Written In Blood

by Alex R Carver

  Melissa tried again and again to get hold of the inspector; when she was unsuccessful after repeated attempts, she tried Sergeant Mitchell instead. In the end, it was Constable Black who responded to her radio calls, though he sounded very unhappy to be doing so.

  “Mel, it’s Mike, the inspector’s down, so’s the sergeant, he shot them both.” His shock was audible despite the crackling of the radio signal. “He shot the sergeant right through the door, and then he shot the inspector in the back.”

  Melissa went cold at that news.

  “What do we do now?”

  Melissa found the question incredibly unfair, she was the youngest of the constables, and Black the oldest; if anyone should have been able to come up with an idea of what to do, it was him. Her mind raced for a few moments as she thought about the situation; she hoped that Black would come up with something, but when he didn’t she spoke.

  “Where’s Kieran?” She had been listening for further shotgun blasts, and was relieved not to have heard any; she hoped that meant her colleagues were safe, but the absence of such noises told her nothing of what was going on at the farm, which meant she couldn’t relax.

  “He went back into the house after shooting the inspector,” Black said. “He hasn’t come out again.” He was relieved by that, though he couldn’t help worrying about what the teen might be doing in the house. The patrol car he had arrived in sheltered him, but did not stop him feeling as though he was being watched, and possibly being sighted on with the shotgun; it was a feeling that made his skin crawl, as though his body was being explored by a tarantula.

  “Are you safe?” Melissa hoped so, though she found it hard to believe that he could be under the circumstances.

  “Safe enough, for the moment,” Black said, he was unable to conceal either the lack of certainty or the apprehension he felt.

  “What about Paul and Adrian?”

  “Paul’s with me, we’re both hiding behind a car, Adrian’s not with us, he’s still at the station ‘s’far as I know.”

  Good, stay safe,” Melissa told him, as if she expected her friend to foolishly risk his life. “I’ll call Inspector Stevens and see what he says; armed backup should be on the way, hopefully they’ll be here soon and can sort things out.” She ended the radio call and switched to her mobile phone so she could call her superior.

  *****

  Kieran snatched up the bag of saleable items he had dropped in his sister’s bedroom and left again without delay. He thought about searching Emily’s room for anything worth taking, but decided against it, the odds were it wouldn’t be worth the time it would take to find his sister’s ‘valuables’.

  He opened the front door slowly and cautiously; he didn’t think either of the constables he had seen when he first looked out into the yard were armed, if they were, he was sure they would have returned fire when he shot Sergeant Mitchell and the inspector, he wasn’t about to risk himself stupidly, however.

  He peered around the yard but saw nothing, he assumed the constables were still hiding behind the patrol car, he had seen their heads when he looked out the window after collecting his bag. Just to be on the safe side, and to encourage the constables to keep out of the way and to not do anything stupid, he fired off both barrels from his shotgun as he moved hurriedly across the yard to his Land Rover.

  His shots were not intended to harm the constables, whom he couldn’t see in any case, they were merely to keep their heads down. In that they succeeded for he saw not so much as a hair to indicate there was anyone in the yard with him by the time he reached the driver’s door of his Land Rover.

  55

  “Mike, Mike! What’s going on up there? Are you alright?” Melissa abandoned the call to Stevens so she could try to find out what the new shotgun blasts indicated; she hoped it wasn’t a sign of something bad, though how it could indicate something good, she didn’t know. Her concerns grew the longer she waited for an answer.

  It was almost a minute and a half before Black responded to the radio call, time in which he cowered behind the patrol car, afraid that the slightest move on his part would draw more fire from the murderer. “I’m uninjured, so’s Paul, but I’d hardly say we’re alright,” he said, speaking in as low a voice as he could manage to keep from being overheard. “We’re still using the patrol car for cover.”

  “What were the last couple of shots about?” Melissa asked. “If you’re staying under cover, what was Kieran shooting at?”

  “Us!” Black said. He sounded a little calmer, but there was still a note of alarm in his voice. “I don’t think he was actually trying to kill us – for which he was more than a little grateful – I think he was just trying to get us to keep our heads down.”

  “Is he still in the house?” Melissa still had her mobile phone in her other hand and she could hear from it, faintly, Inspector Stevens’ voice as he demanded to know what was going on.

  There was a prolonged period of hesitation from Black, as he worked up the courage to raise his head above the bonnet of the patrol car, against which he was leaning, so he could look around. He exposed himself for no longer than was absolutely necessary, dropping back down into cover after the briefest of glances. “No, he’s not in the house anymore,” he said quickly into his radio once he was safe again. “He’s in his car. I think he’s getting ready to leave; yes, he’s just started the engine. What do we do?”

  The answer was obvious to Melissa. “Stop him.” After everything Kieran had done, they couldn’t simply hope that the requested backup would arrive before he got away; in her mind that would be tantamount to aiding and abetting his escape.

  “How’re we supposed to do that?” Black wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, any way you can think of,” Melissa told him. She couldn’t believe that she seemed to be the only one capable of thinking of solutions. “Run his car off the road or something.”

