by Andy Maslen
Ramage screamed again and collapsed sideways, banging his head on the corner of the desk as he went down. He ended up in an untidy heap, slumped sideways and folded at the waist, with his neck bent where his head rested against the side of the desk. His trouser leg had exploded outwards at the knee when the hollow point round hit the patella, smashing it and the ligaments and joint beyond. Fresh blood blossomed through the ridges of the fabric, turning the colour from rose to an angry red that, were it a sunrise, would herald the worst kind of day for shepherds.
Lucy kept both eyes open, despite the scope. She was enjoying managing the images of the two differently-sized women. The tiny one in her left eye and the large one, so close Lucy could reach out and touch her, in the right.
A triangular cut had opened on Ramage’s right temple. It was bleeding freely: a delta of scarlet streams running down his cheek, along his jawbone, over his neck and into the collar of his shirt.
“Such a lot of claret, Stel. Careful. We don’t want him bleeding out before we’re done with him, do we?”
Stella turned to other-Stella. “He won’t bleed out. They’re bad, but they’re not going to kill him.”
Ramage gaped. “Who are you talking to?”
“Me? Nobody.”
“But you, you were just talking to somebody. Are you wired up, is that it?”
Stella bestowed a pitying smile on Ramage, much as one would if speaking to a particularly stupid child.
“This isn’t official business, Sir Leonard. I didn’t do all of this just to arrest you, you stupid prick. Have you forgotten? You killed my husband. You murdered him. And my poor baby too. Lola, her name was. Did you even know that? She was five months old when you killed her. Do you know how she died?”
“Any moment now,” Lucy whispered, squeezing the trigger a little more with each passing second.
Ramage shook his head. He did know, though. How could he not have known? He’d read the papers. He’d even arranged to read the pathologist’s report, though it had started the nightmares where the burnt and bleeding baby clamoured for him to hold her, and his fingers popped through the crackling, blackened flesh like so much bubble wrap.
“I think he does,” other-Stella said. “I think he knows exactly how she died.”
“So do I,” Stella said. She turned to Ramage whose eyelids were fluttering. “She was strapped into her car seat. The petrol tank ignited. Richard died instantly. But my Lola … you burned her alive!”
Now. Lucy squeezed off the shot. The rifle jerked back into her shoulder, and the explosion echoed off the stone wall of the house with a double crack.
Stella lunged violently towards Ramage and shoved the barrel of the Glock hard against his mouth, splitting his lower lip and smashing a couple of his lower incisors. “She burnt to death, you fuck!” she screamed into his face.
At the same moment in time, Lucy Van Houten’s .308 calibre, copper-jacketed Winchester round burst through the window, showering Stella’s back with fragments of glass. The space where her head had been was penetrated by the copper-jacketed bullet, which flashed through the Stella-shaped absence and buried itself in the wall opposite.
Aware of, yet unable to process, the explosion of sound and stinging specks of shattered glass, Stella continued across the short gap between her and Ramage and hit him hard across the side of the head with the Glock. Ramage’s head lolled forward as consciousness deserted him.
Now she turned. Now she registered the broken window, and the twinkling fragments of glass and scraps of lead on the carpet.
The other Englishwoman! She must be here. A PPM shooter sent to silence me.
Stella used thick cable ties to bind Ramage’s wrists together around a pipe beneath a huge cast-iron radiator.
“Stay there,” she whispered. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“Shit!” Lucy Van Houten said. “I missed. I never miss.”
She stood and brushed the leaves and bracken fragments off her tactical outfit, then started walking towards the house.
34
Hunter/Hunted
Stella dropped to her belly and crawled away from Ramage. She kept her hands off the glass-strewn carpet, using her elbows, knees and feet to propel herself to the doorway. Once she reached the fallen door, she got to her hands and knees, covered the last six feet in a second or two and was out into the hallway. She darted along to the neighbouring room and went in. It was a guestroom, though clearly unused for many years, as the furniture was covered with sheets, giving the room an air of being occupied by ghosts. The floor-length, plum-coloured velvet curtains were drawn. She crossed the room in a handful of long strides, knelt by the window, and inched back the right-hand curtain from the side, rather than the centre.
