by Michael Kerr
“A local inspector, out on the main road. And Ken is in the area now, with an armed response unit. There’s no way you’ll get off this headland alive.”
“Don’t bet on it, bitch,” Eddie growled. “I’m not stupid. Ryder and you are an item. You’re what will make the difference. He gets to choose whether to deal and save your skin, or watch you die in front of him. I think he’ll put you first. And that will cost him his life.”
Lisa said nothing. She had let Jack down and made a bad situation much worse. However this came out, he would be pissed at her for getting in the way and compromising everything.
Eddie pulled her sharply to the right, off the track and through thick clumps of grass over rough ground, not stopping until they came to the cliff edge.
“I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, Lisa,” Eddie said, standing behind her with his left forearm clamped across her throat. “I made a mistake in assuming that Hewson was dead. It might all end, right here. But if it does, then we go together. And if I can I’ll take Ryder with us. Thing is, I don’t think I care anymore. But I won’t go to prison. Growing old behind bars wouldn’t be a fun thing to do. I’m a free spirit and need to follow my dream. Can you understand that?”
“No, Eddie. Every action has a reaction. What is it coppers and screws say: ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime’? You made the choice to victimise and commit atrocities against helpless women that had done you no harm. Do you really believe that monsters like you should be able to exist in a civilised society?”
“I believe in free will. I believe that might is right,” Eddie said. “The powerful govern and rule everything. They make up the rules to suit themselves, and the gullible masses work their fingers to the bone, pay extortionate taxes and do exactly what they’re told to, without realising that the democracy they supposedly live in is no more than a totalitarian state. Freedom is a fallacy. I choose to live outside all constraints.”
“You could have been a vagrant, or pissed off to Peru and lived in the jungle,” Lisa said. “Nobody would have stopped you or given a shit. But you took the free will you cherish so much away from others, and went on a killing spree. You live outside everything that is decent. And I’d rather die here today with you, than see you be given the chance to ever harm anyone else.”
As Eddie made to answer, he saw a figure materialise from the fog, then draw back. He fired at the spot where it had been, and waited.
“You missed by three feet, Eddie,” Jack called out, before quickly shifting position and lying down prone on the wet grass.
“What are you going to do, Ryder, wait for the troops?” Eddie shouted. “Or do you want to save this bitch’s life? How important is she to you?”
Jack wanted to take a shot. He would play along until he got the fraction of a second chance he needed to end this. “Talk, Eddie. I’m listening,” he said, then rolled to his left, in case his voice attracted a bullet.
Eddie couldn’t get a fix on where Ryder was. The muted sound of his voice seemed to be emanating from all around him. The fog was playing tricks with it.
“You’ve got a local plod parked out on the main road,” he shouted. “Give him a bell. Tell him you’ve taken me out, but that Lisa is wounded. Get him to drive out here to pick you up.”
“And then what? You kill him and take Lisa and the car?”
“No, Jack. I leave the three of you here without phones, and I drive away.”
“You think I’m going to buy that?”
“I don’t think you have too many choices. Do it, or we get to find out if Lisa can fly. I’m standing two feet from the edge of the cliff. If the car isn’t here in three minutes, she goes over. Then it’s just you and me. I might get past you in this fog. And then you’d have lost her for nothing. Could you live with that?”
Jack got up, walked forward until he could see Eddie and Lisa. He held the pistol loosely at his side, pointing it at the ground. It was a gamble, but he was confident that Eddie was desperate. He knew a side of the man that had worked so many cases with him. He might not be a psychologist like Lisa, but was prepared to take the chance that Eddie wanted to live, and that he would be open to negotiation if he thought it was his only chance of getting out of the mess he was in.
Eddie got in tight behind Lisa. Pushed the barrel of his gun up behind her right ear and said, “Careful, Jack. Remember, if I go, she goes.”
