Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  “He’ll live,” Maggie said. “And be released as soon as he wakes. It was a shallow wound, but he lost a lot of blood. Give it a few days, and he’ll be fine.”

  “Good.” Ruth had looked at the sleeping sergeant, then at her adoptive mother. “Maggie, why are you here?”

  Maggie hadn’t answered immediately. “He saved my life,” she’d finally said. “It was a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten.”

  “Was it during The Blackout?” Ruth had asked.

  Maggie had sighed. “Yes, and after.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ruth had asked. “I mean, you acted like you’d never heard of him.”

  “I asked him to keep an eye on you when you applied for the police,” Maggie had said. “I didn’t want you to know. I’m not sure that was the right decision.”

  She’d wanted to ask for the details of how the sergeant had saved Maggie’s life, and a million more things besides. It wasn’t the right time. Maggie looked older and frailer than Ruth had ever seen her. Instead, Ruth had laid a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and watched the sleeping sergeant, until restlessness overtook her, and she’d left.

  Life in the city carried on oblivious to the events of the night before. It was absurd and infuriating. Ruth had paced through the streets until her feet had taken her to the outdoor stage from where the signing ceremony was going to be broadcast.

  The antenna towered above the cliffs. It was impossible to tell where it began and the scaffolding ended except by watching the engineers scrabbling up and down, hammering out and screwing in their last minute adjustments. Ruth couldn’t get near it. The common in front of the stage was empty, the nearby streets roped off and guarded by Marines.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Riley had said when one of the Marines had finally relented and gone to find the constable.

  “I had nowhere else to go,” Ruth had replied. “I thought I could help.”

  “The Navy is running things,” Riley had replied with a shake of her head. “I’m here as a token. A representative of the civil power so it doesn’t seem like a military coup. I couldn’t let you through the barrier even if I wanted. You’ve got a day off. Enjoy it.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Ruth looked behind Riley to the stage in front of the apartment building. In front of the stage were rows of empty chairs that ran across the common all the way to the next empty apartment block. Agent Clarke, the woman who’d been with the ambassador on his visit to Serious Crimes what seemed like a decade ago, was pacing up and down the vacant rows.

  “Can I get a seat for later?” Ruth had asked. “I’d like to see the ceremony.”

  Riley shook her head. “They’re not going to use the seats. The only audience will be listening on the radio.”

  “But there are all those chairs,” Ruth had said.

  “Weaver thinks that the commissioner planned to disrupt the ceremony. It’s possible someone might still try. No one is being allowed to get close. They would have moved the equipment inside, but it’s too late for that. The engineers had a fit when I suggested it.” She’d grinned.

  Ruth tried to smile back.

  “Come back this evening,” Riley had said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ruth had taken to the streets again. Increasingly hungry, she found herself wandering through the town until she reached the Golden Hind – the pub opposite the shoe shop owned by Xavier Collins. The windows of the shop had been cleaned, and there was no sign of those lurid trainers. There was a new sign, too, promising shoes repaired while a customer waited in the pub.

  Ruth scraped at the horseradish and mustard sauce that was the pub’s speciality in search of the potato underneath. Theoretically, it was a nice day. The streets were clean and busy. The sun was bright, though it had failed to burn off the morning’s chill. Everyone who walked past seemed content, but Ruth felt a great sense of disquiet. In her mind she replayed the conspiracy as it had happened, and then as Wallace had planned it. There was a piece missing, but she couldn’t place what it was.

