by Zoe Sharp
Not bad. Oh God . . .
His words seemed to convince himself as much as me. He went first down the stairs, moving faster than I’d feared he might. I kept a wary eye on his back as we stumbled across the lower floor, and burst out through the fire door.
The moon, which had proved so useful to light our way into the site, now seemed like a curse. We had to take the long way back towards the gap in the fence, moving from one piece of cover to the next, in bursts. As we ducked behind a big Cat digger I could just see the pair of squad cars that had pulled up close by the entrance. The lights flashed in and out of sync as the patrolmen talked together in undertones.
We waited, tense, until they’d picked up torches and moved in towards the office building drawn, as we’d been, by the light in the top corner. I tried to remember if we’d shut the fire door as we came through it, but my recall failed me.
“We haven’t got long before they find him,” I muttered.
Sean was pale as death. He swayed, eyes closed, and I pushed him back against the digger’s panelwork with the flat of my hand, fighting down the sudden flare of panic.
“Sean!” I said roughly. “Stay with me, sergeant!”
His eyes opened slowly. For a moment he looked at me without seeing me, only bringing himself back on track with a visible effort. “Giving me orders now are you, private?”
“You better believe it,” I bit out. “Can you make it to the truck?”
He nodded briefly and, with a last check to make sure the cops had their attention focused firmly on the building, we set off again.
Once we were on the mud, the going proved harder. Where Sean had seemed so nimble before, now he moved heavy and slow. It seemed to take forever to cross the last few metres. My back had never felt so exposed.
The gap in the fence had shrunk since we came in, and getting through it to where the Nissan waited was a painful struggle. I had to loop Sean’s arm over my shoulder and half-drag, half-carry him the rest of the way.
As we reached the Patrol, Sean dug in his pockets and handed me the keys. “You’ll have to drive,” he said tiredly.
I took them without argument. After all, we had enough of a job to heave Sean up into the passenger seat. There was no way he could have got behind the wheel.
Once I’d hauled myself into the driver’s side, I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath. I found I was almost sobbing for air and my hands were shaking. I could hardly see for the sweat running into my eyes.
Something hard was digging into my hip, and I yanked the Glock out of my pocket, staring at it stupidly, as though seeing it for the first time. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog that seemed to have settled down over my brain.
Come on, come on! Get with the programme, Fox!
I twisted the key in the ignition, dumped the handbrake, and selected reverse on the auto gearbox. I’d forgotten to cover the brake as I did so, and the Patrol jerked backwards as the transmission engaged. I nearly put the damn thing into the wall of one of the units, and by the look of the construction, the building would have come off worse.
Sean moaned at the rough movement, but I had little time for finesse.
Finally, I managed to get myself together enough to switch on the headlights and roll out of the estate. Christ, I hadn’t driven anything with four wheels since I’d left the army. At least the Patrol had a bit more sophistication than the old Land Rovers I’d been in then.
I tried hard to make our departure look casual. I made sure I turned the opposite way to the site when I came out of the industrial estate, trundled off down the narrow lane as though this was a perfectly normal occurrence, that I had every right to be there.
All the time I was straining to hear the first wail of the sirens.
I glanced at the Glock, which lay where I’d dropped it on the dashboard, grabbed it and stuffed it quickly into my door pocket. The last thing I wanted now was to be caught fleeing the scene of a murder, with a wounded fugitive, and a smoking gun . . .
I drove without a clear destination in mind, just knowing that I needed to put distance between us and Langford’s body. I had to concentrate hard on keeping the Patrol positioned on the narrow road. From the high driving seat, the vehicle seemed fantastically wide.
I glanced across at Sean. He’d slumped sideways with his head resting on the window, and his eyes were closed again. I wanted to check him over there and then, find out how bad the wound was.
Eventually, when I’d driven for ten minutes or so, my nerve failed me. I spotted a gateway and nudged the Patrol into it. Sean’s eyes fluttered open as he felt us come to a stop.
