There was a long pause. She gave me that sweet maternal smile. “You really do remind me of my Rabbie. Anyway, any last words?”
My chest was heaving with painful sobs. I was near hysterical. I looked around me. This was happening. No movie ending for me.
I saw something from the corner of my eye, blurry through the tears and sweat. I nodded at her. “My last words?”
“Yes?” she asked sweetly.
“Good boy,” I said.
“What?”
Forty kilograms of Alsatian/Dobermann cross launched himself at her. And this time, Kenny wasn’t playing. He was going in for the kill.
Her screams sounded out across the village. She dropped the gun. But I could see she had something else on her.
“No, you fucking don’t,” I said, launching myself at her, and kicked her hand as hard as I could before she could get to her pocket.
She screamed again. Simon and Guy came running. Guy grabbed Kenny while Simon took the gun she’d been holding and used it to smack her across the face as hard as he could. Blood and a tooth or two flew across the garden. But it was too late. She took her small revolver from her pocket and aimed, and fired. “Simon!” I screamed.
He was lucky. He dived to avoid losing half his skull, but he dropped the other gun, and it scattered across the ground. I lunged for it. My hands were sweaty, but Imanaged to get it. Katrina and I stood there, weapons pointing at one another.
The others backed off, Guy cradling Kenny. Ollie was standing at the doors of the house, looking stricken. “You know, my husband did four tours in Northern Ireland. It’s easy to get guns out of there. This is the one I shot Riz with,” she said, shaking her little revolver like it was a cool knick-knack. She pointed it at them wildly. “No one make a move.”
We all took a pause. Above us, I could hear a chopper approaching. They’d brought in the big guns. A police siren was still whirring.
“Katrina Pettigrew,” came the sound of a voice through a megaphone from the street. “This is DI Neuberger. You are under arrest. Come out with your hands up, and you will not be hurt.” Katrina threw back her head and laughed.
None of us spoke for a long time. Just the sound of the helicopter coming closer and the ragged breathing of all involved. “You know that photo of your son,” I said. “Looks pretty flammable. It’d be a shame if you never saw your boy’s face again.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she said. I needed to get her away from everyone else. No matter what I did, she had a full cartridge in her gun. I couldn’t have much more than one or two bullets in this weapon. I was inching backwards, and she was coming towards me. Further from the others.
I smiled. “Wouldn’t I? Well, if you want to know, you gotta catch me first,” I said and took off with a jump over Nigella’s back fence.
She screamed in frustration. But that was all, I didn’t look back; instead, I ran as fast as my skinny little legs could carry me. Down the path to the end of Nigella’s street, through overgrown hedges and old rickety fences, rose bushes and thorns ripping at my exposed arms and legs.
I couldn’t hear her behind me, but I needed to believe she was.
The crack of a gun. A bullet zinged past my head, and a tree in front of me gave out a shower of bark as the shot lodged itself into the trunk. Yep, definitely behind me. I felt a sharp pain as a splinter punctured my forehead.
“Fuck!” I screamed and hung a left. I emerged onto the street going east through the village. I was sweating and running – literally – on pure adrenaline. My white T-shirt was already soaked through with sweat, plaster, and now stained red from the wound on my forehead, which was pumping out blood at an alarming rate. I took off to the left, heading for Katrina’s house.
I reached the corner, sprinting madly. The door to one of the houses on the corner of the street to Katrina’s was opening, presumably someone out to look at the helicopter. “Arden, I thought it’d be you involved in this, gosh, it was never like this before you moved here!” She squinted in the bright sunlight. “Oh, look, Katrina is out jogging too. In this heat, and at her age! Hello, Katrina!” she yelled, which turned to a shriek as a huge chunk of Odette’s front door took a bullet.
“Fuck off, you annoying cow!” Katrina screamed.
While she tried to kill Odette, I dived onto the tiny path that ran behind the back of this street’s houses. The one Sonia and I had used to break into Katrina’s house when it was Arabella’s. A lifetime ago.
Sprinting along it, I had no idea what I was doing, or what would happen, but as long as Katrina was focused on me, she wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
I jumped the fence into her garden and crept along. I couldn’t hear her behind me. Clearly, she’d not come this way and instead gone to the front. I moved as quietly as I could.
The garden was overgrown and wild. The plants left to their own devices. Maybe it was because of the heat,causing some to wither, that it was passable at all. I got to the back door and decided, fuck subtlety. I smashed the window and reached through to unlock it.
“Hey, Katrina, I’m in your house, coming to get your son!” I yelled. “Your screwed up druggie son, who let any man who looked at him fuck him because of all his daddy issues!”
I heard a scream of annoyance from the front of the house.
“Dirty addict. He was a stupid little boy!” I kept taunting, a drip-drip of sweat and blood fell off me onto the hardwood floors as I walked. “I bet he was filthy. Addicts always are. Bet he let Simon and Guy do whatever they wanted to him. Bet there were ten guys a night in his bed! None of them probably even knew his name.”
