The roar of his car peeling away from the sidewalk meant that we’d missed an opportunity to finish Markus. But not entirely. If we could follow him now, we could still catch the bastard. The only problem being, saving a life was always more important than taking one in my estimation.
‘Hold your fire, Jones. For God’s sake, your partner’s dying here!’
The bullets stopped punching through the open doorway.
Jones was considering my words, and I had to keep him thinking.
‘You know we’re not your enemy. The bastard who just shot Tyler is. He’s getting away, goddamnit, and Tyler’s bleeding to death.’
‘Show yourselves,’ Jones shouted back.
Rink was dabbing at a raw patch on his cheek where Markus head-butted him. By the look of him he was wishing he’d twisted Markus’s head back to front instead of going for his gun hand. ‘What do you think?’ I asked him.
‘Think I should’ve killed the fucker when I had the chance,’ he said. But then his gaze fell on the shuddering form of Detective Tyler on the porch, and his expression changed. He’d made the correct decision, after all. The man was severely wounded, but without Rink’s intervention he would have been dead by now. Tyler still stood a chance. ‘Jones. We’re coming out,’ he shouted. ‘Get over here and lend a hand with your buddy.’
We put our guns away, and moved outside, our hands empty so that Jones was under no illusion as to our intent. Jones approached us; he had a palm slapped to a wound on his outer left thigh, but in his other hand he held his service pistol aimed at us. He was a man torn by indecision. I hoped he’d be a friend to Tyler before he was a cop. His features showed a range of emotions as he checked us out: anger, rage, but something else too. It was the look of gratitude I was glad of, but it was not something we could rely on. The detective would have called this in and other uniformed officers would be descending on the house, and they would arrest us in a heartbeat. It made our need to get away more urgent.
‘Here, quickly,’ I commanded. ‘You must put pressure on the wound, or he’ll be gone in minutes.’
Jones had only one decision to make. Arrest us or not. If he did so then he’d miss the opportunity to save his friend. Thankfully he didn’t consider making one of us administer assistance to his fallen comrade. That was his duty, he understood. He placed down his gun on the porch while he pushed both palms down over Tyler’s hands. Blood still pulsed between all twenty interlaced fingers. ‘Hold on there, buddy,’ he said. ‘Help is on its way, OK. You’ll get through this.’
‘You called an ambulance, right?’ Rink asked.
‘Coming,’ Jones whispered, without taking his gaze off Tyler’s pale features. ‘It’s coming.’
‘Good,’ Rink said. He nudged me. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘You can’t. You have to wait here.’ Jones’s face was stricken, as if he did not want to be alone with him when Tyler slipped away.
‘We have to stop the bastard who did this. You know how it is, Jones,’ I said. ‘If your buddies arrive while we’re here, they’ll waste time arresting and processing us. There are still people in danger from that murderous son of a bitch. Do you want him to hurt others the way he has your partner?’
The big cop stared down on his friend. Tyler tried to say something, but all that issued from between his lips were scarlet bubbles. Even so his intention was emphatic enough. Jones turned and looked at us. ‘You’d best go out the back way, or else you’ll be stopped.’
We shared a moment, and for the first time our attitudes were ones of mutual respect. He mirrored my nod of acknowledgement. Then we fled round the side of the rickety house to where we’d left Rink’s father’s car. Rink had grabbed the sack and its contents we’d brought, and he slung them in the back. He got in the passenger seat, while I started the engine. Our original intention to grab and execute Markus somewhere far from prying eyes was now redundant. Now it didn’t matter how many witnesses there were, our hand had been forced and we had to take more direct and immediate action. First we had to get away from there.
I threw the car into drive and set off, but only made it as far as the side of the house before noticing the baleful wail of approaching sirens; over the rooftops of the houses opposite the stuttering gumball lights rebounded from the trees on the next ridge over. I hoped that one of the sirens and set of lights was from the ambulance on its way to save Tyler.
Jones’s warning to leave by the back made sense. If we went out by the same route I’d driven in, we’d be seen and chased down. There was nothing for it, then. I reversed quickly, popped a turn on the hard stand at the back, then angled towards the overgrown shrubbery. I caught a look of resignation from Rink reflected in the rear-view mirror, and I could only shrug. I battered through the foliage, hearing branches gouging the metal work, leaves and flower heads blizzarding over the windscreen as the car tore through. A sapling bent and snapped beneath the fender; I hoped it caused no major damage to the undercarriage. The next obstacle was a weathered wooden fence, but it was smashed to kindling, and I pushed the car unhindered now down a rugged slope of couch grass and plants I neither cared to identify nor worry about.
The drop off to the road was the trickiest manoeuvre to perform, and it was as much luck as skill that sent the car off the hillside at an angle, so that the two offside wheels found traction on the asphalt before I pulled at the steering and weaved off the embankment on to hard ground. As it was the resulting contact made the car slew and bounce like crazy, but I grimly held on to the wheel and forced it under control.
‘Good job we’re dumping the car after this,’ Rink said.
He was right. The chances were that I’d caused unthinkable damage to the chassis and the car would never be roadworthy again. As long as it took us to where we were going, though, that was all that mattered now. There was a whine from the engine that hadn’t been there before, as well as a rhythmical thud each time the front left wheel completed a revolution, but otherwise the car kept going. I pushed it as fast as I dared, taking us down a steeply sloping avenue towards lower ground, intent only on evading the police swarming towards Markus’s house. Nearing the bottom of the incline, I slowed, and drew up at a crossing. Waiting there we looked like any other car on the road — so long as no one made a closer inspection — and we didn’t receive as much as a glance from the cops in the marked cruiser that shot by with its sirens screeching.
‘So far so good,’ I said, clichéd but true. Once the cop car was out of sight around the next bend I pulled out, heading in the opposite direction, intent on gaining a route to Bridget Lanaghan’s house before the police cordoned us in. It was apparent to us both that Markus would have reconsidered his plans now that his identity had been discovered. With Parnell and Faulks safely out of his grasp that left only one other he could target. He’d be going for Yukiko.
The temptation was to drive fast, but that could attract too much attention, so much as it pained me I kept to the speed limit, heading across town to the Lanaghan house. Thankfully traffic was sparse by now, so there were no major hold-ups, and even the traffic lights fell in our favour. We made it to Bridget’s leafy neighbourhood in a little less than ten minutes. It felt like ten minutes too long. Rink was gritting his teeth, his features set rock solid the entire time. We didn’t concern ourselves with debating what-ifs, which would have been a waste of energy. Markus was very unlikely to have arrived before us, because his priority would also have been avoiding the police cordon. There were no guarantees that he even knew about the connection between Yukiko and Bridget Lanaghan’s home, but it wasn’t a chance either of us would take. Yukiko would have to be moved elsewhere. Probably it would be best that Bridget and the other members of her family were taken somewhere safer until this was resolved.