by Nick Oldham
The revolver came up.
Henry threw himself sideways, whilst in the same movement he launched his Maglite torch as hard as he possibly could at the man, not even sure it would connect. He hit the floor hard and a judder of agony shot through him; he felt the whoosh of the bullet just above his head as the silenced round destroyed a sheet of glass in the door panelling behind him. A second bullet slammed into the wall.
What amazed Henry about the shoulder pain as he hit the floor and rolled was that it was indescribable and almost debilitating, and if he’d had the choice he would have remained where he landed and not moved again until the agony had dissipated.
Unfortunately, being shot at by a gunman didn’t give him any time to feel sorry for himself. He had to force himself through it.
He drove himself with an iron will and, ducking behind the staircase where it curved and widened, took the opportunity for one glance.
The gunman had disappeared back into the living room.
Henry did not need any more motivation than that. Holding his shoulder, he sprinted for the door, out through the vestibule on to the front steps, knowing that his only option was to escape and come back with reinforcements, a dead cop being neither use nor ornament to anyone.
He stumbled down the steps on to the gravel, where he lost his footing, tripped and rolled, coming up covered in gravel dust in front of the Fiat. He stayed low, using the cover provided by the cars before veering across the driveway to a row of thick, high rhododendron bushes that lined it. They were taller than him, and dense. He ducked between two, tripping again on a large stone but managing to keep upright, veered right, using the bushes as further cover, and scrambled towards the gates. He did not look back, knowing he had to get off the property and into his car and screech like fuck away.
As he ran he heard a whirring, clanking noise ahead of him – and with dread, realized what this was.
The gates were closing, trapping him in the garden.
Henry crouched low, trying to keep his laboured breathing as silent as possible and at the same time to get a view of the front of Percy’s house from behind the bushes. It was still lit by the floodlights angled up from the ground.
Then, with an audible crack of electricity, the exterior lights went out and the house and garden were plunged instantly into almost impenetrable darkness. As there were no street lights on the lane beyond the grounds, there was no ambient lighting other than from the occasional appearance of a bright, virtually full moon from behind clouds scudding across the night sky.
Henry knew what ‘lights out’ meant.
He had disturbed a killer in the act of murder, a killer who was probably now cursing himself for being so careless as to allow someone else to see his face. And although Henry had only seen it for a very short time, it was imprinted on his mind and he was certain he would be able to ID the man.
Which was bad for Henry.
Because ‘gates closed’ plus ‘lights out’ could only mean that a disturbed killer had one more job to do before leaving the scene: hunt down and kill the remaining witness.
It took a few moments for Henry’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, but even then it was difficult to see through the gloom, a situation not helped by the fact that in his initial panic to escape he had thrown his torch at the gunman, a reflex action. In retrospect, not a particularly rational act, although if it had hit him it could have been the thing that gave Henry just enough time to dive to one side whilst the man was distracted.
Still, Henry admonished himself, right now, a torch would have been very handy.
He swore, squinting to see, but as the moon went behind a heavy chunk of cloud the blackness was almost total. He fished out his mobile phone and hid the illuminated screen with his hand.
Hawke knew his own carelessness had compromised his task tonight and he had learned a great lesson from this for the future: kill and go. That was his usual MO, it had to be said, but tonight he had fallen into the trap of having too much fun and it had backfired somewhat. Because both his victims had assured him that no one else was expected to arrive at the house, he had allowed himself to dawdle – and, of course, someone had turned up. The Brits called it ‘sod’s law’.
A fucking cop. One who had ducked and thrown a torch at him that had been better aimed than his own bullets, having struck him right in the centre of his forehead and gouged open his skin in quite a deep, crescent-shaped cut.
A lucky throw which had stunned him temporarily, made him spin back into the living room. It would be the cop’s only piece of luck that night.
But by the time he stepped back into the hallway, the cop had gone. Hawke rushed to the front door, saw the man enter the cover of the bushes, obviously heading towards the gates. On the wall by the front door was the control button for them and Hawke slapped his palm down on it and saw them start to close. Then he ducked back into the house, sliding his hand down a rack of light switches just inside the hallway, pitching everything into blackness. He ran through to the living room, wiping his own blood off his forehead with his arm, stepped over Percy’s body – no longer twitching – and went to his briefcase, screwed the silencer off the gun for better accuracy and tossed it in the case.
He picked out the other piece of equipment he always carried with him, one of those essential little tools designed to give a killer the edge. He fitted the night vision goggles over his head, clicked them on and adjusted them to fit over his eyes. Suddenly his darkness became green and he could see everything clearly, including the two dead bodies on the floor which still radiated the body heat that the goggles used to work by. He stepped out into the hallway and headed for the front door, out on to the steps.
He was going hunting.
Henry knew he didn’t have the physical ability to scale the high walls of the garden or even clamber over the gate. He would probably have impaled himself on the gate’s spikes anyway. He also knew that since the kidnap threat the tops of the walls had been threaded with strands of barbed wire, but the cops (that meant Henry) had turned a blind eye to this illegality. This meant Henry was walled in on three sides, and the River Wyre made up the fourth side, a natural barrier that was its own fortification.
