3 A Reformed Character (20 page)

He had a quick conversation which seemed to be with Dave, since the words ‘pick-up truck’ were mentioned more than once, and then replaced the phone in his pocket. Christopher didn’t ask. Something he had learned from hanging out with Amaryllis was that he just didn’t need to know everything. It was more restful that way.

A long coal train came along behind them and stopped, blocking the place where they had crossed the tracks. Christopher felt a slight qualm at that. What if they needed to be rescued by the police, or needed an ambulance? Could the police get into the yard another way? He knew they had secret access routes that normal people couldn’t use.

‘I thought Amaryllis didn’t want Dave involved,’ he said conversationally. The silence and lack of action were getting on his nerves.

‘Hmph!’ said Jock. ‘We might need transport – I’ve asked him to bring the pick-up truck. I don’t know how she thought we would get the whole gang to the police station.’

‘We might have been better to call the police in the first place,’ Christopher grumbled.

At the other side of the tracks, beyond the stationary coal train, a car horn hooted several times.

‘That’ll be him now,’ said Jock.

The coal train started moving again.

‘He was quick,’ said Christopher.

‘They were in town anyway,’ said Jock.

‘They?’

‘Jemima Stevenson and Rosie were with him. He’s bringing them too.’

‘Amaryllis is going to kill us if anything happens to them.’

‘They can keep their heads down,’ said Jock airily.

Now that the coal train had got out of the way, they could see the pick-up truck with Mrs Stevenson sitting regally in the front and Rosie waving to them from the back seat. Dave got out and crossed the railway line on foot to where they stood.

He was halfway across when they heard the shot.

‘Amaryllis!’ said Christopher, and against all his instincts and inclinations, began to run towards the sound.

He was vaguely aware of Jock shouting at him to come back, but the words didn’t really make sense.

He was almost knocked flying by two people who came running at him from the yard, as fast and as focussed as if the devil was chasing them. Recovering from the near collision, he thought he recognised Zak Johnstone and Stewie the talking ham. He hoped Dave and Jock would be able to grab them as they ran. But that wasn’t important now. He dashed on, regardless.

He was in the yard. He ran on, towards a figure lying flat on the ground by the old workman’s hut. He knew who it was – had known ever since he heard the shot. Oh God, he groaned out loud, oh God. Why didn’t I stop her?

He stood there and stared down at her. Blood poured out of a wound in her left shoulder. She wasn’t moving at all.

Ambulance, said a little voice inside his head. Get an ambulance, for God’s sake.

He flung himself to the ground beside her and felt for a pulse. He wasn’t very good at this kind of thing but he thought he detected something.

Bleeding. Stop the bleeding first. He unwound the woollen scarf he had flung round his neck before leaving home, and made it into a kind of pad which he pressed firmly on to the wound, mentally apologising to Amaryllis if he was hurting her by doing this. Phone, phone, where the hell was his phone? He had a sudden, guilty memory of Amaryllis asking if he had his phone just before this whole thing kicked off. And another memory of the phone sitting on his kitchen table.

Of course! Amaryllis always had a mobile phone with her, and he was sure she had it fully charged and located somewhere on her person. He twisted his spare arm into an almost untenable position and searched her jacket pocket for it, rather tentatively because it seemed like an invasion of her well-guarded privacy. A voice from above him said suddenly,

‘An ambulance. We’d better get an ambulance.’

Giancarlo Petrelli stood over them both, holding a gun.

Christopher forced himself to ignore the boy and the weapon, because he had just located Amaryllis’s phone. He dealt with the emergency call first, then said to the boy,

‘Put that thing down. You’ve done enough damage.’

‘I’ve done – nothing,’ said Giancarlo. He looked dazed and confused: Christopher wondered if he was on drugs. He put the gun down carefully on the rough ground quite close to Christopher, and stepped back. ‘Are the police coming?’

‘Yes.’

Christopher reached out, picked up the gun very gingerly because he had never handled one before and was convinced he only had to touch it to do untold damage to himself and others, and put it in his coat pocket, again very gingerly. He wondered if he should try to move Amaryllis. But he knew keeping the pressure on the wound was the most important thing to do now.

He heard footsteps moving away, accelerating as they went. Giancarlo was making a bid for freedom. After what he had done, they would probably lock him up and throw away the key once they did catch him.

