The Child Taker & Slow Burn (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

Sarah awoke from a dream-filled sleep when she heard a horse neighing. She opened her eyes and was frightened by the darkness. Zak was next to her and she snuggled into him, trying to gain comfort from something familiar to her. She had a headache and a sore throat, and the feeling of motion was making her feel sick. The horse neighed again, and she knew that it was close by, but she couldn’t see it in the darkness. She could smell the horses. Her mother had taken her riding as soon as she was old enough to walk and she loved every minute of it. The sounds and smells of the animals and stables were somehow comforting in this strange world that she had found herself in. She thought about her favourite pony, Misty, a grey with a pleasant temperament. Sarah took carrots to the stables every time she rode him, and she loved the sound of Misty crunching carrots, and the way his lips quivered as he munched them. 

“Mummy,” she whispered as loudly as she dared, scared that she might alert any monsters that were lurking out of sight in the darkness. Her foot was sticking out of the blanket which covered them, and she pulled it back into the bed, out of reach of the snapping teeth of the ghosties and ghoulies that might live under there.

“Daddy,” she whispered a little more urgently. The only sound was the horses, and the hum of a diesel engine. Sarah wanted to go back to sleep where she was safe, and she closed her eyes and waited for it to take her. Her brother stirred and moved closer still, oblivious to the darkness that surrounded him, and Sarah held him tightly as she drifted back to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-six

Constable Davis reached for his radio as he followed the blood trail down the corridor. He needed backup to track down Jack Howarth. His superior officer would be over the moon that he’d let him escape. The Constable knew that his boss wanted him out of the Armed Response Unit, and he would use this gaffe to discipline him for his poor performance. He would also crucify him for leaving his charge unguarded while he bought crisps and tea from a vending machine. There was no reason that he could think of to justify leaving Howarth alone.

“Constable 2235, to base. I require immediate backup at Warrington General. A suspect has absconded, I repeat, a suspect has absconded.” The radio crackled in response but there was no reply. Davis stared at the radio, confused. The modern radio communicators that the police used were virtually fail-safe, and they never went down. Nor were there many black spots where a signal could not be received. If there was no reply to a call, then there was no one in the police station, and that was impossible. The Constable tried the call again, but there was still no response.

“How can there be nobody in the radio room?” He asked himself. He hooked the radio back onto his utility belt and followed the trail. The blood had fallen in blobs at random. There didn’t appear to be any pattern to it, which indicated that the wound had been wrapped to stem the blood flow, and that the blood was dripping from the sodden cloth. He stayed close to the walls as he tracked down the ward. A door opened to the right, which startled him. He pointed the Glock 23 at the doorway and frightened the life out of the nurse who was stepping out. She screamed and slammed the door closed again.

“Stupid bitch, I nearly wet myself then.” Constable Davis muttered under his breath. He reached the stairwell at the end of the corridor and pointed the gun into the landing area while he checked that it was clear. Globules of blood had dropped onto the beige floor tiles and there were smears on the stairs where someone had stood in them. From the smears, he gauged that there were at least two people, and probably three, moving together down the stairwell, which meant that Jack Howarth had help. Davis approached a metal banister rail which had been painted with pastel-pink gloss, and leaned over it to see who was on the stairwell. The floors above were empty. He looked down.  Two floors below he could see two men wearing green trousers, and a third who was barefooted and wearing a dressing gown. Constable Davis supposed that the green trousers belonged to ambulance men, and the dressing gown was obviously a patient. There was nothing unusual about seeing two ambulance men helping a patient down the stairs, but he remembered entering the lift earlier, and two paramedics had stepped out as he’d stepped in. Was it a coincidence or were they looking for Jack Howarth? He’d made enough of a cock-up of his posting today without adding wrongful arrest to the list. They were a long way down the stairs, and he could only see their bodies from the knees down. He decided to take a punt.

“Jack Howarth,” he bellowed at the top of his voice. The men in the green trousers stopped walking, which was to be expected, considering, but when they bolted he knew that they had Jack.

