One Hundred and Six

  ‘I’m limited in what I can tell you,’ Haddock said to his team, gathered around his meeting table, ‘but Edward Hornell is now the main person of interest in the Gavin Ayre investigation, and in another suspected homicide. You’ve all been issued with an up-to-date image of the man. It’s not certain, but it’s very possible that he’s in the area. If he is, the best assumption is that he’s planning to make contact with his wife. If so we don’t know why, but he hasn’t just turned up at the house, that’s for sure; so let’s assume that he has bad intentions. I’ve had eyes on Mrs Hornell since this morning. She dropped her child at the nursery at nine thirty and then went straight home, since when she hasn’t left.’

  ‘Isn’t the wife a possible suspect too?’ Noele McClair asked. Her voice came from the superintendent’s computer, where a Zoom link was active. ‘My mum is still adamant that she saw two sleeping bags.’

  ‘We believe that’s what any passers-by were meant to see,’ he replied. ‘Jackie’s established that there’s a camera overseeing the new toilet-and-shower block at Gullane Bents, to guard against vandals. There are sightings of Edward Hornell over two days, but none of his wife. Not just that, her drop-off times at the nursery are a matter of record. I’m disregarding her as a suspect. Instead we have to consider her as a potential target.’

  Singh raised a hand. ‘Is the husband likely to be armed?’

  ‘Not in the same way. The DCC and I think we know where he got the weapon that killed Ayre. It’s one among many but, once test firings are done, we hope to be able to identify it.’

  ‘What’s the next step?’ the Sikh asked.

  ‘I’ve told Benjamin to maintain discreet surveillance, but not to expose herself.’ A young DC’s sudden grin froze on his face and vanished under Haddock’s glare. ‘If Hornell does show up at home, she’s to withdraw and we surround the place with an armed team . . . and a negotiator.’ He paused. ‘People, we’re not alone in this. Hornell’s a serving officer, so the Military Police are involved. That said, it’ll take them a while to get here.’

  ‘How about the MoD police,’ Wright asked. ‘They guard the nuclear power station at Torness, and they’re armed.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, we need specialist MPs. But, until they get here we’re alone on the ground. To back us up, I’m . . .’

  Haddock stopped as his phone sounded. He checked the screen and took the call, handsfree. ‘Tiggy, you’re on speaker,’ he told her. ‘What do you have?’

  ‘Mrs Hornell’s on the move,’ the young DC said. ‘I’m following her at a distance and I think she’s taking me to a riding stable.’

  ‘That would be part of her routine,’ McClair volunteered. ‘She exercises her pony, then picks up the kid.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Jackie Wright answered. ‘I think it depends on whether anyone else is there or not.’

  ‘I’ve just passed two other women,’ Benjamin advised. ‘Heading back towards the stable.’

  ‘Then we assume she’ll go out alone and be in the open. We have to get out there. Tiggy, we’ll join you as quickly as we can. Meantime you’re on your own. If you have a chance, stop her and get her out of there whether she wants to go or not. If you can’t do that, keep her in sight and keep us advised of her location.’

  ‘Sauce,’ McClair intervened, ‘this is my community: I have a feeling I know where she’ll go. If she does, it’s where she’ll be most vulnerable. I’m no more than a mile away. If I could leave Maddie with a neighbour . . .’

  ‘No!’ Haddock exclaimed brusquely. ‘Noele, you’re back on maternity leave and no arguments. The rest of you, let’s get moving.’

  One Hundred and Seven

  ‘The Military Police investigation branch have turned something up,’ Major Hitchens told McGuire with a hint of professional pride in his voice. ‘They’ve established that Lieutenant Commander Hornell caught a train at Hereford yesterday morning. He bought a ticket at the station on a service to Edinburgh, changing at Crewe, and arriving just before three yesterday afternoon. That’s as far as they’ve traced him but the map tells me it’s not far from his home. The MP unit is on the way to you by road, as fast as they can, but the earliest they can get there realistically is late afternoon. Can you cope until then?’

