Blast Read online

  He shrugged. ‘Might as well before I head back to the Smoke to brief my own team.’

  She treated him to a mischievous smirk. ‘If you want to spend some of those inflated Met allowances we in the provinces can only dream about, you could always buy us both a nice breakfast afore you go.’

  He returned her gaze with a wry smile and ran his eyes appreciatively over her shapely figure. ‘And what do I get in return?’ he queried, adopting a straight face.

  Her smirk broadened. ‘Well now,’ she replied, ‘if you’re a really good boy, I might even offer to buy you a Cornish cream tea later.’

  ****

  Just over 17 miles away, light and life greeted Lynn Giles dozing fitfully beside Alan Murray’s hospital bed when she was awakened by his voice calling her name. Only just managing to keep her emotions in check after all that had happened at The Old Customs House, she had insisted on accompanying Murray to hospital in the ambulance, desperately praying that he wouldn’t die. Despite the way he had treated her and the resentment and antagonism she had displayed towards him for his cruel deception just hours before, she knew deep down that she was hopelessly in love with this arrogant charlatan. Their affair had gone way beyond just carnal satisfaction. It had developed into something much deeper. Something she had never expected to happen and had never experienced in any previous relationship. Now she couldn’t imagine life without him.

  The surgeon who had removed the bullet from his chest several hours before had complimented him on his lucky escape. ‘Another inch to the left and you would have been a goner,’ he’d said cheerfully, showing him the twisted fragment of metal in its kidney-shaped basin. ‘The lady with the gun obviously caught you on the turn, so the round missed your ticker, clipped your sternum and ended up in your shoulder.’

  Given a sedative, trolleyed to a private room and placed under constant observation, the insurance investigator had slept for most of the afternoon. But now waking, he stared at Lynn through half-closed lids as she straightened and wiped the sleep from her own eyes. Squeezing his sound arm a little, she smiled. ‘I … I thought you were on the way out,’ she said soberly, studying his pale, perspiring face.

  He grunted. ‘Too ornery for that,’ he replied in a thick hesitant voice, obviously still partially under the influence of the sedative, which had been administered. ‘Are you okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Shaken up, but otherwise unscathed,’ she replied. ‘Thanks to that power-cut, which threw the bitch’s aim.’

  He nodded slowly, then frowned. ‘But what about Archie? He must have been terrified, what with the storm and everything.’

  She squeezed his arm again. ‘He’s fine. Taken in by a police dog-handler just before I got in the ambulance with you. I saw him being fed a chocolate bar by the copper. He’ll be his friend for life after that.’

  He treated her to the ghost of a smile. ‘Always liked his grub, did old Arch. He’ll eat ’em out of house and home if he’s not collected soon.’

  ‘Will he have to go back to where you got him from, now that you no longer need him?’ she queried.

  He frowned. ‘I sincerely hope not,’ he said. ‘I’ve got kind of used to the old feller now. Maybe they’ll accept a hefty donation instead. We’ll have to see.’

  ‘Well, in the meantime you can leave him with me,’ she said. ‘I could do with some company at my place anyway.’

  He grunted his thanks. ‘So what happened to the mad woman with the gun?’

  Lynn’s mouth tightened. ‘Went over the cliff, I’m told,’ she replied. ‘They haven’t found her body yet. Poetic justice, though, in my opinion. It seems she was behind everything. The bombing of the club and three murders. All down to revenge after Freddie Baxter dumped her apparently, and she had planned for me to take the fall. A nice beauty.’

  He tried to ease himself into a more comfortable position in the bed and winced at the pain. ‘Seems I was wrong about everything then, doesn’t it?’ he blurted, after a pause. ‘Especially you. I can only say how sorry I am.’

  She manufactured a frown. ‘What? Sorry I didn’t turn out to be your multiple-murderess, you mean?’

  ‘You know very well what I mean.’ He hesitated, his good hand ruffling the bedsheet as he stared down at it. ‘I meant what I said when I told you I had fallen in love with you,’ he went on, his embarrassment apparent as he cleared his throat, unable to meet her gaze.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Despite all my scars?’ she goaded, but with more than a trace of bitter cynicism in her tone.

  He raised his head and treated her to a level stare. ‘With or without the scars,’ he said. ‘It makes no difference to me. But I treated you very badly and I just don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to make it up to you.’

  She stood up and bent over him. ‘Oh you’ll make it up to me all right,’ she said, leaning closer. ‘Doc says you will be out of action for several weeks and when you leave hospital, I have to look after you until you get your strength back.’ A glint of devilment was back in her eyes now as her lips brushed seductively against his. ‘But after that, Mr Murray, you’re going to make it up to me big time – and you’d better believe it.’

  AFTER THE FACT

  Darkness. Cold, dank and heavy. Pressing down on the young woman’s broken body as she lay on her back, listening to the plop, plop, plop of water dripping on to her face from the blackness way above her head.

  Carol Amis realised the police would be searching for her on the rocky beach below The Old Customs House. She had heard the muted clatter of the helicopters shortly after regaining consciousness. But they would be out of luck. She hadn’t gone over the cliff edge at all, but had plunged into an old mine shaft hidden beneath a tangle of undergrowth just off the footpath she had tried to use as an escape route.

  The shaft had been sunk into the ground maybe 100 years before by one of the many companies plundering the lonely promontory in the then relentless search for tin. But the steady erosion of the cliff face over the years had produced rock falls which had taken with them most of the remaining ruins of the mine’s surface workings, leaving only the occasional broken wall and treacherous shaft to trap the unwary. She was its latest victim.

  She must have fallen 40-50ft, landing heavily on the bed of broken rock, which choked the lower half of the shaft and the adits bored into the cliff face beneath her. Although it was a miracle she had survived the impact, it might have been better if she hadn’t. She felt sure she had snapped part of her spine as there was no feeling below the waist anymore and one arm was trapped under her, useless and probably also broken. Blood streamed from a ripped shoulder. She could feel it running down her arm and over her hand. Mixing with the moisture which dripped incessantly on to her face and body. While she found she could still move the arm with difficulty, it turned out to be wasted effort. Her probing fingers encountered only a slimy wall streaming with water which chuckled with amusement as it trickled past her through holes in the rubble on its way into the buried depths.

  Blind panic seized her. She was trapped. Entombed in stygian darkness. Unable to move and with almost no prospect of rescue. No one had seen her pitch into the shaft. The police search teams probably didn’t even know it was there. Instead, they would assume she had smashed herself to pieces on the rocky beach and been swept out to sea in the storm.

  God help her. Even after all she had done – the bombing, the ruthless taking of three lives – she couldn’t be left to die like this.

  Weakly at first, but then with renewed vigour as she marshalled what strength she had left, she shouted for help for the umpteenth time, her voice once more rebounding off the walls in the form of mocking echoes, which chased themselves around her with malevolent glee.

  But there was still no response and as her shouts became wilder and more unhinged, the clatter of the search helicopters faded into silence, replaced solely by the sound of the trickling water and the muted screech of gulls wheeling above the empty clifftops, whi
le the ghosts of the old Tommy knockers peered curiously down at her from their crevices in the shaft, waiting patiently for her soul to join them in their cold, dark world.

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  Also by the same author:

  Crime Fiction:

  Flashpoint

  Burnout

  Slice

  Firetrap

  Requiem

  Strawfoot

  Sandman

  Deadly Secrets

  Autobiography:

  Reflections In Blue