  “Don’t do it, Melissa,” Zack said in his most authoritative voice. He realised what the young constable was intending a heartbeat after she dropped her phone and radio and bolted from the living room, and was determined to stop her before she got herself hurt. “Melissa!” He hurried after her, but wasn’t quick enough to catch her before she made it out the front door.

  “What’s going on, what’s she going to do?” Sophie followed her friend, worried and curious, but, like Zack with the constable, was unable to catch up to him before he disappeared through the front door, which he left open.

  Sophie wanted to continue the pursuit, if only to satisfy her curiosity, but stopped when she remembered that Tara Wright was still in the living room; the young girl may have calmed after the ordeal she had gone through that morning, but that didn’t mean she could be left on her own. Frustrated, she left the door ajar and returned to the gloomy living room, where she kept an eye on the teen Zack had saved while listening for anything that might tell her what was going on outside. The boards over the windows annoyed her even more than they had before, because they prevented her having any idea of what was going on outside of the house, as well as requiring them to have the light on, despite it being daytime.

  Zack reached the end of his drive in time to see the patrol car that had been parked to block the narrow road race away. What Melissa was doing was what he would have done were he in her position, but he would have liked her to show a little more caution.

  There was nothing he could do to stop her, however, short of turning into Superman, which left him with just a couple of options: he could remain where he was and watch as Melissa continued up the road on a collision course with the Land Rover that had just left the Wright Farm, or he could give chase on foot and hope that he could somehow limit the potentially fatal disaster he could see looming – he chose the latter option.

  56

  Kieran was astonished to see the patrol car heading up the road towards him as he left the yard. He didn’t know which of the village’s constables was behind the wheel, and he didn’t really car
e, he was more concerned with the fact that there was no space for him to get past the vehicle; if he tried to go to his right he would be stopped by the copse of trees bordering the Harwell Farm, while on his left there was the wall, and the ditch on the other side of it, that separated him from his family’s field.

  His foot lifted from the accelerator momentarily, doing so without him thinking about it consciously, but once he realised what he was doing, he pressed his foot back down so he could speed up.

  He hoped whoever was behind the wheel of the patrol car would lose their nerve, and turn away before there was a collision, after all, his Land Rover was more likely to come out better off. It wasn’t until the last moment, when he saw that it was Melissa behind the wheel, rather than one of the other constables, that he realised the car was not going to turn away; by then it was too late for him to do anything but brace himself for the impact.

  When it came, both quicker than he had expected and with more of a delay – the final second or so before the two vehicles collided seemed to slow until it passed at a fraction of the proper speed, enabling him to take in every detail, right down to the look of grim determination on Melissa’s face – it sent a shock up his arms and made him fly forward, unhampered by the seatbelt he hadn’t bothered to put on, and into the steering wheel.

  It was fortunate that there was not enough time for either vehicle to accelerate to too great a speed, it meant the impact was less severe than it could have been. His chest hurt, as did his arms, but not so badly that he couldn’t move, albeit slowly, and with much muttered cursing.

  Kieran threw open the door at his side and stumbled from the Land Rover; the moment he was on his feet, he looked around to determine where the danger he was sure he had not yet escaped was going to come from next.

  In front of him was the patrol car Melissa had stopped him with, it looked as though it had been welded to his Land Rover. Neither vehicle was going to be moving any time soon, that much was obvious, and from what he could see, Melissa was as stuck as her car; she was struggling to cope with the air-bag that had opened protectively, which he was glad about. Beyond the patrol car was Zack Wild, who was approaching the crashed vehicles slowly and cautiously and, as far as he could see, without a weapon; since that was the case, Kieran dismissed him as a threat.

  When he turned to look back up the road, Kieran saw something that worried him more than either the author or the trapped constable; the second patrol car, carrying the two constables who had come to the farm to arrest him, was creeping towards him. The speed of the patrol car’s approach could not have been more than one or two miles an hour, but he still didn’t like to see it heading his way.

  He reacted to the threat automatically, diving back into the Land Rover, the pain in his chest forgotten, to retrieve his shotgun from the passenger seat. He brought the weapon to his shoulder the moment it was clear of the vehicle and sighted along the barrel at the windscreen of the patrol car.

  Kieran watched as the patrol veered suddenly and sped up, crashing through the wall and into the ditch, though not before the driver’s window shattered under the impact of the double load of shot he had fired. His eyes remained on the crashed patrol car for a moment, until he felt sure the officers in the vehicle were no longer a threat to him. Zack Wild on the other hand, having almost reached the rear of the patrol car Melissa was trapped inside of, was, even if he still appeared to be unarmed.

  Hurriedly, Kieran removed the spent shells from his shotgun and replaced them with fresh ones he dug out from the pocket of his jacket. With his gun reloaded, he reached into the Land Rover to retrieve the bag containing the ‘valuables’ he had gathered from the house, he couldn’t afford to leave that behind, not if he wanted to stand any chance of surviving beyond his escape from the village.

  With the shotgun held awkwardly in one hand, he climbed over the crumpled bonnet of the patrol car and dropped down on the other side. After a quick adjustment to the bag on his shoulder, he approached the driver’s door.

