Time to Kill (23 page)

There he was! From his height Mason instantly recognized David among the group of kids, humped by the backpack, wheeling the bicycle with those who were walking towards the waiting cars, high-fiving and gesturing as they parted, the boy actually waiting until the cars drove off.

Tentatively, the shake in his hands making it difficult at the first attempt, Mason rejoined the ignition contacts. The engine fired. Mason put on the low sidelights and pulled out in pursuit. There was too much traffic, in the opposite direction and in front – shielding him – and behind. He'd never get away after running the kid down. He'd be chased, rammed to a halt or stopped by police to whom the number would be immediately reported. It wouldn't work. Everything planned, in place, and it wasn't going to fucking work! Mason belched, sour again. There was so much to reverse: too much. He didn't even have a place to run, to hide.

Beyond the two intervening cars in front Mason suddenly saw David turn off the expected, most direct route. There wasn't any attracting blast of protest when Mason made his following turn without any signal, keeping his lights low but still easily able to see David about twenty yards ahead. It was much better, far fewer cars in either direction and lower, side-street illumination, although there were lights from most of the houses. Because of David's height his saddle had to be high, hunching the boy low over the handlebars. He was riding well, keeping a straight line, not wobbling from side to side. The road turned, straightening into a direct parallel to the main highway they'd just left. As he took the turn Mason saw from his rear-view mirror that there was nothing behind him and that the road in front was empty, too, no indication of approaching headlights.

Now! It had to be now! Mason plunged down on the accelerator, surging the car forward so abruptly the wheels squealed. He had the brief impression of David trying to look behind at the noise, for the first time wobbling. Mason hit. There seemed to be no sound, just the faintest scrape of metal against metal before David and the machine disappeared underneath. The jeep rose up over the obstruction and the scraping got louder with the bicycle and rider trapped and dragged along beneath. The obstruction pulled Mason sideways, on to the sidewalk, so that he had to brake to avoid colliding with a low garden wall. He threw the Cherokee into reverse, backing off, bumping backwards over what was underneath. On the road again he accelerated although without any squeal this time. In his rear-view mirror he couldn't distinguish between the boy and the bicycle. Nothing moved. There was no sudden burst of light from any of the bordering houses.

He'd done it! thought Mason. Begun the revenge he'd thought about – lived off – for fifteen years. Their suffering began now but it was only the very beginning. It was going to get much worse, as bad as he could make it. He didn't any longer feel sick, didn't have any discomfort at all.

It was almost completely dark by the time Mason reached the viaduct den and he had his full headlights on. There was no sign or sound of anyone already being there, even when he drove more deeply in than he'd explored that morning. Mason left the lights on and the doors open, for extra illumination, to see what he was doing, upending two of the petrol cans for their contents to gush out and splashing the rest around the cab to soak the seats. He had intended to remove the petrol cap to use one of the prepared tapers as a wick but forgot that it would be locked. Instead he put it in the last full can, which he wedged beneath the Cherokee's petrol tank. He lit his other tapers from that, throwing them as well as the discarded latex gloves into the car as he ran. The explosion almost knocked him off his feet, making him stagger, but he didn't fall. He didn't look back, either, running until he got into the cross street. Then he did look, surprised at the glow showing above the intervening houses.

The hire car remained where he'd left it, in the half deserted car park. The smell in the car now was not of cat's piss but petrol, where it had splashed over him, and he drove with all the windows down to blow it away, welcoming the coolness of the night air. He was sure all the smell had gone by the time he reached Dulles but he still had three hours before the San Francisco flight, more than enough time to thoroughly wash in a rest room and afterwards savour a settling martini, although his hands weren't shaking any more and he didn't feel sick.

The bulky, bald-headed man who slumped into the seat beside him when boarding was almost completed said, ‘Don't you just hate these red-eye flights?'

‘Sometimes they're convenient,' said Mason.

