A Long Way Down

by Ken McCoy

  ‘Becky, I’d like you to get me a Mr John Dunhill of Dunhill and Broome estate agents in York.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Five minutes later his phone rang. ‘I’ve got Mr Dunhill for you, sir.’

  ‘Ah, good … Mr Dunhill, this is DCI Wood of the West Yorkshire Police. I was invited to speak at your Lodge dinner a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Yes, I remember you. And a jolly good speech you gave, I must say.’

  ‘Thank you, but in our conversation just before the dinner the talk got around to our Detective Inspector Septimus Black.’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember the name.’

  ‘Not a name you can forget in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes, a loose cannon if ever there was one, by the sound of him. Not the sort of man we’d have as a member. I do hope you’re not proposing him?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s just that I remember you mentioning that a man of that very name had bought a property from you some years ago and it’s aroused my curiosity as we’re trying to track him down right now and it’s very much to his benefit that we find him.’

  ‘He bought a property, did he? Erm, yes, I believe he did. That’s right. It was the unusual name that rang a bell with me and when you spoke of a Septimus Black I wondered if it might be the same man.’

  ‘Do you know where it is?’ Wood asked.

  ‘You mean the property he bought? Not offhand but I can soon do a check and ring you back. You do realize that normally we keep our transactions confidential, but with you being a senior policeman I imagine all is in order.’

  Ten minutes later Dunhill rang him back. ‘Yes, I’ve tracked down the sale and it was indeed to Mr Septimus Black who worked for the West Yorkshire Police. The property was near Scarborough. Mainly three hectares of fairly useless land which was neither arable nor development land. We were glad do get rid of it, to be honest. He was the only prospective buyer and got it for three thousand five hundred pounds, which was as low as we dare go without giving it away.’

  ‘Just land, there was no house on it?’

  ‘Actually, there was. A derelict property known as Newby Cottage.’

  ‘Would you be able to tell me exactly where it is?’

  ‘Of course, we have a location map in our file. I’ll scan it and send it through to you if you give me an email address.’

  ‘Would this include the postcode?’

  ‘Yes, we can give you that.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m very much obliged.’

  TWENTY

  Sep was bored. He and Winnie had been holed up in Newby Cottage for three days. He’d spent most of his days chopping up wood with Eli and improving his skill at walking with and without a crutch to the extent that he could now walk several yards crutch free – completely unaided. He’d brought with him the .357 Smith revolver he’d acquired from Winnie’s attacker. It was fully loaded with five rounds which meant he couldn’t practise with it but he was well acquainted with small arms and didn’t need to. If trouble arrived, five shots would be all he’d get, but out here he didn’t expect trouble. No one knew where he was, not even Fiona.

  Where the track to the cottage joined the main road was a lay-by and in that lay-by was parked a car in which sat two men, Roscoe Briggs and Wolf. On the evening of the third day, Winnie took the Mercedes van out to buy supplies from the nearby village of Seamer. The car followed her to a convenience store where she bought milk, bread, tea and various other requirements, including pipe tobacco for herself. The men in the car didn’t approach her, but as she left the shop they did take her photograph which they emailed to Redman. The word came back that this was indeed Black’s woman and that they had found where he was hiding. A second car left Leeds carrying Carl Redman, a thug known as Animal and several weapons, including improvised firebombs, better known as Molotov cocktails. The two men already out there had been instructed to take a look at the cottage and its surrounding area in the fading daylight, as the attack was planned for night-time.

  ‘We’ve got visitors,’ said Eli, coming out of his computer room. Sep and Winnie followed him back in. One of the screens showed two men walking down the track: Roscoe Briggs and Wolf. Neither of them were dressed casually enough to look like local country folk and both of them walked with aggressive determination.

  ‘Don’t like the look of them,’ commented Sep. ‘They look like a couple of handy lads looking for trouble.’

  ‘They won’t know we’ve clocked ’em,’ said Eli. ‘They must have climbed over the gate.’

  ‘If they’re looking for me,’ said Sep, ‘how the hell did they know to come here?’

