Miss Take - Chapter 9 (5968)

Chapter 9 (5968)

The rain had stopped and the sun was out. A double rainbow shone across the gap between the two blocks of flats. A crisp breeze blew through the drying yard that Kelly and the Hamiltons had now walked out onto.
‘Let’s not wreck Jackie’s home,’ she’d said in the flat. ‘If you’ve heard of me, then you know what I’m capable of.’
Lenny had shrugged. ‘Outside then, but no funny business,’ he’d then nodded at his men, who kept to either side of her as they had gone down the stairs. As the exited the building she had ducked past them, then under a washing line, stepping out onto the rain-sodden grass of the yard.
She turned to them, backing off. ‘I didn’t kill your brother.’
‘Oh aye?’ replied Lenny sarcastically. ‘Really?’
She could tell that trying to convince him of anything was futile. He was there for her blood, and nothing less. She moved into a fighting stance, ready for what was going to happen next.

Lenny let out a big breath. ‘Well, right. Aye, then. Two-soups here says he’s a black belt. I’ve seen him beat up neds and prossies, but it’d be nice tae see if he’s as hard as he thinks he is.’
The larger of the two goons, a broken-nosed man in a black bomber jacket, whose name was apparently “Two-soups” did a double-take at Lenny. ‘I cannae fight the wee boy, Lenny. He’s just a wean.’
Lenny hissed at him through golden teeth. ‘This wee wean put three of Trajan’s lads in stooky and laid out Tam the Man.’
‘No way,’ gasped Two-soups. ‘Tam looked like he’d gone ten rounds with Tyson.’
‘No, apparently this wee fucker did it,’ said Lenny Hamilton, pointing at Kelly.
Two-soups shrugged and raised his hands. He was young, younger than Kelly probably, and had the sort of build that looked like it would run to fat later in life. At the moment though he was tall, lean and long limbed. If he was any good, then she had no chance in a stand-up fight.
He advanced slowly in a loose kickboxing fighting stance, one arm raised and one arm out in front. He looked the part, she had to give him that. He’d obviously spent a lot of time in front of the mirror at least, practising postures he’d seen in films. She didn’t circle, she didn’t do any fancy foot work, she simply kept her guard up and waited for him to make the first move.
He tried a few jabs and Kelly almost let out a sigh of relief. He just a McDojo part-timer after all. Fit, enthusiastic, but badly trained and slow, relying too much on his height and long arms.
She was too small for him to land an uppercut, and he couldn’t seem to figure out what part of her tiny body to plant a kick on. She didn’t need to block any of his moves, she just ducked and side-stepped. He tried a front kick which she easily avoided then two more jabs that she batted aside with blocks.
‘Come on Two-soups for fucks sake!’ laughed Lenny with obvious enjoyment from the side-lines.
‘Right,’ said Two-soups, trying to grab her and missing. In frustration he threw a few more punches, exposing his chin. It was too much of a tempting target for Kelly, who crouched and then came up from the ground like a rocket. She punched him neatly under the jaw, making loud cracking sound as it landed and he fell to the ground. Two-soups was unconscious for a split second as he fell, but collected himself enough at the last moment to put his arms out and prevent himself from landing on his face.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Lenny, stepping back. He hadn’t even seen what had happened, but suddenly his biggest henchman was now on his hands and knees spitting out blood.
‘Woah…’ whispered the other goon, backing up until his backside was pressing against a windowsill on the side of the flats.

Two-soups was a tough lad though. With blood flowing down his chin he hauled himself up from the pavement and advance on her again, but this time in a more defensive boxing stance.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ said Kelly, raising her guard again. ‘But I will.’
They circled each other again, Kelly waiting for Two-Soups to make a move, while he seemed to be trying to figure out a way to hammer a nail through water. Staying focused on her opponent she could see from the sides of her eyes that people were starting to watch the fight from windows and doorways.
‘Soups, if you don’t fucking plant that kid, I’ll kill you myself,’ said Lenny, judging that he was about to embarrass his clan in front of a reasonable portion of Salamander Street.
