Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘I would have taken a radio,’ she argued.

‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘The others will catch up with him.’

‘No they won’t — and I don’t think he wants them to.’

Sean’s raincoat trailed behind him like broken wings as he burst from the alley. Lawlor was only a few metres ahead, never once looking over his shoulder — years of running from the police had taught him that could be a costly mistake. They ran straight across the emerging road, causing a passing car to judder to a stop, its horn blaring as the two figures disappeared into another alley and faded into the darkness.

Halfway along the alley Lawlor suddenly leapt to his side, hitting a six-foot fence and scrambling over it like a cat a second before Sean’s hands could grasp his ankle. ‘Bastard,’ he muttered, launching himself at the fence, his upper-body strength dragging him over just in time to see Lawlor straddle the fence on the opposite side of the garden. Now that they’d left the roads and alleyways, Sean knew he was on his own; the chasing pack would have no idea where he’d gone. He felt his ankle almost give way as he landed on hard grass, relieved it was only a fleeting pain as he sprinted across the lawn and jumped at the fence, clearing it more smoothly than he had the last. Remembering to roll as he hit the grass on the other side, he sprang back to his feet in one motion, cursing the raincoat that continually threatened to trip him as he struggled to see clearly in the ever-increasing darkness. Lawlor had already cleared the next fence, using a garden bench to vault it, the distance between the two men remaining the same. Sean maintained his pace as his foot hit the bench while his left hand helped him clear it, but this time it wasn’t grass that waited for him, it was paving slabs, slippery with winter moss and moisture from the cooling air. His right foot gave way under him and he hit the ground hard, his shoulder and hip taking the blow, his forehead connecting with the leg of a cast-iron table, forcing him to call out in pain as he pressed his hand to where he knew he’d been cut, feeling warm, slippery blood escaping from the wound.

‘Come here,’ he yelled after Lawlor, quickly back on his feet and moving across the garden, heaving himself over yet another fence, breathing hard and heavy now.

At first he could see nothing in the twilight, but where his eyes betrayed him his hearing came to the rescue: Lawlor had changed direction, heading for the end of the garden instead of traversing. Sean could hear the sound of feet scuffing against the higher fence as Lawlor struggled to pull himself over, fatigue beginning to override his fear and adrenalin. His own anger and the pain from his bleeding head and bruised shoulder drove him on, flooded his body with hormones that pushed him forward despite the burning in his brain and muscles. He hit the back fence just as Lawlor snaked across and landed on the other side with a thud, his footsteps heading away. Sean’s hands grabbed the top of the fence as he jumped from a standing position, pulling and scrambling until he was able to hook a leg over and roll on to the other side, but the fall was much further than he’d expected as the ground fell away from the backs of the houses.

Suddenly he heard a tremendous noise screaming up behind him. As he turned to see what it was, a dazzling beam of light came bearing down on him like an exploding star. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he braced himself for the sound and light to send him to oblivion, stumbling backwards, tripping and falling, until he saw the train crashing past, its passengers oblivious to the drama only inches away as the whistle screamed in alarm. He rolled further from the tracks, pushing reflections of near death aside as he scrambled back to his feet and scanned the trackside for Lawlor. The lights of the train picked him out no more than twenty metres ahead and Sean took off after him with increasing determination, already looking forward to the moment when he’d be kneeling on Lawlor’s back, twisting his shoulders and snapping on the quick-cuffs.

The train receded into the distance, leaving behind an eerie silence as Sean chased the shadow in front of him, concentrating on his running, maintaining a short powerful stride, arms pumping like pistons, occasionally flailing to the side when he slipped on the large pieces of loose gravel that ran alongside the tracks and between sleepers.

The darkness was almost total now, but then a spot of light appeared in the far distance, approaching slowly and silently at first. As it grew larger and louder, its speed seemed to increase tenfold and then tenfold more until it was a meteor hurtling towards them. Sean looked down at the darkness under his feet and assured himself that the approaching train would pass him safely by on the parallel set of tracks, but as it grew dangerously close he realized it had been disguising another sound, a rumbling and humming from the tracks he was running along. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a second light heading towards them, moving slower than the other, but still capable of bringing instant death to anyone who got in its way.

Sean knew he should stop, give up the chase and let Lawlor escape, hunt him down another day, but once he was after his man his police instincts took over, instincts that had been drummed into him since his first day on the force. To lose a suspect was the greatest of sins. So he resolved to keep going — keep going until he had Lawlor under his heel or lost him to the darkness of the night. He wouldn’t give up the chase, no matter what.

The silhouette of Lawlor kept moving steadily forward, but Sean could see he was tiring as he kept losing his footing, teetering to one side and then the other, his arms jutting out to keep his balance or break his fall, and all the time the lights from in front and behind continued to converge on the two men. Soon Sean would be close enough to kick Lawlor’s legs from under him and end the chase. But just as the train coming towards them was almost level with Lawlor, he burst across the tracks, his silhouette perfectly framed by the approaching light, and jumped clear less than a second before one hundred tons of metal moving at sixty miles per hour hurtled through the space he’d leapt from.

Despite the close proximity of the slower train behind him and the speed of the train in front of him, Sean could think of only one thing: unless he went now, Lawlor would be lost — and God knew when he’d surface again. Without looking over his shoulder, he crossed the first set of tracks, the reverberation vibrating the muscles in his legs, the lights so close they cast his shadow long and far, stretching it further with every fraction of a second, until he leapt to the second set of tracks, closing his eyes as he ran.

When he landed on the grass bank he was temporarily blinded and deafened by the noise and light of the train. Disorientated, almost confused to find himself still alive, he tried to work out which direction he was lying in. Along the tracks he saw a shadow stumbling down the grassy bank into the darkness below. He jumped to his feet and sprinted diagonally down the bank, closer and closer to his target until finally he threw himself headfirst across the remaining distance between them and brought Lawlor to the ground with a thud.

Sean pressed Lawlor’s face into the wet grass and held him there while he got his breath back. ‘I told you to stand still, didn’t I?’

Lawlor twisted his head so he could talk and breathe, trying to spit out the pieces of grass that stuck to the saliva gluing his lips, his voice broken and disjointed. ‘I … I didn’t know … who, who you … were, guv’nor.’

‘Bullshit,’ Sean panted. ‘You may not know who I am, but you know what I am.’