The Gulf Conspiracy (21 page)

‘
You come up,’ said Jane. ‘I’ve got a pile of stuff to get through for school on Monday so I could use the time.’

Steven said that he would come up late in the afternoon and suggested that they go out to dinner.

‘
That’d be nice,’ said Jane.

‘
See you tomorrow,’ said Steven. His flight was called for boarding as he switched off the phone.

The evening sun was bathing Canterbury Cathedral in pale orange light as Steven drove across Kent and down to the seaside town of Ramsgate. The Glasgow flight had been on time and he’d had no problems in getting in to the city. He’d showered and changed at the flat and been on his way again in seemingly no time - but getting round the M25 orbital had been a nightmare. Roadwork had reduced the speed of travel to a snail’s pace and caused him to give up all hope of missing the evening rush hour traffic on the roads leading to the south coast. It was nearly eight o’clock when he entered the outskirts of Ramsgate and stopped to ask for directions to Beach Mansions. The first two people turned out to be holiday makers who had no idea; the third, a local, gave him directions which turned out to be wrong but brought him close enough to find someone who actually did know where the building was.

Steven liked the look of Beach Mansions. He guessed that the building itself had been built around the end of the nineteenth century because of the styling and the fact that it was stone-built, but it had obviously been well looked after and exuded an air of solidity and middle class respectability. The long low building, interrupted in the middle by an arch giving access to an inner courtyard, occupied an elevated position where front-facing flats had uninterrupted views from their bay-windowed rooms out to sea. He noted that at least two of them had telescopes that would allow the residents to watch the comings and goings of cross channel ferries.

Steven parked in one of the white-lined parking bays marked ‘visitors’ and got out to approach the half of the building to the right of the arch, having been directed by a signboard pointing to numbers 18 to 36. The uniformed man behind the desk looked up from his paper and said, ‘Yes?’

‘
I’m calling on Dr Michael D’Arcy,’ said Steven. ‘Number 21.’

The man carefully folded his paper before lifting a handset and pressing a button on a board on his desk. Several moments passed before he said, ‘Dr D’Arcy’s not in.’

‘
Any idea when he might be back?’ asked Steven.

‘
He often works late.’

‘
Maybe I’ll hang around for a while,’ said Steven. ‘See if he comes home. What kind of car does he drive?’

‘
Green Toyota like my son, Gordon. It’s got a dent in the back. Some old dear along in Sandwich went right into him last Monday at traffic lights.’

‘
Gordon or Dr D’Arcy?’

‘
Dr D’Arcy,’ replied the man, looking as if it were a stupid question. ‘Gordon works in Newcastle.’

The daylight had all but gone as Steven paused to look down at the lights of the town before getting back into his car and turning on the radio. Half a dozen cars were to come and go in the next hour before Steven saw a green Toyota enter the car park. As it turned to park in a bay opposite he saw the damage to its rear end. He got out but had to delay crossing because another vehicle was coming into the car park. The car, a dark blue Range Rover, slowed to a crawl and Steven could see that its driver was watching the Toyota. His first assumption was that the driver must be a neighbour of D’Arcy’s waiting to say something to him when he got out – a view reinforced when Steven saw the driver’s window of the Range Rover slide down – but then he saw the gun appear in the driver’s hand.

Everything seemed to happen at once. D’Arcy who was now out of his car and locking his door, turned to face the Range Rover just as its driver raised his weapon to fire. Steven yelled out, ‘D’Arcy, get down!’

The silenced gun fired and D’Arcy was thrown over backwards from the impact of the bullet and lay spread-eagled on the ground as the Range Rover driver turned his attention to Steven whom he obviously hadn’t realised was there. Steven, now in a desperately vulnerable position, sprinted across the car park to throw himself into the shrubbery: it was the only cover available. He was conscious of another two dull plops coming from the gun. One resulted in wood splintering from a nearby branch while the other sent up shards of tarmac in front of him. A piece hit him on the left cheek and opened up a cut.

