Fighting for the Dead

TEN

By leaving it to the last minute, Henry secretly hoped that Steve Flynn would have found somewhere to bed down for the night other than the Tawny Owl. It wasn’t to be.

He called Flynn as he left the mortuary.

‘Hi, Henry,’ Flynn answered quickly.

‘Hello, Flynn,’ Henry said more formally. ‘How are you?’

‘For someone who’s been half-murdered twice, OK.’

‘What’s happening with you tonight?’

‘In what respect?’

‘Sleeping arrangements.’

‘Er… try to get a room in a Travelodge or something, I guess,’ he said delicately.

‘You’ve nothing booked?’

‘Not as yet.’

Damn, Henry thought. ‘You’re welcome to stay at the Owl,’ he said, almost choking on the words. ‘I mentioned the possibility to Alison and she’s fine with it.’

‘Brilliant, thanks,’ Flynn gushed. ‘Slight problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah — Diane needed her car back, so I’m without wheels.’

Henry stifled a groan. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the hospital. I visited Colin and gave Diane the keys… just walking to the main exit as we speak.’

‘Come down to the mortuary. I’m down here now, just about to set off to Kendleton. I can bring you back across in the morning, but it’ll be an early start.’ Henry hung up and pulled his face distastefully.

It took five minutes for Flynn to arrive. Henry sat waiting in the Merc, listening to an old Rolling Stones track. He flashed him as he approached. Flynn slumped in, admiring the car for the first time.

‘Nice one, Henry. You must be doing well.’ He clunked the door shut. ‘Super’s wages and all that.’

‘It’s financially crippling to run. I could buy a new Kia every year with what it costs to insure.’

‘Mmm… Kia… Mercedes,’ Flynn said as though he was trying to balance something tricky in his hands. ‘Not much of a contest.’

‘I know,’ Henry said, pulling out of the mortuary car park.

Flynn said, ‘Genuine thanks, Henry… I was probably going to bed down upstairs in the chandlery.’

‘Look upon it as victim support.’

‘So — not a friend thing.’

Henry almost choked. He drove up to the roundabout at the southern edge of Lancaster and headed north through the city, traffic still quite heavy in the mid-evening.

This was fortunate for the stolen black Range Rover, being driven on false plates, that slotted in three cars behind Henry’s Mercedes. That meant it could follow him through the city without drawing attention to itself, something that would be harder, but not necessarily impossible, once out on the country roads.

‘Have you made any progress?’

‘Depends on what you mean?’

Flynn pouted. ‘Investigating the attempt on my life, or this morning’s bloodbath, maybe.’

‘Forensics and CSI have been sorting the canal boat and I’ve had a few uniforms going house to house in Glasson — but I haven’t had an update so far,’ Henry admitted. ‘Been slightly busy with today’s bloodbath, as you call it.’

‘So you’re really throwing resources at it,’ Flynn said with sullen sarcasm and a shake of the head. ‘I doubt you’ll get much from the boat or from house to house. The nearest house to the boat is a quarter of a bloody mile away.’

‘I know, I know,’ Henry said, not taking the criticism too well. ‘What are your thoughts?’

‘Depends on what you mean,’ Flynn mocked Henry, who shot him a cold stare. ‘Have you identified this morning’s baddie yet?’

‘No.’

Henry’s mobile phone rang and he answered it on the Bluetooth connection speakerphone.

‘Henry? It’s me, Jerry Tope. Been trying to contact you all day.’

Henry tutted and rolled his eyes, miffed at himself. Tope was one of the many calls he had decided not to take. ‘Yeah, sorry, Jerry, haven’t had time, as you’ll be aware.’

‘Hi, Jerry,’ Steve Flynn butted in.

‘What… who is…?’ Tope stuttered.

Henry said, ‘Steve Flynn’s with me, we’re in my car.’

‘Oh, can I talk?’ Tope asked uncertainly.

Henry hesitated, glanced at Flynn, then said, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’

They were out of Lancaster now, heading towards Caton on the A683, passing underneath the motorway bridge at junction 34.

Tope went on, ‘I’ve done some checking with regards to the MO thing, like you asked. You know, the spray in the face?’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Not as common as it used to be… bit of a sixties/seventies London gangster thing. More associated with girlfriend/boyfriend fallouts these days. That said, I expanded my search criteria and bit by bit I found something that might be of interest to you.’ Henry waited. ‘You still there, Henry?’

