Riot Act (34 page)

I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision, but the four dazzling outward streaks of the muzzle flash in the low light seemed permanently burned across my eyes. I shut them, but it didn’t help much.

“He’s in the stairwell, I think,” I told Sean quietly.

“In that case,” he murmured, “you’d better take this.”

I opened my eyes again to find the Glock was out in his hand, and he was offering it to me. Before I’d a chance to argue, he threw it across the gap that separated us. I caught it automatically, closed my hands round the pistol grip, and slipped my right index finger onto the trigger.

And, suddenly, I was back in the killing house on camp. Back inside the skin of the girl who’d trained to be a soldier. Back up against the system that hadn’t wanted me there, didn’t believe I had what it took to succeed. Back with the observers waiting for every hesitation, and mistake.

I swung my arms over the top of the blocks, holding the gun straight out in front of me, and snapped off two quick shots in the direction of the stairwell.

I dropped back into cover almost, it seemed, before the empty shell cases had finished bouncing onto the chipboard.

As my ears cleared, I thought I heard movement, the clatter of feet, but by the time my hearing had recovered enough to be sure, the noise had faded. I glanced across at Sean, still keeping low.

“D’you think he’s still there?” I whispered.

“I don’t know.” He slithered round again, grabbed a piece of plasterboard in front of him and rattled it enticingly, but there was no further response. “I think you might have scared him off.”

“I damned well hope so,” I said, shaky. “It would have been enough to scare me.”

I left my protective stack of blocks reluctantly, tiptoed round the obstacles between me and the stairwell, keeping the gun up and ready. Nobody shot at me on the way there. I rushed the last few metres, hit the wall and waited a beat, listening, before I swung my body round it, breathing hard.

The stairwell was empty.

I crossed to the window, stared down through the glass at the unfinished site below. At first there was no sign of anyone running away, then I caught a silvered flash of movement, right over by the road. It was brief, disappearing quickly behind one of the earth movers, but it had to be our man.

As I watched, I realised that the very character of the moonlight was changing, from silver to blue.

Flashing blue.

Oh shit.

I spun round, to find Sean at the doorway behind me. “Come on!” I shouted. I was compensating for the ringing in my ears, speaking too loudly. I lowered the volume and went on. “It’s the police – we’ve got to get out of here, right now!”

I was on the first step before I realised Sean wasn’t hard on my heels. That he was still in the doorway, leaning against the wall. I stopped, and found myself invaded by a swift, stark fear.

Shoving the Glock into my pocket, I moved back to him. He started forwards then, belatedly, but as he reached the top of the stairs, he staggered, and almost fell.

I grabbed him on reflex, recoiling as my hands came away slick with blood.

“Christ! Where are you hit?” I flipped him round, braced him against the handrail, and yanked open his coat with numbed fingers.

“Left shoulder,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “That first one ricocheted and got me. Don’t worry. It’s not bad.”

Not bad. Oh God . . .

His words seemed to convince himself as much as me. He went first down the stairs, moving faster than I’d feared he might. I kept a wary eye on his back as we stumbled across the lower floor, and burst out through the fire door.

The moon, which had proved so useful to light our way into the site, now seemed like a curse. We had to take the long way back towards the gap in the fence, moving from one piece of cover to the next, in bursts. As we ducked behind a big Cat digger I could just see the pair of squad cars that had pulled up close by the entrance. The lights flashed in and out of sync as the patrolmen talked together in undertones.

We waited, tense, until they’d picked up torches and moved in towards the office building drawn, as we’d been, by the light in the top corner. I tried to remember if we’d shut the fire door as we came through it, but my recall failed me.

“We haven’t got long before they find him,” I muttered.

Sean was pale as death. He swayed, eyes closed, and I pushed him back against the digger’s panelwork with the flat of my hand, fighting down the sudden flare of panic.

“Sean!” I said roughly. “Stay with me, sergeant!”

His eyes opened slowly. For a moment he looked at me without seeing me, only bringing himself back on track with a visible effort. “Giving me orders now are you, private?”

“You better believe it,” I bit out. “Can you make it to the truck?”

He nodded briefly and, with a last check to make sure the cops had their attention focused firmly on the building, we set off again.

Once we were on the mud, the going proved harder. Where Sean had seemed so nimble before, now he moved heavy and slow. It seemed to take forever to cross the last few metres. My back had never felt so exposed.

The gap in the fence had shrunk since we came in, and getting through it to where the Nissan waited was a painful struggle. I had to loop Sean’s arm over my shoulder and half-drag, half-carry him the rest of the way.

As we reached the Patrol, Sean dug in his pockets and handed me the keys. “You’ll have to drive,” he said tiredly.

I took them without argument. After all, we had enough of a job to heave Sean up into the passenger seat. There was no way he could have got behind the wheel.

Once I’d hauled myself into the driver’s side, I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath. I found I was almost sobbing for air and my hands were shaking. I could hardly see for the sweat running into my eyes.

Something hard was digging into my hip, and I yanked the Glock out of my pocket, staring at it stupidly, as though seeing it for the first time. I shook my head, trying to clear the fog that seemed to have settled down over my brain.

Come on, come on! Get with the programme, Fox!

I twisted the key in the ignition, dumped the handbrake, and selected reverse on the auto gearbox. I’d forgotten to cover the brake as I did so, and the Patrol jerked backwards as the transmission engaged. I nearly put the damn thing into the wall of one of the units, and by the look of the construction, the building would have come off worse.

Sean moaned at the rough movement, but I had little time for finesse.