“Relax, Eddie. Meet me halfway on this and you get to roll the dice again.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I call the officer and tell him to bring the car, leave it running and join us. Then we throw you our phones, and you let Lisa go. Do that, and you get a head start. Try to do more than just leave, and I swear you’ll die here.”
Eddie thought it through. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because you’ve been part of my team for long enough to know that I’m a straight talker. And it’s the best deal you’re going to get from me. You won’t get far. Your cover’s blown, and the area will be swarming with armed officers before long. It’s your time you’re wasting.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Eddie said.
Jack didn’t need the phantom pins and needles in the lacuna at the end of his pinkie to tell him that Eddie had no intention of leaving any of them alive. The murdering bastard planned on being the only one to leave the peninsula.
“My phone,” Jack said, reaching into his pocket for it with his left hand, not moving the Beretta from where it was held against the side of his thigh. He held the mobile up for Eddie to see. “Before I make the call, loosen up on Lisa’s neck. You’re choking her.”
Eddie eased his grip a fraction. When the time came, he would shoot Lisa in the head, and in the split second that followed, while Jack was frozen by the shock of seeing her brains blown out, he would put a couple of bullets in his former boss’s forehead, and then do the same to the local plod. He would soon be out of the area, aided by the poor visibility. This arbitrary turn of events would necessitate his having to start from scratch, but that was a challenge to meet and overcome. He knew how to become another person. Everything would work out. It always had, and always would. This was little more than a temporary setback; one that he would learn from, and look back on with mixed emotions. Having to shoot Dawn had been a vexation. But he would get past it. In the final analysis, she had not been worthy of him. Maybe no woman was. He had become besotted with the false image of an actress playing a part, not the shallow, feckless person who existed behind the pages of a script. Even her hair had been dyed. She had enticed him with chicanery, and ultimately and deservedly paid the price.
Jack made the call. Told Bryant to bring the car out to the end of the peninsula and help him with Lisa, who he said had fallen and broken her ankle.
“Sweet,” Eddie said. “Throw the phone over the cliff. You don’t need it now.”
Jack complied and said, “Why, Eddie? You were a good copper.”
“Everyone asks why and looks for reasons. It’s a long story, Jack, and we don’t have the time to do it justice. Let’s just say I found a way to offload a lot of tension; the way you take a pill to get rid of a headache. It’s a need that I can’t, or don’t want to repress.”
“What was all that crap with the artist, Bosch?”
“To give you something to follow. You were looking for a ritual murderer. I gave you false patterns and behaviour to chase your tail with. I thought it was a neat touch.”
“Not neat enough, Eddie. If you’d got half a brain, we wouldn’t be here now. You blew it. You think you’re clever, but from where I’m standing you’re just a sad, pathetic bastard, who’ll end up topping himself in a prison cell.”
Eddie’s finger tightened on the trigger. His hand began to shake. He wanted to end it. A long blast on the car horn of the approaching vehicle stayed his hand. He could just see the dull, diffused glow of headlights through the fog. Another minute and Ryder, Lisa and the copper in the car would be dead.
THE pilot tilted and eased the helicopter ever lower, to hover for a moment, before setting the craft down gently on what he had no way of knowing was the fifth green, or of the consternation that the deep indentations of the tyres would generate. There would be a seriously pissed off green keeper. And the secretary of the Harlyn Bay Golf Club would waste a lot of time that day making phone calls to the police, to report that some vandal had parked a vehicle on the baize-like sward.
With the engines shut down, the slice of the rotors began to wane. The leader of the team hit the release, yanked the handle down and slid the door back, and eight helmeted and Kevlar-clad officers exited the chopper, followed by Ken, who wore a bulky bullet-proof vest under his coat.
The golf course had been the perfect landing site, although it was on the southern side of Trevose Head.
“We’re going to be on foot, moving fast over rough terrain in fog,” the ARU leader, Don Barrett, said to Ken.
Ken got the message. He would slow them down. He was a fifty-seven-year-old heavy smoker with a crocked knee, and knew he wasn’t up for a yomp cross-country.
