Stark shifted in his seat uncomfortably. ‘Bombs … ambush pinch-points, nervous locals, suspicious activity, approaching vehicles –’
‘Approaching vehicles?’ she interrupted, incredulous. ‘In London?’ Stark looked to be shrinking with embarrassment. ‘You’ve been sitting next to me for nearly two years flinching every time a car passes? And all this time you’ve let me think it was my driving?’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Your driving’s just a secondary factor.’
Fran punched him in the arm.
He rubbed it in silent admonishment and returned to looking out the window. ‘I try to switch it off, but …’ He sighed. ‘It’s worse when I’m tired. More like …’
‘Like you’re back there?’ He hated letting these things out; saw it as weakness. Fran tried to imagine what it must be like to go through life expecting attack, suspecting everything. It must be exhausting. Now she thought about it, even the way he walked down the street hinted at it; his eyes were always peeled. What did they call it, hyper-vigilance? Ever since she’d realized he had PTSD her ears pricked up at every mention of it on the news. Was Stark literally still living the war? No wonder he looked like shit. He’d been fine for so long, while he was with Kelly, but since then …
‘Did you know that the plural for crows is a murder?’ he asked quietly.
Even Fran’s insatiable curiosity wasn’t going near that one. ‘I’ve had quite enough nature for one day. Tell me why we’re doing this?’ They were heading back to Miriam’s flat. The uniforms guarding the place had been notified to be wary, but Stark still hadn’t explained himself.
‘Jesus knows.’
‘What?’
‘Just something I want to check.’
‘We should be out chasing down Kirsch.’
‘Where?’ he asked flatly. ‘How?’
Fran had no answer. She drove the car past a line of vehicles that had pulled over at the wailing siren and lights, suddenly blinking back another threat of tears. ‘You died,’ she said quietly.
‘What?’
‘It said in the papers – on the operating table in Camp Bastion. Is that true?’
Stark glanced at her. She gripped the wheel, willing her face expressionless. ‘So they say.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I was on an operating table.’
‘Do you remember losing consciousness, then?’
‘Is now really the time for this?’ he asked.
‘It’s the perfect time.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, sort of; it’s hazy. I was in and out for a while on the medevac chopper.’ Perhaps he sensed her need for direct answers rather than his usual dodges. It must be obvious where this was coming from, so she pressed on.
‘Did you think you were dying?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you feel?’
‘Are you asking if I saw a warm welcoming light and heard the choir of angels?’
‘Don’t take the piss. I’m asking, seriously.’
‘Seriously?’ Stark sighed, thinking. ‘Pain. Utter weariness. Encroaching darkness and an overwhelming sense of relief.’
Fran took a moment to absorb this. ‘Well, aren’t you just the little ray of sunshine.’
They screeched to a halt outside Miriam’s flats. A uniform car was already there. ‘No sign of him,’ said one of the constables.
Fran looked both relieved and disappointed. Stark marched silently up the stairs and she followed in silence. SOCO hadn’t arrived yet. He wiped his feet, pulled on gloves and unlocked the door with Miriam’s keys.
‘All right, smartarse. Why are we here?’ she asked impatiently.
Stark took down the wooden crucifix from the wall and gave it a gentle shake. It rattled. ‘Jesus knows.’
The two detectives locked eyes.
Fran took out her phone and began photographing.
‘She kept looking at it,’ said Stark. ‘I only remembered after … my gran had one similar that opened into a candle holder.’ As he held it in two hands, applying pressure with his thumbs, the front of the cross with its icon slid down to reveal the hollow interior.
It wasn’t a candle inside.
It was a scroll of yellowing paper. Stark unrolled it, scanned it, and sighed. Handwritten in a pin-neat copperplate, in biro. ‘The one thing she couldn’t confess to her priest.’
But the scroll hadn’t made the rattling. There was another object inside. A golden pendant necklace spelling a name.
Kimberly.
SOCO arrived ten minutes later.
Outside the two constables were looking agitated. ‘We’ve had a shout. Abbey Woods. Two separate reports of IC1 male with a rifle. Shots heard. Everyone and their dog is heading there now. All three choppers are up. Armed response vehicles inbound and Specialist Firearms are on their way. Should we go?’