*     *     *

‘I'm still at the gallery,' Ann told Cathy Hockley. ‘David was supposed to stop by after practice but he didn't. So he should have been home an hour ago but he's not answering the phone. Is he with Brad?'

‘No,' said the other mother. ‘I haven't seen him all evening.'

Eighteen

T
here appeared to be no part of David's body that was not connected to a sustaining tube or tethered to monitoring screens across which spires peaked and fell or registered fluctuating numbers. David's chest did not seem to rise or fall in time with the expanding and deflating soft-sighing bellows of a life support machine linked by a tracheotomy line. The boy's throat was heavily bandaged around the entry incision. There was further bandaging across the right side of his face, covering his eye, and a separate dressing completely turbaned his head. The bed covering was tented over where his legs would have been but where Slater and Ann knew they were no longer. Neither looked at the other, hunched on either side of the bed. Ann's eyes were actually closed, her lips moving imperceptibly. Each held the clammily cold, unmoving hand laid out towards them between both of theirs, careful not to disturb the drips and feeds strapped into both of their son's arms from frame-suspended bottles. What was visible of David's face was shiny, a wax-white frozen mask. There was no flicker from his closed left eyes, either.

A pent-up sigh whimpered from Ann, loud enough to startle them both, and at last their eyes met.

‘He's going to be all right,' insisted Ann, in a fierce whisper.

‘Yes.' From the initial, numbing conversation with the surgeon Slater could only remember that as well as losing both legs David's skull was fractured and there were a lot of other injuries.

‘It's going to be very different, though.'

‘Yes.'

‘A lot of adjustments, changes.'

‘A lot,' Slater went along with her.

‘I want him to wake up!'

‘Let him sleep. It was …' Slater just stopped short of saying it had been a long operation to do all of what had been done. But it wasn't one operation; several. ‘He needs to sleep, to get better.'

‘I want him to know we're here, with him.'

‘He'll know.'

‘They should have arrested them by now. Whoever did it. The police …' Ann trailed off, swallowing tight lipped to hold back the nausea welling up inside her.

As if on cue the door behind them opened, a nurse nodding towards the unseen corridor outside. ‘There's an officer …?'

Slater eased his hands from David's without disturbing the drips. To Ann, unnecessarily, he said, ‘You stay here.'

The uniformed traffic sergeant was different from the officer to whom Slater had earlier given David's identification details. This one had an expression of professional sympathy and the sagging belly of a man who'd spent a lot of time sitting in a patrol car. He introduced himself as Michael Hannigan and said at once they were looking into a possible connection between the accident and the torching of a stolen 4x4 about three miles away from the scene. The timing fitted with that of their only witness who'd seen an off-road vehicle driving away from where within little more than seconds he'd discovered David and the crushed bicycle.

‘What, exactly, did he see?'

The policeman shook his head. ‘It's not good. He first saw the car, reversing, when he turned off the main highway. That was all he saw, a 4x4. In the darkness he can't even give us a colour or any description at all of its occupants, whether there was one or more than one.'

‘Reversing?' challenged Slater, at once.

‘Our accident guys have gone over it pretty thoroughly now. Seems the car hit David from behind and carried him and the bike up on to the sidewalk. From the road markings they think both were jammed under the vehicle, which had to reverse to get off them and drive away as it did.'

‘So David was driven over twice?'

‘That's the way it looks, Mr Slater.'

‘Deliberately?'

The officer frowned. ‘We don't often get deliberate hit and runs … you're getting into criminal intent, murder even, with a question like that …'

‘What about skid marks … something from which you can get tyre treads?'

Hannigan pulled his lower lip between his teeth. ‘That's an astute question but then my officer told me you're a security consultant. There weren't any skid marks.'

Hannigan's remark abruptly registered with Slater, who until that moment hadn't considered any implications from this encounter with officialdom and his being a defecting Russian hidden in a Witness Protection Programme. There'd been very specific instructions about it, when they were being coached for entry, though. The inviolable rule was always to maintain their cover identities, never at any stage or for any reason to disclose anything of their past. Forcing himself on Slater said, ‘You often get hit and runs without skid marks?'