  ‘We can,’ the DCC said. ‘Are you still confident that he isn’t armed?’

  ‘The headquarters arsenal is all accounted for: I can confirm that but he wouldn’t be the first soldier to have brought a private firearm back from a foreign posting. Take nothing for granted and, remember, he has special skills.’

  ‘I’m not likely to forget it;’ McGuire retorted. ‘I was shot myself once so I’m even less likely than most to put my officers at risk. We have eyes on his wife and reinforcements, including armed officers, are on the way to her location. The plan is to take her into protective custody as quickly as possible, but if he shows up and offers even a sight of a gun, he’s going down.’

  ‘That’s understood,’ Hitchens agreed. ‘Our people will have the same orders when they arrive. But Mr McGuire, that may not be your only problem. I’m afraid that I’ve just had some rather worrying intelligence from the armourer at regimental headquarters. In the light of that, you may decide to shoot him on sight.’

  One Hundred and Eight

  ‘The old railway line,’ Noele McClair told Haddock, on handsfree, as his car sped eastwards with Jackie Wright seated beside him and Tarvil Singh in the back.

  ‘It’s exactly that; a single track that left the main line just after Longniddry, stopped at Aberlady, then carried on to Gullane, with a request station at Luffness golf club. It stopped carrying passengers ninety years ago but it took coal into the villages for thirty years after that. The track itself is long gone, and the section within Gullane’s either overgrown or built on now, but the rest of its land is still a sort of walkway. People use it a lot, dogwalkers and horsey folk like Claire. It’s okay in the open but . . .’ She paused. ‘Sauce, I can see her now, on her pony. I’m on a hillock across from my house with binoculars and I have a clear line of sight. She’s past the farm, starting to head back towards the stables. I can just see Tiggy too, but she’s trying to follow on foot. She’s got no chance of catching the woman before she crosses the Peffer Burn and goes into the woods. That’s where she’ll be at her most vulnerable; if her husband’s lying in wait for her that’s where he’s most likely to be.’

  ‘We’ve cleared Aberlady,’ Haddock shouted, ‘what’s the quickest way to the location?’

  ‘If you turn into the Luffness golf club car park,’ she replied, ‘and go as far as you can past the clubhouse, that’s as close as you’re going to get. You’ll see the woods from there. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to stop her before she crosses the burn. Where’s our armed team?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re ahead of them, Noele. Hornell may not even be there, but . . .’

  ‘Sauce, even if you scare him off and he escapes, the priority is to protect Claire, yes?’

  ‘Of course. Where is she now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t see her any longer. Listen,’ McClair said urgently, ‘has anyone tried the obvious and called her mobile? Jackie has the number, I know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wright called out, ‘but she’s not picking up. I doubt that she’s got it with her.’

  ‘Noele,’ Haddock intervened, ‘we’ve got to go, we’re there now. You call Tiggy, tell her to stand down.’

  He turned off the road and into the golf club. The car park was informal, a flat grassy area, and it was full. Midweek medal, he guessed, taking McClair’s advice and driving between the clubhouse and the first hole, startling a threesome who were ready to tee off, and carrying on across what he remembered from a playing visit was a practice area rather than the course itself. He pressed on but the way forward came to an end when they reached a fence, with a banked ridge on the right. Sauce stopped, letting the car brake itself as the trio jumped out.

  They could see what had to be the old railway track on the other side of an uncultivated field, little more than a hundred yards away. They could see Benjamin, bent double, trying to catch a breath. And they could see Claire Hornell, her eyes focused on the track ahead as she pushed her pony into a trot, gathering pace as she neared a bridge, on the other side of which the woodland began.

  ‘Claire!’ Tarvil Singh’s basso profundo boomed across the space between them, reaching the trees and stirring a murmuration of starlings from their branches, but the rider carried on looking only straight ahead.

  ‘Fucking AirPods,’ the eagle-eyed Wright shouted. ‘She’s wearing fucking AirPods!’

  ‘We need to get into the woods to cut her off,’ Haddock ordered. ‘Be careful, but get to her one way or another. The first one to catch her stops her; we worry about him once she’s safe.’