“Armed police, stop where you are,” he shouted. The men took no notice of his warning and continued running down the stairs, jumping them three at a time. Constable Davis launched himself down the first flight of stairs like an Olympic sprinter out of the blocks; his considerable weight carried him down at breakneck speed. By the time he’d turned onto the second landing he was puffing like an old steam engine, and he leaned over the banister to see how far ahead of him they were. One of the paramedics was looking up the stairwell directly at him, and he was pointing an Uzi nine millimetre machine pistol up at him. The Israeli-built weapon is capable of firing nine hundred bullets a minute and Constable Davis threw himself onto the floor as it kicked into life. Bullets smashed into the stairwell all around him and ceramic floor tiles exploded into thousands of tiny shards as the volley of nine millimetres ricocheted off the concrete walls. The police officer waited until the deafening noise had subsided, sucked in a deep breath, and took off down the next flight of stairs. He paused briefly before taking the next flight two steps at a time, then as he reached the first floor landing he used the wall to slow himself down, and he had to swerve violently around a wheelchair-bound woman who had been abandoned on the stairs by a frightened porter when the machinegun was fired. She seemed senile and completely oblivious to the fat police officer as he lumbered past her at full tilt.

He heard a clattering noise echoing up the stairwell and he risked another quick look over the banister. A nurse wearing a dark blue matron’s uniform with a stiff white headpiece was sprawled on the floor. She was surrounded by dozens of dark brown tablet bottles and sterilised dressing packs. To the right of her was the trolley that she had been pushing before she’d collided with Jack Howarth and his associates. It had been upturned and its contents were strewn across the corridor. Constable Davis had a clear view of one of the paramedics. He’d fallen just a few feet away from the matron, lying on his back winded by the collision with the medicine trolley.

“Armed police! Stop or I’ll shoot,” he repeated the warning. The dark-skinned man looked straight into his eyes, but there was no fear in them, only contempt. He moved so that he was sitting up, resting on his hands with his legs out in front of him on the floor. He couldn’t spring up to his feet from that position quickly, and Constable Davis had him cold in the sights of his Glock. His superior might think that he was overweight but no one could criticise his aim. He’d won the unit sharpshooter shield two years running for his skill with a pistol, but his boss said that all around fitness and stamina was more important to the unit. Davis wondered if he’d be saying the same thing now, faced with a foe armed with automatic weapons. Would it be more important to run a mile in under six minutes, or would being confident that he could hit his enemy square in the chest be more useful in this situation?

“Don’t move a muscle.” Davis trained his weapon on the Moroccan as he walked slowly down the last flight of stairs. Jack Howarth and the other man were making a break for it down the main corridor towards the casualty department. The matron scrabbled around, dazed, and tried to stand up; she was between the police officer and his prey.

“Stay down!” Davis called to her but she was panicked and concussed. She rose briefly, and then stumbled backward and landed firmly on her backside, looking shocked and slightly embarrassed. The Moroccan used the distraction to bolt in the opposite direction to his affiliates. He was up and running before the armed officer could get a shot off safely. There were too many nurses and patients milling around, watching the action as it unfolded.

The Constable had to decide which of the fugitives was the more important to chase, and he turned and sprinted after Jack Howarth. The corridor was wide and painted white, and the floor was highly polished red vinyl, buffed to a sheen every day by an army of janitors. To the left it forked to Accident and Emergency, and to the right it opened out into a semicircle of shops and cafes before leading out into the car parks via two revolving doors. He saw Jack Howarth fleeing through one of them as he reached the foyer. There was no way to get a shot off. His lungs were screaming at him for air and there was sweat pouring down his face. He wanted to stop and give up the chase, but the thought of his superior officer taking his weapon from him and sending him permanently out on traffic duty spurred him on. He took off as fast as he could and tried to close the gap between him and his quarry.

Jack Howarth and his associate were fifty yards across the car park as he reached the revolving doors, heading towards the ambulance bays. The Constable entered the door and was about to exit the other side when the doors jammed suddenly. He slammed into the glass at speed, flattening his nose and splitting his lip. The armed officer was stunned for a moment, and he couldn’t understand why the doors had stopped revolving, until he saw the two hoodies that he’d encountered earlier at the vending machines. The male hoody had rammed a waiting room chair into the doors, and he stood protected by the thick glass, puffing his cheeks out and mimicking the fat police officer. They ran back into the hospital laughing hysterically at him. The doors were jammed solid and he couldn’t move them, no matter how hard he pushed them. He turned around and tried to push them in the opposite direction to see if he could dislodge the chair, but they wouldn’t budge. There were bystanders everywhere but people were too traumatised by the gunfire to come to his assistance. He banged on the glass to gain one man’s attention, and pointed to the metal chair. The man thought about it for a second, and then rushed off in the other direction.