I groped around until I found the interior light, flicked it on, and twisted in my seat to face him. It took an effort to keep my hands steady as I opened his coat, following the liquid trail, and ripped his shirt up the side seam.
Underneath, swimming in blood, the bullet had left a puckered entry hole in the skin just below the point of his left shoulder. Bright and raging, it seemed so small to be the cause of so much oozing fluid.
I tilted him forwards gently, lifted the shirt at the back, running my hands tentatively over his goosebumped skin. I was feeling for the exploded exit, but couldn’t find it. I’d been hoping for a flesh wound, but the bullet was still in there.
I pulled my fleece off over my head, dragged the T-shirt I had on underneath out of my jeans and yanked that off, too. Sean wasn’t in any state to admire my underwear, and I didn’t give him much chance to, quickly shrugging my way back into the fleece. I used the T-shirt to wad against his shoulder, trying to stem the flow with fingers that felt abruptly fat and clumsy.
“You never could keep your hands off me, Charlie,” Sean said, his voice blurred. He tried a laugh, but something went wrong on the way out and it became no more than a gasp. He was staring at me without focus again, his exhaustion total, and I realised how much it had taken out of him to stay operational until now.
Operational. Jesus, the people who trained me would have been proud that I fell back instinctively on their evasive terminology. Operational. It meant alive and conscious. Sean becoming non-operational, on the other hand, was something I didn’t want to think about right now.
I leaned him back into his seat. “Sean, listen to me.” I was mildly surprised to find my voice came out relatively calm and clear. “The round’s still there, and I don’t know where it is. I have to get you to a hospital.”
“No!” His response was stark, immediate. “No hospitals,” he reiterated, struggling to get the words out. Struggling harder not to plead with me. “When they’ve found that blood bath back there, the first place they’ll come looking for us is the local hospitals. You know what’ll happen then, don’t you, Charlie?”
I tried hard not to let him get to me. “You can’t help your brother if you’re dead,” I told him brutally.
He managed a weak half smile that looked as though it was ripped out of him by something with claws. “I can’t help him if I’m in a prison cell, either.”
I said nothing for a few moments, not meeting his eyes, then let go of his coat and sat back in my seat, annoyed. With Sean. With myself. It was as though he was deliberately trying to kill himself and it was eating away at me to have to watch him do it.
“Dammit, Sean, you need a doctor,” I said at last, my voice low with anger.
“If you can find me one, Charlie, who won’t go running to the police, I’ll see him,” he said, and I knew by the stubborn set of his mouth there wasn’t going to be any shifting him on this one.
“It’s all going to be academic if we don’t stop you bleeding,” I threw at him, wanting to hurt him as much as he was hurting me. “I could always just let you pass out, and then cart you off to the nearest Casualty anyway.”
I saw the flinch he tried not to let show, and my temper deflated like a slow-punctured tyre.
I sighed. “OK, OK, we’ll deal with this,” I said. “But first, we’ve got to get you some place safe.
Some place out of the way, where the police aren’t going to find us.”
Twenty-two
I took Sean to Jacob and Clare’s. Under pressure, it was the only place I could think of that was secluded enough to hide him.
Besides, Jacob’s work means he has a tendency to be highly security conscious. As well as a sophisticated alarm system, a couple of sensors hidden on the driveway link direct to a buzzer in the house. At least we would have fair warning of unexpected visitors.
When I rumbled the Patrol to a jerky standstill on their moss-covered forecourt, the whole place looked dark and quiet, lying as it did under the shadow of the trees, but I knew Jacob would be watching the strange vehicle warily from somewhere. I cut the engine, suddenly aware of a fatigue so overwhelming it made me want to weep. I twisted in my seat.
“Sean?”
For a moment there was silence and all manner of nasty scenarios slithered past my eyes, but then I heard the quiet rustle of clothing as he moved.
“Yeah.” His voice was clogged and raspy. “I’m still with it.”