Fran looked up at the flats. ‘No, stay here with SOCO.’
‘No,’ said Stark. Everyone looked at him, thinking he was contradicting her. ‘Sorry, no, not you; Kirsch …’ His mind was racing. ‘He stole their phones …’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Fran.
‘Misdirection. Abbey Woods …’ Stark winced, trying to think it through, searching for the links. ‘Kirsch took Susan’s and Miriam’s phones. Two calls. Shots heard. But Kirsch’s rifle is silenced.’ Kirsch had that big pistol too, but the reports hadn’t mentioned that.
He looked at Fran and saw the idea take seed. She still had mud on her face. Did she know?
Stark blinked as the links lined up. The photo of Harper on his phone outside Royal Hill station – taken on a long lens, from an angle, from above. Not much, but definitely. There was only one place that photo could have been taken from. The rectangle removed from the basement wall and the torn corner of paper with –all and –ans printed on it … a drawing – Greenwich Town Hall Plans. Now the Greenwich School of Management, who’d kicked Simon Kirsch out for his disruptive post-trial notoriety. ‘Charles Whitman,’ hissed Stark, the certainty settling into him like icicles elongating through his heart.
Fran frowned. ‘Who?’
‘The original spree killer.’ Austin, Texas, University – ex-US Marine up a tower with a rifle. Dunblane and Columbine. All school shootings …
‘You do know that only some of your thoughts reach your mouth?’ said Fran, exasperated.
‘I’ll explain on the way,’ said Stark, turning to the car.
‘Abbey Woods?’
Stark shook his head. ‘Royal Hill.’
Fran felt the colour draining from her face as she drove. ‘What if you’re wrong?’
‘Then we end up miles from our gun-toting madman. It’s if I’m right we should worry,’ replied Stark, tapping the radio handset impatiently.
Unmarked forty-two – control – please respond, crackled the radio.
Stark thumbed the handset. ‘This is unmarked forty-two – receiving, over.’
Unmarked forty-two – control – The two public reports from Abbey Woods originated from the two phone numbers you gave us – Confirm positive match.
Bogus calls. Kirsch using the phones he’d taken from his mother and Susan Watts. Stark would have given anything to be wrong. ‘Control – car forty-two, DC Stark. Reason to believe armed suspect, Simon Kirsch, may be targeting Greenwich School of Management and Royal Hill Police Station. Imperative – have school evacuated and dispersed asap – and initiate station lock-down protocols. Over.’ Nothing happened for a few seconds. ‘Control – confirm receipt, over?’
That protocol requires authorization from an inspector or above, said the disembodied voice, uncertainly.
Stark explained why they should take his word for it in terms so terse that even Fran winced.
She was less impressed with the sodding traffic, which seemed to have trebled in the last hour. Nose-to-nose vehicles made the usual token attempts to move aside, but it was hopeless. The car’s angry siren barely represen
ted Fran’s impatience as she turned the air inside the car bluer than the lights outside it.
Switching to side streets and back-doubles gave little relief. After an age of fighting through gaps and snaking around cars pulled over or frozen in indecision, they eventually broke free across Blackheath.
All cars. Shots fired, Royal Hill station, barked control over the radio. Repeat. Shots fired, Royal Hill Police Station. All cars respond.
PART FOUR
* * *
75
Fran’s heart caught in her throat.
Stark snatched up the radio. ‘Control, unmarked forty-two inbound. ETA one minute. Where’s the shooter? Repeat, where is the shooter?’
Stand by, called the voice. With the siren on it was hard to tell, but it sounded like Maggie had taken over. The radio clogged with calls, cars reporting in, people demanding information.
Then Maggie’s voice cut in abruptly. Stand by … Stand by … All units, officer down. Code Zero. Repeat, Code Zero, officer down in the street outside. Be advised, shooter is not in the building, shots coming in from outside.
‘Take Burney Street,’ said Stark. ‘Westbound. He shouldn’t see us coming.’
‘Shouldn’t?’
‘If he’s putting shots into the station from outside he’ll be low in the tower, one of the windows on the lower staircase.’ Where the photo of Harper had been taken from. How, was a question for later.