  At half past three, she gave up, and began a meandering walk back towards the outdoor stage, intending to watch the broadcast and then go home via the hospital. She reached it fifteen minutes before the broadcast was due to begin, and the Marines wouldn’t let her near. She craned over their uniformed shoulders, trying to spot Riley, or even Agent Clarke, but the only person she could see was a young man with a notebook, looking lost amidst the empty seats. She backed away. There wasn’t even a crowd. Everyone else, she guessed, on seeing they couldn’t get close had gone to some pub or home where they could listen on the radio. She could do the same, of course, but what would be the point? The speeches weren’t important. It was the fact that there was a broadcast that mattered. That they’d trained engineers, and had electricity to spare, and that there was somewhere else on the planet that would broadcast a reply, that was the real achievement. From what she’d seen of the script on the commissioner’s desk, the words were forgettable, full of vague sound bites that promised a lot without… without…

  There was a man, on his own, loitering by the side of the building ahead, and there was something odd about him. Was it the white streak in his brown hair that ran from his crown to where the top of his ear was missing? Or was it something else? Something about the way he was looking up and down the street almost too casually. The building in question was on the other side of the common from the apartment block on which the antenna had been built. It was covered in almost as much scaffolding as the radio mast. With the introduction of electricity to the area, she supposed it was being renovated. The man didn’t look like a labourer told to stop hammering until the broadcast was over. He didn’t look like anything except that he didn’t belong.

  Ruth kept walking, not quite towards him, but as if she was angling for the old hotel at the bottom of the hill. A small crowd was queuing outside, wanting to get inside to listen to the broadcast. The man turned his head. Left, right, left again, this time looking at her. He looked away, almost too quickly, and then back at her. Ruth pretended to ignore the man as she got closer. There was something about him. Was it the hair? It must be. Had she seen him before? She didn’t think so. The man turned and began walking down the road.

  It was nothing, Ruth thought. She was getting paranoid, that was all. Then, when he reached the end of the building, the man abruptly ducked around its corner. That was suspicious. Too suspicious. Ruth quickened her pace. As she reached the end of the block, her hand dropped to her belt, flipping the button on her holster, drawing the revolver. She turned the corner and saw… nothing. The man had gone.

  There was a clear view of the road on the far side of the building, the cliffs beyond, and the path that led down them to the beach. He wasn’t there, and there was no way he could have disappeared. That left the door to the building. It looked sealed. She stepped closer and tried it. Despite looking secure, the door swung silently outward.

  Her heart began to beat faster. She tried to calm it. What was the danger? Where was the threat? The building was at least four hundred yards from the stage. An image of Emmitt came back to her, standing in that field, the sleek old-world rifle in his hands. But that shot had been made at a distance of fifty yards, sixty at most. No, she told herself her fears were the product of nothing but sleepless paranoia.

  Except four hundred yards wasn’t far, not for a shooter who’d had training. She stepped into the doorway, her revolver tracking from left to right. It was a stairwell, with a door leading into the ground floor, and stairs leading up. Be rational, she told herself. Yes, of course it was possible that someone might have a gun that could accurately hit the stage from here, but was it likely?

  There was no crowd, she realised. No spectators to spoil the shot. The PM would be standing on the stage near the microphone as the ambassador gave his speech, and then he would wait for her to do the same. Those speeches had been timed and scripted. The commissioner had had a copy of that script on his desk, with the ti
mings written in the margin. They might be off by a few seconds, but not much longer.

  She tried the door that led into the building. It was sealed. She crossed to the stairwell and began to climb.

  And Wallace had had a map of the stage. With that and the script, someone would know exactly where the microphone was, and when the Prime Minister would be standing by it. They could have practiced somewhere out in the wasteland until they knew they could make the kill.

  Elbows bent, revolver pointing upward, Ruth began to climb the stairs.

  But it wasn't Emmitt that she’d seen, just a man with a white scar in his brown hair, missing half an ear. She took a breath, and spun around the landing, pointing the gun up. There was no one there.

  Where had she seen the man before? She hadn’t, she was sure of it. Yet there was the vague sense of recognition whenever she thought of his face.

  She reached the first landing and another door. She tried it. It was sealed. She breathed out, and realised that she was alone in the building, except, perhaps for that man. She knew she should go and get help. The words of Captain Weaver, and Ruth’s own self doubt, kept her putting one quiet foot in front of another as she climbed the stairs.

  The second landing ended in another locked door. She thought she could hear voices coming from above her. One sounded American. Familiar. There was a crackling hiss behind the voice. It was the ambassador, speaking on the radio. Then she knew how she’d recognised the half-eared man. He matched Mitchell’s description of the man who’d run when he’d arrested the ambassador’s assistant.

