Dead Man Walking

by Paul Finch

  She pondered this; it went against all her CID instincts, but there was no doubt about the danger they faced. Outside meanwhile, they heard Heggarty’s muffled tones. ‘7438 to Charlie Two, receiving, over?’

  Heck tugged the curtain aside to glance down.

  The tall shape of the rangy bobby was about ten yards from the house. He still held the transmitter to his mouth. In fact, so intent was he on this that he never even heard, much less saw, the hooded form materialise out of the fog directly behind him.

  Heck was fleetingly frozen. Then, as the indistinct figure lifted its left hand to the back of Heggarty’s skull, he jerked to life, shouting a warning, pounding on the glass.

  But it was too late. The gunflash blew off Heggarty’s hat.

  And the top of his head.

  Chapter 14

  ‘Kill the lights!’ Heck shouted, as he charged along the landing, snapping his own torch off in the process. He met Hazel at the top of the stairs. She’d heard the shot and tried to grab hold of him, but he thrust her in the direction of the bedroom. ‘In there with Gemma, lie low …’

  Before she could reply, he was galloping down the stairs and across the darkened lounge towards the open front door.

  For half a second, he expected a black-clad figure to emerge through it, pistol levelled. But Heck reached it first, banging it closed with his shoulder, then scrabbling around for a lock. Rather to his surprise, his fingers alighted on a central bolt, which he rammed home with no difficulty. When he felt around the top of the door, there was one there too, which also moved freely and easily.

  Heck threw himself to one side, flattened against the jamb.

  Even through the thick farmhouse walls, he could hear the whistling. Though he’d been half expecting it, and though he’d heard it so many times before, Strangers in the Night had never sounded so menacing. Yet the song was fading – as if the whistler was already departing the scene. Half a minute later, sweat trickling down his face, Heck risked glancing from the window. Nothing moved out there, though the crumpled form of Dan Heggarty lay where he’d fallen, a dark pool spreading sluggishly around him.

  Heck switched his torch back on, but kept its beam lowered as he crossed the lounge to the stairway passage, passing the staircase itself, and darting from one ground-floor room to the next. Most were dank and uninhabitable, draped in webs and crammed with all manner of aged junk. But currently he was more concerned about their doors and windows, and in the main these were securely locked, including the back door.

  Overall, the house looked secure, though there was no guarantee of that.

  He trotted up the stairs and back along to the bedroom. ‘It’s me,’ he said as he entered. The two women were well away from the window, crouched in separate corners. They waited expectantly while he squatted down. ‘I’m pretty sure Heggarty’s dead.’

  Gemma nodded. ‘His body’s still out there … it hasn’t moved.’

  There was a brief contemplative silence.

  ‘So …?’ Hazel had again been struggling to choke back sobs, but now sounded shocked. ‘You’re just going to leave him?’

  ‘Do you want to go out?’ Heck asked her. ‘The bastard’s probably working on the basis at least one of us will try.’ He mopped a sweaty hank of hair back from his brow. ‘He’s obviously been watching this place closely. Cragwood Vale, Fellstead Grange … he must have done that in order to identify Annie as a possible target.’

  ‘And?’ Hazel wondered again, sensing something else was coming.

  ‘Think about it,’ Heck said. ‘There are two bolts on the front door. They work properly. There’s no sign that door was broken open any time recently. Nor with the back door. I’ve checked all the windows too. They aren’t in brilliant condition, but no one has smashed any of them to get in here.’

  Hazel shook her head. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying whoever this guy is, when he first got in here a couple of days ago, he didn’t have to break and enter.’

  ‘Annie may have left the door unlocked.’

  ‘She may have done,’ Gemma said, picking up on Heck’s thought process. ‘But how likely is that, living all the way out here on her own? Especially given that she was in bed when this attack took place.’

  Hazel looked horrified. ‘You mean there’s another way in?’

  ‘Shit, this is not good.’ Heck’s voice was taut. ‘He’s up here in the hills. Watches Annie pottering around the farm. Sees her coming and going, identifies an entry point. Uses it when Annie’s in bed. Murders her, most likely while she’s asleep.’

