Justice for the Damned (32 page)

‘Let Forester go,’ said Tyler.

‘Sure, as soon as you let Margaret go,’ replied Jim, his voice as tight as his chest.

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘Then Forester stays right where he is.’

‘Well, well,’ said Doug. ‘I think this is what they call a Mexican stand-off.’

Tyler shook his head. ‘In a Mexican stand-off no one has the upper hand. That’s not what we have here. You see, Jim, I really don’t give a toss about Forester. Yeah sure, he’s worth a lot of money to me. But what’s money, if you don’t have your freedom? You, on the other hand, love Margaret. Don’t bother denying it. It’s written all over your face. So here’s the deal. You let Forester go and I give you my word Margaret will die fast and painless. If you don’t let him go, Doug’s going to put a bullet in him. And then I’m going to go to work on Margaret while you watch. So what’s it going to be? I’ll give you another ten seconds to decide.’

There was a matter-of-factness about Tyler’s voice that left Jim in no doubt he meant every word. Jim looked at Margaret, his eyes full of desperate uncertainty. Staring tearfully back at him, she gave a shake of her head. ‘Don’t do it, Jim,’ she said, gulping her words out.

He had to do it, though. The thought of dying held little fear for him. But the thought of Margaret being tortured to death was more than he could endure. Slowly, like a terminally ill man holding on to his final seconds of life, he dropped the scalpel and uncuffed Edward.

Edward turned towards Jim, his beady eyes shining with triumph.

‘Move away from him please, Mr Forester,’ said Tyler.

As Edward approached Tyler, his gaze fell to the dead dog. The shine left his eyes. His nose twitched with displeasure.

‘It attacked Stan,’ explained Tyler. ‘He had no choice but to kill it.’

‘Well you can bloody well deduct fifteen hundred quid from the idiot’s fee. Conall was a top pedigree.’

Doug edged towards Jim. ‘On your face, Jimmy boy.’

Holding Margaret’s gaze, afraid that if he looked away it would be the last time he saw her alive, Jim got down on the ground. What little breath he had gasped out of him as Doug rammed a heel into his spine and zipped his wrists and ankles together with plasticuffs. The tingling was back in his left arm. His vision was growing grey. With every ounce of will he possessed, he held onto consciousness and Margaret’s eyes.

‘Is this his wife?’ asked Edward, eyeing Margaret with the same look of mild disgust he usually reserved for his own wife.

‘Ex-wife,’ corrected Tyler.

‘So go on then. Keep your word. Kill her.’

‘All in good time. For now she’s of more use to us alive.’

Edward’s mouth puckered in disappointment. ‘Why?’

‘We need to know how Monahan found his way to you and if he’s been working with anyone else on this private investigation of his.’

‘You mean there might be others out there like him?’

‘It’s just a precaution.’ Tyler saw no profit in telling Edward about Reece. The shrill edge in the politician’s voice and the way his eyes darted around as though he expected to see enemies lurking behind every tree, told of nerves stretched close to breaking. The last thing he needed was Edward flipping out on him. ‘Most likely there’s no one. But if there is, we may need some form of leverage to persuade the good detective to give them up.’

‘You lying bastard,’ hissed Margaret, reading the intent of Tyler’s words.

‘Hush now.’ Tyler tightened his arm against her throat, choking off her oxygen. She struggled briefly, eyes bulging, mouth working silently, then went limp.

‘Margaret!’ Her name tore out of Jim’s throat. He fought frantically to writhe out from under Doug’s boot. As Tyler lowered Margaret to the ground, Doug whipped the pistol across the back of Jim’s head once, then again and again until blackness took over.

Pulling on plastic gloves, Tyler approached the steel door and made to close it. He didn’t even glance at what was inside the bunker. That was none of his business. ‘Wait,’ said Edward, ‘my wellies are in there.’

He quickly retrieved them. Tyler locked the door and returned the key to him, saying, ‘Go home and get yourself cleaned up. Don’t leave the house or phone anyone. I’ll call you as soon as we find the girl.’

Edward blinked as though he’d been slapped. The girl! How could he have forgotten about her? ‘Are you saying she got away?’

‘Stan’s on her trail.’

