by JR Carroll
‘Too late for flattery,’ Markleigh said. He rose to his feet, thumbed the hammer back.
‘If you’re going to do it, you’ll have to shoot me in the back,’ Tim said. ‘Because I’m leaving now.’
He turned around, put his hands in his coat pockets and made for the door. Any sudden or unexpected moves would surely provoke a volley of gunfire, so he proceeded carefully, almost in slow motion. The door seemed far away.
The .38 held six rounds, but being an old-school cop, Markleigh would likely load only five, as a safety precaution. This was standard practice. Cops had been known to accidentally shoot themselves with the hammer resting on a loaded chamber.
Tim’s heart pumped furiously, erratically, like a trapped animal trying to burst free. Sweat beads popped out on his forehead and upper lip.
He was three paces from the door when the first bullet tore into his back. Three more followed, in quick order, and then a fifth in the same general area.
Tim lurched forward, crashed into the wall and crumpled face-down on the floor. There he lay, completely still.
Markleigh stepped closer. He grabbed Tim’s shoulder roughly, turned him over. Tim’s face was unmarked, but deathly pale.
No sign of life.
Markleigh drew back the hammer once more, aimed between Tim’s eyes, placed his left hand behind the weapon as a shield against back-spatter, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Before Markleigh could react, Tim opened his eyes.
‘Forgot to count,’ he said.
Markleigh backed off, opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out a nine-millimetre hollow-point round from Tim’s Glock filled the room with a deafening blast. Tim aimed for his chest, but because of recoil the shot went high, ripping through the soft tissue under Markleigh’s jaw and exploding through the back of his head.
Markleigh flew backwards, over the coffee table, and sprawled on the floor in an untidy mess, legs and arms all over the place at grotesque angles, and a great fan of blood and bits of brain spread over the wall behind him. It was already starting to slide down to the floor.
Tim lay on the floor, his head against the wall. Some time passed. He felt as if he was in a daze, as if he had just woken up from a terrible nightmare and was waiting for it to dissipate.
But this was no nightmare.
The Glock was still in his hand.
With his left hand he slowly undid his coat buttons, so he could breathe more easily. The pain from the wounds in his back was immense, as if he’d been struck five times with a hammer.
Kevlar was indeed a miraculous invention. A lightweight nylon and steel matrix could stop a bullet in its tracks, but the wearer still felt the impact as if he’d been shot. The bullets could penetrate several layers before flattening out. Tim would have deep bruising and residual soreness for a while to come.
It was better than being dead.
He gave silent thanks to the former client who had provided him with the vest, no questions asked. There had to be some advantages in the criminal defence business.
Still, there had been tense moments, and no certainty that all would go according to plan. If Markleigh had aimed for his head, or some other part of his body, it would’ve been a different story. It was a gamble from the get-go.
But Tim had reasoned it out. Cops are taught that, if they are in a position where deadly force is to be used, they must aim for the main body mass, which is the torso between the neck and the waist. If your safety is threatened, you never try to wound your opponent, or try for any fancy shots. Apart from the difficulty in doing so, a wounded person is still capable of killing you.
Dale Markleigh was certainly a fallen and disgraced cop, but the training and skills were still in his blood. His only mistake was in failing to count his shots.
It is not easy to keep score when you are being shot, but Tim had somehow managed it. He knew five rounds had been expended. The life-and-death question was: did Markleigh have a sixth?
Once again, training and experience had trumped. Tim had sweated for a long moment when Markleigh loomed over him to deliver the coup de grace, but in the end his judgement paid off.
Cops, perhaps more than civilians, are creatures of habit.
Tim had no doubt that the sound of gunfire in their quiet neighbourhood would send the local citizens scurrying for their phones. Already he could hear sirens in the distance. Soon, this silent, blood-spattered room would be alive with frantic police and ambulance activity.
Lying propped against the wall in that silent room, Tim considered his situation. The self-defence strategy would work for him better than it would have for Markleigh. Tests would show that Tim had been shot five times in the back before he had responded with a single fatal shot.
Still, it was anything but clear cut. Such cases never were. The prosecution could—and doubtless would—argue that Tim had gone to Markleigh’s flat, armed and wearing a bullet-proof vest with the intention of creating a scenario in which he could kill his sworn enemy and then present it as a righteous homicide.
The sirens were much closer now, only a block or so away. The rain seemed to have eased off. Tim let the Glock slip from his hand and pushed it far away. Cops would be pumped; they’d have guns drawn, ready to rock and roll. If it was a TRG team, they wouldn’t need much of an excuse to use their boys’ toys.
In his own defence, Tim could argue that he had gone to sort out his differences with Markleigh, nothing more, and had worn the vest and carried a gun because he knew Markleigh was a dangerous man who would almost certainly be armed. And why would Tim risk being shot five times before retaliating? If just one of those shots had hit him in the head, he’d be a dead duck.
Also, he was actually leaving the premises when Markleigh opened fire. The fact that he was shot in the back supported that.
That was the gist of his case.
Could go either way.
Only one thing was certain.
He was going to need a good lawyer.
About JR Carroll
JR Carroll lives in Melbourne, where he was born and raised. A graduate of Melbourne University, he worked as a teacher for a number of years before turning to full-time fiction writing. His first book, about the Vietnam War, was Token Soldiers. This was followed by a series of crime thrillers, including Catspaw, No Way Back, Out of the Blue, The Clan, Cheaters, and Blindside.
First published by Momentum in 2014
This edition published in 2014 by Momentum
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
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Copyright © JR Carroll 2014
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8 Hours to Die
EPUB format: 9781760080648
Mobi format: 9781760080655
Cover design by Michael Momi
Edited by Kylie Mason
Proofread by Chrysoula Aiello
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