He had called nine-nine-nine on his mobile phone and been patched through to a police comms operator at Blackpool. As the connection was being made he moved, still crouching low, to what he thought was better cover behind the trunk of a wide oak tree, whilst still trying to keep an eye on the house.
The depth of the darkness made this difficult and for the first time in his life Henry realized that maybe his eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. In fact, all in all, he was becoming a real old crock.
‘Police – how can I help?’
Henry slid down low and quickly explained who and where he was and that he wanted armed patrols to be making their way to Pool Foot Lane urgently … but before he had finished the call, he heard the killer call out to him.
‘I’ll show you mercy if you come out now.’
Henry stopped whispering, ended the call abruptly and shoved his phone back into a pocket to hide the bright screen. He held his breath and hoped they didn’t call him back.
‘You come out right now; otherwise I’ll hunt you down,’ the voice threatened.
Henry swallowed but did not move a muscle, knowing he was hidden by the width of the tree.
‘Just so you know, I’m wearing night vision goggles, so I will be able to see you.’
Only if you’re looking in the right place, Henry thought, because he got the impression that the man’s voice was being projected away from where he was hunkered down.
He heard the crunch of a twig in undergrowth some way across to his right, over by the gates. He turned his head slowly, trying to see exactly where the man was. But he could not, although the sound was perhaps only twenty metres away.
If the killer was telling the truth about the goggles it would only be a matter of moments before he turned to face H
enry and the heat emanating from his body would be picked up by them. All the man had to do was to move slowly and keep scanning from side to side and he would see Henry sooner rather than later.
Henry prayed he was still looking in the wrong direction.
Another sound, another crack. A little further off, Henry thought.
The man was moving away … which didn’t really help Henry … it just prolonged the agony.
The moon suddenly appeared as the cloud broke, casting a silver light across the trees, and Henry saw the silhouette of the man over by the gates, peering through the bars. He could also make out the shape of the gun dangling in the man’s right hand. From its outline, he could see that the silencer had been removed.
Henry looked the other way, towards the river, also lit up by the moon, maybe a hundred metres away, with a boat tied up alongside the small jetty. Percy’s speedboat. And it was clear that the river was high and therefore the tide was in.
Henry rose silently into a starting position. He steadied his breathing – again – and counted down from three. On ‘one’ he sprinted as soundlessly as he could towards the jetty, keeping bent over double, his vision focused, and hoping that the long, wide lawn would not be too slippery because he was wearing totally inappropriate footwear for running, especially across grass. Brown brogues with smooth leather soles were not exactly made for sporting events.
He felt it was going well. Forty metres gone and no sign that the gunman had realized what was going on. The jetty and boat were almost in reach, though he wasn’t remotely certain what his plan was when he got there, just had a vague idea that he would leap on to the boat, fire it up and escape in a spectacular churning wake.
The first bullet skimmed by his right ear a microsecond before he heard the crack of the shot and the shockwave burned past his cheek, the knock-on effect being that he slid, tripped and went face down in the manicured grass. Using his momentum he converted this ridiculous fall into a forward roll and emerged still running for his life.
He kept low, zigzagging, hearing the discharge of another bullet but not feeling it either miss him or, more importantly, hit him.
And then he was pounding down the wooden jetty, running alongside the speedboat and leaping into it, causing it to rock precariously on the water. Henry tried to keep his balance, but staggered across the small deck. He tried to stop himself, but completely miscalculated everything and tipped over the rail at the other side, cartwheeling into the icy, murky water of the river, which was ebbing lethargically.
He went under, inhaling a chestful of the gritty, sand-coloured water, floundered and felt his feet touch the river bed, which was soft mud. Using the strength of his arms and upper body, he forced himself back up to the surface, coughing, spluttering and gasping. The water was in his chest, throat and nose. He gagged, sucked in air and then grabbed the rubbing board on the side of the speedboat and, with a gargantuan effort, hauled himself back over the side, dropping breathlessly on the deck, flopping there like a huge starfish.
He cursed, roused himself to move and scrabbled to the mooring ropes on the port side and yanked them free. Immediately the boat – like a beast sensing freedom – angled away from the jetty.
Henry glanced back and saw the figure of a man lit by moonlight, jogging down the sloping lawn, the easy gait of a hunter who knew his prey was trapped and as good as dead.
Next Henry searched frantically for a starter button or an ignition key. He had really no idea what he was looking for, but guessed that steering a boat could not be that much different from driving a car.
The boat spun lazily in the river.
And the gunman reached the jetty, stopped running and aimed his gun.
Henry ducked instinctively as the bullet smacked into the side of the boat. His hands brushed on a plastic case about the size of a small toolbox.
Another bullet tore into the small boat.
Henry glanced up, saw the man walking with purpose along the jetty. He looked at the box again, flicked the catches on its side and flipped up the lid. It contained four flares and a flare gun; Henry grabbed this and slotted a flare into it.