“Come back and move the fucking chair!” Constable Davis yelled. The man broke into a jog, desperate not to be dragged into a life-threatening situation. Police officer or not, there were guns involved and he didn’t want anything to do with it.

Headlights lit up the foyer as they approached, and Davis looked to see where they were coming from. He thought that it could be an ambulance crew, in which case they would stop and help him. It was indeed an ambulance, but when he saw the Uzi being pointed out of the passenger window his heart sank. He saw the muzzle flash as the first nine-millimetre slug blasted out of the barrel, followed by twenty-two of the same, all of which were headed towards the front of the hospital. The muzzle flash meant that the bullet was already about to hit the target, and he dropped to the floor and curled up into a foetal position a split second before the plate glass windows disintegrated. Glass shards sprayed the foyer, slicing, cutting and stabbing anyone that was unlucky enough to be in their path. The bullets miraculously missed the fat police officer and the remaining onlookers, and they ripped through plate-glass panes, aluminium window frames and plasterboard walls before embedding themselves in the bricks that formed the exterior walls. Constable Davis looked up and watched the hijacked ambulance speeding away. He stood gingerly and wiped shattered glass from his hands and face; dozens of tiny cuts began to bleed as the glass shards were wiped away. Gripping the Glock tightly, he closed one eye and aimed at the vehicle. He breathed in and steadied his aim by gripping his wrist with his free hand. The weapon kicked in his hand as he aimed three shots at the rear wheels. The first shot sparked off the sub-frame and then punctured a rear tyre. The rubber split, exploded and became nothing but ragged strips as the vehicle careered onward. The second bullet missed, but the third shredded the second tyre. The vehicle lurched to the right and bounced up the kerb, buckling the front wheel and ripping the front bumper from the chassis. Sparks flew skyward in all directions and tyre remnants were cast askew. The ambulance mounted a grass verge and then smashed into a low brick wall in a shower of smoke and steam. The vehicle tilted violently before rolling completely onto its side, leaving a wake of sparking metal behind it in the darkness. When it finally crashed to a halt, there was nothing but silence all around it.

Constable Davis climbed through the ruined revolving doors and crunched across a thick carpet of shattered plate glass to reach the pavement outside the main entrance. Ambulance crews from the hospital ran towards the crash site.

“Armed police!” The Constable shouted. “Get back away from the vehicle.” Some of the crewmen looked uncomfortable with the order, as it was their natural reaction to help, especially when it could be their own comrades that were injured.

“They’re ambulance crew,” one of the men shouted. The Constable ignored him and approached the upturned vehicle with his gun raised.

“Stay back! They are armed fugitives,” he shouted without taking his eyes from the vehicle.

“That’s my ambulance.” Another voice shouted up from the back of the approaching ambulance men. “They must have stolen it.” Realising that the police officer was correct, they started to back away from the crash scene.

“Anything we can do to help?” One of the paramedics asked from a safe distance.

“Telephone the emergency services and hospital security, and tell them that I need help,” he replied. The sound of broken glass shifting drew his attention back to the ambulance. “Move away, now!”

The armed officer jogged to the side of the ambulance and then approached the open rear doors cautiously. He peered quickly inside and a volley of bullets told him that the occupants were still functional and armed.

“Throw your weapons out, and step out of the vehicle, do it now!”

There was no reply from the fugitives. Davis tiptoed around the ambulance until he was level with the driver’s cab. The windscreen was destroyed and he could hear the occupants scrabbling around inside. He took a deep breath and jumped into the field of vision. One of the Moroccans was waiting for him, and he blasted a volley of bullets at the armed officer. Constable Davis fired two well-aimed shots at the assailant; one smashed his sternum into pieces before ripping a lethal rent in the heart muscle. The second tore his lower jaw from his face, exposing his upper teeth and gums in a macabre grimace. Four bullets from the Moroccan’s Uzi slammed into the police officer; two shattered his hip and pelvis before ripping a large piece of muscle from his buttocks. The other two were embedded in his stab vest, unable to penetrate his body, but the velocity of the impacts caused dreadful internal injuries. 

Constable Davis lay on the car park bleeding profusely. The Moroccan was dead, but he could only watch helplessly as Jack Howarth picked his way out of the wreckage. He took the Moroccan’s shoes and picked up the Uzi before walking over to the dying police officer. His hand was strapped heavily with hospital gauze dressing. Blood was soaking through the bandages and dripping onto the tarmac.