Dead Man Walking (36 page)

No one else stirred, which was probably a good thing. As their vigil had worn on, some truly ridiculous suggestions had been made; Mandy Fillingham wondering if they all ought to sit on the roof – even if the killer broke in, he would never know where they were. Gemma had replied that, in the unexpected event the killer did not possess thermal imaging and was not able to pick them off the roof with embarrassing ease, hypothermia would have less of a problem. Burt Fillingham had agreed with Gemma that his wife was talking ‘ludicrous crap’, though Gemma hadn’t actually used that term, and suggested they go on the offensive instead: smash up the furniture, arm themselves with clubs and charge from house to house, banging on doors, shouting, trying to smoke the guy out. It hadn’t taken Gemma to remind him the average bullet would be more than a match for a broken chair leg; Ted Haveloc had made that contribution, pretty scathingly.

At this point Gemma had intervened, advising them to keep the noise down and stay focused on the real problem, which was the dangerous individual outside. Twenty minutes had passed since then, and everyone now was snoozing – aside from Gemma.

She patrolled the downstairs, visiting each and every room, including both sets of toilets, checking every window, occasionally stealing a peek from behind the closed drapes, seeing only the monotone blankness of the fog.

At length, she ventured upstairs, the creak of each tread amplified in the deep quiet. At the top, a single passage ran the full length of the building, various rooms leading off it, all standing open and in darkness. She proceeded slowly, poking her head into each one separately, but always waiting for her eyes to attune before entering to check the window. In most cases, with the exception of Hazel’s flat, they contained nothing more than a sideboard, an armchair and a bed, so it wasn’t like there were many hiding places. Even so, it was a far from agreeable experience, evoking memories of her days as a young constable in Limehouse, where she’d spent many a night shift property-checking at the backs of shopping precincts, along rows of garages or underground lock-ups, or among the sheds on desolate urban allotments. This had been as much to fill the long, lonely hours as anything else, though occasionally she’d discovered a break-in or the odd tramp or junkie dossing where he shouldn’t. Of course, it had never entered her head that she might be about to encounter a deranged killer.

Even now, such thoughts only occurred to Gemma as she approached the bedroom at the far end of the passage, the one with the broken window-catch. Partly this was because it struck her that, in all the fuss, they’d forgotten to nail that offending window shut – but primarily it was because for some reason the door to that bedroom was now closed.

She halted in front of it, wondering if it had been closed the last time they’d looked, which had been at least an hour ago. Her memory was too fogged by fatigue to recall accurately. But it didn’t make sense that this door had been left closed while all the others were open.

She glanced behind her. The corridor dwindled through darkness to the top of the stairs, where only a very faint ambient light filtered up from below. The complete silence down there suggested no one was going to come to her aid quickly if she called out. She turned back to the closed door, remembering the door in Fellstead Grange, how it had virtually been blasted from its hinges. When she’d told Heck earlier there was at least the same chance the perpetrator would attack the pub as there was he’d attack them, she’d meant it truthfully, but perhaps deep down she hadn’t held it as a real and conscious fear. But now …?

‘Oh sod it!’ Gemma blurted, reaching out a weary hand, depressing the handle and pushing the door open, exposing the pitch-darkness beyond.

She wondered what she would do if the window was wide open, but it wasn’t – and neither was there anybody in there, at least nobody she could see.

She circled around the neatly made bed, dropped to her knees to glance underneath it – even though she was barely able to see anything down there – and even checked in the wardrobe, which was the same, though at least she was able to grope around inside, hands bashing the empty coat-hangers. Feeling ridiculous, and relieved she hadn’t called one of the civvies to assist, she closed the room up again, this time making a mental note that she
had
shut the door, and sloped back along the landing and down the stairs.

Everyone was still asleep, so she lifted the hatch and passed through the bar, intending to get herself another glass of water.

It was in the kitchen where she had her next fright. She was at the sink, filling a glass, when she sensed someone behind her. She spun wildly around – to find Hazel sitting bleary eyed on the floor against the units at the other side of the room, knees drawn up under her chin.

‘You gave me a turn,’ Gemma said.

‘No sign of Heck or M-E?’

‘I wouldn’t expect them for some time yet.’

‘If ever.’

