Vicious Circle (6 page)

‘You will never know how much I love you,’ he told her, and was about to close the door when he saw something which brought his fear flooding back. A thin glistening snake of blood crawled out from under her blonde hairline and ran down her cheek, onto her chin and neck.

‘No!’ he blurted. ‘Oh God, no!’ He reached out one hand to her, but he was reluctant to touch her and discover the worst. He forced himself to do it, and he parted the golden waves of her hair. The bullet hole had been hidden beneath them. Hector brought his face close to hers and studied the wound. He was a soldier, and he had seen countless bullet wounds. His first estimate of the situation was confirmed. The light bullet must have been deflected by the heavy gold ring, but it had also been tumbled. The deflection had not been sufficient to leave Hazel untouched. The bullet had hit her high in the front of the skull. The entry wound was not a neat circular puncture but an elongated tear in her scalp. The bullet had rolled in flight and hit her sideways on.

Gently he ran his fingers back through her hair, examining her scalp. There was no sign of any exit wound. The bullet was still inside her skull; inside her brain.

He closed his eyes tightly. Yes, he was a soldier and he had seen many good men go down. But not this, never the one woman he had ever truly loved. He had thought he was tough and he had thought he could take it. But he discovered now he was not and he couldn’t. His soul quailed. His universe reeled. He braced himself. It took an enormous physical effort, but he spoke aloud to himself. ‘You stupid bastard! Standing here moping while her life bleeds away. Move! Damn you, move!’

He closed the door and ran round to the driver’s side. He clambered into the seat. The engine had stalled. He started it again. His mind was racing now. The nearest general hospital was the Royal Hampshire in Winchester. The road behind him was blocked and impassable. He calculated the quickest alternative route to reach it. It would put an extra eight miles on the journey.

Nothing else for it,
he told himself grimly and gunned the Rover. He drove fast, very fast. He took chances passing other vehicles in dangerous situations. This was nearly his downfall, but also his ultimate salvation. He shot past a heavily laden lorry that was lumbering up a blind rise. In doing so he avoided by mere inches a head-on collision with an oncoming police car. The driver made an immediate U-turn and came after him with the siren blaring. Hector saw in the rear-view mirror the vivid blue and yellow reflective markings of the vehicle, and the peaked cap of the police driver chasing him.

‘Thank you, God!’ he breathed and pulled over immediately. The police car parked in front of him and two uniformed officers jumped out and came back to him with grim expressions. Hector lowered his window and stuck his head out. Before either of the traffic officers could speak he shouted at them.

‘My wife has been shot in the head. She is dying. You must give me an escort to Winchester Hospital A & E.’ They both paused with their grim expressions changing to consternation. ‘Here! Take a look. She is on the back seat,’ Hector insisted. The man with sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve ran to the rear window and peered in.

‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘There is blood all over the place.’ He straightened up and looked at Hector. ‘Okay! Follow me, sir.’

‘Let your mate ride in the back with my wife. He can cushion her head from being thrown about.’

‘Peter, you heard the man,’ the sergeant snapped, and the younger man scrambled into the back seat of the Rover.

Gently Hector helped him settle Hazel’s head onto his lap. Then he shouted to the sergeant, ‘All set. Let’s go.’ The patrol car raced away with its siren howling and Hector’s Range Rover close on its tail.

There was an ambulance parked outside the main doors to the emergency room at the hospital, but the sergeant gave it a blast with the siren and it moved off the stand hurriedly as Hector drove up. The sergeant jumped out and ran into the building. He came back almost at once leading a white-coated orderly pushing a theatre trolley. Hector helped the orderly lift Hazel’s limp body onto the trolley and cover her with a sheet.

‘Go with your wife, sir,’ the sergeant told him. ‘I’ll wait here to take your statement later. You will have to tell us how this happened.’

‘Thank you, officer.’ Hector turned and followed the trolley into the entrance. A young female doctor accosted him.

‘What happened to this lady?’

‘She was shot in the head. There is a bullet in her brain.’

‘Take the patient to X-ray,’ the doctor snapped at the orderly. ‘Tell them, I want front and side plates of the head.’ Then she glanced at Hector. ‘Are you related to the patient?’