  ‘Oh my God …’

  ‘It’s worse, I’m afraid. Somehow or other he knew we’d end up coming up here. Don’t ask me how …’

  ‘And that’s why he left the front door unlocked,’ Gemma interrupted. ‘To get us all into the house.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Heck felt fresh sweat on his brow. ‘To make us fish in a barrel.’

  ‘If you’re right,’ Hazel whimpered, ‘that means he could be here …’

  Heck nodded. ‘I know … now!’

  The door burst open, slamming the wall as a dim figure forced its way through.

  ‘Everyone down!’ Gemma shouted, throwing the shotgun to her shoulder. Heck dived to the floor, dragging Hazel with him. BOOM – the payload spread as it crossed the room, shredding the woodwork to either side of the entrance, and hitting the figure full-on, hurling it backward onto the landing.

  Heck scrabbled after it on all fours, wafting at dust. He levered himself to his feet and flattened his body against the fragmented jamb, angling his head to peek around.

  And seeing something incredible.

  There wasn’t one body lying out there. There were two, one on top of the other.

  The one on top was dead, though it would be more accurate to say it had never lived. It was the mannequin from downstairs. The shotgun blast had broken it in half. One of its arms had become detached. However, the body underneath it was fully intact, and far more animated. Even as Heck watched, it kicked aside what remained of the dummy and lurched quickly to its feet. Heck ducked back into the room, but caught a fleeting glimpse of heavy boots, dark waterproofs, a full-head leather mask, and in its gloved right hand, a six-shooter.

  The bedroom door was only partially intact, and when Heck banged it closed, it came loose around the hinges, which had been mangled by shot.

  ‘The bed! Get me the sodding bed!’

  The women jumped to their feet, though Hazel was too frozen with shock and horror to do much more. She goggled at the sight of Gemma unceremoniously throwing Annie Beckwith’s corpse to the floor, and inserting herself behind the heavy cast-iron bedframe as she tried to shove it across the room.

  ‘Give me a hand!’ Gemma gasped.

  Belatedly, Hazel joined her. The bed screeched forward, its un-wheeled feet chewing through floorboards. Heck added his strength too, and they slid it into place, ramming it against the door – and not before time. Half a second later, there were three detonations, and a trio of holes was punched through the planking. Three corresponding impacts struck the far wall, knocking out fist-sized chunks.

  ‘Heck … I may have killed us here,’ Gemma panted. ‘I wasted our last cartridge.’

  ‘We’re not bloody beaten yet!’ He pivoted around, grabbed at the curtains and yanked them down in a mass of dust and rotted fabric.

  The window beyond was deeply recessed, set into a stone wall that was at least three feet thick. But its four panes of glass, though heavy and grimy, relied on a central cruciform frame that was badly decayed.

  ‘Both of you get down,’ he said, tearing off his jacket and wrapping it around his fist. Behind him meanwhile, the door was assailed. Kicks and blows rained down with anger and exertion, then three more gunshots followed, ripping through the jamb.

  ‘He must have ammo to spare!’ Gemma shouted.

  ‘This whole thing’s been well planned.’ Heck drove his padded fist hard at the window, which
exploded out in a cascade of jangling shards. A few teeth of glass remained in the aged frame, but he knocked these out too. ‘Okay … quickly!’

  Hazel hung back like a frightened rabbit. ‘What … what’s on the other side?’

  He didn’t answer, just grabbed her around the waist, lifted her up and placed her on all fours in the window embrasure, pushing her bottom until she vanished and he heard the double-thud of her feet alighting on a hollow surface.

  ‘You next, Gemma.’

  ‘No … you next,’ she said. ‘I’m the senior rank, and I screwed up. So it’s my arse.’

  ‘It’s your arse I’m thinking about. Be a hell of a shame to lose it.’

  ‘I could say the same about yours … now get out!’

