Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  The sound had been a gunshot. Someone was shooting at them. As if to underline that too-slow realisation, there was another shot. Acting on instinct, because it certainly wasn’t out of volition, Ruth raised her head.

  “Get down!” Mitchell hissed, pushing her back into the ditch. “And stay down. Don’t move.”

  His face was almost immobile with tension, but his eyes raged. He pulled out a gun, not the revolver in his belt, but a small, sleek, black pistol from a holster on his ankle. He raised his hand and fired off two shots towards the house.

  “Riley?” he called, and Ruth realised the constable wasn’t in the ditch with them.

  “Here,” she called from somewhere on the far side of the track and a little closer to the house.

  “One shooter. Single shot rifle. Second storey. Southeast corner. Remember Guildford? The bridge?” Mitchell yelled.

  “Understood,” Riley replied.

  “Listen,” Mitchell hissed. He raised his gun and fired again. “Riley is going to run to the—” There was a shot from the house. “Riley is going to take the right,” he continued. “I’m going to run to the house. I want you to stay here. Understand?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “I’ll stay here,” she said.

  “On five,” Mitchell called out loudly, and he fired again.

  Ruth began to count. She’d only reached three before Mitchell pushed himself out of the ditch.

  Suddenly, she realised her revolver was still in its holster. All thumbs and no fingers, she fumbled with the button. She drew the revolver for the second time that day, and for the second time in her life that she hadn’t been cleaning it or practicing on the range.

  There was a shot, and then another, but they sounded as if they came from different guns. Ruth forced herself up, raising her arm. Mitchell was running towards the house, firing off shot after shot. There was no sign of the scarred man or of the woman. The second man, the one who’d been helping to unload the radiators, was running towards the paddock. Riley was chasing after him. Focus, Ruth told herself. The barrel of her revolver was weaving left and right. She tried bracing her left hand on her right wrist. Though that steadied her aim, it did nothing for her wavering vision. Any shot was as likely to hit the sergeant as it was the house.

  There was another shot from inside the building. She saw Mitchell stumble, trip, and fall. He’d been hit.

  Ruth was out of the ditch and running towards the house before she’d had time to think. She reached the cart as she saw Mitchell stagger to his feet and stumble into the house. There was more gunfire, this time from inside. Muffled by brick, she couldn’t tell whether it was from a rifle or pistol. She ran off the track, onto grass, and then over worn paving slabs. Sprinting up the drive, she reached the porch just as there was a percussive, single shot from inside, followed almost instantly by an even louder moan.

  “Sir! Sergeant!” she called.

  “Upstairs is clear,” he called back from somewhere above. Any relief that he was still alive vanished the moment she stepped into the house. Revolver held in two hands, elbows bent, she rolled around the doorway to the front room. Levelling the gun, sweeping left and right, she frantically tried to remember her training. There was a monstrous machine, made of grey plastic and black metal, in the middle of the room, but there were no people. At the far end was a doorway, with two paint-chipped doors pushed wide open. She went through them and into a kitchen. The windows were covered with thick felt curtains that had been pulled aside. Through the glass she saw both the scarred man and the woman running across the meadow behind the house.

  Without thought, she pushed open the kitchen door, and ran after them. The man was in the lead, almost two hundred yards away. From his easy stride, Ruth doubted she’d catch him. The woman was sixty yards closer, but running as fast as Ruth. She didn’t care. They were angling towards the wire fence of the recycling plant. There was no escape there. She ran straight, running parallel to the fence, slowly gaining ground.

  The scarred man seemed to realise that freedom didn’t lie in front or to his right. He changed direction, heading towards the same woodland from which Ruth had spied on the house half an hour and a lifetime ago. The woman copied the man and changed direction. Now Ruth really was gaining on them.

  The man turned his head. He saw Ruth. He shouted something. The woman turned. Ruth locked eyes with her. The woman started to run faster. Ruth tried to find some last burst of energy but found her reserves dry. She wasn’t going to catch them.

