Dead Man Walking (46 page)

‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t have suited you if I’d died at that stage,’ Heck replied. ‘I know you wanted me dead earlier, but not then. I mean, if I’d died then I couldn’t have gone back to the pub and told everyone how brave you’d been. You looked equally brave when we got distracted by Ted’s curtain twitching. Whether you actually saw that curtain twitch or not, you knew Buster would be in there, so you’d have an excuse when we finally forced entry and only found the cat. The main thing was it gave you a few minutes away from me. Just enough time to nip across the road to the police station, climb through the cellar window, hit the breakers, open the propane tanks, and then climb out again. Done and dusted inside what … three, four minutes? Course, the real stroke of genius came a few minutes after that, when you shot the road surface alongside us.’

‘Now you’re just being silly,’ she said, but her fixed grin had hardened into a kind of sneer.

‘The gun was up your sleeve, I suspect,’ Heck said. ‘And that’s why you used a silencer. I’m guessing that, earlier on, the sound of roaring gunfire suited your plan. Had to keep us running scared, like you said. But I’d never have fallen for an unmuffled gunshot when the weapon was in your hand and you were right next to me. Of course, while we were both supposedly lying low in the trees, all you had to do to draw our attention to the ambushed firearms car was nip up there and switch its beacon on. A tight schedule, I agree, and it’s kept you on your toes, M-E, but ultimately all very manageable.’

‘You’re so wrong,’ she said. ‘It was the Stranger. It’s been the Stranger from the beginning.’

‘You think saying that over and over will make it true?’ he asked her.

‘Ultimately, Heck … it won’t matter what you believe.’

‘Or what
you
believe, M-E. Because they’ll still go over this place with a fine-tooth comb, and at some point they’ll uncover the truth.’

‘Which is that all the evidence implicated Mick McGurk, isn’t it?’

‘Neatly planted evidence, I’ll give you that. I guess you snaffled the wristband while you were applying first aid to McGurk back in the pub. It’s also telling that only
after that
did you mention the quad-bike to us. You were certainly thinking on your feet, love. Which led neatly to the next stage of the operation … you sending me around the side of the McCarthy house where you knew there was a closed gate. That would give you just enough time to plant the wristband on the quad-bike, wouldn’t it?’

‘Aren’t you forgetting I was with you and all the other villagers when the Stranger whistled to us from the fog, Heck?’

‘That Dictaphone was neatly planted too,’ Heck said. ‘Except I wasn’t meant to find that, was I?’

Mary-Ellen gave a low whistle. ‘You see, Miss Piper. Heck’s luck strikes again. You really were a fool to let him leave SCU.’

‘Winners make their own luck,’ Gemma replied. ‘For Heck’s luck, check no further than his habit of chasing a lead to its very end, of doing the job more thoroughly than anyone else. And that’s what’s undone you, isn’t it, Mary-Ellen? The discovery of the Dictaphone meant you had to complete your mission at any cost.’

‘Yeah,’ Heck said. ‘After that, you couldn’t just cut your losses and run. You couldn’t simply lead the villagers down the Race and then bask in the safety of their innumerable testimonies that you’d been such a friend. Maybe letting so many of them go wasn’t your plan in the beginning, but I bet you had half an eye on it as a contingency when you saw time was running out. I mean, enough damage had been done to this place to register it as a disaster on the seismic scale, and the senior officers on site would get dragged over the coals for it. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would keep
your
ass out of a sling. And you could go after your real foes again at a later date. But no … once we had possession of the Dictaphone, which was covered in
your
prints and DNA, all that went by the wayside. You
had
to come back here and finish us.’

Mary-Ellen shrugged innocently. ‘My decision to come back here was entirely the right one, DS Heckenburg, for all sorts of reasons … even though it won’t have a happy outcome. Thanks to you confiding in Hazel about Mick McGurk, no one will ever now query my own witness statement, which will be that I got worried about you guys and came back with Ted Haveloc to the Boat Club – only to discover that McGurk had already killed you two, and that in the ensuing fight he killed Haveloc as well … before I managed to get his gun and use it on him.’

Heck shook his head. ‘So you’ve killed Ted Haveloc too?’

