Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,31
keep checking the mobiles—we only have to get a signal on one of them for five minutes and we can end this.”
She still didn’t like it, but finally Beth accepted that it wasn’t a battle she could win. “I’ll do the phones. I’ll take them up on the roof every ten minutes or so—if there’s a signal going, that’s where we’ll get it.”
“Make sure he doesn’t see you,” warned Horn. “With a good sniper rifle he could be accurate to as much as a mile.”
“I won’t stay still long enough for him to use it.”
“Do you have a flagpole?” asked Horn.
McKendrick looked puzzled. “On top of the tower.”
“Then we can fly a distress signal.”
“This isn’t a ship of the line!” snorted Beth. “We have a Union Jack, not a wardrobe of pennants! We can’t send England Expects and all that stuff.”
“We can fly the Union Jack upside down,” said McKendrick. “The universal distress signal.”
Trying to picture it, Horn frowned. “Doesn’t it look pretty much the same both ways up?”
“Pretty much,” admitted McKendrick. “It would take an expert to notice, even from close up.”
“And anyone who gets that close probably won’t get to leave,” said Horn grimly. “I don’t think we should count on anyone noticing which way up the flag is.”
“Then we’ll fly a tablecloth instead,” said McKendrick, suddenly inspired. “The biggest, whitest one I can find. Flag of truce. That would be noticed, even from a distance. Whoever saw it might not know what it meant, but he’d know it meant something.”
“Would he know to call the police rather than come blundering up to the front door to ask what the problem is?” wondered Beth. “Come to that, would the police know to send a SWAT team, or would we get a couple of PCs on their way back from liaising with a Neighborhood Watch scheme?”
McKendrick looked as if she’d slapped his face. But it was a point. He didn’t want to see a couple of twenty-something constables mown down investigating a bit of table linen on a stick.
“I think,” said Horn, “he won’t pick a fight with the police unless he’s cornered. Because he knows that, the world over, there are two kinds of murder hunts—those where the victim was a civilian, and those where he was a police officer. They pull out every stop in the organ when it was a cop who got killed. Of course they do—it’s personal. It also means they’re dealing with someone who’ll stop at nothing. No professional hit man wants to be the subject of that kind of manhunt. I think, if he sees a police car coming and he has the chance to slip away, that’s what he’ll do.”
“All right,” decided McKendrick. “We’ll hoist a tablecloth and try to attract attention. Beth will keep trying the phones. Next we need a line of retreat…”
Beth touched his arm. “No, next you should check on Uncle William. Will you tell him what’s going on?”
McKendrick shook his head. “No point upsetting him when there’s nothing he can do to help. But I will draw the curtains.”
Horn shook his head. “Don’t do anything to mark out his room as different. You draw his curtains, the guy outside knows there’s something in there you want to protect.” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t want to be insensitive, but what’s the problem with your brother William? Why can’t we bring him down here with us?”
For a moment he thought McKendrick wasn’t going to answer. “Beth, where’s that damask tablecloth your mother used to use for dinner parties? Oh, yes—I know. Horn, you come with me. When we’ve got it flying, I’ll take you in to meet William. You can see for yourself what the problem is.”
CHAPTER 7
FROM THE top of the tower Horn had a panoramic view of the heart of England. It was very green, and rather flat, and populated by trees and hedgerows and not so many people. In fact, none that he could see. Not only no people but no signs of people, unless you knew that the straight lines carved through the fields were the mark of tractors. There were no dwellings in sight. He could see no roads other than the driveway by which they had arrived.
From this vantage he could see Birkholmstead more or less as a plan on a map, and it gave him a better impression of the castle than he’d managed from inside. It really wasn’t very big. There would be comfortable stockbroker Tudor houses in any leafy