A Time For Justice (34 page)

‘
I want to get involved all right,’ he said,
‘physically
and
mentally,

OK?’

She slipped a hand around the back of his neck and eased him
towards her. ‘I love you,’ she said. They began to kiss.

Dave August stirred and rubbed his eyes. He looked at his
watch. Six-thirty in the morning. He pushed the sheet back and
swung his legs out of bed. Then he realised where he was. Janine’s
house, somewhere south of Manchester. A smile spread across his
face as he glanced round at the sleeping female next to him in the
large bed.

Carefully he pulled the sheet off her and looked at her bare
flesh with a tinge of pleasure.

He felt himself move again.

But no. He had to leave.

Janine stirred and moved over the bed to rub her bare breasts
against his naked back.

‘
I need to be going,’ he said reluctantly. ‘You said you’d
give me directions to the motorway. I don’t know this area at
all!’

‘
Later,’ she murmured, and gently slid her hand around to grip
his twitching penis, taking it firmly in her palm. She squeezed it,
began to manipulate it. It expanded rapidly.

August placed a hand on one of her breasts.

As soon as August and Janine left the house some twenty
minutes later, a removal van pulled up outside. Six men descended
on the property. In less than an hour every piece of furniture and
every fitting had been removed and placed in the back of the van. A
‘For Sale’ sign was erected in the front garden and the van, men on
board, drove away.

The house was back on the market, being sold by a small chain
of estate agents, ultimately owned by one man.

Lenny Dakin.

Chapter Nineteen

‘
Daddy, I know I like it ‘n’ everything, but why are you
living over a vet’s?’

‘
Don’t ask stupid questions, Leanne,’ her older sister Jenny
admonished her. ‘Mummy and Daddy have split up because Daddy’s
become a drunk and an adulterer, and you need to live somewhere,
don’t you, Daddy?’

‘
Yes, dear, I suppose that sums it up,’ said Henry,
restraining himself from a smile despite the
accusations.

‘
Well, I know all that,’ Leanne said dismissively. She was
sitting in the back seat of the Metro with a couple of dolls in her
lap, and they were all en route to the Lake District. ‘But why over
a vet’s?’

‘
Because it’s cheap and interesting,’ he said.

‘
When you get divorced,’ began Leanne, about to pose one of
those dreaded questions, ‘will you marry the vet? She seems like a
nice lady. I’d like her to be my second mum. I could have all sorts
of pets to mend, couldn’t I?’

‘
Whoa, hold your horses,’ said Henry. ‘Your mum and me aren’t
divorced yet. We might be getting back together.’

‘
Mum said that hell would have to freeze over first.’ Jenny
grinned at her father. ‘But she was in a real bad mood when she
said that.’

‘
Oh really?’ said Henry. He felt his guts twist.

‘
And not only that,’ interrupted Leanne again, ‘why are you
driving this crappy car?’

Henry burst out laughing.

Henry had rented a log cabin owned by one of his workmates,
situated high and lonely in the hills above Hawkshead in an idyllic
position. He’d been there on many previous occasions with his
complete family and the girls particularly enjoyed it.

The single-track path leading to it was long and arduous. The
Metro struggled valiantly over the bumps and up the incline and
made it more or less intact. They unpacked quickly - they were only
staying the night and had a minimal amount of gear - and Henry
assembled his fishing tackle.

‘
Right - you two be OK for a couple of hours while I go up to
the tarn to fish?’

‘
Yeah,’ they said in unison.

‘
Good. I’ll be back by four at the latest. Then we’ll go over
to Windermere on the ferry for tea. Tomorrow we’ll have a look at
Beatrix Potter’s place. OK?’

‘
Yeah,’ they said. ‘Excellent.’

‘
Good.’

‘
Tight flies, Daddy,’ chirped Leanne. ‘Don’t be
long.’

With a grin on his face at her child-like mistake, he hunched
his equipment onto his back and over his shoulders and headed
towards the trees, breathing deeply of the cool, pine-laden air. He
felt as if this was the first day of the rest of his life. He’d
felt the same way on many other occasions over the last few months
though - and most had turned to rat-shit, so he wasn’t foolish
enough to totally believe it; yet somehow today
did
feel different.

He’d made a start by deciding to cut out two things that
seemed to cloud his life at the moment - alcohol and
women.

He was determined to woo Kate again and get back to a normal
happy existence. The bachelor life didn’t do much for him, he had
to admit. He longed for the warmth of family life; being with the
kids made him miss it even more.

But how to get back into Kate’s good books?

That would take some doing.

Betrayal couldn’t easily be forgotten.

And he knew things could never be as they had been in the
past; it was the future that interested him.

Once into the trees, coolness and darkness reigned. The pine
tang in the air became almost overwhelming, like a drug. The ground
was firmly soft to walk on and he dawdled along, halting
occasionally as he spotted some bird or beast. He broke back into
open sunlight soon after and pushed on upwards.

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.