In Loving Memory

by Gerald Hammond

  On the straight, she could spare a small fragment of her attention for reporting in. Luckily the car had a hands-free system. The radio was already live, but to make sure she keyed the two digits for Mr Blackhouse’s phone into her own mobile. ‘I’m in pursuit,’ she said loudly. ‘Heading towards Haddington.’

  There was immediate babble, which resolved itself into Mr Blackhouse’s voice telling her to hold the man in view, keep reporting, but under no circumstances whatever was she to become involved. This was competing with Sandy’s voice saying much the same thing.

  The farm road was rough and potholed. She could see that the rider in front of her could choose an almost straight path avoiding the potholes. He was standing on his footrests, allowing the bike to bounce between his thighs. Lacking any such tactic for cushioning the bumps, she could only try to pick the nearest approximation to a flat surface that she could find and try to leave the worst of the potholes to one side or between the wheels. The farm road remained more or less straight. She managed to gabble a few more words of acknowledgement and report. Over the radio she heard requests for local cars to be alerted and moved ahead to intercept at some unspecified point.

  The Range Rover had been built with just such abuse in mind and was generally recognized as the best all terrain vehicle in general use, but she still hated to think what she was doing to the suspension. Her insides were being bounced and jostled. The tarmac would come as a blessed relief. But evidently her quarry knew the layout. Just before they returned to a solid road, he turned off on to a track that undulated along behind a ragged strip of conifers.

  She made the same turn and managed another fragment of report while she considered tactics. She had switched on the Sat Nav but with the car bouncing and juddering she could obtain only the vaguest impression of the map. Her best hope was that he would arrive at a closed gate. The gap between them was such that she would be able to reach him before he could get through and close the gate against her. And what then? She had her handgun but nobody knew how he might be armed and he was very much wanted alive. He knew the lie of the land. If he had spent much time here he would have ridden the paths and tracks many times. He knew that she was following. From time to time he twisted to look back and the machine wobbled dangerously. His mind would be turning over just the same sort of calculation. There would be places where two wheels could go but four could not.

  The track curled around a great heap of boulders and then forked. The motorcycle turned away uphill, away from the town. The hardwood trees of the farmland were replaced by coniferous planting, closing in on both sides. Much of the surface was worn down while the roots of the conifers, being shallow, made ridges across the track. It was traditional washboard surface. It came back to her that the best ride over such a surface came when the speed was either very high or very low. She accelerated. The ride improved. Despite the bouncing and the narrowness of the track, she managed to refocus her eyes for moments at a time and read the co-ordinates off the Sat Nav. She relayed them through the radio. Her colleagues should now be dashing round by tarmac, but it would be a long hike on foot to the coach and even then it was doubtful whether the coach could approach near to where she was being led. They might be using a commandeered tractor and trailer, to turn him back, or perhaps the local panda cars were massing on his route. But the whole spread of the Lammermuirs was ahead, with fences, bogs, forestry and every kind of obstacle, but very few roads.

  The washboard surface seemed smoother as she picked up more speed. Trees were rushing past, in places so close that she felt the urge to pull her elbows in; but only the greenery reached far enough to brush the sides of the car. The exposed roots were slippery. She was gaining ground. She pushed forward, closing on his rear wheel. He looked round. She could see the stain on his face. She was just considering a ramming tactic when he swerved suddenly on to a grassy slope. He bounced, slithered and vanished uphill among pine trees. The receding scene was increasingly dark, so she knew that the pinewood closed in. This was the one place where a motorcycle could probably go, but the trees would be too close together for a Range Rover.

  She held the car steady while she called in a quick report and position fix, then she kept her foot down, hammering up the track over the roots. She felt a little guilty. She had been brought up where every girl learned to ride as soon as she could straddle a Shetland pony and she had never got out of the habit of thinking of her car as a living being, to be exercised, perhaps stretched but never knowingly injured. However, her only chance now was to put on all possible speed and try to make her way in the same general direction as that taken by the Norton, hoping for a glimpse, a distant engine-note, a tyreprint or perhaps even a chance dog-walker who had seen or heard the Norton. The small map of the Sat Nav was too limited to be of much help. Her recollection of a brief glimpse of the Ordnance Survey map some hours earlier suggested that he could only go onward. There was no other track leading back down towards the town, of that she was sure. Of course, he could circle somewhere among the trees and return to the track behind her, but she thought not. He would not know what pursuit was following on.

  There was brighter sky in front of her. The track that she was on reached a crest and emerged from the woods. Mingled grass and heather stretched ahead, rising towards the skyline and dotted with sheep. The track forked. Walsh could not have crossed in front of her yet, so she turned left and recovered speed. Of course, he might have come to a dead end or been turned by the sight of her fellow officers. He could be racing back to meet her. She kept up her speed but felt the pistol on her belt and loosened it in the holster. It was of small calibre and just what use it might be in the event of a collision she could not have said, but she was in a mood to grasp at straws.

  More conifers rose ahead, this time a plantation, fenced against deer. The track arrived at a T-junction. She stopped, switched off and got out. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the stammer of the motorbike. She held her breath and turned her head. The sound was coming from in front of her and to the left. The leftward arm of the junction seemed to be curving in the right direction. She reported quickly. An unidentified voice said, ‘We’ve got his girlfriend in custody.’

