by Ed James
Palmer clambered down with much more grace than he’d managed. She pressed her head to Dawn’s chest to take a pulse, counting to ten against her watch. ‘Her heart rate’s dangerously low. She needs urgent medical help.’
‘We can’t wait for an ambulance. I’ll carry her up.’
‘With your hip?’
Corcoran gritted his teeth and got out his police radio. ‘I’ll call Broadribb and—’
A man stepped out of the gloom and pointed a gun at Corcoran’s head.
Fifty-one
[Palmer, 22:08]
‘You first.’ The gun told Palmer more than the man could. He wore a balaclava, though the light barely touched his face.
‘What do you want, John?’
He didn’t flinch at the mention of his name. ‘I told you, up there.’ He pointed with the gun. ‘Go.’
She looked at Corcoran. That steely glint in his eyes, switching his gaze between the pistol and the man. The things he’d do to him. Smashing his brain into a pulp not the least.
She looked up at the top of the ladder. She could get up there and run. But Dawn was ill and needed medical attention. ‘I need to help her.’
‘You’re not listening to me. Get up there.’
‘She’ll die!’
‘Up there. And don’t think about running or I’ll put Dawn out of her misery now, followed by him and then you.’
‘You’re not a killer.’
‘Yet.’ Another flick of the gun. ‘Now, go.’
Palmer hauled herself up the ladder, taking it slow, pretending she’d never climbed one before, but soon enough she was up the top and out.
She could run for it. Get to Corcoran’s car, get his phone or hers. Call it in. Get backup.
But John would have Corcoran and Dawn. Two lives. And he had a gun . . .
Corcoran was crunching up the ladder. His hip didn’t look right, each step causing severe pain.
Palmer looked down into the gloom at Dawn, spread-eagled on the floor, lying there, dying. A casualty of his stupid war. Palmer knew she should try and save her, but he had all of the power.
Corcoran pulled himself up to her level and flopped over, whispering, ‘Let’s bide our time. I’ll attack him, you get the gun, we can save Dawn.’
‘Are you sure?’
Before Corcoran could do anything other than nod confirmation, John appeared, training the gun on Palmer. ‘Steady.’ One step at a time, then he cleared the top, aiming the gun right at her, flicking between her stomach and her heart as he stepped onto the straw. On his knees, then standing up. ‘Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to—’
‘You can’t just leave her down there!’ Palmer stepped closer to him. If she could push him back down . . . ‘She’ll die!’
‘That’s the whole point.’
‘You haven’t killed so far, John. You don’t have to cross the line.’
‘Stop appealing to my better nature. I don’t have one.’
‘This isn’t you—’
‘It is.’ John shoved the gun against her chest, then wrapped an arm round her neck. Up close, she could appreciate his sheer size. At least a foot taller than her and built. He pushed her outside, the pistol now digging into her back, and he led them to his car. ‘Get in, passenger side.’
Corcoran followed at a distance, looking around for anything he could use to overpower their captor.
‘Spoiler, but there’s nothing.’ John aimed the gun at him. ‘Phone and police radio. Now.’
Corcoran dropped them both on the ground.
John sighed. ‘Kick them over.’
Corcoran did, but only to halfway.
‘I’m losing my patience with you.’ John bent down to pick them up, keeping the gun trained on him, then he slipped them in his pocket. ‘Which one’s your sore hip?’
Corcoran frowned at Palmer, then back at John. ‘The left.’
‘Thanks.’ John aimed the gun at Corcoran’s right leg and shot into his thigh.
‘No!’ Palmer jolted forward but John held her back.
Corcoran stumbled backwards, screaming.
John shifted the gun to Palmer, the mechanism grinding as he reloaded. ‘I told you to get in!’
Her breathing came hard and fast. ‘You, you—’
‘Get in the fucking car or so help me God I will shoot you in the fucking face.’
Palmer stared at him. She didn’t have a choice. Corcoran was screaming, Dawn was dying and there was nothing she could do to help either of them. She opened the passenger door and got in.