‘If …’ Fran glanced at Stark. His jaw was set, eyes peeled as if staring could clear the road ahead.
They screeched to a halt as an aggregate lorry tried to get out of their way by turning into the street they wanted to take. Fran sounded the horn repeatedly, shouting, as if either could be heard over the siren. Futile. She thumped the steering wheel with her palms, uttering a vicious curse, then mounted the kerb, beeping furiously at startled pedestrians.
They tore down Crooms Hill with the park on their right, and left into Burney Street with the station at the far end. There was a uniform car abandoned in the middle of the junction with Royal Hill, right outside the Old Town Hall college building. The clock tower loomed to the right. If Kirsch was up top with his rifle, instead of low as Stark thought, they were sitting ducks.
‘Stop there.’ Stark pointed to the car park entrance on the right. ‘Med-kit,’ he barked, already half out of his door and off up the street, leaving her to fetch the medical kit from the boot like his lackey. Two uniforms were sheltering off to the right by the gardens opposite the station. There was a prone figure in the street by the abandoned car.
A sound drew her eye, a puff of dust from the station. Not dust, glass. Several of the windows were pocked with bullet holes. They weren’t bulletproof, or even mirrored. Those inside must feel like goldfish in a bowl with a cat’s claws dipping in.
Stark edged up the street towards the sheltering uniforms and crouched to talk with them, gesticulating towards the tower, looking around. He called out to the casualty but got no response. And then he stood and walked into the road, looking towards the tower and all around as if he had all the time in the world, before retreating casually back into cover. A spout of black erupted from the road behind him. But no gunshot. Stark’s ‘quiet rifle’.
Fran had a sinking feeling.
He said something to the uniforms, then darted out across to the prone figure, gripped the back of their collar and dragged them unceremoniously into the shelter of the car.
Seconds later part of the light atop the car exploded.
Stark knelt over the figure, checking them out.
Fran could see it was police. Male, she thought. She could also see blood on Stark’s hands. Another rending explosion as the rear windscreen shattered.
If there was one difference between real life and the movies Fran was confident in, it was that cars were not bulletproof. Get behind the front wheels and engine block, they were told. Stark had done so, but concentrating on the victim, his head was in the air.
Nothing happened for about twenty seconds; an eerie quiet, and then a door panel puckered out as a bullet buried itself in the road beyond.
Stark looked around, at her, at the med-kit in her hand, both of his applying downward pressure to a wound.
She saw his mouth move in a curse. He undid the man’s utility belt and then tugged out the trouser belt beneath, looped it round the man’s thigh and pulled it tight. Then he pulled out the man’s ASP, slid it into the tourniquet, gave it two twists and tied the belt slack around it. But then he began looking at the man’s head. Was he shot twice?
Fran considered sliding the case to him but it was too far. She’d fluff it and leave the sodding thing stranded in the middle of the road. She’d have to make a dash for it.
She stood and dashed.
‘Fran, no!’
An eruption of tarmac just in front of her brought her up short, freezing her in a flinching half-crouch, arms up over her head like a fool. There was a deep-looking gash torn up, about five inches long, widening from the angular impact.
‘Fran, take cover!’
Fran blinked at Stark. For the second time in days she saw fear written across his face.
Realization dawned that she was just standing there in the open like a damn bunny transfixed in headlights, again. She looked up at the brick edifice expecting to see Kirsch, expecting the next bullet to bear down on her like a juggernaut.
76
‘FRAN!’ bellowed Stark. ‘Get back!’ He jumped out into the open again, waving his arms frantically up at the tower to create a distraction. Fran tore her eyes from the tower to him, realization slapping her in the face. Ducking beneath her hands, she back-pedalled into cover just as another strip of macadam tore out of the road where she’d been standing.
‘Three,’ said Stark under his breath.
Another car screeched to a halt behind hers. Sergeant Clark and Constable Barclay climbed out and ran towards Fran.
Stark peered over the bonnet of the car towards the tower. The uppermost of four small square windows, third floor of the tower’s lower staircase, was smashed open. Muzzle-flash and another section of the bodywork rent upward in a shower of dust and noise.
