by Michael Kerr
Matt hiked his shoulders. “The footprints lead towards it, but if he is inside and we rush him, anything could happen. Beth could get killed. He has us out in the cold in more ways than one.”
“Bring that rope over here, and take a look at my arm,” Paul said, giving John a pained smile. “I think it’s broken, but a second opinion wouldn’t harm.”
“I’m not a doctor,” John said as he dropped the rope at Paul’s feet and knelt to examine the gunman’s left arm. He didn’t know what to do. He had attended a first aid course a couple of years previously, but didn’t remember much of it.
The sudden heavy blow from the butt of the pistol dazed him. He fell forward over Paul’s legs, losing consciousness as the second blow crashed into his temple.
Paul placed the gun on the floor at his side, grasped the rope with his right hand and, once more employing hand and teeth, managed to fashion a noose with a running knot, which he secured John’s wrists behind his back with. He then dragged and rolled the limp body over to where Beth lay and used the remainder of the rope to tie them together by their necks. There was very little room in the tent, but with his gun held ready he rested and waited, positive that Barnes would not be long in coming.
The heat from their bodies helped to warm the confined space, and in a state of exhaustion and suffering from concussion, Paul’s effort to stay alert and awake was a battle he soon lost. Within a very short time his head fell forward and he began to snore.
“Look, there’s a bloody tent under the remains of that arch,” Matt said. “Sutton and Beth must be inside it.”
“Right,” Gordon said, raising his gun. “There’s only one way in. Let me lift the side of it up, while you two open the front as a diversion.”
Matt didn’t like the idea, but knew that only surprise would give them a chance of saving Beth. He thought it through. If he shouted to Sutton, to let him know that he was trapped, then there was every chance that the psycho would kill Beth and then take the easy way out and eat a bullet. He nodded in acquiescence. Gordon was extremely athletic, and an ace marksman with a handgun. He also had the confidence in his own ability, or would not have volunteered to perform such a stunt.
They moved slowly, stealthily, sight and sound of their approach masked by the whistling wind that howled through the ruins.
Standing almost next to the tent, Gordon knelt down, and then backed away from it to where Matt and Pete were standing. “Have either of you got a knife?” he said. “The tent’s a one-piece model with an integral floor. “I’ll have to cut it.”
Matt didn’t like it. Even as Pete withdrew a penknife from his pocket, opened the blade and passed it to Gordon, he was ready to call it off. Maybe waiting Sutton out was the way to go. But what would he be doing to Beth inside the tent? Jesus, he couldn’t wait.
“It’s razor sharp,” Pete said to Gordon.
Gordon returned in a crouch to the side of the tent, and when he was ready, nodded to Matt and Pete, who were standing just a few feet from the front of it and ready to go in. Heart pounding, wired, and up for the task at hand, Gordon was in his element. This was as exciting as any dawn raid he had ever made on a crack house. There was something about facing jeopardy that turned him on more than sex could. Off duty he was into extreme sports. He continually needed the rush that only courting danger could provide.
Gordon grinned at Matt and Pete, before slicing a wide arc in the canvas and throwing himself through the opening, his body folding to execute a forward roll, his intention to finish up in a kneeling position inside, from which he would open fire on Sutton as soon as he saw him.
As Matt saw Gordon vanish as quick as a fox, he unzipped the entrance flap.
Paul came awake with a start, grunting in shock as both the side and front of the tent flew open. He saw the dark shape of a man hitting the groundsheet, to come up in a kneeling position. His reactions were sluggish, not responding fast enough. It was as if he was trying to move in deep water, and only with supreme effort did he force his hand to raise the gun up and take aim.
Gordon had been too pumped-up; his adrenaline levels off the gauge as he made his play. He had landed hard, travelled farther than he had intended to, bouncing back off the far side of the tent to come up with his pistol in a two-handed grip, searching out his target in the gloom.
