The Cutting Crew (17 page)

Automatic gunfire - like a hammer smacking an iron girder twenty times a second. I made it to the ground just as the noise and light exploded beside me, then above me, then past and over to one side. Pain jarred my arm and face, and the undergrowth was tangled and sharp, but I ignored it and concentrated on the man.

Where was he? Then I caught a glimpse of him - slightly ahead of me, raking shots out through the woods, aiming a little high. The trees were flashing into life, and smoke was billowing between them. I edged to my left and fired once, twice, hitting nothing. My third shot caught him somewhere. The gunfire swirled upwards as he went back and down, bullets fluttering up like startled birds, shredding leaves, and I could hear him screaming over the sounds of the shots before they cut out. And then just screaming.

I got to my feet and moved quickly, circling him as quietly as I could. My heart was racing but my mind was strangely calm; it had slowed down completely and was talking to me in a small, confident voice.

You've got him, it's okay, just take it easy.

The man kept screaming, and then called out: 'Man down! Man down! Fuck!'

I was moving round to the left - come on, it's okay, just relax when he started firing again, like an animal caught in a trap and lashing out. The shock made me dive down, but he was firing away from me, tearing apart the woodland where I'd been when I'd clipped him the first time. The shots laced back and forth, the flash from the muzzle illuminating the wood in staccato bursts of fire.

And there he was at the centre, a shadow twisting on the ground, not much more than a series of lit contortions. I took aim and fired into the heart of them three times. Immediately, the shots stopped.

This time, there was no screaming.

I paused, gathering myself together. My arm hurt where I'd hit the ground, and my cheek was stinging. I touched it carefully, and my hand came away wet. Had I been caught? I decided I wasn't in nearly enough pain; I'd probably just been cut by a thorn or nicked by a splinter of bark. The woods stank of smoke and sap.

The fight was continuing at the road, and the sound of shots turned me around and drew me back towards it, moving through the undergrowth as quickly as I dared, heading straight for the beacon of light spilling from the men's van. It was criss-crossed with the black lines of the trees. I heard more shots, interspersed with screams of pain. The sound of bullets pranging metal.

I kept to the treeline, heading alongside the road until I got near enough to work out what was going on. There was a dead man by the van, but the second was still alive, using the door to shield him from shots coming from up ahead. Lucy was still alive; still returning fire. Something inside me lurched with relief, and I felt a savage twist of desire to kill this man as quickly as possible and make sure she was safe. I couldn't see Rosh, but there was gunfire slamming the far side of the van from the dark field, and so he must have been out there somewhere. But the man was still firing off shots. He emptied his clip out front of the van and then fumbled in his belt for another, backing off slightly along the vehicle. I wanted to kill him. Instead, I stepped out and drew down on him and said: 'Drop it.'

He looked up at me - startled, terrified - and my aim faltered slightly as I caught sight of his face. It was Michael Kemp, an officer in our department. Sean and I had worked with him a couple of times, and although I didn't know him well I'd always liked him. I liked him a lot fucking less now, but at least I had him caught square with nowhere to go.

Regardless - panicking - he was still working at the gun. He got the clip in just as I said:

'Mike, for fuck's sake, drop the gun.'

But then he was aiming for me and I had no choice. His gun came up quick and I fired twice, catching him in the chest and throat. He went back into the van so hard that he left a dent in the side, but still managed to get a wild shot off. And then he was down, sprawled out and motionless. His gun clattered away from him.

I kept my aim on him as I moved over, shouting out to Lucy and Rosh:

'Hold your fire!'

I kicked the gun, sending it skidding off towards the field, and kept aiming, but Kemp wasn't moving and he never would. There was blood pooling out all around him and my second shot had removed most of his neck. Officer Michael Kemp was very fucking dead.

Rosh and Lucy held their fire as ordered, and the sudden hush was shocking after minutes of constant gunfire. My ears were ringing gently. It felt like an intrusion to shout in this new, bruised silence, but I did it anyway.

'We're clear.'

Then I put my back to the van and slid slowly down, finishing up crouched on my haunches. The adrenaline was running all the way through me, finding nowhere to go, and as I watched Lucy approaching cautiously from up ahead I realised that I was shivering badly.

'Martin?'

'Here.'

'You in one piece?'

'I'm fine,' I said. 'They're all dead.'

The shivering would become uncontrollable soon; it would be as though my thermostat had broken. Adrenaline would turn into what it always did - a cold, crawling poison that only time could take away.

Lucy collapsed next to me. She looked ragged and wild, but basically unscathed. I leaned against her, and she did me, and together - slumped there in support - we waited for Rosh.

'You get your man?' he asked when he arrived.

I nodded.

'I clipped mine,' he said, shaking his head and frowning. 'I know I did, because the fucker screamed and stopped shooting at me. I caught him dead centre, ten metres away - three, four hits - and I saw him go down. He wasn't getting back up.'

I said, 'And? You don't sound so sure.'

'I got closer, and he wasn't there. No body. Nothing.'

'You think he crawled off?'

Rosh just shook his head again.

'No. Even with body armour on, he wasn't going anywhere. I was on him in two, maybe three seconds. No way he moved. It's like he fell down and turned to mist. His fucking gun was just sitting there.'

I looked around at the dark fields and woods. The breeze was rustling them slightly, and it was very cold. I started shivering even more. If Rosh said that he'd tagged his man, then I was sure he had.

