Crossfire (The Clifford-Mackenzie Crime Series Book 1)

by R. D. Nixon

  ‘Where’s Andy?’ the woman wanted to know. The man called Bradley nodded at the door to Jamie’s former prison, and the woman raised an eyebrow. ‘And he’s—’

  ‘As a dodo.’

  ‘I’ll just check, if I may?’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Bradley stepped aside and allowed the woman to pass. Jamie was glad he couldn’t see what was in there, but the woman was clearly satisfied, though she was even paler now.

  ‘Right. Next issue then. Where are they?’

  Bradley picked up a bag from the corner and passed it to her. She unzipped it and took out a package wrapped in newspaper. Then, shockingly, she held one end of the paper and let the package roll open. The contents hit the floor with a smash, sending shards of china spinning to all four corners, and Jamie cried out and shielded his eyes.

  Bradley stared. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Come on, Don. We all know these aren’t the real thing. Now, I’ll ask again. Where are they?’

  ‘You believed that fuckwit?’ Bradley waved at the door behind which the American lay. ‘You didn’t even check!’

  ‘I believe him because he always told me the truth. Unlike you.’ She took another out of the bag, but this time, Jamie noticed, she opened it and checked the base of the pottery figure, tilting it this way and that in the light from the window, before letting that one, too, crash to the stone floor. He looked closely at where they had fallen, seeing that they’d held something inside, but it was hard to tell what, wrapped tightly as it was in old, yellowed newspapers. Maybe drugs? It was usually drugs.

  The woman was poking around in the rubble, with a thin little smile on her face. She picked up one of the packages and opened it to reveal a handful of smallish grey stones. ‘Wow. Priceless gravel.’

  ‘Oh aye. Very clever of you. So now what?’

  ‘Now you hand over the Fury. Then you take me to where the originals are.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarah.’ He sounded anything but, to Jamie’s ear. ‘I don’t have the Fury. Or the originals.’

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop to freezing point.

  ‘You don’t have it?’ Sarah’s voice could have cut glass.

  ‘Nope. But if you think hard enough, you’re bound to come up with a few suggestions as to where we might find it.’

  ‘And if I do?’

  ‘Original deal stands. You piss off back to America with the bulk of your precious collection, and we just keep the Fury. In return for which, we protect your dirty little secret.’

  A sound outside the window halted all conversation. Jamie’s heart sped up so much he could feel it through Mr Mackenzie’s jacket. Running footsteps, a voice sobbing his name...

  ‘Mum!’

  Forgetting the gun, he leapt to his feet just as she burst through the door. She stopped dead, as he had, at the initial darkness, then a second later she had seen him and was on her knees, holding him tight, her hands moving across his back and into his hair, as if checking he was real, and unhurt.

  ‘Jamie! Oh, God, Jamie...’

  And then he was crying too, and the rest of it stopped mattering for a while. Gradually he became aware of the silence in the rest of the room, and he pulled away and turned, suddenly sure he was going to be staring down the barrel of that gun. The others were staring at him, and in bafflement at his mother, but at least they didn’t look like they were about to shoot them.

  His mum stood, but held him close. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked their captors, in a voice that trembled. It didn’t scare him to hear how frightened she was, although he’d thought it would; it just made him want to protect her. The thin officer levelled the gun at them again, and she moved in front of him, still holding his hand tightly as if she were frightened to let him go.

  ‘Listen,’ she said desperately. ‘We won’t say anything to anyone; we’ve got nothing to do with all this. Why don’t you just let us go? We’ll go straight back to Liverpool tonight, honest—’

  ‘How many more of you are going to come crawling out of the woodwork?’ Sarah interrupted. ‘This was supposed to be between me and him,’ she added, gesturing towards Bradley. ‘It’s all getting a bit crowded, don’t you think?’

  Bradley looked sulky, and Jamie thought it was odd how the childish expression seemed to fit so easily on a grown man’s face.

  ‘This has nothing to do with us,’ the officer said. ‘Look, you just told us to get rid of the problem and we did.’