Matt dropped to one knee as he entered, eager to target Sutton; finger almost squeezing off the first round, containing it at the last possible instant as he saw that Gordon was blocking his line of sight. He had no shot. Could only see his DC’s back. Moving sideways to get a clear view, he stumbled over a sleeping bag, to fall forward over two bodies, his gun spinning away out of his hand as his elbow connected with the canvas-covered ground.
Gordon fired a split second before Sutton; the two explosions merging into one stuttering detonation which deafened everyone in the tent. The resulting muzzle flashes lit the small surroundings in a photoflash of brightness.
The bullet from Paul’s gun struck Gordon high in the chest, punching him backwards with the impact, leaving a hole the size of a golf ball in his back as it exited. He hit the ground with his legs folded beneath him.
Paul cried out as the bullet from Gordon’s weapon ploughed into his shoulder to splinter bone and ricochet, emerging from his armpit at an almost forty-five degree angle to punch a hole through the side of the tent. Biting down, somehow managing to contain the pain that now radiated throughout his entire body, he pushed himself up from the blood-spattered canvas with an inhuman scream of rage and anguish escaping him as he ran to the front of the tent, crashing into Pete, who had been following Matt in. The heavy contact spun Pete off his feet, to fall forward, face down on the now crowded floor.
Paul lurched away through the ruins, found a gap in the wall and ran in the direction of the forest, quickly disappearing, absorbed from view by the blizzard.
Pete crawled over to Gordon’s side as Matt checked to see whether Beth or the stranger bound to her had been hit during the exchange of fire.
Gordon’s mouth was working, trying to form words, but only a liquid wheeze was being emitted from between his bloody lips. He looked up at Pete, and his colleague’s expression confirmed what he already knew; that he was beyond help. He gripped Pete’s hand and squeezed, finding some comfort in the other man’s presence, and not as scared as he would have been if alone. He felt so fucking cold. The burning sensation of the bullet wound receded as an icy chill numbed and robbed him of all physical malaise. The surroundings misted and appeared distant as though he were looking out through the wrong end of a telescope. He was suddenly a young boy again, entering the kitchen of his childhood home in Harrow. He could even smell the freshly baked bread that his mother was taking from the oven.
“That smells terrific, Mum,” he said aloud – to Pete’s surprise – before, in the ruptured ruins of his chest, his heart ground to a stop like a rundown clock.
Pete closed Gordon’s staring eyes and gently pulled his fingers free from a hand that still held his tightly, even in death. The emotion he felt was not reflected in the expression on his face, which was hard and set. He was consumed with the need to not just kill, but to torture the lowlife piece of shit that had caused such devastation.
Matt wanted to move, follow Sutton and finish him, as a hunter would search out and put a wounded animal down. But he would not be reckless. Sutton was hurting bad, partially disabled and, judging by the floor of the tent, bleeding heavily. He would not be able to get far, especially in the thick snow. It was more than likely that he would seek out fresh shelter and dig in.
Matt untied Beth and the stranger. They both sat up. Beth groaned and swallowed hard. John nursed the two egg-sized lumps on his head.
Beth could see the DC laying only a few feet away and knew instinctively that he was dead, and felt guilty at the overwhelming relief of being out of Sutton’s clutches, which nullified the sorrow that she felt she should be experiencing. Her line of thought was broken
as she vomited; the sudden ejection a result of the combined pain, anxiety, relief, and the stale air inside the tent, that stank of sweat, blood and cordite; a heady mix.
John examined Beth’s injuries after first explaining who he was to her and the two armed men. Beth wiped at her mouth, embarrassed at the mess she had made, but simultaneously acknowledging that throwing up was of little significance under the circumstances.
“You need to be in hospital, Ms,” John said. “Looks like you’ve got a broken nose, and your leg is in a bad way.
Matt put his hand on John’s shoulder. “I want you to drive her out of here. The car is just a little way down the road. Do you think you can do that?”
“No problem,” John said.
Within minutes of the shooting they were carrying Beth back through the blizzard to the Discovery, where Matt helped John settle her on the rear seat. As they did, Pete removed the rotor arms from the Volvo and the Mondeo as a precautionary measure, in case Sutton somehow managed to double back and get past them.