  He leapfrogged into the recess, and scrambled forward on hands and knees, poking his head out and seeing a lower section of slanted roof about five feet below, covered in broken, lichen-covered slates. Hazel was already halfway down it on her backside. She’d shortly reach the eaves, from where it would be no more than a seven-foot drop. Heck scrabbled out in pursuit, landing hands-first on the sloped surface, shattering a dozen more tiles, hearing the woodwork crack underneath, but now rolling sideways, coming up hard against Hazel’s back, causing her to yelp.

  He glanced backward and up. ‘Gemma?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said, appearing in the window. ‘Just go!’

  Heck and Hazel leapt from the roof side-by-side, Gemma following half a second later. Without stopping to talk, they ran forward and away from the house. Heck looked back once, seeing a black aperture where the hatch to an old coal-cellar had been pried open – which clearly explained how the killer had first gained access to the property. Not that there was time to ponder this. They ploughed through icy fog, which seemed even denser than earlier, keeping their torches switched off; the gunman would hear them easily enough without them leaving him a beacon. And yet almost immediately they came unstuck. Within a few dozen yards, they were staggering across strips of ground cordoned by knee-high net-wire fencing, some planted with rows of vegetables, others filled with rubbish and old straw. Beyond these, they stumbled between chicken-sheds and other dilapidated structures which they had to veer around or scrabble over. As such, they lost all sense of direction, only keeping together because they clung on to each other.

  From behind them, there was an echoing thump.

  ‘Front door,’ Heck breathed. ‘He’s coming after us. Keep moving.’

  But now they hesitated. Low sheds lay on all sides. Alleys led in various directions.

  ‘Which way?’ Gemma said. ‘We can’t just run blind. If we come to that beck, or to a scree slope or something, and he’s right behind us …’

  ‘Keep heading away from the house in a straight line,’ Hazel advised, panting.

  ‘How do we know it’s a straight line?’

  ‘As long as all these paddocks and farm structures are here, we know we’re crossing Annie’s farmyard. Most of them are directly behind her house.’

  ‘And then what, Ms Carter?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘There’s a path up into the hills.’

  ‘You mean the Track?’ Heck said.

  ‘No, a smaller one. Annie once told me she didn’t like it when walkers used it, as it brought them down into the corrie behind her house.’

  ‘How steep is this smaller path?’ Gemma wondered.

  ‘It’s just as steep for him as it is for us,’ Hazel replied tartly.

  With no option, they hurried on, coming to a broad thoroughfare of beaten earth running straight through the middle of the allotments.

  ‘This is the main passage across the yard,’ Hazel almost shouted. ‘It leads straight to the hills.’ She took off quickly, the other two hurrying in pursuit.

  ‘And what do we do when we get up into these hills?’ Gemma asked Heck quietly. ‘How is that going to help us exactly?’

  ‘Hazel’s a local,’ he answered. ‘She knows her way around.’

  ‘She’s a pub landlady, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s been up here thirty-eight years, whereas I’ve been here two and a half months, and you’ve been here … what, four hours? And what’s all this “Ms Carter” stuff? I think she’d prefer Hazel.’

  ‘And I’d prefer it if you weren’t so bloody close to her. We’re doing a job here, not playing out some romantic melodrama.’

  ‘Hey … she’s just found a friend dead and now she’s being chased by a madman. So cut her some bloody slack, eh!’

  ‘Watch your tone, sergeant …’

  ‘I don’t need to watch anything. I’ll defer to your rank … ma’am. But as I’m the one with operational command, you’re not my bloody gaffer. Or anything else.’

  But five minutes later, when they slid through another stile and found themselves on a path that ascended sharply, mainly by forming switchbacks through heaps of fallen slate, he began to wonder.

  ‘Hazel … where are you taking us?’

  ‘I told you … the hills.’

  ‘Where in the hills?’

  ‘Anywhere away from Fellstead Grange, don’t you think?’

  ‘This is great,’ Gemma said. ‘If we’d stopped and thought, we could probably have worked our way back to the Track, and then it would all have been downhill.’

  ‘You think we’d have made it, Superintendent Piper?’ Hazel wondered as they tottered upward. ‘We’d have had to go right past the house. What if he’d intercepted us there?’

