Heck and Mary-Ellen threw caution to the wind as they sprinted back through the foggy woods towards Cragwood Keld. Long before they got there, even deep amid branches so tangled they managed to lose sight of each other, they could see the wavering glow of a huge fire some distance ahead.
When Heck finally staggered, panting, into Hetherby Close, he found that Hazel and the rest of the villagers had also discarded concern for their personal safety and were milling all over the pile of burning rubble where the police station had once stood.
He advanced into the chaos, goggle-eyed.
Up close, the debris mainly consisted of shattered timbers and scorched bricks, and had heaped itself around a central crater – what had once been the cellar – from out of which cloying black smoke was pouring.
‘What happened?’ Heck shouted, wafting his way back and forth. He snatched at someone. But it was dizzy old Sally O’Grady, who could only respond by shaking her head and fixing him with a fishlike stare, her cheeks blackened with soot.
‘What happened?’ he said, blundering over the hot wreckage to the next figure. This was Hazel. She too was in a state of stupefaction. He grabbed her by the wrists. ‘Hazel, what happened?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘We just heard it … and now the whole building’s gone.’
‘I can bloody see that!’
‘Mark … Gemma was in there.’
‘What?’
Hazel’s red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. ‘And PC McGurk.’
‘Gemma …?’
‘There was a power cut at the station, and they came up here to try and fix it.’
At first Heck played it cool, determined to show no obvious distress. And that wasn’t difficult because Gemma wouldn’t have been in there, she couldn’t have been. There was no way Gemma would have been … in there.
‘Mark!’ Hazel shrieked as he tore himself away.
He flung himself up and over the nearest embankment. His throat was too raw from the smoke for him to scream Gemma’s name as he staggered down into the pit at the heart of the conflagration. More rubble lay scattered, though very little was identifiable. A few warped fragments of blistered metal were all that remained of the propane tanks, but there were puddles of fire between them, which Heck knew defied the laws of nature – unless they were eating up the remnants of spilled petrol.
The propane canisters and petrol.
Someone had done a number on them this time, alright.
‘Gemma!’ he cried, meandering through the flames, the intense heat drying the sweat on his face, searing his skin, the smoke filling his lungs, causing him to retch. ‘Gemma! Christ almighty, don’t you dare do a runner on me …’
A muffled moan sounded in response.
He spun around. ‘Gemma …?’
‘Heck,’ a voice croaked. It was breathless, pained beyond belief.
He spun again, and fleetingly, through billows of smoke, spied two pillars of blackened concrete in the far southwest corner; all that was left of the cellar’s reinforced door-frame.
Heck scooted over there, kicking flaming planks aside.
Beyond the gateposts, a concrete stair led upward. There was no roof above it anymore, no walls to either side; most of the stair itself was buried in bricks and masonry. But right at the foot of it lay the smouldering hulk of a heavy oaken door. More to the point, it was shifting slightly, as if something was pinned underneath.
Heck took hold of the wood. Its edges were ragged, glowing embers, and his fingers were scalded even through his gloves, but the strength of desperation was a potent force. Shoulders straining, he heaved the door up and tossed it behind him. But his gut lurched when he saw what lay underneath it: a hideous mess of broken limbs and charred flesh.
A choked whimper escaped from him. But his eyes were attuning fast to the dense smoke and crimson firelight, and as he blinked away tears, what at first had looked like a single person reduced to a mangled, faceless horror, slowly resolved itself into two people, both thick with dust and debris; one lying over the top of the other, back turned upward – which explained the lack of face. The POLICE insignia stencilled into the partially melted hi-viz slicker revealed that this was McGurk.
If the burly Scot had been wearing his hat at the time, he no longer was now – his bull-neck and the back of his head were not just singed black, they were thickly bloodied. Presumably they’d taken the brunt of the impact as the door flew from its hinges. Heck hunkered down and felt at the side of the PC’s neck. There was a pulse, but the injured cop was lifeless, a deadweight. It didn’t stop Heck hauling him off to get to the person underneath. This one was equally coated in dust and dirt, but more animated, coughing and writhing as she struggled to breathe.
‘Thank God,’ he said, slumping down onto his knees. ‘Oh, thank God …’
‘Oh hell, Heck …’ Gemma coughed again, hawking out wads of gritty saliva. Her face too was a mask of dirt and blood, but her focused gaze indicated full consciousness.
‘Don’t try to move,’ he advised.
‘I’m … I’m alright.’ She tried to get up.