  The woman suddenly fell.

  “Emmitt!” the woman called.

  Ruth kept running.

  The woman was on her hands and knees, pulling herself back to her feet. She managed another pace before she collapsed again.

  “Emmitt!” she called.

  Ruth grinned. The woman must have twisted her ankle. There was no way she would escape now. She threw a glance towards the scarred man. He seemed a lot closer than before, but the woman was closer still.

  Still running, she holstered the revolver, and pulled out the handcuffs. Ten yards. Five. The woman was crawling away from her. Ruth’s grin turned feral as she leaped, using her weight to push the woman down to the ground. She pushed her knee into the woman’s back as she cuffed one hand, and then the other.

  “You’re under arrest,” she said, and the words seemed strange in her ears. She pulled the woman to her knees, and only then remembered the scarred man. Hoping to get some sight of which stretch of woodland he’d disappeared into, she looked up. He stood fifty yards from her. Something dull and metallic was in his hands. It was a rifle, she realised. Though it was far squatter than those sold for hunting.

  Drawing her revolver, she took a pace towards him. The man fired. Ruth’s training took over. Her arm raised, her finger curled on the trigger. The gun clicked. She pulled the trigger again. There was another shot though not from her. The revolver clicked. Click. Click. Click. Click. The scarred man slowly lowered his gun. He watched her for a moment, as she ineffectually pulled the trigger, before he ran for the treeline.

  Ruth’s hands fell to her sides as she watched him go. She let out a ragged breath and turned to her prisoner. The woman had been shot, twice, in the chest. Blood still pulsed out of the gaping wound, but she was dead. Ruth took a step towards her, and then a stumbling step back, barely managing to turn her head before she threw up.

  “Are you hurt?”

  It was Mitchell, and his voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. Hands roughly gripped Ruth’s shoulders, forcing her to straighten. Then he raised a hand to her chin and gently turned her head from left to right.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Look at me. You’re okay. Do you understand?”

  “I… yes.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I forgot,” she said.

  “Forgot what?”

  She raised her hand, but the revolver wasn’t in it. “To load it,” she said, blinking as she tried to focus on the long grass around her as she looked for her weapon.

  Mitchell followed her gaze, bent, and picked up the gun. He reached to her belt and pulled out six cartridges. He quickly loaded the revolver and fired off six shots in the direction of the woodland.

  “He fired at your prisoner,” he said. “You returned fire. You missed.”

  “I didn’t fire,” she said. “I forgot.”

  “No,” he said patiently, “you fired six shots. He ran. You didn’t pursue because it was more important to secure the scene. Repeat it.”

  “I fired six shots. I didn’t pursue because I had to secure the scene,” she murmured.

  “Good enough,” he said, and handed her back her gun. Then he jogged off across the grassland in the direction of the woods. She assumed he was going after the man… Emmitt? Was that what the woman had called him? Ruth looked down at the body, and then quickly away and found she was looking at the house. There was no sign of Riley. What had the s
ergeant meant by secure the scene? Did he mean the house? Why? When she looked back towards him, she saw that he’d stopped, about fifty yards from her, and was looking at the ground. He bent and picked something up. A pace further on, he did it again. Then he started walking back towards her, throwing an occasional glance at the trees.

  “Old-world make,” he said when he reached her. In his hand was a casing. “From what I saw from the house, I’d say it was a military grade rifle.”

  “You mean the Marines?” she asked.

  “No. I mean old-world military. And I don’t think it was British,” he said, examining the casing. “High velocity. That’s about as far as I’m willing to guess.” He looked at the dead woman. “Two good shots. Either would have killed her, so the second must have hit when she was on the ground. That tells us a lot.”

  “It does?” Ruth asked, curiosity cutting through shock.