‘
No Heck, you killed him!’
Mary-Ellen barked, froth spurting from her lips. ‘By fucking things up for everyone. By allocating Ted to
my
kayak. I told you, you fuck, by this time I was happy to send the rest of that rabble down the Race. Ted could have gone too, but by sticking him with me you signed his death warrant. What choice did I have …’

‘By sticking him with
you
we signed his death warrant?’ Heck said, wonderingly. ‘
You
had no choice?’

Briefly, her mouth slammed shut, her jaw trembling violently. A fresh tear snaked a zigzag course down her left cheek.

‘Careful, M-E,’ he said. ‘You’re moving off script.’

‘The Stranger killed Ted Haveloc,’ she said tightly. ‘Everyone will see that. And I’ve had enough of this bullshit!’ She focused on Gemma again, raising the gun until it was level with her face. ‘The Stranger’s plan was to break you, DSU Piper, to ruin you professionally … but I’m sure he’ll be equally happy to see you dead …’

‘Course he will!’ Heck butted in. ‘He’s the lowest of the low, a sadistic pipsqueak!’

‘Shut up, Heck,’ she shouted. ‘You’re next, but how you get it is my choice.’

‘
You
know what a scrote he was better than anyone, don’t you, M-E!’

Fleetingly, Mary-Ellen was distracted between the two of them; more tears poured profusely; tears of rage, regret, angst … who knew?

‘All those lonely years in that dirty, decrepit caravan,’ Heck said. ‘Just him and his perverted fantasies. And you of course. The little girl with the perfect dad.’

‘I said, shut the fuck up!’

‘Except no one could ever have been that perfect, Mary-Ellen. Especially not someone with a track record for sexual violence. Like I say …
you
know that better than anyone!’

Her eyes flared like pits of burning oil as she swung the Python around, at which point Gemma snatched her own firearm from the shingle and levelled it with both hands. ‘Drop that weapon, PC O’Rourke! Right now!’

Heck had been counting on this. Only a few seconds earlier, he’d glanced again at Gemma’s gun, and had suddenly thought its chunky black outline and big cylindrical barrel all wrong for a harmless starter pistol.

Mary-Ellen smirked at Gemma with disbelief. ‘You on crack, ma’am? Thinking you can take me down with that silly toy?’

Gemma locked gazes with her. ‘Don’t make me do it, Mary-Ellen.’

And only now did Mary-Ellen seem to recognise that something might be wrong. That somehow or other she might not be fully in control of this situation.

‘You sneaky bitch!’ She swung the Colt Python back around.

But Gemma fired first.

The ‘starter pistol’, which was actually a single-shot flare gun, bucked in her hand, a ball of blistering light flashing the twenty yards between them, hitting the policewoman clean on her left side and engulfing her in flame; igniting her like a Roman Candle. With flames roaring up her legs and the whole left side of her body, Mary-Ellen ran headlong into the tarn, uttering muffled, incoherent shrieks, but still managing to get three thunderous shots off before the waters enveloped her in clouds of steam. Thanks to her frantic, stumbling flight, and the massive recoil of the Python, all three slugs went wide, though the two cops still threw themselves to the ground.

As the tarn roiled and hissed, Heck snatched Gemma’s hood and yanked her to her feet. ‘This way,’ he said, hauling her along the shingle towards the clubhouse.

‘Tell me you got all that?’ Gemma shouted.

Heck stuck his hand into the same pocket as before, where the Dictaphone was still running on ‘Record’. He hit the ‘Off’ switch through the sealed evidence bag.

‘Just hope it picked up something,’ he said. ‘It’s a souped-up model, so it ought to have. Good job these bags are airtight too. Otherwise, this thing would have died when the canoe went down …’

They scrambled over the Boat Club fence, but there now came a squawk of outrage behind them. Whatever the fire had done to Mary-Ellen, they couldn’t tell – despite glancing back, in the murk and the smoke and the steam they had no detail. But she hadn’t relinquished her Python and now appeared to be kneeling upright in the water, levelling the weapon with both hands. Two more deafening shots followed, an entire plate-glass window on this side of the clubhouse disintegrating.

Heck and Gemma ducked sideways, struggling and tripping between tables and chairs. The next thing they were on slick timber decking. Ahead of them, the Boat Club jetty tapered off into the fog.

‘You bitch!’ Mary-Ellen screeched behind them. ‘He’ll do you for this!’