‘Yeah, go on, Jerry.’

‘Two guys operating around the fringes of the Mediterranean. Several gang-related enforcement attacks.’

Henry passed through Caton.

‘And when I say gangs, I mean organized gangs as in Russian.’

‘Russian?’ Henry said.

‘Two very bad guys suspected of very nasty attacks in Majorca, Malta and Cyprus. People have been left blind. That said, guess what? They’ve never yet faced a court for it, because — guess what again? No one wants to give evidence against them. I’ve got the details of who they are suspected to be by plundering various intelligence databases.’

‘Names?’ Henry said.

‘Yuri Gregorov and Vladimir Kaminski.’

‘Photos, prints, antecedents?’

‘On file. Just because they haven’t been to court doesn’t mean they haven’t seen the inside of a police cell, rare though that is. They do have a couple of minor convictions, actually… and they do have another speciality. They steal cars to order, usually big four-wheel-drive ones.’

‘OK, thanks for that. You know what went on up at Joe Speakman’s today?’ Henry asked. Tope said he did. ‘In that case, link up with the scientific people and see if one of these guys is our dead shooter.’

‘You serious?’ Tope said.

‘Deadly.’

‘Shit… sorry… can I add something?’

‘Yep.’

‘These guys are ex-military and ex-secret police — in the most recent incarnations of these things in the new Russia. Y’know, new versions of the KGB and all that? But now they allegedly work for a big Chechnyan ganglord called Oscar Malinowski, a guy who’s grown very fat and rich in the last twenty years as Russia’s crumbled internally. And they’re both as hard as nails.’

Henry and Flynn glanced at each other.

‘Er…’ Tope hesitated.

‘Spit it out,’ Henry urged.

‘If they’re up there, something’s going on, Henry — something big and unpleasant. They operate as a team and if you have killed one of them, the other will be mightily pissed off. So just be wary, Henry. They’re not above paying cops a visit. In fact they’re suspected of maiming and blinding a detective in Cyprus… so watch it.’

‘That’s if they are these guys,’ Flynn cut in.

‘Yeah, maybe they’re not…’

‘Anyway, Jerry — do some more digging for me, will you — as well as liaising with the scientific people to see if we do have a match.’

‘I will.’

‘What about that other job?’ Henry asked Tope.

‘Much as I’d trust Flynn with my life,’ Tope lied, ‘it’s really just for your ears, Henry.’

Even though Tope had said nothing, the implication of his reluctance to speak made Henry suddenly feel slightly queasy — even more ill than hearing he might be prodding a hornets’ nest full of Russian nasties.

‘No prob…’ Henry’s mind whirred. ‘Look, get me what you can on this gangster Malinowski will you and email me with everything else you’ve got… I’ll pick it up on my Blackberry… and I’ll speak to you in the… shit!’

During the course of the phone call, Henry had reached the village of Hornby and turned right to head out towards Kendleton in the unlit back of beyond. He had been aware that there was a vehicle behind him, but hadn’t paid it much heed as it hadn’t been right up his backside and his concentration was on what Tope was saying. Now, almost without realizing it, he was out on the tight, narrow country roads just wide enough for two vehicles to pass with care in opposite directions, a few inches to spare between wing mirrors. So far there had been no oncoming traffic and Henry’s car and the one behind had been the only vehicles on the road.

Up to that moment, the car behind had kept to a reasonable distance.

As they hit a stretch of road clinging to a steep hill with one of the tiny tributary streams that fed the River Wenning down an almost perpendicular drop to their left, the main headlight beams of the following car came blazing on like aircraft landing lights and the car itself surged up behind the Mercedes just as he was talking to Tope.

There were four big headlights fitted along a cowcatcher attached the front radiator grille and Henry’s car was brightly lit up, casting a long shadow ahead of himself. Then, on this tight, narrow, steep-sided and dangerous road, the vehicle swerved out, the horn sounding angrily, and moved to overtake.

That was the moment he said ‘Shit’ to Tope.

He had nowhere to go to make space for the idiot who must surely have seen that a manoeuvre like this, on that stretch of road, was not an option.

Flynn twisted round in his seat, looking over his shoulder. He knew from experience that the road was not built for this because he’d once been all but forced off it by — spookily — a black Range Rover, the type of vehicle behind them now.

