by Paul Finch
The figure on the other side of the wall, a well-built guy, wearing dark clothes with pale, bearded features framed inside a white woollen balaclava, was taken completely by surprise, especially when the heavy glass bottle exploded on his cranium.
Heck yanked the empty gun from his faltering grasp and threw it out of reach into the undergrowth, at the same time trying to drag him over the wall. The gunman, already tottering, blood welling through his balaclava, tried to pull back. Heck snatched his wrist with his left hand, and with his right brought down the remaining bottleneck over and over again. As good as any blade, he plunged it repeatedly into the gunman’s left shoulder and the left side of his neck.
A shout caught Heck’s attention; it was wild, incoherent, and it came from further up the road. More footfalls sounded as the second of the gunmen ran their way.
Heck saw him coming. He was burlier than the first, also bearded and wearing dark clothes, with his hair tucked under a black woollen cap. Only when the first one dropped to the road, through shock and blood loss, did this second one open fire.
Slugs screamed along the top of the wall, kicking out fist-sized chunks of stone and mortar. Heck ducked and rolled into the foliage. Dropping the blood-slimed bottleneck, he scampered away on all fours, heading as deep into the cover of the trees as he could. He made thirty-odd yards before leaping up and running, weaving between the trunks, trusting that the blackness of night would also conceal him.
Thirty yards became forty, became fifty, became sixty … but Heck knew that if the other bastard simply sprayed this woodland with slugs, he still had a good chance of hitting his target.
And yet that didn’t happen.
Instead, Heck heard a gabble of muffled voices. By the sounds of it, the second guy was now attending to the first, because one of those voices was a pain-racked gibber. Heck circled an oak and slammed his back to it. He stood there rigid, drenched with sweat, straining to hear, though he couldn’t make head nor tail of what they were saying. Not even enough to distinguish whether they were speaking English, though he was certain they hadn’t been when he’d heard them back at the pub.
‘Who the hell …?’ he said under his breath.
Whoever they were, they didn’t hang around. What sounded like a stumbling run, no doubt the one assisting the other, diminished away along the road again. Then he heard a car engine jar to life. It was the Subaru.
Heck was torn with indecision. His heart told him to return to the road. If they got that motor inside the lorry, whose make and registration number he hadn’t yet noted, they were clean away. But his head told him that this could be a ruse to draw him out into the open.
His heart won – but only after a potentially catastrophic delay. As he wove his way back, he heard the louder rumble of an HGV coming to life.
‘Shit!’
He ran faster, reaching the wall a dozen yards along it from the point where he’d fought with the first gunman. But the lorry was already out of sight, its tail lights dwindling to pinpoints of red in the distant darkness, before winking out altogether.
Heck leaned against the stonework, gasping, head drooped.
Only with an effort did he push himself away, and hobble back towards his car, passing a section of wall whose entire parapet had been sheared off by gunfire. His adrenaline was flagging fast, and suddenly he felt weary beyond belief. A hundred different strains and sprains nagged at him. Even the cut over his brow had opened again and was leaking.
That was when he realised that he was clutching something in his left hand. A bracelet of some sort, which he’d yanked loose from the first bastard’s wrist.
Initially, he only glanced at it, but that was enough to stop him in his tracks.
He held it up in the half-light, to check it out properly – and there was no mistake. It was a leather bangle dangling with tiny, Gothic adornments: skulls, inverted crucifixes, wolf heads. Even in the midst of this whole overwhelming calamity, Heck’s own haunting words came back to him like bullets in their own right:
I don’t think this’ll be the last we hear from these guys. And when we do hear … it’s going to be seriously nasty.
His breath struggling out in ragged sobs, he staggered on.
He’d known it. He’d said it all along. If only he’d insisted … but no, there was no time for futile self-recrimination. There wasn’t even time to find an evidence bag. For the moment, he had no choice but to slide the bracelet into the pocket of his trousers. It would be as safe there as anywhere.
‘Gemma?’ he called, as his Megane came into sight through the bushes. It was little more than a smoking, devastated hulk – but that was hardly a surprise.
‘Gemma?’ he said. ‘Gemma … you OK?’
