Gregory and Vanbrugh waded forward and turned him over. The strange thing was that his face was unmarked except for the bruises left by his clash with Rogan and his eyes stared vacantly into eternity, fixed for all time.
‘Do you know him?’ Gregory asked.
Vanbrugh shook his head. ‘He’s a new one on me.’
The truck was still burning furiously and as they approached, they became aware at once of the sickly sweet stench of burning flesh.
A constable turned, his face wrinkling in disgust. ‘One of them’s still in the cab, sir. You can just see him if you bend down.’
In the intense heat, things seemed to shimmer, to lose definition and the figure which lay doubled up, one arm reaching out through the crumpled window, no longer seemed human.
‘A nasty way to go,’ Gregory said.
Vanbrugh nodded and they stumbled across the stream, knee-deep in ice-cold water to where another
constable knelt beside a body in the wet grass.
As they approached, he stood up and turned. ‘Nothing doing here, sir. His neck’s broke. Must have been thrown out of the back when the truck first landed.”
Jack Pope lay on his back, one arm bent, fingers curling slightly. His eyes had retracted slightly and his head lolled unnaturally to one side.
‘What about this one?’ Gregory said.
‘Jack Pope. He’s the one who shared a cell with Rogan.’
‘The ex-policeman?’
‘That’s him.’
They turned and Vanbrugh shielded his eyes from the rain with one hand and watched half a dozen men move up the mountainside above the road in a thin line. Gregory gave a sudden grunt and pointed.
‘There he is, just below the ridge.’
Vanbrugh caught a brief glimpse of Morgan moving fast, several hundred feet above his pursuers. A moment later he went over the ridge and disappeared.
‘Red hair,’ Gregory said. ‘At least we know that much about the bastard.’
Soit wasn’t Sean Rogan -Vanbrugh moved back across the stream and picked up a piece of red mailbag canvas that shredded in his hands, still smouldering.
‘Just about settles it,’ Gregory said.
‘Looks like it.’
They climbed the steep slope and arrived back on the road in time to see the wounded constable being lifted into the rear of the Land-Rover. His face was twisted with pain, but he managed a grin when Gregory lit a cigarette for him and stuck it in his mouth.
‘How is it?’
The constable gingerly touched the blood-soaked bandage that encircled his right thigh above the knee. ‘Bloody awful, but I’ll survive, sir.’
‘Good man,’ Gregory said. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll lay him by the heels.’
As the Land-Rover moved away, a police car came
down the road from the direction of the farm and braked to a halt. Sergeant Dwyer jumped out.
‘Any luck?’ Vanbrugh said.
‘Not a soul to be seen, sir, but they’ve certainly been having themselves a high old time. Someone’s been shooting the place up.’
‘Now what in the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Vanbrugh said, frowning.
‘A hundred and forty thousand is a hell of a lot of money/ Gregory said. ‘Maybe somebody wanted a bigger slice of the cake.’ He turned to Dwyer. ‘What about the car we heard driving away?’
‘We found it a mile or so further on where the road peters out in the ruins of an old mining village. A green Morris Oxford shooting brake.’
‘No sign of the occupants?’
‘Not a smell. There’s a sergeant and two men up there now, but they’re going to need help.’
Vanbrugh turned to Gregory. ‘Didn’t you say there was no other way out of the valley?
Gregory nodded. ‘Not by road, but any reasonably active person could cross the mountain on foot.’ He took a map from his pocket and opened it. ‘You can see the village here and the old workings on the other side.’
Vanbrugh studied the map for a moment and pointed to the two dotted lines that marked the course of the Long Cut under the mountain. ‘What’s this? A canal?’
‘It certainly looks like it. Probably used to ship ore through to the next valley in the old days.’
‘If it were still navigable, it would make a convenient back door. The sooner it’s plugged the better.’