‘Yeah, but just be careful …’
‘Ow, shit … I’m not alright!’ She stiffened in agony. ‘My back …’
‘Is it bad?’
‘Just a bang, I think.’ She wriggled where she lay, grimacing again, and then eased herself up into an awkward sitting posture. ‘Hell of a bang …’
‘This whole thing went with a hell of a bang. Must have slammed you back onto those concrete steps like a bundle of laundry.’
‘McGurk?’ Gemma asked.
Heck turned to the dusty figure lying motionless alongside them. ‘He’s alive. And it’s a bloody miracle. Good job this was a heavy door.’
Gemma mopped a sleeve of grimy sweat from her brow. ‘Propane, yeah?’
‘Yeah. Some maniac must have opened the valves on all the cylinders.’ Heck glanced around. Treacly-black smoke still snaked from several pools of liquid fire, wreathing into the mist topside to create a hellish, stinking smog. ‘Looks like he doused the floor with petrol as well. Turned the whole nick into a time-bomb.’
There was a clatter of bricks as Hazel scrambled down the side of the crater. The other villagers were now gathered along the top. Heck’s gaze roved across them. Despite everything, it was important to remember the civvies they were trying to protect here. Thankfully, it looked as if all were present and correct.
McGurk now stirred, giving a dull groan.
‘Mary-Ellen!’ Heck called. ‘I need you.’ There was no response. He glanced up, expecting to see her hastening down the brick slope towards him. But nobody moved among the spectators along the rim. ‘M-E!’
‘I didn’t see her with you,’ Hazel stammered. ‘You arrived here on your own.’
‘She was right behind me when we were back in the trees.’
‘I didn’t see her.’
Heck was about to let forth on the subject of people doing disappearing acts just as you needed them most, when he was distracted by a louder groan from McGurk, who now tried to turn over.
‘Lie still,’ Gemma instructed, leaning across the injured cop and prodding at the side of his neck, as if to assure herself that Heck’s diagnosis hadn’t been wrong.
McGurk lay still again, breathing slowly but heavily.
‘Nightmare scenario, this,’ Gemma said. ‘He could have a dozen broken bones that need immobilising … but we can’t leave him here.’
‘Agreed,’ Heck replied. ‘We need to get him back to the pub. If we do more damage to him en route, we apologise afterwards.’
Even so, they checked McGurk over quickly before moving him. The workable first-aid knowledge all police officers were required to possess didn’t come close to matching that of qualified medical personnel, but it was frequently the only thing available in situations like this. Aside from a deep, nasty gash zigzagging across the back of McGurk’s head, which was responsible for most of the blood and for his groggy state, he wasn’t manifesting any other obvious injuries.
‘Good enough to go, I reckon,’ Heck said.
Gemma winced as they tried to lift the guy upright.
‘Here,’ Hazel said, stepping in. ‘Let me.’
The casualty groaned all the more. His face was unrecognisable it was so black, but mainly this was soot adhering to congealed blood.
‘How the devil could this bastard benefit from blowing up the police station?’ Gemma wondered, as Heck lifted the casualty’s left arm over Hazel’s shoulders, and then manoeuvred the right one over his own.
‘Hard to say, but he probably set it up earlier … a lot earlier,’ Heck said. ‘Might have thought we’d pack all the villagers in there for safekeeping. Alternatively, he might just have wanted to wipe the cops out …’
‘I thought he liked to get hands-on,’ she said, limping after them as they sidled clumsily up the steps, McGurk’s booted feet dragging.
‘Seems to be a jack of all trades,’ Heck grunted. ‘Where the hell is Mary-Ellen?’
‘I told you, I haven’t seen her,’ Hazel said. She too was smoky-faced, tears smudged down her cheeks.
‘Wha’ … the fuck happened?’ McGurk mumbled. He was slowly becoming coherent, but his head drooped onto his chest as though his own bodyweight was pulling him down. The ex-Marine might be in his forties now, but he was still a solid hunk of bone and muscle.
‘You got front-row tickets to the Stranger’s barbecue,’ Heck told him. ‘Think you can walk? You weigh a sodding ton.’
‘I’m blo— bloody sorry …’ McGurk stuttered.
It was several minutes after they’d got up onto the flat before the casualty was able to find his feet properly. Even then, his knees buckled as they tried to skirt the exterior of the rubble.
‘Don’t … don’t think I’m gonna make it,’ McGurk said.
‘Yes you are,’ Heck replied.
