by Nick Oldham
Henry went low, powering his right shoulder into the pit of Worthington’s stomach and encircling him with his arms. The impact drove Arlow backwards, tripping over Jake, and he landed heavily with Henry still firmly attached, keeping his head low down as punches rained down on the back of his neck and back.
The two men grappled like wrestlers, each fighting for an advantage, rolling across the garage. Henry smacked his be-capped head against something hard. His stitches split, and the two men came apart with the faster Arlow leaping to his feet, turning to Henry, who was also rising, and hitting him in the face.
Henry sagged down.
Arlow twisted back to Jake, who had managed to get on to one knee. He was over to him in two strides, gave Jake a double-fisted sideswipe that sent him over again, before turning to find the gun and stopping suddenly.
Emma stood there, pointing the weapon at him. The remnants of her bindings hung from her wrists, blood dripped from the blow Worthington had delivered to her face and she looked as desperate as anyone, but resolve and determination oozed from her. She had the Glock in her right hand, resting on the palm of her left, and was settled in a perfect combat stance.
The gun did not waver.
‘Give that to me, you stupid little bitch,’ Arlow barked. He made towards her, but she jerked the gun at his chest, and this movement halted him.
‘You think I won’t shoot you?’ she said.
‘I don’t think you know how to,’ Arlow retorted, smiling.
‘My dad was a firearms officer,’ she warned him. ‘So don’t tempt me … After the day I’ve had, shooting you will be the easiest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘You give it to me now.’
‘No, you get down on your knees and put your hands on your head, or I will shoot you.’
At the other end of the garage, Henry groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. Jake lay still where he had fallen.
Henry’s noise distracted Emma. She glanced in his direction, and Arlow launched himself at her.
Emma pulled the trigger four times, each bullet hitting him in the chest, stopping him.
‘Bitch,’ he gasped, looking down at his body, seeing four holes, one of which in particular pumped blood like a water feature. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if trying to hold the blood inside, to stay alive, but he dropped with agonizing slowness to his knees. His eyes looked into Emma’s with pure hatred, but then they turned up in their sockets so that only the whites showed, and he slumped down at her feet.
TWENTY
Eight months later
The couple were so newly-wed that the ink wasn’t even dry on the marriage certificate when they stepped out into the glorious sunshine that bathed the village of Kendleton in a bright, golden glow and almost tropical warmth on the hottest day of the year.
As they appeared at the top of the steps outside the Tawny Owl, hosting its first ever wedding, they were doused by what seemed a blizzard of confetti that covered them and the whole area in white, pink and silver paper droplets.
Henry Christie blinked in the strong sunlight. Alison’s arm was threaded through the crook of his, and they smiled delightedly at the proceedings, although Henry did scowl slightly at the sight of the confetti snowfall.
‘I’m going to have to sweep that up,’ he moaned through the side of his mouth into Alison’s ear. ‘I’ll need one of those leaf blower/sucker things now.’
‘To add to your growing list of gadgets?’ she said with amused cynicism.
He and Alison were standing at the rear of the main wedding party, which had massed on the front steps of the Tawny Owl and was being directed into various poses and clusters by Dr Lott, who also doubled as the wedding photographer. He had recently put himself through a course at a college near Lancaster and had ingratiated himself with the husband and wife to be, convincing them he was the man for the job, a claim yet to be proved.
‘You two now, yes, you two,’ Lott said, and like a sheepdog separating a pair of sheep from the flock he jostled the newly-weds to one side and set them up with the bride displaying her gartered leg across the groom’s groin.
‘They look happy,’ Alison said. She tilted her head and rested it contentedly on Henry’s shoulder.
‘They were made for each other,’ he agreed. ‘Both completely mad as hatters.’
The newly-weds they were discussing were Rik Dean and Henry’s sister, Lisa, who had eventually set the date and decided to get hitched at the Tawny Owl, which now had a license to hold ceremonies. There was a new annex of extra bedrooms, and the upstairs had been refurbished with a function suite. Alison and Henry had decided to concentrate on small but extremely expensive events. Henry, having developed a bit of a business edge, had enjoyed relieving Rik of several thousand pounds.
‘Right, that’s good,’ Dr Lott said. Having finished the shots of Lisa’s leg, he started to rearrange the other guests on the front steps for even more shots at strange, but, he assured everyone, artistic angles.
Henry and Alison held back, but were beckoned forward to join the ensemble for a final few photographs before the party retreated inside for drinks and the wedding breakfast upstairs. Rik and Lisa were at the centre of the group, Henry and Alison at the end of the back line.
‘Come on, guys, big smiles,’ Lott said, encouraging them all like a children’s entertainer.
Henry forced a very large, false smile on to his face, which he managed to keep in place when Alison sneakily said, ‘Us next, darling?’
