Strangers (39 page)

The fence was freestanding, so it collapsed immediately, falling flat. Lucy fell too, and rolled across it. Tammy tripped but kept her feet, and then Lucy was back up, dragging her on across the slip road. On the far side of that, increasingly evident as their eyes adjusted to the poor light, stood various pieces of heavy equipment: wheelbarrows; cement mixers; stacks of cones; several sections of concrete sewer pipe yet to be laid. They wove through this clutter and veered across more open ground towards the buildings, which up close were no more than a row of workmen’s cabins standing in darkness.

Another shot was fired.

It roared, the slug again whipping by with inches to spare, smashing a fist-sized hole in the nearest of the cabin doors. Whether this disabled the lock in some way, Lucy wasn’t sure, but she flung herself forward and the door banged open on impact. She toppled through into a black interior. Tammy whined with terror as she tumbled in behind. Lucy jumped back up and slammed the door closed, but even as she did, a second bullet-hole exploded in the middle of it, a shaft of yellow light spearing through.

Lucy gasped and ducked away, hitting the light on her phone and spinning round to find anything that might assist. It was the usual thing – plywood walls, a tarpaper floor, the combined smells of mud, oil, asphalt. But aside from a side-desk spread with paperwork and a row of hooks on which safety helmets and hi-viz jackets hung, the room was empty.

Meanwhile, a pair of heavy feet came pounding up to the door on the other side.

‘
Hayley!
’ Tammy scrabbled with the handle of an internal door.

Lucy dashed over. They barged through it and hared down a short passage from which various other offices opened, all tiny and bare, finally entering a more spacious room at the end. Extra hi-viz jackets and hardhats hung in here. There was a table in one corner, a filing cabinet, and a row of tools propped against the far wall.

Lucy lurched first to the tools, and snatched up a spade. It could be used as a weapon, she supposed, but it would be heavy and cumbersome. Besides, it might serve another purpose. She whirled back to the open internal door and glanced down the corridor. Yellow street lighting glimmered from the room at the far end, but then a male silhouette stepped into view, gun still in hand.

Lucy slammed the door and braced the spade against the inside of it, ramming its hilt under the door-handle and, tearing up a wedge of tarpaper flooring, jamming the blade against that. It wasn’t much of a barricade, but it might buy them a little time.

‘What’re we going to do?’ Tammy wailed. ‘We can’t stay here!’

Lucy glanced over her shoulder. There was a window behind her with mesh across it, and another external door. That was their way out. But there was no guarantee that safety really lay outside. From here they probably had a choice of running across open farmland or back to the East Lancs and along the hard shoulder. None of those options would offer much protection from gunfire.

A massive impact crashed through the room. The internal door shook in its frame, but the spade held it fast. Lucy backed away and jumped aside. It was pure instinct but it saved her life, as two more shots punched massive holes in the woodwork.

‘
Jesus Christ help us!
’ Tammy wept.

‘Just get out of here!’ Lucy yelled. ‘Get outside!’

Tammy attempted to comply, but could only shriek in dismay. Astonishingly, given that the others were all open, the outer door appeared to be locked.

Another massive shoulder-impact struck the internal door. Its frame shook; the jamb split. Only by a miracle was the spade still in place, but it wouldn’t last much longer – it was already sliding underneath the tarpaper.

Lucy again surveyed the tools: shovel, spade, a big rubber sledgehammer, spirit level, pickaxe …

Pickaxe.

She grabbed and hefted it.

It was heavy, not to mention awkward: an arc of thick but tapered steel on the end of a solid hickory handle.

Again it would be heavy and clumsy, but it would do in a crisis like this.

She spun back to the internal door. Vlad launched himself against it repeatedly, battering it slowly inward. The spade slid deeper under the tarpaper.

Lucy rushed forward, threw the pickaxe back over her shoulder and, giving it everything she had, swung it down, punching it through the wood at just about neck-height – a blow that coincided perfectly and deliberately with Vlad’s next shoulder-charge.

