Target (16 page)

I didn't even look to see how my would-be killer had reacted. I saw the shovel hit him somewhere in the midriff while he was still turned the other way, and I heard him let out a surprised grunt, but by then I was charging for the tree line, splattering mud everywhere, knowing that salvation was only feet away.

I half dived, half slid into the trees, rolling on the pine needles and scrambling to my feet. Behind me I heard the pop of a shot fired through a silencer, then the sounds of barked orders and pursuit.

Sensing freedom, and with adrenalin coursing through me, I ran into the welcoming darkness, ignoring the branches that tore at my skin. I stumbled once, almost fell, but my sheer momentum, coupled with a desperate, exhilarating will to live, drove me onwards.

A powerful torch beam moved in a steady arc through the sodden foliage, trying to focus in on me, and as I weaved to avoid its glare a bullet hissed quietly past my head and popped into the trunk of a pine just ahead of me, leaving a small round hole and a thin trail of smoke. I caught the whiff of cordite as I passed and tried to accelerate but my legs wouldn't go any faster and my lungs ached with the strain of all my exertions. I wasn't fit, and it was beginning to show. But I knew without doubt that the men following me would be fitter, so either I continued to run or I died.

Without warning, the ground ahead of me simply disappeared, and before I knew it I was tumbling down a slope. I somersaulted once, hitting my head on something hard, and then I was immersed in water.

I scrambled to my feet, saw that I was knee deep in a shallow stream, then charged across it and scrambled up the slope on the other side. As I reached the top, gasping for breath and blinking the rainwater out of my eyes, I dared for the first time to look over my shoulder.

And saw him there. Standing in the darkness, at the top of the slope on the other side of the stream, barely twenty yards away, the snarling wolf face skewed slightly where it had taken a knock, but with the gun held outwards in both hands, taking aim.

I dived forward into the mud as he fired, making myself as small a target as possible. The shot sailed somewhere above me and I crawled assault-course style on my belly until I had cover from the trees. Then I got to my feet and was running again, hearing him splash through the water of the stream as he continued his pursuit.

I was tempted to drop down and hide in the thick undergrowth, knowing that it would be extremely difficult to find me there, but in the end my instincts told me that my best hope of survival was to put real distance between us and reach some kind of civilization.

I could hardly breathe now – my lungs felt like they were about to burst – but my legs somehow kept going and I'd covered maybe another fifty yards when I finally saw a gap in the trees ahead. The sounds of pursuit had faded and I had this sudden elated feeling that they'd given up, having decided that I was proving too difficult to kill.

The opening in the trees gave on to a quiet country road flanked on the far side by an impenetrable-looking hedge. As I ran on to the lane I saw the lights of houses about a hundred yards further down.

Freedom. As soon as I got there I knew I'd be safe. And this time I'd go straight to the police, regardless of what they believed or didn't believe.

But a hundred yards is a long way when every muscle in your body aches and each breath comes in a shallow gasp.

And when there are two men chasing you with guns.

I caught a flash of the torch beam in the trees to my right, but this time it was further ahead, between me and the houses. The bastards were trying to cut me off.

I took off again, arms flailing, my gait little more than an exhausted, drunken stagger.

A hundred yards. Eighty. Fifty. The torch beam had disappeared, and as I rounded a slight bend in the road I could see a red pub sign hanging outside one of the buildings. All the lights were on inside and there were several cars parked next to it. The rain was easing now.

Thirty yards. Twenty. I could hear the clink of glasses, the welcome buzz of conversation. Safety.

The pub door opened and a middle-aged man stepped out, turning his head to call out a final goodbye to those inside.

'Help me!' I managed to shout, the effort physically painful. Barely ten yards away now. 'Please help me!'

He was still grinning when he turned my way. I was, too. I'd never been so happy to see someone in my whole life. To have been so close to death and to be given a second chance at life is the sweetest, most incredible reward imaginable.

The bullet struck him in the eye with a malevolent hiss and blood splattered the pub window. He tottered on his feet for a full second, his expression one of mild surprise, then he lost his footing on the pub step and went down hard, his head hitting the pavement with an angry smack.

I stopped, all hope sucked out of me, and turned round slowly.

The Irishman was twenty yards away from me, the gun raised and pointed at me.

Strangely, I felt nothing. I think I was too exhausted for that. I'd tried everything. I'd done my best, and in the final analysis it simply hadn't been enough.

And then there was a roaring sound, getting closer and closer, and the Irishman was suddenly bathed in bright light.

A car. Coming fast, skidding now.

Instinctively I swung round to meet it, blinded by the headlights as it bore down on me, realizing at the very last second that I was right in the middle of the road; and then I was flying through the air, flailing like a madman, seeing the ground come up to greet me.

And then, bang.

Nothing.

Mike Bolt took the corner way too fast. There were plenty of reasons why: it was dark; it was pissing with rain; the road was unfamiliar, winding and very narrow; and, most important of all, he was a man in a serious hurry.

