A Time For Justice hc-1

by Nick Oldham

  ‘ Anyone hurt?’ Henry called out.

  ‘ Nope.’

  ‘ Good.’

  Then he couldn’t believe his eyes when Hinksman, apparently uninjured, crawled out through the space where the windscreen had once been, and sprinted away.

  Henry was only feet behind. He was almost near enough to lay a hand on Hinksman’s shoulder.

  They ran behind a pub. Hinksman leapt over a low fence, closely followed by Henry.

  ‘ I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ Henry said to the beat of his running pace.

  Suddenly they found themselves on the edge of the outer dock wall. On their right was a fifteen-foot drop into the fast-ebbing, brown-coloured, swirling water of the River Lune.

  Henry was gaining on Hinksman all the time. He was feeling confident. Hinksman, in turn, seemed to be slowing down; perhaps he was injured, after all.

  Then without warning, Hinksman stopped, spun round on the spot with the agility of a soccer centre forward. The move caught Henry completely by surprise and before he could stop himself he ran right into Hinksman’s arms.

  Hinksman brought a knee up into Henry’s testicles and rammed them home. Pain seared through his groin and he doubled up, letting go of the American. Hinksman then punched Henry in the back of his head and Henry dropped to the ground.

  Hinksman turned and was about to run, but Henry was not having that. Despite the pain he reached out and grabbed an ankle with both hands, catching Hinksman off-balance, bringing him crashing face-down to the ground. Henry fell on top of him, trying to pin him there for as long as possible. Surely assistance could only be moments away?

  But Hinksman was strong, agile and dangerous.

  He elbowed Henry in the ribs, causing him to release his grip, and both men rolled towards the edge of the dock, clutching at each other.

  In a flash of speed Hinksman was on top and Henry’s head was dangling over the edge.

  ‘ Hold it,’ came a voice. Assistance, Henry thought with relief.

  Hinksman glanced up. Then he looked down at Henry, smiled and said, ‘Let’s go together.’ With one final surge he took both of them off the edge of the dock into the river below.

  They separated as soon as they hit the water, pulled apart with such incredible icy force that they were powerless to resist.

  Henry struck out ferociously with his arms and legs in a desperate panic to remain on the surface. It was a futile attempt. He was drawn under with terrifying ease and he knew he was going to die. He clamped his mouth shut in an attempt to keep his lungs clear of water. He found it impossible. The dirty river water cascaded down his nostrils instead, making his mouth open in a gasp, then swallowing what seemed like the equivalent of a bucketful of gritty water into his stomach and lungs. It felt as if it was filling his head too. His body was twisted and turned, stretched, slewed and squashed, thrown around like a piece of clothing in a spin drier.

  All in blackness. Everything freezing cold.

  He knew he would be dead very soon. If not from straightforward drowning, then from the numbing cold of the river. It was pointless to make any effort. He might as well give up. To struggle would achieve nothing.

  Suddenly he was spat up to the surface.

  Air shot down his gullet — sweet, sweet air. His eyes opened. He saw that he was in mid-channel, surging with the tide towards Morecambe Bay and the open sea beyond. He could see the open dock-gates of Glasson about 150 metres away. Several figures were looking out at him.

  He tried to shout but his voice was lost in the heavy wind and rain. A vortex twisted him round 180 degrees. Now he was looking at the opposite bank of the river, about 120 metres off.

  A second later the invisible hands of a current dragged him under again.

  This pull was long and strong and he couldn’t fight it. He never expected to come up from it. He seemed to be under for ever, yet only seconds later he was on the surface again, looking towards the riverbank which appeared much nearer, about 50 metres away.

  The water covered him again, this time with less force.

  Even so, he was cold, weak and helpless.

  Yet he began to fight it. Because he had something to fight for — to find Kate. He couldn’t leave the world not knowing. This time he rose to the surface from his own inner strength and there was no panic in his struggle. A rush of power coursed through him like an elemental driving force. He fixed a point on the bank and began to use long, strong, methodical strokes, and utilising the general direction of the flow, struck out towards the bank which was now even closer.

