Armed ones, preferably.
Surely things could not get any worse.
They did.
A miniature pineapple bounced past him with a metallic clunk, then rolled across the floor. Doc watched with horror as he realised what it was as it came to rest right next to a petrol container situated between the dead man’s legs.
If anyone had asked Doc how he would react to being trapped by a gunman in a cellar with an unconscious friend, a grenade rolling across the floor, his brain barely functioning, he would have said: his life would flash in front of his eyes and he would cease to exist shortly thereafter.
His feet decided differently.
Doc found himself standing by the dead man, scooping the grenade into his still shaking fingers without any conscious recollection of having decided to move, let alone actually move several paces to his current location.
It was as if he was observing himself from outside his body, and a serene sensation flooded through him as he saw his other hand grab the petrol canister and slide it across the room. The stranger that was Doc then pulled the lifeless man from his sitting position, easing him to the floor.
In his surreal state, Doc felt no fear, had no concept of time. No clue as to how many seconds had elapsed, how many ticks of a clock remained before the grenade would disintegrate and strip the earthly flesh from his ethereal spirit.
Again, without conscious thought, he placed the weapon on the floor, rolled the dead man on to it, satisfied the explosive would detonate under the heavy corpse’s chest, then lay face down on top of the body to further smother the blast.
***
The muted crump made by the exploding grenade surprised Harding — he had anticipated a much more audible and visible result. Maybe the distance and the underground location were responsible, but the flaming secondary blast he’d expected to accompany the initial explosion failed to materialize.
Was it a dud?
The sirens were almost upon him now, but he could not leave without first checking the bastards were dead. A quick fumble through his holdall using his one working hand found the plastic explosive and the fuse, but as he pulled the items out he realised.
The remote detonator’s fucked!
It was lying on the gravel in pieces where he had hurled it in disgust earlier. He threw the explosive back into the bag and tossed the lot behind the perimeter wall, furious that he’d been given such sub-standard tools.
Four bullets would just have to be enough even if he had to use a couple to finish Powers and Carver. There should still be a few in the revolver too, so he could shoot his way out of the cellar, if need be.
Taking careful steps so as not to aggravate the graunching agony in his arm, he descended into the cellar with the gun held out in front of him.
Carver lay collapsed by the doorway, his pale face in sharp contrast to the crimson pool surrounding him. He looked dead enough to Harding who would have liked to make certain but had no bullets to waste.
Then he spotted Powers, sitting on the floor next to the ‘suicide’ corpse, a dazed expression on his face as he stared at the now mangled body. He did not seem to notice Harding’s approach, or the barrel of the gun pointing at his head.
‘Look at me, you fuckin piece of shit.’ Harding’s anger swelled, his throat tightening as he saw the revolver lying by Powers’ fingers.
So this was who had shot him.
‘YOU CUNT!’
More pain. More torment from the same bastard. After all these years locked up with a bunch of lunatics, druggies and paedos…
As if awakening from a dream, still apparently dazed, eyes unfocused, a hand rubbing his scalp, Powers stared through Harding, giving the distinct impression there was nothing in his line of sight, no one there. Not even giving Harding the satisfaction of an acknowledgement.
No fear at death’s approach. No response at all.
Harding jammed the tip of the silencer against Powers’ skull and screwed it round as if trying to bore into the man’s brain, determined to make an impression.
‘Wakey wakey, dopey.’
Nothing, still.
The sirens arrived outside before they were silenced, and although he knew he had to get moving, Harding wanted Powers to know he was about to die. This zombie act was not going to stop the inevitable bullet.
‘I told you to look at me.’
He stepped back, the gun still aimed at Powers’ face.
Finally, a response. Powers’ head jerked back as his eyes focused on Harding’s, then his expression changed to one of confusion, his brow contorting as he spoke, voice unsteady.
‘Harding… Why are you here?’
‘Haha! Why am I here? To kill you, you twat.’
