Chapter Fifty-Two

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

"Talk to me people, what's going on?" Harrison spoke urgently into his radio. He had no idea what had happened in the room where Constable Turner had been playing the part of Emily Wright, but it seemed clear to him that things had not gone well. If it had, the figure he believed to be their killer would not have reappeared in the passage, except in handcuffs.

As if it wasn't enough that his officers had failed to secure their murderer while he was in the room, Harrison could see that one of his officers was down in the passage, and the other was being left behind as their suspect made his escape.

"He got away, sir, sorry," Melissa gasped into her radio as she left the room. "Sergeant Tracey's down, I don't know how badly he's hurt, but it looks bad. Help's on its way." It hadn't been an easy decision for her to make, to leave the injured sergeant after pressing the alarm button to summon help, but she was sure she had done the right thing. She had no medical knowledge, beyond her first aid training, so there was little she could do for the sergeant, but there was still a chance that she could catch the man who had injured him. "Constable Walsh is down as well," she reported.

Harrison made a snap decision as he saw Melissa hesitate by the constable on the floor. "Leave him, let the medical staff deal with him, you get after the suspect." He realised that his decision might not be one Melanie agreed with, it might even be one that would land him in trouble when the operation was reviewed, but he was certain it was the right one.

Melissa had already been torn between stopping to help the constable on the floor and continuing to pursue the killer, and was relieved to have the decision taken out of her hands.

Leaving the constable, she took off down the passage. When she reached the corner around which she had seen Constable Yarrow disappear, she saw the fleeing figure of their suspect up ahead, beyond her lumbering colleague. Her throat was sore where she had been choked, she was sure her nose had been broken, and her split lip was bleeding, but she didn't let any of that slow her down as she gave pursuit.

It surprised her when she began to close the distance between her and those she was pursuing; she overtook Constable Yarrow just before they reached the stairwell.

"Which way?" Melissa asked of Harrison after bursting through the door into the stairwell. "Up or down?" She didn't wait for an answer, the sound of heavy, hurried footsteps from below told her which direction to take, and she descended as quickly as she could.

Harrison sat in the security room and watched the monitors with a growing sense of dismay. He had said from the start that he needed more officers, four plus himself simply wasn't enough to be certain of stopping someone who had shown a capacity for extreme violence; a capacity that had been demonstrated again with the disablement of two of the four officers given him for the operation. He watched as the medical staff began working on the constable in the passage, and he watched as his suspect pulled away from Constable Yarrow, only to have Constable Turner narrow the gap.

It was good that Melissa was gaining on the fleeing suspect, but it only took him a second to realise that she was unlikely to catch him, and that if she did she was at a serious disadvantage. Barefoot, and dressed in little more than a hospital gown, with neither handcuffs nor baton, Melissa was unlikely to have much chance of stopping the suspect, especially when he was armed and unafraid of violence. He could think of only one way to prevent what seemed like the inevitable escape of his suspect, and realising that he got quickly to his feet to leave the room.

Harrison radioed control with a request for backup as he ran from the security suite and made his way down the passage towards the front of the hospital. He moved as quickly as he could, determined to reach the stairwell and put himself between his suspect and escape. He didn't have a baton, an oversight he regretted, but he did at least have handcuffs, and he hoped he could hold his suspect up for long enough for the two chasing constables to catch up; he was confident that between the three of them they could make a successful arrest.

He threw open the door to the stairwell and bounded up, amazed to see that he had got there before his suspect could reach the ground floor. He slowed as he reached the first floor, his eyes on the dark-clad and masked figure descending towards him and the knife in his hand; above the figure, but closing the gap, was Melissa, and audible, but not yet visible, was another person, who Harrison guessed was Constable Yarrow.

"Stop where you are, you're under arrest."

Harrison was surprised when He neither stopped nor slowed, but instead leapt at him. Before he could react, let alone dodge or defend himself, Harrison was borne to the floor by the weight of his attacker; his breath escaped him in an explosion that carried with it the pain of being stabbed. When he felt the knife pierce his stomach he was reminded that he had forgotten to put on his stab vest, a potentially fatal mistake he hoped he wasn't going to regret.

Melissa saw her superior attacked and reacted without thinking; she rushed down the stairs and launched herself at the man who had killed her cousin. She crashed into him, knocking him away from Harrison and sending him rolling down the stairs; she went with him and when they came to a stop she found herself on top. Quickly, she pinned his arms with her knees so she could pull off his mask to see if she was right about His identity.

It seemed a simple enough thing to do, but he bucked and heaved wildly in an effort to throw her off, making it difficult for her to grab hold of the balaclava he was wearing while trying to maintain her balance. She had the advantage of being on top but Melissa didn't find it easy to control the killer she had caught, he was too strong.

Looking around for help, Melissa saw Harrison pulling himself slowly and painfully towards her and her captive, while Constable Yarrow was still a floor away, continuing his descent at a tortoise-like pace. She couldn't believe how slow her fellow constable was, his running speed seemed to be barely above walking; she felt like yelling at him to speed up so he could help her, but needed her energy for other things.

Harrison had managed to drag himself only a couple of feet, and Yarrow was still a dozen or so steps away, when the struggle between Melissa and the killer ended. Before she had a chance to realise what had happened, He wrenched an arm free from the knee pinning it and slashed at her face – she hadn't thought to try and disarm him, so focused was she on unmasking him.

Melissa jerked back away from the flashing blade, but not quickly enough, the razor-sharp steel opened her cheek from her ear almost to her lip. Before she could recover from either the surprise or the pain, an almighty heave threw her off her suspect and she saw stars as her head struck one of the stairs.

She struggled to her feet dizzily and looked from her injured superior to the fleeing murderer; she didn't want to abandon the pursuit and let Him get away, but she didn't want to leave someone who was injured either, not again, not after already doing it twice that night.

"Don't worry about me, get after him, don't let him get away," Harrison ordered in a pain-filled voice when he saw Melissa coming towards him.

"Which way did he go?" Melissa demanded of Yarrow when she caught up to him just outside the entrance to the emergency room, where he was looking unhappily around the dimly-lit car park as though he expected their suspect to appear from the shadow of one of the cars they could see.

"No idea," Yarrow admitted. "He was gone by the time I made it out here. He could be anywhere by now."

Melissa's head whipped around, sending blood splashing from her cut, as the sound of a racing car engine reached her. She hurried along the front of the building towards the corner where the engine noise had come from; she knew the vehicle she could hear might not have anything to do with the suspect she was after, but the timing of it seemed too coincidental for her to ignore.

She reached the corner in time to see a dark Land Rover race away through the car park towards the exit; it was gone so quickly there was no time for her to spot anything that might help her to recognise either the vehicle or the driver during the few instances when it passed through a patch of light.

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net