‘She is my wife.’

‘You’re in the best place, sir. The consulting neurosurgeon from London is here today. I will ask him to come to examine your wife as soon as he can.’

‘Can I stay with her?’

‘I am afraid I have to ask you to wait until she has been to X-ray and until the neurosurgeon has examined her.’

‘I understand,’ Hector said. ‘You will be able to find me outside with the police. They want to take a statement from me.’

Hector spent the next half-hour with the police sergeant sitting in the front seat of the police car. The officer’s name was Evan Evans. Hector gave him directions to the scene, and a brief description of the nature of the attack.

‘I was trying to defend my wife from the assailants,’ Hector explained, but he was careful not to give too many details. As far as the law was concerned he had committed a double murder. He had to have time to think his cover story through. ‘I drove my Range Rover into their motorcycle and I think both the riders were injured. I did not have time to attend to them. I was most anxious to get my wife under proper medical care.’

‘I can understand that, sir. I will phone my headquarters immediately and have them send a vehicle to the scene. I am afraid they will have to impound your wife’s car for a full forensic examination.’ Hector nodded his understanding, and the sergeant went on, ‘I know you will want to be with your wife now, but we shall require a full written and signed statement from you as soon as possible.’

‘You have my home address and my mobile phone number.’ Hector opened the car door. ‘I will be available any time you need me. Thank you, Sergeant Evans. When my wife recovers, a great deal of the credit for that will go to you.’

As he walked back into the hospital the young doctor hurried to meet him.

‘Mr Cross, the neurosurgeon has examined your wife and her X-ray plates. He would like to speak to you. He is still with Mrs Cross. Come with me, please.’

The neurosurgeon was in a screened examination cubicle bending over Hazel’s supine figure, which was still on the trolley. He straightened up as Hector entered the cubicle and came to meet him. He was a handsome middle-aged man. He had the self-assured air of one both intelligent and highly competent; a master of his craft.

‘I am Trevor Irving, Mr…?’

‘Cross. Hector Cross. How is my wife, Mr Irving?’ Hector cut across the pleasantries.

‘The bullet has not exited.’ Irving was just as business-like. ‘It’s lying in an extremely delicate position, and there is bleeding. It must be removed, and at once.’ He pointed to the backlit X-ray plate on the scanner beside Hazel’s bed. The dark shadow of the tiny round-nosed projectile stood out boldly against the soft billows of brain tissue that surrounded it.

‘I understand.’ Hector averted his eyes. He didn’t want to look at that terrible harbinger of her death.

‘There is a complication in that your wife is pregnant. How far along is she?’

‘Forty weeks. She was examined by her gynaecologist this morning.’

‘I thought it might be that far advanced,’ Irving said. ‘The foetus will be dangerously distressed by the mother’s surgery. If we lose her, we might lose her child with her.’

‘You have to save my wife at all costs. She is the one who bloody counts.’ Hector’s tone was savage. Irving blinked.

‘They both bloody count, Mr Cross. And don’t you bloody forget that.’ His tone matched Hector’s.

‘I apologize unreservedly, Mr Irving. Of course I did not mean that. My only excuse is that I am distraught.’

Irving recognized in Hector Cross a man who did not back down easily. ‘I am going to do my utmost to save both of them, mother and child. However, we will need your permission for Doctor Naidoo here to immediately remove the child by Caesarean section using a spinal block anaesthetic. Only then can I proceed to remove the bullet.’

He turned to the other physician in the cubicle, who came forward to shake Hector’s hand. He was a young Indian man but there was almost no trace of an accent as he said, ‘The baby is still in very good condition. Caesarean section is a very simple procedure. There is almost no danger involved and neither your wife nor your child will be traumatized.’

‘All right, then. Do it. I’ll sign any piece of paper you need,’ Hector said. He felt as cold as his voice sounded in his own ears.

*

A nurse conducted Hector to a hospital waiting room. There were half a dozen other people there before him. They all looked up expectantly as Hector entered, but then slumped with disappointment and resignation. Hector helped himself to a cup of coffee from the communal urn. He saw his hands were shaking and the cup chattered against the saucer. With an effort he controlled them, and found a seat in a corner of the large room.