  Then she heard Sandy’s voice. ‘He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He uses prostitutes. Show her to the locals. Or try somebody from Vice Squad.’

  Honey was already on the move again.

  She was meeting a new hazard. The track had been shaped over many years by tractors and trailers. The deep ruts made by their wheels had left a central hump of grass and heather and occasional boulders. She thrust on, trying to keep two wheels on the hump and two on what little rough verge she could find. She ignored so far as she could the scraping and swishing and occasional clatter from beneath.

  The track continued to curve in the right direction but it was deteriorating. There were stout trees ahead, close to each side of the track. She had to settle the car down over the central hump. Almost immediately, a boulder caught the underside of the car. There was a heavy crunch and she stopped dead, almost hitting her nose on the windscreen. Thankfully, the airbags did not deploy. The engine was still running but she killed it. The sump might have lost its oil but perhaps she could still save something from the wreckage. In the sudden stillness her mind ran free. She trod down a mad thought that she should draw her pistol and put the vehicle out of its pain.

  She used her personal radio again, to report the disaster and give the co-ordinates of her precise position. She had hardly finished when she became aware of an intrusive noise. She could still hear the Norton. And it was getting louder. The little map on the small screen could hardly be expected to show every small farm track but the lie of the land suggested that the track had been about to come to an end. Or else Dougal Walsh had arrived at a police cordon or some insurmountable obstruction. Either way, he had turned back.

  She quitted the car. However much damage she had already inflicted on the Range Rover in the course of duty, she did
not intend to invite bullet holes. What’s more, she did not know what calibre of pistol Dougal Walsh was carrying. Some pistol bullets, she knew, would go through a car door but only something like a magnum had much chance of going through a pine tree. She stepped close to the stoutest tree nearby and drew her own inadequate weapon, cocked it and left the safety catch off.

  Walsh had rounded a bend and was in sight, no more than eighty yards away. The light was going and he looked huge in the dusk. She heard the engine note hesitate as he saw the Range Rover in his path. In the moment of comparative quiet, she stepped out and raised her voice. ‘Armed police,’ she cried. ‘Stop and throw down your weapon.’ The cry came back as an echo, but she never knew from where.

  The Norton came on, accelerating.

  Honey took a two-handed grip, clasping her right wrist in her left hand. She had claimed that particular weapon because she had fired it often before at the range. She could hardly make out the sights in the poor light but that shouldn’t matter – a pistol is designed to shoot where its handler is looking. She fired at his front tyre. She heard the bullet strike metal. Later, her bullet was found in one of the front forks.

  Walsh braked, the motorcycle skidding to a halt a stone’s throw away. His legs went out to balance the machine. The Norton’s headlamp came on. It was the sudden blaze that told them how close darkness was.

  Everything went slow. She was dazzled. Her Smith and Wesson had fallen to her side and weighed a ton. Walsh raised his own pistol, copying, as he thought, her two-handed grip. There was nothing left but to die bravely. She never heard the shot but felt a blow on the left shoulder such as she might have got from a carpenter’s hammer. There was pain but it was within the bounds of tolerance. Her left hand had lost its grip. She expected his second and fatal shot at any instant. She took a step to the side, heaved her pistol up and fired, single-handed.

  In slow motion, it seemed, the Norton fell on its side, pinning his leg beneath, but he still held the pistol. She had to turn her back on him in order to reach in through the window and switch on the Range Rover’s headlights.

  The radio was still open. ‘We’re both dead,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Come quickly. Get paramedics.’ She had intended to say that they were both shot but she couldn’t make the effort to correct her words.

  Her shoulder was beginning to hurt like hell but she was damned if she was going to pass out and leave him armed. She walked unsteadily towards him.

  There was a very long pause. Walsh was lying on his side. The hot exhaust was burning its way through his jeans and probably through his leg. She tried not to recognize the smell. His pistol was pointing at the ground and his stained face to the sky. He was making a sound that she could only think of as a prolonged moan. And then she saw.

  His pistol was of a larger calibre than hers but it was similarly semi-automatic. He had taken a grip, as an amateur often will, by wrapping his left hand around his right hand, thumb on top. No semi-automatic pistol has enough space for two thicknesses of hand between the action body and the slide as it recoils to reload after a shot. His pistol was jammed on his right hand and left thumb.

  Honey stepped forward. Walsh was hit. Something was leaking through his shirt. He wrenched his hand free, leaving a lot of skin behind, but he was too late. He looked at her with an expression compounded by a fear of her weapon and a fear of her femininity. Honey said, ‘This is for the black girl.’ Any movement was agony but she was not going to leave him armed. She swatted him with her pistol, just above the ear. Her pistol was too light to do much damage. He was never out but he was hurt. He was still trying to raise the pistol so she hit him again. ‘That’s for making holes in my best cashmere,’ she said thickly. She kicked his pistol away.

