by Matt Hilton
'Where is my wife?'
The young man twisted, trying to free his gun, but Rickard only pushed down harder with his heel.
'I asked you a question!'
'Fuck you!'
'Once more: where is my wife?'
'Gone, asshole. You're too late.'
Rickard heard movement behind him and recognised it as someone removing the beam from the brackets on the side door. Alisha making a break for it. He scolded himself for not checking behind the damn mattress in the bedroom he'd passed, but it was too late for recriminations now. Alisha wouldn't get far before he could catch her again. He had time to make this man sorry for sticking his nose in his business.
'Then that means you're no use to me any more,' he said. He slashed with the knife and opened up the man's throat. It was a calculated cut that sliced his trachea wide but missed the major blood vessels. The man would die, but it would take minutes and he had no hope of screaming for help.
Rickard leaned down and took the Glock from the man's fingers. He stepped slowly off the pinioned hand and watched as the man grasped at his throat. The gut shot was forgotten as he tried to stem his life from ebbing away.
Rickard turned away, left the man to die in silent torment and went back into the hall. Glancing into the bedroom he saw that the mattress was now lying on the floor – so Alisha had been hiding there – and the door to the outside was wide open. Again he felt a trickle of admiration that Alisha was proving more worthy than he'd ever have thought, but it was only fleeting. It wouldn't stop him from making her scream in agony. He went outside, switching the Glock to automatic fire.
Chapter 28
'There are reports of shots fired,' Harvey said. 'You'd better haul ass, guys. Cops are responding to nine-one-one calls, so they'll be going in hard.'
'Not far now,' I said. I put away my phone and checked my gun.
Rink drove the Chrysler like a crazy man, laying his hand heavily on the horn to clear a passage through traffic that seemed to have been sent by Rickard's guardian angel to thwart us. We lost a mirror and gained a few stripes of gleaming metal in the paintwork, and more than a couple people screamed obscenities at us as we squeezed by. But we were still ahead of the blue lights and sirens heading in the same direction.
We got on to surface streets that gave us a cleaner run into Liberty City, and Rink now lay heavily on the throttle. We shot through at high speed and I was only happy that it was a school day and there weren't children out playing in the road. Keeping one eye on the way ahead, I counted off the blocks on my right.
'Two blocks,' I indicated and Rink nodded in acknowledgement.
Approaching our turn Rink decelerated rapidly, engine compression slowing the vehicle, then took a turn that had the tyres stuttering on the paved road. Then he gave the vehicle everything and we shot like a bullet towards the next intersection.
'Next left.' Rink already knew the way but I felt like I had to say something. Again he took us through a ninety-degree turn at speed, and then it was a straight run along a street that could never be described as a tourist destination. The houses looked different, but I could have been in the council scheme where I'd grown up. Rickard had brought further trouble to a neighbourhood with enough of its own.
Rink braked.
Ahead of us was a scene like a Western gunfight, only here the cowboys had automatic handguns and machine pistols instead of six-guns. I took in the scene in an instant.
One man in a vest and tattoos had his arm propped over the top of a wooden fence. He fired but his shots were ill-timed and most of them got nowhere near where he was aiming.
Two others were crouching behind a car, firing randomly towards the front of a wooden house.
Lying on the road behind the two gunmen was a young woman. She had her arms folded over her head and was screaming in terror.
My attention snapped from the woman to the man walking out as bold as a man of steel from the side of the house. He was holding what looked to me like a Glock 18 and he fired off short bursts of bullets directly through the body of the car the two gunmen were behind. The vehicle was no protection and I saw one of the men spin away, shrieking as he clutched at his side. The other man took flight, throwing himself backwards and trying to scuttle away across the road. The man with the Glock continued advancing, but he angled his aim at the man behind the fence. The gun stuttered and a stitch-pattern of rounds cut through the fence, a right-to-left oblique angle that almost cut the tattooed man in half.
