by M K Farrar
“You did everything you could,” Mallory said from beside him. “This wasn’t your fault.”
Despite uniforms’ attempt to get people to stay in their houses, a decent-sized crowd had still formed. It looked as though the neighbours were having a goddamned lawn party.
One man caught his eye, sitting on the doorstep of a house farther down, on the opposite side of the road. He was long-limbed, with fair hair and the kind of bland face that would be hard to describe in a lineup.
Ryan’s stomach lurched.
It was him. The son of a bitch had wanted to watch the fallout, or perhaps he’d been waiting for the father to come home so he could find his family stabbed.
“There!” Ryan shouted. “Sweeny’s over there.”
Sweeny realised he’d been spotted and jumped to his feet.
Ryan had no intention of letting him get away again. He ran for the outer cordon and leapt over it. He was barely aware of Mallory shouting his name.
Sweeny vanished between two houses, and Ryan took after him. He remembered his radio and, barely breaking his pace, used it to inform the other officers which direction Sweeny had gone.
Sweeny ran down the side of the house, knocking over a wheely bin. The bin fell into Ryan’s path, forcing him to leap over it. Ahead of him, Sweeny reached a wooden fence, and he hooked his hands over the top and pulled himself up and over. Sweeny was tall and agile, and Ryan hoped he’d be able to keep up.
His colleagues were close behind.
Ryan used his radio again. “He’s gone westbound over the fence, backing onto Waring Road. Cut him off.”
He reached the fence Sweeny had hauled himself over and jumped for it.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and groaned as he yanked himself up, his biceps and shoulder muscles straining. For a moment, he didn’t think he was going to make it, and he’d fall to the ground again, but somehow, he managed to hook his chest over the top of the fence. That gave him enough leverage to pull the rest of his body over.
He hoped his colleagues were moving faster.
Clumsily, he jumped to the ground on the other side and gave himself a second to get his bearing. The red-brick wall of the house ran to his right-hand side, but he couldn’t see Sweeny.
“Fuck.”
Ryan kept going.
A figure stepped out from behind the back wall of the house and punched him hard and low in the stomach.
Sweeny.
Ryan folded in half, confused. Though Sweeny turned and ran the moment after he’d struck Ryan, it felt as though he hadn’t removed his fist from Ryan’s gut. But then he realised it wasn’t his fist embedded in his stomach but the handle of a knife. Sweeny had got him right underneath his body armour.
Shit.
His knees gave way, and he fell to all fours. He was barely aware of someone running behind him.
“Oh God, Ryan.”
Mallory.
She opened her mouth and shouted, “Officer down! DI Chase is down. We need an ambulance right away.”
“He went that way.”
Ryan put one hand around the blade that was still embedded in his stomach, the warm pulse of blood seeping between his fingers. His instinct was to pull it out again, but his training kicked in and he knew not to. Doing so would only make the blood loss worse. He managed to lift his other hand and point in the direction Sweeny had gone.
“It’s okay,” Mallory reassured him, yanking off her jacket. “We’ve got every officer in Bristol hunting him down. He’s not getting away.”
“He’d better not,” Ryan managed to growl.
Mallory bundled the jacket into a ball and surrounded the hilt of the knife with the material, pressing down firmly to help staunch the bleeding. The pain was overwhelming, taking over his thoughts completely. Was he going to die? Was this it for him? Regret washed over him for all the things he hadn’t done. Who was going to take care of Donna now? He hadn’t wanted her to go through her cancer treatment alone.
One thought in particular was bright and clear: would he see Hayley again?
The paramedics had been forced to come from the back way, unable to just climb over a fence as Ryan had done.
“Give us some space, please,” the female half of the paramedic team said to Mallory. “We’ll take over from here.” She addressed Ryan. “It’s DI Chase, isn’t it?”
“Ryan,” he managed to croak.
Someone who was about to help save his life definitely got to call him by his first name.
“Okay, Ryan. We’re going to get you to the hospital, okay? You’re going to need surgery, but you’re going to be all right. We’ll take care of you now.”
“I’m coming, too,” Mallory announced.
The paramedics must have known better than to argue with her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mallory was curled up in a chair at Ryan’s bedside, drifting in and out of sleep, lulled by the rhythmical beeping of the machines attached to him. He’d got through the surgery without any complication, and for that she was grateful.
She hadn’t told Donna yet. She knew the other woman was going through enough on her own, and since they were divorced, it wasn’t as though Donna was Ryan’s next of kin anymore. Ryan wouldn’t have wanted Donna to weaken her immune system further by a sleepless night.
She’d had no choice but to ask her parents to stay with Ollie overnight. It had been difficult for her, letting go of some of that responsibility, but she hadn’t wanted Ryan to wake up and find no one here. She remembered how she’d been dreaming of having a night away from home to get a restful night’s sleep, but this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind.
The grey light of morning peeped through the slats in the window blind. It was just after seven. She stifled a yawn and thought about caffeine. She was going to need it even more to get through today.
