“I guess you found Kevin,” he said. “Is he still alive in there?”
Annie was staring at me, alarm and confusion loud on her face, shrugging a question at me. I couldn’t move.
“Ali? Are you alright in there?”
In there. He was watching me. I willed myself to breathe and my eyes to move, squinting against the sunlight, scanning my field of vision. Trees. Barn. One or the other.
“Well, look, while I’ve got you and you’re letting me talk, I just want to tell you I’m sorry for what happened between us. I really didn’t want it to come to that, and honestly, I don’t want it to come to that again, either. I’m really glad you’re okay, but I’m afraid to say you’ve got me a little bit cornered.”
The house. If he was cornered, he had to be in the house. I looked at Annie, managed to signal toward it with my eyes. Watched her face change, her eyes darken, her jaw set.
“What I’d really like is for you to stand down for a minute, turn away, go back downstairs, talk to your friend. Give me a head start. What do you say?”
I forced the words out of my throat. “Where are you?”
“Over here,” he said.
I looked out there again, trying to see into the dark places. Nothing moved. He wasn’t standing there waving. “Over where?”
“I’m in the barn.”
The doors, ajar. Black inside.
“I’m watching you through a rifle scope. Say hi to Annie for me. I guess I couldn’t rely on her, after all. It’s a shame, she’s a nice girl.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “We’ve got all your guns.” Didn’t we?
“So what I’m thinking is, if you just stay well over there for a minute, I can be on my way and not have to kill you both.”
“No.” He was bluffing. If he was in the barn with a rifle, he wasn’t cornered. He was in the house and unarmed. I willed life into my limbs and gestured to Annie to get out of earshot and get on the phone. “I want Jenny back.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Oh, her. You don’t want her back.”
“Then you’re not leaving. I want Jenny, and I want answers.”
“Answers to what?”
“Fucking questions, dickhead.”
He sniggered. “Well, why don’t I call you when I get where I’m going?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “You’re going straight to the nick, in about twenty minutes, unless you really have got a gun, in which case you’ll be going to the morgue. Either’s fine with me, but I want Kerry Farrow’s body and I want my detective inspector back, so you might as well give them up while we’re waiting.” Emboldened, I stepped out of the garage onto the gravel driveway and looked over to the open door of the house. “I don’t like talking to you on the phone,” I said. “Come out so we don’t have to come in after you, there’s a good b—”
The rear window of my car shattered, the explosion of glass followed a split second later by a faint crack.
Annie was running before I hit the ground, and was out of the garage and in That Man’s sights before I could stop her.
Chapter 34
I’d never seen a sky as blue as the one I stared up at as I lay on my back on the gravel beside the car, trying to figure out what hurt. I didn’t know what kind of blue it was. Azure? Sapphire? Cobalt? Those are the usual words people use to describe it, but I didn’t really know what any of them meant. It was just blue. The purest, deepest blue I’d ever seen or imagined. It was peaceful and beyond beautiful, certainly worthy of being the last thing I ever looked at.
It wouldn’t be, though. Annie saw to that when she threw herself down beside me and stuck her face in the way and shouted, “Ali, Jesus, are you hit?”
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think so. “I’m alright,” I said. “Stay down.”
She was already on her feet, though, and then she was hurling herself into the driver’s seat of my car and the engine was running and before I could react, the wheels were spinning and she took off backward across the drive.
I could see what she’d reacted to, then. I glanced across to the barn to see the big wooden doors crash back off their hinges and in front of them was a van, surging out of the darkness and onto the dirt track that would lead it to the mouth of the driveway.
I knew what she was going to try to do, and that it wasn’t going to work. The van was huge; it looked like one of our old riot control vehicles, a full-size twin-wheel Sprinter with bull bars and window guards and, oh God, a secure cage in the back.
I scrambled to my feet and screamed vainly after Annie, watching helplessly as she spun my Alfa through an admittedly impressive J-turn and gunned it for the tree line, closing the distance faster than That Man could, maybe two or three car lengths in it, the van bearing down on her with twice the weight, twice the momentum.
I was off and running, adrenaline and fear and fury in full control, my only objective to be close enough to that van to mount it if it stopped.
Annie beat him to the tunnel in the trees. Then, a flash of brake lights and my car swerved first to the right and then to the left, the rear wheels locked as it yawed sideways into a slide. The back end hit first, slamming against the first tree on the right. The front end followed suit a beat later, the Alfa coming to a dead stop in a billow of smoke and plastic and air bags, wedged tight across the mouth of the track. I saw Annie fling the door open, and then the van was on her, no brakes, no hesitation, slamming into the side of the car and folding it as though it were made of paper.
But it held. The back end of the van leaped five feet into the air and slammed down hard as the front plowed into the car I hadn’t finished paying for and stopped in the space of about a yard.