  Ruth was at the third landing. The radio broadcast was coming from one floor above. It was too late to turn back.

  The gun’s grip was slick in her hands. The stairs loomed above her. The door to the next landing was wedged open, and she could hear the voice on the radio more clearly.

  “This is a time to formalise the centuries old friendship between…” the ambassador was saying. Ruth tuned it out.

  The wedged-open door led to a corridor off which there were four closed doors either side. The corridor ended fifty yards away in another open door. She inched forwards, quietly raising one foot then the other. You are police, she repeated in her head. Not for comfort, or reassurance, but to drown out the other voice that kept asking what she’d do when she reached the open door. She reached it all too quickly.

  There was one man in the room, a rifle in his hand, the barrel, and his eyes, pointed at the stage visible over his shoulder. It wasn’t the half-eared man she’d seen outside. It was Emmitt, and he hadn’t seen her.

  Over the radio, an announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen of two continents. I present Mrs Emma Wolton, Prime Minister of…”

  The barrel of her revolver wavered as Ruth took aim. “Don’t…” The word came out as a whisper. “Don’t move!” she said, this time in a loud bark. Emmitt turned his head slightly, but barely glanced at her before turning back to the window.

  “I’ll shoot,” she said, and he just ignored her. For a moment she couldn’t believe it.

  “I will,” she said.

  “If you remembered to load your gun,” he replied softly, shifting his stance, taking aim. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Over the radio, the Prime Minister said, “Thank you all. I cannot tell you how glad I am to be here today…”

  Time slowed as anger flared, at herself for being someone just caught up in events, at Maggie for her secrets, at Mitchell and Isaac for their guarded conversations, and at the commissioner for deceiving her and everyone else. Then it boiled over into fury at the sheer arrogance of Emmitt. Her finger curled on the trigger. A final flash of doubt crept over her as to whether she had loaded the gun before the revolver bucked and the gun roared.

  The shot sounded strange, almost as if it had echoed. No, it wasn’t an echo. Emmitt had fired too. There was shouting coming from the radio now. Emmitt turned. His face was expressionless as he raised his left hand to his right arm.

  “You broke my arm,” he said, in that same soft voice. He strode towards her, crossing the room before she had a chance to react. A rough slap knocked the gun from her grip. The backhand knocked her against the wall. His fist curled, and she dived to the ground before he had a chance to throw the punch. She rolled to her feet, looking for her gun, but it was on the other side of the room.

  A knife appeared in Emmitt’s hand and sliced through the air between them. Ruth ducked again, dived, rolled, and grabbed the pistol, bringing it around and up just as he threw the blade towards her. She kicked herself out of the way as the knife plunged into the floorboards where her arm had been. When she brought the gun up, Emmitt was already out of the door, running down the corridor. She took aim, but there in the doorway at the end of the long hallway was the man with the missing ear. In his hand was a gun. He fired. Ruth ducked as the bullet tore splinters from the doorframe. She pushed herself to her feet, and then to the doorway, spinning around, gun levelled, but the hallway was empty.

  Over the radio she heard the Prime Minister saying, “I’m fine, really I am. Sorry, everyone, a light fixture exploded. As I was…”

  Ruth didn’t think. She didn’t hesitate. She just ran. Along the corridor to the stairs, bounding down them, three steps at a time, all doubt was gone. They would run, but she would chase, and she wouldn’t let anything stop her from catching them. She reached the building’s entrance and dived outside, rolling across the grass, expecting one or both of the men to be waiting either side of the door. They weren’t. They were running down the hill towards the path that led to the beach.

  She ran across the wild-grown grass, and jumped over the low wall and down onto the road. Her feet hit the ground with a resounding slap of leather on concrete. The half-eared man heard it, turned, and fired. The bullet hit stone somewhere to her right. Ruth didn’t stop. Emmitt did. He yelled something Ruth didn’t hear, waited for the other man to catch up, and then took the gun from him. His right arm hanging loosely by his side, Emmitt raised the pistol in his left, and fired. The bullet came nowhere close. Ruth grinned and sped up.