With a groan Two-soups came in at her again, throwing punches and kicks wildly. He was putting on a good performance, but nothing was landing. She hunkered down, dodged and blocked, letting him tire himself out. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he panted as he unleashed a flurry of jabs that went nowhere. ‘Stand still!’
She wanted to end it, but he wasn’t letting her get in under his arms again. After her uppercut had rattled his teeth he was keeping well back out of her reach. If she went in on an attack, he’d easily grab her or land a heavy blow and that would probably be the end of her.
She glanced up at the flats. They were five floors in height and easy climbing, if she made a break for it…
The lapse of concertation cost her a burst lip. She pulled her head back as one of his huge fists went whistling past. She avoided a heavy connection, but his knuckles scarped across her mouth, cutting her lips on her teeth. As she spat out blood, he stepped away to get his breath back, almost as if he had surprised himself in landing an actual blow.
In that moment she took her chance and ran to the wall, and was up to the third floor in moments, leaping from hand hold to hand hold. By the time she was nearly at the roof though, Lenny was shouting up at her. ‘You come back down here and take yer beating, or I swear to fucking god I will go up to Jackie’s flat again and paint the walls with her whooer blood!’
Cursing Kelly stopped climbing, paused for a moment, then started coming back down again. At the first floor she leapt down onto a tool-shed then aimed a flying kick at Two-soups’s head. He manged to block her, but she planted her foot in her back as she went past and used the momentum to leap towards the other henchman.
This man was not a trained fighter, and had been watching the whole fight up until now as if he were in a dream. Her kick hit his head square in the face and he rebounded off the building, then fell into the gravel by the wall, out like a light.
Yelling, she charged at Lenny who frantically backpedalled. She threw some punches but he turned his body sideways and tucked in his head. She leapt on him, clawing and biting. ‘Get him off me!’ he cried as she bit his left eyebrow off.
She was suddenly yanked away by a strong pull on the hood of her top. She spun round and planted her fist right in-between Two-soups’s legs. As he came down, she kneed him under the chin and then sent him crashing into the bins with a perfectly timed kick to the head. Making sure he wasn’t going to be getting up again any time soon she turned to see Lenny running for his car. Spitting out a mouthful of skin and blood, she picked up a bin lid and threw it at his legs. It skiffed into the pavement, bounced and hit him in the back of the knees. It slowed him a little, but he still managed to get in the car and was driving off before she could catch him. As he turned out of the car park she leapt from the pavement onto a road-side junction box and from there onto the roof of the car. Lenny skidded out onto the main road and barrelled towards Leith Walk.
She could hear him shouting and swearing inside the car and see him, through the tinted glass of the sun roof, reaching into the glove compartment with one hand while trying to wipe blood out of his eyes with the other.
The car swerved through the traffic, driving erratically, maybe because he was trying to do too many things at once or maybe to try and throw her off. She had a firm climbers grip on the car though so she wasn’t going anywhere. He tossed pens, tissues and litter out of the glove box until his hand landed on a gun. He then aimed it at the roof and started shooting wildly, while screaming hysterically. As soon as she had seen the gun though, Kelly had bailed. She hit the road in a tumbling roll, then stood up just in time to see the car drive right into the Robert Burns statue at the bottom of Leith Walk with a very loud crunch.
She ran along the street, past startled bystanders and braking cars to the accident. Lenny was in there, his face covered in blood and shattered glass, and airbag pressed up against his chest.
She opened the door and hauled him out onto the street. He fell into the side of the car. She stuck two fingers up his nose and pulled his head up. He cried in pain.
‘If I hear of any harm coming to Jackie, I’ll be back for your other eyebrow,’ she threatened.
‘Aye, aye, aye,’ he gasped, trying to get his hands blindly around her wrists. She let him go and stepped back. A crowd was forming and she could already hear sirens. Jumping up, she ran for it, heading for the Water of Leith in search of a hiding place.
***
The next day she was as stiff as a board and aching from all her exertions. She could hide all that, but not her split lip. Still, this wasn’t the first time she’d gone to school with an injury and she gave the same excuse as she did last time.
