Chain of Evidence

57

Challis risked a peek. Lisa was shooting at him from behind the driver’s door of the Jeep. A semi-automatic rifle with a small clip. He guessed that it had been stowed behind or under the seats. There was a crack and a bullet punctured the tyre beside his foot. She fired again, the bullet punching through the open door. He ran around to the front of the big four-wheel-drive, glad of its bulk. His relief was short-lived: a bullet pinged off a nearby stone. He felt terribly exposed. Lisa Joyce would cripple him and then shoot him where he lay.

Then he heard her call his name.

‘What?’ he shouted.

‘I phoned Wurfel when I saw you arrive.’

She’ll present Wurfel with a self-defence story, he thought. He couldn’t see any point in negotiating, or waiting, and slithered on his belly and elbows toward the shepherd’s hut, using the Range Rover for cover. Lisa fired again, the bullet whining away and dust and stone chips flying.

Just then the sheep, made skittish by the cracks and echoes in the still air, broke away and charged toward the hut, passing close to Challis. He rolled to his feet and ran with them in all of their fear and exultation. Dust rose and pebbles flew and the sheep kicked and bucked. Lisa fired, a desultory shot that went nowhere.

Challis huddled behind a ruined wall. Lisa had the advantage in this engagement, while he had nothing but the hut and small deceptions in the sparsely grassed soil of the plateau. He glanced hurriedly about: only heaped stones and a length of wood, possibly a lintel or part of a window frame. He grabbed it like a club, alerting Lisa, who got off a shot that sent a stone chip into his face. Blood coursed down his forehead, blurring his right eye. He swiped at it with his forearm and another shot smacked numbingly through the wooden club. He lay afraid and very still, and then began to retreat again. If he could reach the far rim of the plateau, he might be able to try an outflanking manoeuvre.

The next shot creased his ear and he pissed his pants. None of his nerve endings would let him alone. He trembled, tics developing in his face, and the blood dripped onto the dust, balling there. He supposed he was sobbing aloud, he didn’t know, but retreated in a mad scramble from the hut until he found a stone refuge, where the rocks were grey and licheny, weathered and streaked with bird shit. It was a good place. He huddled there and, in his visions, Lisa Joyce appeared above him and shot him like a fish in a barrel.

Dimly then he heard a starter motor grinding. He risked a look: Lisa was in the Jeep. That galvanised Challis. He charged forward, making for the Range Rover and Rex Joyce’s hunting rifle.

Instantly Lisa stepped out of the Jeep. Challis was barely halfway to the Range Rover. He ducked and swerved, but she merely stood with her arms wide to the world. ‘I haven’t got any bullets left.’

Challis halted tensely. ‘Then drop the rifle.’

‘I haven’t got any bullets left.’

‘So put the rifle down.’

‘It was all Rex’s fault.’

‘Lisa, drop the rifle.’

Challis advanced, and Lisa stood there with the rifle outstretched.

‘Drop it, okay?’

‘None of it was my idea.’

Still Challis advanced. He reached the Range Rover, leaned in and retrieved the hunting rifle from between Rex Joyce’s legs. He jacked a round into the breech, then emerged from the shelter of the vehicle, blinking furiously to clear his bloodied eye, the rifle to his shoulder. ‘Lisa, I’m warning you.’

‘I suddenly said to myself, what am I doing, shooting at Hal?’

Challis stopped, the rifle aimed squarely at her, and said quietly, ‘Lisa, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Please put the rifle down.’

Lisa grinned and deftly slapped the rifle from one hand to the other and up to her shoulder. Challis shot her legs out from under her.

She screamed and rolled in the dirt. ‘Ow! You shot me!’

‘Yes.’

She tossed in agony, raging at him. Challis retrieved her rifle, ejected the magazine and checked the breech. She’d had one bullet left.

‘I didn’t think you’d shoot me!’

‘In a heartbeat,’ Challis said.

She began to cry and swear and deride him. He found a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his eye, then crouched beside her. ‘Shut up,’ he said, tearing off one of his sleeves.

‘It hurts!’

‘You’ll live.’

He bound her leg and then sat, depleted, not thinking about anything at all but feeling the weariest he’d ever felt. And then a surprising contentment settled in him. He tilted his face to the sun and adjusted his body to the pebbly dust as if he were part of the landscape. Finally Sergeant Wurfel’s Land Cruiser appeared over the rim of the plateau like a breaching whale.