I was still a hundred feet away when That Man kicked open his door and slid down from his seat, pulling a rifle out after him. He walked around to the front of the van, raised it to his shoulder and aimed at the ground somewhere beyond the wreckage. I yelled, reached for the revolver in my back pocket. Found the pocket but not the gun. Skittered to a halt as That Man lowered the rifle without firing and turned to look at me.
There it was: the face my brain had been unable to render since the day he’d crippled it.
It was bland, expressionless, a generic collection of generic features, no more memorable than the e-fit pinned to the notice board in the incident room.
Nothing came flooding back. There was no magical moment of recognition or mutual understanding. Nothing. He just shook his head, and raised the rifle, and fired.
I took a reflexive staggering step backward as something bounced off my hip; it stung and made a tiny hole in my jeans, but that was all it did. I watched as he gave an exaggerated shrug and dropped what was clearly an air rifle into the weeds. He reached into the van, pulled out a long black bag and what looked like some kind of bow, and threw me a childish wave, and melted into the trees.
I caught hold of my senses before the adrenaline could wear off, and darted around the other side of the van to where it had buried itself in my car.
The Alfa was toast; it was three feet wide and bent like a banana. It was also empty.
I clambered up over the top of it and jumped down onto the track. Annie was lying some twenty feet away in the dirt, and as I reached her side she sat bolt upright, wild-eyed, and said, “Fucking hell, I wasn’t drunk enough for that.”
“How bad is it?” I looked her over for missing or right-angled limbs, but she was intact.
“Did you see me fly?”
“No.”
“Oh, well. I’m not doing it again. Which way did he go?”
I pointed.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
“Got the gun?”
“No.”
She gave me two sarcastic thumbs-up and said, “Awesome. You had one job.” A
nd then she was on her feet, pain and anger radiating from her face, and she hauled me up by the armpit from my squat and said, “Now what?”
Now we wait for the backup to arrive, and we call for a rolling perimeter on the surrounding roads, and air support. That’s what now what. But twenty minutes is twenty minutes. “I don’t know,” I said. “Stop fucking about and chase him, I guess.”
* * *
Kevin sorted slowly through the keys one by one until Erica recognized the one that fit the cage.
“That’s it,” she said. “The brassy one. Can you get it off the ring?”
Kevin looked at her, bemused, and held up his hands. “Not in a hurry,” he said, “but I’ll try.”
She watched anxiously as he fumbled with the split ring, his fingers slithering all over as he deposited more and more blood on it. “I can’t do it,” he coughed.
“Let me try. Hold it up here.”
He levered himself a little upright, groaning as his head swam and his foot dragged on the floor; jammed the bunch of keys ring-first against the mesh wall of the cage.
“No, you need to wipe that, don’t you.”
He sighed and nodded and feebly rubbed it against the least bloody section of trouser cloth he could see through his sticky scarlet filter, and then presented it to her again, far from clean but workable at least.
Erica pulled the required key through the mesh and set to work rotating the ring, looking for the ends, which she found eventually. She could just get a nail to it, but had neither the hands nor the room to turn it as well. “I need you to help me. If I hook it on, you turn it, okay?”
Kevin grunted his agreement, and spilled some more blood from his palms as he manipulated the ring. They dropped them and had to start again twice before they finally got the key hooked into the spiral and the ring turned all the way around and then it was free, and Erica fell back against the wall behind her and laughed.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Kevin gurgled, slumping against the door.
“It’s either that or cry,” she said. “You know there are two locks, right?”
* * *
The second key was easier, now that their routine was more practiced. Finally, Erica pushed herself to her feet and slid the first key into the top lock, pulled it out and tried it in the bottom. A moment later the cage was open, and Kevin spilled out into the room.
“You think you can walk?” Erica suggested optimistically.
Kevin laughed despite himself. “I was hoping you could carry me.”
“Oh, well, I’ll see you later then,” she smirked.
“Fine, fine, help me up.”
* * *
Erica looked like the end of Carrie by the time she’d manhandled Kevin to the top of the stairs. His blood was in her hair, on her face and hands, streaked across her T-shirt and down one leg of her jeans. She could remember being this desperate for a bath before, but only once, and it was a memory that made her shudder.
She maneuvered him through the doorway, and draped his arm across her shoulder again and led him past the crashed BMW to the threshold of the garage.
Then she dropped him.
“Okay, what the fuck?” She walked out into the sunshine, to the spot where the Alfa had been and no longer was. “Where the f—” She spun around, her toe catching the revolver lying on the gravel, and took in the scene at the edge of the clearing. The van, canted over to one side, with a twist of bright red metal protruding from one end. “Ali?” she shouted, turning to look up at the house out of some vain hope.
“What’s going on?” Kevin tried to crawl out to join her, but she stopped him.
“Stay here,” she said. “Get out of sight. I’ll...find something to keep you warm.”
She picked up the gun, and then kept her eyes on the van as she sidestepped over to the door of the house. It was still wide open, and she pressed herself to the frame and peered inside. “Ali?” Nothing from the living room. “Annie?” She slid in through the door, and ducked her head into the kitchen. Nothing.