‘Training for a competition,’ she told Mrs Harper. ‘We are all padded up, but sometimes you put a foot wrong and – bang!’
‘You’d better watch yourself hen!’ laughed the deputy head. ‘Or they’ll will think we’re battering you!’
Kelly was lucky, the October holidays had just started and there were no children at the school. The teachers had two or three in-service days to complete before they too would go on holiday.
She kept her head down for the rest of the day, then after going home for her for a change of clothes went to Omni Centre for her tea and to browse the internet on a burner phone.

This was the place she went to when she wasn’t meeting Corum. Since their first meeting they had now met up for coffee three times. She had no idea where it was going and she knew she was playing with fire. He was nice though, for a pig, and they seemed to talk together so naturally she found herself looking forward to their next meeting. She told herself that it was a good way of keeping an eye on how much heat was coming her way, but she knew within herself that it was simply because she liked him. His intentions she was less clear on. She knew what men were like, and she was definitely giving him the come on, but so far, he seemed happy to just talk. They had talked about their families again, then their childhoods and then just trivial things that friends talked about when they were together. It had been a new experience for her, and something she had been enjoying, much to her surprise.
She started on IMDB, and was far from shocked when she found nothing even remotely matching what little evidence she had gathered. She started on the Cosby show and then worked her way through all the 80s shows she could remember having seeing re-runs of back when she was younger and watched TV. It wasn’t her thing now though, she just didn’t bother with the box any longer, she spent most of her free time these days planning robberies, climbing and training. Her gran would be a great help with this sort of thing though, and she was almost thinking of giving her a call. It would make the old girl suspicious, and encyclopaedic as her knowledge of TV shows was, would it be of any help anyway? The man she was looking for she had a recent description of only. He was fat and ugly now apparently, but what about thirty years ago when the show was made?
It was hopeless. A possibly left-handed man, fat, bald and ugly who paid for sex. It wasn’t enough. There were plenty of men like that in the world. Possibly a soldier? Again, how did that help? Everyone in the world had a past. Anyone could be possibly anything.
She sighed and sat back. A waiter came over and asked if she wanted another coffee and she nodded yes. She leant back in her seat and watched the late-night shoppers and cinema-goers going past in the main mall.
The waiter, who wore a badge declaring his name to be Martin, looked like he was in his fifties. Having ran out of any better ideas and chancing her luck with someone in the right age demographic she asked him, ‘do you remember the Cosbys?’
He laughed as he put down her sugar sachet and milk jug beside her coffee cup. ‘Err, aye. I watched it anyway, back when it was on.’
‘Do you remember an old fat and ugly white guy being in it?’
‘No, I don’t remember it that well, sorry,’ he tapped the table with his index finger as if thinking about it. ‘I can ask Helen though; she is crazy good at that sort of trivia.’
‘Och no, it’s fine. I’m just… It’s a puzzle. A friend told me about someone they knew that was in it. I can’t remember his name, just that he was fat and ugly. He might have been left-handed.’ She realised how silly she sounded.
Five minutes later someone Kelly assumed to be Helen herself was at the table, a stocky, friendly looking woman, also in her fifties.
‘Was it Wallace Shawn?’ she asked without giving an introduction. ‘He played Jeffrey Engels.’
‘I’ve looked at everyone who was a regular on the show already,’ said Kelly holding up her phone. ‘I don’t think it was him. It really seems unlikely he just happened to be hanging around in Edinburgh two years ago and nobody knew about it. It’s silly, it doesn’t matter.’
‘He’s still going strong though. He’s in Young Sheldon now.’
‘It can’t be him. The man I’m looking for was in Edinburgh two years ago. For at least a year. If he was in the Cosbys he’d have stopped acting years ago.’
‘You mean The Cosby Show,’ said Helen
‘What did I say?’
‘The Cosbys.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well, it could be your man was in the Kosbies.’
Kelly looked at her blankly.
‘You know, the K-O-S-B, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. They were merged with all the other regiments in 2006.’
Kelly sat bolt upright, her eyes wide.
