Crossfire (The Clifford-Mackenzie Crime Series Book 1)

by R. D. Nixon

  He gave the fingers of that hand an experimental wriggle, and as they started to tingle, he acknowledged that this glove had stayed on at least. God alone knew where the other one had gone – probably still wrapped around the throttle of his bike, he thought with a flash of grim humour; never let it be said he bottled that particular chicken run.

  Carefully he began to ease his left hand out, but as he did so a deep and shocking pain sank into his neck and shoulder and he screamed, the sound muffled against the interior of his helmet. The same pain that had speared down his back now centred on his shoulder, concentrated with all the ferocity of a blow torch. He breathed as slowly as possible, dismayed to hear each expelled breath as a trembling moan, and after a long while the pain had lessened enough to allow him to reach up again and begin to ease the helmet around.

  It must have taken at least ten minutes of slow, inch-by-inch progress, but finally he could see daylight out of the corner of his eye, and he began to feel the touch of cool air on his temple. Spurred on, he began to work faster until finally, with a shout of mingled pain and triumph, he was able to drag the helmet off and fling it to the side, resting his sweating face against the cold wet grass.

  How many times have y’heard not to remove the helmet after a bike accident? Idiot! He reached behind with his ungloved hand and pressed gently at the spot just below the base of his skull, experimenting with the pressure, and decided with a hot sweep of relief that his neck wasn’t broken. He could still hear that sound though, a hollow roar that worked its way into the centre of his head and wouldn’t go away; he wondered if it were even real, or generated by the sick dizziness. Then he heard something else, something far easier to identify.

  A gunshot echoed flatly across the valley, and he jerked as if he himself had felt the impact of the bullet. The pain in his shoulder seemed to reinforce that notion, and brought with it a rush of nausea which he desperately fought back; he could only begin to imagine how badly it would hurt if he were to throw up now.

  Instead he focused on the sound; this was the height of the grouse season – there were shoots all over the hills at any given time – but this had been different. A single shot, no dogs; the sound hadn’t been like that of the sporting rifles the paying guns usually favoured, but more like the crack of a small handgun. He began to shake as he thought of the direction the sound had come from; further up the valley and echoing past him, repeating itself, lost among the more accepted sounds of the small game hunters on adjoining lands.

  The boy, the cottage, the gunshot. The three factors spun and mingled in Mackenzie’s aching head as he struggled to turn over, and he found himself whispering Jamie’s name under his breath, forcing it out through gritted teeth. It gave him the strength he needed, and at last he lay, panting, on his back, staring up at the grey sky, the drizzle falling faster now, covering his face with a welcome coolness. He blinked away the drops that landed on his eyelashes, then lifted his left hand and ripped the glove off with his teeth. Gratefully he let his hand fall to the wet grass, where the rain washed the sweat from his fingers.

  Finally he could put it off no longer and, wincing at every movement, unzipped his leather jacket. He took as deep a breath as he could manage and placed his right hand over his collarbone. The jagged ends shifted and grated under his tentative touch and he went cold from head to foot, his heart speeding, lifting up through him, hammering until he felt as if it would pop out through his forehead. He closed his eyes against the dizziness, and the darkness was deeper than it should have been out here, with the sky so close...

  When he awoke, water was running in tiny streams down his face, and pooling in the hollow of his throat and in the creases of his jacket. Every sensation was heightened; he felt as if he could identify every nerve ending in his body, and every one of them wept. Each hair on his head had its own needle, securing it to his scalp; each millimetre of exposed skin felt the passage of the air moving over him like an abrasive cloth.

  His hands lay open on the ground beside him – he wondered how long he’d been unconscious for, both immediately after the crash, and since falling into the void again. And was he hurt anywhere else? His legs were stiff and ached horribly, particularly his knees; likewise his hips: sore, but not broken or dislocated. He flexed his chilled fingers and began to check his upper body, biting his lip in anticipation of the discovery of further injury, but relaxing a little more with each touch. His chest and ribs ached, but with a dull throb rather than the worrying, sharp agony of a fracture. The only serious pain, other than that of his broken collarbone, was from the savage wrench as his helmet had whipped around and twisted his neck.