He could not prevent the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple as he gulped.
He was 1,000 metres away, hidden in the trees that rose on the hill opposite the Tawny Owl. He had been there for two days, having settled into a tight but comfortable hollow beside an oak tree and behind a gorse thicket, just wide enough for his lithe, prone body. Two days had been easy in comparison to what he done in the past. The British weather was pleasant, and he had been shaded during the summer days, and at night the ground retained enough heat to keep him snug.
He had not been seen, other than by a nosy fox and a badger that came snuffling around the night before. He had let them, and they’d left.
He was armed with the same weapon he had learned to shoot and kill with: an Accuracy International Sniper Rifle .338 Lapua Magnum (which he still used, even though the model had been phased out). It gave him a killing range of 1,500 metres. It was fitted with a Zeiss telescopic sight, through which he was now looking at the wedding guests on the front steps of the pub.
He moved fractionally from one face to the other, zeroing in each time until the cross hairs in his sights turned from a blur into tight focus. He did this on the forehead of each person with the ball of his forefinger resting on the trigger.
He guessed that, had he wanted to, he could have killed about seven of them before anyone realized what was happening. And then another six before the remainder started diving for cover. He knew he was that good.
Later, in the bar, Henry Christie found himself in a group consisting of the newly married Rik Dean, Jake Niven, and his old friend, Karl Donaldson.
Henry, Jake and Donaldson toasted Rik for the umpteenth time, and they all downed their Jack Daniel’s in one, then held out their empty glasses for Henry to refill from the litre bottle he had unofficially liberated from the store. Henry complied, and all four of them gravitated to the fireplace in which a fire was still smouldering, the embers red. The fire was completely unnecessary, but it looked good as they sat down in a semicircle around it.
‘So how are we doing?’ Henry asked no one in particular.
Karl Donaldson was up from London with his wife. He looked as healthy and as good-looking as ever. ‘It’s going well,’ Donaldson said, raising his glass. He was tall and broad, had a jawline like Superman, piercing blue eyes like a film star and was ageing far too well for Henry’s comfort. Henry had always been just a bit envious of him and of the way in which ladies seemed to swoon as soon as he put in an appearance; even
today, Henry had seen some of the female wedding guests stop with their champagne glasses to their lips and watch him in awe as he walked into the bar. It was a nice envy, though; he and Donaldson had been friends for almost twenty years. ‘Still hunting down terrorists like there’s no tomorrow,’ the American said.
Henry looked at Rik, who he knew had been working at full tilt for the last eight months on the Bartle/Overwall case, as well as doing the tidying up of everything that concerned Fraser and Arlow Worthington – and several other murders that had come his way: some straightforward, others more complex. ‘Where are we up to with Spencer?’ Henry asked.
‘He’ll be at court in September,’ Rik said. ‘With Overwall, who still cannot shut up, which is a good thing. We’ve definitely linked six more girls to them both, and our CSI and forensics teams have done awesome work with regards to it all. I doff my cap to them – going down drains, emptying that disgusting slurry pit … that police car will never go on patrol again … and finding stuff in those underground containers. Incidentally, we found a pair of Bartle’s boots in the slurry, which had glass fragments from the car’s broken window in the tread of the soles. Also found glass in the back of one of the cloned Skodas, too.’ Rik stopped, then said sadly, ‘Unfortunately, all the girls are dead.’
A real conversation-stopper if ever there was one.
They all took a reverential sip of their JDs.
Henry turned to Jake. His family had taken the brunt of almost everything, from Fraser Worthington to Spencer Bartle. Henry knew they had been through hell and back, as clichéd as this sounded, but it was as close to the truth as it could be. The beauty of it was that, even though these were still early days in the grand scheme of things eight months down the line – they seemed to have dragged themselves out the other side.
Emma had proved to be a tough young woman, and fortunately Bartle had not had a chance to harm her before Henry had lumbered on to the scene; however, she had been transferred from one horror straight into another, when Arlow Worthington knocked on the door on a revenge mission on behalf of his dead brother.
Arlow had brought about his own death at Emma’s hands.
It had to be said that few tears were shed for him, but Emma was a different thing. But with care and a little professional counselling she showed an incredible resilience that wasn’t just a brave front. She truly was an astonishing person.
It also helped that the Crown Prosecution Service decided very quickly she had no case to answer and that she had acted in self-defence – of herself and her family.
Her brother Danny had been badly assaulted by Arlow, who had cracked him across the head with his gun when the lad had bravely tried to intervene and protect his mother. He had fractured Danny’s skull, and for a while there had been major concerns for him, but he’d pulled through and, like Emma, had shown himself to be an amazing young person.
