by Andy Maslen
Black smoke curls from her lips as she speaks and when she coughs, a smoke-ring shoots from her rosebud mouth towards Ramage’s face. She stretches her arms out towards him.
Not wanting to, but unable to resist, he reaches out to pick up the baby, noticing as he does so, that small orange flames flicker restlessly on her downy cheeks. But she screams, “You’re hurting me!” before bursting into flames that leap the gap between them and ignite his hair.
Ramage awoke, screaming, and batting at his skull.
“Oh, God,” he moaned. “How did we get to this?”
*
Stella arrived back at the B&B around noon the following day, behind the wheel of a rented silver Golf. She’d driven it carefully all the way back from Perth, never once exceeding, or even reaching, the speed limit. Even when the sweeping open road through the gorgeous landscape of lakes and yellow-and-purple moorland screamed at her, “open it up”.
On the bike, it would have been a different story. She’d have cracked the throttle wide open and torn along the road, taking a racing line around every bend, getting her knee down and shrieking with the sheer unconfined joy of the machine’s power and balance. But given her ambivalence about four-wheeled transport, and the fact that secured in the boot was an intriguing collection of firearms and other implements, she felt an encounter with the local traffic cops was best avoided.
Inside her room, she changed into the camouflaged shooting gear, packed, and went downstairs.
The landlady did a double-take as she took in Stella’s hunting outfit.
“Off shooting, are you, dear?”
“Stalking, yes.”
Stella settled the bill with cash, earning a smile.
“Well, good hunting and come again, won’t you dear?” her landlady urged her as she left, pressing a hand-tied cellophane bag of homemade shortbread biscuits into her hand.
And then Stella left, pointing the Golf towards Craigmackhan.
Leaving the Golf parked at a picnic area off a narrow country road, Stella shouldered the kit bag and a backpack loaded with a groundsheet, a fleece, a flask of coffee and a dozen energy bars. She consulted her map, then began the two-mile walk through the woodland that bordered Craigmackhan. As she left the picnic area behind her, the birdsong and the soughing of the breeze in the tall fir trees grew louder. The combination of sounds had a calming effect on her nerves, which had been singing like wind through telegraph wires ever since she’d started the car that morning. Somewhere in the distance, she heard occasional deep booms coming in pairs. She’d seen on the map that the Ministry of Defence owned the land to the west of her position and assumed the booms were explosions.
A good day to be testing weaponry, she thought, shifting the weight of the kitbag. Yes, she could have slung the long guns over her shoulders and stuck the Glock in her belt. Hell, she could have wrapped a scarlet bandanna around her forehead and stuck the cleaver between her teeth. But a chance encounter with a couple of birdwatchers or hikers would, she felt, queer her pitch as an avenging angel. They’d smile politely then race for the road and be on the phone to the police in seconds. Mission over.
Pausing by a rotten log, she sat and lowered the heavy kitbag to the ground where it settled with a scrunch into the dry bracken. She unscrewed the flask of coffee and poured a cup, washing down a couple of energy bars with the hot, strong brew. The smell of the coffee overlaid a sweetish smell of rot wafting up from the decaying tree trunk. The sun chose that moment to come out, sending bright, golden rods of light splintering through the tree canopy, and mottling the bracken and leaf mould on the ground like a leopard’s pelt. She inhaled deeply and rolled her shoulders, letting her head fall back on her neck and staring up through the leaves to the sky beyond.
“What if I just turned back? What if I just sold everything and disappeared?”
“No!” other-Stella snapped. “Not. Going. To happen. We’ve come this far and we’re bloody well going to finish it.”
The birds continued singing merrily as the two women discussed the mission. The wind strengthened, and the branches above her head swayed and snapped as gusts swirled through the wood.