  The mud of the riverbank was deep, brown, sticky and smelly. But to an almost completely exhausted Henry Christie it was as glorious, beautiful and welcome as a tropical beach. One last push and he was out of the water.

  He was alive.

  Coughing and retching, he crawled out of the river on all fours. He rose slowly to his feet and stumbled a few steps before weakness felled him face-down into the mud again. He was completely covered in it now, brown from head to toe like a wallowing hippo. But he didn’t care. He was out of the water, alive, and more or less kicking.

  With a great effort he rolled onto his back, too weak to move any further, lying there, gasping for breath, feeling the rain splatting onto his face. He began to shiver, but he’d already decided that, despite the risk of hypothermia, he was going to lie there until he was rescued. He closed his eyes and began to cough.

  There was a clicking noise near his face.

  Henry looked up into the muzzle of a revolver pointed between his eyes.

  Donaldson was holding the binoculars so tightly to his eyes that they were beginning to hurt the sockets. There was a leak in them too, which didn’t make it any easier, and the lenses were steaming up.

  ‘ Fuck this rain,’ he blasted. ‘Can’t see a damn thing properly.’

  He could make out the two figures on the opposite bank about a mile away, one standing above the other. But that was all. They were just stick men on a drawing. He knew one was Henry, knew one was Hinksman, but couldn’t tell which was which.

  He swore again and looked round as a rifle marksman trotted up beside him.

  Henry let his head drop back into the mud with a ‘plop’.

  ‘ Christ,’ he gasped, ‘I hoped you’d drowned.’

  ‘ Take more than a trickle of water to get rid of me,’ said Hinksman.

  He was also covered in mud, was panting heavily, and coughing up mud and water.

  Though very tired too, the one big advantage he had was that he was holding a gun and pointing it at Henry. The gun was coated in thick mud too, but Henry had no illusions about this. He knew it would probably still fire and wasn’t about to take any stupid risks on the off-chance.

  Hinksman wiped the gritty mud from his eyes and mouth. ‘Well, last time we were together like this, the roles were reversed. So, Henry, how does it feel to have a gun pointed at you?’

  ‘ I love it.’

  ‘ Yeah, I’ll bet you do, asshole,’ sneered Hinksman.

  ‘ So what are you going to do? Kill me, like you killed all the other innocents?’

  Hinksman shrugged. ‘Innocent bystanders get killed occasionally. That’s just the way it is, Henry. But I haven’t got time to get into that debate now. So, Henry, here we are — just you and me. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Just us two, alone. I’d better watch myself… you’re a pretty dangerous guy. We got lots in common, you an’ me.’

  ‘ Oh, I doubt it,’ said Henry. He started to sit up.

  Hinksman took a step backwards. His foot sank in the mud and he nearly overbalanced. ‘Don’t you fucking try anything, or I’ll just kill you now!’ he warned.

  ‘ All I’m doing is sitting up, OK?’ Henry said. ‘Y’know, I really do think you’re afraid of me.’

  ‘ In your dreams, chum. You couldn’t scare a kid shitless.’

  Henry looked across the river to Glasson Dock. He could see the tiny figures on the dock wall. Help seemed a long wa
y away.

  ‘ They can’t do nothing for you, Henry. It’s just you and me — and our common interests.’

  ‘ We’ve nothing in common,’ Henry stated. He drew his knees up and folded his arms around them. He was really shaking now, both with cold and fear. His voice had begun chattering as he spoke.

  Henry felt his gun hanging in the holster under his left armpit. For the first time he realised it was still there and Hinksman obviously didn’t know about it.

  ‘ Oh, but we do. For example, we’ve both fucked the same woman. Kate. Lovely lady. Lovely, lovely lady.’

  Henry’s chill disappeared, to be replaced by a burning heat throughout his lower abdomen. The look in his eyes changed from fear to anger, then to danger.

  ‘ She’s putting on a bit of weight around the thighs and midriff. But she’s a nice, really nice woman. At least she was until she met me, then she became debauched, a real animal. Do you know, I couldn’t believe you’d never had anal sex before. That really surprised me in this day and age.’