  He rolled his head gingerly to look at the surrounding area. Only clumps of heather and tufts of grass dotted the side of the valley; it could well have been a different story otherwise. He must have landed hard on his left side – from waist to shoulder flared when he moved – but apart from that he was sure there was no serious damage. And as much as he did hurt, at least he was alive.

  And now he knew Jamie was, too.

  The rain had stopped. That was the first thing he noticed. The second thing was that there was a wet warmth against his side, and an uncomfortable weight across his stomach. Mackenzie moved his head and groaned. Both warmth and weight twitched, and then vanished as the boy sat up, blinking and frightened, and shuffled away.

  ‘Relax,’ Mackenzie tried to say, but it came out as a croak and he cleared his throat and tried again.

  But Jamie had already remembered where he was. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mackenzie.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, for...’ he gestured helplessly. ‘For sleeping on you.’

  Mackenzie smiled as best he could, but the pain in his neck and shoulder was starting to wake up and creep down his side and across his chest, and he had the feeling he’d see some pretty good bruises there too, if he ever got out of here. Breathing hurt.

  He could see he’d been unsuccessful at allaying the boy’s concerns and gave up trying to smile. ‘You did the sensible thing, lad,’ he said. ‘Better you’re as warm as you can be, aye?’

  Jamie nodded, biting his lip as he looked at Mackenzie. ‘How did you end up down here?’

  Mackenzie frowned; he remembered the car, the feeling that it was deliberately running him off the road, but still had no idea who was driving it. It wasn’t Bradley’s car – he knew that.

  ‘I was in a hurry,’ he said at last. ‘There was a car coming up behind me, and I lost it on the bend.’

  Jamie nodded sympathetically. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Seems I broke my collarbone.’ Mackenzie felt the sick heat sweep across his face, remembering the horrifying grating of bones under his hand, shifting loosely beneath the flesh. Not just broken; shattered. He lay very still, breathing as calmly as he could manage, but all he wanted to do was roll onto his side and throw up until he passed out. Or died.

  ‘Did you break anything else?’ Jamie was asking.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Legs?’

  ‘No. Nor arms, nor ribs, I don’t think. Nor, thanks to my own laziness, my neck.’

  ‘Ah. Not too bad then.’

  Mackenzie stared, wondering if he was taking the piss. Jamie looked back at him, but he seemed honestly relieved and Mackenzie didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. ‘Not too bad,’ he agreed. It was easier that way.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Jamie asked after a few minutes silence.

  ‘Aye, a bit.’

  ‘D’you want some of my Mars Bar?’ The boy had dug a misshapen mass of paper and chocolate out of his pocket, and although saliva flooded Mackenzie’s mouth at the sight of it, he shook his head. It wasn’t entirely selfless; the thought of chewing and swallowing anything at all just now made him shudder, but in any case, he couldn’t take the lad’s last bite. Jamie shrugged and finished the chocolate, licking his fingers clean and wiping them on the grass.

  The evening crawled towards dusk. Mackenzie lost t
rack of time as the mist fell over them, and he knew he’d started to drift – long passages of time seemed to be spent somewhere else, somewhen else. One minute he was a boy, scrambling over the hillside with his brother and their friends, getting under the beaters’ feet as they roused the game from their heathery hiding places, the next he was facing Bradley across a scratched table.

  A breath-taking switchback, and he was upstairs on the landing with Adrian, at Hogmanay, watching the grown ups kissing each other with all the enthusiasm bestowed on them by an evening of heavy drinking. Women in neat dresses, tartan scarves pinned by ornate silver brooches; men in kilts and dress shirts, with dirks in their pristine white stockings, and leather brogues. From a distance they all seemed relaxed and magazine-glamorous, but up close Mackenzie knew they’d all be sweating and pink, breathing hard from the reels, which were often more athletic challenge than dance. All in all he preferred to watch from a distance.