I climbed out and, once they’d seen my face, both Jacob and Clare came hurrying out of the front door. The orange glow of the hall light flooded out after them, and threw elongated shadows onto the stone sets.
“My God, Charlie, what the hell’s happened?” Jacob demanded, limping forwards as I yanked the passenger door open and Sean’s bloodied figure all but fell out into my arms.
“He’s been shot and he needs help,” I said bluntly, staggering under the weight. I caught their instant withdrawal, their hesitation, and swung to face them.
“I know I’m pushing my luck coming here, but I didn’t know where else to take him,” I said, speaking fast and low. “If you want me to go, tell me now, but make your minds up quick, before he bleeds to death.”
That broke them out of it. Jacob came forwards to help me then. If he hadn’t, I never would have got Sean into the house.
Clare went ahead, fluttering anxiously, holding doors open for us and shooing the dogs out of the way. They were taking far too much interest in the state of the new arrival for my liking.
By general consensus, we put him in the kitchen, where at least the blood he was losing could be mopped off the flagged floor. We propped him gently against the kitchen table and Jacob supported him there while I carefully peeled his coat away from the wound.
Underneath it, my makeshift dressing was drenched scarlet. In the strong light it seemed that the front half of his jacket was stained wet with it. It scared me, the amount he was losing. He couldn’t hope to sustain it.
I took one look at Jacob’s troubled face, and realised he knew it, too.
I clenched my teeth with the effort it took not to cry. You are not going to die on me, Sean . . .
Clare came bustling in then with a big First Aid kit. We broke the seal and found decent-sized sterile dressings inside. I’m not sure they were much more effective than my T-shirt, but at least they looked the part.
Jacob moved away, filled the kettle and shoved it to boil on top of the Aga. Clare had gone again, reappearing with a bundle of ragged towels. “They’re only old,” she said, pale but determined, “but they’ve been washed.”
I nodded gratefully to her, suddenly fiercely proud of my friends. The way they’d taken us in without asking awkward questions. Like who was this guy? And why would anyone want to be shooting at him?
All the time I kept up pressure on the site of the wound, leaning into him, the only way to curb the bleeding. It finally seemed to be slowing up, and at least it gave me the excuse to watch him for a few moments.
Even through the pain and the anger, the times when I’d hated Sean as violently as I’d loved him, I’d never forgotten the beauty of him.
“Sean.” His eyes flickered open at my soft call. There were grim circles round them, shadows etched in deep. “We need to get to that wound, clean it up,” I said. “Are you up to this?”
He nodded once, and eased himself upright. I helped him with the coat, but left as much of his tattered shirt in place as I could. Despite the warmth of the kitchen, he still felt chilled.
“Get him onto the table,” Jacob suggested.
We laid him down flat then, bunching the coat under his head. Clare unfolded some of the towels and laid them over Sean’s torso and legs, trying to keep him warm.
Once the kettle had begun to hum, we ferried hot water in bowls to mop the worst of the blood away. He could still move his fingers, but the front of his shoulder had started to swell, and he didn’t seem to be able to lift his arm much.
At length, I stepped back. “It’s no good, Sean,” I said, dropping another ruined towel into the bowl at my feet. “That bullet’s going to have to come out, and the sooner the better.”
He lifted his head cautiously, body tight with the pain, but his voice seemed detached. “Then you’ll have to do it,” he said.
“You’re joking!” I snapped. “What? Douse you down with whisky and go rooting about in there with a knife and fork? What happened? You in a hurry to die now, soldier?”
He let his head drop back. “What other option is there?” he asked, sounding unbearably tired.
“Let me make a phone call,” I said, throwing a glance as much to Jacob for his permission as to Sean. “Then we’ll see.”
When neither man made any dissent, I moved over to the phone and dialled a number that I didn’t have to look up. While the line rang out at the other end I tried not to pray for the right person to answer. He did.
