Stay Alive

by Simon Kernick

  ‘That woman,’ hissed the gunman. ‘The one you’ve just saved. Amanda Rowan. Guess what?’

  Scope didn’t say anything.

  ‘She’s a killer. She killed her husband and my boss’s daughter. Her and someone else. That’s what we wanted her for. To find out who her accomplice was. And now you’ve let her go scot-free, and no one’s ever going to be able to prove a thing against her. Thanks to you, she’s going to get away with murder.’

  ‘How can you be so sure she did it?’

  ‘The murders were meant to be the work of The Disciple. You know, that serial killer who’s been slaughtering couples down south.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Except we know for a fact that The Disciple never killed Amanda Rowan’s old man or my boss’s daughter, because we spent two days torturing him, and he admitted everything except those two murders.’ He coughed and spat on the flagstones before carrying on. ‘It was all a set-up. I almost admire the bitch.’

  Scope rolled his shoulders back, trying to ease the tension in them. ‘I was just trying to save the kids,’ he said.

  The gunman groaned. ‘Christ, it was all such a mess. We were just meant to snatch her and that was that. No one else was meant to get hurt. I didn’t want to kill any kids. I’m not an animal.’

  ‘Tell it to the cops,’ said Scope. ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘No way. I’m not going back inside. I spent too long there.’ With a huge effort, he sat up, using one hand for support.

  Scope had already killed twice in cold blood tonight. He didn’t want to have to do it a third time. Instead, he kicked the gunman in the face, knocking him onto his back, his head hitting the flagstones as he cried out in pain, closing his eyes.

  Scope patted him down to confirm he didn’t have any more weapons, then left him there, confident that he was no longer any threat, and walked over to the farmhouse door. It was time to call the police and give them the latest on what had happened. The thought worried him. If the scar-faced gunman was right, and Amanda Rowan was a killer, then Jess was still in danger, which meant that he needed to get the police to intercept them. He could hear faint sirens in the distance, above the sound of the wind. Christ, what a night it had been. And yet, if he’d had his time again, he wouldn’t have done anything differently, even if it did mean he’d soon be under arrest and on his way to a police station.

  Whether he came out of it again a free man was anyone’s guess.

  He stopped by the body of the big guy and looked down at him. He had a round, pudgy baby face and he looked young, definitely under thirty. What a waste of a life, he thought, even if he had brought it on himself.

  He bent down to pick up his discarded gun and stopped, frowning.

  Because it wasn’t there.

  Fifty

  ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’ asked Amanda over the noise of the Land Rover’s engine.

  Jess nodded weakly in the passenger seat. ‘I think so.’ She didn’t want to look at her leg but she forced herself to. She knew a bit about entry and exit wounds from watching too many seasons of CSI, and she could see that the bigger hole where the bullet had exited her leg was only a couple of inches from where it had gone in. ‘I’m not sure how much damage the bullet did,’ she said, ‘but it’s bleeding a fair bit.’

  ‘We’ll get you help soon.’

  ‘Who was that guy? The one who helped us?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s the one who got involved earlier, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. That was him.’ Jess took a deep breath. ‘God, I can’t believe I almost got killed back there.’ She began shaking in the seat. She’d been hit by a car once while walking home from secondary school. It had been her own fault. She’d been texting someone and had walked right out in front of it. Luckily, it had only struck her a glancing blow and, having convinced the driver she was okay, she’d limped home, only to go into complete shock as she’d put the key in the lock, almost fainting on the doorstep. She had that exact same feeling again now, and it made it difficult to think of anything else. And yet something was bothering her.

  ‘We’ll be in Tayleigh soon,’ said Amanda. ‘Then we can get you to a hospital.’

  ‘What did they mean back there about you killing your husband? I thought it was The Disciple.’

  ‘Of course it was The Disciple,’ said Amanda, giving Jess a smile that looked way too condescending.

  ‘So why have so many people been chasing you then?’

  The smile disappeared. ‘I told you. I’m just a normal woman trying to get over the death of my husband, who wants to be left alone. That’s all.’

  As they drove through the darkness, Jess stared at her, thinking. ‘It’s just I can’t understand why they’d say all that stuff unless they were really sure of it.’

  Amanda sighed. ‘Look, it doesn’t make any difference. They were still wrong.’

  They fell silent for a few moments and Jess decided to let it go. All she wanted now was to be reunited with Casey, and put this whole nightmarish episode behind her.

  Amanda took a deep breath, then another, before slowing the car.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ She pulled up at the side of the road, got out and staggered round the front of the car before bending over in front of a gorse bush, her hands on her knees.

  Jess turned away, feeling nauseous herself. It was still almost impossible to come to terms with everything that had happened today. Her step-aunt and step-uncle were dead. So were many other people. Casey was still missing. And the whole thing centred round one person.

  Amanda.

  The door flew open fast and, before Jess could defend herself, she felt strong hands clamped round her neck, squeezing hard. She tried to struggle but it was as if all the strength in her body was sapping rapidly away and, as she was pushed back into the seat, her vision already blurring, she found herself staring into Amanda’s eyes. But they were different now. The expression in them was cold and determined.