  ‘How can you say that? The little shit was out roaming the mountains! I hardly call that getting him out of the way. Yet again I’m left to pick up the pieces. And now his bloody mother has turned up!’

  The two officers clearly had no idea what she was talking about. ‘But…Mackenzie’s dead,’ Bradley ventured. ‘That’s what you wanted, right?’

  Jamie felt his mother’s hand tighten until he gasped in pain. ‘You didn’t kill him though,’ she said, her voice cutting across the room, small and broken as it was. ‘So you can’t claim brownie points for that, can you?’

  ‘Who killed him then?’ Sarah wanted to know. ‘Don’t tell me there are even more incompetents out there? I actually needed Mackenzie, for Chrissake!’

  ‘My ex-husband did it,’ Mum said. ‘He...he ran him off the road.’

  There was an exasperated explosion of breath from Sarah, and she started yelling at the two officers again, but Jamie didn’t hear what she was saying; his head was full of the words his mother had just spoken. His father had tried to kill Mackenzie... His father. Dad. Who was supposed to be in prison. He shook his head, but it didn’t make the truth sink in any further.

  What did click though, was that his mother believed Mackenzie was dead, and he could tell she was crying. He wanted to tell her the truth, but remembering the satisfaction on the fat police officer’s face, he knew he couldn’t say it out loud; the man might decide to go down there and finish the job.

  His mother suddenly turned to him. ‘That’s his jacket,’ she said in a strange little voice. ‘You...you saw him?’

  ‘I found him in the valley, before that lady picked me up,’ he told her, trying to make her read his mind: Mum, he’s alive...

  But her eyes were blurry with tears and she just kept touching the jacket, then his face. She looked as if she had a hundred questions but could speak none of them aloud. He remembered how Mackenzie had reacted when the subject of Mum had come up – they were friends, he’d said; he’d die before he hurt her... Suddenly it was more important than ever that he tell her, and he was about to risk a whisper when she was pulled away from him.

  The woman had dragged her across the room and pushed her to a far corner, where she stood with her arms wrapped across her chest and her head bowed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Jamie asked. ‘Are you going to shoot us?’

  ‘Probably,’ the skinny man said. He glanced over at Jamie’s mother then, and gave a nasty little smirk. ‘Although I think we might be able to find a wee diversion first, don’t you, sir?’

  Bradley followed his look and scowled. ‘You bloody well will not. Just shoot them and let’s have done with it. The bodies can stay here until we get Cameron up here too, then we’ll set fire to the whole lot in one go.’

  ‘You’ll leave Cameron alone,’ Sarah said sharply. ‘You can trust him; he’ll not say anything. And about the Fury,’ she went on. ‘You seemed pretty confident you’d have it to use as a bargaining tool. How do I know you’re not lying about not finding it?’

  ‘I’m out of ideas,’ Bradley admitted. ‘It’s not here. You tell us where to start looking, we’ll do it.’

  ‘I’m telling you right now; if I don’t get that stone, you’re going to be joining the barbecue in the back room.’

  ‘What the hell is it about this fucking stone?’ the thin one broke in, irritated. ‘It’s valuable, okay, I get that, but anyone would think it had magical powers the way you two’re going on.’

  A lurch of recognition broug
ht Jamie’s focus onto the other officer. Could it be?

  ‘You’ve never seen it, Alistair,’ Bradley said. ‘If you had, you’d understand,’

  The woman nodded agreement, and as Jamie watched, her face sort of...drifted, like she wasn’t really here at all. God, how he wished she wasn’t. Her voice was only halfway there too.

  ‘It draws you in,’ she murmured. ‘You’re hypnotised and it’s, sort of – well, you can scoff,’ she said, more normally now, ‘but I’m not so sure it doesn’t have some kind of power. Over the mind, at least.’

  Jamie decided it was time to speak up. ‘Stone?’ he said hesitantly.

  ‘Shut up.’ Bradley threw the words over his shoulder, barely acknowledging that Jamie and his mum were still in the room. ‘It’s no good trying to explain to him, Sarah, he’s a philistine. He won’t believe it until—’

  ‘I found a stone,’ Jamie went on. ‘Is it black, but a bit see-through, with very bright colours in it? Sort of...inside it?’

