“The blood drips from the front door simply stop here,” Grace called over. “There are tyre marks. It looks like he, or she, got into a vehicle.”
Over by the Impreza, Nick was on the phone updating Pollock on their find. He glanced across as Grace spoke, saw the intent frown as she lifted the camera again, at the precise moment the ground at her feet erupted.
She landed brutally hard, enveloped in a cloud of shards and dust as her head cracked back onto the concrete. The monstrous sound of the shot transported Nick instantly to the show field, to the vulnerability of flesh.
The phone went tumbling. “GRACE!” he yelled, already sprinting.
He scooped her limp body into his arms and almost threw her into the byre doorway, rolling inside after her. The force of his momentum sent them both skidding across the lino. They crashed into the far cupboards, Nick taking the brunt of it, trying to shield her. He was still gasping from the shock, the sudden overwhelming bolt of fear.
She’s not moving!
There was blood everywhere. He ripped her T-shirt up out of her waistband to find the wound before it registered that if she’d been hit there wouldn’t be much left of her.
“You’ve a one-track mind, Mr Weston,” she managed, voice muzzy. Her eyes flicked open, so close he could make out the individual colours of her iris. Her point of focus seemed to be somewhere over his left shoulder and several miles beyond the cottage walls. Concussion, he realised.
“My God, Grace…” he said, weak with it. “I thought he’d got you. I thought—”
“—wrong,” she said, still hazy. “He missed.” She put a hand up towards her head, a gesture that ran out of energy before she could complete it. She winced, let the hand flop. “Mostly.”
“Not by much,” Nick said on an unsteady breath. Gently, he smudged a trickle of blood from her eyebrow with his thumb.
She began to shake then, a faint quiver. Nick put his arms round her. ‘You’re OK, it’s all OK,’ he murmured, hiding a tremor of his own. “I’ve got you.”
“I know you have,” she said distinctly, and closed her eyes again.
Nick waited a beat. “Grace?” No response. “Grace!”
Carefully, he eased out from under her sprawled limbs, checked her over. Apart from numerous small cuts from the splintered chips of concrete, there were no obvious signs of a wound. But when he stripped off his jacket to support her head, his fingers found the alarming lump on the back of her skull, the broken skin, the blood. In slow-motion recall, he saw her fall again, her head striking the concrete with sickening force as she went down.
Could be fractured, he registered with a hollowness at the base of his stomach. She needs a doctor—an ambulance.
He looked round for a phone, then realised there wasn’t a land-line. His radio and mobile were in the car.
He swore under his breath, eyed the gap out into the sunlit yard, the distance to the Subaru. He just had to hope that, even over a mobile phone line, Pollock had recognised the sound of the massive gunshot for what it was, that the Firearms team were already on their way.
Meanwhile, he had to just sit tight and wait.
Meanwhile, said an invidious voice in his head, she might die.
Keeping well under the level of the kitchen window, Nick crabbed into the living room, trying to avoid the blood. He reached for the AK still by the low table in the centre of the room.
“Sorry, Grace,” he murmured as he picked it up, snapped the magazine out to verify a full clip. He slapped it home again with the palm of his hand so it re-seated firmly.
It was a long time since he’d last held an assault rifle in his hands.
Grace hadn’t stirred, her breathing shallow. For a moment, he hesitated over leaving her. If her skull had been fractured in the fall, she might stop breathing. He could breathe for her, if he had to, until the paramedics got here. But not if he’d gone charging off trying to get himself killed…
Telling himself that the most sensible thing was to stay put—the relief such a decision would bring—did not make him feel any less of a failure. And it did not make his terror at the prospect of going out there any less real.
You coward. You utter bloody coward…
Tilting his head sideways, he peered over the top of the worktop, out through the window. The shot had come from the direction of the farmhouse, but he saw no open windows on either storey. The barn door was firmly shut and devoid of gaps.
That left the field behind the farm, open except for the single clump of trees halfway up. Nick didn’t see any stray reflections from the scope, but instinct told him that’s where he’d find the sniper.
With a last regretful glance at Grace, he backed up as far as the confines of the room would allow, clutching the AK across his chest. His hands were shaking. He took a couple of deep breaths, and launched. By the time he passed through the doorway, he’d already hit his stride.
He ran for the car, gabbled a message into his radio and ignored the squawked order to keep his head down until back-up arrived again. All the time he was trying to work out why nobody had taken a pot-shot at him.
He knew the rules of fire and manoeuvre as well as anyone. Was the sniper repositioning himself so the next shot would come from a totally different direction, as it had at the show field? Nick tried to close his mind to it.
Just before they’d gone into the byre, he’d experienced a sudden burst of fear that had both shamed and surprised him, as memories of walking into that undercover ambush took hold.
Is that why you’re doing this? he asked himself, mocking, cynical. Trying to prove you’re still the man?
Nick gripped the stock of the AK tighter and bolted for the corner of the farmhouse. Still no high-pitched whistle, no concussive follow-up boom of the shot. Carefully, he took a peek around the edge of the stonework, assimilated the landscape in an instant. Back to the wall, he took another couple of breaths, then he was out and running again, for the wall into the neighbouring field this time, vaulting the gate, rolling out through the fall on the other side. He pounded up the field with just the hedge between him and the stand of trees, fiercely glad of the stamina from his daily runs.
At any moment he expected the bark of the Barrett to come rampaging through the branches. That alone sent the sweat dripping into his eyes. He blinked furiously. Why is it worse when you’re expecting it?
Just past the copse was an adjoining gateway, standing open. Nick threw himself through it, went flat to the ground on the other side, the AK out in front of him.
Still no shot.
After a moment, he raised his head, cautious, but nothing stirred except a slight breeze fingering the grass. It was wet from the earlier rain, soaking his shirt.
Nick’s nerves stretched, his breathing ragged and his heart beating a brutal tattoo behind his breastbone. He clambered to his feet, went across the distance dividing him from the trees like a hare from hounds.
He was on the uphill side, the incline adding momentum. He reached the trees and jerked back to walking pace, the rifle up and ready, butt pulled tight into his shoulder, finger inside the guard. For a moment he wished for body armour, dismissed the thought.
No use against a Barrett, anyway.
Then above the pounding in his ears, he heard the quiet sound of stifled sobbing. He crept towards it, mouth dry.
At the front of the copse, facing down towards the cluster of farm buildings, he found Edith Airey, sitting weeping amid her ragged camouflage, with the mammoth gun over on its side in front of her. The AK in his hands was a toy by comparison.
The reason for the lack of secondary shots was immediately apparent from the hunch of her body, the way she cradled her arm.
Her shoulder was broken.
She heard his approach and looked up blindly. Nick wondered if it was his imagination—was it just the tears that gave her eyes a shining glitter?
“Well? Did I do it?” she demanded. “Is she dead?”