An officer was standing resolutely in the middle of the road by the time they arrived from Express Park.
‘Armed Response are going in now, Sir,’ he said.
Dixon was out of the pursuit vehicle, climbing into the driver’s seat of the patrol car blocking the lane. ‘Where’s the bloody handbrake in this thing?’ He was looking for a lever down beside the seat, but there wasn’t one. Handbrake off and the car should just roll out of the way.
‘I can’t let you through, Sir,’ protested the officer.
‘Let me, Sir,’ said Mark, shoving the uniformed officer out of the way. ‘There’s a button.’
Once through the roadblock they were speeding down the single track lane, high hedges on both sides, at a modest sixty miles an hour this time, blue light switched off.
‘This is as far as I can get,’ said the traffic officer behind the wheel, the lane in front of them blocked by a line of ambulances, vans and cars.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mark, his hand on the driver’s shoulder.
Squeezing between the vans and the hedge, dead branches coated in frost clawed at their coats, the occasional rotten blackberry still hanging on for grim death. The dead of winter, they called it; only two things going for it – ice climbing, not that he did that any more, and deserted beaches.
The dead of winter.
Please, God, no.
Two large five-bar gates were standing open, a heavy chain on the ground just visible in the first light of dawn.
‘I can’t let you go any further, Sir,’ said Inspector Watts, the senior Armed Response officer.
Another one calling Dixon ‘Sir’. The last time their paths had crossed they’d been the same rank. This was going to take some getting used to, although Dixon had more important things to worry about.
‘They’re going in now, although we’ve had a look with a drone and can’t see anything.’
‘Armed police!’ The shout came from the barn, figures creeping along the wall at the front, crouching low, the movement visible through the hedge.
‘We’ll never get through the barn doors, but there’s a door at the far end that’ll take a battering ram,’ said Watts.
Jane was crouching behind Dixon, then came Louise and Mark.
Two crashes, wood splintering, shouts of ‘Armed police!’ coming from inside the barn now. Dixon braced for the gunshots.
‘Clear!’
More officers emerged from the darkness opposite the barn, behind arc lamps now illuminating the front.
The radio on Watts’s body armour crackled into life. ‘There’s no one here, Guv.’
‘Fuck it,’ muttered Dixon. ‘Check for a cellar,’ he said, turning to Mark and Louise behind him.
‘They’ll have done that,’ snapped Watts.
‘Check it again. They’re here somewhere, they must be.’
‘Unless they really are in the hote—’ Mark thought better of it.
‘Jane, stay here and find out if we’ve found their phones yet, will you.’
A sharp intake of breath, about to protest, but it never came. Perhaps that conversation about eating for two, sleeping for two and taking risks for two had done the trick?
The barn doors were standing open by the time Dixon received clearance to go and have a look for himself, lights on inside now.
It had been open the night of wassailing, the ancient cider press the centrepiece of a small museum of sorts. This time there were pallets of cans wrapped in plastic, stickers with red crosses and ‘Quality Control’ on them. Some had been emptied down a drain and dumped in a recycling bin on wheels.
‘Shocking waste,’ said Mark, quietly.
Trestle tables leaning against the wall, stacks of chairs; Dixon even noticed two old toasters on the side. A wooden ladder led to a mezzanine floor.
‘It’s clear, Sir,’ said an Armed Response officer, spotting him about to start the climb. ‘There’s nothing up there.’
Watts had followed him into the barn. ‘We’ve been through every door and there are no trapdoors in the floor. I’m sorry, Sir, but there’s no one here.’
A sharp kick at the gravel sent stones flying across the seating area outside, clattering into the sodden wooden benches and tables. Dixon was watching the ambulances and vans turning off the lane and into the car park. It seemed only yesterday he had parked there for the wassailing, flames from the fire pit rising into the darkness, the smell of mulled cider, people milling about everywhere, Roger queuing at the bar.
It was much the same scene now, arc lamps replacing the flames perhaps. And the people were carrying guns. The Portaloos had gone too.
‘We’ve found their phones,’ said Jane, appearing at Dixon’s elbow. ‘They were behind a sofa in the bar area. We’re checking the CCTV now.’
‘What about the families?’
‘Still at Express Park,’ replied Jane. ‘Reception will be opening to the public in a bit, so I told them to put them upstairs in the canteen.’
Dixon was leaning on the five-bar gate, looking into the gloom beyond, a fork in the farm track fifty or so yards away. ‘What’s down there?’ he asked.