She put one foot on the bottom stair, but she sensed there was nothing up there for her. She knew that house, knew what it felt like empty.
Hurriedly, and without a second glance at the missing square of carpet, Erica crossed the living room and took the edge of one of the curtains in both hands and ripped it from the rail.
* * *
Kevin had the full-on shakes when she got back to him. She draped the curtain over him, bunching it up under his head to make a pillow, and ran her fingers through his matted hair. “You’re going to be alright,” she said. “Help’s coming. I’ll be back.”
“Don’t leave me,” he slurred.
She stood. “There’s something I’ve got to do,” she said, walking to the back of the BMW. “I’ll be as quick as I can, I promise.”
And with that, she checked the gun was secure at the small of her back, lifted the can of petrol from the boot of the car, and went for a walk.
Chapter 35
Annie kept up, panting into her phone to redirect the response teams to the surrounding roads on the premise that we’d do our best to herd That Man in their direction. Between us, we were armed with two mobile phones, a notepad and a biro, so I could only hope we didn’t catch up with him first.
He wasn’t hard to track; he was a big man, and his crashing progress through the undergrowth was both indiscreet and destructive, leaving a trail of bent and broken ferns in his wake.
In a matter of minutes, though, both the brush and the treetops began to thin out, and the ground turned hard and brown—a carpet of dead leaves and twigs, an obstacle course of moss-covered fallen trunks. There was light here, as well as shade, glittering shafts of sunlight breaking through the canopy and casting a golden glow across the forest floor.
There was also silence.
I held up a hand and signaled for Annie to stop. Put my hands on my knees and sucked in air and spat out the raspy crap coating the back of my throat. The pain in my leg was coming back now, my right knee trembling under my weight.
Beside me, Annie squatted and surveyed the scene, her eyes more focused than I’d seen before, like a hawk’s, alert to the slightest movement. “Where the hell did he go?” she whispered.
I shook my head, trying to steady my breathing. “I don’t know. He was right in front of us.”
“Have we fucked up here?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think we might have.”
“Shit.”
I reached out and clapped a hand on her back. “Which way’s the road?”
She waved off to our left, vaguely. “Over there somewhere. If we keep going this way, we’ll come to the river, I think.”
Good. “Good. Then we’ll do that, try to stay this side of him, and hopefully we don’t have to catch up to him, someone else can.”
She announced her agreement by offering a high five. I didn’t leave her hanging.
“Keep moving?”
I started to nod, but something wasn’t right. “Wait,” I whispered. It was too quiet. Far, far too quiet. That feeling, the one of being watched. “Turn around,” I said. “Watch our back. Try not to breathe.”
Annie turned slowly, the only sound the sole of her shoe grinding a dead twig to dust. Nothing else. The birds weren’t singing. The rabbits weren’t rabbiting. There was just silence, for a long, oxygen-starved moment.
And then, something. A scratch. Metallic. To the right of us, I realized, away from the road. Shit. A beat, and then a repeat, longer this time. The range impossible to gauge.
The range.
“Annie,” I whispered.
A bow.
“What?”
A rustle, louder, and movement, fifty feet to my right, a large, dark shape rising from behind a fallen tree.
Erica’s words, ringi
ng in my ears. A game.
“Fucking run,” I said.
Annie fucking ran, and so did I, the first arrow whistling through the space vacated by our parting heads at the precise moment I realized what was happening.
I sprinted straight ahead, leaving my progress up to blind luck as I craned my head to see That Man nock a second arrow, his eyes on me for a split second before he turned and aimed somewhere behind him.
I ran straight into a tree, of course, and it hurt, but not as much as an arrow to the face was going to hurt, so I bounced right up again and pinned myself to the trunk, frantically scanning for Annie.
I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her, and I could see That Man tracking her, bow drawn, ready to shoot.
“Annie, get down!” I screamed, and he loosed the arrow and turned and glared at me, reaching into the bag he’d slung like a quiver across his back.
“You could have just fucked off, Ali,” he called. “I told you I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I almost laughed. Shouted instead. “Is this what you did with all those girls? Is this what you did with Kerry?”
“Why not?” He drew back the third arrow. “You’ve got to admit, it’s kind of fun.”
I ducked back behind the tree, and a second later felt the thump as the arrow buried itself in the trunk. “Where is she?” I shouted.
“Who?”
“Kerry.”
Silence. I gave him ten seconds, and then the thought that he might be advancing on my position grew too strong, and I risked a look. He hadn’t moved; he was just standing there, bow in one hand, arrow in the other, his head bobbing from side to side like he was weighing up his answer. “Sure, okay,” he said. “Emily’s Wood. There’s an old wooden carriage, or what’s left of it. She’s under there. Are you going to run, or what?”
Where the hell was Annie? If she had any sense, she was running as fast as her legs could carry her out of these woods, but no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I spotted her, fifty yards the other side of That Man, edging from tree to tree. “No,” I said.
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