There was a muffled squawk on the other side, and then a bizarre silence, which lingered for several seconds. Briefly, and with some considerable effort – because its blade was lodged in place – Lucy had to strain all her gym-toned muscles to wrench the pickaxe head free. When she did, she blinked in shock; its bottom six inches of steel were dark with blood.

She certainly hadn’t killed the bastard – she could now hear him again on the other side of the door; what sounded like a low, pathetic keening, followed by a drunken stumbling of feet as he moved away. Was this total victory, she wondered, or just a breathing space?

She hurried across the room to where Tammy cowered by the locked outer door.

‘Out the way!’ Lucy instructed her.

Tammy scrabbled aside as Lucy swung the pickaxe again, mightily, sundering the lock with a single blow. The door broke open when she yanked at it, and then they were out into the night air. They were now at the rear of the cabins, another plain of grit and rubble stretching into the darkness ahead of them. It was anyone’s guess what lay in that direction. But Lucy had no intention of finding out. Dropping the pick and taking Tammy by the wrist, she circled warily back around the flimsy structures towards the front.

The ribbon of the East Lancs came into view.

Predictably, no police support had arrived as yet. But maybe it wouldn’t be needed. Only a hundred yards away, the Corsa sat skew-whiff where it had ground to a halt.

It would be a risk. There was a lot of open ground to cover before then, but skulking inside those wooden buildings was no guarantee of safety, especially as the wounded hoodlum was still in there too. Lucy jerked forward, walking quickly but quietly, refusing to relinquish her grip on Tammy’s arm, her eyes fixed on the cabins as they bypassed them and crossed the slip road – only to hit a nail-biting halt when the main cabin’s mangled front door burst open and Vlad the Impaler came see-sawing out, pistol hanging low.

It was like watching a broken marionette. His head lolled exaggeratedly; his legs wobbled like rubber. He barely seemed aware of Lucy and Tammy as he tottered for several yards and fell against the drum of a cement mixer, before slumping down to the ground, where he lay on his face.

The two women waited, hardly daring to breathe.

The prone form was approximately thirty yards to their right. That was close enough for them to see that he’d dropped his pistol – it lay beside his left hand – and to distinguish the extent of his wound: by the looks of it, the pickaxe had pierced him at the point where his neck met his left shoulder. Even from here it was plain that this was more than a mere gash. As Vlad had fallen, his black coat had flapped open and, though he was wearing a white muscle shirt underneath, it was darkly and wetly stained all down its left hand side.

‘Head for the car,’ Lucy whispered, pushing Tammy towards the Corsa.

‘And what’re
you
doing?’ Tammy asked, as Lucy edged towards the body.

‘We need the keys, don’t we?’

‘For Christ’s sake, we can hotwire it!’

‘No, Tammy … it’s a modern motor. It won’t be anything like as easy as that. And keep your voice down.’

‘He might not be dead …’

‘I’m hoping he’s bloody not!’

Lucy continued forward, only to hesitate again – this seemed like madness. What if the bastard was faking it? The temptation was suddenly to retreat, to turn, to run, to keep running. But no … head had to rule heart here. Even if this guy was out of the fight for good, there could be others of his ilk around. There was no argument: Lucy and Tammy needed those damn keys to make a clean getaway. It might also help if they got hold of Vlad’s gun.

‘Go to the car,’ Lucy said again, sidling forward.

Tammy did as she was told, walking over there but constantly glancing back.

Lucy stepped as lightly as she could, but cringed with each crunch of grit. The fallen Russian was now about fifteen yards away and evidently still alive; he shuddered as tendrils of pale steam wafted up from him. But the claret-coloured pool forming under his torso meant that he was losing blood profusely. It occurred to her that she ought to do something about that. Staunch the flow if nothing else. But then, the son of a bitch had been trying to
kill
them. It would be difficult playing doctor after that. The divisional support units she’d asked for might be struggling to locate them, but they’d get here eventually. He’d have to take his chances until then. Besides, she was more worried about herself. It would be bad enough having to search through pockets sodden with blood, but the bastard’s left hand still lay close to that pistol. Unconscious though he seemed to be, he was easily in reach of it. Even if she managed to nab it first, it wouldn’t be hard for him to snatch her wrist in the process.

She crossed the final few yards with extreme stealth.