I had no memory of jumping out the Chrysler and running. Somewhere along the way I'd racked my SIG. I shouted wordlessly and saw the young woman's face come up. She stared at me, and something in her face made me wonder why I caused her to jerk in fear. Maybe it was the gun in my hand, or more likely it was because I looked so much like the man stalking towards her on the other side of the vehicle. I looked across at him and got a good look at Rickard for the first time.
The word doppelganger went through my mind.
Viewing the photo-fit of the man who'd snatched Imogen Ballard, I'd whimsically thought of him as my evil twin. Now there was no whimsy in it. Luke Rickard did look very much like me. It was enough of a likeness that I'd thought of him as an abomination that I couldn't suffer to live. If anything the feeling was even stronger in me now and if I could I'd have concentrated on that there and then.
But my first priority was the safety of the young woman.
Rickard looked at me and his eyes went to slits. He smiled coldly, but then he continued his march towards the vehicle. The remaining gunman had made it all the way across the street and it looked like the fight had gone out of him. He went down on his backside, throwing down his gun. His hands came up in a pleading gesture but there wasn't an ounce of compassion in Rickard. He unloaded a spray of bullets at the man and I saw tatters of his body sifting in the breeze.
I was still running. Behind me I could hear the crunch of Rink's boots as he shadowed me. At a run I fired, but all my bullets went high and wide. I was too busy looking at Alisha to care. I shouted at her to come to me and finally it was as if she realised that I wasn't her husband and she came first to her knees, then to a crouch and began running towards me.
Rickard swivelled.
'No!' I yelled.
He aimed the Glock 18 at his wife, tracking her movement with a slow, lazy smile on his lips. Pulled the trigger. The machine pistol rattled and there was a corresponding jig from Alisha as if she was dancing to its beat.
I shouted in denial, then lunged to catch the woman in my arms. I pressed her to the ground, covering her with my body, even though it was probably a pointless act. She was deathly still beneath me and the coppery smell of blood was strong in my senses.
Beside me Rink skidded to a halt. His gun came up and the sound was like a roaring cannon.
'Frog-giggin' son of a bitch!'
I heard his snarl and knew that he'd missed Rickard. Lifting my head, I searched for the killer, but caught only a hint of shadow as he raced back round the side of the house.
'We can't let him get away…'
Even as I said the words, I knew that he was making a run for it and I jammed a knee under me ready to take up the chase. Alisha shuddered beneath me and mewled out a cry of agony. Then I forgot all about chasing Rickard as I rolled the woman towards me and cradled her body to mine. Coming to my feet, I held her in my arms, jogging with her back to our car. Rink covered our retreat as I took the woman out of the line of fire. There was no guarantee that Rickard had fled the scene and he might burst out of hiding at any second.
Laying her on the road, I pulled off my jacket and bunched it under her head. Then I checked her for wounds. She'd been hit in three places: two of the wounds weren't going to kill her yet but they could be serious enough to require amputation of her left leg to save her life. The final wound was the most pressing. It was in her lower back, but the angle of the bullet could mean that the round had torn through her liver and without immediate ass
istance she was going to die. I pressed my hand down hard on the wound, trying to stop the flow of blood. I looked up at Rink and my face was probably a picture of desperation judging by what I saw reflected there.
'Why…?'
Alisha's voice was as brittle as cracked ice. It was only one simple word but it would take more than I could offer to answer her.
'Hush,' I said. 'Don't talk. Try to be as still as you can be.'
'Am I… going to… die?'
'No.' I tilted away from her so that she couldn't see the lie in my face.
When I looked back at her she was watching my face, but there was little recognition in her eyes. The pupils were as small as pinpricks. 'Why did you do this to me, Luke?'
Whether her question was rhetorical or she was swimming through delirium, I felt her words like a vice closing on my throat. I wasn't like him: physically maybe, but not in my heart.
'Shush, now. Help's coming, Alisha.'
Rink nodded his head over us, and I became aware of the sound of sirens and vehicles braking to a halt. Seconds later there followed shouted orders and the clatter of running feet.
Somewhere along the line I'd put my gun back in my belt, and I noted now that Rink had put his away. My friend lifted his open hands to the cops shouting at him and then waved them over.