By the time he heard the distant sirens he felt as if he had been crouching there for hours. It was an age after that again when he heard running feet and looked up to see two paramedics standing there. They crouched down beside him.

'She's been shot,' he said, and had to take a deep breath to try and stop his voice shaking. One of the paramedics gently lifted his hand, which still pressed the padded scarf into Amaryllis's shoulder. Blood poured out again.

'Keep holding it like that for two more minutes, pal, and then we'll get you out of here,' said one of the paramedics. They took over from Christopher in easy stages and improved on his makeshift arrangements by bringing oxygen and other professional equipment into play. He sat back on the ground, leaving them space but reluctant to move away from Amaryllis. At last one of them helped him up. 'She's lost some blood but she's strong. She'll fight back....Are you all right?'

He was in the middle of framing a reply when the police arrived, swarming all round him in large numbers like an ant colony.

'She's been shot,' he said again to one of the officers.

The police took names and addresses from him, and the paramedics brought a stretcher for Amaryllis and a kind of folding chair for Christopher. He didn't want to sit in it, but the paramedics insisted. 'We don't want to have to put you on a stretcher too,' they told him. 'Just behave yourself.'

When at last things started to make sense again, he saw that they had managed to drive the ambulance into the railway yard, where it stood ready to whisk Amaryllis away. He wondered why they didn't get a move on. Surely every second counted? They loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, came back for him, and one of them got into the driving seat. The other was just outside talking to a couple of policemen. Jock McLean came up to the group, asked something, peered into the ambulance. Christopher strained his ears and thought he heard one of them say, ‘... grey in the face... a bit out of it… heart attack risk…’

He wasn’t sure who they were talking about. Was it him? He didn't feel like a heart attack risk, but it was as if some evil monster had sucked all the energy out of him.

Amaryllis suddenly pushed aside the oxygen mask and tried to speak, coughing and spluttering a bit. He leaned across to listen.

It was hard to understand anything, but he thought he heard the word 'Petrelli'. Then the second paramedic jumped into the back of the ambulance, replaced the mask and closed the doors behind them.

'I think she just told me who did it,' he blurted out, not wanting to hold them up but desperate to help catch the person who had shot her.

'Never mind that for now,' said the paramedic in the back with them. 'Hold tight, we're going to put on a bit of speed.'

After that it was impossible to say anything or hear anything, because the siren was going and they were dashing through the streets of Pitkirtly much faster than was safe. It was even worse than travelling in Dave's pick-up truck. Although this was what he wanted them to do if it saved Amaryllis, Christopher was afraid he would embarrass himself by being sick.

This fear intensified once he remembered he still had the gun in his pocket.

Chapter 24  The only possible explanation?

Jock and Dave had a busy half hour, but all in all Jock thought it went very well, considering. Just as Christopher disappeared from view, and while Jock was still wondering whether to follow him, Zak Johnstone and his sidekick came round the corner from the railway yard at a gallop, looking as if the hounds of hell were after them.

‘You take the glaikit one and I’ll go after the other one,’ said Dave, with the result that they both tackled Stewie the sidekick, who was only marginally more glaikit than Zak, in Jock’s opinion, and it looked as if Zak would get away except that Rosie jumped out of the pick-up truck as he was accelerating past it and swept his legs out from under him in an impressive tackle. Mrs Stevenson also got out of the truck when it became clear that Rosie had recognised Zak, was pummelling him as he lay there and showed no sign of pausing.

‘You’re hurting me,’ whined Stewie. ‘I’ll get you charged with assault.’

‘We’ll deny everything,’ said Dave, twisting his arm a fraction harder.

Jock used his mobile to call the police and then they escorted Stewie across the railway line. Mrs Stevenson and Rosie between them managed to push Zak into the back of the pick-up truck and Mrs Stevenson locked the doors. Zak complained loudly and they ignored him. Rosie wound down the window.

‘He’s the one who tried to break into my cattery,’ she said. ‘We pulled off his balaclava and saw his face, didn’t we, Jock?’

‘Definitely,’ said Jock, who in truth wasn’t at all sure. But if Rosie said so, it was good enough for him.

‘What are we going to do with those scumbags?’ said Dave, as Stewie squirmed in his grasp.

‘I suppose we’d better hand them over to the police,’ said Jock. ‘Somebody'll need to work out the whole story.’

‘We never did nothing,’ complained Stewie. ‘It’s not a crime to run down the road. We were having a race.’