  At some point he was paging through pictures on a camera screen; at first he didn’t recognise the sleep-flushed beauty, one delicate arm flung over her head, the other hand lying carelessly over that of the small boy in the sleeping bag next to her. She looked tiny, defenceless, open faced and so relaxed in her dreams it hardly seemed possible it could be the same person who’d caused him nothing but aggravation. One was so close up Mackenzie could even see her breath condensing on the chilly night air, and individual eyelashes resting on her cheek. Even in his semi-delirium he knew he was going to let her down.

  There followed a period of blessed nothingness, and then Mackenzie was holding Kath at the station, feeling the warmth of Josh’s kiss on his cheek...and then they were gone, and he was empty, hollowed out. Bradley was grinning at him across the table again, tossing him the locket...

  ‘No!’ In his mind it was a scream, but it emerged from his tight mouth as a whisper, taken by the mist and swallowed whole.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the boy asked. Mackenzie’s eyes were still closed, and it could so easily have been Josh sitting there next to him, the accent barely noticeable in the boy’s hushed tone.

  ‘Aye,’ he said in a shaky voice, and looked over at Jamie. ‘I was just somewhere else there for a moment.’

  ‘Wasn’t somewhere good, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Mackenzie admitted, ‘but it’s not somewhere I ever need to go again.’ He touched Jamie’s sleeve. ‘You’re soaked, lad.’

  ‘I’ll dry out. It’s stopped raining.’

  ‘This mist is heavy enough to keep you wet. Let me see your feet.’

  ‘Why?’ Jamie nevertheless waggled his feet at Mackenzie, who caught at one of them with his right hand. The movement jarred him horribly, and he went still for a moment, feeling the blood drain from his face, leaving him light-headed.

  Then he studied the foot he held. ‘Which way did you come? Along the road?’

  ‘No, through the valley, and down beside the waterfall.’

  Of course, a waterfall – that was the roaring he kept hearing. It was up behind him somewhere and he couldn’t turn to see it, but now the sound made sense. It was a relief to know that it had a natural origin, and wasn’t something screwed up in his head.

  ‘It’s a good thing you came that way; your feet are pretty scratched up but at least you’ll be able to walk on them.’

  ‘I was coming to take your boots,’ Jamie said in a small voice. Mackenzie had to smile at that; the boy sounded contrite, but it was probably the oldest instinct in the world to take what was no longer needed and use it to preserve what was. And after all, the boy had been convinced at the time that Mackenzie had meant to do God knows what harm to him and his mother.

  At the thought of Charis, the smile dropped away. If she was on her way up here, she could be heading straight into danger. Maddy knew where Rob Doohan lived – between them they’d have been able persuade the old man to give them the same information he’d given Mackenzie...

  ‘Where’s the phone?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘It doesn’t—’

  ‘I know! You need to go. Get up to the road. Find a signal, and call Maddy.’

  ‘Who? Shouldn’t we call the police?’

  ‘No! Christ, no.’

  Jamie looked confused and frightened. ‘An ambulance then?’

  ‘Do that after. First you need to call my partner – it’s more important.’ Mackenzie began to gingerly work his right arm out of his sleeve. ‘Take my socks and put them on, aye? Then...’ he broke off and swallowed hard, ‘then you can help me with this; I’m buggered if I can do it on my own.’

  He lay back while Jamie tugged at the sodden laces of his boots. Each pull seemed to ripple up through his leg and into his chest with the speed and ferocity of a snapping wolf, and he had to fight not to cry out; the last thing he needed was to frighten the boy. Finally his boots were off. His socks followed, and for a moment he welcomed the coolness of the air on his feet.

  ‘Can I try the boots too?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘You can, but they’ll be a hindrance when you’re climbing.’

  He was right, and Jamie soon pushed them back onto Mackenzie’s own feet. At least his socks were dry and warm, and he saw the bliss cross the boy’s face as they enveloped his freezing feet. Mackenzie chided himself bitterly for not thinking to give up the clothing sooner.