‘The army. Oh my god your right!’ said Kelly. ‘Helen you are a proper genius!’
‘Told you,’ mouthed Martin over at the bar.
All smiles, Kelly finished her coffee and gave them both a big tip as she left.
She then walked up onto Princes Street and got on the first bus that stopped. Up at the back of the top deck she got out her phone and started checking all the regimental websites she could find. She knew nothing at all about the Scottish army, but soon learned about all its old regiments and their mergings into the only current Scottish infantry regiment, the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Helen had been quite correct, the King's Own Scottish Borderers had been merged in 2006, but there were still plenty of current regimental websites, with visitor information, the stories of old soldiers and that sort of thing. There were plenty of pictures, mainly of Remembrance Day wreath laying and veteran’s parades, but also old pictures, some black and white and sepia toned, of young men posing in groups for regimental photographs. She browsed and scrolled through the photos, as the bus wound its way around Edinburgh. She wasn’t going anywhere; she was just using the bus Wi-Fi on a phone she would throw away once she was done.
Then suddenly she saw him. The killer. The same man she had seen that night at Wraithston. He was younger, of course, but that was him, a man approaching forty, but still fit and dangerous looking. The picture he was in had been taken in 2003 during the Iraq war, but it was definitely him. He was posing beside a jeep or something, with three other soldiers, with what she assumed was the city of Basra in the background if the title of the photograph was to believed. His name was Sergeant Clarence Price and after another hour of digging she found out that he had been dishonourable discharged after the war for reasons that were pretty murky and unclear, but probably involved injuring or killing Iraqis. After another two hours of searching and a complete circuit of Edinburgh by bus she found his current address, a converted farmhouse on the outskirts of Livingston, a town only a ten-minute train ride from Edinburgh.

She got off the bus at the next stop and walked home in the dark, thinking and planning. There was no reason she could think of for not getting on the train and going to scope out the house the next morning.
The only thing that bothered her was that Jackie had said Elaine’s client had been fat and ugly. Clarence Price was neither fat or ugly, meaning… meaning what, she wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure it even mattered. If she could deliver Price to Corum somehow, then a fair portion of her problems would come to an end, or so she hoped.

***

Corum was at his desk, a place that he rarely visited if he could help it. He preferred to be out and about, talking to his contacts and informants, dragging around coffee shops, pubs and drug dens. He had stacks of papers and photographs laid out, with the computer keyboard and monitor pushed to one side to make room.
He felt like he had enough of the pieces of the puzzle to start putting some of it together. The edges of the puzzle at least, definitely enough to start forming conclusions. Not only the actual solving of the case was demanding his attention. There were a lot of witness statements coming in now, and all the other paperwork that surrounded a murder inquiry needed sifting through and analysed. He realised he probably had to sit there for the next day or two, so he was happy of the distraction of Yoyuwevuto as she walked up to their area in the open plan office, took her coat off and hung it neatly on a nearby stand.
He looked up. ‘Well, so you HBU bods are dropping everything against Paul Bevy now I hear.’
‘Yes, it looks like it,’ replied Yoyuwevuto. ‘The Wraithston Manse murder has really muddied the waters. Harvey is coming to the conclusion it’s not worth the hassle to try and build a case that the procurator fiscal will throw back at us.’
‘Good. Anything else?’
‘Not really,’ pondered Yoyuwevuto as she sat down at her desk. ‘Oh, when I was at the school the other day, I noticed your girlfriend had a cut lip. The deputy head told me that Miss Kane has a black belt in karate.’
‘Kelly?’ asked Lavius in disbelief. ‘She’s tiny. She couldn’t knock the skin off a rice-pudding.’
‘Make of it what you will, Sergeant. Apparently, she’s lethal.’
Corum stopped shuffling through the papers he’d been holding and froze. The wheels turned in his head.
‘Yoyo. Fucking hell. Look at this,’ said Lavius pulling a page out of the bundle and handing it to her.
Mable read the from the paper Lavius had handed to her.