  Melissa was still struggling with the air-bag when Kieran yanked open the door at her side, and she didn’t immediately realise what was going on. By the time she did, he had ripped a hole in the air-bag, deflating it, and reached in to undo her seatbelt. She tried to fight him off as he grabbed her by the front of her uniform blouse and hauled her out of the driver’s seat, to no avail.

  When it became clear that she lacked the strength to fight Kieran off, she used the only tactic she could think of, she went limp. The result of her move was that when she was pulled out of the car she fell to the ground, which forced Kieran to reach down to lift her up; Melissa intended that and took the opportunity presented to her.

  The moment Melissa felt Kieran’s hold on her loosen, she wrenched herself free and surged to her feet. One hand went for the shotgun, while the other went for his face. She was successful in pushing the shotgun away so it couldn’t be used against her, he caught her other hand before she could do any damage to his face, however, and she found herself being spun around and secured in a grip that she found impossible to break free of, despite her best efforts.

  “Get back,” Kieran told Zack Wild, raising his shotgun one-handed so it was pointed in the general direction of the author, while he tightened his other around Melissa to stop her struggles. “I said get back.” He squeezed the first trigger, more to discourage Wild, who was making his way around the rear of the patrol car towards him, than because he wanted to kill him. Despite that, he was disappointed to see that Wild’s sudden dive behind the rear of the patrol car saved him from harm.

  “Give it up, Kieran,” Zack said as he pushed himself up from the ground, in pain from the numerous injuries he had gathered over the past few days, but glad that his reflexes were still sharp enough to keep him from being shot. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”

  Kieran looked around quickly before smiling nastily. “Who’s gonna stop me? You? I’ve got this.” He waved the shotgun. “And I’ve got her.” He indicated Melissa with a nod of his head. “As long as I’ve got these, there’s nothing you can do to stop me, now get outta my way.” He took a step towards the rear of the patrol car and Wild, his grip on Melissa tight enough to stop her escaping, while the muzzle of his shotgun, despite the wavering caused by his one-handed grip, remained pointed at Wild threateningly.

  “Don’t make things worse than they already are,” Zack told the teen, speaking in as reasonable a voice as he could manage – he had never done the negotiator’s course while he was with the police, but he had some idea of how to handle such a situation. “There are armed police on their way to the village, they’ll be here soon, and when they arrive you’ll be caught, or killed if you try and force the issue. Things will go better for you if you surrender now.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Kieran snapped. “Things won’t go better for me no matter what I do. Now back up and give me the keys to one of your cars, I don’t care which one, I just want a vehicle, and whatever money you’ve got on you.”

  Zack grimaced. “I can’t do that,” he said regretfully. He carried on quickly when anger flashed across Kieran’s face. “I haven’t got any money on me, nor have I got my car keys. I don’t even have my mobile on me.”

  Melissa felt Kieran tense through the grip he had on her, and was sure he was about to try to shoot Zack again; she wasn’t going to let that happen if she could stop it, not that she was sure how she could, given how good a job Kieran was doing of restraining her with just the one arm. She knew that working on a farm helped to develop muscles, but she wouldn’t have thought it could make a teen that much stronger than her; no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t even pull an arm free.

  She might not have the use of her arms, which hampered her significantly, but Melissa realised there was something she could do to try and stop Kieran shooting Zack. Hooking her right foot behind Kieran’s leg, she threw herself back into him, while twisting her body to throw his aim off sh
ould he manage to pull the second trigger on the shotgun.

  Zack saw what Melissa was doing and hurried from his position of cover; he closed the distance between him and the two struggling figures as quickly as possible, wanting to reach them before the teen murderer could get control of his captive and his weapon. With one hand outstretched, he caught the long barrel of the shotgun with his left hand and immediately gave it a tug. He had been planning on simply keeping the weapon away from him while he tried to free Melissa, but now he had hold of it he realised it was a better idea for him to disarm the teen.

  Kieran had to think and act quickly when he felt the tug that almost pulled the shotgun from his grasp. He tightened the grip he had on the gun with his right hand, and abandoned his efforts to subdue Melissa with his left, leaving her to fall to the ground, at the same time he took his finger from the trigger – he didn’t want to fire his one remaining shot accidentally, especially when he wasn’t in a position to reload.

  Zack wrenched and twisted at the shotgun with both hands as he sought to disarm Kieran, who he quickly realised was stronger than him, especially in his current wounded condition. His efforts weren’t helped when he stumbled over Melissa, who was in the act of pushing herself to her feet so she could join the struggle. He fell to one knee, and had to let go of the shotgun with his right hand so he could put it down to keep from falling over completely; releasing half his grip on the weapon was the last thing he wanted to do, but the move was automatic.

  Kieran gave the shotgun in his hands a massive tug the moment he saw Zack’s hand leave the gun. He was hoping to wrench it free while Zack was off-balance, so he could turn it on the man and use it as it had been intended. Luck was not with him, however, just as it hadn’t been during the rest of the morning; somehow, Zack managed to keep the shotgun pointed away from his body while he struggled to get back to his feet.