‘What if he doesn’t catch her?’ The note of hysteria in Edward’s voice grew more pronounced. ‘Oh God, Oh Christ—’

‘She’s weak and badly injured,’ cut in Tyler, pointing at a sprinkling of dark spatters on the grass to illustrate his words. ‘My guess is she won’t make it out of the woods.’

‘But what if she does? It’ll be the end of everything.’ Edward jabbed a trembling finger at Tyler. ‘You stupid bastard! How could you let this happen?’

‘I didn’t let this happen. You did. And it’s going to cost you another couple of hundred thousand at least. But we can discuss payment later. For now, go home.’

Tyler’s voice was as deadpan as his face. But there was something underneath his words, some quality of unspoken warning that made Edward glance nervously at the knife in his hand. Hugging his arms across his shivering chest, Edward turned and started towards Southview. He’d only taken a couple of steps when the echoing sound of a gunshot rang out.

Tyler and Doug exchanged a glance. ‘How far away do you reckon that is?’ asked Doug.

‘Maybe half a mile.’ Tyler turned to Edward. ‘From the sounds of it, I’d say your problem just got solved.’

‘It could be someone out shooting pheasants,’ Edward said doubtfully.

‘No. That wasn’t a shotgun blast.’ Tyler took out a phone and dialled Stan. The line rang. One ring, two, three, four…

Melinda had taken more than a few punches in her life. And that was what it felt like to be shot – like the hardest punch she’d ever taken. There was no pain. Not at first. Only the feel of all the air being knocked out of her lungs. She staggered. But somehow, through some mixture of desperate strength and sheer force of will, she managed to stay on her feet. Her momentum carried her in amongst the trees. She could have wept with relief as they closed ranks around her like a protecting wall. But she didn’t have the breath for it. She felt as if she was straining to suck air through a straw. The mulchy leaf-littered ground seemed to cling to her feet like glue. Her body screamed at her to stop, to give up, but her mind refused to listen. Another gunshot reverberated through the woods. She tensed in anticipation of being hit, but the ping of a bullet striking metal told her the shot hadn’t been fired at her. She didn’t glance back, she just drove her legs with all the strength she had.

Thorns pierced the soles of her feet, branches whipped her face, roots tripped her over. And every time she fell it seemed as if she wouldn’t be able to get back up. But somehow, clawing at earth and bark, she managed to. The initial numbness of shock was wearing off. An itching, burning sensation was rapidly building where the bullet had passed through her right shoulder. There was an inconspicuous-looking little hole in the wax jacket. But when she touched her hand to it, blood instantly pooled in her palm.
I’m bleeding to death! I’m bleeding to death!
The panicked thought threatened to overwhelm her. She fought to drag her mind back to the one certainty – if she didn’t keep moving, she would die. Putting one foot in front of the other. That was all that mattered.
One foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other.
She repeated the words over and over in her mind like a prayer.

When Melinda reached the fence, her eyes filled with tears of shattered hope. Beyond the wire, a patchwork of fields strung with tatters of mist sloped towards the grey rooftops of a village. The houses were only a mile or two away, but she may as well have been looking through a telescope at the moon. Her legs felt rubbery. She could barely move her right arm. She would have struggled to climb some stairs, never mind a fence. She staggered along the fence, searching in vain for some gap she might squeeze through or crawl under. Body quaking, eyes closed, she leant her face against the wire. It was over. All that was left for her to do was wait for death, whether it be from loss of blood, or at the hands of the ex-cop who’d shot her, or maybe at the hands of the man he worked for. What was his name? Forester. Yes, that was it. She gave a frantic, determined shake of her head. No, she would rather push her hand into the bullet wound and tear out her own insides than give that fucker the pleasure of killing her.