John got into the driver’s side and twisted the key in the ignition. The car burst to life and he pulled off, easing round the tight circle to head back towards the cottage. Lights off, one hand steering, the other pointing the gun at her.
Palmer looked in the wing mirrors but Corcoran was lost to the darkness now. Just lying there, shot and bleeding. A leg wound shouldn’t bleed out, but he would need medical attention. She looked over at John. ‘You’ve done well.’
John drove past the cottage and turned into the lane, taking it slow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Everything. You’ve planned this out well and executed it expertly. We had no idea it was you until we spoke to Dawn’s father and even then I—’
‘I know you’re judging me for this but I really don’t care.’
Palmer focused on the gun, flinching slightly, then she looked out again. ‘Why are you doing this?’
John turned right at the main road, hitting the floor until the needle hit seventy, the automatic grunting through the gears. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘I get why you think you’re doing this. Those people tormented your father, ruined his life. He blamed them for everything, for the destructive spiral that led to your birth, to him and your mother not being able to keep you. But you can’t bring either of them back into your life.’
‘No, but I can make those fuckers suffer for what they did. My father was a good man. Troubled, damaged, but good in his heart. And they broke him. I should never have been born. I know every angry teenager thinks that, but I genuinely mean it. If he hadn’t been so badly damaged, he wouldn’t have met my mother when she was so young, wouldn’t have made her pregnant. She was a child.’
‘Have you talked to anyone about this?’
They entered civilisation, the first little houses of Princes Risborough.
He reached up to rub his chin with the back of his hands, shifting his balaclava up to reveal a couple of inches of precisely trimmed goatee. ‘None of your psychobabble, please.’
‘It’s called therapy. All this rage, it’s possible to channel it into some—’
‘I’m channelling it into this.’ John wound down his window and chucked Corcoran’s phone and radio out. Palmer watched them bounce and roll across the carriageway as they raced away. ‘I was taken away from my parents because they were incapable of caring for me. I had so many terrible experiences that you wouldn’t believe, denied a basic family life until I met my dad.’ He tore his balaclava off and his face was twisted into a smile. ‘Stuart. He was a good guy. Him and Mum adopted me. Turned my life around. He died three years ago. Complications from his diabetes.’
‘Is that why you’re doing this to Dawn?’
‘That’s a happy coincidence.’ John sighed. ‘When I was sixteen, my father, my real father, he came to see me.’
‘Terry.’
‘Right. He was drunk, dishevelled, pathetic. In tears, apologising for being such a bad father.’ John snorted as he slowed to the thirty limit, passing normal people and their normal lives. ‘You know that Nirvana song, where it goes “I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad”? I totally get that. Stuart was my dad, Terry was my father. When Terry’s parents divorced and his mum stayed in Birmingham, his own father used to lock him in that milk shed overnight . . . That building back there. Downstairs. Made him scared of the dark. And school was hell for a kid going through that. Then he got
a flicker of hope. There was this girl, see, not my mother. Someone else.’
‘Sally.’
‘Get you.’ A snarl escaped his thin lips. ‘That harpy . . . Her and her friends. Those pricks locked my father in a bunker for sixty hours. Almost three whole days. To most people, it would’ve been tough. Damaging. But to him? It broke him. “It was like being in hell, son. I didn’t even know if I was dead or alive.” Those four pricks all went off to university, and my father . . . He suffered what people like you would identify as PTSD. He never slept properly again, had flashbacks, became withdrawn, hallucinated, grew dependent on alcohol . . .’
‘He could’ve sought help.’
‘Nobody would’ve given him it. Not back then. But you seem to know all about his disastrous relationship with my mother, Hayley. That night Terry came to see me, he apologised for never being good enough for her, blamed himself for everything that happened to me and to her, then he stumbled off . . . But I followed him. Wanted to get to know him, the real him, not the fuck-up I saw. In time, I was able to forgive him for what had happened and I tried to help him get back on track. Then a few weeks later, Terry killed himself. At that cottage.’ John held up his pistol. ‘Shot himself with this gun.’