‘Oh right,’ said Yoyuwevuto as she read. ‘That’s interesting. Kelly Kane was a foster child. So? Oh, I see. That’s… She was fostered by Niles Makepeace. That’s weird. Perhaps she knows Gavin?’
‘Perhaps? I’ve been sat here for the last hour trying to figure out what it all means.’
Mable went to speak again then put her hand to her mouth.
‘I know right?’ said Corum. ‘She knows Paul. She knows Gavin. Where does she fit in? Because she fits in somewhere. Is she working with Gavin? If you’re telling me she’s a black belt, was it her that actually kicked the shit out of Trajan’s men and I just never saw her that night? Oh – Keyser fucking Söze!’
Corum threw the papers that had come from the fostering agency down and fished out a black and white picture of Kelly Kane when she had been a teenager, a passport style photo blown up to A5 size. He pulled the top off a Sharpie with his teeth and started drawing on the photo, painting in a large afro haircut around Kelly’s head.
‘Oh, my word!’ exclaimed Mable.
‘Kelly Kane,’ said Lavius through his clenched teeth. ‘Is Gavin Newgate. Our very own little ass-kicking Miss Take. Where will she be now?’
‘At this time, probably halfway between the school and her home,’ replied Yoyuwevuto.
‘That little…’ growled Lavius remembering that just a few days ago, on Friday after work, they had met for coffee again, their third meeting since Ocean Terminal and they had talked for hours and hours.
He growled again, sighed and slumped into his chair with his head in his hands when he suddenly realised the whole thing at Ocean Terminal had been a set up. She’d checked he was waiting there, where “Gavin” had said to meet, then burgled his flat, and then, as cool as a cucumber came back down to the shopping centre to see him again.
Yoyuwevuto, seeing he was clearly going through something, put her hand on his shoulder.
‘She doesn’t know that we know, Sergeant,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps when you’ve calmed down a bit we can go and talk to her.’
‘Arrest her you mean?’ he said, but then after a deep breath he went on. ‘No. She’s didn’t kill Mack, or Treacle come to that, but perhaps she is trying to lead us to who did. This needs thinking about. Your right, best to not act too hastily.’
As he leaned back in his seat with his eyes shut and Yoyuwevuto began to log in to her computer, a young CID officer came up with a print out.
‘I’ve got your man here, Corum!’ he exclaimed happily. ‘Not too hard in the end. He’s an ex-army guy called Clarence Price. Got an address too.’
Lavius shot up out of his chair and took the piece of paper. It was a head shot of the same man as in the CCTV image, but this time wearing a Kevlar helmet and dark glasses.
‘Definitely him. Currently living in Livingston.’
Almost as if he was glad of something else to think about other than what a complete fool Kelly Kane had made of him Lavius latched on to this new lead.
‘So perhaps we should try Clarence first?’ he wondered aloud. ‘If Miss Take can really take out a room full of Romanians then we’ll need the bloody riot squad to bring her in. Maybe I can go round to her house and talk some sense into her later, once I’ve stopped wanting to strangle her anyway.’
‘Do you think she calls herself Miss Take, Sergeant? Really?’ asked Yoyuwevuto.
‘I guarantee it,’ he replied with a wry smile.

By the time they were in the car and slowly making their way through the Edinburgh rush hour, Lavius had already refined his plans a little.
While he drove, Yoyuwevuto called the school.
‘It’s the October holidays,’ she said to Lavius once she had hung up. ‘The school is now closed for the rest of the week. Mrs Hunter says that Miss Kane mentioned something about going to Spain.’
‘Right, fine,’ said Lavius in a manner that suggested nothing was fine. He drove for a while, but eventually laughed and shook his head.
‘Lord bless her,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother Interpol just yet, because I doubt she’s on her way to Spain. After we’ve talked to Mr Price, I’ll text her and set up a meeting, I think that would be better. I’ve… err, well… I have her number. I’ll try and arrange a meeting. Let’s not go the full HBU laser death squad just yet. If she is really Gavin, and she bloody is, she’s also a witness to murder after all.’
Lavius paused to get his vape out of his jacket pocket and tried to fire it up. Nothing happened and he threw it angrily out the window. ‘Fucking thing!’