  He led the way, leaping over tufts of grass. As he ran he remembered a time, six months before, when he had been humiliated in a footrace by Jazz Skinner, a twelve-year-old monster, but he was still ahead of his companions as he reached the woodland. Claire Hornell was still in sight as he splashed across the shallow Peffer Burn; she had slowed the pony to cross the bridge, but it was still moving briskly. In the corner of Haddock’s eye, he was aware of Jackie Wright becoming entangled in the wire of a broken fence and falling, splashing and cursing. He had no time to rescue her; all he could do was press on, his cries of, ‘Claire! Claire!’ still bringing no reaction.

  The wood seemed to thin a little as he pressed on, and the pony’s pace seemed to slacken a little. He had given up shouting, but was closing in on his objective when . . .

  An object, a black, flying, whizzing, shapeless object, caught the pony on the side of the head. Frightened, it reared up, whinnying and throwing its rider to the ground. Still running and almost upon her, Haddock looked to his right to see a figure approaching, a man of medium height and build. As he came towards them steadily, he tossed a catapult into the bushes. His gaze was focused totally on the stricken woman, as if Haddock was invisible, or dismissed as no threat at all. The pony regained its footing and galloped away, perhaps towards what it perceived as safety, an abstract notion for the detective in that moment.

  Sauce had seen the military photograph of Edward Hornell; in life it occurred to him that he bore a close resemblance to the younger brother in the TV series Succession, but this was a much more deadly version of Roman Roy: not merely because of his bearing, nor because of his undoubted close combat skills, but because inside his green jacket Hornell was wearing what was very obviously a suicide vest.

  His wife’s ankle was twisted beneath her; she was motionless, staring up at him in silent terror as he stood, little more than ten yards away. ‘Give me a hug, baby,’ he said, reaching out a hand as he took another step towards her.

  Haddock was further away but he did all he could; he started to run again, towards the scene, to do what he knew not, other than die. He knew that would have been inevitable, even if he had chosen to flee, having been shown the effects of an Improvised Explosive Device on a training course. As he moved toward his death he thought of Cheeky and Samantha. And he thought also of his friend and colleague Stevie Steele who had opened a door in a country cottage to find an IED on the other side. He hoped that he would be as relatively unmarked as Stevie had been, but he feared that his identification would be by DNA. He was ready to close his eyes, hoping he would reopen them in Heaven, when . . .

  A massive figure burst from the treeline. He was clad in a muddy black suit, strewn with twigs and leaves, and he was moving inconceivably quickly for a man of his size as he enveloped Edward Hornell in a vast embrace and slammed him face first, with the boom of a contained explosion, into the ground.

  One Hundred and Nine

  ‘What’s the last line of Some Like It Hot?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘ “Nobody’s perfect”,’ Tarvil Singh revealed with a huge grin. ‘He wasn’t, and am I glad of that. The best fucking operator in the SAS he may have been, but because he had one loose wire in his suicide vest, it was useless.’

  The bomb squad leader had told Haddock that the force with which the massive DI had hit Hornell had shaken that wire loose. ‘A miracle,’ he had said. ‘It was only your colleague’s size that saved him. If you or I had tackled the subject, it would have stayed intact, the device would have detonated and everyone within thirty yards would have been dead.’ That was information that the superintendent had decided to keep to himself, for ever.

  ‘Where is he now?’ Singh asked, sitting further up in his hospital bed.