  ‘When I went out in the van there was a car parked in a lay-by out on the main road,’ Winnie told him.

  ‘Anybody in it?’ Sep asked her

  ‘Not sure. I didn’t think it was important, in fact I turned the other way.’

  ‘Winnie, in our situation everything’s important.’

  ‘OK, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Did it follow you?’

  ‘Sep, I wasn’t watching out for anyone following me. I thought we were safe out here.’

  ‘One of those guys is holding a gun,’ observed Sep, moving closer to the screen. ‘Can you zoom in on him, Eli?’

  Eli zoomed the camera in and picked out the intruder who was holding a handgun. Both of them were looking all around as if trying to acquaint themselves with the area.

  ‘One of them’s got plasters on his face,’ said Winnie.

  ‘Yeah, so I notice,’ said Sep. ‘I think I might have bumped into him before.’

  They disappeared from the screen quadrant and appeared in the one next to it. The two men took cover behind some trees, eventually reappearing on a third screen.

  ‘We should be able to see them through a bedroom window in a minute,’ said Eli.

  He and Winnie ran upstairs, with Sep trailing behind. He joined them in Eli’s bedroom, standing back from the window in the shadows to avoid being seen. The two men appeared two hundred yards away and stopped walking, just looking at the cottage and talking to each other.

  ‘We’re being cased in readiness for the big event,’ Sep told them.

  ‘Jesus! When’s that?’

  ‘Tonight I would think, after dark. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were just the advance party. How the hell did they find this place?’

  Sep looked at Eli as he said this. The old man held up his palms in protest. ‘Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve said nothing to no one ever since I came here. Most people round here don’t even know who I am, never mind you.’

  ‘Well, they’ve tracked me down somehow, which makes this place useless to me.’

  ‘We can leave by the back road if needs be,’ said Eli.

  ‘If they’re casing the place the odds are they already know about the back road,’ said Sep. ‘In fact, it could be that they’re all here already. What we don’t know is, how many.’

  ‘It could be they’re the only ones,’ Winnie pointed out.

  ‘I hope so, but I doubt it.’ Then he added, ‘No, two’s not enough. The last time they sent two they lost one and I gave the other a bloody nose.’

  Sep looked at his watch. The two men on the screen were now walking away. ‘They’ll all be meeting up somewhere.’ He looked at Eli. ‘Have you still got those two shotguns here?’

  ‘I have, yeah, but they’re not much good after about a hundred yards. The scatter gets too wide after that. A few pellets might bring a partridge down, but not a man at that distance.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sep, ‘but I’m thinking about closer than that. Get them, would you, Eli? And as much ammo as you’ve got.’

  Darkness was falling as Sep checked over the two shotguns. He had his Smith with him, fully loaded. It was a small revolver but by far the most potent of the weapons they had at their disposal. Under normal circumstances, were he not crippled, Sep would face this challenge on his own, but in this case he used common sense and rang Jane Hawkins.
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  ‘Ma’am, I’ve got a problem. I’m holed up in a cottage I own near Scarborough and the bad guys have found out where I am.’

  ‘They’ve done better than us. I hadn’t a clue where you were – other than not here.’

  ‘I’ll give you directions and the postcode, ma’am. These people are armed so I think we’ll need an armed unit to help us.’

  ‘Us? Who’s us?’

  ‘I’m here with Winnie and an old friend called Elijah McMurphy. He looks after the cottage when I’m not here. Elijah has a couple of shotguns but they won’t be much use against real guns shooting at us from a distance.’

  ‘OK, Sep, give me your location. I’ll contact the Scarborough Police and see what help they can give us. An armed unit might take a while to muster. Keep your heads down until they arrive.’

  ‘Thanks, ma’am.’

  ‘Take care, Sep.’

  ‘I always do, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed.’

  Sep turned the situation over in his mind then turned to his two companions, saying, ‘Look, it might be a while before we get help so I think in the meantime I’ll have a look round outside and see exactly what we’re up against.’

  ‘Have a look round?’ said Winnie. ‘Sep, you can hardly walk!’