  “You’ve heard the expression, there’s no honour among thieves? Sayings like that only last because there’s a grain of truth to them. Now, there’s a time to think about what just happened, but it isn’t now. I’ve got a suspect handcuffed to the sink, Riley is missing, and that man could come back.”

  “I think his name is Emmitt,” Ruth said.

  “Then let’s see if our suspect will confirm it. Come on, she’s not going anywhere.”

  Ruth let herself be led away from the body. Walking helped clear the fog from her mind.

  “I thought I saw you get shot,” she said.

  “I was.” He pointed at a tear in his shirt. “Bulletproof vest,” he said. “Stopped the bullet, but I’ll have a nice bruise tomorrow. They’re not standard issue, and you want to know why not?”

  “Why?”

  “When I came back to Twynham and saw the uniform they told me to wear, I asked. Most of us wore them when I left, you see. They’re all different styles and designs depending on whether they came from the armoury in a ship, a provincial police station, or a military base. That means they’re not uniform, therefore they can’t be issued as such. Damn stupid bureaucracy.”

  “Oh.” It was unimportant. The sergeant was alive. She was alive. “Wait. Riley is missing?” she asked.

  “The man she was chasing got on a horse. The last I saw of Riley, she’d grabbed the other one, and was riding after him.”

  “Riley can ride?” Ruth asked.

  “When I met her she was with a group of horse traders from Ireland. That’s what they claimed to be. What they were… well, that’s a story for her to tell you. Yes, she can ride. But if this man, Emmitt, comes back, I’d rather have some cover to hide behind.”

  “Do you think he will?”

  “He might,” Mitchell said, “when he realises we’re alone. On the other hand… I don’t know. None of this quite fits.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  They’d reached the house.

  “Didn’t you notice?” he asked. “See for yourself.”

  She followed him inside, throwing one last look at the treeline. There was no sign of Emmitt. No sign of anyone. She couldn’t even see the body of the dead woman. Ruth went through the kitchen and back into the main room. There wasn’t much light until Mitchell pulled the boards down from the room’s bay window. Then she saw. The room was full of banknotes. Some were stacked neatly. Some stacks had been knocked over, spilling the currency down to the bare floorboards. Other notes were still stuck together on sheets of paper slightly smaller than an unfolded newspaper.

  Mitchell picked up a stack of bills held together by a thin strand of off-white string. It was about four times the size of that which had been in one of the pouches of Anderson’s money belt.

  “Buy yourself the best house in the country,” he said, placing the stack on a small table next to the hulking great machine, and picked up another. “Buy yourself a ship.” He placed them next to the first. “And a crew.” He placed a third next to the first two. “Provision it.” A fourth stack. He picked up two more. “And what do you do with the rest? Buy a factory? Buy every factory?”

  Ruth turned slowly around as she tried to work out how much money was in the room. She gave up when she reached a hundred thousand.

  “How much,” she asked, and was surprised by how weak her voice sounded.

  “Here, sit down,” Mitchell said, righting a wooden chair and placing it next to the large machine. He went into the kitchen and came out again with a stone jug. “It’s water,” he said, passing it to her.

  Her hands shook as she took a sip, and then a gulp.

  “It’s millions,” Mitchell said. “Exactly how many, I don’t know. In many ways it doesn’t matter. In the old world it would have been a small fortune. In ours it’s a larger one than anyone could dream of earning.”

  “Is that the computer?” Ruth asked, jerking her thumb towards the massive grey machine.

  “That’s the printer. I’d say three copiers have been stripped down and rebuilt, combined with… I don’t know. Perhaps those rollers were built specially for this job. We’ll have to find out. But this,” he said, picking up a small silver folder, “is the computer.” He opened it. One half held a keyboard, and the other half was a screen that suddenly changed from mirror-black to a brightly lit image of a twenty-pound note.

  “That’s a computer?” she asked.

  “You haven’t seen one before?”

  “In pictures,” she said, her mind still foggy. “Phones, and those boxy things that go under desks.”

