the distance, vanishing as mere specks twenty miles away.

Goodhew noticed another speck, this one ahead of him, just a dot moving through the air.

The police helicopter.

As he reached the edge of Burwell, he didn’t slow, but raced through the place at double the speed limit. He willed that no one would step off a pavement. He willed that the housing would
soon finish. The village was only two miles from end to end, but each one of them felt like ten.

He finally broke out on to the open road, and now he could see the dot of the helicopter again, but this time it was hovering.

Telegraph poles followed the road, running alongside his car. They marked the way ahead, flitting past him with increasing frequency. The hedgerow dropped back, and in the distance he could see
the level crossing.

He heard Marks: ‘We can’t stop the train.’

The crossing was still a mile away, but he was closing in at sixty. He saw the red warning lights start to flash and the barriers begin to fall.

Goodhew yelled to Marks, ‘There’s no one there!’

But, as he said it, his eyes were drawn to where the helicopter hovered half a mile to his left.

‘The other crossing,’ Marks shouted. ‘To your left, over to your left.’

Goodhew skidded into Cockpen Road, saw the freight train rumbling through the first crossing even as he made the turn.

The second crossing was two hundred yards straight ahead of him.

Cars littered the side of the road. People stood with their doors open, staring at the Renault Megane stationary on the track.

Goodhew held his line, furiously hitting his horn and leaving them to find their own way clear.

He heard the frantic warning of the locomotive’s horn, the squeal of the brakes the driver was now applying one and a half miles too late.

A moment before the impact Goodhew prayed.

Prayed he was fast enough to miss the train. And slow enough not to kill them all.

He broke through the crossing barrier, a crack and splinter which had barely begun to register before being swallowed up by the impact of metal on metal, as he slammed into the
rear of the Megane.

His airbag launched itself, his eyes closed, and he flopped into its bulging arms.

He didn’t know where he’d ended up, or whether his car lay in the path of the train.

He kept his eyes shut, and waited for one long second. He prayed everyone else was clear.

And not dead.

The train’s brakes still screamed as it roared past, rocking the patrol car on the remains of its suspension.

Then there was silence, and he opened his eyes, saw the grey clouds. They weren’t shaped like ribs at all but train tracks. The blue sky faded, the sunlight fingering it the colour of
gone-off milk.

He spoke into the radio’s earpiece. ‘Get an ambulance.’

But the device was dead; he pulled it off and threw it to one side.

Someone opened his door, told him not to move.

He looked down at his legs, and knew for certain that they still worked. He hauled himself out then, stumbling towards the wreckage of the other car.

It had smashed through a picket fence into the derelict garden of the crossing keeper’s cottage, so that only the driver’s-side rear corner hadn’t ended up in the
rubbish-filled enclosure. Its indicator blinked at half speed.

The car’s front end had joined two abandoned VW Campervans and a wrecked towing caravan.

Most of the damage was to the back. The boot was crushed into the rear passenger area, the rear windscreen was gone, staved in by the weight of Goodhew’s car. The rear seat had doubled
over, leaning against the back of the front seats.

Four or five onlookers had already gathered around. They had pulled the front doors open and they were leaning inside. No one was checking the back, or even trying to open the rear doors.

He pulled a man aside and peered into the front. He saw Stefan first, slumped forward, with eyes gaping. Next to him was Kimberly. Blood was running from her forehead, and PC Rimes was holding
her hand.

‘Riley,’ Kimberly kept repeating.

‘Where is he?’ Goodhew had to ask it twice before his question filtered though to her.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

Rimes spoke calmly. ‘Help’s coming.’

Goodhew grabbed at the back door; it wouldn’t open, twisted too far out of shape to ever again separate from the body shell. He reached through the broken side window and twisted the seat
back into a more upright position – revealing Gully’s face.

Her eyes were half-closed, her pupils immobile. A dark pool, still shiny, coated the seat. Streaks of blood had dried like earth stains on her cheek.

‘Sue,’ he whispered. Then louder, ‘Sue.’ He heard the desperate tone in his voice and tears pricked his eyes. ‘Sue,’ he said again.

He put the back of his hand to her nostrils and felt her breath tickle his skin.

He stretched his arm in further, reaching for her hand, squeezing it in his.

‘Sue, talk to me.’

Her eyes didn’t move but she spoke, barely moving her swollen mouth. ‘What?’

‘Talk to me.’

‘It hurts.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Tears rolled on to his cheeks.

‘Help me.’

‘We’ll get you out in a minute. Just hold on. Talk to me. It was the only thing I could do. I never meant to hurt you.’ He wiped his eyes with his cuff.

‘Riley?’ she muttered.

‘Do you know anything, Sue?’

‘He’s in the boot.’

‘No!’

‘He is,’ she insisted. ‘I saw him being put there.’

A coldness passed through Goodhew, knowing he had rammed the back end of the car hard enough to compress it by at least two feet. He’d pushed the upright section of the back seat out of
the way in order to reach Gully, but from the first he could only remember watching for some movement from her. He’d never checked behind the seat. ‘Sue, I need to fold the seat down on
you again. Will you be all right with that?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just for a second. I need to look in the boot.’

‘OK.’

He let go of her hand and reached across to the nearer rear-seat headrest and gave it a sharp tug forwards.

Gully drifted up through the fog of sleep, near the surface but not quite breaking through it. She heard Goodhew’s voice, muffled and faint, like he was speaking in
another room.

She was talking to him in that other room, too, letting words slip out without her brain’s say-so.

He was doing something with the seat now, trying to fold her up in it, or something. She heard him draw a sudden breath, then say, ‘Thank God, thank God,’ over and over.

He took her hand. ‘Which car is Riley in?’

‘Not this one.’

‘I know, Sue, but did you see him in the boot of another vehicle?’

Her voice became quieter, until he seemed to be finding it as hard as she was to distinguish the poorly formed words.

‘Sue, say that again.’

‘Can’t remember. It was red. Small saloon.’

‘And Craig drove it?’

‘No, he drove us . . . then moved Stefan from back here to the driver’s seat. You wouldn’t know that if we were dead, like we’re supposed to be.’

He pulled away from her for just a second and she heard him shouting, ‘Over here, quick.’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘Help’s coming, Sue.’

‘Can you stay?’ She hoped she hadn’t blushed. ‘Stefan’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anita?’

‘Not sure. Listen to me. You need to stay awake, Sue . . . Sue.’

She thought she
was
awake, but he repeated her name several more times before she muttered a response. ‘Why do people play games?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Goodhew replied.

‘Do you?’ she persisted.

‘I try not to.’ He added, ‘When I crashed into you, I never wanted to see you hurt.’

‘Hmm,’ she replied.

She wondered why she was still talking, she felt so tired. Too many questions, too much effort . . . God, she wanted to sleep.

Why did he keep bugging her?

His voice kept on though, chipping away at her, dragging her back. Making her think about words. And he sounded so strange. She listened more closely; he sounded sort of choked.

‘I didn’t have a choice . . . the train would have hit this car. It was the only thing I could think to do.’