Gemma sipped water. ‘I understand your concern, Hazel, but pit some demented gunman with loads of ammunition and the biggest grudge going – against Heck, with no gun, no wheels, no idea who he’s up against … I still make it even money. And that’s not taking into account Mary-Ellen, who’s just about the most efficient and energetic uniform I’ve come across in quite some time.’

‘Nice speech. I appreciate the attempt to reassure me.’

‘Well that’s partly what I’m doing, but there’s no reason to despair. They’re both good at their jobs, and however late they are, we’ve still got a firearms unit en route.’

Hazel nodded tiredly, as if that was of no consequence at all. ‘Everything alright upstairs?’

‘Won’t deny that I freaked myself out a little bit … but basically, yeah. How come you’ve not got your head down?’

‘Don’t know how anyone can sleep, to be honest. Mind you, they didn’t see what we saw up at Fellstead Grange, did they?’ Hazel struggled to suppress a shudder. ‘I know I look like shit, Gemma, but there’s no way my eyelids are closing tonight.’

‘Laudable ambition.’ Gemma placed her glass of water on the unit, and then slid down until she too was seated on the floor. She yawned. ‘You have my full permission to extend it to me if you catch me nodding off – give me a good hard dig in the ribs.’

‘Bit more excitement than we’ve been used to, eh?’ Mary-Ellen whispered.

‘Yep,’ Heck said, equally quietly, ensuring he was flat against the wall behind him. ‘I’d almost forgotten how much fun all this stuff was.’

They were waiting just around the corner from Truscott Drive. Only a few dozen yards north of their position, on the opposite side, was the turn into Baytree Court. This was the small cul-de-sac that constituted the village’s most westerly residential road. There were three holiday cottages along there, but dominating the turning circle at its end was a large detached house belonging to the McCarthys.

Heck wasn’t sure why, but the sense of impending threat he’d felt before they’d entered Ted Haveloc’s place seemed to have dissipated, though that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The incident with the cat had certainly lightened the mood, but it might also have created a false sense of security. If anything, the squawking beast could have alerted the madman to their presence on the village streets – if he wasn’t already aware of that. They thus held their position a little longer, waiting and watching.

‘Any ideas yet?’ she wondered.

‘Lots,’ he said. ‘None that make sense.’

‘Changed your mind about the Stranger?’

‘My mind’s never actually been made up on that. I think the Stranger’s the key to all this. But whether the Stranger is the perp is another matter.’

‘Don’t get you?’ Mary-Ellen replied.

Heck pondered again. ‘First, I thought it was a hell of a coincidence, me being up here and the Stranger turning up as well. I mean, I wasn’t involved in the original investigation. But it was a near-certainty I’d recognise the whistling …’

‘Admittedly, that would be a
real
coincidence. And a lucky break for us.’

‘Unless it’s been contrived,’ Heck said. ‘Unless I was
supposed
to recognise it and conclude we were dealing with the Stranger. Because if I did, what was the next thing I was going to do?’

‘Call for supervision and support, I suppose.’

‘Of course, but this very convenient fog has prevented any of that arriving.’

‘Heck, whoever this guy is, he can’t control the weather …’

‘No, but he can control his own timetable … like watch the weather forecasts and wait for some really bad stuff to come along before he kicks everything off.’

She mused on that.

‘So what would I do next?’ Heck said.

‘Well … call DSU Piper.’

‘That’s right. Gemma was a key investigator on the original case. She even fired the fatal shot … assuming it
was
fatal. You don’t get much more involved than that.’

He set off walking, heading diagonally across the road towards Baytree Court.

Mary-Ellen scurried to catch up. ‘You think this whole thing’s been what, a ruse … to bring Gemma up here where he can attack her? Does that fit the Stranger’s profile? Would he still be looking for revenge ten years later?’

Heck shrugged. ‘We don’t have any kind of profile for him. Except that we had him down as a local man who worked outdoors. And we know for sure that at least one of those assumptions was wrong … he turned out to be a Scot. From his build, his voice, his manner, Gemma reckoned he was a husky bloke … but she also reckoned he wasn’t a young man. Now okay, I don’t know how accurate that assessment could be … he was in heavy clothing and it was dark, but sometimes it’s the way people breathe, the way they position their body.’