‘Totally … messed up …’
‘Look on the bright side. You’ll get six months’ sick leave for this. Full pay.’
The rest of the villagers had now convened on Hetherby Close, their faces stark and pop-eyed in the firelight, stained with smoke.
‘Okay, that’s all of us,’ Heck said. ‘Back to the pub, everyone. Come on, another two hours and a bit, and it’s daylight.’
They shuffled along Hetherby Close in a disorderly group, heading for the junction with Truscott Drive. It was far from easy. McGurk still hung semi-lifeless from Heck and Hazel’s shoulders, and none of the other villagers were prepared to walk ahead, instead clustering around the cops for safety but at the same time impeding progress.
The smoking ruins of the police station and the surrounding buildings fell slowly behind and vanished in the mist, but that was no comfort.
‘Come on, people,’ Gemma urged them. ‘Make way, eh … we’ve got to get this injured man to shelter.’ But she too looked strained; her voice was weak with pain.
‘Where the bloody hell is M-E?’ Heck said for the umpteenth time. ‘We couldn’t half bloody use her now!’
‘You sure she wasn’t injured too?’ Gemma said. ‘She couldn’t be buried under wreckage?’
‘We were nowhere near the blast when it went off. We ran back towards the village together, but got separated in the woods …’
Almost on cue, a shrill voice sounded from their left. ‘Heck … Heck!’
They glanced around as Mary-Ellen emerged from between the houses north of Truscott Drive.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.
Mary-Ellen was as sooty, dusty and bug-eyed as the rest of them, her spiky black hair gleaming with sweat. ‘I think … think I almost caught him …’
‘What … where?’
‘Baytree Court.’
‘Yeah … well, “almost” doesn’t help us. Come on everyone, stop standing around. Back to the pub!’
‘Heck, he was right there … I almost nabbed him.’
‘Tell me on the way. McGurk’s hurt and we’ve got to get these people under cover.’ Heck glanced at Hazel as they stumbled on. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve got propane cylinders in your cellar too.’
She shook her head. ‘Ours are in the shed out back. There’s only beer in the cellar.’
‘Thank God for beer.’
‘I’m not kidding, Heck,’ Mary-Ellen said excitedly. ‘After we got split up in the woods, I came out on Truscott Drive a bit further up from you … just across from Baytree Court. And I thought I heard something down the far end … like breaking tiles … like stuff was falling off Bella’s roof. It made me think there might be someone up there, you know … next to the tower.’
‘That was more important than finding out what had happened at the nick?’ Heck said.
‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If you wanted to survey this whole village with thermal imaging, where would be the best place?’
Heck couldn’t deny the logic of this. The McCarthys’ house didn’t just boast a higher, steeper roof than most of the properties surrounding it – its features also included a mock-Victorian bell-tower. In addition, it sat on raised ground. Anyone perched on top of there with heat-detecting vision would have a grandstand view of the neighbourhood and the chaos slowly engulfing it.
‘And did you see anything?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t see anything, could I? But I heard him, I’m sure. It was like a cracking, breaking sound. When I ran over to the McCarthy house, bits of slate and other shit were falling off the roof.’
‘And that’s the bloody extent of it?’ he snorted. ‘You know explosions create shockwaves that cause structural damage?’
‘What … you think I should have ignored it?’
‘No … no, course not.’ Heck was now acutely aware of the other villagers clustered around them, listening, and therefore not looking to their own safety. ‘Look, we’ve got to get these people under cover. Give us a hand here, M-E!’
Mary-Ellen hastened to assist with McGurk, replacing Hazel, who now looked exhausted. ‘There was no sign of the bastard anyway,’ Mary-Ellen said. ‘Then I heard you screaming for Gemma … so I didn’t hang around.’
‘Come on everyone, move it!’ Heck shouted, McGurk still a sagging weight on his shoulder. They recommenced shuffling down the hill in a disorderly gang. ‘Christ’s sake, PC McGurk,’ Heck complained. ‘Can’t you put one foot in front of the other?’
Before McGurk could mumble a foul-mouthed reply, a familiar refrain, rendered harmonious by the most tuneful whistling they’d ever heard, came drifting downhill towards them. They stopped and glanced back at the station, which was blanked out by smog, though flickers of orange firelight were visible. Whoever was whistling Strangers in the Night to them, he was standing right there, right in the midst of the obscured ruin. But of course, just because they couldn’t see him, didn’t mean he couldn’t see them.