Something crawled up Palmer’s spine.
‘It changes you, doesn’t it? Something like that. Made me determined not to let my early trauma affect my life the way it had my father. So I worked hard to get ahead. Stuart helped, of course, and I did okay. Not the best university, but I studied architecture. My dream job. Things were going well. But then my mother found me. She’d left town when I was young, when she was still young. She lived in France for a bit, then America. She came home, but she was broken too. Her father used to abuse her, sexually. She wanted to be all grown up, to take control of her body, which is why she met my father, why she hooked up with this guy who could buy her drink, who got drunk all the time.’
John flew across a roundabout. No sign of the police roadblocks now. ‘She was in a hospice outside of town, dying of ovarian cancer. Hard not to blame myself for that. If I hadn’t been born, maybe everything . . . inside her would’ve been fine. She died two weeks later, but I got to know her a bit. This skeleton, only forty-five. No age at all. If she hadn’t had me, hadn’t met my father, she’d still be alive. Maybe she’d get peace for what happened to her, I don’t know. But standing by the side of her grave, I just couldn’t let it go. My entire life, my mother’s and my father’s . . . Three lives ruined by the selfishness of those entitled teenagers who tortured him, because they didn’t want to risk their own futures. I promised I’d get revenge.’
‘Listen to me, John. What you’ve gone through, what your parents went through . . . I understand. Believe me. I know what’s going on in your head, all the blame and shame and guilt and fear and anger and despair. You only wanted to do the right thing for your father. But you’ve given these people your message. Let me get out here.’ She kept her focus on him. ‘And you can just disappear, become someone new. Live a life for all three of you.’
‘Don’t you think I’ve considered that? And I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work.’
‘John, you can choose to stop this. We can still save Dawn.’
‘But I can’t be saved. I need to do this.’
‘That’s not true. I can work with you and we can help you. We spoke to your boss. You were running a property development. That’s huge.’
‘I made a complete mess of that.’ He pulled up at the side of the road.
She saw where they were. Outside Dawn’s parents’ house. And the cops had all gone.
‘Those people inside already have one death on their conscience.’ John reached across her and got out a fresh set of bullets, then started loading them into the gun. ‘They deserve more.’
Fifty-two
[Corcoran, 22:18]
Corcoran lay in the damp mud, his thigh on fire. Pain screamed out all over his body, from kneecap to hip. Everything burned.
They’d lost. John had Palmer now.
And that hit him hardest of all. Forget about the victims and their tragedies, as devoted as he was to saving them and helping them through their traumas; John had Palmer.
He felt a thickness in the back of his throat, a fluttering deep in his gut. Jesus, there was something there. The case forcing them together, binding them tight in its shared horror. But she was inside his head. He could feel her thoughts in his head, beneath his skin, see her face when he closed his eyes.
And that bastard had her and there wasn’t a thing Corcoran could do to stop him. No telling where he could’ve gone. Would probably use her as insurance to escape. Flee the country or just go to ground.
He hauled himself up to his knees and the pain flared again. Then up to standing, both sides broken and buckled.
What the hell could he do? He was shot, bleeding and broken. His car was back at the house, assuming John hadn’t done anything to it. He just needed to go over and—
DAWN.
Save her first.
Corcoran set off, step then slide. Step then slide. He got into a groove, then rested against the shed’s front wall, clutching the door as he eased his way in. His trouser leg was soaked through. He step-slid over, each movement a sharp rasp of burning agony, leaving a bloody trail in the straw.
The trapdoor was still hanging open and she lay on the floor, eyes shut. She opened them and looked right through him. ‘Help.’ Her voice was a weak plea, rather than the loud shout that had alerted them.
