Nick Oldham - A Time For Justice

All in blackness. Everything freezing cold.

He knew he would be dead very soon. If not from straightforward drowning, then from the numbing cold of the river. It was pointless to make any effort. He might as well give up. To struggle would achieve nothing.

Suddenly he was spat up to the surface.

Air shot down his gullet — sweet, sweet air. His eyes opened. He saw that he was in mid-channel, surging with the tide towards Morecambe Bay and the open sea beyond. He could see the open dock-gates of Glasson about 150 metres away. Several figures were looking out at him.

He tried to shout but his voice was lost in the heavy wind and rain. A vortex twisted him round 180 degrees. Now he was looking at the opposite bank of the river, about 120 metres off.

A second later the invisible hands of a current dragged him under again.

This pull was long and strong and he couldn’t fight it. He never expected to come up from it. He seemed to be under for ever, yet only seconds later he was on the surface again, looking towards the riverbank which appeared much nearer, about 50 metres away.

The water covered him again, this time with less force.

Even so, he was cold, weak and helpless.

Yet he began to fight it. Because he had something to fight for — to find Kate. He couldn’t leave the world not knowing. This time he rose to the surface from his own inner strength and there was no panic in his struggle. A rush of power coursed through him like an elemental driving force. He fixed a point on the bank and began to use long, strong, methodical strokes, and utilising the general direction of the flow, struck out towards the bank which was now even closer.

The mud of the riverbank was deep, brown, sticky and smelly. But to an almost completely exhausted Henry Christie it was as glorious, beautiful and welcome as a tropical beach. One last push and he was out of the water.

He was alive.

Coughing and retching, he crawled out of the river on all fours. He rose slowly to his feet and stumbled a few steps before weakness felled him face-down into the mud again. He was completely covered in it now, brown from head to toe like a wallowing hippo. But he didn’t care. He was out of the water, alive, and more or less kicking.

With a great effort he rolled onto his back, too weak to move any further, lying there, gasping for breath, feeling the rain splatting onto his face. He began to shiver, but he’d already decided that, despite the risk of hypothermia, he was going to lie there until he was rescued. He closed his eyes and began to cough.

There was a clicking noise near his face.

Henry looked up into the muzzle of a revolver pointed between his eyes.

Donaldson was holding the binoculars so tightly to his eyes that they were beginning to hurt the sockets. There was a leak in them too, which didn’t make it any easier, and the lenses were steaming up.

‘ Fuck this rain,’ he blasted. ‘Can’t see a damn thing properly.’

He could make out the two figures on the opposite bank about a mile away, one standing above the other. But that was all. They were just stick men on a drawing. He knew one was Henry, knew one was Hinksman, but couldn’t tell which was which.

He swore again and looked round as a rifle marksman trotted up beside him.

Henry let his head drop back into the mud with a ‘plop’.

‘ Christ,’ he gasped, ‘I hoped you’d drowned.’

‘ Take more than a trickle of water to get rid of me,’ said Hinksman.

He was also covered in mud, was panting heavily, and coughing up mud and water.

Though very tired too, the one big advantage he had was that he was holding a gun and pointing it at Henry. The gun was coated in thick mud too, but Henry had no illusions about this. He knew it would probably still fire and wasn’t about to take any stupid risks on the off-chance.

Hinksman wiped the gritty mud from his eyes and mouth. ‘Well, last time we were together like this, the roles were reversed. So, Henry, how does it feel to have a gun pointed at you?’

‘ I love it.’

‘ Yeah, I’ll bet you do, asshole,’ sneered Hinksman.

‘ So what are you going to do? Kill me, like you killed all the other innocents?’

Hinksman shrugged. ‘Innocent bystanders get killed occasionally. That’s just the way it is, Henry. But I haven’t got time to get into that debate now. So, Henry, here we are — just you and me. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Just us two, alone. I’d better watch myself… you’re a pretty dangerous guy. We got lots in common, you an’ me.’

‘ Oh, I doubt it,’ said Henry. He started to sit up.

Hinksman took a step backwards. His foot sank in the mud and he nearly overbalanced. ‘Don’t you fucking try anything, or I’ll just kill you now!’ he warned.

‘ All I’m doing is sitting up, OK?’ Henry said. ‘Y’know, I really do think you’re afraid of me.’

‘ In your dreams, chum. You couldn’t scare a kid shitless.’

Henry looked across the river to Glasson Dock. He could see the tiny figures on the dock wall. Help seemed a long way away.

‘ They can’t do nothing for you, Henry. It’s just you and me — and our common interests.’

‘ We’ve nothing in common,’ Henry stated. He drew his knees up and folded his arms around them. He was really shaking now, both with cold and fear. His voice had begun chattering as he spoke.

Henry felt his gun hanging in the holster under his left armpit. For the first time he realised it was still there and Hinksman obviously didn’t know about it.

‘ Oh, but we do. For example, we’ve both fucked the same woman. Kate. Lovely lady. Lovely, lovely lady.’

Henry’s chill disappeared, to be replaced by a burning heat throughout his lower abdomen. The look in his eyes changed from fear to anger, then to danger.

‘ She’s putting on a bit of weight around the thighs and midriff. But she’s a nice, really nice woman. At least she was until she met me, then she became debauched, a real animal. Do you know, I couldn’t believe you’d never had anal sex before. That really surprised me in this day and age.’

‘ You bastard,’ Henry hissed. Very deliberately he laid the palm of his left hand over his right bicep and jacked up his right fist.

‘ I know, I admit it. I’ve done a lot of very bad things to her, Henry. Very bad indeed… but your colleagues in that big blue van have done something even worse, by ramming me off the road.’

‘ How do you fathom that?’

‘ They killed her,’ he said with a fake note of surprise in his tone.

‘ You see, she was in the back of the van. You mean you didn’t know? Trussed up like a chicken, naked as a jaybird an’ all that, but definitely alive — until they forced me off the road, that is. I gotta quick glance at her before I climbed out. Real mess. Head all smashed in. She looked pretty dead to me, pretty fuckin’ dead. And your pals did it. Not me, not me, Henry.’

‘ You liar.’

‘ Now why in hell would I lie at a time like this?’

Henry thought numbly, And I told them to ram him off the road.

Shoot the one who’s standing up,’ Donaldson said to the marksman. ‘That’s Hinksman, I’m sure of it. One hundred per cent.’

‘ How do you know?’

‘ I know. Trust me. Shoot him.’

‘ No, I can’t,’ stuttered the marksman, cracking under the pressure of a real-life situation. ‘It wouldn’t be reasonable force. I’d have to justify it in court.’

‘ So? Fuck me! He’s pointing a gun at your colleague. Last time he did that he pulled the trigger and killed the poor son of a bitch. Now shoot him before he does it again.’

‘ No, I won’t.’

‘ What is it with you English cops, for Christ’s sake?’ Donaldson screamed through the torrential rain. ‘A pal of yours is being threatened by a maniac with a gun who’s killed before and you’re discussing what you might have to say in court. I don’t believe this! Just pull the fucking trigger.’