'This woman needs help now.' I stared up at the cop who had his sidearm pointed at my face. 'Get a goddamn medic.'
Other cops pounded by us, some doing a nervous dance as they approached the vehicle surrounded by dead men; others moved towards the house. I didn't give any of it much more than fleeting notice as I was too busy trying to keep Alisha alive. Next moment hands were pulling me away, and the people bending over Alisha wore different uniforms. I relinquished my hold on her, handing her over to the paramedics.
I looked down at her blood on my hands. Please… not another innocent, I prayed.
Next thing I was aware of was moving ahead with Rink, passing cops who tried to grab at us; we brushed them aside. Then we had passed the side of the house. My senses had pinholed during the last few minutes, but now they were returning as we took up the chase. The smell of gunpowder hung heavily in the air, and there was also the familiar tang of death. The house held no interest for us and we raced into the backyard. A man was dead on the floor and a little distance away a dog lay oozing its brains out of a hole in its skull. I barely glanced at them, heading for the open gate through which Rickard must have fled.
We went through another garden and on to a parallel street where we found another two dead men. People from the neighbouring houses were beginning to come out to see the show. It was a bad sign. It meant that Rickard was gone.
The appearance of me and Rink sent a few of them fleeing back to the relative safety of their homes, but there were others who were a little bolder. They thought we were cops and they felt they had a right to harangue us for not being there to serve and protect when they needed us most.
A fat man, his large belly protruding beneath the line of his T-shirt like a cow's udder, came at me and he was just about frothing at the mouth. 'You don't care about us. You don't care!'
Right then and there he was right: I stiff-armed him out of my way and he went down on his backside. There was a collective shout of anger. Someone shouted something about police brutality. People began to wheel round us and for a moment I thought they were going to attack us like a pack of hyenas.
'Where the fuck did he go?' Rink roared at the top of his lungs.
The pack was shredded by his anger, some of them actually taking off at a run as though Rink was about to blast them to death with the gun he waved.
'The man who killed these people…' I waved at the two on the ground. 'Where did he go? Someone must have seen something?'
From beyond the group of neighbours I heard a high-pitched whistle. Looking over their heads I saw a young black boy on a cycle. He was pointing his finger in stabbing motions to a junction further along. I knocked Rink's elbow and we shoved through the crowd towards the boy.
The boy wheeled ahead of us, all the way to the corner where he skidded to a halt using his feet as brakes.
'Up there,' he said. 'See the burned-down house? He ran in there.'
I nodded thanks at him.
'You see him, shoot him,' the boy ordered. 'He shouldn't have shot that poor dog.'
Under any other circumstances I'd have found the boy's statement absurd, but not this time. He had no love for the men Rickard had shot; in fact plenty of people would be secretly pleased that someone had done away with those blighting their neighbourhood with narcotics.
Rink was slightly ahead of me, but as he approached the burned-down house he came to a halt and covered as I moved forwards. I went by him, took up a covering position and then Rink moved ahead again. It was a one-two manoeuvre we sometimes called pepper-potting back in our military days, and the technique hadn't left us.
We had to approach with caution. We knew that Rickard was armed and extremely dangerous, but more than that he held a superior position. If we both entered the grounds at the same time he could take us down with one burst of gunfire. This way, one of us would still get a chance to kill him if he got the other.
In the next instant that consideration was taken away.
I heard an engine burst to life and a car came hurtling out of the yard in reverse. I had to dive clear and went down on my chest. Twisting round, I saw the bulk of the vehicle spin past me as Rickard hit a skid that angled it away from us. I fired into the body of the vehicle, but I must have missed him, because Rickard hit the gas and the wheels spun furiously before biting into the road surface and launching the car away from me.
Rink held his gun with both hands as he fired repeatedly. The back windscreen of what I now recognised as an older model Ford Taurus imploded, and as I rose up I caught only a fleeting glimpse of the top of Rickard's head where he hunkered low in the driving seat.
