Horse's Arse (26 page)

    'She
shot him,' answered Pizza tearfully. 'Get a fucking ambulance, for Christ's
sake, he's been shot.'

    Benson
turned and shouted to the group who were now gathered behind him at the door.
'Someone get an ambulance on the hurry up and tell Control this has gone to
fucking rat shit.' Piggy hurried out into the living room to make the call on
his personal radio.

    Benson
knelt down next to Bovril and looked closely at him. He could see very little
blood around the hole in his tunic. Bovril's eyes were opening and closing and
his lips were moving.

    'Stay
with him, keep him awake,' he instructed Pizza, who had his ear close to
Bovril's mouth as his lips moved. Benson stood up, went over to the bed and
looked dispassionately at Myra's corpse.

    'Fucking
bitch,' he snarled and spat into the still-bleeding hole in the back of her
head. Then he saw the pistol lying by her right knee and called Clarke over to
him. He and the ashen-faced detective quickly discussed what to do next.

    'We
haven't got long, Bob. We're going to have to make the best out of this that we
can. This gun'll come in handy.'

    'How?'
asked Clarke, glancing over at Bovril. He was consumed with guilt, incapable of
thinking straight. He repeated his question.

    'What's
happened in here is tidy. This bitch is dead, but we can still score some
points. Some more fingerprints on the gun would come in handy, wouldn't they?'

    Clarke
still didn't understand.

    'We
can tie someone else in to the gun, Bob,' said Benson urgently, picking it up
with a Biro stuck up the barrel. 'Driscoll's prints on the shell cases would go
down a treat.'

    At
last Clarke nodded his understanding as Benson took a handkerchief from his
pocket and spread it on the bed next to Myra. Then, using the handkerchief, he
opened the chamber and ejected one live round and the two spent cartridges. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw that one or two of the group were watching
him.

    'Get
them out of here, Bob. Fewer people who know the better,' he whispered. 'Find
something for them to do while I get this sorted.'

    Benson
wrapped the bullets in his handkerchief and walked back into the living room.
Driscoll and Baker still lay unconscious side by side and obscured from the other
groaning Mafia by the sofa. Kneeling alongside them, he quickly forced
Driscoll's right thumb and forefinger on to both of the spent cartridges, and
for good measure did the same to Baker with the live round. Smiling grimly, he
walked back into the bedroom, where he found Clarke kneeling alongside Bovril
and Pizza. The others had disappeared. Clarke looked up as he entered.

    'OK?'
he asked.

    'Done
and dusted,' replied Benson, going over to the bed and carefully replacing the
live round and the spent cartridges in their original places in the chamber.
Snapping the pistol closed, he threw it alongside Myra's body. 'That should
fuck them,' he said quietly, turning back to the group on the floor. 'How's he
doing?'

    Bovril
could feel the liquid running even faster inside him, almost gurgling like a
stream in flood. He felt cold and dizzy and was still struggling to breathe. He
couldn't focus his eyes but was aware of people around him. One of them was
Pizza. Pizza was talking to him but he couldn't hear him, the buzzing in his
head was too loud. Lisa. Lisa. He had to get a message to her. He had to tell
her he loved her. Perhaps Pizza would pass it on. He'd tell her himself when he
got out of hospital. There was only one bullet inside him, he was sure he was
going to survive. But what was that gurgling sound? Why was he so cold? Why
couldn't he hear or see properly? Pizza, Pizza, listen to me, you have to tell
Lisa something for me. Nobody knows about her yet, but I love her and I need
her to know that. You have to tell Lisa that for me. Pizza, Pizza, can you hear
me? You have to tell Lisa. Lisa. And Bovril slipped into unconsciousness,
bleeding to death on the floor of a dingy bedroom in a squalid flat in the
arsehole of the world, a whispered name on his lips.

    He
opened his eyes in a very dark place. He didn't know where; it was so dark he
couldn't see his hand in front of his face. He turned slowly round in the dark,
but dare not move any further. A few minutes passed. Then he noticed that he
was beginning to cast a shadow in front of him and he turned to see a bright
light some distance away. Despite its intensity, the light didn't hurt his eyes
and he began to walk uncertainly towards it. The light warmed him and as he got
closer he saw a figure silhouetted deep inside it. He strained his eyes and
then smiled with relief as he recognised the figure. Bovril ran into the
welcoming, warm light, all fear and pain gone. The light closed around him and
he was gone.

    It
was still raining when they buried Bovril two weeks later; no one could swear
that it had ever stopped. Low, scudding, leaden clouds, whipped along by a
biting northerly wind, added to the melancholy air in the small churchyard a
few miles west of Horse's Arse. The surrounding trees, stripped of their
leaves, thrust their branches into the sky like blackened, arthritic fingers
and bent against the chilling blast. Circling rooks added their menacing tones
to proceedings, completing the depression that hung over the churchyard.

    Situated
on the side of a hill, the place offered little defence against the elements,
and the crowd gathered around the grave huddled closer for protection. The thousand-year-old
oak at the far corner of the graveyard, however, had provided cover for
mourners and revellers alike for as long as the church had stood. In the
summer, its heavy, low branches, which touched the ground in places, provided
solace from the beating sun, and now it protected the slim young girl from the
wind and rain as she watched the proceedings below her.