  ‘I can move fairly quickly on crutches and I can walk a bit. I don’t have to go far to get around the back of them and I’ve got the Smith.’

  ‘Sep Black, you’re a genuine lunatic.’

  ‘Winnie, we need to find out what we’re up against and who’s more capable out there, me on crutches … or you?’

  ‘Ooh, I suppose you are, big head. But we really need you in here.’

  ‘I’ll get back here soon enough and when I do I’ll know what we’re up against … and I might have done them some damage.’

  Now on their own in the cottage, Eli and Winnie watched the screens. In the fading daylight Eli had turned the cameras on to infrared. The picture turned monochrome but bright images of two moving people were plain to see. Eli left the room and came back with two shotguns. He handed one to Winnie.

  ‘Ever fired one of these?’

  ‘Yep, I used to go clay-pigeon shooting.’

  ‘So you’ll know how to load it.’

  ‘I do. I also know they have a very limited range and accuracy, with them being smooth bore. They can bring a piece of clay down at a hundred yards but they can’t bring a man down at that distance.’

  ‘True, but they can sting a bit at that range and they’re all we’ve got.’

  Eli placed a box of cartridges on the table. Winnie took two out and loaded them into one of the shotguns.

  ‘Like you said, they’ll do decent damage to anything a hundred yards away but the effective range is about half of that,’ Eli told her, ‘although by the time the shot’s travelled a hundred yards the spread’s pretty wide and it’ll hurt like hell, even if it doesn’t penetrate.’

  ‘If they’re all we have, they’ll have to do,’ said Winnie, holding hers to shoulder to get the feel of it. ‘Single trigger. The last one I used had two triggers. One for each barrel.’

  ‘These are fairly modern. You need to pull the trigger and pull it again, one pull for each barrel.’

  ‘How do you think we should play this, Eli?’ Winnie asked. ‘It seems to me that they need to be at the end of the garden path for these to be of any use.’

  ‘I think we should keep the lights turned off so they think we’re asleep and keep a lookout on the monitors. As soon as they get to the end of the path we let ’em, have both barrels.’

  ‘You mean, kill them?’

  ‘I doubt if we’ll kill them, but we’ll certainly stop them. We should shoot through the upstairs windows. Aim at their legs. That should slow ’em down.’

  They both went upstairs to a room with a large, sliding sash window. Eli opened it about nine inches and they both knelt behind it with weapons at the ready. It was a clear night with enough moonlight for them to make out the end of the garden path quite clearly. Out of the dark appeared the two men, both holding handguns. Weapons with far greater range and accuracy than the guns Winnie and Eli had. The intruders stopped before they got to the gate. The smaller of the two men appeared to be giving instructions.

  ‘The little one’s the boss,’ decided Winnie. ‘I’ll take him.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because I’m a bloody good shot with one of these things and I won’t be blowing his head off.’

  ‘OK. I’ll take the big feller.’

  They heard breaking glass from below, followed by a shot.

  ‘Could that be Sep shooting?’ Winnie asked, hopefully.

  ‘Could be.’

  There was another shot. Winnie made no comment about this, like Eli she was concentrating on the job in hand. The approaching men had now reached the front gate. Winnie and Eli silently poked their gun barrels out of the window and took aim. ‘Count of three,’ said Winnie. ‘One … two … three.’

  Four bangs were followed by loud screeches of pain from the two men down below, who now began to fire their handguns, indiscriminately, at the cottage. Winnie and Eli reloaded and fired again. This time bringing the smaller man down. The bigger man hauled him to his feet and proceeded to drag him away until they both disappeared into the gloom. Winnie couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. Eli did it for her.

  ‘I reckon they’ll be back and firing from out of our range,’ he said.

  ‘Only if they’re capable,’ said Winnie. ‘I think we did them a lot of damage. Do you think we should get in the van and drive off?’

  ‘I don’t know, Winnie. Sep’s out there. I don’t want to leave him.’

  ‘He’ll have heard the shooting,’ said Winnie, ‘and there should be an armed police unit on the way.’

  ‘The bad guys won’t know that, so they won’t be scared off. They’ll most probably know about the Merc and have it covered.’