Finally, I managed to get myself together enough to switch on the headlights and roll out of the estate. Christ, I hadn’t driven anything with four wheels since I’d left the army. At least the Patrol had a bit more sophistication than the old Land Rovers I’d been in then.

I tried hard to make our departure look casual. I made sure I turned the opposite way to the site when I came out of the industrial estate, trundled off down the narrow lane as though this was a perfectly normal occurrence, that I had every right to be there.

All the time I was straining to hear the first wail of the sirens.

I glanced at the Glock, which lay where I’d dropped it on the dashboard, grabbed it and stuffed it quickly into my door pocket. The last thing I wanted now was to be caught fleeing the scene of a murder, with a wounded fugitive, and a smoking gun . . .

I drove without a clear destination in mind, just knowing that I needed to put distance between us and Langford’s body. I had to concentrate hard on keeping the Patrol positioned on the narrow road. From the high driving seat, the vehicle seemed fantastically wide.

I glanced across at Sean. He’d slumped sideways with his head resting on the window, and his eyes were closed again. I wanted to check him over there and then, find out how bad the wound was.

Eventually, when I’d driven for ten minutes or so, my nerve failed me. I spotted a gateway and nudged the Patrol into it. Sean’s eyes fluttered open as he felt us come to a stop.

I groped around until I found the interior light, flicked it on, and twisted in my seat to face him. It took an effort to keep my hands steady as I opened his coat, following the liquid trail, and ripped his shirt up the side seam.

Underneath, swimming in blood, the bullet had left a puckered entry hole in the skin just below the point of his left shoulder. Bright and raging, it seemed so small to be the cause of so much oozing fluid.

I tilted him forwards gently, lifted the shirt at the back, running my hands tentatively over his goosebumped skin. I was feeling for the exploded exit, but couldn’t find it. I’d been hoping for a flesh wound, but the bullet was still in there.

I pulled my fleece off over my head, dragged the T-shirt I had on underneath out of my jeans and yanked that off, too. Sean wasn’t in any state to admire my underwear, and I didn’t give him much chance to, quickly shrugging my way back into the fleece. I used the T-shirt to wad against his shoulder, trying to stem the flow with fingers that felt abruptly fat and clumsy.

“You never could keep your hands off me, Charlie,” Sean said, his voice blurred. He tried a laugh, but something went wrong on the way out and it became no more than a gasp. He was staring at me without focus again, his exhaustion total, and I realised how much it had taken out of him to stay operational until now.

Operational. Jesus, the people who trained me would have been proud that I fell back instinctively on their evasive terminology. Operational. It meant alive and conscious. Sean becoming non-operational, on the other hand, was something I didn’t want to think about right now.

I leaned him back into his seat. “Sean, listen to me.” I was mildly surprised to find my voice came out relatively calm and clear. “The round’s still there, and I don’t know where it is. I have to get you to a hospital.”

“No!” His response was stark, immediate. “No hospitals,” he reiterated, struggling to get the words out. Struggling harder not to plead with me. “When they’ve found that blood bath back there, the first place they’ll come looking for us is the local hospitals. You know what’ll happen then, don’t you, Charlie?”

I tried hard not to let him get to me. “You can’t help your brother if you’re dead,” I told him brutally.

He managed a weak half smile that looked as though it was ripped out of him by something with claws. “I can’t help him if I’m in a prison cell, either.”

I said nothing for a few moments, not meeting his eyes, then let go of his coat and sat back in my seat, annoyed. With Sean. With myself. It was as though he was deliberately trying to kill himself and it was eating away at me to have to watch him do it.

“Dammit, Sean, you need a doctor,” I said at last, my voice low with anger.

“If you can find me one, Charlie, who won’t go running to the police, I’ll see him,” he said, and I knew by the stubborn set of his mouth there wasn’t going to be any shifting him on this one.

“It’s all going to be academic if we don’t stop you bleeding,” I threw at him, wanting to hurt him as much as he was hurting me. “I could always just let you pass out, and then cart you off to the nearest Casualty anyway.”

I saw the flinch he tried not to let show, and my temper deflated like a slow-punctured tyre.

I sighed. “OK, OK, we’ll deal with this,” I said. “But first, we’ve got to get you some place safe. Some place out of the way, where the police aren’t going to find us.”

I took Sean to Jacob and Clare’s. Under pressure, it was the only place I could think of that was secluded enough to hide him.

Besides, Jacob’s work means he has a tendency to be highly security conscious. As well as a sophisticated alarm system, a couple of sensors hidden on the driveway link direct to a buzzer in the house. At least we would have fair warning of unexpected visitors.

When I rumbled the Patrol to a jerky standstill on their moss-covered forecourt, the whole place looked dark and quiet, lying as it did under the shadow of the trees, but I knew Jacob would be watching the strange vehicle warily from somewhere. I cut the engine, suddenly aware of a fatigue so overwhelming it made me want to weep. I twisted in my seat.

“Sean?”

For a moment there was silence and all manner of nasty scenarios slithered past my eyes, but then I heard the quiet rustle of clothing as he moved.

“Yeah.” His voice was clogged and raspy. “I’m still with it.”

I climbed out and, once they’d seen my face, both Jacob and Clare came hurrying out of the front door. The orange glow of the hall light flooded out after them, and threw elongated shadows onto the stone sets.

“My God, Charlie, what the hell’s happened?” Jacob demanded, limping forwards as I yanked the passenger door open and Sean’s bloodied figure all but fell out into my arms.

“He’s been shot and he needs help,” I said bluntly, staggering under the weight. I caught their instant withdrawal, their hesitation, and swung to face them.