Pawn (16 page)

Chapter Seventeen.

The world was coming to an end. At least that was the only thing that Barns could think as he looked around at his crime scene. Though of course it wasn’t his crime scene yet. Not until it had been cleared. For the moment it was just a disaster.

In front of him lay the supermarket, windows blown out, some of its walls blackened from fire damage, and wisps of smoke rising from the roof. Though the fire that had been ignited by the bombs had been minor, it didn’t look that way. Here and there in front of it, there were a few indistinct shapes lying on the ground, all now thankfully covered with sheets. These were the ones who had almost escaped. Almost being the important word. But even outside the supermarket death had come for them, probably because of stray weapons fire escaping the burning market.

In front of it was the tangle of broken metal and stalled machines that had once been cars. But it wasn’t guns or bombs that had got them. It was simple panic. Many of the people fleeing the scene had done the very worst thing they could. They’d got in their cars, turned the keys and planted boot. In reverse, in crowded parking lots with narrow alleys between them, and with hundreds of others doing the same, that had been a terrible mistake. There had been at least fifteen crashes, he’d had some time to count them as he’d stood around waiting for information, though it was hard to work out where one crash ended and the next began.

Ringing the entire supermarket, and half the mall beyond it, were cordons of armed police and lengths of police tape. So much police tape. In thirty something years Barns had never seen so much tape used at a crime scene, and the last time he had seen so many officers in one place had been a parade. Then as he recalled, they hadn’t been wearing body armour.

Triage facilities had been set up in the parking bays behind him, and easily a hundred people were receiving treatment for injuries that ranged from simple scratches and burns to partial amputations. The more serious cases had already been flown out of there to the nearest hospitals. And they were the lucky ones. Few bodies had been pulled out yet, but the reports from the armed police still searching the supermarket, said there were plenty of them.

Mixed in among the survivors of course, were more police, taking down details, trying to arrange for families to be told what had happened and to pick up their loved ones, and trying to stay out of the way of the paramedics.

And then there was the command post, a glorified name for a couple of vans loaded down with communications equipment and ringed with non uniformed officers. All of them he knew, were like him. Desperately trying to work out what had happened. But that was likely to take some time.

Barns sighed as he stared at the supermarket from the car park, disgusted that such an awful thing as a shootout and bombing could have happened here, in a peaceful place. But it had, and so close to his home too. It had already been a long day, even if it had only been an hour or two since he had got the call. And it was only going to get longer.

Or maybe not. He suddenly spotted a lone figure leaving the supermarket and heading his way. A figure far too tall and gaunt even in body armour to be anyone else but his sergeant. Barns knew that if he was leaving, it could only mean that he was no longer needed inside, and probably he had some news. He waited impatiently for his sergeant to complete the hundred yard walk across the parking lot, weaving his way through the parked cars and over to the command post.

“Hopkins.” It had seemed even longer standing outside the crime scene, unable to enter it because there were still possibly some gunmen running loose inside the buildings. But at least his sergeant could, if only because he’d recently done his weapons and first aid training. Say what you would about him, the man was dedicated to his training, and that was useful.

“Eight dead, fourteen seriously to critically injured, most of them women and children out doing the family shopping. Please tell me we have someone to pin this on Hopkins.” If Barns sounded upset it was only because he was. This was more than just terrible, it was an atrocity. And somehow he was sure that it was all linked back to Venner and his accursed painting. In fact it reminded him of the hotel.

It had been a bad week even before the shootout. Ever since his initial suspect had been murdered on a beach.

Someone had leaked masses of information about the case to the press, and Rufus’ Hennassy’s name was once more the lead story on the news every evening. But not his death, his life. His early years. And he had to hand it to them. Once the media had a story they went with it all the way. Hospital records, social services records, teachers and priests. Anyone and anything they could lay their hands on that told them a little more about his beginnings they’d somehow managed to drag out. And it was terrible.

What Rufus and the police records had told him was bad enough, but with what the media were dragging out and plastering all over the evening news, it just got worse. Abuse, torture, repeated horrific injuries, many of them life threatening, and even suggestions of sexual abuse, the disaster that was his early life was unspeakable, or it should be.

But people were speaking. They were shouting in fact. Calling for enquiries. How could any young child suffer so much for so long and it not be reported? How could the doctors who’d treated him not have reported the abuse to the police? How could the teachers who saw him coming to school each day covered in blood and bruises not have acted? How could the social agencies not have acted? There were already questions being asked in parliament about it. So many questions, so few answers. And now all they had was a dead man, and not even a body to pay their respects to.

Naturally the police were in the firing line. He was in the firing line simply for having named him a person of interest in the current cases. Making that public announcement had been an unfortunate mistake in hindsight. It gave the press a target. But also, and this was the thing that truly hurt, for not having recognised him as a victim from the outset. The press were relentless on that score. Maybe they were right to be.

There was truth in the charge, and the inspector couldn’t deny it much as he might have wished to. At the start he had thought him a suspect, and thought he was hiding something. He was, but it wasn’t a guilty conscience. It was his own horrid past. But worse than that, when he had learned of his past, he hadn’t acted quickly enough to protect him. That was his failure. His repeated failure. And now the man was dead because of it. But he could do nothing about it. Nothing at all. His own masters had made sure of that.

