by Jane Adams
‘That would be nice, but what we’d really like to do, if it’s not too much bother is to check your basement.’
Jake filled the kettle from the kitchen tap, his back to both the men. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask them where their warrant was. Instead he lied as smoothly as he could. ‘I’m sorry, officer, but I don’t have a basement here.’
He plugged the kettle into the socket and began to turn, then saw that what he’d taken for a list in the policeman’s hand were house agents’ details — a photocopy of the write-up he’d seen when first he’d come looking at the house.
‘It says here, sir, that this house has a full-sized basement. Have you had it sealed or filled in?’
The lunchtime washing up was still stacked on the draining board, including the sharp knife Jake had used. It was more impulse than thought that made him snatch it and he lunged forward, then slashed across the body of the nearest man, the blade catching the man’s sleeve and deflecting upward, opening his cheek. Then he was out of the kitchen door and into the narrow hall.
* * *
Mike took Peterson’s call just after leaving the road-block.
‘It could be nothing, Mike. We’ve had two false ones already and brought them in, but it’s not going to amount to much.’
Mike took the reference and checked it against his own map. He was about five miles away. ‘On my way,’ he said.
He ran to his car, shouting at Macey to join him.
‘It might be nothing,’ he said, ‘but it’s the best fit we’ve had so far.’
He’d slammed into gear and taken off before Macey had time to fasten his seatbelt.
‘You think this is it?’ Macey asked him. ‘God Almighty, do you always drive like this?’
Mike didn’t trouble to answer, too intent on taking a thirty-mile bend at twice that speed. Macey too fell silent, thinking about Charlie Morrow and visualizing his next by-line.
* * *
It took Jake only seconds to descend the basement steps and unlock the cellar door. The gun he’d used earlier had been propped beside it, left loaded but broken. Jake snapped it closed and then he was inside, with Charlie at gunpoint, and heading back towards the stairs.
The uninjured officer met him three steps from the top, and then he saw the gun.
‘Back off,’ Jake ordered him. ‘I can kill this one and still have another barrel left for you.’
They moved slowly to the top of the steps, the gun pressed close against Charlie’s spine. The other officer, his hands raised, was trying to talk Jake down.
‘This is no good, sir. Lower the weapon. I’ve called for reinforcements.’
‘And they’ve a bloody long way to come, haven’t they, officer?’
They were going to die, Charlie thought, and Jake was going to get away again.
The idea that Jake should escape free and clear suddenly enraged Charlie Morrow. That he could go on killing and maiming and destroying people’s lives. He had to take a chance.
They were almost at the kitchen door now, the hallway cramped and overfull with the three of them. One police officer had backed up and gone through the kitchen door when Charlie made his move. He dropped and turned, came up with his hands reaching for the gun, deflecting the shot at the moment Jake fired. The two men fell, Charlie on top of Jake, struggling for control, but the younger man was stronger and he still had possession of the gun. He hit out with the rifle stock, catching Charlie’s shoulder a glancing blow, and forcing him aside. Jake rolled forward, twisting his body as Charlie struggled once more to gain control. Then Jake had pinned him down, was sitting astride his legs with the gun raised and pointing straight between Charlie’s eyes. Charlie thrust upward with both hands, praying to deflect the shot before he fired, but the expected explosion of sound and pain never arrived.
A look of shock spread across Jake’s face and he fell forward, the knife he had used to slash the policeman’s face wedged deeply in his back.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It seemed a long time before anyone arrived and when they did it was all at once. Patrol cars screaming down the lane, a helicopter hovering above them. Armed police emerging from ploughed fields, sprung from some lunatic effect-artist’s dream.
Charlie had led the other officer outside, after helping him to get his injured colleague from the house and fetching the first aid kit from the police car. They sat in the garden, Charlie doing his best to clean the face wound and stop the bleeding.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he said hopefully. ‘A bit of a scar, maybe, but that’s all.’
He saw the other man studying his face and then pulling his gaze away, embarrassed. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. A macho man, trying not to cry.