Unbelievably, Powers’ hand began creeping towards the revolver, then, fingers trembling, the idiot gripped the handle.
As if!
‘Oh, just fuck off and die, Powers!’
Harding took aim between his victim’s eyes and the explosive crack of a bullet echoed through the cellar.
***
Jack was spinning wildly, the sensation similar to an extreme funfair ride, his belly on fire, his throat wet with coppery tasting blood. This vertiginous state of consciousness hauled him from the darkness, suddenly alive to the agony burning through his guts, the searing heat of a glowing red poker gouging and boiling his insides.
At least, that was how it felt. And to feel it, he thought, he must still be alive.
He tried to remember where he was, his eyes gradually focussing on the cement floor, his nose also registering the sticky blood under his cheek, pooled around him.
Someone was talking, but it was not Doc’s voice. He tried to focus on the sound. The words. Then the yelled insult lanced through the fog of pain.
‘YOU CUNT!’
Harding’s voice.
We’re in the cellar...
Jack tried to raise his head, but it was too heavy. Instead he felt the skin of his cheek being sandpapered off by the abrasive floor as he rotated himself, struggling to find a position from which to view Harding. The movement set off more waves of pain in his insides, almost unbearable, taking him to the brink of consciousness and back.
He tried to roll to the side, managed to force his body off his arm, his right hand released, the gun still clutched in his fingers.
I can hardly feel it. My hands are numb.
Harding jumped into focus, his back to Jack as he jammed his pistol into Doc’s skull.
God! It’s too heavy.
The gun weighed about fifty kilos in his current state, but Jack forced himself to lever his torso, to get better purchase on the weapon while still lying on the floor. His brain processed the sound of ambulance sirens coming from outside, now louder, almost drowning out the conversation. The noise stopped as Harding took a few steps back, another two metres closer to Jack’s gun, but with his own still pointing at Doc’s head.
Could he do it? Raise the barrel in time to shoot before Harding finished his friend? Could he hit a target — even one this close — with numb fingers?
He tried again to aim the pistol as Harding laughed and grunted more indecipherable words. The distance had closed and maybe Jack could hit his target if he could just turn the gun upright. With hands slick with blood, he forced the butt into position by swivelling his forearm and wrist, his finger curling round the trigger.
It was not going to do the job, aimed at the man’s legs, especially with Doc sitting right behind them. A bullet from Jack’s gun was as likely to kill his friend as it was to disable Harding, but the situation was urgent.
Jack knew Doc’s final moments had arrived as Harding shouted, ‘Oh, just fuck off and die, Powers!’
With one final mammoth effort Jack forced the barrel up, thinking a bullet hitting home anywhere in the torso would do, though he had a specific target in mind, and in normal circumstances it would have been an easy shot for him.
The movement sent more blood rushing to his mo
uth but he hoped the bullet would hit home, would sever the spinal cord between Harding’s shoulder blades to paralyse his gun hand. He squinted, aimed and squeezed the trigger immediately before unconsciousness engulfed him again.
***
Doc was convinced he was about to die.
Lying on top of the corpse felt surprisingly peaceful. A warm, contented embrace from his burgeoning fate.
Then his world went crazy.
The blast lifted him off the ground and tossed him to the side, smacking his head on the wall. Stunned, his mind refusing to cope with anything happening around him, Doc was relieved to find himself alive. He tried to get up to check his friend’s status, but could not.
Was he wounded?
There was a woolly silence engulfing him too, his vision was blurred, and the cellar seemed darker now.
The shadow of a man appeared before him, but he could not make out the words vaguely reaching him through his deafened ears.
Doc knew then. He was suffering concussion and a wave of nausea swept through him, gurgling some bile into his throat, the sharp taste rousing him from his torpor.
The muddy words continued, the tone belligerent, yelled by a voice he recognised.
Harding.
The shadow man.