Anna’s physical injuries were more superficial, and she had been easily fixed by doctors, but as Henry looked at Jake now he could still see the remnants of Arlow’s frenzied attack on him. Jake’s liver had been ruptured, his ribs broken, cheekbone and jaw fractured, which meant two months of scaffolding on his face and another two virtually immobile, sucking up chicken soup through a straw.
He had just returned to work, and now, although not really supposed to drink, he was enjoying a few JDs.
It had been a tough time for the Nivens, and they could easily have left Kendleton, but then the village itself showed its true character by rallying around in all sorts of practical ways, demonstrating just how seriously ‘community’ was taken around these parts.
Jake smiled crookedly at Henry – he had yet to master his old smile – and raised his glass. ‘I’m good,’ he said. ‘Thanks, mate, this has been the worst and best move I could have made.’ He glanced over Henry’s shoulder and caught sight of Anna, who was chatting to another of the wedding guests. Their eyes met, and they shared a smile.
It was a long summer night, one of those perfect nights for a wedding.
About eight p.m., Henry drifted out of the proceedings alone, on to the front steps of the pub. He had a glass of JD in one hand and the stolen bottle in the other, dangling loosely down by his side. He just fancied a moment or two of chilling.
He was joined, one by one, by Donaldson, Jake and Rik, all in a line, with their eyes narrowed as they looked across the village green over towards the rising bank of woodland opposite, the leaves of the taller trees dappling the light of the sun as the beautiful golden orb dropped slowly in the sky, burnishing everything with gold and casting long, lazy shadows. Each man took a moment to contemplate the meaning of life, as influenced by alcohol.
‘Guys,’ Henry said, feeling incredibly serene and warm to everyone and everything in the way only Jack Daniel’s can bring about. ‘Guys,’ he repeated. He raised his glass and toasted: ‘To the future.’
Each man lifted his own glass and they responded like a choir: ‘To the future.’
‘Whatever it may hold,’ Henry concluded.
He had been a sniper in his previous life. Had been highly successful at it, particularly in the Middle East, with over 150 kills to his name.
But that had been life as a sniper, authorized and paid for by the state, when he had learned to be an expert in camouflage and concealment, stalking, observation and map reading – as well as firing a rifle with extreme precision.
He had transferred these skills, but now he thought of himself as a hunter, as opposed to just a sniper. In addition to the skills he had learned, he believed there was much more to being a hunter.
Being a hunter called for wider knowledge.
Now it was a given that he had to get to know his prey, whereas when he was ‘just’ a sniper, it was totally impersonal. He’d shot people he did not, would not, ever know – albeit that person was out to get him first if possible.
As a hunter, his prey was not out to get him, as such.
They may have been out to get someone else – quite possibly the individual who hired him – but they would never, ever know of his existence. They would never know they were being stalked or watched. They would never know that danger lurked, and they would be dead in an instant and still know nothing about it.
So now he considered himself a hunter, probably the best in the business, and he saw it as a requirement to get to know his target, their habits, their associates, their routines and the times when they felt they were safe, but were, in fact, at their most vulnerable. The times when they would be most easy to kill.
The hunter looked down the Carl Zeiss telescopic sight, which had the mil-dot reticle and a scale enabling him to see the dialled elevation setting without having to remove his eyes from the lens. He was prone, right leg drawn up, his face pressed against the stock’s cheek-piece and the stock itself supported by a sandbag he had brought along for the purpose. He breathed deeply, but was not yet ready to fire, even though conditions were just about perfect: no wind, nice weather and clear visibility.
He looked at each man standing on the front steps, knowing them all, all the members of the herd.
Firstly, Rik Dean, high ranking detective in the local force: of no interest.
Then PC Jake Niven, local cop: no interest.
After him, Karl Donaldson, former FBI field agent, now nothing more than an office bod working in the FBI Legat at the US embassy in London.
The hunter held Donaldson’s head in his sights and tensed slightly as the Yank shaded his eyes and seemed to peer directly at him, right down the telescopic sights. Surely the guy had not spotted him? Had he made a mistake?
Then Donaldson put his hand down.
He was of no interest to the hunter, anyway.
Rik Dean stepped in front of Henry Christie, obscuring him from view. He shook Christie’s hand, then walked into the pub.
Jake Niven did the same thing, patting Henry on the shoulder as he walked past and back inside.
Finally, Donaldson did the s
ame.
It was as if the members of the pack were paying their respects to the leader.
The hunter inhaled, then exhaled long and slow as Henry Christie came into view and Donaldson walked away.
Christie stood there, JD bottle in one hand, glass in the other, tilting his head slightly just to get the last rays of the sun, but even so, the hunter was able to focus the cross hairs right in the centre of his forehead.
This man was the hunter’s prey.
The hunter took off, then replaced the ball of his right forefinger on the trigger. Inhaled, exhaled again, holding his lungs on empty. The barrel of the rifle was rock steady and would be even more so when he took the shot between his own heartbeats.