  But now came the hard bit. He finished wriggling his right arm out of his jacket, and Jamie knelt awkwardly beside him. Mackenzie took a couple of shallow breaths, braced himself, and then rolled onto his right side, freeing up his left arm. He mentally counted backwards as pain sent dizzying spirals of fire up through his neck and into his head, then he felt small hands on his back, easing his arm away from his body, sliding the warm jacket away from him and rolling him back down into dampness. The shock of the cold ground through his shirt made him catch his breath, and some of the pain abated, leaving him with a dull, grinding ache. His stomach roiled, and he struggled against the ever-threatening nausea.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Mackenzie,’ Jamie said. ‘Promise I’ll look after it.’

  Mackenzie raised a hand in acknowledgment, waiting for the watery sensation in his mouth to fade. When he could move again, he looked over at where Jamie sat wrapped in the huge jacket.

  ‘You look ridiculous,’ he whispered, hoping for a smile, but Jamie just stared at him with huge, frightened eyes, and in that moment Mackenzie would have given anything to be able to embrace him.

  ‘Which way do I go?’ Jamie asked, peering around at the steep valley sides. Mackenzie remembered the phone call he’d made to Stein the night before, from his office. There was a signal up near the waterfall, where Stein must have stopped to take his call, but the risk was too great to send Jamie back that way, even if his own network also functioned up there. It was unthinkable to send him anywhere near the cottage, knowing Bradley might be waiting.

  They both jerked as a short cry echoed down the valley.

  ‘What was that?’ Jamie asked in a trembling voice. An image of Charis flashed through Mackenzie’s over-wrought mind, and he blinked to clear it.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe a fox. The Glenlowrie Estate’s named for them.’ Some strength returned to his voice, and he fixed Jamie with a firm stare. ‘Look, the important thing now is to do exactly as I say, and go where I tell you to go. Nowhere else, you understand?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jamie waved the phone in the air. ‘I have to find a signal, right?’

  ‘Aye. But also, there’s a chance maybe your mother will be on her way to find you. She mustn’t get to the cottage – it’s too dangerous. I’ve not heard a car go down yet, have you?’

  ‘No, but we were both asleep for a while.’

  ‘Even so, we’d better assume Bradley is still up there, and—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who’ll have come up here after Andy Stein.’ It could only have been him, and presumably Mulholland too. ‘He and his sidekick are police officers, which means you can’t trust anyone. Got
it? I know Stein set you free, but if he told them about you they could be out here right now, trying to track you down.’

  Mackenzie studied the boy closely, needing to be sure he was aware of the danger. Jamie looked serious and scared, which was fine by him; scared was far better than over-confident and careless. ‘Right, go up the side of the valley there.’ He pointed to the slope directly to their left; the bottom of it still bore the flattened evidence of his unremembered slide, and he suppressed a shudder. ‘It looks like the easiest climb. When you get to the road, turn right, downhill. Okay? Down. Keep checking the phone; you may have to go a long way, or you may get a signal right away.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘While you’re on the road, make sure no-one sees you. Any car that approaches – probably none will, not up here – but if they do, they’ll be moving dead slow in this mist. Keep low until you’ve checked out the driver. Could be your mother, or it could be my partner Maddy. She has red hair. Pale skin. Very pretty in a scary teacher sort of a way.’

  The boy still didn’t smile, and Mackenzie went on, ‘Soon as you see her, flag her down. Anyone else – keep right out of sight.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And mind how you go in those floppy socks,’ Mackenzie reminded him. ‘Last thing I need is you down here with a broken leg. Although the company would be nice.’ He was relieved to see some of the strain leave the boy’s face and a smile finally tremble on the pale lips. ‘You’ll be fine, lad,’ he said, and Jamie’s smile formed properly as he stood to leave.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  He started off up the slope, and Mackenzie watched him, trying to decide whether the sudden cold that swept over him was real or imagined; a turn in the weather, the descent of night, or simply regret at the loss of his companion.

  Jamie had now reached the place where the slope became steeper, and he leaned forward onto his hands in readiness for the hardest part of the climb. Then he glanced back over his shoulder. Mackenzie raised his hand in farewell, and the unthinking movement jarred him so badly that the low cry had broken loose before he could check it.