Steven rolled over and over until he came to a halt under a holly bush and turned to look back just as the Range Rover driver turned his headlights on to full beam and revved his engine. Steven felt like he was on some hellish floodlit stage as the Range Rover’s tyres squealed and its rear end twitched as the driver sent it hurtling across the car park directly at him. As he struggled to his feet there was only one decision to be made, whether to jump left or right. It was six of one, half a dozen of the other, he decided. Timing was going to be everything. He had to wait until the very last moment so that the driver would not have time to alter course. The blinding lights raced towards him as he stood there like a capeless matador until the moment of truth came and he threw himself to the left.

The Range Rover careered past him into the shrubbery and the pain of a thousand berberis thorns raked Steven’s face and hands as he landed in a dense clump of it. The right rear wheel of the Range Rover just caught the sleeve of his jacket as it hurtled past, ripping it away from his shoulder and reminding him how close he’d come to death. Now fuelled by panic, Steven struggled to free himself from the bush before the driver, who was now reversing the vehicle, could take another pot at him. The commotion, however, had caused lights to go on all over the building and people were coming outside to see what all the fuss was about. It was this that made the driver decide not to try again. Steven sank to his knees in exhaustion as he saw the Range Rover squeal round in a circle on the tarmac and head for the exit to disappear into the night.

Steven wiped away the blood coming from the scratches on his face with one hand and brought out his mobile phone with the other. He punched in the emergency number before hurrying over to where D’Arcy lay.

‘
Ambulance,’ he snapped. ‘Beach Mansions, Ramsgate, man with serious gunshot wound.’

D’Arcy was unconscious and Steven could see from the puddle on the ground that he had lost a lot of blood but he still had a pulse so, under the gaze of the small huddle of people gathering in the car park, he set about stabilising him as best he could. D’Arcy had failed to drop to the ground in response to his warning shout - most people wouldn’t - but in turning to see where the call had come from, he had moved his body just enough to ensure that the bullet had not hit him full front in the chest. It had entered at a slight angle and travelled upwards to smash his left clavicle before making a large jagged exit wound.

‘
I think you might need these,’ said a voice beside him. Steven turned to see an elderly woman, her face framed by a mass of grey hair, crouching down to proffer three rolls of clean white bandaging.

‘
Yes, thank you,’ he replied.

‘
I was a nurse,’ said the woman. ‘Perhaps I can help?’

‘
Maybe you could organise some blankets to keep him warm and get me some light,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve got to stem the blood flow somehow or he’s going to bleed to death.’

‘
Of course,’ said the woman. She went back to the small group of onlookers and Steven heard her say, ‘It’s Dr D’Arcy: he’s badly injured. We need blankets and a torch.’ She stemmed a chorus of, ‘What happened?’ by saying, ‘Quickly now!’

Blankets appeared and the nurse covered D’Arcy before directing a powerful torch beam on to the wound. Steven secured the pressure pad he’d fashioned from one of the bandage rolls over the gaping, jagged hole in D’Arcy’s shoulder but the thick white wadding turned red in a matter of seconds.

‘
Won’t do,’ said Steven. ‘Pressure alone’s not working.’

‘
How about a tourniquet?’ asked the nurse.

‘
Nothing to tie it round,’ said Steven. ‘The blood’s not coming from his arm. Quick! I need paperclips and forceps . . . or tweezers,’ he said. ‘Tweezers would do.’

‘
Quickly someone,’ said the nurse to the onlookers. ‘You heard the doctor.’

One of the ground floor residents brought out a box of paperclips and two more appeared with tweezers in their hands. Most of the group turned away in horror as Steven started fishing around inside D’Arcy’s wound with his bare hand. He glanced at the nurse’s face and read the criticism there. ‘If I don’t do this, he’s going to die,’ he muttered.

‘
I was actually thinking of you,’ said the nurse quietly. She looked at Steven’s bare hands covered in blood.

Steven found the severed artery. It still spurted blood as he brought it to the surface between thumb and forefinger bringing gasps from the few onlookers who still dared to watch through fingers over their faces.