From the hospital bed came a groan.
Mallory sat forward, suddenly wide awake. “Ryan?”
His eyes opened, and he winced. “I feel like shit.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not surprised. The surgeons removed a four-inch blade from your abdomen.”
“Did it...?” He paused as though the effort of speaking had suddenly become too much. “Did it go okay?”
“No complications. The doctors will be around shortly to speak to you, though.”
He seemed to sink into the pillow at the news. “Good. That’s good.”
“I’d say you were lucky, but I’m guessing you don’t feel very lucky right now.”
“No, not really.” His eyes slipped shut again.
He was on a morphine drip for the pain, and she assumed the drugs and anaesthesia plus the blood loss had done a number on his system. He would be needing to sleep a lot over the following days and weeks so he could recover.
She thought he was going to go back to sleep again, but then his eyes opened.
“Did they catch him?” he asked, his voice croaky. “Did they get Sweeny?”
“Yes. Not far from where he stabbed you. He’s in custody now.”
“What about the family? Did they—?”
Mallory bit her lower lip. “The two children, Tyler and Reese, survived, though, like you, they both suffered stab wounds. The mother, Helen, didn’t make it.”
His eyes closed again. “Fuck. If only we’d got there sooner.”
“We did everything we could. Sweeny attacked the mother in the loft sometime yesterday afternoon and held her there. She’d lost a lot of blood. It looks as though she threw herself out of the loft hatch to try and save the kids.”
“I hope she knew they’d survived before she died. Dying while believing your kids are dead must be the worst thing in the world.”
“She made it to them before she passed. She crawled across the landing and found them. The girl, Reese, was conscious enough to know what was happening, she said, and held her mother as she died.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah, it’s
not really the sort of thing you can get over. The father arrived shortly after we did. I imagine he’s going to be blaming himself as well for not getting back sooner. Apparently, he went to a business dinner after work, even though he knew the mother was missing.”
Ryan’s shake of the head was so slight it was barely noticeable. “I was like that, too. Put work before everything else. Maybe now he’ll realise how lucky he is to have two children who are still alive.”
***
Mallory left the hospital mid-morning, swapping with Donna who Mallory had insisted needed to be told, despite Ryan’s protests not to bother his ex-wife. It had taken her pointing out to him that Donna would be furious not to be told that had made him relent.
Now she was home, and she wanted a hot shower and a decent cup of tea and to get her head down for a couple of hours.
“I’m home!” she called as she opened the front door and threw her keys down on the hall console.
She headed into the kitchen to discover her parents sitting at the kitchen table, both with a mug of tea in front of them. There was a third one, which she assumed was meant for her, or perhaps it was for Ollie, though he didn’t normally like hot drinks. Tension simmered in the air.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
Her mother grimaced. “You might want to go and see your brother. He’s upset about something.”
She stared at them. “You didn’t think to go and see him yourself?”
“He doesn’t want to talk to us, and you know what he can get like. Once he’s made up his mind about something, he digs his heels in like a stubborn mule.”
She’d been hoping to sit down for five minutes, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Neither of her parents had even bothered to ask how her day had gone. That she’d helped to apprehend a murderer and had spent the night at her boss’s bedside in hospital obviously hadn’t computed with them. Sometimes, even though they’d handed Ollie’s care over to her, it felt as though they still didn’t see her as a fully functioning adult with a life of her own.
“Oh-kay,” she drew out the word, “I’ll go and ask Ollie, shall I?”
She went upstairs to her brother’s bedroom. Ollie had his back to her and was leaning over a small suitcase on his bed.
“What are you doing, Ollie?”
He didn’t turn around but picked up another piece of clothing from a pile he had next to the case and put it on top of the last one. “I’m going.”
“Where are you going?”
“To live somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“Because I hurt you, Mallory. I heard Mum and Dad talking, and they said I hit you.”
He’d put a couple of his favourite tops into the case, together with his favourite book. The sight of them broke her heart.
“You didn’t hit me, Ollie. We had an accident while you were having a bad dream, that’s all. I know you’d never hurt me.”
His shoulders shook, and she realised he was crying. She put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around, and hugged him hard.
“Now unpack your stuff. I don’t want you going anywhere. You’re stuck with me, okay?”
“Okay, Mallory. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
She left him putting his stuff back in his drawers and stormed downstairs. It had been an incredibly long day, and her emotions had already gone through the wringer, and now she had this to deal with as well. Sometimes, it really did feel as though it was all too much to deal with, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up on her brother.
“You told Ollie that he hurt me?” she blurted as she walked back into the kitchen.
“No, sweetheart, we didn’t,” her mother said, “at least not intentionally. We were talking about everything between ourselves, and he overheard us.”
“You should have been more careful! Ollie thinks he needs to move out now. He thinks he’s a danger to me.”
Her parents exchanged a glance.
Her father lifted a hand towards her face. “Come on, love. What about your eye? You look like you’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.”
