“Are you okay?” Goodman asked, clearly alarmed at the sight of the blood that had run down one side of the detective’s body from his ribs to his jeans.
“I’m fine,” Dillon told him, covering up. “It’s just a superficial cut.”
Goodman’s eyes narrowed as he finally spotted the motionless form sprawled across the deck. “Don’t tell me I’ve missed out on all the fun?” he said, sounding bitterly disappointed. “I’ve never arrested a murderer before, and I was hoping that me and Rex would be the ones to find him.”
As he spoke, a furry creature with beady eyes and very sharp teeth bounded over the side of The Golden Sunrise. Tail wagging, the German Shepherd went straight over to Winston’s prostrate form, sniffed him intently, and then raised a leg and urinated over him.
“Rex!” PC Goodman chastised the dog. “Sorry about that,” the dog handler said, looking extremely embarrassed as he reined the dog in. “Rex has developed this really bad habit of doing that to suspects of late.”
Dillon grinned and patted the dog’s shaggy head. “That’s alright,” he said. “He can take a shit on him too, for all I care.”
Chapter 39
Garston wasn’t used to strenuous exercise, and his lungs were fit to burst as he ran a race in which the prize was his freedom. Praying that he wouldn’t twist an ankle on the uneven terrain, he blindly sprinted across the grassland, feeling his legs growing heavier with every step.
A wave of relief washed over him when he spotted the massive blue crane and realised that he was almost back at the road. Behind him, his pursuers were still noisily fighting their way through the shrubbery. His face was crisscrossed with deep scratches where numerous sharp thorns had cut into his flesh, but it had been worth the pain to gain the minute or so lead that he had given himself.
As Garston reached the old church van that he and the others had been driven here in, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a thin beam of light burst through the foliage separating the quay from the open grassland that he had just cleared. Almost immediately, it began weaving its way towards him, bouncing up and down in a steady rhythm.
As he emerged into the car park, his breath exploding from him in great gasps, he spotted a vehicle parked on the gravel by the edge of the road.
The car had its sidelights on, and he could just about make out the shape of a man and woman sitting in the front. He assumed they were a couple of young lovebirds who had stopped off there to enjoy a little canoodling.
As he ran towards them, he clumsily pulled the Brocock from his coat pocket, hoping they weren’t locked in the throes of passion, because he didn’t have time for them to fuck about pulling their clothes back on.
He skidded to a halt and snatched open the driver’s door, making the blonde woman sitting behind the wheel jump with fright. Beyond her, the well-built man in the crumpled suit who was sitting in in the passenger seat with a large map unfolded across his lap seemed equally startled. A handheld radio was balanced on the armrest between them, Garston noticed, realising that they were cops, not lovers.
“What the fuck…?” the woman spluttered as Garston thrust the business end of the gun into her face. Her accent was Irish, he noted.
“Get out of the car,” he screamed, grabbing hold of her hair.
“Let her go,” the man shouted bullishly, opening his door to get out.
To dissuade him from doing anything silly, Garston swivelled the gun on him, levelling it straight at his chest. “Not you,” he said fiercely. “You stay exactly where you are until I tell you to move.”
Shaking with rage, the male cop froze, one hand on the door handle, the other down by his left leg.
Keeping the gun pointed at him, Garston glanced nervously over his shoulder, looking back in the direction he’d come from.
The torchlight he’d spotted earlier was already much closer, and now there were two others flanking it.
His stomach knotted.
The moment Garston averted his eyes, Jack Tyler grabbed hold of Susie’s heavy-duty Maglite, which was in the passenger footwell by his left leg, pushed open the door, and rolled out of the car.
Garston reacted by pinning Susie to her seat and taking aim at Tyler’s fleeing figure. He fired twice, shattering the nearside front and rear passenger windows in quick succession, and sending a shower of glass raining down on Jack as he scuttled along the side of the car towards the boot on all fours.
The explosions were incredibly loud, filling the car’s interior with the acrid stench of smoke and cordite.
Almost deafened by the noise of the gun being discharged right next to her face, Susie screamed and tried to grab it from Garston’s hand.
As Tyler reached the rear of the Astra, shaking tiny shards of glass from his hair, he was aware of manhandling a battling Susie away from the car. Peeking over the top of the boot, he saw the enraged fugitive shove her roughly to the ground.
The sight made his blood boil, but there was nothing he could do about it.
To her immense credit, Susie grunted in pain, spat out a mouthful of dust, and immediately tried to scrabble to her feet.
“Stay there,” Garston snarled, pointing the gun at her face, “or I swear I will shoot you.”
Tyler’s head whirled in confusion. What was Garston doing down here in the car park when he was supposed to be up on the quay by the boat?
Since the earlier outbreak of gunfire, both he and Susie had been trying to establish radio contact with the SFOs to get a situation report, but the handset
