MURDER IS SKIN DEEP, M.G. Cole [i can read with my eyes shut TXT] 📗

Pulling onto the grounds, the headlights fell across a sign for Classic Aero, a renowned aircraft restoration company. Garrick had once listened enviously as one of his colleagues recounted a story of taking a ride here in their two-seater spitfire. He’d always vowed to treat himself one day. A bucket list moment that he’d failed to achieve.

A dirt trail circled around the farmhouse, to an assortment of seven sheds and hangars at the back of the farm used for storing and repairing classic planes. The doors of two hangars were open, several small aircraft just visible in the dark interior. Fraser’s Mercedes was parked between the buildings.

Garrick lunged across the steering wheel. “Kill the headlights!” He found the switch and extinguished them. Chib cut the engine.

“That’s his car,” said Garrick. “He must have left it on the street so his protection wouldn’t see him driving out.”

As silently as they could, Garrick and Chib stepped out of the car, leaving the doors ajar so as not to make any more noise. They stealthily approached the nearest hangar, keeping to the shadows and listening for any signs of which building he’d entered.

There was only the hoot of an owl from the fields beyond.

“Maybe he’s gone already?” whispered Chib.

He had planned this, Garrick thought. He knew I was closing in, even if I didn’t. He recalled that Huw Crawford tried to call Terri all night, but she didn’t pick up. But he talked to somebody. Maybe a last damning accusation made to a burner phone before he took his own life. Shielding the glow of his mobile’s screen, Garrick scrolled through the notes on his phone and found the number Huw Crawford had called. It rang–

And the classic Nokia Grande Valse echoed from the furthest hangar.

“There!” Garrick slipped the still-ringing phone in his pocket as he charged forward towards the noise.

Chib tried to follow, but her foot snagged on some junk in the shadows, and she fell flat on her face.

Garrick drew closer to the dark hangar – just as the growl of an engine drowned out the ringing phone. He could see nothing but darkness ahead. Then a huge shadow loomed, and he felt a sudden rush of air pulling him forward. At the last second, Garrick rolled aside as the whirling blades of a propellor slashed inches in front of his face.

He hit the ground hard. In the shadows, a wing sliced over his head. Garrick sprang to his feet and turned to see the silhouette of a biplane against the hangar doors. There was one figure sitting in the cockpit. The fool was going to fly himself out of the country.

Something suddenly struck him in the side, and Garrick felt a rib crack as he was pushed aside. He had forgotten about the tail’s horizontal stabiliser. The breath was squeezed from him as he dropped to his knees, fighting the pain in his ribs.

A sudden steely determination pulsed through him, numbing the pain. He clambered to his feet, and on shaking legs, ran after the Boeing Stearman biplane. He almost cannoned into Chib at the entrance as the aircraft taxied between two sheds, heading out to a dark field.

“Get the car!” he snapped. Before she could reply, Garrick sprinted between a line of trees. He was gasping for breath as each step jarred his injured rib. He emerged on a long dark field. The ground was waterlogged. Cold mud seeped into his shoes. In the ambient light he could just see the shorter, paler grass which had been cut to form a basic unregulated runway. The aircraft was pointed away from him as the engine throttled up. There was no way he could stop it as it trundled forwards. He gave chase any way.

A blinding light came from his Land Rover’s headlights as the vehicle suddenly sped onto the airstrip, cutting off the plane. The Stearman performed a tight U-turn as Fraser wrestled the peddled to avoid a collision. Now it was pointing straight at Garrick and still accelerating. Garrick didn’t know if it was a deliberate assault – or if Fraser couldn’t see him in the darkness. The manoeuvre was so sudden that Garrick skidded in the mud as he tried to stop.

He could barely breathe as the roaring biplane jounced towards him. He stopped, and then impulsively ran back the way he had come – but the aircraft was faster.

He was seconds away from being chewed up by the propellor.

The waterlogged airstrip was in no condition to take the weight of a plane. The wheels suddenly dug in the soft mud and the Stearman nosedived into the ground. The wooden propellors shattered on impact, leaving the engine howling. The biplane came to rest at an acute angle, tail-up, stranded in the field.

Garrick ran towards it. Fraser struggled to unfasten his belt. He motioned to clamber from the other side of the plane, intending to run, when Chib skidded the Land Rover to a halt, blocking his path.

“Derek Fraser,” Garrick roared over the roar of the engine. “You’re nicked, mate!”

29

Garrick glowered across the interview room. It was the following morning, and Fraser was crumpled over the table looking sorry for himself. Next to him, his solicitor, Rosamund Hellberg sat with a sullen look, knowing she was now backing a losing horse.

“I didn’t see you in the dark,” Fraser mumbled.

In Garrick’s view, it was a poor excuse for attempted murder.

“And you could’ve run sideways,” said Fraser sheepishly. “Who runs in a straight line?”

Despite the co-codamol Garrick had taken to combat his broken rib and piecing headache, he could still feel the pain. Between the bruises across his body, his sore buttocks, head, and rib, he was struggling to find an area that wasn’t hurting.

Fraser was a defeated man. His arrogance was replaced by malaise. He had admitted to murdering Oscar Benjamin after they had both performed the security truck robbery.

“I was broke. I was going to lose everything, and the artwork wasn’t selling for much. Aye, it was