Matt pulled a card from his wallet and handed it and his mobile phone to John. “Call this number and ask for Detective Chief Inspector Tom Bartlett,” he said. “You need to tell him our location, and the circumstances. Beth will give you details.” He then kissed Beth lightly on the forehead and turned to go.
“Be careful, both of you. He isn’t worth dying for,” Beth shouted after them, knowing that her words fell on deaf ears.
Matt and Pete waited and watched until the 4x4 had turned and vanished into the wall of white, then returned to the chapel and set off in the direction that Sutton had disappeared.
Pete pointed to the ground. Matt nodded. There were footprints and blood. Snow had its uses.
They followed the drizzled trail of blood and deep indentations that although already being covered by the unrelenting snow, clearly led them to the point at the tree line where their quarry had entered the forest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PAUL hobbled into the trees, his senses reeling and his whole left side a relentless, gnawing pain that threatened to overwhelm and eat away all his will with its ferocity.
The bracken-covered ground rose steadily in front of him, a daunting prospect that slowed his progress even further as he struggled up the incline. Blood was seeping through his clothing, even saturating his trousers. The floating shards of bone in his shoulder grated against each other and pierced fresh muscle with every step he took, causing him to grunt and groan aloud as he fought to stay on his feet. Only the sight of a ridge at the top of a rocky cliff gave him the resilience to carry on putting one foot in front of the other.
Scrabbling up the loose scree on his knees, only able to use one hand to aid his ascent, he crawled up onto the top of the rim and drew his gun from his pocket, knowing that he would be being hunted.
Finding a sheltered overhang, he sat down, waiting, looking through the shroud of falling flakes that were now large and dropping vertically, due to an easing of the wind. He wanted Barnes to appear; was eager to be done with him, so that he could try to make it back to the Volvo and then find a doctor who he would force to treat his wounds. There was a lot to be said for running away, to live and fight another day. That Barnes had somehow found him and followed him all the way from London was astonishing, almost beyond belief. He had underestimated the cop, and was now paying the price. Beth and Kirstie were lost to him, and Hannibal had loyally given up his life in his defence. He was now in the middle of nowhere, hurting, and with only a slim chance of escaping. He was filled with unbridled rage. The blood was pissing out of him. He removed his jacket, then his sweater, which he cut the sleeves out of, to use one to pad the entry wound in his shoulder and pack the exit hole in his armpit with. He then looped the other sleeve over his shoulder and under his arm, using his hand and teeth to tie it off as tightly as he could manage, screaming in defiance at the pain of bone mashing on bone in raw flesh. After struggling back into the now armless sweater and his jacket, he concentrated on fighting back the dark tendrils that snaked out and wrapped around his brain, threatening to pull him down into an inky abyss. He bit down hard, teeth purposely burying into his tongue; the fresh pain helping him to focus, sharpening his failing senses. He searched for and found an untapped well of hidden strength, and fed off it, not yet ready to quit the game. A part of him began to accept that he may die from blood loss or even the cold. But before he did, he wanted to kill the man who had fucked up his life. Maybe this would be as good a day as any for both of them to die on. If it came to pass that his time had come, then he would take Barnes with him. He had the satisfaction of knowing that he had lived his life wholly on his own terms, not manipulated or cowed by society and all its petty laws, but as an independent entity; a force who had made his own rules and lived out his every fantasy. All good things came to an end. He would meet death with the same disdain he felt for life.
The tracks became much harder to follow as they moved through the trees. Bowing branches cradled the snow and kept much of it from falling to the ground. Here and there, telltale spots of bright red could be seen on the bracken, and also on scattered patches of snow.
They reached a point where the trees abruptly stopped and gave way to craggy cliffs standing grey and cold behind the thinning screen of lazily falling crystal flakes. The wind had spent itself, leaving a heavy silence in its place.
“He’s gone up on the ridge,” Pete said.