Ken nodded to the chisel-faced officer in charge of what was in all but name a highly professional killing team. “You know the problem, solve it,” he said.
Don gave one of the officers a hand signal. One man detached himself from the group and went to Ken.
“This is Johnson,” Don said. “He’ll follow on with you.”
And with that, Don jogged off at the head of the other men, who fanned out behind him in a loose V formation.
Ken didn’t give Eddie McBride a dog’s chance in hell of coming out of this any other way than zipped up in a body bag.
The information was current. By phone, patched through to him, a local police inspector had given Don the approximate location of where he knew the armed perpetrator, DI Jack Ryder and Lisa to be. The aim was to protect Ryder and the woman. That meant negating the threat with deadly force. Don was glad of the natural cover that the fog afforded. It was making the going slower than he would have liked, but would be to their advantage when they arrived at the scene.
Peter left the mobile phone, with the line open, under the passenger seat. It was as good as a homing device. God forbid, if McBride got a chance to flee, then they would be able to track his movements.
As Peter got out of the car, his mouth was covered and he was manhandled to the ground. He was frisked, his wallet taken, opened, and his ID checked. He was lifted back to his feet, to be met by the sight of several men dressed in black, all carrying ugly black weapons. He could have hugged them, but didn’t. He was sure that Jack Ryder had been under duress when he made contact and told him to bring the car. Now he could relax. His part in this was over.
Eddie was all set. As soon as the local bobby appeared, he would pull the trigger. Shame. Lisa Norton was a sexy looking brunette; just his type. Very much like his late mother. But there were plenty more where she came from; ten a penny. And he wanted to see the expression on Ryder’s face when he saw the side of the bitch’s head blown out.
There, at ten o’clock, a shape. And then others appeared. Eddie’s jaw dropped open. It was a trick. He was surrounded on three sides, with his back to a hundred and fifty foot drop down a sheer cliff face. Fear, rage and an appreciation of the inevitability of his situation vied for supremacy in his mind. But he would still win. Fuck them. Everything has to end. He made the decision to shoot, then just drop back over the edge, still holding the dead or dying woman. He would go out on a high. They would not have the satisfaction of either arresting him or taking his life. He had the ultimate power to determine how this ended.
Jack’s hands were a blur. He adopted a shooter’s stance; right hand cupped in left, and the left side of his body slightly forward of the right. He breathed out, took careful aim and fired. The whole sequence was silky smooth and far too fast to be reacted against.
Eddie felt as though he’d been struck by a white-hot laser beam; a searing pain in the mouth and the back of his neck that somehow instantaneously paralysed his whole body.
Lisa had not taken her eyes off Jack’s. She was almost hypnotised by their intensity. It was as if he was talking to her. He was going to do something, and not go through with any deal that they both knew Eddie would break. When Jack’s eyes widened she was ready, totally focused on him and unaware of any other movement as she jerked her head to the left.
The bullet shattered the middle two bottom teeth, drilled through the soft tissue of Eddie’s tongue and the back of his throat and fractured two vertebrae as it sped on and exited his neck, to lose acceleration and curve down towards the ocean, where it would gently sink; now an innocuous, malformed nub of lead.
Had Eddie’s spinal cord been severed, then there would have been no physical reaction to the massive trauma. He would have just crumpled to the ground as limp as a wet facecloth. But he was still conscious, and still had a loose grip of Lisa as he staggered back and tottered on the edge of the cliff.
Lisa jerked forward, pulled free of the slack arm and threw herself forward, face down onto the soft, wet grass, to dig her fingers into the ground.
Eddie began to fall, and even as he sailed back and out into space he attempted to raise his gun hand and shoot Lisa.
Jack darted forward immediately after discharging his gun. He watched Lisa break free and throw herself to the ground, and also saw that Eddie was attempting to take aim and fire at her, even though he was already falling backward to certain death.