  The two men started running again, along the path that curved down the cliffs. They were a hundred yards away. Ninety. A hundred. Ruth could feel a dull ache rising up her legs. She wasn’t gaining, but she couldn’t give up. Not now.

  They reached an old one-bar gate that blocked the end of the winding road. Emmitt had to slow to duck under it. He paused at the other side to fire. Again he missed. It was too great a range, Ruth thought, and he was right-handed, not ambidextrous. The two men set off again, dodging around the wooden beach huts to the sand-strewn path that ran alongside the beach. Ruth didn’t slow as she neared the gate. She put a hand out, ready to jump over it. At the last second, realism caught up with her feeling of invincibility, and she dived underneath, grazing her hand as she sprawled back to her feet.

  When she rounded the beach huts, she saw there was less than seventy yards between her and them. Slowly but surely, she was gaining on them. Emmitt glanced around. The other man did the same. Emmitt barked something. The man put on a burst of speed, but he couldn’t sustain it. He was tiring, Ruth thought. Emmitt wasn’t. Even with the wound in his arm, his stride had an easy gait, suggesting he could keep going for hours. It didn’t matter. She only needed to arrest one of them.

  Sixty yards. Emmitt looked back. Ruth raised her gun. Emmitt finally sped up, leaving the other man behind. He tried to keep up, but couldn’t. There were fifty yards between her and the half-eared man. Thirty. Kicking up sand, dodging twisted metal from the decaying hulks lining the beach, the distance shrank. Twenty, and the man stumbled. Ruth raised her gun again. No. No, she couldn’t. The man was unarmed. She switched her aim towards Emmitt, but he was at least a hundred yards ahead.

  The half-eared man stumbled again. With victory within her grasp, Ruth found a last burst of speed. Sprinting the final few yards, she dived forward in a one-armed tackle that knocked the man down.

  “You’re un
der arrest,” she barked, pressing her knee into his back, bringing her gun up, looking for Emmitt. He’d stopped, still a hundred yards away. He raised his pistol, fired, and missed. Ruth returned fire, and missed. Emmitt gave an almost sardonic shrug and shot at her again. The bullet struck sand on the beach to her right.

  The other man struggled.

  “Stay down,” Ruth said. “He’s not aiming at me. He wants to kill you. Stay down and you might live.” She wasn’t sure how true that was.

  Emmitt fired again, and again the shot went wide. Then he waited as if giving her a turn.

  She aimed, carefully, and then stopped. How many bullets did he have left? One or two? It didn’t matter because she realised that it wasn’t his gun and he didn’t have any spare ammunition. He was waiting for her to waste her bullets at an ineffective range, and then he’d get closer as she was reloading. She held her fire, and smiled.

  The standoff continued until Emmitt finally took a step towards her. Then she pulled the trigger. It was a miss, but a close one. He stopped, and raised the pistol to his forehead in a mocking salute. Then he turned around and ran away along the path.

  “Remember,” she hissed at the man as she pulled out her handcuffs, “he was trying to kill you.” She cuffed the man quickly. When she looked up, Emmitt was gone.

  She pulled the man to his feet, and saw his face was covered in blood. He’d broken his nose in the fall, and gashed his forehead, almost exactly underneath the scar that turned that streak of hair white. From the way he staggered as she pushed him towards the cliffs, she suspected he had a concussion. When he fell to his knees and threw up, she thought that confirmed it. Because of that, by the time she saw the Marines running down the beach towards them, they were barely a hundred feet from where she’d arrested him.

  At the head of the Marines, almost as if they were racing one another to stay out in front, were Agent Clark and Riley.

  “Emmitt,” Ruth said. “He went that way. He’s injured. I shot him in the arm. The right arm. I think it’s broken. He’s armed, but I think he’s only got one bullet left. And he’s not a very good shot with his left hand.” She bit her lip to stop herself from babbling any further.