The opening in the trees gave on to a quiet country road flanked on the far side by an impenetrable-looking hedge. As I ran on to the lane I saw the lights of houses about a hundred yards further down.
Freedom. As soon as I got there I knew I'd be safe. And this time I'd go straight to the police, regardless of what they believed or didn't believe.
But a hundred yards is a long way when every muscle in your body aches and each breath comes in a shallow gasp.
And when there are two men chasing you with guns.
I caught a flash of the torch beam in the trees to my right, but this time it was further ahead, between me and the houses. The bastards were trying to cut me off.
I took off again, arms flailing, my gait little more than an exhausted, drunken stagger.
A hundred yards. Eighty. Fifty. The torch beam had disappeared, and as I rounded a slight bend in the road I could see a red pub sign hanging outside one of the buildings. All the lights were on inside and there were several cars parked next to it. The rain was easing now.
Thirty yards. Twenty. I could hear the clink of glasses, the welcome buzz of conversation. Safety.
The pub door opened and a middle-aged man stepped out, turning his head to call out a final goodbye to those inside.
'Help me!' I managed to shout, the effort physically painful. Barely ten yards away now. 'Please help me!'
He was still grinning when he turned my way. I was, too. I'd never been so happy to see someone in my whole life. To have been so close to death and to be given a second chance at life is the sweetest, most incredible reward imaginable.
The bullet struck him in the eye with a malevolent hiss and blood splattered the pub window. He tottered on his feet for a full second, his expression one of mild surprise, then he lost his footing on the pub step and went down hard, his head hitting the pavement with an angry smack.
I stopped, all hope sucked out of me, and turned round slowly.
The Irishman was twenty yards away from me, the gun raised and pointed at me.
Strangely, I felt nothing. I think I was too exhausted for that. I'd tried everything. I'd done my best, and in the final analysis it simply hadn't been enough.
And then there was a roaring sound, getting closer and closer, and the Irishman was suddenly bathed in bright light.
A car. Coming fast, skidding now.
Instinctively I swung round to meet it, blinded by the headlights as it bore down on me, realizing at the very last second that I was right in the middle of the road; and then I was flying through the air, flailing like a madman, seeing the ground come up to greet me.
And then, bang.
Nothing.
Thirty-eight
Mike Bolt took the corner way too fast. There were plenty of reasons why: it was dark; it was pissing with rain; the road was unfamiliar, winding and very narrow; and, most important of all, he was a man in a serious hurry.
He slammed on the brakes, conscious of Mo Khan smacking a hand on to the dashboard to steady himself as he shouted instructions for back-up into his airwave radio, but the car was already going into a skid. Bolt turned the wheel hard, trying to straighten up before he hit the house looming up in front of him. He missed it narrowly, but the wheels locked and the car was temporarily out of control as it skidded along the rain-slicked road. A red pub sign appeared through the slicing of the windscreen wipers, and then suddenly Mo yelled out, his voice almost deafening him: 'Boss! Watch out!'
A guy standing in the middle of the road facing them. Frozen like a deer in headlights.
The car was slowing down thanks to Bolt's pressure on the brakes, but nowhere near fast enough. He could see the fear on the guy's face, the way his eyes were widening, recognized him from the photo he'd seen at HQ earlier that day as Rob Fallon, the man they'd gone to Maxwell's place to see, the one man who might help them locate Tina.
And then, bang, they hit him.
He flew over the bonnet, smacked bodily into the windscreen, cracking it, then bounced off and into the darkness.
The tyres screamed, the car wobbled, and then, at last, it stopped. The two men lurched forward in their seats, Bolt's head narrowly missing the windscreen.
That was when, through the rain, he spotted another figure standing in the road only a few yards in front of them. It was a man, but Bolt didn't get a good look at him, because he was pointing a gun straight at the car.
'Get down!' he shouted, dragging Mo down by the collar as he ducked beneath the steering wheel.
There was the sound of breaking glass as a bullet whistled through the car, followed by a second crack as it exited through the back window.
Keeping his head below the level of the damaged windscreen, Bolt floored the accelerator and the Jaguar shot forward. Two more bullets smashed through the window in rapid succession, both missing their targets, and then out of the corner of his eye Bolt saw the gunman jump to one side as they passed him, then disappear from view. He lifted his head above the steering wheel, saw the guy running for the trees, but he was trying to do far too many things at once and before he had a chance to turn the wheel and give chase the Jaguar mounted a bank at the side of the road and ploughed into a hedge, before coming to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle to the tarmac.
For a moment, Bolt was too shocked to say anything. Barely five minutes earlier he'd been driving to his informant's house to follow up on a lead. Since then he'd discovered his corpse, done a mad dash to try to intercept his killers, run over Rob Fallon, probably written off his second car in a year, and narrowly avoided being shot dead.
But there was no time to dwell on any of that now. Shaken but unhurt, he jumped out of the car and, using the door as cover, scanned the trees ahead for the gunman, wondering for the first time if it had been Hook. Because if it had been, and they could catch him, then maybe they could find out what had happened to Tina.
But it was clear he was gone.
Bolt leaned back inside the car. 'Are you OK?' he asked Mo, who was scrabbling round on the floor for the radio.
'Just peachy,' Mo replied, picking it up, but his thick wedge of greying hair was standing upright and he looked like he'd seen a ghost. 'I think you might have saved my neck.' He pointed at one of the bullet holes in what was left of the windscreen. It was at head height on the passenger side.
There wasn't time for Bolt to acknowledge the gratitude in his colleague's voice. 'Get on that radio and tell them to get helicopter support here as soon as possible. We need to track down that shooter. And get ambulances here too. ASAP. I'll go check on our casualty.'
Leaving Mo in the car, Bolt ran back in the direction of the pub, the adrenalin-fuelled excitement he was experiencing tempered by the fact that he'd run down the one man they desperately needed to speak to.
A crowd had gathered outside the pub – about a dozen people in all, mostly men. Most appeared to be milling around, seemingly unable to take in what had just happened, but one was bent down beside a man lying on the ground, giving him what appeared to be an increasingly desperate heart massage.
Bolt's heart sank. Surely he hadn't killed Fallon. That would be the most terrible irony of all.
One of the men saw him coming. 'There he is, the one who hit him!' he shouted in a loud upper-class voice that carried all the way down the street.
Bolt pulled out his warrant card and waved it at the group. 'I'm a police officer,' he called out with as much authority as he could muster, knowing he needed to take control of this situation. 'Move out of the way please.'