‘There are plenty of other things you’ve done that are crimes,’ said Jock. ‘Accessory to murder, maybe? Breaking and entering. The list’ll be a mile long once the police have looked into it all.’

‘You can’t prove anything,’ said Stewie, kicking the ground petulantly.

‘Just shut up, Stewie!’ shouted Zak from his imprisonment. ‘We don’t have to say anything to them – they’re just a bunch of interfering old people with nothing better to do.’

‘Hey, not so much of the old!’ said Rosie, glaring at him. He cowered back against the car seat.

The clashing noise of various sirens started up in the distance, and quickly came closer. An ambulance drew up alongside the truck.

‘Anyone hurt in there?’ said one of the paramedics, peering at them all.

‘No – you need to get through there,’ said Jock, pointing towards the railway line with the yard beyond.

‘We’ll open up the big gates,’ said the paramedic. ‘Thanks. The police should be here any minute.’

To Jock’s surprise the small pedestrian gate turned out to be only a section of a big set of gates that allowed the ambulance access over the tracks. The vehicle bumped its way across the lines and turned towards the entrance to the yard. As soon as it was out of sight, a police car drew up alongside the truck. This time Jock and Dave offered up the captives.

‘But you should go and have a look in there as well,’ said Jock helpfully, pointing to where the ambulance had gone.

Another police car arrived, and Zak and Stewie were decanted into it.

Once Jock knew it was safe to leave the others, he hurried off towards the yard. Nobody stopped him so he carried on to where the ambulance stood. By that time there were policemen swarming all over the place; two of them were talking to one of the paramedics.

‘Have you got Amaryllis and Christopher in there?’ said Jock to the paramedic. There was no reply immediately so he peered into the back of the ambulance. A shape that was barely recognisable as Amaryllis, wearing an oxygen mask, lay on a stretcher while Christopher sat in a chair beside her.

‘Is Christopher all right?’ said Jock. He could see Amaryllis probably wasn’t all right, and he really didn’t want to know more than that at the moment, but Christopher looked as if something had sucked all the colour out of his skin.  Of course he was on the peely-wally side at the best of times, but still… ‘He’s gone very grey in the face.’

The paramedic broke off from his conversation with the police. ‘He seems to be a bit out of it. We think he might be a heart attack risk, so we’re taking him with us just in case. He doesn't look like he's planning to leave her side anyway.’

This was all said in hushed tones. Jock hoped Christopher hadn’t heard any of it. He wouldn’t want to be thought of as a heart attack risk.

‘Do you know anything about the shooting, sir?’ said one of the policemen. It wasn’t anyone Jock had encountered before. Presumably they had drafted in officers from elsewhere to cope with the sudden crime wave in and around Pitkirtly.

'I don't think so,' said Jock, 'but you can ask me anyway, if you want.... Maybe better have a word with Mr Smith first. He knows all about this.'

'Mr Smith? Detective Chief Inspector Smith?'

'That's right,' nodded Jock. 'If he wants to make Superintendent he'd better get to grips with this case before it finishes off his career.'

'We'll have a word with him,' said another officer. 'Here he comes now.'

The ambulance suddenly drove off. After crossing the railway line, it seemed to have put its siren on; he could hear it receding into the distance. He wondered which hospital they would take Amaryllis to. Did they have one nearby that specialised in gunshot wounds? Or maybe you didn't need to specialise in them to be able to treat them. Maybe the injuries were generic and could be dealt with by the nearest surgeon.

Jock suddenly felt as if he needed to sit down after thinking about Amaryllis and her injuries. One of the policemen supported him as he swayed slightly.

'Not another patient, I hope?' said Mr Smith, arriving on the scene.

'No, sir,' said one of the police officers. 'He's just gone a bit wobbly at the knees.'

'I'll take him back to the station with me in a while for a chat,' said Mr Smith. Jock couldn't help finding the words ominous, even if they weren't meant like that. Mr Smith didn't seem to be in a very good mood. Maybe somebody higher up was holding him personally responsible for the local crime wave.

Half an hour later, they faced each other across the table in one of the interview rooms.

'It's time to stop all the games, and just tell it like it is,' said Mr Smith. Jock winced at the sloppy grammar. 'I can see that the idea of telling the truth causes you some pain,' Mr Smith continued, 'but I urge you to forget any pointless loyalties and give me a sensible statement.' He reached out and switched on a tape recorder. Beside him at the table, a junior officer opened his notebook and prepared to record everything in a more old-fashioned way.