‘Another thing,’ he grumbled. ‘It’ll be worth matching up all your Squirrel robberies with her catering jobs. I expect that is how she operates, checks the place over then comes back later to rob them.’
Lavius, now going from anger to amusement at his own stupidity in almost every sentence, again laughed. ‘Jesus. Please never tell anyone of this Yoyo. My first girlfriend since Sarah and she turns out to be a criminal mastermind.’
‘I won’t,’ said Yoyuwevuto. ‘I promise.’
‘So anyway, back to Mr Price,’ said Lavius after they’d driven a while longer.  ‘The night of the murder, Mack the Knife gets a call. He goes home. He waits. He’s expecting someone? Maybe. We think so.’
‘Because the alarms are off,’ said Yoyuwevuto.
‘Correct,’ went on Corum with a nod. ‘Someone, perhaps our man, arrives. Goes upstairs and slays him. Our ex-KOSB? Dishonourable discharge chap is definitely capable of it. At the same time, probably by coincidence, or friend Miss Take is robbing the place.’
‘Whether Mr Price was there or not, Miss Take certainly was.’
‘Correct again,’ said Corum. ‘So, either Price is a murderer, or he just happened to be passing. That will be the lie to catch him in. If he says he was coming back from the pub then we want to know everything about it, who he met, how long he was there, where exactly he was going when he lives in Livingston.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
‘Don’t give me that pained look, Yoyo. Am I teaching you to suck eggs? This is proper detective work, young lady, we’re doing more than just finding out who broke into Lidl and stole all the vodka.’
Yoyuwevuto laughed politely at his joke.

They arrived at the house in the late afternoon, the sky was clear, but darkening towards evening. It was a large farmhouse, with a long gravel driveway and an overgrown front garden. The front door had a small porch, hung about with dead ivy, full of dirty boots, dog-leads and umbrellas. It smelled of wet mud.
Price himself answered the door, ‘police is it?’ he muttered as he ushered them in to a gloomy front room. ‘Is this about those estate kids at last?’
‘No, Mr Price,’ said Lavius, ‘This is something else. We want to ask you some questions about the night of September 24th. It was three weeks ago. Do you remember it?’
Clarence Price doddered about, his back bent, gesturing to a long floral-patterned sofa beside the window for them to sit down on.
‘Tuesday was it?’ he asked as he eased himself into an armchair by the fireplace.
It’s definitely him, thought Lavius as he looked the man over, he has the same jawline and narrow eyes as the man in the CCTV image. His gaze moved from the man to look around the room as Yoyuwevuto continued with the interview. There was a presentation plaque from his regiment on the wall, between framed pictures of a woman that could have been his wife and various other family members. There was a lot of figurines and other knick-knacks in the room, but they were dusty and Corum guessed that his wife had left him, or he was a widower. Either way, a woman had once lived here, but was long gone.
‘You were in Edinburgh that night,’ his partner was saying. ‘You walked along Starlaw Road. Do you mind telling us where you were and where you were going?’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Price in confusion. ‘I’ve not been into Edinburgh in years. There must be a mistake young lady, I was here at home that night. I’m at home every night these days, I can barely walk. I’d hardly be strolling around the big city in the middle of the night, would I?’
Lavius had stood up to look at some of the pictures at the other side of the room. He was not particularly interested in them, he was more interested in watching Price’s demeanour.
Price took a box of matches and a packet of cigarettes down from the mantlepiece, but then seemed to think better of it and put them back again. He then returned his hands to the pockets of his cardigan.
‘Do you have anyone that can confirm you were at home that night?’ asked Yoyuwevuto.
‘I don’t think so,’ Price replied. ‘It’s just me here now. I live alone.’
Yoyuwevuto continued asking questions, but Price stuck to his story and there was not much else left to be said.
Yoyuwevuto thanked Price and put her notebook away. As they were leaving, Corum pointed at one of the pictures. ‘Is that your dog, Mr Price?’
‘Yes, oh yes. He’s out the back if you want to meet him.’