He slammed on the brakes, conscious of Mo Khan smacking a hand on to the dashboard to steady himself as he shouted instructions for back-up into his airwave radio, but the car was already going into a skid. Bolt turned the wheel hard, trying to straighten up before he hit the house looming up in front of him. He missed it narrowly, but the wheels locked and the car was temporarily out of control as it skidded along the rain-slicked road. A red pub sign appeared through the slicing of the windscreen wipers, and then suddenly Mo yelled out, his voice almost deafening him: 'Boss! Watch out!'

A guy standing in the middle of the road facing them. Frozen like a deer in headlights.

The car was slowing down thanks to Bolt's pressure on the brakes, but nowhere near fast enough. He could see the fear on the guy's face, the way his eyes were widening, recognized him from the photo he'd seen at HQ earlier that day as Rob Fallon, the man they'd gone to Maxwell's place to see, the one man who might help them locate Tina.

And then, bang, they hit him.

He flew over the bonnet, smacked bodily into the windscreen, cracking it, then bounced off and into the darkness.

The tyres screamed, the car wobbled, and then, at last, it stopped. The two men lurched forward in their seats, Bolt's head narrowly missing the windscreen.

That was when, through the rain, he spotted another figure standing in the road only a few yards in front of them. It was a man, but Bolt didn't get a good look at him, because he was pointing a gun straight at the car.

'Get down!' he shouted, dragging Mo down by the collar as he ducked beneath the steering wheel.

There was the sound of breaking glass as a bullet whistled through the car, followed by a second crack as it exited through the back window.

Keeping his head below the level of the damaged windscreen, Bolt floored the accelerator and the Jaguar shot forward. Two more bullets smashed through the window in rapid succession, both missing their targets, and then out of the corner of his eye Bolt saw the gunman jump to one side as they passed him, then disappear from view. He lifted his head above the steering wheel, saw the guy running for the trees, but he was trying to do far too many things at once and before he had a chance to turn the wheel and give chase the Jaguar mounted a bank at the side of the road and ploughed into a hedge, before coming to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle to the tarmac.

For a moment, Bolt was too shocked to say anything. Barely five minutes earlier he'd been driving to his informant's house to follow up on a lead. Since then he'd discovered his corpse, done a mad dash to try to intercept his killers, run over Rob Fallon, probably written off his second car in a year, and narrowly avoided being shot dead.

But there was no time to dwell on any of that now. Shaken but unhurt, he jumped out of the car and, using the door as cover, scanned the trees ahead for the gunman, wondering for the first time if it had been Hook. Because if it had been, and they could catch him, then maybe they could find out what had happened to Tina.

But it was clear he was gone.

Bolt leaned back inside the car. 'Are you OK?' he asked Mo, who was scrabbling round on the floor for the radio.

'Just peachy,' Mo replied, picking it up, but his thick wedge of greying hair was standing upright and he looked like he'd seen a ghost. 'I think you might have saved my neck.' He pointed at one of the bullet holes in what was left of the windscreen. It was at head height on the passenger side.

There wasn't time for Bolt to acknowledge the gratitude in his colleague's voice. 'Get on that radio and tell them to get helicopter support here as soon as possible. We need to track down that shooter. And get ambulances here too. ASAP. I'll go check on our casualty.'

Leaving Mo in the car, Bolt ran back in the direction of the pub, the adrenalin-fuelled excitement he was experiencing tempered by the fact that he'd run down the one man they desperately needed to speak to.

A crowd had gathered outside the pub – about a dozen people in all, mostly men. Most appeared to be milling around, seemingly unable to take in what had just happened, but one was bent down beside a man lying on the ground, giving him what appeared to be an increasingly desperate heart massage.

Bolt's heart sank. Surely he hadn't killed Fallon. That would be the most terrible irony of all.

One of the men saw him coming. 'There he is, the one who hit him!' he shouted in a loud upper-class voice that carried all the way down the street.

Bolt pulled out his warrant card and waved it at the group. 'I'm a police officer,' he called out with as much authority as he could muster, knowing he needed to take control of this situation. 'Move out of the way please.'

The crowd parted a little, letting him through, although they aimed angry mutterings at his back.

'He's dead,' said the man giving the heart massage, looking up as Bolt stopped next to him, his expression one of utter disbelief. 'Jim's dead.'

Bolt looked down and felt a guilty surge of relief. Jim was a well-built man in his fifties, wearing a check shirt and corduroy waistcoat. There was a blackened, coin-shaped hole where his right eye should have been.

'This man's been shot,' he said firmly so that everyone could hear him. 'An ambulance'll be here in a few minutes. We're trying to locate the killer right now, but there's another casualty round here as well.' Then, wiping away the raindrops on his face, he pushed through the group, looking for Fallon, praying he was OK.

He found him lying in a narrow alleyway just up from the pub. He was on his side in an approximate fetal position, and he wasn't moving.