Vlad shuddered again, and groaned.

Lucy halted, but told herself that it had been a nervous reaction.

She took another hesitant step forward. And then …

Putta … putta … putta …

In truth, she barely heard this automatic gunfire because it had been silenced. Even so, she glimpsed the stroboscopic flash in the corner of her eye.

When she spun round, another gun-toting figure had appeared, rising up on the other side of the Corsa. And though this newcomer wore a full head ski mask made from black leather, from its female outline it clearly wasn’t Gregor.

There hadn’t been two of them. There’d been three.

And Tammy – twenty yards from the car, with nothing to shield her – was still the main target. The unexpected fusillade, fired from what looked like a machine-pistol with a black tubular sound-suppressor extending its muzzle, raked her clean across the midriff.

She went down like a sack of meal.

Lucy went down too, diving and rolling, and in the process grabbing hold of Vlad’s pistol. She wasn’t an authorised firearms officer; she’d never carried guns on duty, though she had been trained to handle and disarm them. But this was a Glock 9mm, very common to police officers and ridiculously easy to use. As she came to rest on her front, she took aim with both hands at the masked figure advancing round the Corsa.

Lucy’s brow was slick with sweat. She already had a good idea who this new player was, though it was impossible to be certain. Either way, the machine-pistol, which had a massive magazine inserted into its underside, was still levelled on the curled-up shape of Tammy.

With no choice, Lucy squeezed off three quick shots.

The range was about sixty yards and she was untrained to shoot, so she missed, but each slug struck the Corsa, the first two taking out a window each, the third punching through its bonnet and caroming up from the chassis, either the ricochet itself or slivers of shrapnel ripping across the assassin’s neck, slicing open the ski mask so that braided orange tresses fell out.

There was no question now; it was Suzy McIvar.

She likes to take care of business personally,
Geoff Slater had commented.

She was even wearing her trademark spike-heeled boots and tasselled leather jacket.

The murderess scrambled back around the Corsa to take cover, and maybe nurse her wound – though that could only be minor. Lucy fired again. Two more quick shots, each tearing holes through the Corsa’s bodywork. Then she jumped to her feet, pumping the trigger more as she dashed forward. The Glock’s standard magazine capacity was seventeen rounds; she knew that much. She didn’t know how full this particular weapon’s clip had been to start with, but there was no stopping now; she had to keep the bitch pinned down, at least until she could check on Tammy. So she kept firing as she advanced, hitting the car over and over.

The fallen girl was heavily bloodied, but made no sound as she lay in a ball, clutching her abdomen. It already looked horrific, and normally would require a professional and delicate response. But none of the usual protocols of first aid applied here. Lucy had to get the casualty out of range any way she could. But even as she slid to her knees alongside Tammy, the machine-pistol reappeared, periscope-style, above the Corsa’s bonnet, and another burst of strobe-like fire dazzled the night.

Fortunately, because Suzy wasn’t looking, the shots went wide. But there was still no time for an on-the-spot diagnosis.

The fireman’s lift was always the easiest way to carry an injured party out of a combat zone. It had been tried and tested in every battle in history. But it could only ever be a last resort. Even so, this was exactly the situation Lucy now faced. Ignoring Tammy’s gasps, she grabbed the wounded girl by the armpits, and, thankful that she was small and relatively light, threw her up and over her shoulder, clamping her in place by looping her left arm around the back of Tammy’s thighs. The prostitute squealed as her perforated midriff took all the weight. But Lucy couldn’t afford to respond to that. She might not just be hurting the girl, she might be killing her. But they would both of them die if they stayed here.

She turned and tottered away, struggling not to overbalance.

Another blast of stroboscopic light threw their combined shadows across the open ground. A frenzy of dirt was ploughed up around them, the floor erupting beneath Lucy’s right foot and tearing away the entire sole of that training shoe – leaving her with no grip on her right side. Subsequently, almost immediately, she slipped in the mud and fell forward, taking Tammy down with her.

Tammy hit the ground first, whimpering like a child as the wind wheezed from her lungs, but as she landed, trapping and twisting Lucy’s left arm underneath her.