So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (32 page)

Home, she thought. I’m going home. To my beautiful house and the beautiful gardens and all the beautiful things that I worked so hard for. The home in which my beloved husband took his own life after months of suffering. I’m going home, and I’m going to lie down on my bed, and I’m going to put the muzzle of this gun to my temple and squeeze the trigger.

The decision made, she felt better. She pressed the accelerator with her foot and passed another two cars, thinking of that fiery bloom inside her skull, the comet trail of the bullet through her head.

56

‘Stay back,’ Purdy said, his voice crackling through the speakers. ‘Don’t make her panic and hurt anyone else. We’ll close everything but the Glenavy side of the roundabout, so if she enters it, she won’t get out of it again.’

‘She might not go that far,’ Flanagan said.

‘Maybe, but it’s the best guess right now. A pursuit car is heading your way, but I don’t know if it’ll reach you in time. Stay on the line, I’m going to patch in Command.’

Flanagan’s head had cleared a little, but the movement of the car, the sway as it pulled out and past other vehicles, churned her stomach. She watched road signs as she listened to the dial tone.

A young woman’s voice said, ‘This is Command, go ahead.’

‘Glenavy Road,’ Flanagan said. ‘A26, we’re just coming up to Hammonds Road, heading south, speed seventy miles per hour. Target is approximately one hundred yards ahead, two cars between us. Will update.’

‘Pursuit car and support should join you at Glenavy Services. Helicopter in the air in five minutes.’

‘Understood,’ Flanagan said.

A road sign said one mile to the roundabout. If Roberta intended to get off the main road, she’d need to do it soon. Only a few more turn-offs before the roundabout. They reached
the brow of a hill and the long incline on the other side. Glenavy Services at the bottom of the dip, the railway bridge beyond. The Enterprise train crossed it on its way to Belfast.

Flanagan strained her eyes, looking for the marked cars that should have been waiting at the service exit. There, she could make out the bright blues and yellows. She nudged Murray’s arm.

‘Get moving,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Murray said, shifting down a gear and stepping on the accelerator.

He hit the button to activate his hazard lights and eased out into the centre of the road. Flanagan felt the BMW’s engine thrum as the acceleration pushed her back into the seat. Only a small number of oncoming drivers, who hit their horns and flashed their lights as they had to swerve onto the hard shoulder. No more ahead. Flanagan understood the traffic had now been stopped at the roundabout, no more coming this way. They passed the first car between them and the Citroën, got an angry look from the driver. Flanagan held her warrant card up to the window, but it didn’t seem to placate him. The second car edged over to the hard shoulder to make room, and Flanagan waved thanks on the way past.

‘Now slow down,’ Flanagan said. ‘Leave space for the pursuit car to get in.’

Murray eased off the accelerator. Flanagan saw smoke plume from the Citroën’s exhaust; Roberta had seen them close the gap and was speeding up.

Up ahead, the pursuit car, a Skoda Octavia VRS, nosed out of the junction. The Citroën wavered as Roberta saw it. She braked
for a moment, then accelerated again. The Skoda shot out of the Services exit as she passed, building speed so fast she couldn’t create a gap between them. The support car went to follow, but Murray leaned on his horn, and the driver held back to let them take the place behind the pursuit car.

‘We’re behind the pursuit car now,’ Flanagan said.

‘Understood,’ came the voice from Command.

Once the support car had slotted in behind Murray’s BMW, it slowed to a crawl, forcing the traffic behind to keep back. As the trees in the roundabout’s centre island came into view, so did a string of slow-moving cars at the entrance to the roundabout. Flanagan saw a pair of uniformed officers in fluorescent jackets pointing them in the direction of the motorway exit. They intended to close the exit before Roberta’s car got there, trap her like a fly in a jar.

The evening sky dimmed, cloud thick and grey above.

Let them take you, Flanagan thought. Don’t fight.

But she knew there would be no easy end to this.

57

Roberta wept when she saw the police car edging its way out of the junction. Adrenalin had been raging through her system ever since she found Flanagan in the house, and now it needed its release.

This is it, she thought. This is the end.

Not yet. She could still fight.

