Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes (12 page)

“What do you think, sir?” Riley asked.

“I think they’ve burned down one house, and are likely to do the same thing again unless we have a quiet word,” he said.

“We’re going to go down there?” Ruth asked. “Shouldn’t we get backup?”

“I don’t want to arrest them,” Mitchell said. “I want to know if they started that fire. I don’t want to tell Weaver that house is where the counterfeiters were if a quick sift through the ashes only turns up a melted still. But if they didn’t destroy that house, they might have seen something.”

“Won’t they run?” Ruth asked as she followed the sergeant through the bracken and back down the hill.

“If they do, then we’ve broken an illegal distillery. That’ll please the commissioner, though it will mean we spend the rest of the week filling in the paperwork.”

Ruth wasn’t reassured. They collected the bicycles, wheeled them around the hill, and towards the track. What was even less reassuring was what Mitchell said as the roof of the house appeared over the horizon.

“Stay behind me,” he said. “Do what I say, and nothing more. Understand?”

She nodded.

“If there’s any sign of trouble, fire your gun in the air,” Mitchell said. “They’ll run.”

“Probably,” Riley added.

Ruth’s sense of anxiety grew as they walked nearer. The rest of the roof, then the upper windows of the house, and then the head of the man on the back of the cart came into view. He spotted them a moment later and shouted a warning to the others. The woman returned from the paddock. The first man, the one Ruth thought of as the leader, stood watching them. Mitchell raised a hand. The leader stepped away from the cart. He was holding a suitcase. Presumably he’d brought it out from the house. Ruth wondered why. The woman stayed where she was, her body shielded from view. The second man was… he was backing away from them, Ruth realised. Not fast, and he wasn’t heading towards the house.

That sense of unease finally boiled over. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She couldn’t say why or what. Riley must have seen it too, because for each forward step the constable took, she was taking one to the right. She was angling toward the further side of the track, close to the fence. Ruth understood that it meant Riley was planning something, she just wished that she knew precisely what.

“Lovely day for it!” Mitchell called out.

Ruth turned her attention back to the two figures by the cart. The woman was young, in her early twenties. The leader was older, and there was something strange about his face.

“Can we help you?” the woman called. The man put the suitcase down.

“We’ve had a report from the recycling plant,” Mitchell said. “They’re concerned because of a fire in another property not far from here.”

They were fifty yards away now. The woman’s lips were curled up at the edges in an approximation of a smile. The man was staring at Mitchell. Ruth kept her eyes fixed on him. He wasn’t smiling. Or perhaps he was. Now that they were closer, she could see his face properly and saw that it was distorted by a mass of scars. He looked like he’d fallen through a plate glass window only to land on a fine metal sieve.

“We’re looking for pipes,” the woman said.

“Then I’ll need to see your licence,” Mitchell said. They were thirty yards away, close enough for their voices to carry without the words being shouted.

“Of course,” the woman said.

The man abruptly waved at the house. “Do it!” he shouted.

And then it all seemed to happen at once.

Ruth was looking at the woman and saw surprised confusion spread across her face. At the same time, there was a loud noise, and something hit her, knocking her down to the ground. Before she had to time to register that it was the sergeant, he was half rolling her, half dragging her into the ditch on the far side of the track.

The sound had been a gunshot. Someone was shooting at them. As if to underline that too-slow realisation, there was another shot. Acting on instinct, because it certainly wasn’t out of volition, Ruth raised her head.

“Get down!” Mitchell hissed, pushing her back into the ditch. “And stay down. Don’t move.”

His face was almost immobile with tension, but his eyes raged. He pulled out a gun, not the revolver in his belt, but a small, sleek, black pistol from a holster on his ankle. He raised his hand and fired off two shots towards the house.

“Riley?” he called, and Ruth realised the constable wasn’t in the ditch with them.

“Here,” she called from somewhere on the far side of the track and a little closer to the house.

“One shooter. Single shot rifle. Second storey. Southeast corner. Remember Guildford? The bridge?” Mitchell yelled.

“Understood,” Riley replied.

“Listen,” Mitchell hissed. He raised his gun and fired again. “Riley is going to run to the—” There was a shot from the house. “Riley is going to take the right,” he continued. “I’m going to run to the house. I want you to stay here. Understand?”

Ruth nodded.

“Say it.”

“I’ll stay here,” she said.

“On five,” Mitchell called out loudly, and he fired again.

Ruth began to count. She’d only reached three before Mitchell pushed himself out of the ditch.

Suddenly, she realised her revolver was still in its holster. All thumbs and no fingers, she fumbled with the button. She drew the revolver for the second time that day, and for the second time in her life that she hadn’t been cleaning it or practicing on the range.

There was a shot, and then another, but they sounded as if they came from different guns. Ruth forced herself up, raising her arm. Mitchell was running towards the house, firing off shot after shot. There was no sign of the scarred man or of the woman. The second man, the one who’d been helping to unload the radiators, was running towards the paddock. Riley was chasing after him. Focus, Ruth told herself. The barrel of her revolver was weaving left and right. She tried bracing her left hand on her right wrist. Though that steadied her aim, it did nothing for her wavering vision. Any shot was as likely to hit the sergeant as it was the house.

There was another shot from inside the building. She saw Mitchell stumble, trip, and fall. He’d been hit.

Ruth was out of the ditch and running towards the house before she’d had time to think. She reached the cart as she saw Mitchell stagger to his feet and stumble into the house. There was more gunfire, this time from inside. Muffled by brick, she couldn’t tell whether it was from a rifle or pistol. She ran off the track, onto grass, and then over worn paving slabs. Sprinting up the drive, she reached the porch just as there was a percussive, single shot from inside, followed almost instantly by an even louder moan.

