Dead Man Walking. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t initially reply. She wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t ultimately hope for that. Like Mark, she’d entered this arrangement in adult, open-minded fashion. They’d been attracted to each other, they’d enjoyed the mutual company, the no-strings sex. They’d neither been looking for much more than that. But the better you got to know someone, the more your emotional relationship to them changed.

      ‘You honestly don’t have feelings for him yourself?’ Hazel asked.

      ‘Heck makes that difficult,’ Gemma replied.

      ‘That isn’t answering the question.’

      ‘Look …’ Gemma shrugged. ‘I know it sounds terrible, but … Heck would like to come home each night after a long, tough day at work, to find his beautiful wife wearing heels and a miniskirt while she cooks him an excellent supper. Not because he’s sexist or a chauvinist. He isn’t. But because that’s the only thing that’s going to take his mind off the job. And …’ she shook her head, ‘that just isn’t me.’

      ‘It isn’t me either,’ Hazel said defensively. ‘I have a career just like you … maybe more like you than you think.’ Conscious of Gemma’s sceptical glance, she added: ‘I run The Witch’s Kettle because I love it, not because it pays a load of money … which it doesn’t anyway. What I mean is … oh hell, whatever I say, you’re just going to see me as another silly, inconsequential woman, aren’t you?’

      ‘I never made that comment,’ Gemma replied.

      She might not have done, but Hazel certainly felt silly and inconsequential with her smudged make-up and tousled hair, especially in the presence of this handsome, athletic policewoman, who even now was only wearing a light sweat, whose lustrous blonde locks, though messed up after all the running around they’d done, appeared to be reverting to a fetchingly curly state, whose aloof, supercool attitude would have been reassuring had it not been so intimidating.

      ‘You know, Mark’s spoken about you a lot since he’s been up here,’ Hazel said. ‘He holds you in the highest regard as a fellow officer. He just feels you betrayed him, that’s all.’

      ‘Maybe I did, when all’s said and done.’ Gemma sensed Hazel glancing around at her. ‘There, I’ve admitted it … you happy? I hope so, because I haven’t been … not since it happened.’

      ‘Well, they say confession’s good for the soul. Personally, I’m not so sure.’ They plodded on side-by-side. ‘Anyway, I wonder where he is now?’

      Gemma laughed without humour. ‘Wherever it is, it’ll mean a shed-load of paperwork for someone.’

      The two quad-bikes frequently rode neck and neck as they chased each other across the open moor.

      Heck had no idea which direction he was travelling in, or even how fast. Both riders had hit their headlight switches, but this revealed nothing in front except vapour. His speedo was coated in grass and dried mud, and he hardly dared spare a hand to scrape it clean; but surely they’d reached forty miles per hour by now at least. It had never been his plan for the killer to mount the other ATV in the sheep fold and come racing after him. Heck had even taken its key and jammed it into his pocket. But somehow or other, his opponent, who was nothing if not versatile, had managed to get it started and had come ploughing in pursuit.

      Torn turf sprayed behind the duo as they roared back and forth, twisting and turning across the glistening, dew-slick fell-side. Every manoeuvre Heck made, his opponent copied it. A couple of times, when they were close together, he glanced around, and on each occasion saw the masked figure pointing a pistol at him. Heck lowered his head, though this wasn’t easy – he was already lying forward until he was almost flat, like a MotoGP racer, and yet weirdly, no shots were fired. Only now did it start to occur to him that this guy – this maniac, this madman – was actually enjoying himself. This whole thing was great sport for him; possibly it had turned out better than he could ever have hoped for.

      On the third occasion the gun was turned his way Heck spun his machine left, the twosome spreading apart, engines grinding. Heck throttled down a sharp descent, at the bottom of which he hurtled along a deep furrow. The ground down there was soft and boggy, liquid mud spurting every which way as he slewed across it. This slowed him somewhat, so he hit the gas harder – just as his opponent came veering down the right-hand slope, attempting to head him off.

      Heck took such swift evasive action that he found himself running on two wheels, the vehicle about to tip. He fought the handlebars desperately until he was able to bring it back onto all fours. As he swung up the left-hand slope, his opponent aped the manoeuvre. They blazed along neck and neck again, their flanks almost touching, clods and divots spinning from their wheels as the surface dipped and rose. Heck glanced across, saw the black rapist mask, the strange fierce eyes in its leather sockets fixed on him with eerie intensity. Seconds seemed to pass as they sped along in this mesmeric embrace, neither of them watching where they were going. The pistol, a chunky Colt Python revolver with a four-inch barrel, was still in the killer’s right hand, but now clamped against the handlebars as he kept a tight grip on them. Of course, just because he wasn’t able to shoot at present, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take a chance very soon – especially not if Heck gained some kind of advantage. There was no option but to try and outpace the son of a bitch, but that was proving difficult. They ran on and on, still not watching the ground ahead. Not that this made a great deal of difference, as they couldn’t see more than a few yards anyway in the fog – until the terrain to the left tilted sharply up onto another ridge. Heck swayed in the saddle as he rocketed up, the killer again copying his action. The ground on top was dry, but rutted and uneven, and now the duo found themselves jolting and bouncing across rocks. And boulders too, large ones.

      As they swerved to avoid these, they were funnelled together into a natural passage, which very quickly became a ravine, maybe a hundred yards long and with no visible exit at the end. Heck throttled up, though he knew this was a terrible risk. They were touching sixty now, easily, and still he couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead. When he struck a heavy stone with his front nearside tyre, it was a massive blow, which lifted his ATV sideways off the ground – for a second or two he was sailing through mid-air. He landed with brutal force, but managed to stay upright, and yet there was worse to come. They were on open ground again, still blistering forward – at which point Heck’s opponent seemed to brake, to swing his machine violently sideways, as though he’d suddenly had enough of the whole thing.

      Heck wondered what the guy had seen, or knew about in advance. And then he saw it himself.

      But only at the last second, as it came rushing out of the fog.

      Another dry-stone wall, built completely transverse to his angle of approach – aside from a small gap where the old stones had tumbled down in heavy weather. The gap was four feet across at the most; Heck wasn’t sure if that was even wide enough, but he aimed for it all the same, veering crazily so that he could meet it head-on, at the same time realising he’d at last gained the edge.

      Only to abruptly realise something else.

      In what might be his last moment of coherent thought, he understood why the maniac had pulled away. Because they weren’t just on any old moorland here, he realised – they were on Fiend’s Fell. Heck thought about braking, but knew it was too late. Now all he could do was slam his head down and throttle his machine to the absolute max. He shot through the gap in the farm wall, roaring up the naturally ramped ground beyond it, and sailed far out into the abyss over Witch Cradle Tarn.

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