‘Four,’ hissed Stark. Four shots since the brief hiatus that Stark hoped was Kirsch reloading. ‘Come on …’
And then another.
‘Five!’ He jumped to his feet, hoisted up the limp man into a fireman’s lift and set off towards Fran, accelerating painfully slowly through the grinding protest from his ribs, and the protest from his brain that his bullet count could be wrong.
‘Run!’ he heard Fran shout. ‘RUN!’
I am bloody running, he thought. But it was more yomp than jog, and if his hip gave out now he’d be in big trouble. Nearly there, come on! Breath-clouds bursting from him like a steam train. Another eruption of macadam, a yard from his feet; Kirsch had changed magazines quickly. Stark barrelled across the pavement, bumped off the opposite wall and dropped to one knee to roll his burden unceremoniously on to the ground.
Fran was beside him. ‘Are you hit? Are you all right?’
‘Ambulance …’ he gasped, rolling the man over and pressing his bloody hands on to the wound in the top of the shoulder where it met the neck. The bleeding had slowed; either good news or very bad. ‘Dressing … Quick!’
Fran opened the med-kit and tore open a dressing. Stark snatched it from her hand and pressed it against the wound. He looked up at Barclay and Clark who was already on his radio. ‘Here, take over!’ he ordered fiercely, grabbing Barclay’s arm and dragging him down. He pressed Barclay’s hands where his had been. ‘Keep the pressure on, both sides, front and back, like this … When it’s saturated press another over it. Don’t ease up till the paramedics take over. Understand?’
Nodding, Barclay looked panicky but did as he was told.
Another smack indicated a shot ripping into the street nearby. A shot at nothing. Frustration.
‘Two,’ Stark hissed, climbing to his feet with a gr
imace. His suit was torn at the left knee, the kneecap bloodied. He was covered in blood, hands and arms, chest where the casualty had bled while being carried.
‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ demanded Fran, the concern on her face boiling off in fury. ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’
‘I wasn’t standing there with a fucking target painted on me!’ he growled, straightening up with a wince. Hardly a cross word to her in two years and now twice in one day.
He could see she was trembling.
There’d be time for soft words later.
Another spurt of tarmac. Short on targets, if not on ammo. ‘Three,’ he muttered.
‘Three what?’ demanded Fran angrily.
Ignoring her, Stark called to Clark, who’d just come off his radio. ‘The college evac?’
‘All the students are out, we think. But the caretaker, principal, three teaching staff and two unarmed officers locked themselves in the cash office when Kirsch marched in. Shots were fired inside and we have one officer unaccounted for.’
Stark swore. ‘Other casualties?’
‘Unknown.’
‘Firearms?’
Clark shook his head. ‘Every armed response vehicle for miles is still in Abbey Woods or stuck in traffic. Specialist Firearms too.’
‘ETA?’
‘Fifteen minutes minimum,’ confirmed Clark unhappily.
Too long. Kirsch had sold the perfect dummy. Stark bit his lip, looking up at the top of the clock tower high overhead. ‘We have to clear the streets.’
‘We’ve got uniforms in the high road. Public are being shepherded away or into shops. Streets cordoned off. But with everyone else holed up in the station, we don’t have the bodies …’ Clark explained.
The lock-down. Stark’s doing. Time for a rethink. He turned and walked out into the road to peer at the tower and slipped back into cover as a bullet ricocheted off the kerbstone and across the road. ‘Four.’
‘Four …?’ Fran lost it. ‘What the … living fuck are you doing? Have you got a fucking death wish?’
Stark waved away her distraction, shaking his head as he tried to concentrate, to assess the distances. ‘The picture on the basement wall said the rifle has a five-shot magazine, bolt action,’ he explained. ‘Force him to hurry and he fumbles, rushes his next shot. And he’s inaccurate; he’s practised for elevation and range, but not tracking.’ A glance told him she didn’t comprehend. ‘Pumpkins don’t move. At least with subsonic ammunition he’s limited his range.’ Her frown returned. ‘He’s using slow ammo. Greater parabola to distance …?’ Still nothing. ‘If he retreats up the tower he can put accurate shots through any window within a quarter-mile, inaccurate up to a mile.’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 34