Peering out through the narrow slit she’d created, she saw the shooter approaching the house. It was a woman, five-six maybe, and stocky. Blonde hair tucked under a black baseball cap with POLICE stencilled across the front in white. Fuck, Stel. They’ve sent the Cowboys and Indians after us.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” other-Stella said. “It looks like a single cowboy. Oh wait, it’s a cowgirl. Not very pretty is she?”
The face under the baseball cap was pale, even under the shadow cast by the long peak. Slabby was the word that sprang into Stella’s mind. The details weren’t clear, but she could see wide, flat cheeks and a thick nose. Mouth a straight, lipless line. She was wearing full tactical gear that bulked her frame out still further. And in her right hand, she carried a long gun with a telescopic sight. It looked very like the Blaser Stella had left behind in the woods. But she was swinging it by her side as she walked, and her gait was relaxed, almost as if she were a weekend guest admiring Craigmackhan’s grounds.
She thinks she hit me!
“Looks like it. Which means we have the element of surprise,” other-Stella mused from beside her. “We could just wait by the front door and do her as she comes in.”
“No!” Stella said sharply. “Not a cop.”
“She tried to kill you.”
“I don’t care. She’s probably under orders from PPM.”
Stella drew the curtain back into place, sat cross-legged on the floor and stared upwards, racing to find the best option. Or the least worst option.
Go outside and confront her.
“She’s a trained markswoman with a rifle. A long-range gun. You’re a lucky shot with a Glock and a shotgun loaded with breaching rounds. Two short-range guns. No cover, no advantage to you. She’ll kill you from fifty yards out, no bother.”
Stay here and wait for her.
“Better. Now her gun is less useful compared to yours. And you have the element of surprise. She thinks you’re dead, remember.”
Stella jumped to her feet. She had a plan. Wait here in the room next door, then come up behind the SCO19 woman when she checks for bodies, force her to disarm, then cuff or cable-tie her and continue with Ramage as before.
Pulse throbbing uncomfortably in her throat, Stella crouched beside the bed and checked the magazine of the Glock. She had no idea how many times she’d fired. Plenty of bullets left – good. With the magazine out, she racked the slide to eject the live round in the chamber and worked it a couple of times more. Smooth as silk. Also good. She slotted the ejected round into the top of the magazine and reassembled the gun. The Winchester was less useful, she knew. Plus, as she totted up the shots fired, six at the front door, then five for Ramage’s hidey-hole, she realised it only contained one round. She considered dumping it on the bed, but other-Stella wasn’t happy.
“Keep it. It’s still firepower. And it looks threatening too.”
Stella waited.
She started as she heard heavy boots crunch on the gravel below the window.
Just as she was readying herself to move, a faint cry came from the other bedroom. A man’s voice. Ramage’s voice.
“Help!”
Shit! He’s coming round.
This changed everything
. He could warn the cop.
In a flash, Stella saw salvation.
Grabbing the Winchester, she sprinted from the room and ran down the stairs, taking them three at a time, stumbling at the bottom and almost sprawling to the floor.
From above she heard Ramage’s voice, stronger this time.
“Help me! I’m up here. Please. For the love of God, somebody help me!”
Grabbing the newel post, she swerved round the final curving flourish of the handrail and skidded to a stop beneath the staircase. Checking her weapons, she looked back, trying to breathe silently even as her lungs screamed for more oxygen. She couldn’t see the front door; she was completely hidden by the wide wooden treads. She looked up. On their underside, the treads were sanded and polished but left unpainted. The reddish-brown timber looked recently waxed: it glowed with a dull sheen.
The crunching of boots grew louder, and in a few seconds, Stella heard the sound of their heavy-cleated soles walk across the fallen front door and stop on the flagstones.
