The Killing Club

‘Leg it!’ Heck shouted, snatching Farthing by the sleeve.

‘What … where to?’

‘Anywhere! Just bloody leg it!’

Chapter 4 (#ulink_ca016f6f-9234-5e15-8a57-1ffe135e21d3)

They ran together, but in no particular direction. The wilderness of the shop floor lay all around them, littered with rubble – but it was wide open. There was nowhere to duck or hide. Heck glanced back. Cooper was stumbling out from the mesh corridor.

‘Down here!’ Farthing squawked. To the left, a steel stairway dropped through an aperture into dimness.

They descended without thinking. Some ten feet down, it deposited them in a concrete corridor with numerous doors leading off it, though at its farthest end, maybe eighty yards away, there was a smudge of light. They ran towards this, but only seconds later heard the heavy clunking of feet on the stair behind.

‘Oh Christ!’ Farthing gasped.

Passing door after door, they saw nothing but mould-streaked walls, rotted pipe-work. Heck glanced back again. The tall, rangy form of Cooper was pursuing them along the passage, silhouetted on the light seeping down the stair. He was walking rather than running, but with long, loping strides. Heck was confused as to why, in this narrow field of vision, he hadn’t already opened fire. Possibly, just maybe, it was his eyes. Cooper was nearly sixty, and perhaps didn’t have his glasses with him. It was certainly the case that he’d had to get close to his other victims. This gave them a chance, of sorts.

Heck bundled Farthing around the corner onto another shop floor. This one was dimmer than the first, and strewn with further rubble, but still there was nowhere to hide.

‘Oh … shit!’ Farthing stammered.

Heck pushed him towards a double-sized doorway, and beyond this into a tall timber passage that was broad enough for forklift trucks to drive down it. Their footfalls echoed as they hammered along, emerging fifty yards later in what had once been an internal loading bay, a series of concrete platforms abutting into a hangar-like space where HGVs were once accommodated. It was filled with litter and old leaves, and stank of oil.

There was no further access from here. Panting, Heck could only gaze at the huge folding steel doors that separated them from the outside. Again, they heard feet reverberating along the service passage behind.

‘Fuck!’ Farthing hissed.

They scrambled through a smaller-sized doorway on the right, entering a confused sprawl of interconnecting offices and corridors. Again, all were cluttered with rubbish and cross-cut by shafts of light penetrating from various external windows, though most of these had been closed off with corrugated metal. They turned several corners, before blundering into a final room, and finding there was nowhere else to run.

They slid to a halt, sparkling with sweat. Farthing made to double back, but Heck motioned for silence.

Seconds passed as they listened.

Suddenly, there was no other sound.

‘Let’s kick our way out,’ Farthing said, lurching towards the window, which no longer sported glass beneath its metal cladding.

‘Wait!’ Heck whispered.

They froze again. Still there was no sound. Had the maniac lost them? Or was he creeping up even now?

‘Fuck this!’ Farthing said, but Heck grabbed his arm.

‘Just wait! He’s had a couple of chances to pop us, and he hasn’t taken them. It may be he needs to get close.’

‘So?’

‘So hang on! We don’t know how solid that shutter is. It could take us five minutes, and if we make a racket it’ll bring him right to us.’

Farthing licked his lips. ‘You go see where he is … I’ll try and get it loose quietly.’

Heck padded back to the door, stopping alongside a low shelf, on which someone had left a wrench. It was old and rusty, but still satisfyingly heavy. He grabbed it, and peered out into the half-lit corridor. To his left it right-angled out of sight; to his right it ran straight for forty yards before vanishing into shadow. He glanced back, to where Farthing was feeling around the edges of the corrugated metal. With a slight creak, it shifted. The PC gazed at Heck.

‘Couple of kicks and this is gone, I’m telling you!’

Heck motioned to him to wait just a second, and slipped out into the corridor, walking to the nearby corner. Around it, the passage led twenty yards to what looked like a fire-exit. He hurried up there and shoved down on the escape-bar, but there was no budge in it. As he pondered this, there came a series of thundering blows from behind. He knew that it was Farthing – hammering on metal.

He darted back to the corner and around into the main corridor, just in time to see the tall shape of Cooper loom out of the shadows at the far end, gun levelled.

‘You total prat!’ Heck shouted, barging back into the office.

Farthing was still working on the corrugated metal, half of which had been bashed through, though the rest of it wouldn’t shift. ‘Didn’t know where you were!’ he wailed. ‘I thought he’d nabbed you!’

‘Fucking idiot!’ Heck grabbed up an office chair, hurling it through the air.

The impact was cacophonous, and the rest of the corrugated shutter fell away, more dim light spilling inward. Farthing vaulted out through the empty frame first. Heck followed, sensing the figure appear in the office door behind.

‘Oh shit!’ Farthing screamed.

They weren’t outside.

They were in another enclosed space; some kind of garage, empty except for dust and debris. Farthing staggered across it towards a set of double doors, the central cleft of which promised daylight. Heck twirled back to the window. Cooper was framed on the other side, bloody-chinned, gazing along his pistol barrel.

Heck threw the wrench.

It flashed through the air, a spinning blur, and struck its target in the middle of his chest. Cooper went down with a choked gasp and Heck tensed, ready to pounce back through the empty frame and overpower him, but there was no clatter of a firearm dropping loose. So he turned and hurtled across the garage, to where Farthing was throwing his shoulder at the double doors. Heck joined him, left foot first. With a splintering crash, the bolt on the other side gave way. The doors swung open, and fresh air poured in. They tottered out into a yard which seemed to run along the back of the main building and was dotted with the relics of cars and trucks. Another brick wall, maybe twelve feet high, hemmed them in.

‘That way,’ Heck said, pointing left.

About seventy yards in that direction stood a pair of tall wrought-iron gates. They were closed and chained, but there was a gap between the top of the gates and the overarching brickwork. It was a climb, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

Farthing shook his head. ‘N— no … that way!’

He pointed right, where only thirty yards away, beyond the gutted shell of a van, stood a single gate – this one wide open. Some instinct told Heck this was a mistake – but Farthing was already stumbling towards it. Heck followed, glancing over his shoulder. There was still no sign of Cooper. The wrench had caught him a good one; there was even a chance it had done the job for them, but that would be a hell of a gamble.

‘Bloody hell, no!’ Farthing cried. Now that he’d circled the van, he could see through the narrow gate – into a cul-de-sac; a smaller yard encircled by yet another high wall, this one surmounted with shards of glass.

With a creak of hinges, the garage door opened behind them.

Heck snatched Farthing’s collar and dragged him down to his knees, so the wrecked van would fleetingly screen them. He flattened himself on the concrete to gaze underneath it. Cooper’s feet limped into view on the other side. The guy was obviously hurt, limping and breathing heavily; he moved away from the garage slowly, warily – scanning for his prey.

‘Doesn’t give up, like, does he?’ Farthing breathed. He slumped alongside Heck, shoulders pressed back against the crumpled bodywork. His face was pasty-white, and dabbled with beads of hanging sweat. ‘Really … really wants to kill us.’

‘Got no choice,’ Heck mumbled, still watching.

Cooper had advanced about ten yards, and now appeared to be pivoting around. If he ventured right, he’d locate them almost immediately. But if he went left, towards the double-gate, there was a possibility they could sneak into the garage and double back.

Only after several torturous seconds did the gunman make his choice, cautiously edging left. Heck held his breath, though Farthing appeared to be struggling with his. He gave a slow, sharp gasp.