  The pain was unbearable. She could feel herself going. The Norton was too hard and hot to fall on. Leaves and pine needles would be better but the man would be better still. The rescue party arrived minutes later and found her sprawled across him, their blood mingling.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sandy, thanks to his ability at map reading, was the first arrival, leading a small posse. Mr Blackhouse, by virtue of his bulk, arrived last and dangerously out of breath. Sandy took charge. After one agonized study of his wife he relinquished the care of the wounded to those with first-aid experience and turned his own attention to giving the prisoner the statutory warning whether he could hear it or not, calling up support vehicles to the nearest roadway, organizing stretcher parties and even summoning a farmer with his tractor to pull the Range Rover free and clear.

  Of all this Honey, who had lost a great deal of blood and was losing more, remained totally unaware.

  It was the end of a long day for Sandy before a preliminary report had been made to the uppermost echelons, the handguns were cleaned and returned to store and the personnel were chivvied out of the pub, thanked and returned whence they came. A careful examination had determined that the Range Rover would need a new exhaust, but there was no oil leakage and the vehicle was driveable. Even the Norton had been brought to the police garage.

  Sandy had managed to keep track of Honey’s progress by means of occasional hasty phone calls. She and the prisoner had both been taken to the New Royal Infirmary at Little France. This also happened to be the nearest hospital with staff experienced in treating bullet wounds. It was late in the evening before Sandy was free to visit the hospital and by then Honey was in surgery. The bullet, he was told, had clipped her shoulder, damaging the joint. It had been clear of the major blood vessel or she might easily have bled to death. As it was, she had lost a great deal of blood and this had to be replaced by transfusion before she was strong enough to face surgery. Dougal Walsh, being more seriously injured, had already been on the table for some time in another theatre, but arrangements had been made for a guard to be posted over him when he was returned to a ward, for purposes of both confinement and protection. At the moment of impact of Honey’s bullet he had been transformed from the servant of his masters to a very definite threat.

  There seemed to be nothing useful for Sandy to do. He had come provided with flowers, which he left along with a message that he thoughtfully gave to several different nurses, human memory being what it so often was. He then retired to his hotel and to bed.

  *

  In the morning, anxiety woke Sandy early. A call to the hospital assured him that his wife was out of the anaesthetic, out of immediate danger and sleeping naturally. He drove to police HQ but Detective Superintendent Blackhouse, who had had almost as hard a day, had not hurried to come in. There were messages, of a generally congratulatory nature, from Mr Halliday and Mr Largs. He felt quite unable to settle to any routine, and when the hospital, in response to his eleventh phone call, told him that Honey was now awake and that he could visit, he was in his car and on the move within seconds.

  Honey was in a high dependency room just off an orthopaedic ward. A very young but apparently competent doctor gave Sandy a briefing on his wife’s condition before allowing him to enter. His own flowers were prominently displayed, as were offerings from Mr Largs and Mr Halliday. Mr Blackhouse, it seemed, had not troubled himself. Honey, with her shoulder and left arm strapped, splinted and supported, was propped up but dozing in the aftermath of the anaesthetic. She roused almost immediately and gave him her special smile.

  Sandy hesitated between several different openings. ‘Does it hurt much?’ he asked.

  She considered the question seriously. ‘I don’t feel it,’ she said at last. ‘I’m probably stoned on morphine and it’ll hurt like hell when that wears off. Tell me something. I seem to remember firing at him. Did I hit him or am I dreaming? The doctors won’t tell me a damn thing except that a man was brought in at the same time. They waffle on about medical confidentiality.’

  It was Sandy’s turn for thought. He wanted to hug her but that was out of the question. He stooped for a kiss. How would Honey feel about having shot a man in anger? Would she have nightmares? He gave a m
ental shrug. She would find out some time and it was part of his philosophy that truth was best, usually. ‘You nailed him,’ he said. ‘I don’t know all the details but one lung had collapsed. His spine was hit. They don’t know yet whether he’ll walk again. They spent most of the night putting him back together. He’s in Intensive Care.’

  Even a hospital bed, a drip and several pounds of dressings and splints could not dampen Honey’s humour for long. ‘And he nearly missed me? Honour is satisfied. All those hours on the range weren’t wasted.’

  ‘Certainly not. They probably saved your life. He’s in Intensive Care and you’re only in High Dependency, which must tell us something.’ Sandy hid his smile. He had a serious message to get across. ‘I thought you were told, by several of your seniors including myself, not to get involved.’

  ‘That was a bit like telling somebody to land gently just after his parachute failed to open. I was also told not to lose touch with him. I got the Range Rover stuck and he must have turned back when he saw or heard you ahead of him and he had already fired at me and hit me before I shot him. I fired first, but at his tyre and I missed it.’

  This, Sandy decided, would not be a good moment for exploring the ramifications. ‘You’ll have to face an enquiry, but two superintendents and a chief super have all said that they’ll speak up for you – and one of them wasn’t even there – so you don’t have to worry too much about it.’

  Honey raised a hand and made a weak gesture. ‘I wasn’t worrying. If I wasn’t supposed to fire on a known killer who was firing at me, why was I trained to use a handgun? To be honest, I’m more concerned about the Range Rover.’