She stood on the Citroën’s accelerator, and its engine moaned under the pressure. The speedometer needle crawled higher, the little car already running at its limits. Wisps of smoke trickled from the sides of the bonnet, whipped away by the wind.

Up ahead, a line of traffic queuing to enter the roundabout. Nothing coming from the other way. Then she understood: they had closed the entries and exits.

‘Fuck,’ she said, her face wet with tears. ‘Fuck, fuck.’

Roberta jerked the steering wheel to the right, onto the other side of the road, heading the wrong way to the roundabout’s exit, keeping her foot planted. She glanced in the mirror, saw the police car and the BMW had followed her move. So had the other police; they’d left this exit open, anticipating that she’d come this way. A marked Land Rover waited by the exit, reversed in to block it as soon as she and the two cars in pursuit had passed through.

She did not slow as the Citroën’s tyres scrabbled for grip, the car leaning as she steered the wrong way around the curve, then onto the elevated straight section that led to the Moira exit. She glimpsed the line of cars on the ramp leading off the motorway’s northbound lane, held back by another Land Rover. Uniformed officers everywhere.

‘Fuck,’ she said.

The marked car accelerated past her on the inside, its engine roaring, then pulled in front of her. She jerked her steering wheel left and right, but there was nowhere to go. The white BMW pulled up close behind her, and the convoy slowed as it rounded the eastern end of the roundabout, then onto the straight leading back to the western end.

Two Land Rovers blocked the road ahead completely. Trapped. She was trapped.

One thing left to do.

Roberta closed her eyes. Slammed her foot hard on the accelerator pedal. Hauled the steering wheel to the right. Readied herself for the impact and the fall.

The crash came, and she was thrown against the steering wheel, feeling it punch her chest. No airbag, her torso took the full force of it. But no fall. She had expected the car to plough through the fence and plummet to the motorway below, but it had merely buckled the metal.

She pushed herself off the steering wheel, howled at the pain, then groaned as she realised she had broken something inside. Her vision cleared, and through the smoke and steam she saw that the BMW and the marked car had stopped twenty yards ahead, in front of the Land Rovers that blocked the road. A few blurred figures emerged from the cars.

Roberta reached for the pistol on the passenger seat, found it wasn’t there. She blinked smoke out of her eyes, coughed, screamed at the pain. Her hand explored the seat, under it, down the sides. The gun had slid off in the impact, bounced away somewhere in the recesses. It didn’t matter now. What good would it do her?

She tried the driver’s door handle, but the door wouldn’t budge, jammed in place. Despite the pain, she leaned over to the passenger side, pulled the handle, let the door swing open. She hauled herself across, pausing to cry out at the grinding of whatever had fractured in her chest, her broken right hand clutched to her belly. The ground slammed into her left shoulder as she fell out, and she lay for a few seconds, glorying in the pain and the sudden clarity it brought.

‘Don’t move!’

She craned her neck to see who had shouted at her. A woman’s voice. She could barely hear it above the whine and clamour inside her head. Flanagan, maybe? There she was, behind the BMW, along with a line of other officers. Weapons pointed at her.

‘Put the weapon down!’

‘I don’t . . . I . . .’

She didn’t have the breath to push the words out. Somehow, she got her knees under her, and her left hand, then her feet. Upright, she raised her good hand, showed them it was empty, her right still held tight to her stomach.

‘Drop the weapon!’

She tried to lift her right hand, but a sun burned there, too heavy for her to lift.

‘I don’t have it,’ she said, but she heard her own voice as a rumble inside her head and throat. ‘Don’t have it,’ she said again.

Pretend you do, she thought. Pretend you’re going to shoot them, and they’ll shoot you. And then it’ll be over.

She smiled and pointed her left hand at them, made the fingers into a gun, moved her thumb to mime the hammer fall. Then she laughed at the foolishness of it, and howled at the pain it brought.

Flanagan moved from behind the BMW. Someone, that nice young policeman whose name Roberta could not recall, tried to stop her, but Flanagan shook him off and kept coming.

Roberta looked to her right, saw the traffic backed up on the slip road down to the motorway beneath, the cars slow on the inside lane, quicker on the outside, all heading away towards the city to the north-east. The idea presented itself clear and simple to her. So she acted on it.

