Frozen in Crime

Chapter 31 Going Up

When he opened his eyes, Charlie Smith thought he had fallen through a warp in the space-time continuum into another dimension. He was sure he could hear a helicopter - or was it just the buzzing in his head? As he struggled to his feet Amaryllis said in a satisfied tone, 'Jemima and Dave are behind this!' He was so befuddled that he found himself straining his eyes to see if he could spot Mr and Mrs Douglas lurking in the bushes at the other side of the helicopter as it decanted a small group of armed, uniformed men who went straight into a classic formation, fanning out to cover the whole area around the house.

'What?' he asked blearily, and coughed.

'Take it easy, you may have inhaled some smoke,' Amaryllis warned him. She didn't seem to be rushing to join in with the operation, whatever it was, but was fussing over Christopher and another man who had both collapsed in the snow not far away.

There were sirens in the distance. In his befuddled state Charlie struggled to distinguish between police and ambulance, police and fire service.

'Good, they're on their way,' said Amaryllis. She pushed Christopher back down as he tried to stand up. 'Stay there until the paramedics have checked you out.'

'I didn't - I forgot to call,' said Christopher, hoarse and gasping for breath.

'Sssh - you might need some oxygen,' she said. 'It looks as if Jemima and Dave called for backup.'

The other man wasn't so determined to get up. He lay with his eyes open, watching them and wheezing.

'This is Lord Murray, by the way,' said Amaryllis to Charlie. 'I don't think this is the best time to speak to him. But you might catch him later on. Once all this is finished.'

'What was that about Pitkirtly and fireworks?' said Christopher suddenly.

'Did you hear it too?' said Amaryllis. 'Was there something else about setting charges?'

He nodded, set himself off coughing again, and gave up trying to speak.

Amaryllis frowned. 'There's something funny about all this... I thought the setting charges bit must be to do with what they did in there -' she waved her hand towards the back of the house, where the smoke had died down a bit but, even more ominously, flames now shot out through the door, and as they watched, a window caved in and they saw fire inside the room too. Charlie shuddered as he thought about what might have happened. But Amaryllis didn't seem to want to waste time worrying about that. She continued, 'Are you sure they said Pitkirtly?'

'Well it might have been Timbuktu, I suppose,' said Christopher, in the middle of a coughing fit, with a trace of his usual sarcasm.

'Don't try and talk any more,' Amaryllis told him brusquely. 'I don't know... Jimbo told us he was guarding Longannet against a possible terrorist attack. It did seem a bit unlikely at the time, and what's that got to do with fireworks anyway?'

Her voice tailed off as one of the uniformed men approached. She took him aside, out of earshot, and Charlie saw her talking with great animation and many gestures. At first he seemed to be listening in patient resignation, but after a while he became alert, like a dog pricking up its ears, and eventually he and Amaryllis went off together. Charlie felt suddenly tired, leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. By the time she came back he was more or less asleep on his feet.

'They've found ski tracks. They'll take the chopper away and look for the two men,' she told Charlie.

'Oh, God, I'm tired,' he said, yawning.

She gave him a look. 'Don't you want to know about the island?'

'Oh, all right, what about it?'

Christopher, still coughing, sat up with a struggle, and seemed to be listening. Lord Murray was still just lying there.

'There's been a ransom demand,' she told them. 'They think it's to do with Longannet – the power station. Unless we give them lots of money and a safe conduct they'll detonate charges they've planted in the old mine tunnels and blow it up.'

There was a stunned silence. Then Christopher started to cough and wheeze in alarm. Charlie felt a shiver of panic ripple through his body. He noticed how stupid Christopher looked as he turned a shocked gaze on Amaryllis, and decided to make an effort not to appear quite so stupid himself. He thought of an intelligent question.

'So was Longannet mentioned in the demand?'

'Not exactly. They just said they would blow the whole place sky-high and the fires would be seen for miles around.'

'The whole place?' Charlie queried.

Amaryllis shrugged.

'They assumed it was about Longannet – nothing else around here would have the same impact.'

'So,' said Charlies, 'this demand - how did it come in?'

'Mobile phone - not used before or since. Around twelve today. They must have been quite confident of getting into position before anyone did anything. They didn't know they'd have to deal with us, though. That was a mistake. They should have secured the perimeter before they sent the demand.'

Her voice held a note of triumph which was, Charlie thought, a little bit premature.

'Not over yet,' said Christopher, speaking with difficulty.

'Do they know what sort of damage that would do?' asked Charlie in a low voice. He didn't particularly want Christopher and Lord Murray to overhear.

Amaryllis frowned at him. 'Wait,' she mouthed.

'Damage?' wheezed Christopher. 'What about Pitkirtly? How much damage?'

'You need some help,' said Amaryllis, fixing him with a stare. 'Hey!' she called to a couple of paramedics who had just emerged from a newly arrived ambulance. 'Over here!'

'But why?' said Charlie. 'Why would they want to do that? What's in it for them?'

The fire brigade arrived just then, making their way through the snow with some difficulty; two fire engines skidded to a halt by the back door of the house and the firemen began work.

Just when Charlie thought there was nobody left to come along, a small van pulled up alongside them and the woman from the cattery tumbled out of the driving seat, followed closely by Jock McLean from the passenger side. By this time the paramedics had whisked Christopher and Lord Murray away to the ambulance where they were receiving treatment for smoke inhalation. Charlie felt he was fortunate not to have suffered too badly from it, but then, according to Amaryllis he had been dumped close to the door and she had got him out fairly quickly. She herself seemed immune to that kind of thing.

'Here, wasn't that his lordship?' said Jock McLean, jerking an irreverent thumb towards the ambulance.

'Do you mean Christopher?' said Amaryllis.

Jock snorted in his usual inelegant way. 'No, course not. Lord Murray, that's the one. He gave out prizes at the school every year - until some idiot decided prizes weren't fair. I can tell you what wasn't fair - depriving the whole school of the extra couple of hours of freedom we got from going home early on prize-giving day.

Fortunately Amaryllis, who had received some sort of a signal from one of the armed men - were they army or Special Branch? Charlie asked himself - interrupted Jock's random reminiscences. Otherwise Charlie realised there was a good chance Jock would drive his companions to do something desperate such as covering him with snow and leaving him to stand there with his pipe still clamped between his teeth like a hideously moth-eaten snowman.

'Charlie - would you be ok to come with me in the helicopter? I've hitched a lift – to help them spot Jimbo and Mal. And then to see how it all works out.'

'OK,' he said, hoping he wouldn't regret it later.

And so it was that he unexpectedly got an aerial view of Pitkirtly and its environs as the helicopter defied gravity to lift itself into the air and swing out over the trees, its occupants keeping their eyes peeled for two men crossing the snow below. He hadn't realised before how many trees there were between Old Pitkirtlyhill House and the town of Pitkirtly, but then of course he hadn't had any reason to think about it before.

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