Cursing, Bolt crouched down beside him, feeling for a pulse. 'Mr Fallon, Rob... can you talk to me?'

Sirens began wailing in the distance, coming from more than one direction.

Fallon moaned. He was bleeding from the mouth, but he also had a strong pulse. Slowly his eyes opened and he rolled over so he was staring up at Bolt, his face a mask of numb shock. There was a gash above his eye that was weeping a thin trail of blood down one cheek and he had a cut on his head as well.

'It's all right, Rob, you're safe now. I'm a police officer, and an ambulance is on the way.' He showed him his warrant card. 'Can you speak?' he asked, conscious that the sirens were getting closer, and that he had only a short time to talk to Fallon before he was taken to hospital.

'Yeah,' he said weakly, 'I can speak. But I think I might have broken my arm.'

Bolt looked down. His right arm was on the ground beneath him, and for the first time he saw that it was bent at an unpleasant angle.

'The doctors'll fix that. But I need to know about Tina Boyd. Do you have any idea where she is? We need to find her urgently.'

Fallon managed to shake his head a little. 'No. I was trying to get hold of her earlier.'

'Have you been in contact with her today?'

'Yes.'

'Where was she when you last spoke to her?'

Fallon winced in pain. 'Outside the doorman's place. John Gentleman.'

'Doorman?'

'The one at Jenny's place. Jenny Brakspear.' Fallon struggled to sit up, but failed. 'Listen, you've got to find her. The Irish guy, the one with the gun...I think he's got her.' He started to say something else but his words were drowned out by the blaring sirens as the first of the emergency services vehicles came to a halt on the road behind them.

Through the noise, Bolt told Fallon once again that he'd be OK now and squeezed his good hand. But inside he was in turmoil.

Where the hell was Tina Boyd?

When the phone in his left pocket began to vibrate, the man in the cream suit excused himself from his conversation with the mayor and his wife – a mountain of a woman who'd single-handedly polished off two plates of canapés – and weaved his way through the clusters of guests lining the swimming pool over to the cobbled steps leading down to the beach.

'Where are you calling from?' he demanded, walking along the sand away from the party.

'A phone box,' answered the man he knew only as Hook. 'We've got a problem. The witness I told you about. Fallon. We didn't get him.'

The man in the cream suit hissed through his teeth. It was a sound he made whenever he became angry or frustrated. In this case, he was both. 'I thought I told you specifically to get rid of him.'

'You did, but he managed to evade us.'

'If you'd dealt with him in the beginning, as I wanted you to do, we wouldn't have this problem, would we? Right now, he's a major threat to everything. I want him dead. Put all your resources into it.'

'It's too late. He's in the hands of the police.'

The man in the cream suit hissed again. 'I can't afford problems on this. There's too much riding on it. Neither can you. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the two million you're being paid is conditional on events reaching a successful conclusion. If Fallon talks, that's not going to happen.'

'He's hurt. I'm not sure how badly, but he was hit head-on by a car travelling at speed which knocked him high into the air. I saw it happen. It's possible he might even be dead.'

'It would be useful if he was, but we can't leave it to chance. Can you get to him in the hospital?'

'It's possible, but it might be too risky.'

'I didn't think you were the kind who scared easily, Mr Hook.'

'I'm not, but I'm no fool either. That's why I'm still here.'

The man in the cream suit thought about pushing him further but decided against it. He was used to getting his own way, but he was also pragmatic enough to know that Hook had a point. 'Do what you can, but events are very close to fruition and nothing can go wrong now. There's too much riding on it. How far away are we from receiving the goods?'

'A matter of hours. As soon as we have them, no one's going to be able to stop us.'

'So everything's in place?'

'Absolutely.'

'Good. Kill Fallon. I'll sleep easier with him gone. And keep me posted on developments.'

He hung up and stopped walking, looking out to sea at the squid boats on the horizon. As with everything in life, there were complications, but the man in the cream suit was not the type to worry unduly. He was a gambler by nature. This was just a bigger gamble than usual. Even if it failed he would still be insulated from its repercussions, because he was also an expert at covering his tracks.

As he returned to the party, he heard his wife's high-pitched, faux upper-class laughter rising above the buzz of chatter as she talked to two middle-aged men in suits, one of whom was gazing unashamedly at her new breasts. The party had been her idea. Charmaine liked to act the glamorous hostess, and the man in the cream suit was happy to go along with it. She was a useful trophy, but little else. His real interest lay in much younger company, and he tended to travel overseas for his gratification, to Phnom Penh, Saigon and Manila.

Charmaine caught his eye as he took a glass of Krug from one of the waitresses, and flashed him an expensive smile. 'Darling, where have you been? I wanted to introduce you to some friends. This is Mohammed.' She pointed to the one focusing on her cleavage. 'And this is Atul. They're in import/export.'

The man in the cream suit came over and put out a hand to each of them in turn. 'Paul Wise,' he said, flashing a smile of his own. 'Very pleased to meet you.'