In his heart, he’d always known he’d end up facing the Immolation Man alone. He typed a single word reply – OK – and pressed send. He put the phone in his pocket and thought about what to do next. He didn’t have long; Flynn would arrive soon and no way would he get to sneak off then. If he was going, then he had to go immediately. Bradshaw was looking at him strangely. She inclined her head in a silent question.
‘Just need to run a quick errand, Tilly. You stay here and make sure DI Flynn has everything she needs.’
‘Where are you going, Poe? Who was that text from?’
‘Do you trust me, Tilly?’
She stared at him, her myopic eyes burning fiercely under her spectacles. She nodded. ‘I do, Poe.’
‘I have to do something and I can’t tell you what.’
‘You’re my friend. Let me help.’ She said it so earnestly he nearly caved.
‘Not this time, Tilly. This is something I have to do on my own.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The address Reid had given him was on the other side of the M6 but the satnav directed him to a nearby underpass. Poe wasn’t familiar with much of the area after Shap village; if he needed to go north, he took the M6 not the A6, but he was soon heading up into the fells.
Cumbria was one of those counties where you could be on a single-lane track only a few hundred yards from a major motorway and the road quickly turned rural. Poe doubted he’d see any ot
her vehicles. The people who used this road lived on the fell. It wasn’t a route to anywhere and he suspected it would simply stop at some point. Sheep grazed freely, unencumbered by fences. Poe had driven over three cattle grids near the M6 but none recently. Before long he was high enough up to see the motorway below him. He was on Langdale Fell. The air was beginning to thicken with another ominous fog. It wouldn’t be long before visibility was reduced to zero. The satnav said he had another five miles to go. He crested Langdale and began navigating down a smaller road on the other side of the fell. Even though the satnav was working, he stopped to check his AA roadmap. He wanted to get his bearings. He was now on Ravenstonedale Common, the Cumbrian Deliveranceville. He’d never been there before in his life.
The road and fog didn’t allow a speed much above thirty miles an hour. He followed the satnav’s instructions, and by the time it told him he was at his destination he couldn’t see a single sign he was on an inhabited planet. He couldn’t even see sheep any more.
Poe stopped to check Reid’s instructions.
In the distance, jagged peaks rose above the fog like headstones. Their definition was fading, though; the fog would reach him soon and then he would be cut off. Ravenstonedale Common was made up of crags, scree slopes and unyielding granite outcrops. It explained the lack of sheep; there was nothing for them to eat. The wind whistled down the slope and Poe could hear water trickling.
And nothing else.
It was eerie. The moors and fells that usually gave him a clarity of mind impossible in Hampshire, now seemed close and oppressive. The fog was low enough for it to have a dreamlike quality. He really was isolated.
He put the car into gear and followed Reid’s instructions. He took the next left and after one hundred yards he saw the Black Hollow Farm sign, exactly where Reid had promised it would be. Large rocks on the drive and deep ditches either side blocked vehicular access to the farm. The earth was fresh and wet where the rocks had been dragged – the makeshift roadblock had been recently constructed. He wondered why Reid had bothered. It wasn’t as if Poe had planned to drive up to the front door. From now on, Mr Caution was his friend.
Black Hollow Farm was the end of the road. The track stopped where Poe was parked. He turned off the engine and surveyed his surroundings.
The farmhouse was bleak and imposing. Poe had thought he lived an isolated existence, but he realised, compared to the men and women who worked these fells, he was almost a city boy. This was extreme farming.
Black Hollow Farm was well named. A dark atmosphere hung over it like a veil: fear, despair, anger. It was in a deep basin – Poe suspected it had once been a quarry – and was cast in perpetual shadow. It was the type of Lake District farmhouse that would never make money from the lucrative bed-and-breakfast trade. It was a low and stocky building, built to withstand ferocious winters with little regard to aesthetics. It stuck to the ground like a limpet on a rock and looked to be two hundred years old.
A sheepfold – a stone pen that afforded sheep shelter in the very worst weather – was attached to the side of the main building. Poe had one on his own land. They were usually circular or oval, the walls about three feet tall, and there was a single narrow entrance. The one at Black Hollow Farm was slightly different. The entrance had been widened and a huge military camouflage net covered it.
Inside was the ten-cell prisoner-transport lorry no one had been able to locate.
Three other vehicles were parked by the side of the building: the four-cell van Poe had spent hours studying, Reid’s old Volvo and a beat-up Mercedes that was presumably George Reid’s personal vehicle.
Poe took this all in without leaving his car. He removed his phone. Unbelievably, he still had a signal. Now that he’d arrived, the foolhardiness of what he was doing came home to him. No one knew where he was and, even if they did, he was a good forty minutes from assistance.
So why had he come? The smart play would be to call Gamble and leave it to a hostage negotiator or an armed response unit. Anything else was foolhardy. But . . . Reid was his friend. A friend with secrets but a friend all the same.
He didn’t know what to do.
His text alert went off again. It was the same number as before. It was a five-word message: You’re in no danger, Poe.
Still he didn’t move. Getting out of the car and walking the shale track to the farmhouse was the end of his career. Whatever happened, people would say he should have waited.
He thought back to the boy in the photograph. A boy covered in scars. A boy who’d survived against overwhelming odds. His friend. And Reid – despite what he’d become – had been his friend. Nobody could fake a friendship for that long. And Poe owed him the chance to tell his story.