I took a few running steps after the accelerating vehicle. Came to a halt. Centred myself and fired. The front windscreen exploded but Rickard continued on. At the far end of the block, he spun the wheel and the Taurus was gone.
Shoulder to shoulder, we stood there in silent contemplation.
It's never a nice feeling when you realise you've failed, but at least we had one thing going for us. We were still alive and could take up the chase again. Too many others in Liberty City weren't so fortunate.
Chapter 29
Escaping from the police cordon was his first priority. Everything else could come later. Rickard dumped the Ford Taurus at an underpass beneath Route 95, then walked out and into an industrial estate struggling to remain viable in the current market but falling into decay. He left behind all but his own gun and knife. During the gun battle he'd used up all the ammunition for the Glock 18: he'd have liked to hold on to it for a little longer, but in the circumstances it was simply dead weight. At the very most his own gun held four rounds and he knew he'd have to rectify that soon.
At a mail forwarding depot, he ducked inside the nearest door and found a woman sitting behind a desk. She was surprised by his sudden appearance and had to put away the gossip magazine she was reading. Evidently she didn't get too many visitors in a day. She definitely wasn't the public face of the company, dressed as she was in a dull grey sweatshirt and matching pants, her brown hair scraped back into a ponytail held in place with a rubber band. The polish on her nails was chipped and stained by the cigarette wedged between her pinched lips.
She squinted up at him. 'Sorry. We don't allow personal pick-ups from the office.'
'I'm not here to pick anything up,' Rickard grunted. He looked round the office, his eyes drifting over the faded posters to the open door into a small warehouse. There appeared to be nobody else there.
'You want to send something, you have to do it via a carrier.' She took the cigarette out of her mouth, flicked ash into a ringed coffee mug. Then she stuck the cigarette back between her lips and sat star
ing up at him through the smoke.
Rickard ignored her and reached over her desk. He grabbed hold of her handbag and dragged it towards him. The woman lunged for the bag, digging her nails into his hands. She let out a shout of outrage but still managed to hold on to the cigarette like it was fused to her lip. Rickard wrenched loose, scowling at the scratches in his flesh. He'd just fought a gun battle, killed six or so people without a scratch, and now this?
'You shouldn't have done that.'
The woman clawed at her bag again but Rickard snatched it out of her way. He dug inside it. Came out empty. He upended the contents on her desk.
'Where are the keys to your car?'
'You're not having them. Get out now before I call the police.' The woman made to drag her personal belongings across the desk. Among the dross was a mobile phone. As she did, Rickard grabbed her by her hair, using the tail at the back to twist her head sharply on one side.
'Where are your keys, bitch?' From his belt he drew the ceramic knife and thumbed it open. He placed the point as close to her right eye as possible without blinding her. Then he nudged it a little more. The woman shrieked, all her toughness gone. She flailed at Rickard's hands trying to get away from the blade but he just gripped her all the tighter.
'If you want to keep your other eye, you'll tell me where they are.'
Between howling in terror and trying to wrench away, she dug a hand into her sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a bundle of keys. The ring was overloaded with small stuffed animals and Disney character fobs. Rickard released her and she bent over, holding her damaged eye with both hands as she sobbed. He looked at the frippery then tore loose the accumulated keepsakes and scattered them across the desk. He held up the key for the Ford Focus parked outside in the depot lot.
'Look at me,' he commanded.
The woman moaned.
'Look at me.'
'I'm blind!'
'You still have one good eye. Tell me what you see.'
When she didn't raise her head, he shrugged. He grabbed her hair to yank her up and quickly slashed her throat. His hand was guided by frustration but it was still a clean cut that opened her up almost all the way to the spine. The woman died instantly. There wasn't even a shudder – with the vagus nerves severed, there was no route between the brain and viscera to send any residual commands to her system. Killing the woman had formed no part of his original plan. He'd intended stealing her car, before dumping it nearby and transferring to another stolen less obviously than this. He had wanted the woman alive in order to raise the alarm about her stolen car so that while the cops were busy searching for the Focus he'd have a clear run out of town.