Then he felt pain in his skull, his eyes managing to focus on the weapon just inches above, gouging his scalp.
More words came, still too muffled to understand, but he could see the silver glint of the revolver near his hand, and wondered if he could reach it, aim it at Harding and shoot him before he was on the receiving end of a bullet himself.
Despite the air pressing into him, heavy like syrup, he managed to reach a hand for the revolver, felt his fingers wrap around the handle. It took all his effort to overcome this unexpected resistance from the thickened atmosphere, finally managing to raise the gun from the floor in slow motion. He started to bring it to bear on Harding’s belly.
Before he could aim and squeeze the trigger, he was stunned by a hammer blow to his temple just as Harding disappeared from view, spinning off to the side in a shower of blood.
***
As the shot reverberated around him, Harding was confused.
His gun was silenced, so why was the noise so deafening?
The few nanoseconds it took to process this thought, along with the knowledge that his one remaining functioning hand was no longer under his control, also saw the world twist and warp, his mind flying in a vicious spiral as he started a slow motion tumble to the floor.
His entire head felt like it had exploded, and nothing was under his control any more. He couldn’t even breathe.
What’s happening to me?
Powers’ gun hand had hardly been raised, he was still sitting there, like Buddha, as if in a trance, blood pouring from his head.
How could he have shot me?
With that final lucid question screaming in his brain, Harding’s miserable life flashed before his one good eye, then his head slammed to the ground, the light dimmed in a blur of pain and then extinguished for the very last time.
***
‘Are you feeling better, sir?’
Doc was still in a daze, now sitting on the back step of an ambulance with a bandage wrapped round his head, watching Jack being loaded into the rear of another. His friend, the man who had just saved his life, was alive, but unconscious from blood loss. The paramedics had attached fluids to his arm and were feeding him oxygen through a mask as they slotted the gurney into their vehicle.
‘I’m a bit concussed but I’ll be fine.’ A bit concussed was an understatement. Doc’s brain felt like a hundred migraines had been crammed into his cranium. ‘How’s Jack doing?’
The paramedic glanced in the direction Doc was staring before turning back to shine his miniature torch into Doc’s left pupil.
‘The male detective? He’ll be in surgery soon enough, but we won’t know until then.’ The light flicked into Doc’s other eye as the paramedic continued. ‘The lady we found, well she’ll survive. Her hand’s a mess, but they reckon the surgeons will sort it.’
‘And the other man?’
‘Well, there was a rather messy corpse beside a very poorly individual with a bullet through his neck. He would have drowned in his own blood had he been breathing, but his chest muscles were paralysed. They got to him in time though. He was resuscitated before they carted him off.’
Doc must have been totally out of it when that had happened. More lost time, memories vanishing even as they were made.
‘Harding. He’s alive?’
‘Yeah, for now. He’ll be lucky to survive, if you can call life as a quadriplegic lucky. Who is he?’
‘Nobody. Are we done?’
‘Well, we’ll get you to the hospital too, for a check-up. I’ve stitched the flap of skin back into place, but we should get some fluids into you too.’ The paramedic tried to push him back down, pressing a hand to Doc’s shoulder as he started to get up. ‘Steady on! Why the hurry? That bullet grazed your skull, and we need an X-ray to check for fractures. Concussion is serious enough —’
‘I know, I’m a doctor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to that detective.’
The paramedic sucked at his lower lip for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I can’t force you to come with us, but you really should… If you feel sick, or sleepy, then get yourself to hospital. Don’t drive.’
Doc nodded, instantly regretted it as the flare of pain smacked his frontal lobe, but managed to get to his feet and join the nearby huddle of detectives. Several plain clothes officers had arrived on the scene shortly after the uniformed police, who had already taken a brief statement from Doc. An ambulance had been first on the scene, followed by the fire brigade, another ambulance and about a dozen local coppers. The grounds around the house were now crowded with vehicles and people, voices babbling. The initially sombre atmosphere that pervaded when they found their dead and injured colleagues now had an undertone of excitement threaded through it.