‘
Paperclip,’ said Steven, holding out his palm. The nurse dropped one into it and after several abortive attempts punctuated by muffled curses, he managed to clip the end of the exposed artery. It was a slippery, messy business but the blood stopped spurting and Steven allowed himself a moment to recover before replacing the wadding over the wound and fixing it in place with yet more bandage which the nurse unrolled for him. ‘Thanks, you’re doing a great job,’ he said as a wail of sirens in the distance heralded the imminent and welcome arrival of the emergency services.

Steven knew the police would attend because of the mention of a gunshot wound he’d made. It was inevitable, as was the appearance of an armed response unit, which arrived just after the ambulance and two ordinary patrol cars. Two paramedics took over care of D’Arcy after Steven had briefed them on what he’d done already.

Steven stood up and rubbed the stiffness out of his knees before turning round to see a number of squad officers in full Kevlar armour and carrying automatic weapons clatter out of their van and start deploying round the car park.

‘
No point,’ said Steven approaching the officer in charge. ‘The gunman’s gone.’ He held out his ID and said, ‘If you come to the hospital. I’ll tell you as much as I can.’

‘
Now wait a minute,’ said the officer, a portly but erect man in his late forties with a small moustache - which only seemed to emphasise the roundness of his face - and an aura of self-importance about him. ‘You’re going nowhere. I don’t care who or what you are. You can’t just swan off from the scene of a serious crime.’

‘
I’m going with the patient,’ said Steven. ‘I need to talk to him as soon as he comes round. For your information, three shots were fired, one at the victim two at me then the gunman made off in a blue Range Rover. You’ll find the shell cases in the car park. That’s all you’re going to come up with here.’

‘
There are still procedures to be followed,’ said the policeman.

‘
Then you follow them,’ said Steven, thinking that the policeman looked like a man who had dedicated his life to following procedures at the expense of imagination.

‘
How is he?’ asked Steven, turning his attention back to D’Arcy as the two ambulance men loaded him carefully into the back of their vehicle.

‘
Very weak,’ replied the black paramedic who climbed in to continue treating him. ‘By God, you did a good job for a GP.’

Steven smiled as he climbed in and the back doors were closed. ‘I’m not a GP,’ he said. He knew very well that trained paramedics were a lot more use at the scene of an accident than the average doctor although this was not a view the BMA – that most conservative of bodies - liked to encourage.

‘
A&E?’ asked the man.

‘
Army field medicine,’ said Steven.

‘
Bloody hell,’ said the man. ‘This guy’s guardian angel was sure on the ball. What are the chances of a field medic being around when you stop a bullet in the street?’

A nurse set to work on cleaning up Steven’s scratches and abrasions while an A&E team worked on D’Arcy, with the angry inspector who had followed the ambulance to the hospital hovering beside Steven. Steven could appreciate the man’s frustration. Not only had he been unable to provide any description of the gunman, he had not managed to get the registration number of the Range Rover either.

‘
You’re a professional. What were you thinking of, man?’ complained the policeman.

‘
I was trying to keep my arse in one piece,’ replied Steven through gritted teeth. ‘It was dark and a man with a gun was trying to kill me.’

‘
Even though . . .’ said the policeman.

‘
He didn’t finish the job he set out to do,’ interrupted Steven. ‘I’ll need a guard on D’Arcy until we can move him.’

‘
What’s this all about?’ growled the policeman. ‘If you think you can turn my patch into the OK corral and ride roughshod over . . .’

‘
Stop right there!’ snapped Steven. ‘I appreciate that you’re pissed off but I know exactly what I can and can’t do and it might be in your interests if you were to find out too. I suggest you check with the Home Office if you’re in any doubt. In the meantime, just arrange an armed guard for D’Arcy and stop belly-aching.’

‘
What a bloody circus,’ mumbled the policeman as he withdrew.

‘
How’s D’Arcy?’ asked Steven as he saw the doctor in charge step back from the table and strip off his gloves.