  Jess tried to struggle. She grabbed at Amanda’s arms, tried to get a grip on them, but they didn’t seem to move, and she was choking now, unable to breathe, feeling as if her lungs were going to burst.

  Her last thought was that this was such an unfair way to die, after all she’d been through, at the hands of a woman she’d grown to trust, and then her eyes closed and she lost consciousness.

  Fifty-one

  SCOPE STOOD AT the open front door to the farmhouse, keeping out of sight of anyone who might be inside, listening hard. He could hear a barely audible moaning coming from one corner of the front room, but nothing else.

  He remembered there being two gunmen in the forest earlier, just after he’d killed the one who’d shot at Casey, and he’d now killed them both. But someone had taken the big guy’s gun. There was no doubt about that. Scope had checked all round his body and there was no sign of it. But if there was a third gunman inside, then why hadn’t he taken a shot at Scope when he’d had his back to him?

  But the gun was gone. So someone had taken it.

  He looked back towards the other gunman, but he was still flat out on his back on the concrete.

  Slowly, he crept round the front of the farmhouse and looked through the side window. The room appeared empty but he could just make out a pair of stout legs in a floral dress poking out in front of the sofa. The rest of the woman’s body was obscured by the sofa, but it was obvious she was the one whose moans he could hear. He continued further round until he was staring into the kitchen and the hallway beyond. But again it was empty.

  Knowing he couldn’t leave an injured woman on her own, Scope crept back round and very slowly pushed open the front door with the barrel of the gun, standing off to one side, just in case there was someone there planning to ambush him. Then, when the door was fully open, he took a cautious step inside, keeping his finger tight on the gun’s trigger.

  He now had a view all the way down the hallway to
the end of the house. Confident that there was no one hiding there, he looked round, his gaze falling on the old lady lying on her back. She was a big woman of about seventy with her grey hair tied back in a large bun, and Scope was sickened when he saw that her face was a mass of bruises. Her nose was dripping blood down one cheek and it looked as if it was broken.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said under his breath, lowering the gun and crouching down next to her. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he told her, lifting her arm and establishing that she still had a strong pulse. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’ He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  Her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him, managing a weak smile.

  ‘There’s another one in here,’ she said quietly, her voice a hoarse whisper, the accent local. ‘He’s out the back, and he’s got a gun.’

  Scope nodded and stood up, taking a step towards the door, the gun raised again now.

  He heard movement behind him, as if the old lady was sitting up, and some deep-seated instinct caused him to turn round.

  He just had half a second to process the fact that she was sitting completely upright, holding the missing gun two-handed and pointing it directly at his upper body, before she pulled the trigger.

  Only the fact that he was already reacting and diving to one side saved his life, but the bullet still caught him somewhere in the midriff with a ferocious jolt, as if someone was driving a baseball bat into his ribs, and he fell backwards against an armchair, already aiming his own weapon and pulling the trigger before he even had a chance to think about it.

  Scope’s shot was a lucky one. It caught the old lady in the mouth, sending a fine cloud of blood over the sofa behind her. At the same time, her gun discharged, the bullet ricocheting off the floor and disappearing somewhere behind Scope, and then it slipped from her fingers and her head tilted back until it came to rest on one of the sofa cushions, leaving her staring upwards at the ceiling.

  For a full minute, Scope didn’t move. He’d killed a number of times before, not just in the heat of battle, but also in cold blood, when he’d been avenging the death of his daughter. He’d never, however, shot an old woman, and he was having difficulty coming to terms with what he’d just done. It was surreal. Here was an elderly local woman in a print floral dress, her face battered and bruised as if she’d been the victim of a brutal crime herself, and then, just like that, she’d tried to kill him.

  She’d come close, too. He put his hand on his shirt where he’d been hit and felt the wetness of the blood, before finding the exit wound on the left-hand side of his upper back, just below the shoulder blade. It had left a big hole in his jacket, and he was bleeding heavily. Slowly, taking a deep breath, he stood up, flinching from the pain. It felt as if a couple of ribs had been broken, but thankfully he could still move, although God knew what his insides were looking like. Often it was impossible to tell the seriousness of a gunshot injury for some time after it had been inflicted.

  Still clutching the gun, he staggered into the hallway, spotting a telephone on a chest of drawers next to the staircase. He lifted the receiver and, after only the briefest hesitation, dialled 999, trying hard not to think about the fact that he’d killed five people that night, and that apart from Jess and Casey, who were still far from safe themselves, there was no one out there who could say whether or not he was one of the good guys.

  Fifty-two

  IGNORING THE MOANS from the back of the Land Rover, Amanda checked the phone she’d taken from Jess and saw that at last they had a signal, even if it was just two bars.

  Slowing the car down, she glanced over her shoulder at Jess, who was tied up in the back, her mouth covered with a filthy rag to stop her crying out. It hadn’t been hard to overpower her, especially as Jess was in a weakened state anyway. Luckily for Amanda, whoever owned this old Land Rover Defender had left some interesting bits and pieces in it, including an array of tools, a couple of very new Stanley knives and, best of all, some duct tape. It was almost as if he was planning a kidnap himself.