He rounded the rear of the car, picking through the shattered timbers of the gate, at which point he saw that she was still keeping low in the undergrowth.
‘Gemma, they’ve gone. But, you won’t believe …’ His words tailed off. ‘Gemma …?’
She wasn’t keeping low as much as lying on her left side. Unmoving.
Heck threw himself onto his knees next to her.
The blood soaking thickly into her blouse both front and back was a horrifying shock.
‘G … Gemma?’ Thoughts whirling, he fought to get the words out. ‘Come on … come on, darling …’
At first, he hardly dared touch her. When he finally did, it was her bare right arm, the flesh of which was cooling fast.
‘Gemma … NO!’
Frantic, disregarding all rules, because no rules he knew would help them now, he turned her over and hoisted her up into his arms. Even cradled, she lay elegantly, knees together under her denim skirt, the toes of her pretty shoes turned slightly inward. But her head lolled back. When he slid an arm underneath it, to raise it up, her eyelids fluttered.
‘That’s it … yeah, that’s it. Come on, darling … just, stay with me, yeah!’ He looked wildly around, but there hadn’t been a vehicle past in the last few minutes, let alone anyone on foot who might hear him shout.
He shouted anyway: ‘Someone … anyone! HELP US, PLEASE!’
‘Mark …’ she breathed.
He looked down, hope surging. Her eyes had opened slightly, but the expression on her face was strangely serene. Hurt though she was, she’d managed to raise her right hand and now touched his cheek with it.
‘Come on, Gemma,’ he coaxed her gently. ‘Come on, darling. It’ll be OK.’
She smiled at him for a second or two, before her eyes closed again.
When her hand dropped away, the howl that ripped from his chest split the night apart, lingering for what seemed like minutes on the light summer breeze.
Get back to where it all started with book one of the series, where Heck takes on the most brutal of killers…
Dark, terrifying and unforgettable. Stalkers will keep fans of Stuart MacBride and M.J. Arlidge looking over their shoulder.
Click here to buy now.
A vicious serial killer is holding the country to ransom, publicly – and gruesomely – murdering his victims.
A heart-stopping and unforgettable thriller that you won’t be able to put down, from bestseller Paul Finch.
Click here to buy now.
DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg is used to bloodbaths. But nothing will prepare him for this.
Brace yourself as you turn the pages of a living nightmare.
Welcome to The Killing Club.
Click here to buy now.
As a brutal winter takes hold of the Lake District, a prolific serial killer stalks the fells. And for Heck, the signs are all too familiar…
The fourth unputdownable book in the DS Mark Heckenburg series. A killer thriller for fans of Stuart MacBride and Luther.
Click here to buy now.
Heck needs to watch his back. Because someone’s watching him…
Get hooked on Heck: the maverick cop who knows no boundaries. A grisly whodunit, perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride an
d Luther.
Click here to buy now.
Is your home safe?
An unforgettable crime thriller, perfect for fans of M.J. Arlidge and Stuart MacBride. Read the Sunday Times bestseller now.
Click here to buy now.
A stranger is just a killer you haven’t met yet…
Meet Paul Finch’s new heroine in the first of the PC Lucy Clayburn series. Read the Sunday Times bestseller now.
Click here to buy now.
Do you know who’s watching you?
PC Lucy Clayburn faces one of the toughest cases of her life – and one which will prove once and for all whether blood really is thicker than water…
Click here to buy now.
About the Author
Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, now turned full-time writer. He cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of children’s animation. However, he is probably best known for his work in thrillers and crime. His first three novels in the Detective Sergeant Heckenburg series all attained ‘bestseller’ status, while his last novel, Strangers, which introduced a new hero in Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn, became an official Sunday Times top 10 bestseller in its first month of publication.
Paul lives in Lancashire, UK, with his wife Cathy. His website can be found at www.paulfinchauthor.com, his blog at www.paulfinch-writer.blogspot.co.uk, and he can be followed on Twitter as @paulfinchauthor.
By the same author:
Stalkers
Sacrifice
The Killing Club
The Chase: an ebook short story
Dead Man Walking
Hunted
Strangers
Ashes to Ashes
Shadows
About the Publisher
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