The sun was hot on their backs but the young man who had killed Jake Bowen shivered as though freezing cold.
‘What’s your name?’ Charlie asked him.
‘George, George Mitchell. What will happen next?’
He was still a child, Charlie thought, and, now it was all over, very scared.
‘You did what you had to do,’ Charlie told him. ‘No one can tell you anything else, believe that.’
‘I feel sick, and look at me, I’m shaking like a bloody leaf.’
‘You and me both,’ Charlie said. ‘You been in the force long?’
George Mitchell managed a weak half-smile. ‘Six months out of my probationary year,’ he said. ‘God, what a start.’
Charlie laughed. Yeah, what a start, he thought, and it was far from over yet. There’d be the inquiry, the immediate suspension from duty, the debriefing and the counselling, and George’s slow realization that he had killed a man.
‘We’ll get through it,’ Charlie told him. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll get through.’
The first of the police cars arrived then, their sirens screaming through the still air. There was an ambulance, with its flashing blue light, and people everywhere, shouting instructions and running across Jake’s close-clipped lawn. They broke around Charlie and the others like a flood. The injured officer was led away. Someone was trying to organize the chaos of parked and now wedged cars, and the armed officers were being stood down and lounging in the garden, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
A senior officer came and took George Mitchell aside, quietly encouraging him to tell his story, easing him back into a system that had its own rules and its own closed door.
Charlie didn’t feel a part of that any more. He ignored their questions and their anxious looks, and the ambulance man who said he was in shock and needed medical attention. It was all suddenly so alien to Charlie Morrow. Now Jake was dead, he didn’t feel a part of anything.
He was standing on the cliff, looking out to sea, when Mike Croft arrived. He had Macey with him and Charlie took a moment to wonder how Macey had wangled that.
‘Charlie! You OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just fine.’
As he watched, a cormorant skimmed lazily above the ocean, the same one that Jake had watched so many times. It was, Charlie thought, an inspiring sight, something unchanged for generations and still going on.
‘You ever thought about what it would be like to stand here with the wind in your face and the sun on your back and then just let it go? Step over the line?’
‘Charlie?’ Macey’s voice was scared and Charlie felt a hand gripping his arm.
‘It’s all right, Macey, I’m not going to jump.’
He turned away, let Macey lead him back from the edge.
‘Too earthbound, Macey,’ Charlie said. ‘I never learned to fly.’
Afterword
Three weeks to the day after Jake Bowen’s death Julia’s body was finally released to her parents, and that same morning Alastair Bowen was accepted back by the community of St Bartolph’s Church. He was to be cremated that afternoon, but Mike had decided not to remain for that.
He had attended the brief funeral service as the police representative, selected
because he had most contact with the man during those last few days.
There were few people there, the media being kept outside and only a handful of folk wanting to be openly acknowledged as Alastair’s friends sitting with him in the church. Alastair had left instructions in his will. No flowers and no hymns, just a few words spoken by a cleric who had never known him and whose eulogy could have been for anyone.
It was a sad end, Mike thought, and he was glad when it was over and he could slip away.
Outside, the press was there in force, but Mike was not the main focus of their interest. That was reserved for those who had known Alastair in life and were less able to brush the questions aside with official words. Mike was soon back in his car and ready to go.
He sat back in the driver’s seat and reached for his mobile phone. Maria’s number was first in the memory.
‘It’s all finished then?’ she asked him.
Alastair’s funeral, yes, but there was so much yet that wasn’t over. There’d be the inquest, and the internal inquiries into what could have been managed better and what lessons had been learned. And then there was Essie. She was healing well, the memories hazed by the sedative Jake had given her, but Mike knew it was likely to be months before Jo would so much as speak to him again. She was depressed and paranoid, unable to let either of her children out of her sight. The nightmares were a torture when she slept and the waking memory pervaded every conscious hour. Jake Bowen had left a terrible legacy.
‘Are you still there?’ Maria asked him, he had been silent for so long.
‘Yes, I’m still here. I was thinking, that’s all.’
