Anna paused only to pick up her backpack and stumbled towards the opening. Outside, the brightness of the day took her by surprise after the cold darkness of the crypt. She ran back towards Hawley and saw immediately he wasn’t there. His shouts drew her attention and she looked down in time to see Starkey propelling a heavy backpack into the water of the pond below.
Something broke inside Anna then. Gave like a taut string finally yielding to the pressure of an impossibly heavy load. There was no time to consider words like depravity or evil. They were hopelessly inadequate to describe the numb drumming in her ears. All she knew in that moment was that her body became galvanised by purpose. She had time to hear Hawley swear and move towards Starkey in the water before she began to run.
* * *
Hawley had no thoughts other than to get to the rucksack, already three-quarters submerged in the water. Starkey was coming at him, his expression fixed, eyes now wild with an obscene purpose no sane person would ever understand. Hawley moved forwards, reaching down, grabbing whatever he could, aware of the knife in Starkey’s hand, driven by the sight of the backpack sinking ever lower in the water. Starkey roared and lunged; Hawley spun and threw mud and dirt into the man’s face. It slowed Starkey, caused him to hesitate and splutter, a big hand coming up to wipe, allowing Hawley to run past into the water. He felt the sharp stab in his shoulder, felt the resistance of bone as the blade slid, but continued on, reaching for the straps, ducking sideways in an attempt to get away from Starkey and pull the rucksack out.
Weighed down by its contents and water, Hawley needed both hands to haul, feet sinking and slipping into the silt below, groaning, teeth grinding with effort, the backpack at last now more out of the water than in. He turned in time to see Starkey looming above him, only barely able to turn away from the downward thrust of the knife. But this time there was real pain as the blade cut through the muscles of his forearm. Hawley fell, hitting the shallow water, knowing he needed to get up, knowing Starkey was above him now and that the next strike of the knife might be to chest or neck or head. He turned, spluttering, helpless on his back, looking up at the monstrous shadow above him, hearing only the whump, whump, whump of the helicopter blades as it hovered above them.
Fifty
Anna deployed her ASP and the telescopic baton felt reassuringly solid in her hand. She ran into the water, the splashes loud, her knees high, wanting him to know she was there. It worked. The noise made Starkey hesitate and turn. But Anna had the advantage of momentum.
Move fast, hit hard. That was what her instructors always told her.
There was no hesitation as she put all her weight behind a single blow to the outside of Starkey’s thigh. He buckled and she knew the pain would be immense. There was a problem in using the lower extremities as targets because it left you open to blows from the upper limbs. But she had surprise and shock and the water on her side. Starkey’s arm holding the knife dropped, and Anna brought the baton back on the counter-swing and hit him above the elbow.
His hand jerked open, spilling the knife into the water.
Starkey howled with pain. He was on his knees. Anna held the PAVA canister in her other hand and, from a metre, sprayed it into Starkey’s face. Pelargonic acid vannillylamide was what most UK forces had gone over to using. Naturally occurring and closely related to the irritant in chilli peppers, it incapacitated through severe pain for up to an hour. Anna’s aim was good and Starkey got some in both eyes. He screamed, both hands balled to his orbits as he flopped and flailed.
Anna stood back. Starkey was stumbling out of the water, whimpering, unable to see.
‘Get on the floor,’ she ordered.
He didn’t comply.
‘On the floor.’ She went behind him and kicked at his knees. He stumbled and she booted his back so that he fell forwards.
‘Hands behind you. Put your hands behind you.’
Still he didn’t comply. She knelt on his back, using the baton against the back of his neck. ‘Put your hands behind you, NOW.’
Weakly, Starkey shifted his arms and she had the rigid cuffs on him within seconds. His feet were still in the water. It wouldn’t take much to kick him around so his face was in an inch of mud. She could use her foot then. Press his nose and mouth into the filth. Use the Velcro straps to restrain his legs. She wondered how long it might take for the bastard to drown.
Janice Dawson’s ragged, broken voice reached out to her.
‘He boiled her bones, you know that?’
She thought about it then. Wondered how it might have been if the helicopter had not been hovering. Some – colleagues who had to deal with filth like Starkey and the aftermath, the press, the horror etched in the faces of the relatives – might have accepted pressing his face into the choking mud as a blessing, a mercy killing. A way of ridding the world of a blight. But Anna was a hunter, not an executioner. Neither the judge nor the jury. And the force would see it as cold-blooded murder. It would mean a criminal conduct dismissal and a trial. Common sense held sway.
But it took a hefty dollop of self-persuasion and a pinch of self-preservation. Instead, Anna contented herself with imagining it and committing the crime in her mind. That way it was over and done within seconds.
She surprised herself by feeling no remorse. No burning need to chastise herself.
Shaw would have been proud.
Anna turned away. Starkey was no longer her priority. She turned back to Hawley, who was already getting to his feet and yanking on the rucksack once more. They dragged it out, over the mud and through the reeds and the pond scum, both of them panting with effort, Hawley falling to his knees frantically, his arm slick with his own blood mingled with the filthy silt, searching for the zipper, tearing it open, ripping back the cover.
She was in there. Trussed up like a piece of meat. Duct tape over her mouth, around her arms, around her knees and her torso. Anna held the rucksack while Hawley yanked her out by the shoulders. Blair wasn’t moving. She was inanimate flesh. Drowned in three feet of water.
‘No. No. No,’ said Hawley, laying her on her side. Anna fumbled at the tape. But Hawley was reaching for something in his pocket and pulled out keys. Or something that looked like a key, but which he unfolded to reveal a small, thin blade that sliced through the tape around Blair’s mouth, her arms and her legs and torso.
Behind them, Starkey was moaning.
Hawley pulled away the tape over Blair’s mouth and flipped her over onto her back before he pinched her nose, ready to apply mouth to mouth. But he was shaking, staring at her, and Anna saw that he was terrified. This was what Starkey, and the police’s handling of Rosie Dawson’ murder had done to him. Paralysed him with doubt and fear, even when it came to a matter of life and death.
Anna walked across and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ben. It’s OK. It’s OK to do this. You have to.’
Hawley turned his face up to the sky and screamed in frustration.
‘Ben,’ Anna said firmly. ‘Help her.’
Hawley looked at her, squeezed his eyes shut once and then bent his head to blow air into Blair’s throat. Five quick breaths followed by chest compressions, rapidly, twice per second. Then he listened, ear close to her heart. Unsatisfied, he gave her two more breaths and repeated the compressions. Thirty times. After the third set of rescue breaths, as he listened again for any hint of respiration, Blair coughed, threw up two lots of dirty water and moaned. Hawley pushed her onto her side and leaned in close to her.
‘It’s OK, Blair, everything is OK. Just breathe, lovely. Breathe.’