Carver

36

Up on the hillside, Deirdre Bull had managed to crawl through the heather to a low outcrop of rock, behind which she was now hiding, barely able to think straight for the shock of what she had witnessed. As the men went into the farmhouse and further bursts of gunfire echoed around the empty landscape every instinct told her to run, to put as much distance between herself and the danger as possible, as fast as she could go. But fear seemed to render her immobile. She kept imagining eyes, glaring through the farmhouse windows, scanning the landscape, waiting for any sign of movement. It took her several minutes just to remember that she had her mobile phone with her, stuffed into a pocket of her cagoule. But did she dare use it? Her brain told her that no one could possibly hear her. Her fear would not allow her to believe it.

She’d not taken a single further step when four men came out of the house and got into the Range Rover by the front door.

The big black car started moving. At first Deirdre was relieved. That surely meant they were going to drive away the way they had come. But then she realized that they were taking a different course, heading towards the path. And then they were on it, driving directly towards her.

Now Deirdre Bull moved. She dashed from behind the rock and started scrambling straight up the hill, away from the path, which cut diagonally across the slope. She could hear the engine of the Range Rover now as it picked up pace. She knew without even turning around to look that she had been spotted. The chase was on.

Deirdre was thirty-four years old, reasonably fit, but no athlete. She was further hampered by wearing wellington boots. Her breath was becoming more laboured with every few strides that she took. Her feet, made clumsy by the loose-fitting rubber boots, were struggling to get a proper purchase on the hillside. Still she kept going upwards as fast as she could, fighting through the pain in her thighs, her calves and her gasping, protesting lungs. Her eyes were focused on the ground immediately around her. She did not dare look around, for fear of what she might see, or even up, for fear of how far she was from safety. So she was unaware that the escarpment up which she was struggling was actually the side of a long, narrow ridge that ran like a spur from a much larger hill.

Nor did she know that her struggles were the cause of great amusement in the Range Rover, whose driver and passengers were laughing uproariously as they drove up the path to a point directly beneath the fleeing woman. One of the men put on the voice of a TV sports commentator to describe her ascent, ‘Oh, I say,’ he pontificated. ‘She covered the last fifty metres in a shade under thirty seconds. That’s quite remarkable! But you have to ask, how long can the plucky little tree-hugger keep going before someone goes and puts her fucking lights out?’

Ronnie Braddock was not amused. ‘I’ll put your fucking lights out if you don’t shut the fuck up.’ He was sitting up front, next to the driver. ‘Stop the car,’ he ordered.

The engine died, and now there was only the sound of the wind rushing across the hillside. Braddock got out of the Range Rover and walked round the front of the car until he was crouching beside the bonnet on the driver’s side. He rested his left elbow on the bonnet so as to steady himself as he lined up his sleek, futuristic-looking Steyr AUG A1 sub-machine gun on the back of the fleeing figure some two hundred metres beyond and above him. It was a tricky shot, uphill, with a constantly varying crosswind. And then Deirdre Bull contrived to make it much easier.

One second she was fighting her way up an increasingly steep and treacherous slope, the next she was grasping at fresh air as she reached the top of the escarpment. Directly in front of her the ground fell away even more steeply, leaving her looking down on to a dizzying drop. She straightened up as she fought to stop herself falling down it. And for that brief moment her head and upper body were presented in perfect silhouette.

Braddock smiled beneath his black balaclava and fired off his first round. It missed. He swore under his breath, then smiled as he saw the woman turn round to look back in the direction that the shot had come from. His grin broadened and twisted across his face as he sensed the panic and terror with which she must now be overwhelmed. Twice more he pressed the trigger in quick succession, and this time he hit. The bullets tore into the upper left-hand corner of her torso, spinning her round. And then the woman stumbled over the edge of the escarpment and vanished from his sight.

It took the hunters a couple of minutes to make their way to the point where Deirdre Bull had fallen. Her body was clearly visible far below, the jaunty pink and white cagoule standing out from the grass and bare earth around her.

‘Right, that’s her done,’ said Ronnie Braddock. ‘Time we got the fuck out.’