    The
gravel path to the church door was lined with uniformed officers wearing white
gloves. They had stood silently to attention as Bovril's coffin, draped with
the Force flag with his helmet balanced on top, had been borne along the path
and into the church by a party made up of the Brothers, Piggy, Pizza, Andy
Collins and Psycho. Ally was still sulking, as he'd been thrown off the original
party on account of his height, which caused the coffin to tilt alarmingly.
During a dress rehearsal, they'd dropped it. The church had been packed to the
rafters with officers from all over the county and Bovril's relatives. Some of
those, Psycho had noticed happily, were well worth a shag and he'd resolved to
get after them once the funeral was over. Most of the officers there had no
idea who Bovril was and had certainly never met him, but his funeral was a
great opportunity to get away from tedious divisional duties elsewhere. But the
'B' Division officers who knew of him and the Horse's Arse officers in
particular, who knew him well, were there for all the right reasons. The Chief
had given his eulogy prompting one or two raised eyebrows, but generally
decorum was preserved. Even Inspector Greaves at the back of the congregation
was on his best behaviour, though he very publicly needed his wife with him as
an emotional crutch.

    The
service over, the coffin party had crunched along the path to the prepared
grave where they gathered round for the service of interment. Pizza had
deliberately absented himself from the throng and stood on his own with his
back to the driving rain. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He'd felt
like that since the shooting, preferring his own company and so far refusing to
discuss the matter with the rest of the group. The CID officers who'd
investigated Bovril's murder had found Pizza bloody hard work when they'd
questioned him. It wasn't that he was stupid or being awkward; he really
couldn't talk about the death of his friend. His find in the garages had proved
crucial in tying Driscoll and his cohorts in the flat to the attack on the pub
landlord. All fourteen were now languishing on remand in Strangeways charged with
the assault; Driscoll and Baker also faced additional charges relating to the
gun used by Myra to murder Bovril and the assault on her revealed by the
post-mortem. They were all looking at substantial prison sentences with luck,
but Pizza drew no comfort from his part in their downfall. As he snapped out of
yet another flashback to that fateful day, he gave a deep sigh and looked
beyond the huddle at the grave to the oak tree at the far corner. He could see
a young girl sheltering under its branches and covered his eyes from the rain
to see if he recognised her. He didn't, and out of idle curiosity walked slowly
over to the tree and joined her in its shelter.

    'Hello.
My name's Alan Petty,' he said quietly. 'Were you a friend?'

    'Yes,
sort of I suppose,' she said hesitantly.

    'He
was my best mate,' continued Pizza, growing quickly in confidence with this
apparently vulnerable and very attractive girl. 'I was with him when he was
killed, in the same room.'

    'With
him?' she said, suddenly very interested and looking intently at him. 'What
happened, can you tell me? Are you allowed to?'

    Pizza
sighed, looking at his shoes and then towards the grave as his throat tightened
and his eyes filled. 'It's difficult for me. I'm sorry, but sometimes I can't
talk about it,' he said hoarsely. 'He was my best friend and I was standing
next to him when she shot him.'

    'It
must have been very frightening,' she said softly, slipping an arm through his.
'Did he suffer at all?'

    'No,
I don't think so. He was alive for a few minutes after, but I don't think he
really knew what was going on. He was sort of delirious, I think, in and out of
consciousness, and then he was gone.' His throat began to ease.

    'How
long had you been friends?' she asked.

    'Not
very long really, but we were really tight, know what I mean?'

    The
girl had moved round to face Pizza and began to gently probe his memory and
remove the layers that tried to cover the nightmare.

    'What
happened in the flat?' she asked softly.

    Pizza
swallowed hard as he remembered. He wanted to tell her everything. Strangely,
he felt better as he talked to her.

    'We
were there to nick this mob for GBH, but he and I kept out of all the aggro. We
went to search the bedroom and she was in there. He tried to talk to her. He
was really pleasant about things and then she shot him. Just like that, and
then she blew the back of her own head off.'

    'Why
didn't you get involved at the start?' she asked, sensing somehow that it was significant.
He shivered as the wind gusted hard and thrust his hands deep into his coat
pockets.

    'Don't
know really. He didn't seem interested, didn't want to be there. He had
something on his mind, I think.'

    'What
makes you say that?'

    'Well,
before we went in he was miles away and I asked him what was up. He just said
that he'd forgotten to tell someone something important. No, not forgotten,
"bottled out", that's what he said, and it was a woman. He was going
to tell her whatever it was later, but Christ only knows what it was all
about.'

    The
girl smiled sadly. 'Did he say anything else?'

    'No,
I don't think so, not until after he'd been shot and he was delirious. His
voice was really quiet, almost a whisper. I had his head in my lap when he
died. He was trying to talk, looking at me like he was desperate to tell me
something. His lips were moving but I couldn't hear what he was saying.'

    'Nothing
at all?'

    'No,
he was too quiet. It sounded like he was saying a name or something like that,
but I couldn't make it out.'

    'A
girl's name, do you think?'

    'Could
have been, but I couldn't hear him properly. It sounded like "Leaf"
or "Leach" or something like that but it didn't make any sense.'

    He
noticed that the girl's eyes had filled with tears and she was quiet, looking
back at the ceremony at the grave. 'Are you OK?' he asked gently.

    'I'm
fine. Thanks for being so kind and telling me about things. I'm glad you were
with him when he died. I know he'd have got a lot of comfort from you.'

    'Do
you think so? God, I hope he did,' sighed Pizza. 'He was my best friend. How
did you know him, by the way?'

    She
laughed, and smiling said, 'I only knew him a short time, but he had quite an
effect on me. We were good friends.' She paused before continuing, 'It looks as
though they're finishing up down there. You'd better join them, hadn't you?'