‘There’s a lot to think about.’
‘Can I see you tonight? There’s something I want to ask and I can’t say it over the phone.’
She sounded surprised. ‘Pick me up, seven thirty. We’ll go and eat somewhere.’
They finalized arrangements and Mike switched off his phone, smiling to himself. In his pocket was a ring, an emerald, because Maria liked them, and as he started the car to drive home Mike was hoping she would say yes.
THE END
MIKE CROFT SERIES
Book 1: The Greenway
Book 2: The Secrets
Book 3: Their Final Moments
Book 4: The Liar
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Glossary of English Slang for US readers
A & E: Accident and emergency department in a hospital
Aggro: Violent behaviour, aggression
Air raid: an attack in which bombs are dropped from aircraft on ground targets
Allotment: a plot of land rented by an individual for growing fruit, vegetable or flowers
Anorak: nerd (it also means a waterproof jacket)
Artex: textured plaster finish for walls and ceilings
A Level: exams taken between 16 and 18
Auld Reekie: Edinburgh
Au pair: live-in childcare helper. Often a young woman.
Barm: bread roll
Barney: argument
Beaker: glass or cup for holding liquids
Beemer: BMW car or motorcycle
Benefits: social security
Bent: corrupt
Bin: wastebasket (noun), or throw in rubbish (verb)
Biscuit: cookie
Blackpool Lights: gaudy illuminations in seaside town
Bloke: guy
Blow: cocaine
Blower: telephone
Blues and twos: emergency vehicles
Bob: money
Bobby: policeman
Broadsheet: quality newspaper (New York Times would be a US example)
Brown bread: rhyming slang for dead
Bun: small cake
Bunk: do a bunk means escape
Burger bar: hamburger fast-food restaurant
Buy-to-let: Buying a house/apartment to rent it out for profit
Charity Shop: thrift store
Carrier bag: plastic bag from supermarket
Care Home: an institution where old people are cared for
Car park: parking lot
CBeebies: kids TV
Chat-up: flirt, trying to pick up someone with witty banter or compliments
Chemist: pharmacy
Chinwag: conversation
Chippie: fast-food place selling chips and other fried food
Chips: French fries but thicker
CID: Criminal Investigation Department
Civvy Street: civilian life (as opposed to army)
Clock: punch
Cock-up: mess up, make a mistake
Cockney: a native of East London
Common: an area of park land/ or lower class
Comprehensive School (Comp.): High school
Cop hold of: grab
Copper: police officer
Coverall: coveralls, or boiler suit
CPS: Crown Prosecution Service, decide whether police cases go
forward
Childminder: someone who looks after children for money
Council: local government
Dan Dare: hero from Eagle comic
DC: detective constable
Deck: one of the landings on a floor of a tower block
Deck: hit (verb)
Desperate Dan: very strong comic book character
DI: detective inspector
Digestive biscuit: plain cookie
Digs: student lodgings
Do a runner: disappear
Do one: go away
Doc Martens: Heavy boots with an air-cushioned sole
Donkey’s years: long time
Drum: house
DS: detective sergeant
ED: accident and emergency department of hospital
Eagle: boys’ comic
Early dart: to leave work early
Eggy soldiers: strips of toast with a boiled egg
Enforcer: police battering ram
Estate: public/social housing estate (similar to housing projects)
Estate agent: realtor (US)
Falklands War: war between Britain and Argentina in 1982
Fag: cigarette
Father Christmas: Santa Claus
Filth: police (insulting)
Forces: army, navy, and air force
FMO: force medical officer
Fried slice: fried bread
Fuzz: police
Garda: Irish police
Gendarmerie: French national police force
Geordie: from Newcastle
Garden Centre: a business where plants and gardening equipment are sold
Gob: mouth/ can also mean phlegm or spit
GP: general practitioner, a doctor based in the community
Graft: hard work
Gran: grandmother
Hancock: Tony Hancock, English comedian popular in 1950s
Hard nut: tough person
HGV: heavy goods vehicle, truck