‘It's not unusual. Mr Slater. A guy doesn't see something, he hits it. Then runs. Why do you think someone would want intentionally to run your son down?'

‘I don't,' denied Slater, quickly. ‘I'm just trying to find out everything I can about what happened.' He was aware of the surgeon whom he'd briefly met earlier outside the operating theatre going into David's room. To the traffic officer he said, ‘Is this going to take much longer?'

‘I'm just trying to keep you up to speed …' The man stopped, embarrassed at the word in the circumstances. ‘Sorry, Mr Slater. I mean, to tell you everything that we think we've found out so far …' Hannigan shook his head. ‘Which I'm sorry to say isn't very much. Why don't we close it down right now?'

‘My wife and I won't be leaving here, if you want me again.'

‘I don't imagine that we will, not immediately. We've already got all your numbers.'

‘I want to know the moment you get the son of a bitch who did this!'

‘I know. We'll keep in touch. I hope everything works out OK.'

Slater confronted Ann and the surgeon coming out of David's room as he turned towards it, realizing he couldn't remember the surgeon's name. The man was still in his theatre scrubs, which momentarily surprised Slater until he reminded himself that David was probably not the only emergency in the hospital.

The man said, ‘I think we need to talk, that's why I've asked your wife to come with us. My room's just along the hall.'

‘Who's looking after David?' demanded Ann.

‘We are, Mrs Slater,' said the man, gently. ‘The nurse is staying in the room with him.'

‘I don't want to leave him for long.'

‘We need to talk,' insisted the surgeon.

The room into which he led them was obviously his personal quarters in the hospital. There was a family photograph on the desk, the man and his wife and two boys – one about David's age – embraced and laughing on a cabin cruiser. The nameplate on the desk reminded Slater of the forgotten name, Peter Denting. He showed them to seats before slumping behind the desk, knuckling his eyes. As if there had been no interruption in the conversation he said, ‘And I wish we didn't have to talk about it.'

‘What?' instantly demanded Ann.

Denting breathed in deeply before saying, I do not believe – neither does the neurosurgeon who also operated on him before I unsuccessfully tried to save David's legs – that David can survive.'

‘He has survived!' insisted Ann.

Denting leaned forward on to his desk, a calculated gesture enabling him to turn the back of the desk photograph against them. ‘Mrs Slater, David is being kept alive artificially. He's suffered a massive, multiple and continuing trauma. The shock factor is enormous. He has undergone a double leg amputation but the possibility of gangrene or blood poisoning is still there. The neurosurgeon has only been able partially to relieve two separate brain depressions from the skull fracture, which has also destroyed the optic nerves to his right eye. His spleen is irreparably ruptured, his liver is severely bruised and the right rib fractures have punctured his right lung, effectively collapsing it …' The surgeon paused, shaking his head in what Slater couldn't decide was a gesture of despair or apology. I am consciously setting out the injuries he's suffered to make it as clear as I possibly can to you that there is no chance of David recovering. He is already clinically dead.'

‘He's breathing!' said Ann, jagged-voiced.

‘The life support machine is breathing for him,' contradicted Denting.

‘What are you telling us?' said Slater, who already knew.

‘I am
advising
you,' qualified the surgeon, ‘that there is no possibility whatsoever of David ever regaining consciousness, let alone recovering. I am inviting you to tell us to turn off the life support machine.'

‘NO!' screamed Ann. ‘He's going to be crippled but he's going to live and I'm going to look after him … he's going to be all right.'

‘He's not, Mrs Slater,' persisted Denting, although still gently. ‘I won't repeat myself about David's injuries. But you have to understand, accept, that they are fatal. To keep him on the life machine will at best – and it's very definitely not the best – keep David in a permanent vegetative state.'