  Now out of range of the shotguns, two intruders, Carl Redman and Animal, took cover behind trees. Animal was annoyed.

  ‘They were ready for us!’

  ‘I’m aware of that. I’ve got an arse full of buckshot to remind me!’

  ‘I took a few pellets meself,’ growled Animal. ‘Where the fuck’s Wolf and Roscoe?’

  ‘Comin’ up behind us. I want you to get round the back of the house and torch the fuckin’ place,’ said Redman. ‘I’ll follow on as best I can. After that you can get me to a hospital before I bleed ter death.’

  ‘Will it be all right if I gerrem ter patch me up as well?’

  ‘How many bottles have yer brought?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Right. We’ll skirt around the back out of sight and burn the bastards out. You go first, I’ll cover you and keep an eye on the front door in case they try and make a run for it. If they get past me, Roscoe and Wolf’ll get the bastards. Remember, Black’s the one we want.’

  Sep’s plan had been to get himself behind a pile of logs about a hundred yards away from the back of the cottage. He and Eli had put them there after chopping down an unwanted sycamore and cutting its trunk and branches into logs ready for winter burning. His aim was to take cover behind them and see if anyone was approaching the house or already in the vicinity. If not, it meant the back road was clear and they could all escape in the Mercedes which was parked at the back of the house.

  If there was someone there and he could get a clear shot at them, he was prepared to take it and to hell with police gun regulations. Precious lives were at stake here, especially Winnie’s. He opened the back door and swung out on two crutches, heading for the log pile. Already in position was Animal, although he hadn’t seen Sep, who was struggling over the uneven ground. Sep was only halfway to the log pile when Animal went into action.

  He had a rucksack filled with Molotov cocktails – bottles filled with petrol with a petrol-soaked rag stuck in the neck as a fuse. He lit one bottle and hurled it at a downstairs window where
it broke the glass and smashed into pieces inside, spreading its burning contents all around the room. He had followed this with two more through different windows before Sep managed to bring him down with a single shot. By this time the ground floor of the house was completely on fire and Redman was firing random shots at the front door as he stumbled Sep’s way, following Animal.

  Redman cursed as he saw Animal go down. He saw the flash of Sep’s gun and fired a shot which missed and caused Sep to duck behind the logs. Redman fired twice more but his shots were all misses with Sep having taken good cover and Redman now in pain from his wounds, courtesy of Winnie.

  Sep crawled away from the logs, keeping the broad trunk of a nearby tree between him and the gang boss. He could hear shots coming from the house now; Wolf and Roscoe had arrived on the scene. The unmistakeable boom of a shotgun mixed in with the sharper crack of powerful handguns and he knew that more men were advancing behind Redman; although he had no idea who they all were. Sep felt he needed to get back to the blazing house to help, but he also knew it wasn’t an ideal place for him to be right now. It wasn’t an ideal place for anyone to be and yet he’d left Winnie in there. Her parting words had been, … but we really need you in here.

  He peeped around the side of the trunk and saw Redman taking aim at where he’d just come from. Sep fired his second shot of the night, but as he was standing and still unsteady on his feet, missed. From the flash of Sep’s gun, Redman now knew exactly where Sep was and adjusted his aim accordingly.

  The cottage had a stone, garden wall to one side which would give Sep cover if he could reach it. He fired two more shots at Redman and immediately set off for the wall, hoping his shots might keep the gunman’s head down for sufficient time for him to get there. Sep reached the wall and more or less threw himself over it. Shots were being fired at the house but weren’t being returned, which gave Sep cause to worry. He could see the front gate where two men were firing handguns at the house and not seeking cover. Why not? he was asking himself.

  Sep then turned his attention back to Redman who was unaware that Sep was no longer behind a tree. Sep took careful aim at the man’s body, resting his gun on his left forearm to steady it and brought the gang boss down with his last shot. Two down, how many more? Two at least and him with an empty gun. The pain in his leg was now intense and making it difficult for him to think clearly, just when clarity of thought was essential. His feeling of guilt for leaving Winnie and Eli in the house didn’t help matters.