  ‘The Military Police have him and they’re keeping him. The DCC’s been co-operating with a guy from Ministry of Defence security with the agreement of the Crown Office. I interviewed him this morning with their lead investigator, a captain. When you swallowed him up and decked him, as well as knocking yourself out cold on a tree root, you managed to fracture his collarbone, four of his ribs and rupture his spleen. He was on morphine and post-operative sedation so he was cooperative. He confirmed everything that we knew; his wife had told him she was leaving him for someone she’d met. He didn’t argue with her, didn’t plead his case; he decided to eliminate the opposition, simple as that. He took some of the leave from Hereford that he’d been due . . . Hornell could have spent weeks longer at home than he did, but he was too happy killing insurgents . . . hired a car and drove up to Longniddry. Then he pitched his camp by the beach car park and put Claire under observation. He saw her meet up with Ayre on the second day; she went to his home in the morning when the child was at nursery, and of course he had followed her. That same day Hornell moved his camp to Yellowcraig and switched his attention to Ayre. He watched him for three days until he’d established his routine, the early morning ride and then home. With that done, he pitched his tent where Noele and her mother encountered him, and waited for an opportunity to take the shot. And yes, the second sleeping bag was indeed for the benefit of curious middle-aged ladies, like Susan McClair and other passers-by.’

  ‘What if an opportunity hadn’t come up?’ Singh wondered.

  ‘We asked him that. He said he’d probably have waited until the next time she went to Ayre’s place and taken them both out. But at that stage, Hornell didn’t really want to kill his wife,’ Haddock said. ‘It was only when he’d done the job on Ayre and was back in Hereford that he decided that their life, his and hers, could never be the same, so he made his plan to end it. Obviously, we saw what that was: wear the suicide vest, grab her and detonate it. And that’s what would have happened had it not been for you, you fucking big lunatic. If it had gone wrong, I swear I’d have had it carved on your stone.’

  For the first time, Singh’s smile left him. ‘My family don’t have to know about it, do they? About what happened?’

  The superintendent shook his head. ‘They know you suffered a concussion apprehending a suspect. That’s all they need to know. How it happened, they’ll never hear from me, I promise you that. The Chief’s coming to see you, by the way. He doesn’t know whether to write you up for a medal or bust you back into uniform for your own safety.’

  The DI rubbed his head, where a swelling was still obvious. ‘Whatever way that goes,’ he said, ‘I’ve made one decision. From now on, I’m wearing my turban on duty.’ He looked at Haddock. ‘What happens to Hornell now?’

  ‘He’s a serving officer, so it’ll be treated as a military matter. That and also the murder of the Welshman; he coughed to that as well. The Crown Office have signed off on it all but they didn’t really have a choice. Given Hornell’s SAS status, he can never be brought to open court. It’ll be a military trial, a court martial in private, and he’ll get life in a civilian prison.’

  ‘And his wife?’

  Haddock shrugged. ‘I guess she and Poppy will go home to daddy. I doubt that she’ll ever want to ride along the old railway line again.’

  One Hundred and Ten

  ‘They won’t tell you?’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘McIlhenney and McGuire, the Glimmer Twins, your protégés, are actually keeping a secret from you?’

  ‘They are,’ Bob confirmed. ‘All they’re prepared to say is that the Gavin Ayre slash David Allen investigation is closed. The Crown Office has released the body and the Canadians will ask you for it on behalf of Allen’s mother as soon as they’ve made arrangements to fly it home.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know the whole story?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he conceded, ‘but if I did I’d be one up on Lowell Payne, and he’s head of the security branch in Scotland.’

  ‘You asked Lowell?’

  ‘Of course, I did. If I knew the truth I’d also be one up on Dame Amanda Dennis. I asked her too.’

  ‘MI5 don’t know?’ Sarah gasped. ‘She must have been lying to you, surely?’

  ‘If she was, she never has before, and she and I go back a long way.’

  ‘I thought you told me Amanda was retiring.’

  He smiled. ‘I did, because I thought she was, but the Home Secretary won’t let her, nor would the two before her.’ He paused. ‘And speaking of retiring,’ he added, ‘someone else who isn’t: Aileen de Marco. My ex.’

  ‘Didn’t we know that?’ she suggested. ‘She’s going back to Holyrood, isn’t she?’

  ‘She was,’ he conceded, ‘but my political editor on the Saltire tipped me off that she’s taken a look at the numbers and changed her mind. She doesn’t want to be First Minister again; she’d rather be Prime Minister. With that in mind she’s found herself what should be a safe Labour seat at the next Westminster election: our constituency, no less.’