  Jess’s eyes were open but they weren’t really focusing on anything, and it was obvious she was in no state to free herself.

  Amanda turned back to the road and punched a number she knew by heart into the phone.

  It was answered on the third ring. ‘Where the hell are you?’ demanded her lover. ‘I got here more than an hour ago and you haven’t been answering your phone.’ He sounded worried, which pleased her. She liked to feel she had power over him.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Tell me.’

  So she gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened since she’d left her house at four p.m. that afternoon for her walk.

  ‘God Almighty,’ he said incredulously when she’d finished. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I don’t know how the people chasing me found out about George and Ivana, but the fact is they did.’

  ‘I found out on the way up here that the police found The Disciple’s body yesterday night, and it showed signs of severe torture. I also heard that Ivana Hanzha’s old man may be some kind of gangster,’ he continued, sounding stressed. ‘This could be a real problem. He could be after us for years. Do they know about me?’

  Typical, thought Amanda. After all this time together, he was still more interested in trying to save his own skin than caring about what happened to her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Your secret’s still safe.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t think these people will risk coming after me again. Not after all this. My feeling is that whoever’s responsible will let it go. Then, we’ve just got to keep our heads down, and when the inheritance money comes through, we’ll take off abroad somewhere a long way away.’ Or I will, thought Amanda, because she was beginning to conclude that he was more trouble than he was worth. And, in the end, even after everything that had happened between them, she could never trust him entirely. ‘In the meantime, we’ve got a problem.’

  ‘Christ. What now?’

  ‘One of the girls I escaped with – the older one, Jess. She knows about us. I’ve got her trussed up in the back of the car now.’

  ‘Why don’t you just kill her and dump the body? You don’t want to be caught with her, do you?’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got no gloves, and my DNA’ll be all over the place. You should know the problems of DNA after your fuck-up back at home.’

  ‘Does anyone know she’s with you?’ he asked, ignoring the jibe.

  ‘The guy who rescued us at the farm. He saw us leave together. We’re in his car now. But the last time I saw him, he was in a fight with two of the gunmen, so it’s possible he’s dead.’

  There was a long pause while he thought this through.

  ‘Look, I’ve got an idea,’ said Amanda. ‘She’s injured. She got hit by a bullet. I’ll just say she collapsed, and that I couldn’t get her into the car, so I made her comfortable then went off to get help. No one’ll ever suspect anything, even if they can’t find her. They’ll think some other gunman came and took her. All we have to do is make sure she disappears. You’re at my place now, are you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good. Stay put. I’ll drop her off with you, then drive to Tayleigh Police Station, and tell them all about what happened to me. I’m going the back route and avoiding Tayleigh, so I might be about half an hour.’

  ‘How old’s she?’ he asked, an undercurrent of interest in his voice.

  Amanda had a flash of contempt for him then, knowing he was never going to grow out of his twisted habits. ‘Seventeen, and very pretty,’ she said coolly. ‘Looks a bit like Jessica Ennis. You’ll like her.’

  Fifty-three

  Today 22.41

  MIKE BOLT PARKED the hire car on the road outside Amanda Rowan’s cottage, and he and Mo Khan got out. A full police cordon had been set up over an area of close to ten square miles on the other side of the river, where the shootings were allege
d to have occurred, but the village of Sprey, where Amanda rented her cottage, wasn’t part of it, and DI Sally Miles had reluctantly given the two of them permission to come here in an effort to locate her.

  So far, there was no proof that Amanda was involved. In fact, so far there was no proof that a series of shootings had even occurred. There’d been a second 999 call half an hour earlier from a farm three miles northeast of Tayleigh, reporting further shootings, including possible fatalities. But the caller had already been identified as the same individual who’d made the first 999 call from a house two and a half miles away, and since there’d been no other calls, there was still a great deal of confusion about what, if anything, was happening.

  When Bolt and Mo had left Tayleigh’s tiny police station twenty minutes earlier, only one armed response vehicle had turned up, and the locals were still waiting for further reinforcements to arrive by helicopter from Glasgow and road from Aberdeen, before they were prepared to venture out to the farm, even though the 999 caller had claimed to have been shot and wounded himself. This, Bolt knew, was the way they had to do things these days. Thanks to the incredibly tight rules of health and safety, everything had to be done exactly by the book. Risk assessments had to be taken, and the police would only intervene when it was considered as safe as possible, even if it meant innocent people bleeding to death in the meantime. Nobody liked it, least of all longstanding career cops like him and Mo, who remembered all too well the days when an officer would be allowed to intervene, regardless of the risk to himself.

  Amanda Rowan had still not responded to Bolt’s messages, and he’d tried her landline again ten minutes earlier without success, but he’d got sick of hanging round the police station and, if Amanda turned up at home, he wanted to be waiting for her. She had urgent questions to answer about the deaths of her husband and Ivana Hanzha, and Bolt was certain that if a series of shootings had occurred tonight, they had to be something to do with her.