She walked the few steps to the metal railing covered in blistered blue paint. One hand useless, the other grasping, she pulled herself up on it, screamed at the fresh surge of pain from her chest.

I don’t have the strength, she thought.

Yes you do.

She hauled her left leg over, then her right.

Somewhere very far away she heard Serena Flanagan shout, no, no, no, but she ignored the frantic voice as she found the concrete ledge with her toes. Her chest to the railing, her back to the wind, she saw Flanagan coming in a lopsided, limping run, Murray sprinting behind her, more officers following.

Roberta’s eyes met Flanagan’s, and she gave her a smile.

Then she let go.

58

Flanagan ignored the pain, the nausea, the drifting of the world on its axis, and threw herself towards the railing, her hands outstretched. The fingers of her left hand snatched at the fabric of the coat, took hold, her other hand reaching further. Then Roberta’s weight jerked her forward, and her body slammed into the railing, her shoulder shrieking at the strain. As her feet left the ground, she got her right hand under Roberta’s arm, pulled with everything she had.

Her legs kicked at the air as her chest slid over the top of the railing. Roberta writhed in her grasp. Flanagan pushed her foot through the gap in the railing, hooked it there, tried to stop the steady slide over the top.

‘Let me go,’ Roberta screamed, her mouth inches from Flanagan’s ear.

‘No,’ Flanagan hissed. ‘You don’t get to die.’

Roberta wedged the soles of her feet against the concrete ledge, pushed, pulled Flanagan until the top of the railing dug into her stomach. She screamed, hooked her other foot into a gap.

‘Then you can come with me,’ Roberta said, and she jerked her body from one side to the other.

Footsteps behind. Flanagan turned her head, saw Murray and two uniforms, shouted at them to help. She closed her eyes as
her feet began to slip, her own weight beginning to carry her forward, out over the edge.

‘You don’t get to die,’ she said again.

Then strong arms around and over her, hauling her back.

‘Don’t let her fall!’ she shouted, her hands digging into the fabric of Roberta’s coat, her fingernails bending and tearing.

More footsteps, more arms and hands.

‘Get her, don’t let her fall!’

The fabric slipped from Flanagan’s fingers and she was weightless, tumbling back, the road hitting her shoulders hard. She heard a scream, waited for the shrieking of tyres, the sound of a car hitting flesh and bone.

But it never came.

Instead, Flanagan heard another body hit the ground beside hers, followed by a cry of pain and despair and anger. She turned her head, saw Roberta Garrick, Hannah Mackenzie, face down, staring back at her, pure fiery hate in her eyes.

‘You don’t get to die,’ Flanagan said.

59

They kept her in a side ward, away from the good people. Four beds in this room, all empty. A laminated sign taped to the door said
ORTHOPAEDIC CLINIC
. Bustle beyond the door, voices and footsteps. Somewhere out there an old man shouted incoherent rants between cries of pain.

Roberta had not cried out when the doctor set her hand. Instead, she bit down hard until the muscles either side of her jaw ached with the effort. The young doctor had inserted a needle between her third and fourth fingers, and again in her wrist, and a vague numbness followed. But not enough to blank out the pain as he realigned the bones.

She had cracked a rib, he said, looking at the X-ray clipped to a light box. He had been nervous in the company of the police officers, unable to look her in the eye. Afraid of her. She had smiled for him, parted her lips, let him see the tip of her tongue. But the fear did not leave him, because he knew what she was. They all did.

Now the nice policeman, Detective Sergeant Murray, dozed in a chair in the corner of the side ward while two uniformed officers sat in silence by the door. Pale dawn light through the windows. The cast felt clumsy and heavy on her hand, the skin beneath itching. Strapping around her chest made it impossible to take more than shallow breaths.

The anaesthetic in her hand had long since worn off, but she could endure the pain. It wouldn’t be for long, anyway. She’d be left alone sooner or later, and she had no intention of going back to prison. A belt, a length of material, a sharp edge. She had studied these things, the methods, over many months. All she needed was the opportunity.

A little after seven in the morning, going by the clock on the wall, DCI Serena Flanagan entered the ward. Swelling on her lip, a gauze pad on her temple. Murray jerked awake, cleared his throat, sat upright. Flanagan came to the bed beside Roberta’s, sat on its edge.