A quartet of hard metallic sounds grouped into two closely-spaced pairs came next. Click-clack, clack-click. A rifle bolt being worked back and forth.
Then the footsteps approached the foot of the stairs.
Ramage called again.
“Up here! Help! She’s armed. Be careful. Oh, thank God!”
Slowly, Stella knelt on one knee, raised the Winchester to her shoulder, and placed the muzzle against the underside of the seventh tread. She curled her finger around the trigger, and waited.
The shooter began to ascend. Stella listened to the heavy steps.
Clump.
Clump.
Clump.
“Such tight, solid joints, eh, Stel?” other-Stella whispered.
Clump.
Clump.
“Tighten that finger.”
Clump.
Creak.
Stella pulled the trigger.
In the confined space beneath the stairs, the roar as the Winchester discharged its final Hatton round was deafening.
Through the fog of gun smoke, Stella looked up. The final Hatton round had blasted a four-inch circle through the seventh tread.
With particles of burnt propellant stinging her nose she scrambled out.
As she did, the other cop’s screams suddenly became audible through the ringing in her ears.
The woman was lying on her back at the bottom of the stairs. Stella ran to her, stopping to pick up the rifle and sling it out through the front door.
The woman was white-faced with shock and struggling to reach her right foot.
Or what was left of it.
The front portion of the right boot was missing altogether. Emerging from the remaining black leather were shreds and tatters of flesh, with broken and splintered bones poking through the mess. A lot of blood too, but Stella knew there were no major arteries down there. This was a serious injury, but not fatal.
“On your front!” she said.
The woman’s eyes were rolling in her skull like a cow about to be slaughtered. “You shot my foot off!”
“Yes, I did. And I could have killed you. Like you tried to do me. Turn over or I’ll shoot you where you lie.”
The woman complied, grunting with the effort and the agony she must undoubtedly be feeling.
Stella pulled the handcuffs free from the woman’s belt and cuffed her wrists behind her back. Then she rolled her over again onto her back.
“Don’t move,” she commanded her. She ran to the tall window to the left of the front door and ripped away the twisted silk tie-back from the curtain. She returned to the supine form of the injured cop and wound the cord around her calf before yanking it tight and tying it off. “Right,” she said. “You’re not going to bleed out. Tell me. Who sent you?”
“Fuck you!”
“Not very polite,” other-Stella said. “We’ll give her a little encouragement.”
Stella prodded the woman’s ruined foot with the tip of her index finger, eliciting a scream. She asked the same question again.
“I said, tell me who sent you. Do it now or I’ll shoot the other one off.”
The woman looked up at her, eyes screwed into slits as she fought what must be agonising pain.
“And I said, fuck …” A groan. “You.”
“We’d better get on with it then,” other-Stella said. “You could do her with her own rifle. That would be ironic.”
“No! She’s a cop. I’m not going down that road.”
Other-Stella shrugged. “Suit yourself. What are you going to do, then?”
Stella didn’t answer. Instead, she ripped open the Velcro of the woman’s jacket and began searching for ID, a wallet, a phone, a notebook – anything that could give her a clue as to what was happening.
She found the first two in seconds.
She opened the ID.
“Lucy Van Houten. Metropolitan Police, SC&O19.” She looked down at the woman, who appeared to be sliding in and out of consciousness. “Bit far from home, aren’t you?”
The woman hissed through clamped teeth but said nothing.
Stella opened the wallet. It was a roll-fold of tough, black nylon, closed with more Velcro. Ignoring the notes and credit cards, she riffled through the bits of paper. They were mostly receipts, including one from Campbell’s in Pitlochry, but then she saw a folded piece of shiny paper with colour print. It looked like something torn from a magazine. She unfolded the square. It was covered on one side with black type, from an article about diversity in London policing. She recognised the formatting – it was from The Job, the Met’s own magazine. When she turned it over, she gasped. Smiling out at her in full dress uniform was Adam Collier, his white teeth bright in the badly lit photo. Scrawled in the white border, in rounded handwriting, were two words:
Lucy Collier.