'I don't know if I can provide anything you'd consider sensible,' said Jock. 'And by the way, people of my generation don't consider any of our loyalties to be entirely pointless.'

Mr Smith sighed, and interlaced his fingers on the table in front of him. Jock added, 'On the other hand, there's only one thing I want at the moment. For Amaryllis to get better and to catch the person or persons responsible.'

Mr Smith, charitably, didn't point out that Jock had mentioned two things, but said calmly, 'Carry on, please, Mr McLean.'

'Well, here's what I know,' said Jock. 'The only problem is that it might not seem very sensible to you, so just suspend your disbelief until I've finished. You'll find it starts to make sense if you just listen for a bit.'

Jock told the story as he understood it, from the point where Darren had come to them at the caravan for help, to the last thing Amaryllis had said to him before flinging herself into the firing line. He wasn't yet ready to mention the fact that he had helped Darren on his second spell on the run, although his conscience had been nagging at him about that for some time now.

'So she said, wait here. And we did wait until we heard the shot, then Christopher ran through to the yard on his own.'

'So you can give Mr Wilson an alibi for the time of the shooting.'

'An alibi? What are you talking about? Christopher would never have done anything to hurt Amaryllis.'

'I wonder if you can explain something in that case,' said Mr Smith.

'What's that then?'

'Why was Mr Wilson found to have a gun in his pocket when he got to the hospital?'

'A gun?' Jock was perplexed. 'Maybe he picked it up somewhere.'

'I suppose that's possible. Anyway, it's been taken away for tests. He did seem to have forgotten he had it. You're sure he didn't slip away from you during the time you were waiting?'

'No. We were together the whole time.'

'And the only people to run out of the railway yard were the two youths you caught? Zak Johnstone and Stewie Hamilton.'

'The talking ham, that's right.'

'Talking ham? Ah, Hamilton! I see.'

Jock didn't think Mr Smith saw at all, but he wasn't going to start explaining that just now.

'So do you think it was one of them who did the shooting?' Jock asked.

'It seems like a reasonable explanation. In fact, in some ways the only possible explanation... Although I must admit to you, Mr McLean, that I'm not entirely happy with it. Those two are very troubled youths, there's no doubt about that. And Mrs Viewforth has just made a statement to the effect that she caught them breaking into her cat boarding kennels a couple of nights ago.'

'Is that so?' murmured Jock. He had been about to make a different comment but remembered at the last minute that he wasn't supposed to have been anywhere near the cattery that night.

'But there's something wrong,' mused Mr Smith. 'I don't see either of them acting without leadership from somebody much cleverer and more ruthless than they are. It's a puzzle. And if this is linked with the murders of young Alan Johnstone and Old Mrs Petrelli then we may be looking at a dangerous serial killer.'

'Do you think there's anything in the protection racket aspect?' said Jock.

'I'd better not say any more,' said Mr Smith. 'I've said too much already.... By the way, thanks for catching the two of them anyway. There's no doubt they need a sharp shock from the justice system. I can't say whether that will set them on the right road but it's the only thing to be done at this point.'

'What about Darren?' said Jock. 'Will you be letting him go now?'

'I'm afraid he's still under suspicion of the two murders, Mr McLean,' said the chief inspector blandly. 'Until we arrest somebody else for these, we can't let him go... Unless he turns out to have an unshakeable alibi, that is.'

His stare may not have been meant to be penetrating and meaningful, but Jock's conscience at last overcame him in any case, and he blurted out, 'He does have an alibi for Old Mrs Petrelli.'

'Oh, really?' said Mr Smith. 'In that case we'd better add something to your statement.' He switched the tape recorder back on with a long-suffering air.

After Jock had told him about Darren appearing at his house again, the escape through the garden, the gunshots in the woods and the flight to the cattery, Mr Smith put his head in his hands.

'How could all this be going on in Pitkirtly?' he complained. 'And without us knowing about any of it?'

'Maybe you weren't looking in the right place at the right time,' suggested Jock.

Mr Smith took his hands away from his face and let them crash down on to the table. 'How was I supposed to know I should have had a tail on a bunch of interfering pensioners who took it on themselves to pervert the course of justice in more ways than the people who wrote the law imagined?'