Melinda stripped off the heavy wax jacket and flung it over the fence. She removed the belt, before chucking the trousers over too. Trying not to look at the blood-swathed right side of her body, she slipped the end of the belt through the buckle to make a loop. She tied the same end of the belt tightly to her right wrist. Then she reached up with her left hand as high as possible and grasped the fence close to a post. She hooked the toes of her left foot through the wire at knee height and pushed off the ground with her right foot. Pulling herself upwards, she swung her right arm in an agonising arc and attempted to hook the belt loop over the top of the post. She missed and dropped to the ground. Her knees threatened to give way. She clung to the fence like it was a life buoy, drawing up her strength for a final effort. She propelled herself off the ground again. This time the loop dropped over the top of the post. It pulled tight as she put all her weight on her right arm. Then it was like someone was pouring boiling fat over her shoulder. For a second, she thought she was going to pass out. But she didn’t. She caught hold of the top of the fence with her left hand, brought her feet up higher and jerked herself upwards. She managed to get her armpits over the fence, then her belly. The wire drew deep gouges in her skin as she squirmed forwards. Then she was falling. For a second she hung suspended by the belt. She let out a strangled scream. Then the knot came loose and she fell in a gasping, groaning heap to the ground.

Melinda wasn’t sure how long she lay there for. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe longer passed, before she found it within herself to get to her feet. She put the jacket back on, but left the trousers where they were. She didn’t have the strength to retrieve the belt. Moving like someone in a dream, she staggered onwards. A band of mist swallowed her up, turned her around and spat her out to the left of where she’d just come from. The realisation tore a sob from her. It was only a matter of retracing her path forty or fifty metres, but each step felt like a mile. More mist rolled in, cold and clammy. She clambered over a low drystone wall and slithered down a steep grassy bank. She took several more faltering steps, before stopping abruptly as the ground fell away in a sheer drop. The crag was as tall as a two-storey house. Bundles of angular boulders and broken stone millwheels clustered at its base.

Melinda jerked her gaze from side to side, frantically looking for a way down. There wasn’t one that she could see. She rolled her eyes bitterly skyward, thinking,
Why are you doing this to me?
She flinched at the sound of a stone rolling down the bank behind her. Someone was climbing over the wall! She couldn’t see them in the mist, but she could hear them grunting with effort. As she flung herself to the ground behind a hump of grass, a figure lurched into view. It was the ex-cop. In one hand he held the gun, the other clutched his injured thigh.

‘Fucking bastard dog,’ Stan muttered, limping unwittingly towards the quarried edge. As Melinda had done, he pulled up sharply, swaying on the lip of the cliff. In that instant, she knew what she had to do. There was no space for hesitation. A second or two from now he would regain his balance and the chance would be gone. Adrenalin pumping fresh strength into her limbs, she scrambled to her feet and ran at him. She hit him without even sufficient force to leave a bruise, but it was enough. He toppled forwards. He didn’t utter a cry, but his finger twitched on the trigger, sending a bullet into the void. He hit the boulders below with a dull crunching sound and tumbled away out of sight down the slope.

Melinda stared after him for a moment, her chest heaving. Then she resumed her search for a way down. After a short distance, she came to a narrow gulley with a trickle of water in it that descended between two quarried faces. She clambered down the gulley and over the jumble of boulders at the foot of the crag. She flinched to a halt at a sound – a gurgling that wasn’t made by the water. She was about to hurry away from it, but the ring of a mobile phone stopped her in her tracks. She stood briefly frozen with indecision. Then she warily made her way towards the ringing.

Stan was lying on his back in a patch of bracken. There was no visible sign of injury, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be getting back up. His face was pale and bluish around the lips; his fingers were curled into paralysed, shaking claws. As Melinda stooped over him, his eyes bulged up at her without seeming to see her. The gun was nowhere to be seen. She felt broken bones moving and grating beneath her hands as she searched for the phone and found it in an inner pocket of his jacket. She cut off the call and dialled 999. It only occurred to her as the operator picked up that she didn’t have a clue where she was.

Tyler dialled Stan again and went straight through to an answering service. A frown traced itself upon his forehead, barely visible, but there. ‘He’s on the phone,’ he said in response to Doug’s questioning look.

‘He’s probably trying to call you back.’

All three men stared expectantly at the phone. It didn’t ring.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Edward, his voice twanging with anxiety.

‘Go home,’ repeated Tyler.

‘Something’s wrong. I know it. That little bitch has done something to—’

Tyler twisted towards Edward, and what the politician saw in his eye made him break off and retreat a step. Doug quickly ushered Edward on his way. ‘Please, Mr Forester, do as he says. Stan probably just can’t get a signal. You know how poor the coverage can be out here.’

Shooting panicky glances at Tyler, Edward reluctantly resumed heading towards the gate.