It wasn’t the same car, nor quite the same stretch of the road, but it was the same move, and then it had been daylight and he could see. Henry, despite all the light surrounding him now, didn’t have that luxury.

He gripped the steering wheel, hunkered down, decelerated and clung to his position on the road in the hope that the vehicle behind might get past without colliding. He knew that he could not afford to veer to his nearside, he’d be on the grass verge.

But passing clearly wasn’t the driver’s intention.

The Range Rover blasted its horn again as it came parallel, then deliberately shunted left with a crunch and tearing of metal on metal.

It was no accident. Not a misjudgement. It was a premeditated act.

The steering wheel was almost thrown out of Henry’s grasp, but he hung on tenaciously, hardly daring to tear his eyes from the road ahead.

The Range Rover slammed left again.

This time Henry was forced off the road.

The Mercedes crashed through a low hedge, then plunged down the steep hill towards the brook at the bottom of a narrow valley.

Henry grappled with the wheel, fighting it as the front of the car bounced into and out of deep ruts in the banking, throwing him and Flynn around in their seats like they were on a high-adrenaline Disney ride.

Suddenly there was a sheep in the headlights, the beam catching its strange brown eyes. It gave Henry a look of astonishment, then fled into the night a second before the car would have flattened it.

Then the front wheels dropped into a deep rut. The body twisted, then it flipped over and somersaulted, crashed onto its roof, bounced, kept going, landed on all four wheels. But the momentum was too great and it did another three-hundred-and sixty-degree forward roll, moving with agonizing slowness, again thudding down on all four wheels right in the centre of the stream at the bottom of the hill. The engine stalled and died.

Henry was still holding the steering wheel, completely amazed he was still conscious and alive, cowering under the crumpled roof which, though extensively damaged, was magnificently still protecting the occupants. Even then, he thought, ‘German engineering.’

He looked sideways at Flynn. He was still conscious, too, but had a deep, jagged gash on his hairline from which blood gushed across his face. He wiped it away from his eyes.

For a few moments, both men were speechless and slightly confused.

Back up on the road, at the top of the steep banking, the Range Rover stopped diagonally across the road, the front wheels just over the edge in the gap that Henry’s car had made in the hedge. The powerful headlights shone down on the Mercedes a hundred feet below.

Henry blinked as he looked stupidly upwards at them, his brain in turmoil, trying to work out what had just happened, wondering what the guy in the car was doing now.

In a matter of seconds he’d been forced off the road and was now in a fucking stream!

Then outline of a man shape stepped into the headlights, silhouetted by the beams.

Henry saw it and assumed the driver had stopped to give assistance after his dangerous driving. He had done a ridiculous, fucking stupid, dangerous overtake, lost control on the way past, clipped the car he was passing — and now his conscience had kicked in.

That’s what Henry would have liked to think.

The fact that the shadow of the man clearly showed him to have a machine-pistol in his hands made Henry think differently.

Plus it was aimed at the Mercedes, which, though in the stream, was positioned broadside to him, presenting a great and easy target.

He was about to make sure he finished the job he had started.

Henry swore, his dumb brain clicking into gear.

‘Get out, get out,’ he screamed at Flynn, who was already moving, having seen what Henry had seen, and after releasing his seat belt was cursing as he tried to force open the damaged and stuck passenger door with his shoulder.

The man fired. The muzzle flash exploded spectacularly against his black shape.

Four bullets smacked into the side of the Mercedes.

Flynn banged his shoulder desperately against the twisted door as Henry lurched across his knees to add the force of his hands and body against the door, which opened with a creak.

Flynn tumbled out into the stream.

Henry rolled out on top of him.

The man fired again. Henry heard three cracks as bullets hit his car and felt one whizz just above his head before it thudded into the grass bank opposite.

Flynn scrambled low along the stream, virtually crawling, Henry following in the ice-cold water.

There was a scream of anguish from the man with the gun. Henry glanced back to see him scuttling sideways down the slope, obviously realizing that his intended targets had survived the terrible crash and the hail of bullets.

Henry kept behind Flynn, hoping to put some distance and darkness between themselves and the man.

But Flynn had disappeared.

It was only a slicing cut that Flynn had received to his head as the car tumble-dried itself down the slope. He wasn’t even sure what had cut it, but it wasn’t caused by a direct blow, for which he was grateful. It meant he kept a clear head.

He’d been kept brilliantly in place by the seat belt and when the car crashed to a stop, like it had just been dropped from a great height flat down into the stream, he knew he’d cut his head, but also that nothing else had been damaged.