He was accustomed to being in complete command of any situation, but now he felt helpless. There was nothing for him to do but wait. And not allow despair to overtake him.

He had not had a chance to think things through since the dreadful moment that the Mercedes van with the masked driver had roared past him on the narrow road. From that moment he had been driven only by adrenalin and the instincts of survival towards himself and his loved ones, Hazel and the infant. This was his first chance to evaluate the situation soberly and calmly.

One thing was certain; he was in a war to the knife. He had to shore up his mental defences and prepare for the next assault from a faceless and hidden enemy. He could only guess whence it would come. All he was really certain of was that it would come.

However, his mind was still playing tricks with him. His despair returned in full force; this feeling of confusion and uncertainty, this overpowering sense of dread. All he was able to concentrate on was the picture in his mind of the trickle of blood running down Hazel’s face and the nothingness in her staring eyes.

He took a gulp from the coffee mug and pressed the fingers of his free hand into his eye sockets until it hurt; trying to rally his resources. It took a while, but at last he had himself under control.

‘Okay. So what have we learned about the nature of the beast?’ he asked himself. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and found his small moleskin notebook. ‘The van was almost certainly stolen, but I have the registration number.’ He scribbled it down. ‘Next, the driver of the Mercedes. Very little there. Face covered by the mask.’ He replayed the brief sighting in his mind and scanned it for details. ‘Blue denim work shirt, probably fifteen quid at Primark.’ He paused for a moment, and then went on. ‘Left arm bare. Very dark skin. Good muscle tone. Young and fit.’ He wrote it down in his own personal shorthand. ‘Impression of a wristwatch on his skin, but no watch. Careful bastard, then. Stripping for action. Red tattoo on back of the hand. Heart? Scorpion? Coiled snake? Not sure.’ He paused. ‘Nothing else there. What about the two dearly departed? Police forensics will check their fingerprints and will milk every other detail from their cadavers. Though there is little doubt about their tribal origins. I had a good look at them both, post culling. Those Nilotic features are unmistakable. Thin nose and lips. Prominent front teeth. High cheekbones. Handsome. Tall, lean bodies. Almost certainly Somalis.’ Then he smiled grimly at his own naïvety. ‘Or Maasai, or Ethiopian, or Samburu or any one of the other Nilotic tribes. But Somali still makes the most sense to me. The dynasty of Tippoo Tip, the great warlord. They were the original Beast. They were the ones who hijacked Hazel’s yacht; who kidnapped Cayla; who hacked off her head and sent it to us in a bottle. This is very much their style. I thought that I had culled most of that clan. I thought that I had got them all, but a nest of scorpions breeds up again quickly. Could easily be that some of them escaped us to carry on the blood feud.’

Hector had often tried to fathom the tradition of these honour killings. The blood feud was one of the concepts of Sharia law most alien to the Western mind. The aim of the blood feud was neither punishment nor retribution. If it were, then the killing would be of the original perpetrator of the crime, and once that had been achieved the matter would come to an end. It is rather the cleansing of the family honour by the slaying of any member of the offender’s family. Of course, the spilled blood of that victim cries out to the opposite family for purification. Circle without end.

Hector sighed. ‘Time to call up some help here.’ He did not have to ponder that question. There was only one answer: Paddy O’Quinn. Good old Paddy and his merry men.

When Hector and Hazel had first met, Hector had been the owner and operator of Cross Bow Security. Cross Bow’s only client was Bannock Oil, the enormous oil conglomerate that Hazel still headed as CEO. Once the two of them had united, Hazel had wanted Hector close to her at all times. She had persuaded him to take up a position on the board of directors of Bannock Oil, and to sell all his holdings in Cross Bow to Bannock Oil so that he would be free to join her. The price Bannock Oil paid to buy Hector out was substantial but completely fair. It was a sum sufficient to make him financially independent and the master of his own destiny. This was Hazel’s way of ensuring that Hector was a free man, and that they could always be equal partners in their marriage. She did not want him to be subservient to her by reason of her own vast wealth. She knew he was an alpha male and would not, could not, have tolerated any other arrangement for long. It was a gesture so typical of her.