that didn’t happen, though the mere sight of the police Range Rover with its hi-vis blue and yellow chequerboard flanks had touched Kelso with a new sense of despair. He’d been a bank manager for fifteen years, but he had no clue how his actions would be viewed when this was all over. Surely people would understand that he’d acted under duress? But the fact would remain that he’d robbed his own bank of £200,000. And if the hoodlums got clean away, how would people know that he hadn’t been in cahoots with them? The brutalising of Justine wouldn’t disprove that on its own. So, he’d be a suspect at the very least.
He sat up straight and pivoted around, to see if there was anything he ought to have responded to that he’d failed to notice.
On his left there was a stile, and beyond that a farm field, which, now that the mist had cleared, lay flat and white. Across the road, behind the bus stop shelter, stood a clutch of trees, their leafless boughs feathered with frost.
His eyes roved across the bus stop itself – and that was when he saw something.
He’d registered it on first arriving here but had barely thought about it. From across the road, it was a simple sheet of paper inserted into a ragged plastic envelope and taped to the bus stop post. He’d assumed it a reference to some proposed development in the area, a request for viewpoints from the local community, or similar. But now he clambered from his car, and crossed the road, weaving through the slow-moving vehicles. When he reached the bus stop, he saw that the paper bore a message composed from snipped-out newspaper lettering:
GO NORTH UP HORNCASTLE LANE
THAT IS OPEN COUNTRY
SO WE’LL BE WATCHING
ANY SIGN YOU HAVE COMPANY
YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
BRING THIS NOTE AND THE PLASTIC
Kelso ripped the envelope down, and scampered back to his car, jumping in behind the wheel and, at the first opportunity, pulling into the traffic. He swerved onto Horncastle Lane and headed north. As directions went, these were vague, but he felt absurdly relieved, almost as if this whole tribulation had suddenly been resolved for him.
As he’d been advised, and already knew, this was a big agricultural area, expansive acres of farmland rolling away to every horizon under their coat of winter white. The sun was now up and sitting low in the east, a pale, ash-grey orb, while the sky itself was clear of cloud, but, in that eerie way of raw January days, was bleached of all colour. Suddenly, Kelso felt as if he was away from the hubbub; there were few, if any, fellow road-users on this quieter route.
The phone began to ring, and he slammed it to his ear.
‘This is Kelso.’
‘I know it’s you,’ that familiar, confident voice replied. ‘So far you’ve been a good boy. Looks like we’re really going to do business, doesn’t it?’
‘I hope so. Please can you tell me … where’s Justine? Is she all right?’
‘It’s good that you care about your wife, Brian. I always knew you would. That’s why this plan was foolproof from the start. You don’t need to worry, pal. You’ll see her again. Just continue to do exactly as you’re told, and we’ll be fine.’
‘All right, well … please, let’s just get this over with.’
‘Take your next left.’
That, in itself, was unnerving. It meant they really were watching him. Who knew where from – they could be standing on a barn roof, using binoculars, for all Kelso was aware. Whatever it was, they were bloody well organised.
‘And where will that bring me to?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no …’ the voice hardened. ‘Now don’t spoil it by asking stupid questions. I thought we’d already established that once we hook up again, we’ll be searching you … just to make sure that, by some miracle, you and your friendly neighbourhood PC Plod didn’t get a chance to secrete some kind of communication device on you.’
‘I haven’t done that!’ Kelso blurted. ‘Come on … I was only in the bank ten minutes. How could anything like that have been arranged? You were watching anyway, weren’t you? You’d have seen if a police officer had arrived there.’
There was a long, judgemental silence, and then: ‘Like I said … take your next left.’
The line went dead.
Kelso shuddered, briefly feeling as if he needed to vomit, but instead he slammed his foot to the floor, accelerating from forty miles an hour to fifty. As instructed, he took a left-hand turn, but at reckless speed. It was a few seconds later, when common sense kicked in and he slowed right down again. It might seem quiet along here, but the last thing he wanted was to catch the eye of some lazy copper idling around in the back-country hoping to bag some boy-racers.
He pressed on more cautiously for perhaps another three or so miles, passing a farmhouse on his right, though it was boarded up. Fleetingly, he was taut with anticipation, recognising this as a possible spot for the handover. But he’d soon bypassed the old farm, driving steadily north, and still there was no call.
‘Come on, come on,’ he said under his breath, frantic and frustrated at the same time. ‘Please … soon, good Lord in Heaven, let this be over soon.’
The phone buzzed. He snatched it up, and saw that he’d received a text:
Next right
The car was warming up again, but the sweat on his brow owed nothing to the temperature.
When a right-hand turn approached, he swung around it, paying almost no heed to the conditions. The Peugeot slithered sideways across a road so slick with ice that it might have been double-glazed. He now found himself following a single-track lane, which hadn’t even been tarmacked, his wheels jolting amid rock-hard tractor ruts. It was a terrifying thought that he was being lured further and further from civilisation, but that had probably been the appeal of the Dunholme branch in the first place; he was nobody – just an everyday bank manager, but his bank was located on the edge of extensive countryside, from where it would be quick and simple for the robbers to vanish into the sticks. Yet more evidence of how well planned this whole thing had been. But none of that mattered right now. His overwhelming desire to feel Justine in his arms again – no doubt shivering and whimpering, teeth chattering from the cold, numb with shock, but at last safe – rendered any qualms about how isolated he was null and void.
Up ahead, he could see trees: not exactly a wood, more like a copse. The narrow lane bisected it through the middle, running on straight as a ribbon.
Maybe that would be the place? It was the first change of scenery Kelso had encountered on this drear landscape in the last few minutes. In that respect, it surely signified something. And indeed, as he passed into and among the trees, he couldn’t resist accelerating again, bouncing and rocking on the ridged, hard-frozen surface – and, as such, almost crashing head-on into the white-painted pole with the red, circular signpost at the top, which stood in a concrete base and had been planted in the dead-centre of the thoroughfare.
When the Peugeot finally halted, having slid nearly twenty yards, the signpost stood directly in front of him, only its