He saw the man on the road at the same time as Henry.

Appearing with the headlights behind him, gun in hand, like some kind of murderous demon.

The car door had been twisted, but it opened and Flynn rolled sideways out into the stream, then came up on his hands and knees in the shallow water. Ignoring its bone-freezing temperature, he scuttled away, knowing Henry was right behind him.

Then, for a few moments, it didn’t feel like Henry was there.

Flynn did not look back.

He knew the gunman had run down the slope and if he and Henry had simply just run away, all the guy would have to do was stand in the middle of the stream and strafe the darkness into which they had escaped.

Every chance that at least one of them would be cut to ribbons like Bonny and Clyde.

Flynn, therefore, knew he had to move.

He scrambled to his right onto the bank, into the cover provided by a clump of thin bushes which whipped his face, snagged his new clothing. Thorns cut the palms of his hands as he forced his way through them and up the banking, keeping as low and silent as possible, hoping the sounds of his movement were covered by the burbling of the running water and the noise from the still-on engine of the Range Rover.

There were more shots.

Flynn powered on upwards, moving like a fast Komodo dragon, belly just above the grass, driven by instinct, fear, rage and commando training from many years before.

Twenty metres up, he moved right, still keeping to the ground, and emerged at a point ten metres below the Range Rover and fifteen metres to its right, just on the periphery of the sweep of its headlights.

More importantly he was above and behind the gunman, who was still in the centre of the stream in front of the Mercedes. He was crouched low, the machine-pistol in the firing position, not moving, peering into the darkness.

Flynn’s mouth curved into a vicious snarl.

He was about ten metres from the man and the guy clearly hadn’t heard or seen him, or even suspected that one of the men he’d tried to kill had circled back with murder on his mind.

But ten metres was a big distance in the circumstances.

If Flynn started to move for him, he would surely sense the approach, pivot and fire.

By which time Flynn might have gone two metres.

Flynn did not move.

He took a moment to control his breathing, try to reduce his heart rate.

Then the man stood upright and like some demented terminator, leaned slightly backwards, screamed something incomprehensible that Flynn could not make out — but could tell from the voice it was yelled in wrath — and fired the machine-pistol, spraying bullets in a wide arc, maybe forty degrees, down the stream and into the darkness where Henry and Flynn had disappeared.

Then the magazine was empty.

It was obvious the man knew the gun would empty, because as it did he flicked the magazine-release catch and let it slide out into the water, then smoothly began to replace it with a magazine from his back jeans pocket.

But it was a senseless move, one brought about by rage, Flynn guessed, who knew that emotion should never play a part in a dangerous game like this. It clouded judgement and let the enemy in. He should have taken cover when he reloaded.

Flynn ran down the slope, estimating he had about three seconds before the gun was loaded and cocked again.

He held back his own urge to scream, moved silently, the only sound the thump of his feet in the grass.

Just before Flynn launched himself, the man must have sensed something. He twisted, still with the empty gun in one hand, the full magazine in the other, almost slotted in place. He tried to use the gun as a club, but Flynn was in the air at a forty-five-degree angle and the gunman could not manage to swing the pistol around with enough force or accuracy to clobber Flynn’s head.

Flynn connected and as his hands encircled the man, he realized the guy was all muscle. Hopefully, steroid muscle.

The gun went flying and both men staggered backwards.

With a contemptuous curse, the man broke free from Flynn’s grip like Samson bursting from his shackles, and hit Flynn on the side of his face with a huge, hard fist. Fortunately it was a poor, badly aimed, rushed blow, but nevertheless it sent Flynn spinning backwards, far enough away for the man to recover. Flynn saw the glint of a knife blade in the man’s right hand.

It wasn’t a big knife. A serrated four-inch kitchen knife, possibly.

It didn’t have to be long to kill. Big knives were mostly used to intimidate. Smaller, more discreet ones were used to kill efficiently.

The man grinned, the lights from the Range Rover casting an eerie distorted glow across his face. His teeth twinkled.

‘We meet again, but this time I kill you proper, fucker.’

Flynn thought there was probably a good chance of that happening, especially when the man moved towards him with incredible speed. In the darkness, mixed with the light from the Range Rover, with long and short shadows intermingling, it was hideously difficult to judge exactly where the man was, at what point the arc of the knife was. Flynn had to fight almost blind, trusting to instinct and his abilities.