  ‘ You bastard,’ Henry hissed. Very deliberately he laid the palm of his left hand over his right bicep and jacked up his right fist.

  ‘ I know, I admit it. I’ve done a lot of very bad things to her, Henry. Very bad indeed… but your colleagues in that big blue van have done something even worse, by ramming me off the road.’

  ‘ How do you fathom that?’

  ‘ They killed her,’ he said with a fake note of surprise in his tone.

  ‘ You see, she was in the back of the van. You mean you didn’t know? Trussed up like a chicken, naked as a jaybird an’ all that, but definitely alive — until they forced me off the road, that is. I gotta quick glance at her before I climbed out. Real mess. Head all smashed in. She looked pretty dead to me, pretty fuckin’ dead. And your pals did it. Not me, not me, Henry.’

  ‘ You liar.’

  ‘ Now why in hell would I lie at a time like this?’

  Henry thought numbly, And I told them to ram him off the road.

  Shoot the one who’s standing up,’ Donaldson said to the marksman. ‘That’s Hinksman, I’m sure of it. One hundred per cent.’

  ‘ How do you know?’

  ‘ I know. Trust me. Shoot him.’

  ‘ No, I can’t,’ stuttered the marksman, cracking under the pressure of a real-life situation. ‘It wouldn’t be reasonable force. I’d have to justify it in court.’

  ‘ So? Fuck me! He’s pointing a gun at your colleague. Last time he did that he pulled the trigger and killed the poor son of a bitch. Now shoot him before he does it again.’

  ‘ No, I won’t.’

  ‘ What is it with you English cops, for Christ’s sake?’ Donaldson screamed through the torrential rain. ‘A pal of yours is being threatened by a maniac with a gun who’s killed before and you’re discussing what you might have to say in court. I don’t believe this! Just pull the fucking trigger.’

  ‘ No, I can’t. I couldn’t guarantee a hit at this range and in these conditions anyway.’

  Donaldson looked down pityingly at the marksman and made a decision. ‘Sorry about this, pal,’ he sighed and looked at the point just behind the man’s right ear.

  ‘ In fact, I’ve changed my mind, Henry. I’m going to let you live. Killing’s too good for you. If I kill you, you’ll only suffer for a few more seconds and I’d rather you suffered for the rest of your life, knowing that the police killed the one you loved — after I’d raped her, that is. So stay where you are, Henry, and don’t come after me otherwise I will shoot you.’

  He turned and began to walk across the mud towards the road. Henry felt for his gun under his anorak. As he drew it he rose to his feet. He pointed it at the back of Hinksman’s head, steadying it on the palm of his hand.

  ‘ Stop there. You’re under arrest again. Drop your weapon — NOW!’ Hinksman froze. Then turned slowly around, gun in hand. When he was half-facing Henry, a smile broke out under the facial mudpack.

  ‘ I should never have underestimated you,’ he admitted, shaking his head.

  ‘ No, you shouldn’t. You should’ve killed me when you had the opportunity, because I wouldn’t have ever given up on you. I’d have chased you to the end of the earth, and we’d have ended up in this position again.’

  ‘ I believe you, Henry.’

  ‘ Now drop the gun and put your hands up. As you can see, my gun isn’t shaking this time, and if you give me any cause whatsoever, I’ll shoot you dead and feel good about it.’

  ‘ Well, you’ve certainly got the drop on me this time.’ Hinksman’s gun came up quickly.

  Henry was hoping it would. He was ready, didn’t hesitate. He fired a double tap. Bam-bam!

  At the same time as his two bullets drilled into Hinksman’s neck and chest, the large-calibre bullet from the rifle entered his face just below his right eye, removing the whole of the back of his head.

  It seemed a long time before the crack of the shot caught up with the bullet from across the river.

  The Bucar was discovered at 9 a.m. two days later, parked on a grassy knoll alongside a lake near to the main entrance to Florida International University, about ten miles from downtown Miami.

  A campus cop had driven slowly past it a couple of times on his rounds and eventually decided to ticket it for being illegally parked.

