He felt glad to be alive.
He’d made a few important decisions and things could be rosy again if he played it right. Once the trial was out of the way, the road ahead would be clear, he hoped.
After twenty minutes’ fairly hard walking, getting up a good sweat, the tarn appeared below him. He trod cautiously down a scree and approached the water, breathing heavily.
A few minutes later he was on the banks.
Looking across the surface of the water he thought, I bet no one’s fished here in an age, and his heart bumped when he saw the ‘blimp’ of a trout feeding on the surface only ten metres out, then another further away. Out loud he said, ‘You little beauties won’t be expecting me, will ya?’
He laughed and the echo of it danced across the water.
An hour and two undersized fish later, he’d drawn his fly line in and was making a couple of false casts when, as he brought the rod up to 90 degrees with the line running out behind him, ready for that final forward cast, the rod snapped in two and collapsed around his ears. There followed an echoing crrack-ack-ack in the air from over the tarn. Just as Henry realised what was going on, the water at his feet exploded violently.
He threw down his tackle and ran, scrambling wildly towards the trees.
Somebody was shooting at him.
He dived full-length onto the ground just as a bullet slammed into a nearby tree. Splinters flew.
Henry’s thoughts whizzed around his head like a silver ball skittering around a pinball machine. If it wasn’t a lucky shot that had broken his rod, his assailant was a fantastic shooter and could easily have taken him there and then — he could have taken his whole fucking head off. Unless he was playing with him… wanting Henry to know he was going to die. My rod! Henry thought savagely. The bastard. My lovely rod. He’s destroyed it!
Anger roared into him, replacing the fear. It was like the devil taking over a human soul.
This was the Mafia way with witnesses. Terrify them, or kill them. He remembered Hinksman’s silent threat on the first day of the trial. Now it was coming true.
That bastard won’t beat me, Henry thought. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see him rot in jail. Or preferably get fried in the States.
He made a decision: he was going to win this afternoon, no matter what the cost. And winning, at that moment, meant taking the man with the gun.
Carefully he turned round, crab-like, 180 degrees, keeping low. Having done this without mishap he drew his right leg up, placed his foot on a root, making sure he had good leverage for propulsion. He took a deep breath.
He was ready.
He shoved himself up and ran, zig-zagging, head down like a rugby player going for the line.
The shooter let loose. The air around Henry’s body exploded with the crack! and whizzbang! of the bullets.
He sprinted on. He felt like it was lasting for ever, that he was in some weird sort of time-warp.
He was nearly there, keeping his eyes riveted on the place where he wanted to be, throwing himself the last couple of metres. The gunman kept firing remorselessly. It was while Henry was airborne that a searing hot pain shot up his back.
Oh fuck — he’d been hit.
He landed awkwardly, twisting his left wrist, then life went blank
… The bullets stopped. Their echoes ricocheted around the tarn and drifted away to nothingness, like spirits leaving the world. Silence descended. All birdsong had ceased.
It’s hard enough for a person to get a hand up their own back at the best of times. For Henry, lying on his front, pinned down by a sniper, with a painful wrist and a sore head from his blundering fall, and a bullet wound in the back, it was near sodding impossible.
He probed bravely around to find the wound; it seemed to be a deep groove, about four inches long, in the muscle below his left shoulder-blade. Though there was extreme pain he had no trouble shifting about.
He thought, it hasn’t gone in! It’s nicked me and stings like buggery, but it hasn’t gone in. He laughed in relief. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he breathed happily.
Sweat dripped into his eyes. He brushed it out with a blood-soaked hand, making it worse. Nearby was a large clump of fern leaves. He ripped them out of the ground and wiped his face and hands with them.
A burst of fire clattered dangerously over his head, only a matter of inches above.
He tried to think clearly, logically. He was still in danger, but he was here, in a better position strategically, and the odds had evened up slightly, even if the man with the gun still remained the clear favourite.
He snaked further into the trees. When he thought he was completely safe he raised himself to his haunches and started to make some progress around the tarn. Anger kept him going. Nobody takes pot-shots at me and gets away with it, he thought viciously.
A good twenty minutes later with half a mile’s rough travelling through trees behind him, he was within metres of where he believed the gunman had been laid out. He peered through the foliage. Saw nothing.
Taking out his Swiss Army knife, he unfolded the longest blade with shaking hands. Now he was hunting for real, not for sport, and another man was the target. Mild-mannered Henry Christie had become a predator.
He tested the sharpness of the blade with a finger. Satisfied, he edged forwards on all fours, an inch at a time, dead slow.
It had all been in vain. The would-be assassin had gone.
Henry stood up and walked over to where the man had been lying down, the grass flattened by his weight. He’d even left his gun there.
Henry picked it up. ‘Jesus,’ he whistled, ‘a fucking Kalashnikov.’
As he studied the gun, a twig cracked behind him.
He cursed, dropped the gun — it was no use without a magazine in it — and spun round wielding his pathetic knife.
Too slow.
The man charged into Henry from the undergrowth like a rhino from a thicket, bowling him backwards. The knife went flying from his grasp. Suddenly high foliage and sky swept past Henry’s eyes and he found himself on his back, face up, with an immense guy on top of him, the man who’d tried to shoot him.
The man’s head reared back and then rocketed towards the bridge of Henry’s nose. In that instant Henry saw he had wild, demented eyes and a twisted smile on his face.
Henry flicked his head to one side and held the man back as best he could with one hand.
The head-butt deflected into the edge of Henry’s right eye-socket.
At least he hadn’t got a broken nose.
Once more the man reared back.
Henry smacked him hard in the mouth with his right fist, but he was only stunned for an instant. He got a grip of Henry’s arms, straddled all seventeen or eighteen stones of himself across Henry’s chest, and almost tenderly placed one arm at a time under each of his knees.
Henry was like a butterfly pinned to a board.
‘ I’m going to kill you,’ the man informed Henry.
Henry believed him.
One of his hands went to Henry’s throat, and his fingers closed unhurriedly on the windpipe. Slowly, but surely, Henry was being throttled by a man who was enjoying his work.
He gasped, gurgled, struggled for air. His vision misted over. Blackout, followed by death, wasn’t far away.
It was amazing what such a realisation could do to a person. Everything that Henry had left went into what he did next.
He smashed his right knee up into the man’s backside.
He’d wanted to connect with his privates, but that would have been physically impossible. However, the effect was just as good. The impact sent him shooting over Henry in a messy forward roll.
As the hands came off his windpipe, air whooshed down. Henry scrambled to his feet as quickly as possible. He staggered weakly and turned to his attacker, who was up on his knees already. Henry lurched towards him and
