Written In Blood

Chapter Fifty-Seven

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" With each curse, Kieran slammed his fist down on the steering wheel. He could not believe that so much had gone wrong so quickly; first there was the trap the police had set and almost caught him with, then he had failed to get Georgina's phone from his sister. It should not have been possible for him to fail to do that when his sister was so much smaller and weaker than him, and finally he had failed even to stop Tara reaching help.

It took more than a minute for him to calm down enough to leave the Land Rover, and when he did he left the keys in the ignition. Staying at the farm was no longer an option, not now that Tara had escaped him – he simply could not imagine that his sister would keep quiet about what had happened that morning – which meant leaving the village; to help him make a quick getaway he left the front door ajar when he entered the house.

He ran upstairs to his bedroom the moment he was through the front door, where he threw open the wardrobe so he could retrieve his sports-bag. He tossed it onto his bed, and was about to start throwing clothes after it when he stopped; he was normally one for acting first and thinking later, but he realised if he wanted to stand a chance of getting away he needed to go against his nature and think before doing anything.

Standing by the open wardrobe, Kieran thought harder about his situation than he had about anything in a long time. He had no idea where he was going to go, or what he was going to do when he got there – he would have to work out some way of making a living, fortunately he wasn't afraid of hard work, so he was sure he would be alright on that score. For the time being, though, he didn't think it mattered that he didn't have a destination in mind, that was something he could work out later; what did matter was that he got out of the village and put as much distance between it and him as he could.

To give him the best chance of getting away without getting caught, he needed to take with him everything he was likely to need for the next few days, specifically money, food and water – the less he had to stop, the better his chances of getting far enough away that the police wouldn't find him.

Now that he had some kind of plan, limited though it might be, Kieran reached into his wardrobe again, though not for clothes this time. Shifting some stuff about in the bottom, he soon uncovered the item he was looking for and, yanking the rucksack out from the junk that had accumulated to cover it, he left the room. His footsteps thundered as he descended the stairs in a rush, and once downstairs he hurried along the passage to the kitchen.

When he had filled the rucksack with as much food and drink as he could squeeze into it, he took it out to his Land Rover so he could stuff the bag behind the driver's seat. The next thing for him to go looking for was money, and he quickly emptied out the piggy bank - really a whiskey bottle they all threw their loose change into - his father kept in the living room; unfortunately, there seemed to be far more one and two pence pieces than coins of any other denomination. Any amount of money was going to be useful, but he would have preferred to see more pound coins in the flow as he poured the contents of the bottle into a carrier he got from the kitchen.

From the living room, Kieran made his way upstairs to his father's bedroom. He went straight to the chest of drawers under the window and pulled out the top drawer; rummaging amongst the socks and boxers, he soon found what he was after, the small, red lock-box where his father kept his emergency money. It amused him that his father thought the lock-box so well hidden when he had known where it had been for years; he thought it equally funny that his father thought the money in the box safe. At first look the lock-box appeared sturdy, but Kieran knew it had weak hinges, and with only a bit of effort he had it open so he could get at the contents.

"Sonofabitch," he swore angrily, throwing the lock-box aside so violently it cracked the door of the wardrobe. "Cheap, useless bastard," he raged as he counted the money he had taken from the box again and again, failing each time to make it amount to more than the two hundred pounds he had come to the first time. He hadn't expected his father to have a fortune stashed away, the family had never been well-off, but he had expected to find at least twice what he now held.

Kieran put aside his frustration as best he could and focused on what he needed to do; in the absence of any real money, he needed things that he could turn into money, jewellery being the best bet, but anything he could sell at a pawnshop would help. He knew that his father still had some of his mother's jewellery somewhere, he just wasn't sure whether it was worth anything; valuable or worthless, it was better than nothing if he could find it.

He found a dress watch he had never seen his father wear, but had no luck beyond that until he reached the wardrobe he had damaged; it was there that he found the jewellery box containing his mother's rings, earrings and necklaces. He didn't think what he had found would add up to more than five hundred pounds in value, but every penny he could get would help.

He searched Tara's bedroom next, raiding it rapidly for anything that might have value. He doubted he would get much for the small amount of jewellery he found so he left it behind, focusing instead on his sister's CD collection and the small number of electronic gadgets she had: mobile phone, iPod, the tablet she had convinced their dad to get for her last birthday, as well as the few other trinkets of possible worth he found.

He was just checking that he hadn't missed anything when he heard a vehicle pull into the yard. Leaving Tara's room, he hurried into Emily's so he could look out into the yard; what he saw made him drop the bag and dash back out of the room and downstairs. He kicked the front door shut on the way past and hurried on down the passage to the cupboard under the stairs.

He yanked open the door the moment he reached it and stepped inside. He didn't bother fumbling for the light switch or trying to remember whether he had his key on him, he didn't want to waste the time, he simply put his boot into the door of the cabinet where he and his father's shotguns were kept locked. The first kick cracked the door while the second destroyed it, leaving it in pieces, which he quickly pulled out of the way.

He was stuffing extra shells into the pockets of the jacket he had pulled on, having already loaded two into his shotgun, when a loud banging came from the front door.

"Kieran Wright, open up, it's the police. If you don't open up, we'll have to break the door down," Mitchell called through the door.

Kieran hesitated in the doorway of the cupboard for a moment, but when Mitchell knocked again he sprang into action. Hurrying along the passage, he raised the shotgun, pulling the trigger the moment the the muzzle was at stomach height and just a couple of inches from the door. He immediately reached out to open the front door and look around for another target, which he spotted almost straight away.

Intellectually, Harrison knew there was no separation of sight and sound at that distance, both the visual and audio aspects of the event should have reached him at the same time. That was not what happened, however. He saw a section of the door explode outwards and Mitchell fly backwards, a large, bloody hole in his stomach, but he heard nothing until the door swung open. It was then that the sound of the shotgun blast and Mitchell's quickly cut off cry washed over him.

Mitchell's death was shocking, but not so much that Harrison was unable to react to the sight of the shotgun when it appeared around the edge of the door. He dived for the nearest piece of cover there was, his car; he didn't make it, however.

Kieran raised the shotgun and fired the moment he saw the inspector. He didn't care that he was shooting the man in the back, that didn't matter to him in the slightest, all that did was increasing his chances of getting away. He saw the blast take Harrison in the back, sending him sprawling, though whether it had killed him he couldn't say. He hoped the shot had killed Harrison, but it was enough to have another of his would-be captors out of action. Kieran looked around quickly for some sign of the two constables he had seen when he looked out his sister's bedroom window; when he didn't see them, he assumed they were using one or another of the cars in the yard for cover.

He didn't care as much about the constables as he did Mitchell and the inspector, so he ignored them for the moment and retreated into the house. Ejecting the spent shells, he reloaded his shotgun as he made his way upstairs to retrieve the bag he had been filling with his family's valuables so he could fund his escape.