‘It’s okay, Dawn, I’m coming for you.’ Corcoran put the foot of his shot leg onto the ladder first, got it stable, then his other foot. Slowly does it. Another step with the shot foot, and he slipped, the bloody sole of his shoe falling away. His fingers clutched at the ladder, then were torn free and he crashed down, his right knee clattering off a step, his coccyx crunching off the stone floor. A new flavour of agony swept over his body. ‘FUCK!’
‘Help me. Please.’
He sucked in deep breaths, battling against the surging waves of agony coursing across his body. He forced himself up, his vision swimming. He braced himself against the dresser and stood up.
Dawn lay on the bed, looking over at him, her eyes barely opening now.
Corcoran tried to steady himself, breathing deeply. Completely out of his depth here. How could he save her?
She looked at him again, her arm ever so slightly raised, pointing at the dresser. ‘Sugar. Pill.’
Corcoran swung round and opened the drawer. It was stuffed with pills and syringes and vials. He got one of the pills and took it over to her. ‘Is this what you want?’
She peered at it, then nodded.
He held it out in front of her.
She ate it from his hand like horse, swallowing it straight down. ‘Syringe. Please.’
He staggered back to the dresser and got a needle. And a vial of insulin. He held them up to her and got a nod. ‘We’re going to get you out of here, okay?’
She seemed to have got better remarkably quickly. She gave him the up and down. ‘You don’t look so good yourself.’
Corcoran stared down at his leg and got a fresh blast of pain. His trousers were ripped and soaked a deep red. He slumped back against the dresser, deep pain shooting up his torso, up his neck. He pushed out a deep breath, gasping and moaning.
Dawn snatched the syringe out of his hand and tore off the cap. ‘Are you police?’
He nodded. ‘DS Aidan Corcoran.’
She plunged the needle into the vial and sucked it up into the chamber. ‘Who is he?’
‘He didn’t speak to you?’
‘Not a word.’ She pulled up her skirt and pinched a chunk of flesh on her tummy, then jabbed herself with the needle. Didn’t even flinch. She held it there, counting silently. ‘I doubted it was even a man.’ She pulled the needle out and tossed it to the side. ‘I need to get you to a hospital.’
‘He’s got her. I can’t . . . I can’t
lose her.’
‘Got who?’
‘Come on.’ Corcoran hauled himself up and step-slid over to the ladder, fresh pain tearing at his thigh. He rested his head against the metal of the ladder. ‘We’ve got to . . . Get up there, then find my car. Then we’re going to stop him.’
‘You’re losing a ton of blood. You’re in no fit state to drive.’
He looked round at her. ‘Can you?’
‘I can. Are you sure you don’t—’
‘We need to stop him.’ He passed her his car keys.
‘And where is he?’
Corcoran gripped the ladder tighter. He didn’t know. ‘No idea.’
‘I want to bring him down. He doesn’t get to do this to me. Do you hear?’
‘I hear you.’
And Dawn was the answer.
The parents, all of John’s anger directed against their children. For his father’s torment in the bunker, the cause of his tragic life. The start of John’s own tortured existence.
Corcoran put a foot on the ladder. ‘I’ve got an idea where he is.’
Fifty-three
[Palmer, 22:36]
‘Well done getting them all here. Saves me a job.’ John trained the gun on her, still in the car. ‘All those people who left my father to rot in that cell. I’ve made their children suffer, now it’s their turn.’
Palmer tried to keep calm. Let him feel like he was in control.
‘Should I start with Dawn’s father, David? He was the ringleader, wasn’t he? But it was Nathan who forced my father into that bunker. Maybe I’ll leave David till last. Maybe his wife’s there, maybe she—’
‘Let me go. Give yourself up.’
John smiled at her. ‘Not going to happen.’ He pressed the gun into Palmer’s side, pinching her flesh and tapping bone. ‘Now, get out. Nice and slowly.’
Hands up, Palmer opened the door wide and put her foot on the ground. She got out, wobbling, and rested against the car door.
