He found it, pressed the call button and stumbled down the hill to where the man was lying in what Henry had recognized as the prone firing position.
He held the phone to his ear. He was about a hundred metres from the man as the phone rang out.
Jane Roscoe was not the sort of person to make snap judgements about people, but in the case of John Lloyd Wickson, she made an exception.
He was a dislikeable, arrogant shit-head, even if he was rich.
He immediately started by throwing his weight around, taking little notice of what she had to say and genuinely seemed surprised that, in this day and age, a woman could be a detective inspector.
She became increasingly angry with him as he flounced around his home, barking orders at people, shouting at his wife and snarling at his daughter. He had no hint of compassion about him, seemed purely self-centred.
Jane was very close to grabbing him and slapping his vermin-like features.
Eventually he relented somewhat and after a flurry of tirades at his family, he turned to Jane and said, ‘I’m going down to look at the stables now — talk to me on the way.’
Then he was gone, hurrying through the house accompanied by the man who had arrived with him in the helicopter. Jane learned this was Wickson’s head of security, a man she vaguely and uncomfortably recognized, but could not quite place. He was called Jake Coulton.
The three of them left the house and Wickson paused for a few moments at the front door to speak in hushed tones to Coulton, then set off for the stables. Jane scurried behind, trying to keep to the pace. As they got on to the track to the stables, her phone went.
‘It’s me, Henry,’ came the breathless voice.
Instinctively Jane looked across to the distant hillside where she saw a tiny figure running down the hill.
‘What is it?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Guy. . up here. . with a gun. .’ Henry panted.
And with that, the ping of the first bullet zipped by and dust flew up on the track just feet ahead of Wickson, followed a millisecond later by the crack of the shot.
‘Get the fuck down!’ Jane screamed. She dived for Wickson who had stopped in his tracks, incomprehension on his face. His security man had walked on, unaware that anything had happened. Jane rugby-tackled Wickson, smashed him to the ground and rolled him to the edge of the track, into the deep, wet ditch parallel to it. ‘Somebody’s shooting at you.’
The message got through to the security guy as another bullet lifted the track surface by his feet.
Henry had no way of being sure that his message had got through to Jane. As his run down the slope gathered momentum, his heels jarring, he yelled into his phone hoping that Roscoe understood what he was trying to say.
Whilst speaking, he heard the first shot crack in the morning air, like Indiana Jones’s whip hitting its target.
Even pounding down the hill, getting faster and faster, Henry knew he should have veered away and gone to ground, to protect himself.
But his desire to protect life, ingrained deeply over the course of his career, made him — stupidly, some might say — carry on. The mobile phone dropped out of his hand and disappeared in the wet grass.
Verner heard Henry’s thundering approach.
He fired another shot across the bows of John Lloyd Wickson, the noise whipping the air again, then twisted round to face Henry, trying to point the rifle at him. It snagged in the low branches of the tree and before he could bring the barrel round and aim and fire, Henry leapt wildly at him.
But Verner was quick.
He recovered and was able to use the rifle as a baton. He caught Henry a hard, well-aimed blow to the side of the head just before Henry could actually grab him. The impact twisted Henry’s neck and sent him rolling across the grass.
Henry’s mind was jarred for one black moment, but as he hit the grass, clarity returned and he rolled up into a kneeling position, facing Verner who was still trying to pull the gun round and get it pointed at him. Henry pounced again, like an athlete leaving starting blocks.
He palmed the barrel of the gun away and went for the man holding it.
Henry would be the first to admit that he wasn’t really a fighter. Although he had been through many scrapes in his time, often coming off poorly, he did not have the technique of a trained attacker. He had been taught many defensive tactics, but few which went the other way and he knew that his best strengths lay in his ability to overpower, rather than beat into submission.
When faced with someone who really knew what he was doing, Henry knew there would be a good chance of coming off second best.
Although Henry clearly had the advantage of position and the fact that the man on the ground had relinquished the rifle, Henry did not see the blow coming. It was just a blur as the man’s left fist connected. Suddenly Henry’s jaw jarred, his head jerked upwards and then it was him on the floor, the man having now recovered his position.
A glint of steel. In Verner’s right hand there was now a knife. It sliced through the air towards Henry’s abdomen. His eyes shot open and he reacted by twisting to one side, but not quite far enough and quick enough. He felt the blade slice through his clothing and along the edge of his ribs. His skin split with an exquisite sort of pain. He gasped, continued twisting away, and the knife rose again, this time plunging back down towards his chest.
Henry’s hands grasped Verner’s wrist, just preventing the point of the blade from piercing his ribs, halting it less than an inch above his chest.
Henry and Verner stared into each other’s eyes.
Verner laughed.
It was the moment Henry needed. Just that one moment which was a lack of concentration on Verner’s part.
He kicked out, connecting with Verner’s left hip.
This time Verner went sprawling and the knife flipped out of his grasp, spinning away and embedding itself in the soft ground.
Henry was up, going for him.
But Verner had also recovered, was up on his feet, powering towards Henry. They met like a couple of trucks in a head-on collision, then grappled with each other like wrestlers. They teetered over and rolled down the slope, hitting, kicking and trying to head-butt each other, both frenzied, fighting their own separate agendas.
They fought with the ferocity of bears.
When they stopped rolling, Henry found himself trapped underneath Verner. Verner’s right hand was around his windpipe, squeezing hard and forcing Henry’s head back, his knees pinning Henry’s arms to the ground.
Henry gurgled, fought, writhed and desperately tried to break free.
Jane Roscoe raised her head to where she had last seen Henry Christie on the hillside. Now she could not see anyone.
‘Keep your head down,’ she warned Wickson. He complied, crouching deep in the drainage channel, his face now like a frightened mouse. It was an expression that warmed the cockles of Jane’s heart, even though she, too, was terrified. It showed Wickson for what he was. She spoke into her mobile. ‘Henry, Henry, what’s going on?’
The connection was still open, but she could hear nothing.
She opened her shoulder bag and pulled out her personal radio. Her message to control room was quick and succinct.
Henry could feel that the back of his head was in water, a puddle or something, and that the man on him was trying to strangle him and push his head under the water. Centimetre by centimetre, Henry knew he was going under. The water was touching his ears now.
He managed to release one arm from under Verner’s knee.
Without hesitation, Henry clouted him across the head, his hand bunched into a fist with his thumb forming a hard pointed ‘v’ which he drove into Verner’s temple.