Gemma would never forget the sight that greeted her when she and Emad finally reached the spot where the shot had come from. Her chest was heaving and her breath coming in pants as they crashed through the woods, trying to avoid roots and trunks, the light from her and Emad’s phone torches both illuminating and wrong-footing them as the duel beams jogged up and down confusingly.
One shot, she thought. One person dead, possibly. Why only one? Had Catherine Brown killed Pete in front of Meredith, part of her extended revenge plan?
Oh God, she thought, stop speculating and just get there. Emad was ahead of her, fleeter of foot and more agile. He’d been like that at school too, she recalled, a flash of a sports day memory coming to her. Sweet, doe-eyed Emad.
For the first time it occurred to her that they too were in serious danger, running full pelt through dark trees towards an insane person with a gun, their only weapon the handcuffs that she’d clipped to the belt loops of her trousers earlier. Two insane people, most likely, as Brown must have an accomplice. She didn’t escape until the morning after Pete went missing, so someone else must have taken him. And she’d had a getaway driver.
If anything happened to Emad, she would feel responsible. He was a rookie; this was his first life-and-death shout – and he wasn’t even on duty.
‘There’s the chopper,’ Emad panted over his shoulder. ‘Looks like they’ve found them with thermal imaging.’
‘Straight ahead then.’ Gemma felt like she’d gone into a sort of trance, her whole being focussed on getting there, like the time she ran a half marathon; one foot in front of the other, keep deep breathing … ‘Nearly there.’
What the hell do we do when we actually get there? she thought.
Even though she’d seen their clothes lying by the empty swimming pool, it was still a shock to see the twins stark naked, lying under a tree like two overgrown fairy-tale characters abandoned in the woods. Hansel and Gretel, Gemma thought. They’d been siblings too. There was something so primal about the sight – and that was before Emad’s torch beam landed on the bloodied body of who Gemma assumed was Catherine Brown and a bulky man lying motionless next to her a few feet away, like two harpooned whales.
‘Jesus,’ Emad yelped.
Catherine Brown had a number of visible stab wounds all over her face and torso, and an odd little curved blade sticking out of her neck, whereas the man was completely covered in blood from what looked like a shot to the chest. That must have been the shot they’d heard.
‘Meredith!’ Gemma called, running over to her, peeling off her stripy cotton jumper and laying it over the middle of Meredith’s pale torso.
Emad wished he hadn’t left his leather jacket in Gemma’s car – he was only wearing a shirt, but he stripped that off too.
Meredith was still clutching the pistol, her whole body shaking so much with cold and shock that Emad worried she might accidentally pull the trigger again.
Gemma was cooing at them in an unsteady voice. ‘It’s OK, love, you’re all right; you’re both safe now. Help’s on its way. Pete, can you hear me?’
‘He’s badly hurt,’ Meredith managed, her own voice bubbly with panic. ‘I don’t know how he managed to walk this far. I think he’s got a broken arm and bad concussion, maybe a fractured skull. Please, help him.’
Gemma gently removed the gun from Meredith’s grip, holding her hand instead, stroking it as Emad draped his shirt over Pete’s motionless frame. With Gemma’s help, Meredith slowly pulled herself up to a seated position and tried to lay the stripy jumper over Pete as well, but Gemma stopped her. ‘You’re freezing. You put this one on.’
Meredith ignored her. ‘He’s passed out. Don’t let him die,’ she begged.
‘Shhh,’ Gemma soothed, while Emad hopped uselessly from foot to foot. ‘Just a few more moments. The helicopter crew will have life-support equipment and a stretcher for Pete. They can get him straight to hospital. Lift your arms up for me…’
Finally, Meredith permitted Gemma to help her into the jumper, raising her arms like a submissive child, and Emad couldn’t help the relief he felt that Meredith’s breasts were now covered. He knew he shouldn’t be having such puerile thoughts, but he also felt very self-conscious that he was standing there without his shirt, and relieved that Gemma had been wearing a bra – it was weird enough to see her in just that. He wasn’t sure he could have coped with seeing her chest completely bare as well as Meredith’s.
The police helicopter was noisily landing in a paddock a few metres away, rendering further conversation impossible.
Thank God it got here so fast, thought Emad, glancing at Pete’s lifeless body. And thank God I didn’t have to try and immobilise either of them. The dead guy was built like a brick shithouse.
He was just looking at his phone to call through to the station with an update, when a sudden movement caught his eye, illuminated for a moment by the chopper’s lights shining through the trees. Unnoticed and not heard over the din of the chopper’s blades, Catherine Brown had managed to stagger to her feet. She was pulling the small curved knife out of her neck and brandishing it over her head as she lumbered towards Meredith, who was seated with her back to her. Brown was about to bring it down…
Shit! Emad thought in panic. Why hadn’t they checked that she and her sidekick were actually dead? Mavis would kill him. And then the adrenaline kicked in and he no longer had any conscious thoughts other than protecting Meredith and Gemma where they sat. With a yell he dropped his phone and threw himself with full force at the bloodied woman, just as she started to plunge the knife down, knocking her to the ground sideways, relieved to see the weapon fly out of her blood-slick hand.
Brown screamed with weak fury as Emad tried to roll her onto her front and sit on her, but she was so large and heavy, he couldn’t shift her before she managed to headbutt him, his nose exploding with pain and blood that he could feel running down over his mouth and neck and making a sticky, matted nest in his chest hair.
Gemma had leaped up and run across to him, yanking at the handcuffs attached to the waistband of her trousers.
‘Get her feet,’ she barked, kicking Brown over onto her front and holding her down with her foot until she could wrench the woman’s arms behind her back and cuff them together.
Emad kneeled on Brown’s thrashing feet, trying to ignore his busted septum, every movement she made under his shins sending pain stabbing through his skull.
They finally managed to incapacitate her, Gemma pressing the woman’s face into the loamy forest floor, harder than was strictly necessary. Lights and shouts could be seen and heard through the trees. Backup was here.
Meredith, bare-legged with Gemma’s jumper just about covering her hips, had got to her feet and made her way over to where the three of them variously sat and lay. She crouched slowly down next to Catherine, reaching out and pushing Gemma’s hand away from the back of the woman’s head, replacing it with her own, seeming to not care that she was still naked from the waist down. She grabbed a handful of Catherine’s hair and yanked it, until Catherine’s doughy, bloody face was revealed, now covered with rotting leaves and soil, looking as though she had just been dug up.
Meredith locked eyes with her as the footsteps and bobbing lights grew closer. Catherine’s glare didn’t flinch away, a last gesture of defiance. Meredith smiled, slowly, her voice sounding stronger and more menacing than Emad had ever heard it.
‘You failed, Caitlin. Again. What a waste of your life, eh? What a waste of Ralph’s life, Andrea’s life, Andrea’s baby’s life. But you still failed. You didn’t get me, and you didn’t get Pete, and now we’re going to be free of you forever because you’ll never be free again, not now your little puppet is dead. You spent the best part of thirty years trying to make my life a misery, and it hasn’t worked.’
‘It was all for Sam,’ Brown whispered, all defiance extinguished, and Meredith laughed bitterly.
‘Sam never gave a shit about you, or me. And I don’t think you believe that, anyway. You just wanted someone else to blame for your psychopathic behaviour, and so you decided it was all my fault.’
The armed-response team crashed through the trees, at the exact moment Meredith spat in Brown’s face. ‘You’re pathetic.’