  Four pairs of eyes fixed on him; he met them all in turn, starting with his mother and finishing with the other woman, whose piercing gaze he held the longest, sort of like a test. Her face was the clearest, even though the room was getting darker now; she was standing right by the broken window.

  She took a step towards him. ‘Are you telling me you know where the Fury is?’

  ‘If that’s the stone, then yeah. Well, sort of.’

  Sarah’s hand whipped up and struck the side of his face, and through the shock of the pain, Jamie heard his mother’s furious shout. He looked up in time to see her being shoved back against the wall.

  ‘Don’t play stupid games with me, sonny,’ Sarah said in a hard voice. ‘Now tell me where that stone is, or your mother’s going to know what it feels like to have her kneecaps shot off.’

  ‘Leave her alone!’

  ‘Then tell me. Now.’

  Jamie struggled to swallow the tears that tightened his throat. ‘I dropped it, outside. But I think I know where.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘By the waterfall. Near the top.’

  The woman threw up her hands. ‘It’d be like looking for a needle in a whole bloody field of haystacks!’

  ‘Wait. You say you know where?’ Bradley demanded, glaring at Jamie. ‘How?’

  ‘I was sitting on a rock to get my breath back. I thought I might get lost, so I built a little… What’s it called, when you pile up little stones to mark a place you’ve been?’

  ‘A cairn.’

  ‘Yes. One of those. It’ll be somewhere on the ground there. I can take you tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll take us there now,’ Sarah said.

  Jamie’s heart leapt again; they were going to be outside where there was more chance of escape; his mother could do something too, to help them get away; she could do anything... But that hope was immediately dashed as Sarah turned to her.

  ‘You. In the back room.’

  Bradley pulled her over to the door, then hesitated. ‘Someone get that body out of the way.’

  No-one moved, and he glared at them, before letting go of Jamie’s mum and doing it himself, grunting and puffing as he pulled the American’s corpse away from the doorway. Jamie tried not to imagine it, but he couldn’t ignore the slithering, bumping sounds.

  Jamie’s mum put up a struggle, but Bradley’s grip on the back of her neck made any real fight impossible, though she still tried to twist to look at him. ‘Don’t try anything brave out there, okay? I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Mum!’ Jamie’s eyes burned and flooded as he watched the officer push her into the room. The door remained open while Bradley wrestled with the American’s long legs, which were still in the way, and Jamie met his mother’s terrified gaze over the top of the dead man. He once again tried to tell her about Mackenzie without speaking; he tugged at the collar of his jacket and gave her a tiny nod, but saw her eyes brighten with tears... It was hopeless.

  ‘You,’ Sarah nodded at the one called Alistair. ‘Get Don’s car down to Abergarry and establish an alibi. Don and I will take the boy out and find the Fury.’

  ‘I’ll, uh, I’ll get the big torch first then, shall I?’ Bradley said. For someone desperate to get hold of that stone, he didn’t seem very pleased that he was going out to try and find it.

  Sarah took her own gun out of her bag and aimed it at Jamie, but she didn’t look very comfortable holding it. ‘Right. You, me and Uncle Don are going for a wee walk in the moonlight. But if you get any ideas—’

  There was a sudden smashing of glass, and Sarah lurched and tumbled forward, her gun falling from her hand. Through the fog of disbelief, Jamie saw his own hand reaching out to grab it, but a boot slid in, kicking it away from his fingers as they hovered over the barrel like little white ghosts, not belonging to him at all. A heavy thump in his side from the same boot sent him crashing to the floor and he looked up, straight into the wide-eyed horror show that was Sarah. Her screams rose, foul and frantic, and Jamie’s breathing shortened as, behind him, he heard the door finally slam shut on his mother.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Charis felt a surge of savage elation as she heard the gunshot echoing off the hills outside. Maddy! Thank God! But the screams were terrible, and relief quickly gave way to trembling horror. Another shot rang through the ancient stone of the cottage, and she jerked upright, holding her breath. The woman had fallen silent. There were mutterings, and then raised voices; Bradley’s rose loudest.