  “And that’s the problem, isn’t it. Everything was digital, so the pictures that have survived since before The Blackout are often a decade out of date. But this printer was built, not found, and exactly who constructed it is a question for our prisoner. Excuse me.”

  The sergeant disappeared upstairs.

  Ruth realised that she was staring at a twenty-pound note lying by her foot. It was the answer to her and Maggie’s problems, a way of getting Mr Foster off their backs at least until she was paid in three months’ time. Surely there was no way to know exactly how many notes had been printed? Even if there were, it was reasonable to expect Emmitt or the other man had taken some with them. No one would notice one more was missing. She grabbed the note and stuffed it into her pocket.

  Walking into the kitchen, she realised her heart was racing once more. No one would miss it, she told herself. But what if the bank started checking all the twenty-pound notes that were deposited? It wouldn’t matter. Foster would spend the money. But what if he didn’t? What if he took it to the bank and remembered exactly who’d given it to him? And even if he did buy something with it, sooner or later that note would end up at a bank. Ruth pulled out the banknote, intending to drop it to the floor.

  “Anything in there?” Mitchell asked. He was handcuffing a man to the chair she’d been sitting in.

  “Um…” She looked around the kitchen. “Some canned food,” she said. “Something electrical. A stove, I think. A small one.”

  “Makes sense. If they’re stealing the electricity for the printer, there’s no reason they wouldn’t take a bit extra to make their lives comfortable. Let’s start with that,” he said, turning to the prisoner. “Where’s the power coming from? What are the names of the people working with you inside the factory?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Is that your way of saying you’re not going to talk? Look at my colleague. Look at her. You see that blood on her face? It isn’t hers. It belongs to that woman who was working with you.”

  Ruth found her hand moving to the side of her face. Then she remembered it still had the banknote in it. She turned away, thrusting the note back into her pocket.

  “We didn’t kill her,” Mitchell said. “It was the man with the scarred face who did that. He shot her just after my colleague got the cuffs on her. Think about that for a moment. He killed her so we couldn’t arrest her. Now, what do you think will happen to you when you get to prison? Do you think he’ll be able to get to you on the inside? Or
will he shoot you from a distance when you’re out on a work gang?”

  “I’ve got rights,” the man mumbled.

  “Yes, and I’m supposed to read them to you, but it seems a waste since you’re going to be dead within a month. You see, your problem isn’t that we’ve caught you, it’s that you fired at us. Forgery carries a five-year sentence. Counterfeiting is an automatic fifteen. I don’t know exactly which of those two you’re guilty of, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. Attempted murder of a police officer is an automatic sentence of life without parole. You’re young. The years are going to be heavy. Sooner or later you’ll talk. That scarred man knows that, and he won’t risk it, so he’ll kill you.”

  “And what? You’re going to let me go?” the man asked.

  Mitchell laughed. “I’m going to give you a chance. Forgery is five years hard labour, but you don’t have to serve that sentence in a prison or on a work gang. You can opt for a life at sea. Believe me, it will be a lot harder than breaking asphalt, but you’ll live, and at the end of it, maybe you’ll have found a new career. This is a onetime offer. You tell me everything you know, right now, or take your chances. Start by telling us your name.”

  There was silence, broken by the soft clink of the handcuffs on wood as the man stretched and squirmed and looked around for some other way out.

  “I was hired to guard the house,” the man finally said. “And shoot anyone who comes near. I was… I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Ah, there, you see?” Mitchell said, turning to Ruth. “He wasn’t thinking. It was an accident. Now what’s your name?”

  There was another long pause. “How can I trust you?”

  “Take my word or don’t, you’ve no other choice. Your name?” Mitchell said.

  The man breathed out. “Turnbull,” he said, exhaling as much as speaking. “Josh Turnbull.”

  “See, that wasn’t hard. What’s the name of the man with the scarred face?”