His statements to the press were carefully monitored and no admission of guilt in any way would be tolerated. In fact every statement he made had to be vetted by a media officer almost before it left his lips. For the same reason he had been specifically forbidden to lay flowers at the beach where Rufus Hennassy had been gunned down by his brother, a site that was fast becoming a shrine to an abused child. And he wasn’t allowed to attend any of the vigils or church services for his passing either. It would only have been right and decent, but in the modern police image was more important than those things.

The inspector hated that, and he hated the fact that someone else could know so much and find out so much more about the abused child when he as a mere copper had no chance. He hated the fact that that same person, whoever it was, was leaking all the information to the press, especially when he was certain it wasn’t Venner. The painting yes, but not the stuff about Rufus Hennassy. He had no reason. So there was another player involved, and he hated not having the foggiest who that might be. But most of all he hated the fact that only a few short hours before, the criminals he was chasing had gone on the rampage once more and created a whole new atrocity. Still he had no time to dwell on that anger. The only thing he had time for now was his job. Find the guilty and lock them up.

He knew it was Rufus Hennassy’s family in action again. Who else could it be? The press knew it too, and they were camped outside the police cordons in their droves. Cameras were everywhere, many of them with very long lenses, and the tv reporters were actually standing on the roofs of their vans, filming everything. In fact there were probably more press vans and reporters and cameramen, then there were police and public put together. They were everywhere, a veritable sea of microphones and flashing lights surrounding them. He didn’t want to see the evening news, if he was ever lucky enough to return home again. But for the moment he had a sergeant to listen to.

“Two someones sir. One dead, one probably dying. But there are more.” Of course there were more. There were always more. There were no shortage of bad guys in this mess, and all of them he knew in his bones, linked back to Venner somehow.

“Tell me.”

“Well for a start we have Petras the mercenary with no last name. He’s dead with a knife in his throat. His brother though, if he was there, got away.” But at least one of them was down. That was Barns’ first thought. One less bad guy running around with a gun.

“Go on.”

“And we also have Aidan Hennassy. Bullet wound in the thigh. Broken back, smashed ribs, concussion and multiple internal injuries. The paramedics are fixing him up now, ready to be flown to the hospital.” His sergeant might look somewhat pessimistic about the man’s chances, but in everything that he’d said Barns had understood only one thing.

“He’s alive?”

“For now.”

“Now is enough. Hopkins we have to question him.” He didn’t care if the man lived or died, as long as he could finally get some answers and put the rest of these villains behind bars, starting with Venner.

“He’s not talking Sir.” The sergeant hung his head, and Barns gathered from his disappointed expression that he didn’t expect the man to talk at all. That was bad. They needed him to talk. They needed him to lead them to the painting, because only then would this nightmare end. Find the painting end the violence. And then they could concentrate on capturing the criminals. But it wasn’t looking good.

Rufus Hennassy was probably, almost certainly dead. But he hadn’t known anything anyway. Daryl Hennassy was locked away in a mental institution, completely out of his mind and with little prospect of returning. Petras the mercenary with no last name, was also dead, his miserable brother still free and likely angry. And now Aidan Hennassy was probably about to die too without a confession. But still, a man so evil as to torture his son for the first dozen or so years of his life, would it be such a terrible thing if he died? Barns couldn’t have found it within himself to grieve for the man. His passing would not be a loss to the world. As long as he answered his questions first.

“Store security’s up!” One of the scene examiners yelled it out from the back of a nearby police van, stopping the inspector from asking any more pointless questions of his long suffering sergeant, and they rushed over to see. They were far from alone however, and Barns soon found himself having to jostle for a place among his peers. Hopkins was luckier being so tall. But fairly quickly they all found themselves a place where they could watch the monitors in the back of the van.

“So, from the start. Ten twenty one this morning.” The technician hit a button and suddenly four screens came on at once, showing them the inside of the shop, before it had turned into a disaster area and everyone held their breath. A calm, normal supermarket with plenty of people, mostly mothers and children, loading up their carts as they wandered down the aisle. It was so peaceful it was almost boring. But when the action finally started, Barns wished he was back at the peaceful minutes.

“Oh my God!” It was a nightmare. A normal suburban supermarket crowded with shoppers, and people had just started opening up with heavy artillery inside it. The results were entirely predictable. People running and screaming, women and children mostly, while they found themselves trapped in the aisles with shooters at both ends. There were bodies falling everywhere, some of them very small bodies, as huge bullets tore massive holes in fragile flesh. There was blood everywhere and much worse besides. And then the bombs started flying.

Barns made the technician stop the video at that point, so that he could get an image of the bomber. It was a matter of professionalism, getting an ID and simply making sure that the bomber wasn’t among the dead and wounded. But in truth he would have been more than happy if he hadn’t seen it, if the man was dead. He would have been more than happy if they all were. But they weren’t. And soon he had to watch the entire atrocity continue.

He saw Aidan Hennassy, wounded and confused in the smoke, busy shooting indiscriminately, killing and wounding maybe a dozen people, and he knew that the villain would care nothing for those innocents he’d murdered. Anyone who could so terribly abuse his son had no heart at all. He also knew that since they’d been attacked, his lawyer would likely plead self-defence if he survived to reach trial, and some sort of deal would have to be made. There would be no justice in this. Not for anyone. The surviving Russian had done exactly the same thing, shooting wildly in all directions, but since he had got away, again, there would likely be no trial for him at all. Of the guilty, it seemed Aidan Hennassy and the dead Russian were their only two captured perps, and neither of them was going to be of much use.