At that shrill pitch, her voice barely sounded human; it was frothy and distorted. It was easy to picture the effects of the flames on her face and mouth. Not that she’d lost any of her demented rage. She was armed with a revolver, which only contained six shots. She’d now fired five. But if she was concerned about using her last, it didn’t show. The Python roared again, and the wooden handrail alongside them exploded.

‘You fucking bitch, Piper!’ Again, it was a barely human sound, as if her mouth was stuffed with sand.

It was a near-certainty that having raided the strong-box in the firearms car, she’d have another weapon to hand, and indeed, as Heck and Gemma started along the jetty at a faltering, hobbling gait – not only was Gemma injured, but neither of them really knew where they were going – she opened fire again, and instead of the deafening
bang
of the Magnum, this time they heard the duller, flatter
blam
of a police-issue Glock nine millimetre. The shot whistled past, with inches to spare.

‘Heck, where the hell are we going?’ Gemma stammered. ‘I can’t even stand up, never mind swim …’

‘There are other boats along here.’

‘Another bloody boat!’

‘You got a better idea?’

The only boat they found was about two-thirds of the way along the jetty, on its starboard side. It was a canoe, smaller than the previous one but with two paddles inside it. Quickly, Heck untied its line, and lowered Gemma down the ladder. Behind him, heavy feet were advancing along the jetty, along with a hoarse, raw breathing.

He’d expected Mary-Ellen to open fire again by now, but they had a good fifty yards on her, and presumably, her thermal-imaging device had died either in the fire or the tarn.

‘You sodding bastards,’ she blathered. ‘He’ll scalp you for this … he’ll scalp you and he’ll fucking skin you …’

Heck contemplated lying flat on the top of the jetty, hoping she’d have come alongside him before she realised he was there. He felt he could take her. Even with Mary-Ellen hurt, it would be a hell of a fight, but he’d have the element of surprise. However, when she started shooting again, blindly and indiscriminately, he changed his mind. With boards erupting and splintering around him, he rolled over the edge and swung himself down the ladder like an ape.

‘Nice touch with the flare gun,’ he said, as he paddled them away. Gemma was attempting to help, but was in so much pain that her efforts were sluggish and uncoordinated. ‘Just get comfortable,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this.’

The Glock detonated thirty yards behind, and a slug slapped into the water a few feet to their left.

‘Are you kidding!’ Gemma said through gritted teeth. She struck hard with her paddle. ‘It’s two of us or none at all.’

Heck didn’t argue. He was already breathing hard, feeling the strain in his chest and shoulders, though the canoe was moving swiftly and smoothly, cutting cleanly out into the south-central waters of the tarn. He still didn’t know where they were going, the fog slithering on all sides, masking everything. ‘Anyway, like I say, nice touch with the flare …’

‘Yeah, I heard you the first time.’

‘Better than a starter pistol.’

‘I couldn’t find the sodding starter pistol! But the flare gun was in an emergency kit in the club’s first-aid locker. I trashed the Club Secretary’s office in the process!’

‘That’ll be the least of his problems when the new season starts.’

There was another bark of gunfire. A bullet whizzed closely past.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Heck said, glancing over his shoulder.

Another boat was already on the water behind them. Barely visible, but gaining.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Gemma said. ‘She’s back in her kayak.’

‘Looks like she’s in yours, the single-hander. Doesn’t give up easily, does she?’

‘How can she afford to?’

‘I’ve met some headcases in my time …’

‘It’s about survival now, Heck.’

‘Call it what you want, she’s mad as a hatter!’

They’d now managed to find a mutual rhythm, though Gemma winced with the pain and effort. Ahead of them, the fog seemed to be shifting. Heck had the feeling they were approaching a landmass of some sort; the southeast shore maybe.

‘Just think about it,’ he panted. ‘All this time, she’s been waiting her chance. I mean, it might never have come. But she was patient, infinitely patient, just biding her time … month after month, year after year.’

‘Yeah, yeah … just keep that tape recording safe …’

‘It may be classified as unreliable evidence, don’t you think?’

‘Improperly obtained,’ she replied, ‘but real enough. I think they’ll admit it …’

The Glock barked again. But they barely heard. A rising rumble from somewhere ahead now drew all their attention. The fog broke apart like dim, dusty curtains, to reveal rising slopes clad with trees, and yet directly in front, a cleft in this hillside, and across that at ground level, a stone footbridge. The steel grating of the gate was raised, a cloud of spume hanging over it.