Stella knew her ideas of vengeance were unlikely to bring her peace. After the accident, when she’d been living under the mistaken impression that Lola was still with her, she’d visited a grief counsellor. He’d been kind, and listened as she poured out the lurid fantasies of revenge that she was now in the process of enacting. He’d quoted some eastern mystic at her, something about holding onto anger being like gripping a hot coal and expecting it to burn the other person. It made sense. But at that moment, and ever since then, sense hadn’t been high on Stella’s list of priorities. The shock and grief when she realised she’d lost Lola as well as Richard had taken her last remaining shreds of rationality and burned them to a crisp.
In any case, Stella wasn’t out for peace. After dealing with Ramage, she intended to find a quiet spot and join Richard and Lola. They’d be together again. Safe from harm. A family, just like all the other happy families. Mummy, Daddy and Lola. Safe for ever.
“Come on then!” a voice said, right into her ear. “Enough with the ‘What iffing’. We’re going to kill Ramage. Eventually. On your feet, DI Cole.”
Other-Stella extended a hand and pulled Stella to her feet. Helped her lift the kitbag and settle it across her back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Stella checked the map again and strode off eastwards, through a stand of Douglas firs and heading for Dracula’s castle, chatting amiably to other-Stella about where she’d begin working on Ramage when she had him secured.
*
Lucy Van Houten was already in place. She’d arrived at Craigmackhan five hours earlier and was ensconced in a hide she’d constructed from bracken and fallen tree branches. She caressed the stock of her new rifle, a Sabatti STR chambered for 6.5mm Lapua rounds and equipped with a GECO 2.5-15X56 infrared telescopic sight. She’d brought neither food nor drink. She didn’t feel she needed them.
*
Collier called Ramage, sure that by now his attack dog would be in place, watching and waiting.
“Ramage.”
“Leonard, it’s Adam. We’ve got a problem. A major problem. She’s not dead.”
What? You told me it would all be fine. That your man would succeed.”
“I know. But somehow, she evaded him. I haven’t heard a peep out of him either. Either she did him in and dumped him somewhere or he’s gone to ground.”
“Never mind that, Adam. Does this mean I have some homicidal detective coming after me?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. I’m getting onto traffic next. Getting the ANPR cameras monitored for her bike. I doubt she’ll have gone by road, but it’s a start. I’ll do what I can with rail and air but I have to be careful. She’s a serving police officer. I can’t go charging around setting up a manhunt without ringing the kinds of alarm bells I’d rather stayed silent.”
Ramage sighed. “How did we get to this, Adam?”
“How did we get to what?”
“Murdering innocent civilians and their children, then planning to kill serving police officers?”
“You know how, Leonard. Don’t start getting sentimental on me. Not now. The group comes first, never forget that.”
“No, you’re right, of course you are. Look, I have a couple of chaps up here who work for me. Part-time poachers, full-time ne’er-do-wells. They’ve helped me out with a couple of tricky situations in the past. I’ll haul them up to the house and have them bring their guns. If she shows up here, I’ll just have to take care of her myself. Then you can figure out a way to clear up the mess. And I’ll repeat this for you, Adam, just in case you’ve forgotten: I am not going to sit around here waiting to be arrested by a rogue officer with a vigilante complex. And if I am, well, let’s just say they’d better build a bigger dock at the Old Bailey, hmm?”
“Don’t worry. It won’
t come to that. Not anywhere near.”
*
Stella scraped out a nest in the crunchy, brown bracken on the hillside overlooking Ramage’s house. Gordon Wade had been right. The thing was a monstrosity. Gothic windows, a tower, turrets, even a low, crenelated wall around the roof, giving the whole building the air of a fantasy fortress as imagined by a Victorian builder who’d read one too many penny dreadfuls about vampires in Mitteleuropa. The stone was dirty grey, mottled with scabs of white and yellow lichen. Ugly, white security bars had been fitted to the insides of the downstairs windows.
