The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7), Nathan Goodwin [little red riding hood ebook TXT] 📗

The landlord, Joshua Hoad, served Ann her pint of rum and water, which she carried hurriedly away from the macabre conversation to the other quiet end of the bar. She nodded to the straw-hat makers, Amelia Baxter and Sarah Cramp, then took her first sip of drink. She savoured the liquid in her mouth, then sighed with pleasure as it trickled slowly down the back of her throat, seconds later somehow percolating throughout her entire body.

Ann took another long gulp of her drink, then slowly turned to take in those around her. She viewed them with a disconcerting and unfathomable combination of pity, disgust and shame. She understood the pity: most present could not be anything other than that which they had been born to become. The feelings of disgust and shame at those vagrants, thieves and whores, took her by surprise, for she saw in them her own reflection.

Her complex sombre thoughts were pierced by a nearby conversation. The word ‘smuggler’ was said in an unfavourable tone. Ann drank more and cocked her head subtly to one side. Four men, blockade officers, were sitting behind her drinking and smoking. Without turning to face them, she tried to follow their exchange.

By the time their discussion had shifted to something else, Ann knew that what she had heard had been important: a third-rater ship, called the Ramillies, was being deployed off the coast of Deal to aid in the prevention of smuggling. The officers had spoken confidently that this new 170-foot-long boat, with its crew of more than six hundred, would bring about the end of smuggling in Kent and Sussex.

Ann left a good half-pint of rum and water in her glass and strode from the inn. She wanted to retain what she had just heard and, trying to counter the glossing effects of the alcohol, she rehearsed the information over and over, certain that it was of great import.

Chapter Eighteen

Darkness cloaked the old Volvo. It was parked, lights switched off, in the layby on Priory Road, on the outskirts of Aldington.

The dual yellow beams from a car—the first to pass in several minutes—flashed through the Volvo’s interior, illuminating its emptiness. Then, Phil sat up and switched off the internal lights which would otherwise burst into life as soon as he opened the door. He paused, before reaching into the back seat for the metal detector and climbing from the car. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust, but after a few seconds of impatient waiting there seemed little difference, so he began to walk the lane. The hedgerow along the layby was edged by some kind of tight tall shrub with unforgiving spikes, so Phil reluctantly continued along the road, hoping that no cars would appear.

In the distance, he heard the low rumble of an engine and broke into a jog. Just twenty feet ahead he spotted a fissure in the solid line of shrubbery and began to run towards it, as the engine—a motorbike by the sound of it—grew louder and a flicker of its headlight glimmered on the trees ahead.

Phil jumped sideways through the hole, just as the motorbike rounded the corner, its headlight fanning out over where he had been standing just a second before.

Now that he was off the road, he pulled out his mobile phone. The time, appearing in large white numbers read 2:56am. Perfect, he thought, switching on the phone’s torch. The woodland around him was dense and without any sign of a footpath. Long tendrils of bramble had already reached out and snagged onto his grey tracksuit bottoms. His clothes would be ruined by the end of the night, but if he got what he had come for, then it would all have been worth it.

He began to push through the insidious undergrowth, swearing and cursing loudly every time that a strand of bramble refused to release his legs. The aerial view shown by Google Maps was of a vast oak woodland, not the veritable jungle that Phil was now struggling to traverse.

An unnoticed fallen sapling sent him crashing headfirst into a thicket of obnoxious bramble. ‘Shit,’ he cried, as pain shot through his hand from multiple locations. He picked himself up and pulled the spikes free from his hands, then continued through the woodland.

It took over thirty minutes for him to reach the low wire fencing which demarked the boundary to the Bourne Tap. Phil switched off the torch and peered down a steep tree-covered bank which ran down to the main house. He strained his eyes but he could see nothing. The house and the grounds were in complete darkness; exactly how he wished them to stay.

Slowly, he descended the bank until he reached the tennis courts. He paused there for several seconds. In front of him was a wide open lawn with no trees and no protection from being seen from the rear of the house. He studied the back of the property carefully, checking for movement. When he was sure that there was none, he ran across the wet grass.

His movement must have tripped a security light, for suddenly the whole back of the house and garden were illuminated by powerful floodlights. He had no choice but to keep on running. He made it to the small outbuilding and flattened himself against the brickwork. His pulse rate quickened as he heard a fierce-sounding dog barking from inside the house.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he muttered, sliding along the side of the building to the door. Luck was on his side—the door was unlocked. He opened it and slipped into the darkness, just as the barking of the dog became magnified in a way which could only mean that it had been let out.

He had no time. He switched on the phone torch and quickly scanned around the room. It was mercifully small. He could not work out