  He strolled up to it, unfolding his ticket pad whilst whistling and chewing. He had almost completed writing the ticket before he actually glanced inside the vehicle. Something unusual caught his eye: a hand on the passenger seat. On closer inspection he saw that the hand was attached to the arm of a body which was doubled up into the front passenger footwell, as though neatly folded into place.

  The cop stopped whistling, dropped his pad and his gum fell out of his mouth. Then he saw the other two bodies laid on top of each other behind the front seats.

  He did what a good cop should have done: sealed the scene and called for backup — after he’d finished vomiting.

  The first detective on the scene was Ram Chander.

  He strolled up to the Bucar and looked inside at the three bodies. ‘I got a gut feeling about this one already,’ he admitted to the campus cop. ‘I bet we get nowhere with it.’

  Epilogue

  Amongst his many failings, Henry Christie acknowledged that his greatest was that he was not a romantic at heart. In all his married life he had never regularly bought flowers, gifts nor cards for Kate, other than at her birthday or Christmas. Valentine’s Day merely passed him by; their wedding anniversary was just another date on the calendar. He had expected her to take his love for granted and that, he now saw, was probably one of the many reasons why their marriage had run into difficulties.

  Now he was making up for lost time.

  Whilst Kate had been in hospital he had showered her with flowers, cards and gifts, and continually let her know what he felt about her.

  She had spent four weeks in hospital, the first six days in intensive care with major, possibly life-threatening injuries.

  On her discharge she’d spent further weeks convalescing at home in Henry’s care. He had taken special leave and with the assistance of Jenny and Leanne — whom he allowed to stay off school for the purpose — and a district nurse, Henry gentled her back to health.

  When she was fit enough, he did what he thought was the most romantic thing he’d ever done — booked a second honeymoon and arranged for the kids to stay with their grandparents.

  They watched the blazing sun disappear quickly into the Mediterranean. There was no moon, just blackness and a warm breeze. Both were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, nothing on their feet but the fine golden sand which filtered through their toes. They held hands.

  The beach was deserted.

  Henry felt euphorically happy.

  They hadn’t said anything for a while, but it was a contented silence.

  ‘ That was a beautiful sunset,’ Kate said.

  ‘ I cannot disagree.’

  She sq
ueezed his hand. He bent over and kissed her briefly on the lips, but the brief kiss became a lingering, wet, exploring one, sending a charge of excitement through both of them. It was like their first real kiss.

  When they broke apart, Henry said, ‘I love you.’

  ‘ Mmm,’ she murmured happily, a wide grin on her face.

  They began to walk slowly down the beach towards the hotel.

  ‘ I don’t want this to end,’ she said. ‘It’s been lovely, but I do miss the girls.’

  ‘ Me too — on both counts.’

  They walked a little further in silence.

  ‘ So, is it all over, Henry, this Corelli business?’

  ‘ For us, I hope so. Corelli’s still operating and I’ve no doubt he’ll team up with some other big-time British criminal to import drugs… but it’ll take some time, I expect. I think we put a pretty big dent in his operation when the Navy pulled that freighter in the Irish Sea… but, from our point of view, I think we’ve probably seen the last of him.’

  ‘ Good, I’m glad. It was his evil that cast a shadow on us all, wasn’t it?’

  ‘ Yeah… everything started with him.’

  Kate interlocked her fingers into Henry’s.

  ‘ Kate, I thought I’d killed you. If you had died, it would’ve been my fault. You see, I told that personnel carrier to ram him.’

  They had stopped and were facing each other, still holding hands. ‘You weren’t to know where I was,’ she said softly. ‘Don’t feel guilty. I’m alive, you’re alive, we’re back together and we’ve got a future… and that’s all that matters. Us and the girls.’

  Henry looked sullenly at his feet as he poked around in the sand with his toes.

  ‘ What’s the problem?’ she asked.

  ‘ He told me everything he did to you. Everything.’

  ‘ Henry, he hasn’t done anything to me. He might have hurt me physically, but I detached myself from what he was doing. He might as well have done it to a piece of meat. He didn’t touch me here.’ She laid his hand over her heart. ‘Only you can touch me there.’