Through the Blaser’s telescopic sight, she could see the purple Bentley sitting at the front of the house in a circle of pale-gold shingle. It looked as though someone had posed it there for an advertising campaign. She was considering shooting at it when a rough-edged engine note floated up towards her from the road on the other side of the house. She eased her finger away from the trigger and looked over the top of the scope. A Land Rover sporting a harlequin suit of petrol-blue, khaki and primer-red panels pulled round the side of the house and drew up next to the Bentley. Out jumped two men dressed in waxed jackets, corduroys and boots. One went round to the rear door and emerged a second or two later with a pair of what looked like shotguns. Long-barrelled weapons, at any rate. She put her eye back to the scope. Yes. Under-and-over shotguns just like those she’d ignored in Campbell’s the day before.
As she watched, the front door – a heavy affair of oak with curved black straps of iron – opened, and out stepped Ramage. He was dressed in a pair of rose-pink trousers, an open-necked shirt and a mustard-coloured cardigan. Stella’s breath caught in her throat and she could feel her blood rushing in her ears, the surf-sound swelling and receding in time with the throbbing behind her eyes and in the base of her throat. She sighted on his head, watching the way the cross hairs danced on his face, but they were bobbing up and down as her pulse throbbed in her chest. Besides, a clean kill was the last thing Ramage was going to get.
She observed the three men talking, then Ramage returned to the safety of the house, while his two guards broke open their guns, inserted cartridges into the barrels and then closed them with a double crack that reached Stella’s ears a split second after she watched the barrels snap shut. The men walked in opposite directions, beginning a circuit of the house.
“How loyal are you to your master?” Stella asked aloud, as she settled herself more comfortably into her sniper nest. “Will I have to kill you too, or will you desert your post at the first sign of danger?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” other-Stella said, lying down beside her.
*
Three hundred yards to the west, embedded in an almost identical nest of vegetation, Lucy Van Houten kept watch on the house. She amused herself by sighting on each window on the side facing her in turn, imagining people appearing as if at a fairground shooting gallery, bobbling left to right, or snapping erect, like tin targets for her to knock down again.
When the two men arrived in their Land Rover, her heartbeat increased by just a fraction. She sighted on their foreheads, in turn, and considered blowing their heads apart like soft fruit, picturing the spray of pink in the air. But Adam had been clear. The detective kills the owner, then Lucy kills the detective. Adam would be angry if she disobeyed his orders. He might not give her any more assignments. She didn’t think she could bear that.
*
While Stella waited for the men to reappear at the front of the house, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to her six-month rotation with the Metropolitan Police’s firearms squad. Being fast-tracked didn’t simply mean a series of promotions and cushy duties. She’d walked the beat with a forty-two-year-old sergeant named Jack Hempstead while he instructed her on the various forms of villainy he’d encountered in his eighteen years of pavement pounding. She’d looked on as private crime scene cleaning firms scraped blood and body parts off floors, walls and, on one memorable night, ceilings. She’d donned waders and elbow-length, red rubber gauntlets and waded through a sewer searching for a shooter that the mid-level drug dealer they’d been chasing had chucked down a drain. So, all in all, she felt she’d earned her place on the fast track and could take the good-natured jibes of her colleagues as she was promoted, first to detective sergeant and then detective inspector at the tender age of twenty-six.
Back then, when she was doing the rounds of all the major commands, armed police were SO19. Since then, the command had undergone another couple of the Met’s endless name changes, emerging as SC&O19. Everyone in the job thought the ampersand was fussy and just called it SCO19.
Her firearms instructor was ex-army, like a lot of the firearms officers themselves, although by no means all of them. He’d patiently guided her through the loading, operation and care of handguns, rifles and shotguns. His words on shooting rifles came back to her now, floating down through the intervening years like gun smoke on the outdoor range.
“Breathing’s key. In all the way, let it out as you squeeze the trigger to first pressure, wait a single heartbeat, then squeeze off the round.”
Stella waited, trying to calm her thoughts and with them, her heart rate, which was still fluttery and fast. Other-Stella lay down next to her and placed a calming hand in between her shoulder blades.
“You heard what he said, Stel,” she said. “Breathe. Nice and easy.”
