The reek from the cordite drifted quickly, catching the back of Billy’s throat. It caused him to swallow hard, jerking his head backwards. It was then that he spotted movement to his left; a small shapeless form at the periphery of his vision. Immediately he spun around.
The sharpness of his turn caused Rab to follow suite and they caught sight of a petite form shuffling into the doorway from the hallway.
A young girl, dressed in pink striped pyjamas, with plaited dark hair stepped towards them. Under one arm she clutched a teddy bear to her chest and with other hand she rubbed at her sleepy eyes. She glanced at both of them with wide exploring eyes and then switched her gaze to Morag lying prostrate in a growing pool of blood.
“Mummy,” she whimpered.
Billy raised the gun again and fired off another shot. It smacked into the frontal lobe of the young girl’s head. Blood, brain and bone splattered the wallpaper behind her. She hit the ground the same time as her teddy bear.
A halo of crimson liquid began to form around the child’s head and Rab flashed a shocked glare at his boss.
“Jesus Christ Billy, she was just a kid.”
Billy stared back, but it was as if his gaze was passing through Rab.
“She was a fucking witness,” he mouthed brusquely. Then Billy lowered his eyes, spotting the blood stains on his overcoat from his wounded cheek. He tugged at the front of his Crombie, pulling the wide lapels in Rab’s direction.
“Look what the bitch’s done to my fucking coat,” he growled. He raised the Smith and Wesson again, spun around and fired the remaining four rounds into Morag. Her body never moved. The first shot had taken her life. Billy continued clicking the trigger after the gun had emptied and Rab had to grab hold of his forearm. He fixed Billy’s wild stare.
“We need to get out of here Billy, before someone calls the cops,” he urged.
Slotting the handgun back into the waistband Billy surveyed the carnage around him. Bending down he raised the hem of Morag’s dress and wiped the blood from his leather gloves.
“We need to set fire to the place Rab,” he paused for breath, getting back his composure. “Get rid of any incriminating evidence. Know what I mean?” he finished, easing himself back up.
Rab nodded and began scanning the room for suitable material to ignite.
* * * * *
Iain Campbell fidgeted in his seat. He had the driver’s window down and was looking nervously around — and not for the first time. He had been like this ever since Billy and Rab had disappeared.
He brought his watch closer to his face, picking out the position of the luminous hands on the dial and wondering how much longer they were going to be; they had already been gone ten minutes.
This had not been the job he had been asked to do. ‘Look after my son’s back!’ that is what Billy’s father had asked him to do and paid him for, but all he had done over the last three hours had been chauffeuring around these two thugs whilst they picked up their drug debts. He had already watched them give one guy a good kicking, and he knew from their conversation that they were chasing up another who owed Billy the best part of two hundred pounds.
They could stuff the job after tonight.
He scoured the streets again.
He felt cold and yet he knew from the damp patches under his arms that he was sweating. Fight or flight! It had been a long time since he’d had these feelings. He felt sick.
He was about to wind up the window when he heard a loud crack. He thought that it sounded like gunfire.
No it couldn’t be!
He strained his ears. There was another! His heart leapt against his chest and he felt his stomach empty.
Four more shots followed in quick succession. He stiffened and clamped a firm hold on the steering wheel.
Less than a minute later both nearside doors were yanked open. It made Iain jump.
Billy threw himself into the front seat.
Iain saw that his face was covered in blood. Then he spotted the gun Billy was holding. His head was in turmoil.
“Billy, your face.” Iain could see that he had lost a lot of blood. Billy’s shirt collar and the front of his coat were drenched and more was still oozing from a deep gash that snaked from the bridge of his nose and across his right cheek.
“Never mind that just get us the fuck out of here.” He threw the gun into the footwell. “Come on, hurry the fuck up.”
Iain Campbell, sharply engaged first gear and gunned the accelerator, spraying up loose road chippings beneath the spinning wheels, hurtling into the darkness, as the front second floor window of Morag’s flat exploded.
CHAPTER ONE
DAY ONE OF THE INVESTIGATION:
24th August 2008.
North Yorkshire:
Tentatively Hunter Kerr stepped towards the edge of the Cowbar cliff top. Only yards below seagulls screeched and swooped, their fleeting shapes silhouetted white against the village of Staithes below, which was still cloaked in early morning shadow. Glancing across the harbour the bright yellow sun was beginning to appear above the grey rock face of the Nab opposite; an orange glow blurred the top of the hill.
Raising his digital camera he clicked off a couple of frames and stepped back over the gorse to where his painting easel had been set up some twenty minutes beforehand. Screwing his steel blue eyes to slits he picked out the shapes in front of him and with brush in hand he began to mix the tones in the oil paint spread out over his palette. He knew from his many previous painting ventures to this tiny ancient fishing village that he would only have another thirty minutes to capture the intensely bright first light punching its way through the cobbled streets and bouncing across the haphazard pantile roofs of the crop of old white-washed cottages, before the effect disappeared and the blueness of the day took over.
As he settled into his painting, occasionally looking out over the tranquil scene of old fisherman’s cottages sloping towards to the beck that fed the North Sea, Hunter swore he could feel the stress and tension of the last few weeks easing from his body.
Scrubbing in the large blocks of colour onto his canvas board and feeling the breeze brushing across his unshaven face at that moment he realised how glad he was at having been persuaded by his wife Beth, to take time off this weekend to spend some rare quality time with her and their two sons: At the last moment they had asked his mum and dad to join them in their rented cottage. When they had left home the day before yesterday he had selfishly double-checked he had packed his painting gear because he very rarely got the opportunity to paint these days, what with juggling his career and the needs of his family.
When he had seen the weather forecast last night he knew that this morning would be an ideal opportunity to fire off a small oil sketch.
He had managed to sneak out at dawn without disturbing them and as he worked his brushes across the stained canvas the vision of them all still tucked up in their beds, entered his head causing him to smile to himself.
He thought about work as well. He had left his team with a list of tasks, though he knew deep down they didn’t need them; the squad were more than capable of finishing off the case they had just been working on so intensely over the past five weeks.
He had left his partner DC Grace Marshall in charge, and he could visualise her now, mothering the team in her own inimitable way; organising the clearing of the incident room: stacking the house-to-house documentation, categorising witness statement papers, sealing the hundreds of exhibits, and storing all the gory photographs into box files ready for the Coroner’s Court inquest.
That last case had been the most intense and testing investigation he had ever been involved in. Not just since his appointment as Detective Sergeant into Barnwell Major Investigation Team but throughout his fourteen years as a detective.