Richard Wiseman - To Kill Or Be Killed

David stood pointing his weapon like a duellist, side on for a smaller target.

“Drop it Wheeler!” David shouted, suppressing the fear inside and trying not to look at Beaumont stricken on the ground. McKie steeled himself.

Wheeler’s arm came arcing up away from Beaumont and in a back hand, but before the muzzle was on target McKie squeezed the trigger. He aimed for the head and his round struck Wheeler dead centre of the forehead knocking him back, eyes blinded by the smashing of the brain as the bullet ripped through and came out the other side; he fell backwards, no arms out, and smacked flat backed onto the course way in front of the coach, head two feet from the passenger doors.

The Sig 220 rail had clattered to the floor right by its owner. Beaumont lay on the tarmac hand to his chest air rasping in and out quickly his face bearing the concentration it was taking to do the simple task of breathing.

McKie stepped over Wheeler and checked his pulse. He couldn’t help but see the ragged hole in the head the bullet had rent. Wheeler twitched, eyes glazed and the pulse was weak. McKie picked up the pistol and put it in his jacket pocket as he squatted down by Beaumont.

“Jack! Jack! Can you hear me?” Beaumont looked up and nodded. McKie called out to no-one in particular. “Is there an ambulance on the way?”

“Armed police drop the weapon stand up and step away facing me hands in the air. Do it now!” was the answer he got to his question.

David looked into Beaumont’s eyes “You’ll be alright no?”

Beaumont’s eyes in a pain and fear filled place of their own gave him no answer and David felt the danger of the police weapons pointed at him. He took a last look in Beaumont’s eyes and then did exactly as he was told.

Once up he noted the three police vehicles and with relief the arrival of an ambulance, pre called by the armed response team. Officers made their way to Beaumont and another checked Wheeler. David allowed himself to be manhandled and he was made to lie on the ground. He was frisked, the two Sig’s taken and his pass pulled out. The pass was handed to a senior officer who looked very closely at his pass.

David looked up, neck only able to move, his hands cuffed tightly behind his back.

“I’m a civil servant! I have diplomatic immunity; check the pass. My friend the black guy he has the same.” Beaumont was being loaded into an ambulance and the police man wasn’t going to hold up his rapid journey to Stobhill.

“We’ll see about that. I don’t know if you or the dead man over there called us. So you’re going to have to come with me.”

“For God’s sake!” David shouted.

The policeman leaned down.

“I had that Wheeler in the bag at Stobhill yesterday, but he knocked out my constable and got away. I’m going to be very sure of who I let go and give a weapon to today I can tell you laddie.”

McKie nodded it made sense. He was helped up and put in the back of the police car. Forensic teams arrived and that part of the bus station was sealed off, including, unfortunately for the bus passengers, the toilets.

Ten minutes later David was sat in a cell, no shoes, his belongings in a sealed bag at reception, staring at a cell door thinking of Beaumont and of Wheeler’s face as he fell to the ground. He hadn’t said a word. He knew it made sense for them to make sure. The Police Inspector had made it clear that he was personally going to make sure that no assassin got past him on his watch, not after Liverpool and certainly not after Perth last night.

David looked around. He’d sat in customs holding cells with suspected smugglers, but this was the first time he’d been locked in a cell. It was small square and yet high. Fifteen feet from the ground there were opaque glass windows in the ceiling, thick oblong slabs in grill pattern. They let in a grey washed light. The thick steel door had a drop down flap about chest height. A policeman had checked on him through it. The floor was stone and the bed he sat on was a board. There were brown blankets and a rolled up thin blue mattress. It was a holding cell. There was a half walled area with a metal toilet and a flush button. Opposite the bowl was a spy hole similar to that of a domestic door. No privacy and no chance of escape; he’d felt that when the door locked. He had to wait whilst they checked his credentials. He wanted to know how Beaumont was.

He sat there thinking over the incident and each flash of memory brought butterflies to the stomach. After twenty minutes in the cell, the memory repeating itself over and over he made for the metal bowl, noting briefly an eye at the viewing hole in the wall opposite and big man as he was he bent over and was violently sick retching up porridge and coffee.

The time passed with David seeing Beaumont folding to the floor and his fingers twitching as he recalled the single shot opening the hole in Wheeler’s head. With an empty stomach he retched each time the memory of the dead man’s fall popped into his head.

Monty Lawton parked his dark green Mondeo in the visitor’s car park of the police station at Port Dundas Place half an hour after David’s arrival there. He’d had a busy morning. First he’d seen Wheeler, whom he’d been watching for all the previous day. He had also been told to look for Stanton. It was just before he’d been called out today that he’d got through the train station CCTV. His sharp eyes and quick mind had noted the man at Motherwell station, right where he lived. A CCTV backtrack within a ten mile radius had flagged up the lorry at the race track and he was about to call the police when the window inset live stream had shown Wheeler back at the bus station. He’d tried to call McKie, but the phone was engaged. Beaumont’s phone had just asked for messages, since it was still attached to the laptop in the Thistle Hotel. He’d watched with horror the unfolding drama at Buchanon and made a call to Jack. He’d rushed out jumped in the car and driven into the city.

In reception he told them who he was and they’d asked him to wait and whilst waiting his phone rang. The desk sergeant gave him a frown.

“Hi Monty here.. Yes Jack…I’m waiting…You called them yourself… Good…No… Is he? Good. Good… That’s two dead then… Stanton… No idea…but I’ve to get the police here to check a lorry at Hamilton Race Course… I think Stanton’s in the area… Okay… yes, “ he looked over at the desk guiltily “… Yes I am and ready at that. Okay I’ll have him out in a moment. Alright…” The inspector appeared at the desk then the door opened. “Right I’ve to go now. I’ll call back.”

“Mr Lawton?”

“That’s me right enough.”

“Inspector Searle.” They shook hands. “You boss identified this man as one of your own. He’s got some pull your boss. He came off the phone and then the Home Secretary called. Sorry we had to hold him, but we weren’t sure who was who at the bus station.”

“Doesn’t he have a pass like this?” He handed the inspector his pass.

“Yes, but we couldn’t be sure, not after Perth.”

“Sure enough.”

The inspector handed the pass back.

“This pass gives you diplomatic immunity. I’m therefore not able to hold him for the shooting of that man at the bus station. In fact right from the top it says to let him go even though he shot that man, who your organisation are saying is Wheeler, a man picked up after a road accident and found to be armed. He escaped yesterday.”

“Sure enough the man killed by McKie is Wheeler one of the illegal immigrants and according to our organisation a hired assassin.”

“Is that so? I’m not exactly sure who or what your organisation is?”

“You’re not meant to, but take it from us the country’s a better place for that man being dead. I do commend your thinking on holding David until you were sure. Our communications network shows that the Mersey marina murderer managed to get onto a flight this morning using one of our passes and a disguise, so good thinking.”