He sidestepped, swerving his whole body from the knees upwards like a matador, then went in low and — he hoped — under the trajectory of the knife, so that he came back uptight, face-to-face, body-to-body with the guy and the knife was waving uselessly in mid-air behind him.

Flynn knew that would only be momentary, a fraction of a second before the knife came back around into his back, somewhere under the shoulder blades.

He had that amount of time in which to act.

To win.

Also, he was under no illusions about this man’s strength. Even if the muscles were steroid-grown, if Flynn found himself in a bear hug, chances were he would have his ribs crushed slowly, followed by his internal organs, and his spine would be snapped.

It had to be instantaneous. Done with precision.

No hesitation — because what Flynn planned would kill.

His right hand came up between himself and the man, driving upwards in the tight gap between the two bodies. He rammed the heel of the hand under the man’s nose, so the septum would be exactly on that hard part between the soft cushions of his thumb and finger pads.

It was like driving a piston into the man’s nose.

Under normal circumstances — and this was an old, tried and tested move — this would have worked. The septum would have been hammered up into the frontal lobe of the brain, piercing it like a jagged nail and killing the opponent instantly, or at the very least putting him down, making him into a jellied eel and brain-dead for life.

A good plan.

Unless the opponent had virtually nothing left of that piece of gristle that separated his nostrils. Unless years of snorting cocaine had rotted it away and perforated the cartilage making it nothing more than a paper-thin divider. And all Flynn succeeded in doing was grinding the man’s nose to a misshapen pulp.

But there was enough force in the blow to send him teetering backwards with a groan of pain, clutching his mashed face with his left hand, and his right, which was still holding the knife.

Flynn followed up this advantage, lurching after him and bunching his right fist and hitting him as hard as he could in his exposed windpipe, twisting the knuckles on impact, knocking him even further backwards.

The man went backwards, then recovered and dropped into a fighting stance with the knife, despite the blood pouring from the middle of his face and a horrible gagging noise coming from his throat.

And a smile on his face.

He spat out a gob-full of blood and went for Flynn, who jerked side-on, let the knife hand zip past him, then elbowed him right on the nose again, feeling the tip of his elbow sink horribly into a depression in the man’s face.

He did it twice in quick succession. Hard, accurate, but then the man’s left hand crawled over Flynn’s face. His fat fingers dug deep into Flynn’s eye sockets and he began to ease Flynn’s head backwards whilst at the same time Flynn was wrestling with the knife hand.

And the fight was to the death.

Henry dropped as the bullets zinged around him, full length into the stream, face down for a moment in the shallow water, then rolling out of it onto the muddy bank, no idea where Flynn had gone. He slithered and slurped in the mud and came up into a position that resembled a hunted animal on starting blocks.

He glanced backwards and saw two shapes locked together — and realized Flynn had doubled back to take on the gunman. Their terrible fight was illuminated by the car headlights. Henry got to his feet and ran back towards them, just as the man pulled Flynn down onto his arse.

Henry splashed through the water and dived at the man, knocking the knife out of his hand and bundling the mass of muscle off Flynn. The man staggered, but with the strength of a bison he shrugged Henry away. Henry found himself sitting back in the stream, landing heavily on a rock, jarring the base of his spine, sending a shot of pain up to his skull.

Flynn seriously thought he had lost. The man was stronger, heavier and clearly used to fighting and taking punishment. The pain was not having any stopping effect. Flynn had lost his edge. He was fit and lean, but there was too much time separating him from the violent life he had once revelled in and his blade was dull.

It was a good job Henry arrived, barging the man off Flynn. It gave him a chance to reassert himself and go for the kill because he knew that this was ultimately the only way to defeat this person.

As the man tossed Henry aside, he was open. Just for a second. Open. Unprotected.

This time Flynn’s hard-edge blow to the throat was delivered with accuracy and stunning power, driven all the way from the spin of his hips, up through his torso and along his right arm to the blade that was his hand.

He did it twice.

Flynn felt the cartilage crush and crumble.

The man gurgled and sank to his knees, his hands at his throat, gagging, choking.

Still not enough.

Flynn stepped behind him, a ferocious power now inside him, driving him as he put into effect something he had learned many years before and practised for real on two Argentinian soldiers on the Falklands Islands in 1982 whilst a Royal Marines Commando: how to take a man’s head and break his neck with one perfect wrench.