Jack fired again from no more than six feet from the officer who he had always considered to be a friend as well as a colleague. The bullet thudded into Eddie’s chest and the gun flew out of his hand as he toppled over the precipice and rushed down into the grey, smothering fog. He seemed to stare up in surprise, looking at the long ribbon of blood that was flowing from his wide open mouth. Jack felt relief, and yet robbed of full satisfaction. He aimed his gun at the vanishing killer and pointlessly emptied the mag at the tumbling form as it disappeared into a raft of gloom.
Standing for what seemed a long time, Jack imagined Eddie’s body broken on sharp rocks, or half buried in sand. He needed to see it. Had to stand over the corpse and let the sense of closure satisfy him.
He holstered his gun and went to Lisa. She was not crying, just appeared to be shocked. She said nothing as he helped her to stand up and held her close. She did not respond. It was as if he was a stranger. “Are you okay?” he said, and she nodded, but although the expression in her umber eyes told him that she was thankful to him for saving her life, he also read that something that they had enjoyed was now lost. He didn’t understand.
When Peter walked towards him, he just shook his head. He no longer wanted to hit the man. The inspector had fouled up, but knew it, and had redeemed himself to a degree.
“Is there a path down to the beach?” Jack said.
Peter nodded. “It’ll be difficult to get down in this weather,” he said.
Jack shrugged. “Show me where it is.”
It was like coming out through the bottom of a cloud. The fog became an undulating ceiling above his head. He jumped down the last few feet onto the firm, brown sand and walked along the beach. The surf curled lazily, and a lone gull was making a meal of a large fish head on the tide-line. Jack lit a cigarette and strolled to where he could see a crumpled heap maybe a hundred yards distant, up close to where the weathered and split cliffs erupted from the sand.
Eddie had remained conscious for five long seconds. There was no pain. The bullets had taken away all sensation. It was as if his body was a garment, no more a part of him than the clothing he wore. And yet in the final moment as he fell through the air like a rag doll, fear welled up and his mind screamed out in defiance as the realisation that he was about to die struck home. Eddie’s last sight was of Ryder high above, almost obscured by the fog and the broad tongues of blood that spiralled out from his nostrils and mouth. He died
a split second after his body hit the unyielding, compressed sand.
There were already small creatures gathering. Jack supposed that they were sand fleas. And a limpet-covered crab was crawling sideways along Eddie’s outstretched right arm, up towards his blasted, bloody, crooked neck.
Flicking his cigarette towards the foaming, slowly advancing tide, Jack sat on his heels and stared into the unseeing eyes of the dead man. They were full of blood, as was his slack mouth. It was over. He had expected to feel an overwhelming sense of elation, but didn’t. A part of him wanted more; to make the Judas detective suffer hard and long for all that he had done. He spat on the pale, expressionless face, and the crab, now on a stubble-coated cheek, stopped in its tracks, to open and close its pincer claws, scissoring the air, apparently making ready to pluck an eye from its socket.
Jack shivered, straightened up and faced the chill salt spray being blown inshore on a light breeze. The stubborn fog was finally dissipating, and a pearly sky was beginning to show through the thinning mantle.
Retracing his steps, walking through his own footprints, Jack looked up as he neared the winding path that led to where he could see Lisa standing, a silhouette against the nacre backdrop above and behind her.
When he reached the top she had gone. Ken was waiting for him.
“You shouldn’t have gone it alone, Jack,” he said.
Jack sighed. “I should’ve, and I did. Dawn wouldn’t have got killed if the old man hadn’t made a house call.”
“Dawn didn’t get killed,” Ken said. “She’s going to make it. They found her at the cottage, sitting in the kitchen, holding a towel to a nasty scalp wound.”
“That’s good,” Jack said. “Where’s Lisa?”
“On her way to the chopper. She wanted to get back to the city. We need to stay here and tie up the loose ends with the local boys in blue.”
Jack lit another cigarette, cupping it and his Zippo with his hand against the now strengthening wind.
