hang about. Just get out. Go back to your house and I’ll meet you there.’
I snorted with insane laughter. I was beginning to feel really silly. ‘I can’t go there,’ I giggled. ‘He knows where I live. He’s already blown my door away.’ Before she could make another suggestion, the line went dead. Not the way it goes when someone hangs up on you. This was dead, hollow, a void. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like giggling any more. Somewhere outside the house was the man who had been sent to kill me. And his automatic first action was to cut the lines of communication.
I checked my pockets for the van keys, but they weren’t there. Wildly. I looked around the kitchen. I spotted them on one of the worktops, along with my wallet. I paddled through the water and picked them up, stuffing my wallet in my trouser pocket. In the kitchen doorway, I hesitated, water flowing like a spring stream round my ankles, trying to decide whether the assassin would approach from the front or the rear.
I didn’t wonder for long. With a crash that reverberated round my skull, the back door slammed against the wall. I didn’t even wait to look. I whirled round to the front door. The gods were on my side, for the key was in the lock. I turned the key, pulled it out of the lock and yanked the door open. I was through it and had it closed in the time it took the hit man to travel the length of the hall. I shoved the key in the lock and turned it. Then I stumbled and weaved down the path, my breath coming in ragged sobs.
I’d reached the pavement when the night exploded in a pair of catastrophic bangs. I turned to look back at the house. The door was hanging drunkenly on one of its hinges, and the silhouette of a man was pushing it aside. In his right hand, he carried a sawn-off shotgun. I drew in my breath in a horrified moan and ran for my life.
Now I was swerving madly by design as I approached the van. I pressed the burglar alarm remote-control button, which unlocks the doors as well as deactivating the alarm. I was barely at the back of the van, and I could hear him gaining on me. Then, suddenly, the sound of his footsteps stopped. I knew he was taking aim. Desperately, I threw myself into a rolling somersault round the rear of the van to the passenger side, putting the van between him and me.
Weeping with fear, sweating in spite of the cold night air on my freshly grazed skin, I scrambled to my feet and staggered along the side of the van to the passenger door. I grabbed the door handle like a lifeline and pulled myself into the cab. I had the presence of mind to lock the doors behind me. I fumbled the key into the ignition at the second attempt.
I was still cuffed, so driving wasn’t going to be easy. I swivelled round to shift the gear stick into first, then released the handbrake. Movement at the edge of my peripheral vision made me swing round to look out of the driver’s window. The shock of what I saw nearly had me stalling the engine. As it was, I let the clutch out way too fast and the van bucked forward in a series of jumps like a kangaroo on acid.
In my wing mirror, I saw him step back involuntarily to avoid having his feet run over by the van’s rear wheels. Crazy Eddy Roberts, locked somewhere on the slopes of Mount Tumbledown, clutching his gun like mothers clutch frightened children. A man who’d lost touch with human feelings to the point where there was nothing difficult about taking a damn sight more than thirty pieces of silver to kill the mother of his children.
For a fraction of a second, our eyes locked. The engine was screaming a protest at still being in first, so I took my hands off the steering wheel to change up into second. When I looked in my mirror again, the twin barrels of the gun gleamed dully in the distant streetlights as Eddy swung it up towards me. I put my foot down and grabbed the steering wheel. I could feel the van fishtailing as I tried to wrench the wheel round to clear the oncoming corner.
I heard the boom of the gun as the window shattered. I’d lost control of the van almost simultaneously. I hit the kerb at speed and clipped a lamppost. As the van toppled over on its side, the last thing I saw was a pair of flashing blue lights.
Chapter 25
I couldn’t believe how blue the sea was. It glittered under Mediterranean sunlight like one of those crystal beds that New Age fanatics have lying around their living-rooms. I propped myself up on one elbow and watched the lumbering half-tracked harvesters further down the beach, gathering and refining the spice that had caused the planet wars that had ravaged Dune for a generation. Suddenly, the sand shifted, only feet away from my leg, and the head of a huge, carnivorous sandworm reared up. The ferocious jaws opened, to reveal Moustache’s face.
I swam up the levels to consciousness, passing from dreaming to awareness via that state where you know that you’ve just been dreaming, but you’re not quite awake. My head felt like an oversized block of stone, though there didn’t seem to be as much pain as I remembered enduring before the accident. The accident!
My eyes snapped open. I was in a small room, dimly illumined by lights glowing through frosted glass from the corridor outside. I tried to lift my head, but it was too much of an effort. Instead, I shifted my feet to check I was still functioning below the neck. You put your left leg in, you put your left leg out…Yeah, the lower limbs all did the hokey cokey. I breathed deeply. There was a bit of pain from my ribs and chest, but nothing felt broken, which was pretty miraculous given that I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt when I crashed the van. I raised my right arm, which seemed fine, apart from the puffy bruises that ran round hand and wrist like designer bangles by the Marquis de Sade. My left arm had no watch on it, only grazes from shoulder to wrist, and a drip running into the back of my hand, which was more than a little disconcerting.
I moved my head to one side, trying to see if there was a clock anywhere. To my surprise, Della was fast asleep on a plastic bucket chair next to my bed. I felt mildly outraged. Someone had tried to kill me tonight, and she should have been down the police station, going through the hoops of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to make sure Crazy Eddy spent the foreseeable future living at the taxpayers’ expense in a room with a bucket to piss in and bars on the windows. Then a horrible thought struck me. What if Eddy Roberts had managed to give the plod a body swerve? What if Della was Greater Manchester Police’s idea of a bodyguard? What if Crazy Eddy was still out there with his pump-action double-barrelled shotgun packed with cartridges with my name on?
I opened my mouth. My brain said, ‘Della?’ but my mouth was too dry to play along. All I managed was a sort of strangulated croak.
She must only have been catnapping, for her eyes opened at once. Momentarily, she had the startled look of someone who has lost track of where she is. Then her conscious mind checked in and she sat bolt upright, staring at me with undisguised relief. ‘Kate?’ she said softly. ‘Can you hear me?’
I tried to nod, but it wasn’t in my repertoire yet. I waved my arm in the direction of the locker, where there was a jug of water and a bottle of orange juice. ‘Drink?’ I mouthed.
Della jumped up and poured a glass of water. She leaned over me and tipped the glass to my lips. Most of the water went down my cheeks and on to the pillow, but I didn’t care. All I was concerned about was getting some in my parched mouth. The water was warm and stale and blissful. I didn’t want to swallow, just hold it there in my mouth. Della gave me a concerned, anxious look as I waved her away.
Finally, I let the water trickle down my throat. ‘Thanks,’ I said in something approaching my normal voice. ‘What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be down the cells beating a confession out of that mad bastard with the shotgun?’ She gave me an odd look. ‘You did
‘We caught him,’ Della said grimly. ‘The officers from Longsight got slightly over-enthusiastic with their truncheons when they realized he had a gun. Your assailant has a broken collar bone and a shattered wrist, you’ll be sorry to hear.’
‘Is that why you’re here and not down the nick taking a statement?’ I asked.
Della looked awkward. ‘Actually, no,’ she said, shifting in her seat. ‘Kate, this isn’t the same day,’ she said in a rush.
I frowned. ‘Not the same day? What do you mean?’
‘You called me in the early hours of Wednesday morning.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s now four forty- seven a.m. on Thursday. You’ve been out cold for over a day.’
‘Over a day?’ I echoed foolishly. I couldn’t take it in. I had no sense of having lost a day of my life. I felt like