I didn’t bother with much of a preliminary, and didn’t mention any names, just gave him the bald facts. I asked for his help. It wasn’t easy, but I’d been driven that far before and had come out lucky.
There was what seemed like a long period of silence on the other end of the line. A careful and measured consideration. Not of the possibilities of treating the patient, but of the morality of helping me at all. And all the time I stood there watching Sean across the other side of my friends’ kitchen, and fighting the misery.
“Look,” I said at length, turning away and trying to keep the suppressed rage out of my voice. “If you’re not prepared to come and do this yourself, at least tell me what to expect when I go in there, because one way or another, that bullet’s got to come out of him tonight.” I took a shaky breath, then added, “I just think he’ll have a better chance of surviving if you do it.”
“All right, Charlotte,” said my father, “I’ll come. Keep him warm. Keep him awake if you can, and keep trying to control the bleeding. I’ll need some things, but I should be with you in less than two hours.”
I gave him directions, started to thank him, but I was already speaking into a dead line.
I turned back to Sean as I put the receiver back on its cradle. “Help’s on the way. Just you keep breathing until it gets here or my name’s going to be lower than shit.”
It was not much of a joke and, correspondingly, it raised not much of a smile, but under the circumstances it was the best any of us could muster.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Sean said quietly.
I swallowed. I couldn’t cope with him when he was being anything other than a cold and clinical bastard. “Don’t thank me,” I said bluntly. “We’re nowhere near out of this yet.”
***
Even though we were expecting it, the squawk of the drive alarm made me jump. I looked at my watch, and saw that it was precisely an hour and forty minutes since my phone call. Nevertheless, Clare quickly drew the kitchen curtains and we waited, tensed like deer, while Jacob went to the door.
When he returned a few moments later, my father was behind him.
My father strode immediately to his patient, only pausing to favour me with one brief reproving glance as he came in. He was dressed as though for a Sunday lunchtime stroll to the village pub, in dark green corduroy trousers and a wool check shirt.
Only the stiff tan leather bag didn’t quite fit. The case he’d always carried, fi
rst as a doctor, then as a surgeon, for more than thirty years. When he put that down on one of the kitchen chairs it landed with a solid thump that was unnerving.
He unfolded a pair of expensive gold-framed glasses from his inside jacket pocket, and pulled on latex gloves, moving with a deceptively slow kind of haste. As though he was aware that an outright rush would have caused panic.
“What’s his name?” he asked quietly as he slotted a stethoscope round his neck and pulled an inflatable cuff out of his bag.
“Sean,” I said.
For a moment he frowned, then the memory and the realisation hit almost at the same time, flashing over like a sparking match.
He shot a quick glance at Sean’s supine figure, but this time it wasn’t the concerned gaze of doctor to patient, but something darker, and more impenetrable. He waited until the flame had flared and died before trusting himself to speak again.
“All right, Sean,” he said, more loudly, “I’m just going to check your blood pressure.” By the time he’d done so, he was frowning again. For a moment the only sound in the room was the hiss of air escaping from the cuff as he deflated it.
“How is it?” I demanded, recognising the twin dents between his eyebrows as he peeled the stethoscope out of his ears.
“Only a little low, all things considered, but he’s young and fit, and they’re the worst,” my father said, speaking over the top of Sean like he’d suddenly gone deaf. “They maintain pressure on you right up to the point where they crash, and then they can go in seconds.”
He glanced around at the bloodied towels. “You seem to have done a fair job of stopping the bleeding, but I’d like to get some fluids into him, just to be on the safe side, I think.”
He moved me aside almost with impatience and, having been relieved of my immediate responsibility, I felt the energy and the strength slowly seep out of me. I leaned numbly against the nearest wall, limbs heavy, so that it was Clare who ended up holding Sean’s hand as my father slipped the cannula into his distended vein and taped it down.
He plugged a bag of clear liquid into the line and suspended it from the Welsh dresser to one side, seemingly unfazed by the need to improvise.