Some of the detectives were members of Jack’s team, and DS Sam Sharpe had the skills Doc needed right now.
‘Hi, Doc! How’re you after your shoot-out at the Mitcham Corral?’
The black humour masked the underlying worry for Jack and Fiona, no doubt, but Doc replied by tossing the holdall at the sergeant’s feet.
‘It was Harding’s. Take a look inside.’
Doc had spotted the bag, tucked behind him in the bushes, while he was sitting on the perimeter wall, huddled in a foil blanket holding a dressing against his head wound, waiting for the paramedics to finish giving aid to the two injured coppers and, as it turned out, reviving the man who had just tried to kill him.
Perhaps Doc should have felt some joy at this final turn of events. Death was too easy for a man like Harding. His body incarcerated in prison, his brain similarly constrained in a paralysed body. Well, that somehow seemed a more fitting punishment, but Doc wasn’t inclined to gloat.
Until this week, Harding’s existence had been consigned to some isolated neurons in Doc’s brain, locked in a memory compartment as secure as Broadmoor. The key tossed many years ago, after the first occasion Harding had wound him up so much that Doc had lost his temper and tried to throttle the inmate…
Sam pulled on his gloves, unzipped the holdall and started describing the contents.
‘There’s a satnav, a photograph of Abimbola with a diagram on the back — this house from the look of it — two thumb drives marked #1 and #2, some rubber gloves, two empty ammunition clips and a mobile phone. So Harding came here to top Abimbola. Hence the photo — the target wasn’t familiar to him. Hang on!’ Sam’s hand fished out a lump of plasticine-like material. ‘What the hell? Plastic explosive. Where did he get all this stuff?’
‘Whoever broke him out of Broadmoor had more in mind than just setting him free. I found this card in there too.’ Doc had been fingering the object subconsciously while waiting for the paramedic to finish, but now handed
it to Sam. ‘The numbers… They’re security codes.’
‘Three six digit numbers? They could be anything, Doc.’
‘This one,’ Doc’s finger traced the last number on the list as the sergeant held the card, squinting at the digits, ‘is my home alarm code.’
‘Jesus, Doc! Harding was coming for you too… You think these ones are entry codes for other targets?’
‘I guess so. You need to check if there are any locations saved in the satnav memory. That can wait as Harding’s no longer a threat. More importantly, I want to know what’s on those thumb drives Sam, and we need to take a look at what’s on the man’s personal computer inside this place.’
‘The boss is on her way. We should wait as it’s her crime scene, with Jack —’
‘Sam. I’m not asking.’ Doc turned on his heel, and, ignoring the desire to retch and the hammers using his brain as an anvil, did his best not to stagger on his way round to the front door, now hanging off its hinges after the local bobbies had forced entry some twenty minutes earlier. Once inside he found the room he identified as the study, based on the written directions he had discovered on the back of the photograph in Harding’s bag.
Sam followed him in without a word.
‘Fire this up for me, and let’s see what’s so important.’
A flash of lightning lit up the room, startling Doc before he realised it was actually inside his head. Queasiness and light-headedness almost pole-axed him, but he forced himself to remain upright, regulated his breathing and placed his palms on the desk for support.
‘So this is the computer marked on the back of the photo, Doc. Harding was told by some mysterious third party to use the USB sticks… To do what, exactly?’
‘We won’t know until you’ve accessed the contents, but my guess? They contain some incriminating evidence pointing to the man we already have in custody. Maybe another person too.’
‘Who?’
‘Maddox?’ Almost sure, but not certain. ‘I think these,’ Doc slid a finger over one of the thumb drives, ‘were intended to misdirect us. The one marked #1 probably contains whatever information the person behind the murders wanted planted here.’
Mutilated: A British Crime Thriller (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate Book 2) Page 34