Perhaps he'd just misjudged where he'd fallen down. It was the middle of the night, after all. But whatever had happened, we needed to get out of here quickly.

'Let's just move,' I said.

This road was private, but not as private as the farm itself. Nobody from any main road would have seen or heard anything and it was unlikely that anyone would ever come this way by accident.

Nevertheless, we still needed to clean the scene up a little.

It took all three of us to get the damaged van further off the road, a task made all the more unpleasant by the fact that when we first rammed it we'd pushed it over another one of the men - so that was five in total. He was dead by now, but still trapped under the back wheel. We placed what was left of him beside Kemp at the back of the van and then dragged the third man off the road by his heels. Lucy had caught him in the stomach, and then twice in the chest. Man down, indeed.

All three of them were dressed exactly the same. Black clothes.

Gloves. Boots. Flak jacket. These guys had come meaning business.

'Serious,' I said.

Rosh nodded. 'You recognise any of the others?'

'No.'

Lucy shook her head as well.

"Me neither,' Rosh said. 'I've worked with Kemp a few times. I always thought he was a decent guy.'

"Me too.'

Lucy said, 'He tried to hit on me once, but he took it well when I told him to fuck himself. He seemed stand-up the other times I met him.'

'Obviously, that wasn't true.'

'He was on the take?' she said.

'Maybe.' I shrugged.

I was reluctant to go any further down that line of thinking for the moment, if only because what had happened here was so extreme that I couldn't understand why. What was so important about Alison Sheldon that a police officer would cover up her identity, blackmail a lecturer, kill Sean and then try to kill Lucy too? She was just a student. I shook my head.

'Let's finish up,' I said.

It was starting to rain. We loaded all three bodies into the back of the van and then closed the doors. We would leave Rosh's van at the farmhouse, where nobody else would go. If anybody drove past here they would imagine that Kemp's van had run off the road presumably taking the corner too quickly - and then been abandoned. That was all. The two bodies we'd left off-road could stay there for now. Nobody was likely to stumble on them at the moment, and if they did then good luck to them. We could clean up properly when we had more time.

When we were done, Rosh and I brushed the glass away as best we could and got back in the van. Lucy took her car, and we drove the rest of the way down the road, taking the overgrown turning that led to Rosh's farmhouse. We wouldn't stay long, but we could clean up our minor wounds, regroup and work out what our next move should be. Rosh and I drove in silence, the rain pattering in on us. There was lots to talk about, but we needed the quiet time to digest what had happened. The keenest question was how many others there were out there. I had no doubt at all that we'd just killed at least some of the people who murdered Sean - but I didn't know why we'd been forced into that position or if what we'd done here tonight had ended all this for good. We needed to find Harris.

We needed to find Keleigh.

I checked my phone to see if she had called or texted.

No Messages

It was raining properly when we arrived at the farm: great slices of water coming down at an incline, saturating us. You could see it flashing in the headlights and hear it on the roof of the van. It was quietly hypnotic. And I put it down to the rain that, as Rosh pulled the van to a halt at the front of the house, I didn't notice straight away that there was something terribly wrong.

Lucy backed her car up and swerved round slightly, drawing level beside us.

Rosh rested his forearms on the steering wheel, his chin on them, and stared out thoughtfully.

I said: 'It's all gone, isn't it?'

He nodded but didn't say anything. I supposed that it wasn't exactly true: the farmhouse wasn't gone. I could still see it straight ahead, illuminated at its base by our headlights. But the windows were empty and the familiar wooden door was missing. The white walls, where they hadn't tumbled down, were now stained black with soot. Through the gaps, you could see that the roof had fallen in, and the rain was streaking down into the shell of the building, soaking all of the ash and timber and ruin. I half expected to see smoke rising from the debris, but there was nothing. The building had been burned and the fire had gone out, leaving parts of the walls standing but nothing left of the inside. It was a husk. So in every real sense, it was all gone.

We got out of the van, guns in hand, and Lucy joined us. The only sound was the static hush of the rain, which made it seem as though something peaceful and secret was being told to us. I scanned the land around carefully. The fire had been set some time ago, but that didn't mean whoever had set it wasn't still around.

Rosh walked towards the remains of his home.

'Could be an accident,' Lucy said bitterly.

I shook my head, even though she hadn't meant it.

'I don't think so.'

Rosh stopped before we reached the door, stood still and looked at something on the ground by his feet. Burned rubbish, strewn around. It was as though the house had exploded as it died, scattering unwanted belongings around the yard. Lucy and I moved towards him.

'No,' Rosh said as we reached him. 'I don't think so either.'

And I realised that it wasn't rubbish by his feet. Burned, yes, and almost beyond recognition, but still very obviously a body.

Something that had once been human and was now just black and hard and lifeless, like old wood. You could make out the broken head; the curled, melted shape of the rest of it. The rain was tapping on a single exposed tooth.

Lucy knelt down in the mud beside it, tilting her head slightly as she put together what was what. And then, gently, she rested her hand on it and closed her eyes. After a second, I placed my own hand on her shoulder. It was the first time I'd touched her in months, and I felt a slight jolt: a shiver of an earthquake deep inside me. Rosh stood still, but after a second he moved closer, bending over to pick up the object that had been left on top of the body. But we all knew what it was.