“Don’t exaggerate. I have a dangerous job. I put myself in far more dangerous situations than living with Ollie every single day. My boss ended up in hospital last night because a man who’d already killed five people and injured two others attacked him. I was only seconds away when he was stabbed. It could easily have been me.”
Her mother paled. “You’re really not helping me feel better.”
“It wasn’t my intention to make you feel better,” she snapped. “You’re missing the point. Ollie isn’t dangerous. It was just an accident, for goodness’ sake.”
“You still got hurt. I’m worried about you, Mallory. Ollie is my son, but you’re my daughter, and I’m allowed to care about what happens to you, too. This life you’re living, it’s not...normal.”
“Since when have I cared about normal?”
“I’d just like you to go out a bit more, maybe meet someone. It’s not like you’re getting any younger.”
Was her mother seriously going to start giving her a lecture about her biological clock?
“I’m fine, Mum, and I’m only thirty-one. It’s not like I’m past it.”
Mallory remembered when she’d been in her twenties and had spent almost every weekend at a live concert or at a festival. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to see a band play. She was different now, and while she couldn’t quite bring herself to give up the black hair dye or let her piercings heal over completely, she didn’t mind. Sure, seeing all those bands had been fun, but in a way, it had all been empty, too. Her life had meaning now, she had a purpose, and that always beat a few hours in a venue with a thousand people who meant nothing to her.
Her mother sighed. “I know. Forget I said anything.”
“If you really want me to have more of a life, maybe you can just help out a bit more?” Mallory suggested.
“You never let us, love,” her dad threw in. “Unless you’re really desperate because of work, like last night, you tell us you’re fine.”
She considered that for a moment. As much as she hated to admit it, they weren’t wrong. She was always putting across the front that she was coping, even when she wasn’t. Ryan could have died last night. What if that had been her, and she’d have had to look back on her life? Would she be happy with what she’d achieved?
“Okay,” she relented. “You’re right. I will let you help out more. I’m sorry if I’ve shut you out.”
Her mum gazed up at her. “You’re a strong woman, Mallory. Your dad and I are both very proud of you.”
Mallory’s cheeks tweaked in a reluctant smile. “Thanks.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Reese Bolton looked out of the window of her new bedroom in Exeter, onto the view of the fields beyond. The fleeces of sheep were white dots against the green landscape.
She’d been glad to leave Bristol in the end.
The house still hadn’t sold, but that was hardly surprising. Who would want to buy a house where a woman had been murdered and two kids had been stabbed? The life insurance policy her mother had taken out was enough to allow them to move without worrying about selling, so that was what they’d done. Reese was thankful for that, at least. She didn’t think she’d have been able to live in that house a moment longer, and it would have been even worse if people had been coming around under the pretence of viewing it, only so they could get a look at where the horror had happened.
She missed her mum every single day. The loss was like a weight in her chest that refused to shift. Over the past few months, she’d discovered grief was a strange thing. She’d have a day or two where she’d almost feel normal, but then she’d be sitting in the car when her dad was driving her to her new school and she’d remember something, and a tight pain closed off her throat and she’d find herself with tears pouring down her face. On those days, her da
d noticed and turned around the car and took her home again. Then he’d call into work and say he’d be working from home that day and take her out for a hot chocolate instead.
She’d been so angry with her dad after everything had happened. She’d blamed him for not coming home sooner, but after the initial shock and anger had worn off, she’d realised that no one could blame him more than he blamed himself.
Tyler was suffering just as much as she was. They’d both spent a couple of weeks in hospital, recovering from their injuries, and when he came home, he was a shell of the person he’d been. He withdrew completely, sitting on his bed, barely speaking. His injuries meant he wasn’t allowed to play football for at least six weeks, but he said he didn’t care and that he didn’t want to play anymore. At night, she heard him crying in his bed, and she’d go in and silently slip onto the bed beside him and hug him until his tears stopped and hers began.
At least that bastard, Philip Sweeny, would be going away for life. He’d stabbed a detective who’d come to help them, and the detective had been in hospital at the same time as Tyler and her. When he’d been well enough, he’d come to visit them, and told them how sorry he was about their mother and had apologised for not getting to them sooner. Reese had cried and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was one of the good guys.
She liked how that sounded. One of the good guys. Someone who protected people against men like Philip Sweeny. It must feel like taking back control again.
Maybe, when she’d finished school, she would become a police officer, too.
THE END
Enjoyed ‘Chase Down’? Don’t miss out on book three of DI Chase’s series, ‘Paper Chase’! Order today from Amazon. Keep reading to learn more.
The chase is on...
When a young man is found with his abdomen cut open and his organs removed, his death becomes just the first in a horrifying sequence of murders.
The gruesome discovery shocks the city of Bristol, but a second murder rocks it to the core.
Detective Ryan Chase has never seen anything like it before. He must follow the chain of clues connecting the two cases to learn the identity of the next victim and find the person responsible.