  ‘No! I’ll do that. You find whoever did this, then never mind what she said, you’re to get back down and sort out Cameron. I’ll take the kid out, and we’ll find this fucking stone if it takes all night.’

  The door opened again, and Charis pressed herself against the back wall as Bradley dragged the limp body of Sarah Wallace in, leaving her sprawled like a broken puppet, arms and legs impossibly twisted. Just before the door slammed one last time, Charis saw the woman’s bloodied face, twisted to the side, and the glistening emptiness where her left eye had been.

  She sat down against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms locked around them. Jamie’s sobs faded as he was taken out into the night once more, and as she listened to him Charis realised she was swaying gently from side to side, as she had when he was little and she was holding him. And the same mantra passed through her mind too, but now with more urgency than ever before.

  Please, love, just do as he tells you...

  Outside, through the small hole near the top of the wall, she could hear footsteps as Mulholland rounded the corner, searching for whoever had fired the first shot. She told herself Maddy was professional, and careful, but still she felt her heart speeding up as she listened, dreading what she might hear. Eventually though, it was nothing more frightening than a car door, the starting of an engine and the crunching of wheels on chips of stone as it turned in the small space.

  As the headlights briefly touched the dark room, through the vent, Charis saw the horrific injuries inflicted on Andy Stein, and she almost threw up again. His corpse seemed to come briefly back to life in the jumping shadows, and even after the Discovery lumbered away up the slope to the main road, plunging the room into a darkness deeper than before, she couldn’t banish the image. It seemed he’d turned away from the gun as it fired; one side of his head had been blasted away, the rest of his face sagged and distorted, his skin hanging in shreds over a gaping wound that let her see right through to his shattered teeth. His one visible eye was open and fixed right ahead, his mouth twisted in a grotesque, silent scream.

  She tried to remember the slim, graceful man she’d seen in the hotel bar – arrogant and annoying, but still whole, living – but her mind was flooded with this hideous wreckage of humanity; she knew she’d never forget the sight, however long she might live. She was suddenly, sickeningly aware of the rank, metallic smell of warm blood, and of the revulsion of sharing this dark cell with the cooling remains of these two, who had loved one another once. It too
k a moment before she was aware of her name being called in a loud whisper. It was coming through the vent.

  She scrambled to her feet. ‘Maddy?’

  ‘Aye. Mulholland’s gone. Is there anyone else in there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, I’m coming in.’

  Charis crawled towards the door, feeling her way ahead in the darkness. Her foot knocked something that skittered away from her. Something light sounding. Plastic. Crouching, she fumbled after it, and her fingers closed over a familiar shape: Jamie’s inhaler. He wouldn’t have thrown it away if it had been of any use. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut against fresh tears and, breathless, waited for the sound of the bolt being drawn back. When it came, she gave a little sob of relief. A faint light crept in from the main room, just brushing the floor.

  ‘Get the woman’s car keys,’ Maddy said. ‘Quick!’

  Charis fumbled in the woman’s back pocket, and reluctantly realised she was going to have to turn the body over. She reached higher up Sarah’s back, and her hand slapped into a patch of stickiness in the back of the arm, near the shoulder. She swallowed the acid saliva tht flooded her mouth, and then took a firm grip on the woman’s clothing. It was harder than she could have imagined, turning the body, and she strained, feeling the tendons in her neck pop with the effort.

  Finally Sarah was lying on her back, and Charis found the single key, with its chunky fob, tucked into a front jeans pocket. She passed it to Maddy, who vanished, and a minute later headlights flooded the front room of the cottage, spilling in through the window from Sarah’s car.

  Maddy returned and stared down at Sarah’s body for a moment, then walked away, leaving Charis to follow, stepping carefully across the dead woman. There seemed to be far too much blood, considering she’d already been dead when she was pushed in here, but most of it was probably Stein’s. In case she had missed a potential weapon, she glanced back into the room, and instead saw a familiar piece of cloth; her heart contracted painfully as she recognised Jamie’s pyjamas. She bent to scoop them up, and pressed them to her face, but they only smelled like damp cotton.