The boat continued to drift away from the jetty, very slowly, but now far enough to be sure there was no chance of the gunman jumping on board, though it was still close enough for him to take aim and shoot Henry at leisure.
Henry rose on the deck, brought up the flare gun and fired.
Like a heat seeking missile the flare left the muzzle and streaked the forty or so feet across the water towards the gunman – and into him before he could duck and avoid it. He screamed and fell backwards, trying to beat out the burning phosphorous flare that had slammed into him and ignited his clothing. He whirled three hundred and sixty degrees, fighting the fire, then toppled off the other side of the jetty. Henry heard the sizzle as he hit the water and the flames were extinguished.
He lowered the flare gun, only to realize that the speedboat had been sucked into the sluggish but powerful main current of the river and was being dragged westwards with the ebb towards the Irish Sea, about three miles distant. Henry, with no sailing or marine experience whatsoever, found himself at the helm of a boat he didn’t even know how to start.
THREE
For once, Steve Flynn had some spare change in his pocket and a fairly optimistic view of life in general.
It was coming to the end of a good season. The big game fish had run in plenty, the clients had come every day for the past three months and money had changed hands. Flynn and his crew – the very grouchy Spaniard that was Jose and occasionally Tommy, the teenage son of Flynn’s boss – had grafted; some very fine specimens had been hauled up to the boat (then released after being captured on video) and now it was time for a short break in proceedings once this week, the last in September, was over. All three guys were haggard and weary and as much as they loved big game fishing, the trio had had enough of the Atlantic Ocean for the time being.
Jose inspected the fighting chair, rocking it on its hinges, then spat spectacularly over the side of the boat into the marina.
‘Needs fixing,’ he said. ‘Is buggered.’
The thickset Spaniard rattled the chair again to make his point and to attract Flynn’s attention.
Flynn, suntanned to a shade that matched teak, was squinting along the quayside, his eyes shaded from the sun by the peak of his battered baseball cap. He sniffed up, frowned and turned to Jose. ‘Si,’ Flynn said, nodding. He realized the boat, ironically named Lady Faye2 but usually simply called Faye, was due for an overhaul and some TLC. She was as weary as her crew and part of the proposed downtime would include servicing her and sprucing her up for the winter ahead – and repairing the fighting chair, which had taken some real battering recently. ‘It’ll last until the end of the week,’ Flynn said. He wasn’t expecting too much ‘heavy’ business in the next few days, just walk-ons, people who turned up on a whim at the quayside thinking that an exciting trip on a sportfisher was just what was needed, and booked a half or full day charter. Flynn called it the end of season dribble.
That particular day, though, Flynn was expecting two couples who had, yesterday, booked the nine a.m. to three p.m. slot. They had seemed like a nice bunch – not experienced anglers, but Flynn had been looking forward to a pleasant day on the water, showing them the ropes and hopefully hooking them into something worthwhile. There was still a chance of hooking a big marlin, one of the stragglers maybe.
They had seemed keen and paid a deposit, but it was now nine fifteen a.m., they were late and Faye was ready to hit the waves. Their tardiness surprised Flynn. He checked his fake Rolex, frowned again and walked across the extending gangplank from the aft of the boat on to the quayside. He went over to the booking kiosk – in reality nothing more than a garden shed with a sliding window – where day-trippers could book their charters.
The lady sitting inside raised her face and smiled warmly at Flynn. Her name was Karen Glass and working at the kiosk was just a
temporary measure for her. She was leaving at the end of the week to resume her degree at university in the UK, where she was a mature student taking media studies. She and Flynn had got on well for the last three months and maybe could have taken things further, but Flynn had held back. He didn’t want to spoil a good working relationship with the complication of sex and neither did he want anything more than sex, so the two of them circled each other but never closed in for the kill. Besides which, she was his boss’s kid sister.
‘Hi, Flynnie.’
He grinned at her, part of his mind thinking that she only had a few days left in the heat out here in Gran Canaria, so maybe the circle could be closed without any undue heartache. ‘The two couples from yesterday?’ he asked.
Karen’s eyes lifted to the digital clock on the kiosk wall. ‘Oh yeah.’
‘You got their number?’
‘Here somewhere.’ She sifted through the booking forms and found the one.
‘Give ’em a bell, eh?’
‘Will do, skip.’ She saluted him.
Their eyes held for a second longer than absolutely necessary, then she reached for the mobile phone on the counter and started to input the number.
Flynn backed away and stood by the water’s edge, waiting and watching, enjoying the morning warmth of the sun before it got too hot. He had been on Gran Canaria, in Puerto Rico, for nearly nine years now and was pretty much immune to the effects of the sun, but he still enjoyed it – with care. His bronzed skin had been slowly nurtured with lots and lots of thick sunblock and not too much direct exposure to the sun’s rays. He rarely sunbathed, but living out here meant that a tan was inevitable, especially working on a fishing boat.
Faye was moored on the far side of the Puerto de Escala, so that anyone approaching on foot had to walk all the way around the marina to the boat; this also meant that Flynn could watch anyone heading in his direction.