Lavius seemed to consider for a while, then said, ‘no that’s ok. Thank you for your statement, we have to follow all these leads up you understand.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Price as he took them too the door. ‘That’s no problem officers, I’m happy to help.’
As they stood at the car, about to get in, Lavius talked to Yoyuwevuto over the bonnet.
‘That old bugger is lying.’
‘You think so, Sergeant?’
‘Did you see he never lit his fag? That was because his hands were shaking too much.’
‘He may have a condition.’
‘No chance,’ said Lavius dismissively. ‘And another thing. He owns a huge Siberian Husky and not a single walking stick and he tells us he can hardly walk? Those beasts need loads of exercise, my dad used to have one. If you don’t take them out every day, they rip up the carpet.’
‘Maybe someone walks it for him.’
‘Bollocks to that. Those wellies at the door had fresh mud on them. Probably just been for a two mile walk into the forest over there.’ Corum gestured to a farm gate further up the drive.
‘I’m going back to look at his dog after all,’ he said as he started walking back towards the house. ‘See where it goes if we let it loose.’
Yoyuwevuto, who was on the passenger side and closer to the house turned too. There was the barking crack of a rifle shot and she fell to the ground. Corum leapt behind the car as more shots rang out, the impacts hitting the side of the car. After there was five more, the shooting stopped. Price ran out of the house, hurdled the garden gate and into the forest. Corum went to check Yoyuwevuto. He could tell she was dead instantly; the bullet had gone right through her heart. His voice cracking with emotion he called for back-up on the car radio, then went after Price.
In that moment, Corum didn’t care if Price was still armed, he just wanted to catch him and rip his throat out. Yoyuwevuto had been the kindest, gentlest person he’d ever known and now she lay dead, leaving her husband a widower and her children motherless.
The forest track lead down into some marshland. He ran past a sign that had been put up to tell walkers what sort of birds they might expect to see. Further on there was duckboard on the path and the forest opened up a little as the going got wetter. He could see Price up ahead, the rifle slung over his shoulder.
He turned, unslung the weapon and fired, pulled back the bolt and fired again. Corum ducked behind a tree as the bullets whizzed past. He was panting, his breath was forming clouds around him in the frigid air. He glanced around the tree to see that Price had ducked into the woods again. He ran on, across the duckboards, into the forest.
He’d lost sight of Price when he reached a T-junction. A wooden signpost informed him that the trail to the left lead to a loch while the trail on the right lead into Livingston Village. He ran towards the loch, nearly bumping into a couple walking a dog as he rounded the corner of large hazel bush. Out of habit he turned to apologise to them as the woman gave him a stern look. It was then that there was a rifle shot that echoed through the woods, a bullet snagged a branch in front of him with a twapping sound and went into the top of his right leg.
‘Bastard!’ he groaned as he toppled over against the bole of a tree. The couple and their dog ran off down the path.
Corum tried to stand up, but found he couldn’t move his leg. He put pressure on the entry wound, but it was too painful. He could feel himself getting dizzy, but tried to control his rising panic. The bullet hadn’t gone through his leg, he could feel that. In fact it felt like it had gone in no more than an inch into the flesh. He’d been lucky, the branch the bullet had it on the way into his leg had taken a lot of force out of it.
His luck wasn’t all good though. As was looking down to attend to his wound there was a click-clack sound from the rifles bolt action. Price approached, and having thrown off his hunched old-man demeanour he looked much more like the killer he evidently was.
‘Hurts does it?’ he asked as he advanced down the path towards Lavius.
‘What do you think?’
‘You don’t look that worried. Been shot before?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Corum. ‘With a bow and arrow.’
‘Huh,’ grunted Price. ‘You are the second lot I’ve shot at today. There was some black kid snooping around just half an hour before you turned up. I put a bullet in him too. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?’
‘I could hazard a guess.’
‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now,’ said Price raising the rifle up for a shot. ‘The games up. I’ll have to get Reggie to arrange me flights to Brazil after all. Goodbye Detective.’
‘Wait!’ cried Corum, raising up his left hand.
Price fired the rifle.