‘Well if it’s true he wasn’t young, say he was middle-aged, and this was ten years ago, how could he be running all over the fells like a March hare now?’

‘Exactly my point.’

‘Plus he might have suffered severe damage from the gunshot.’

‘That too.’

‘But Heck, if it isn’t the Stranger …?’

‘Shit!’ he hissed.

They were only halfway along the short cul-de-sac that was Baytree Court, but already that was close enough to see that Bella McCarthy’s BMW X5, which was parked outside the front of her house, had also been disabled. Only tatters remained of its tyres, and its bonnet had been jacked open.

‘That’s that,’ Heck said irritably.

‘I suppose we should have expected it.’

‘Yeah … let’s get back.’

They returned to Truscott Drive, walking quickly.

‘Heck, if it isn’t the Stranger,’ Mary-Ellen said again, ‘who the bloody hell …?’

Ptchuuung!

The shot was fired from somewhere to their left.

The first they heard of it was the ricochet from the road surface, because even though the gun was fired from close range, it had been silenced. Instinctively, Heck ducked towards the nearest line of brush, which lay on the right. He crashed through it and threw himself onto his face, and only then noticed that Mary-Ellen hadn’t followed.

He glanced over his shoulder.

She was still in the middle of the road, crouched but apparently frozen rigid.

‘M-E, get over here!’ he hissed.

This jerked her into action, panic driving her onward up the road rather than across it towards him. A second later, the fog had enveloped her, but he heard her feet hammering away into the distance.

‘M-E!’ he hissed again, pointlessly, as she was almost certainly out of earshot.

Somebody else wasn’t.

There was a second
pop
, and a slug tore through the leafage just above his head. A third followed, smashing a branch about three inches from his right ear.

Heck scrambled further from the road, unavoidably threshing twigs and mulch, but remained on his belly, propelling himself with his elbows and his knees. Several yards later, he halted, holding his breath, fresh sweat streaming from his brow.

Now there was silence.

Several seconds passed before he rolled onto his back, knelt up and coiled his legs beneath him so that he could spring to his feet. But instead, he waited again. He was deep amid the foggy trees, but though he’d gone to ground left of the blacktop, he’d now been turned around a couple of times so he didn’t know which direction was which, only that he was somewhere in the extensive triangle of woodland between Truscott Drive and Cragwood Road.

Still, there was no sound. But it was impossible not to imagine the killer wasn’t somewhere very close. Perhaps inevitably, Heck’s ears began to play tricks. Was that the faint shuffle of someone moving slowly through the vegetation about twenty yards to his left? Was that almost imperceptible
click
over on his right the cracking of a twig, or the cocking of a firearm?

Heck hunkered down as low as possible, eyes scanning the unfathomable vapour, reminding himself that even if he
did
hear something, he was deep in the heart of nature. Just because there was a madman on the loose, that didn’t mean animals wouldn’t forage, birds wouldn’t flutter.

More sweat dripped from his forehead as he held his ground.

The seconds became minutes, which in their turn became tens of minutes. But Heck remained alert, twirling at the slightest hint he might not be alone. In normal circumstances, he’d gradually get used to the dark, his natural night-vision soon penetrating the deepest corners of the woodland, but the fog refused to surrender its secrets. He wondered where Mary-Ellen was and if she might have been been hit. The guy hadn’t followed her – at least not initially, as he’d hung around to peg another two off at Heck. Of course, if he was now using a silencer, Heck wouldn’t know whether or not he’d gone after her later, firing off more rounds.

That in itself was confusing. Why had the son of a bitch started using a silencer? He hadn’t been concerned to conceal his gunfire when he was up on the fells. Unless that was all part of his game?

There was a rustle of undergrowth somewhere to Heck’s rear.

He manoeuvred himself around again, muscles tensioned like coiled springs. Something was definitely happening just beyond the scope of his vision. The killer was prowling, searching out his victims. It
had
to be him. It could
not
be anything else. For which reason, Heck determined to stay where he was. If the maniac
was
in his vicinity, as soon as he broke cover a thermal imager would locate and target him easily and cleanly. Several times again, he fancied he heard motion, and yet when he glanced at his watch he saw that forty minutes had now elapsed since he’d gone to ground. Surely, if the killer knew where he was, there’d be no reason to let him sit here?