They stopped at the fringe of the forest and pondered over what to do next. If they moved out over open ground and attempted to scale the incline, Sutton would – if he was still up there, watching – have a chance to pick them off like ducks in a shooting gallery, although a handgun at this distance would not be very accurate against moving figures in these conditions. But if they took the time to travel north or south, climbing up out of sight from the point they were now at, and he had not stopped, then they would have wasted valuable time and allowed him to put more distance between them.
Stopping behind a shed-sized rock, they considered their options.
“We need to get up there,” Matt said.
“I’ll go first,” Pete said. “If he’s there, I’ll draw his fire, and you can pick him off when he makes his move.”
“Bad idea, Pete. It’s me that he wants to kill. And I’m not about to even give him a half-chance. I’ve been on the receiving end of a couple of bullets, and it’s no picnic.”
“We can’t just stay here and freeze our balls off, boss,” Pete said. “He might have passed out or even died up there.”
Matt thought it over. It was crude but might prove effective, and he couldn’t think of anything better. “Okay,” he said, rising to his feet with the intention of calling up to tell Sutton that if he didn’t want to be shot on sight then he’d better dump his gun and come out with his hands behind his head.
The crack of a gunshot broke the silence. Matt ducked back down as a slug glanced off the rock just inches from his head.
“New plan,” Matt said to Pete. “Pincer movement. You go left a hundred feet, I’ll go right. We climb up there out of his sight and move in on him. He’s already killed Gordon and taken a pot-shot at us, so shoot the bastard the second you see him.”
Pete nodded, and they both set off, keeping low. Nature was coming to their aid again. The snow had disclosed shoeprints and spots of blood for them to follow, and now fog was thickening around them, providing cover. But Matt realised that it worked both ways. Sutton would also benefit by its presence.
Paul scrambled across what was a low plateau and started to make his way down the other side of the ridge. The shot that he had fired at the cop had probably missed its target. He hadn’t heard a cry of pain or surprise, and a handgun was best employed for close-up killing. Had he been in possession of a scoped rifle he would have stayed put and taken out his pursuers.
The limestone dropped down in quite large escarpments that were littered with loose boulders and also had large weathered co
lumns of rock jutting up in all manner of shapes and sizes, like a forest of abstract sculptures that ended at the base of the ridge, where there was a hundred yard wide strip of snow-covered valley floor separating the cliffs from more forestry commission land planted with tall fir trees. And beyond that he could just make out the head and tail lights of traffic. He was not too far from a main road. If he could reach it, he would stop a vehicle and make his getaway. The prospect of having a realistic chance of escaping spurred him on. What had seemed a lost cause was now replaced by hopefulness.
The pothole was maybe three feet in circumference and maybe twelve feet deep, at the end of a narrow fissure that ran for eighty feet beyond the hole. Snow had built up to all but cover the opening, which was between two tall pilasters of rock, that Paul walked between as he simultaneously kept looking back over his shoulder, sure that Barnes and the other cop would be following him.
The sudden, unexpected fall gave him no time to react. One of his arms was useless, and he was holding the gun in his other hand. The ground just swallowed him up.
More pain. The inside of the hole was not smooth, but jagged with spurs of rock projecting out from its dark walls. The impetus of moving forward as he fell took Paul down at an angle. His head hit a sharp outcrop, and then another, opening his scalp to the bone, removing his right eye and tearing his mouth open to the chin, fracturing his bottom jaw and almost ripping it off his face, where it hung grotesquely against his throat by scarlet strands of gleaming muscle.
He hit the bottom, to land in six inches of icy water, crying out as his right leg folded and snapped beneath him in several places.
“What the fuck had happened? For a couple of seconds he had no idea. And then with the realisation of his predicament, a voice in his mind told him that it didn’t matter. He had inadvertently picked the worst route possible to make his way down to the valley’s floor. He still had hold of the gun, but that was small consolation. The best result he could hope for now was to wait for Barnes to appear above him, and shoot him dead.