  ‘He probably wouldn’t even have seen us,’ Gemma retorted.

  ‘That’d be a gamble,’ Heck said. ‘He hasn’t had a problem seeing us so far.’

  Gemma glanced sideways at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ll be honest, I’m thinking thermal imaging …’

  ‘Dear God!’ Gemma said. ‘If he’s got something like that, he can spot us up here on the fell-side as easily as he could down in the farmyard.’

  ‘Agreed. So we’ve got to get a move on …’

  Renewed fear fuelled their uphill flight. Lungs working like bellows, muscle-blood pumping hard, they continued up a path which in some sections was more like a stepladder, ascending tier after tier of broken ground, tripping on ruts and loose stones. To make life worse, the path branched several times. On each occasion Hazel dithered, uncertain of the route, but Heck always urged her on. Once they were past the aprons of scree, the fell-side steepened to the point where it became impassable, the path meandering sideways, a ledge hanging above a mist-filled abyss. They scrambled along it in single file, all the while thinking how badly exposed they were, how their foe might be scoping the fog with some hi-tech device. Abruptly, they slid to another halt. Hazel, who was at the front, slammed her torch on.

  ‘Ms Carter, that’s not a good idea!’ Gemma said.

  ‘I need to,’ Hazel replied. ‘We’ve already passed so many of these, I don’t know where we are anymore.’

  The path had branched again, the right-hand route tilting back downhill, the left-hand route ascending sharply.

  ‘Which way?’ Heck said.

  ‘I’m thinking …’

  ‘Which bloody way?’

  ‘Stop rushing me, Mark … we could have gone wrong half a dozen times already.’

  He glanced over his shoulder. The torchlight limned the vapour with a near-phosphorescent glow. Nothing stirred. He strained his ears, but all he initially heard was the wheezing of his own breath, the thunder of blood in his ears.

  ‘Left,’ Hazel decided.

  ‘Uphill again?’ Gemma said wearily.

  ‘We go back down into the corrie, he could be waiting there for us.’

  ‘Not if he’s chased us up the path.’ Gemma glanced around at Heck. ‘Any sign we’re being followed?’

  Heck motioned for quiet. Still they heard nothing, which gave them no clue either way. It might be the madman was down there somewhere, watching, waiting for them to re-descend. On the other hand, he could
have prowled up after them, and even now was stealthily encroaching.

  ‘If we keep going uphill, we make it harder for him,’ Hazel said, snapping off her torch. ‘Besides, you ever tried running down a scree-track in the dark?’

  ‘No disrespect, Ms Carter,’ Gemma said. ‘But we need a better plan than this. We know he’s been up in these fells before. He may know them like the back of his hand, he may be perfectly kitted out for them. But we aren’t.’

  Hazel considered this. For several seconds, all Heck could hear was the declining rate of her breath. It was undeniable that plunging endlessly on into this blind, frozen wilderness would gain them no obvious advantage when they had no clue who their pursuer actually was, or even whether he was anywhere near – though that latter issue was resolved half a second later when they heard a scraping of slate on the path behind, and then a casual, tuneful whistling.

  As always, it was Strangers in the Night.

  They stood rigid. Thanks to the crazy mountain acoustics, he could still be over a hundred yards away. Alternatively, he might be much closer.

  Heck pushed the women forward. ‘Go, go …’

  ‘Which way?’ Hazel moaned.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, just go …’

  She took the left-hand path, heading to higher ground again. They were no longer concerned about noise. It was impossible to move quietly anyway. Loose slate clattered under their feet as they grunted and groaned their way up a zigzagging path that was so steep it might have been designed for goats. Only after ten minutes did it level out again, though now the ground ramped up both to the left and right of it, forming a gully. They ran on regardless. Soon walls of sheer rock hemmed them in from either side. After a few minutes, Heck, who was at the rear, stopped to listen – perhaps in some vain hope that merely keeping going would have been enough to put their pursuer off. It was amazing how quickly the clamour of Gemma and Hazel running on ahead faded. But it was equally amazing how the sound of someone advancing up the path behind them – heavy breathing and stumping footfalls – grew.