While Stella focused on breathing, other-Stella pulled a pair of compact binoculars from her pocket and brought them up to her eyes.
“They’re coming back, look.”
Stella raised the rifle and looked down at the gravelled circle through the scope. The two guards, or whoever they were – Pro Patria Mori muscle, presumably – were walking towards each other, shotguns resting over their left arms, right hands on the trigger guards. They stopped a foot or two apart and exchanged a few words. Then one leant his gun against the side of the Land Rover and fished a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket pocket.
“What a kind chap,” other-Stella said, “offering his mate a fag. Now would be a good time if you felt like testing their loyalty, you know.”
The two men stood close together, blowing clouds of steel-grey smoke into the air above their heads. Talking and laughing.
Stella worked the smooth, straight-pull bolt to chamber a round. She wound the webbing sling around her left hand and adjusted her grip on the wooden fore-end so that the webbing held her arm tight with an enjoyable tension. Using her right thumb, she released the safety catch with a soft click and brought her right eye to the rear end of the scope.
Through the optically perfect lenses, the man appeared to be within arm’s reach. She traversed the cross hairs down from his head, through his chest and his stomach, to his right thigh. He was sturdily built, at least fifteen stone, and the broad expanse of sand-coloured corduroy made a reasonable target. Sorry, mate. But it’ll only be a flesh wound. Not like the kind your boss and his friends have been dishing out.
She began.
Breathe in, all the way.
She checked her aim. The cross hairs were rock-steady.
Let it out, nice and smooth.
She let her index finger curl round the trigger as she held the cross hairs steady on his leg.
Tighten the pressure.
She squeezed the trigger until she felt it resist, ever so slightly: first pressure.
Wait for a beat.
Her heart sent another charge of blood coursing through her arteries.
Fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Fire!
THE REPORT OF the rifle as the bullet hurtled from the muzzle was loud, despite the sound moderator, and the recoil bumped the rubber heel pad hard against Stella’s shoulder. A sharp whiff of burnt, smokeless powder caught in her nostrils and made her blink.
*
Deep inside Lucy Van Houten’s skull, her limbic system, that primitive organ responsible for modulating risk and reward behaviours, squirt
ed a shot of dopamine into her brain. The neurotransmitter flashed through her system, making her feel good in a way she could never put into words. Gunshots always did that to her, and once, as a teenaged girl, she had actually experienced an orgasm as she shot a new rifle.
She knew her moment was approaching and began checking over her weapon.
*
One hundred yards away from Stella’s sniper nest, the soft-point bullet penetrated the man’s corduroy trousers, the skin of his leg, the thick layer of creamy yellow fat beneath, the silvery fascia enveloping his quadriceps, and finally the solid meat beyond.
Before he knew what was happening to him, the partial copper jacket that shrouded all but the tip of the bullet peeled back into jagged petals. The force of impact compressed the lead, which spread out in front of the copper petals, quadrupling its original surface area and tumbling through the soft tissue before stopping dead against the femur.
The man fell sideways, his mouth stretched open in an ‘O’, his eyes wide with pain and fear. Stella heard his cries, though the fractional time delay between his mouth moving and the sound waves reaching her ear drums lent them a comical air as she watched through the scope. The trouser leg was turning from beige to red as he lay, writhing, on the ground, hands clamped over the wound.
“Not turning red very fast, though, Stel. You missed the femoral artery, whether you meant to or not,” other-Stella observed.
His associate was scrambling to help him whilst looking frantically all around for the shooter attacking them. He drew a piece of fabric from his pocket – it looked like a handkerchief – and pressed it against the entry wound, bringing another scream from the wounded man.
Ramage appeared at the front door. Seeing the pair of guards, he ran over, which was, in the circumstances, an unwise move, and stood over them. The second man and he exchanged a few words. Then Ramage pointed at him, shouting. The man replied, waving his hand wildly in Stella’s direction, then pointing down at his friend and then at the Land Rover. Stella couldn’t hear the words themselves, but their meaning was clear enough.