“Sir! Sergeant!” she called.

“Upstairs is clear,” he called back from somewhere above. Any relief that he was still alive vanished the moment she stepped into the house. Revolver held in two hands, elbows bent, she rolled around the doorway to the front room. Levelling the gun, sweeping left and right, she frantically tried to remember her training. There was a monstrous machine, made of grey plastic and black metal, in the middle of the room, but there were no people. At the far end was a doorway, with two paint-chipped doors pushed wide open. She went through them and into a kitchen. The windows were covered with thick felt curtains that had been pulled aside. Through the glass she saw both the scarred man and the woman running across the meadow behind the house.

Without thought, she pushed open the kitchen door, and ran after them. The man was in the lead, almost two hundred yards away. From his easy stride, Ruth doubted she’d catch him. The woman was sixty yards closer, but running as fast as Ruth. She didn’t care. They were angling towards the wire fence of the recycling plant. There was no escape there. She ran straight, running parallel to the fence, slowly gaining ground.

The scarred man seemed to realise that freedom didn’t lie in front or to his right. He changed direction, heading towards the same woodland from which Ruth had spied on the house half an hour and a lifetime ago. The woman copied the man and changed direction. Now Ruth really was gaining on them.

The man turned his head. He saw Ruth. He shouted something. The woman turned. Ruth locked eyes with her. The woman started to run faster. Ruth tried to find some last burst of energy but found her reserves dry. She wasn’t going to catch them.

The woman suddenly fell.

“Emmitt!” the woman called.

Ruth kept running.

The woman was on her hands and knees, pulling herself back to her feet. She managed another pace before she collapsed again.

“Emmitt!” she called.

Ruth grinned. The woman must have twisted her ankle. There was no way she would escape now. She threw a glance towards the scarred man. He seemed a lot closer than before, but the woman was closer still.

Still running, she holstered the revolver, and pulled out the handcuffs. Ten yards. Five. The woman was crawling away from her. Ruth’s grin turned feral as she leaped, using her weight to push the woman down to the ground. She pushed her knee into the woman’s back as she cuffed one hand, and then the other.

“You’re under arrest,” she said, and the words seemed strange in her ears. She pulled the woman to her knees, and only then remembered the scarred man. Hoping to get some sight of which stretch of woodland he’d disappeared into, she looked up. He stood fifty yards from her. Something dull and metallic was in his hands. It was a rifle, she realised. Though it was far squatter than those sold for hunting.

Drawing her revolver, she took a pace towards him. The man fired. Ruth’s training took over. Her arm raised, her finger curled on the trigger. The gun clicked. She pulled the trigger again. There was another shot though not from her. The revolver clicked. Click. Click. Click. Click. The scarred man slowly lowered his gun. He watched her for a moment, as she ineffectually pulled the trigger, before he ran for the treeline.

Ruth’s hands fell to her sides as she watched him go. She let out a ragged breath and turned to her prisoner. The woman had been shot, twice, in the chest. Blood still pulsed out of the gaping wound, but she was dead. Ruth took a step towards her, and then a stumbling step back, barely managing to turn her head before she threw up.

“Are you hurt?”

It was Mitchell, and his voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. Hands roughly gripped Ruth’s shoulders, forcing her to straighten. Then he raised a hand to her chin and gently turned her head from left to right.

“Look at me,” he said. “Look at me. You’re okay. Do you understand?”

“I… yes.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I forgot,” she said.

“Forgot what?”

She raised her hand, but the revolver wasn’t in it. “To load it,” she said, blinking as she tried to focus on the long grass around her as she looked for her weapon.

Mitchell followed her gaze, bent, and picked up the gun. He reached to her belt and pulled out six cartridges. He quickly loaded the revolver and fired off six shots in the direction of the woodland.

“He fired at your prisoner,” he said. “You returned fire. You missed.”

“I didn’t fire,” she said. “I forgot.”

“No,” he said patiently, “you fired six shots. He ran. You didn’t pursue because it was more important to secure the scene. Repeat it.”

“I fired six shots. I didn’t pursue because I had to secure the scene,” she murmured.

“Good enough,” he said, and handed her back her gun. Then he jogged off across the grassland in the direction of the woods. She assumed he was going after the man… Emmitt? Was that what the woman had called him? Ruth looked down at the body, and then quickly away and found she was looking at the house. There was no sign of Riley. What had the sergeant meant by secure the scene? Did he mean the house? Why? When she looked back towards him, she saw that he’d stopped, about fifty yards from her, and was looking at the ground. He bent and picked something up. A pace further on, he did it again. Then he started walking back towards her, throwing an occasional glance at the trees.

“Old-world make,” he said when he reached her. In his hand was a casing. “From what I saw from the house, I’d say it was a military grade rifle.”

“You mean the Marines?” she asked.

“No. I mean old-world military. And I don’t think it was British,” he said, examining the casing. “High velocity. That’s about as far as I’m willing to guess.” He looked at the dead woman. “Two good shots. Either would have killed her, so the second must have hit when she was on the ground. That tells us a lot.”

“It does?” Ruth asked, curiosity cutting through shock.

“You’ve heard the expression, there’s no honour among thieves? Sayings like that only last because there’s a grain of truth to them. Now, there’s a time to think about what just happened, but it isn’t now. I’ve got a suspect handcuffed to the sink, Riley is missing, and that man could come back.”

“I think his name is Emmitt,” Ruth said.

“Then let’s see if our suspect will confirm it. Come on, she’s not going anywhere.”

Ruth let herself be led away from the body. Walking helped clear the fog from her mind.