“School-girl crush, do you think?” said that sardonic voice in her ear. “Looks like Collier’s got his own private little death squad.”
“No! It doesn’t have to mean that. OK, she’s got the hots for The Model. She wouldn’t be the first.”
“Come on, Stel! Do you really believe that a Met firearms officer just happened to be up here on holiday when she decided to stake out Ramage’s house and attempt to murder you? A Met firearms officer who’s clearly in love with the SIO from Richard’s case? Who is your boss. Who sent you down to the exhibits room to rot. Remember what they taught us at Hendon? There’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“It’s not proof. Not definitive. I can’t deal with this now.”
Stella shook her head then swivelled Van Houten around and dragged her over to the stair case. She unlocked the handcuffs, threaded the freed hands between two of the balusters and then cuffed them again.
The wound was still bleeding, but the blood was pooling, not pumping. Stella looked around and spotted a leather ottoman in a corner of the room. She pulled the squat, red, padded cylinder over and lifted the right leg, placing the calf down on the buttoned top.
“You’ll survive,” she said, with a sigh. “There’ll be blue lights converging on this place well before you need an undertaker.”
She stood and climbed the stairs, avoiding the ruined seventh step.
35
Ramage
Inert human forms are notoriously hard to manoeuvre. Stella had had plenty of experience. The occasional drunk, back when she was pounding the beat with Jack Hempstead as a wet-behind-the-ears detective-in-training, albeit one with a first-class honours degree in psychology from the University of Bath. Victims of muggings, ditto. And then, the kind of victims who stayed inert. Once the CSIs had done their job and collected their evidence and the pathologist had had a good look and a poke around, sticking her thermometer where no decent citizen would want it stuck, Stella had been assigned to help lift the dead into sturdy black plastic body bags and then lift them onto stretchers.
When she reached the bedroom where she’d left Ramage, she realised she was going to hav
e to do it again. His cries for help having had no effect on his situation, he’d clearly run out of energy. His head lolled forward onto his chest, and when she checked for a pulse, which she found, he didn’t twitch. Dragging Ramage out of the makeshift panic room, down the stairs and onto the drive took all her strength. She cut the cable ties binding him. Then she hooked her hands under his armpits and locked her fingers together over his breastbone. Pushing up from her knees and leaning back, she hauled his deadweight up, then began the hard work.
Halfway down the stairs, Ramage’s left heel caught on the broken step. Stella swore and jerked him backwards to free his shoe from the splintered timber, then bumped him the remaining six steps to the ground floor.
Halfway to the front door, she heard Van Houten groan.
“You won’t get away with it. We’ll find you.”
Stella lowered the judge to the floor and walked back to the cuffed firearms officer.
“Who’ll find me? You and Adam Collier? You know he’s married, don’t you? And I don’t think he’d see much to get excited about in you, by the way. Have you seen his wife? Slim and brunette, that’s Adam’s type.”
The woman’s face twisted, her teeth baring in a snarl, but whether it was of rage or pain, Stella couldn’t tell.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
“No. But he will be, very soon,” Stella said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.
Almost falling backwards on the gravel, Stella kept her balance and dumped Ramage by the rear wing of the Bentley. Her lip curled upwards in a feral snarl of hatred and disgust, partly from the wet iron smell of the blood, but mostly because she couldn’t bear to touch him. The catastrophic knee wound had left a five-inch wide smear of blood along the polished herringbone parquet floor and a pool when she’d stopped to talk to Van Houten. The ruined biceps had soaked her own sleeves with the judge’s blood. The rifle she’d taken from Van Houten lay with its barrel poking into a large rosebush growing out of the gravel. She decided to leave it there for the local cops to find. Van Houten would have some explaining to do when they found the bullet in the wall of Ramage’s guest room.