SEVEN DEADLY THINGS (Henry & Sparrow Book 3) by A FOX (new ebook reader .txt) 📕

there but even now, while fury flooded through her at what he had done to Martin, to Julie, to Bill and to Talia, DI Kate Sparrow took over and a second later she wrenched him back up above the waves, spluttering and feeble. The water around them was blooming blood and for a moment she wondered if she’d been hit… again… before realising it was his head wound, releasing bright rivulets of red across her hands as she gripped him by the ears.

Energy seeped out of him along with the blood. His eyes opened and stared glassily up at her. He looked utterly drained. Kate could hear Lucas splashing towards them and the drone buzzing overhead as Mike moved his mouth, whispering something to her. She leant in and caught his last few words.

‘Tessa…’ he breathed, as a string of bloody drool slipped from the side of his mouth. ‘Tessa… liked you… the best.’

32

‘Barney Bagnall, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Martin Riley, Julie Everall and William Lassiter, and the attempted murder of Natalia Kingston. You have the right to remain silent—’

‘It wasn’t him!’ yelled Francis. ‘He just bloody saved a guy’s life!’ It was hard for Kate’s brother to get the words out, though, face down on the ground and getting his hands cuffed behind his back while another officer was reeling off his rights.

At a similar angle in the grass, Barney managed to give him a crooked smile. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he said. He was fairly relaxed, all things considered. He knew this would be sorted out as soon as Kate and her friend came back up from the beach. Then a couple of gunshots went off and his belly tightened in fear. There was no mistaking those for a backfiring Ford Capri.

He and Francis were left nosing the grass as the officers dumped them, handcuffed and sprawling, and tore off to the edge of the cliff.

‘Shit! Kate!’ hissed Francis.

But Barney heard someone shout ‘Suspect down! Suspect under control!’ and felt a wave of relief. On the beach there was a genuine suspect for the police to focus on… and it wasn’t him.

Around seven officers witnessed the final scenes of Kate’s struggle with Mike. This was helpful when she finally got off the beach and onto the field where an assortment of police and paramedics had gathered, and found her brother cuffed and face down in the grass.

‘For fuck’s sake, get those off him!’ she had commanded, in a voice that belied how wrecked she felt. ‘And him!’ she pointed to Backflip Barney. ‘Neither of them should be cuffed. They’re witnesses, not suspects.’

The Suffolk police did not appreciate her directions but happily, footage from the drone was now playing out on screen in the senior officer’s patrol car and so how the last half hour had unfolded was evident. As soon as she’d been declared ‘fit enough’ by the medic, Kate was able to join the small group and watch the tangled fight on the cliff between Lucas and Mike, then marvel at the way a silver-shirted Barney had suddenly arrived on the scene and taken a swing at Mike with the saddle end of his unicycle, before hooking him up through thin air.

She put her less injured arm around Francis, now freed and drinking a cup of water, which periodically trembled in his hands. ‘Thank god you got Barney to us when you did… and… you know… hung on to him.’

Francis turned to look at her, narrow-eyed. ‘Are you saying that my part in all this was just to heroically clamp myself to a guy’s arse?’

‘Nobody could have done it better,’ she said. She knew there was every chance that Barney and Francis had together made a huge difference to the outcome. Mike must have been at least semi-concussed by the bash to the head, and then further by the landslip. With his sense of balance wrecked, his firing had been off-centre and she — and Nikki and Craig — were all still here to tell the tale.

She shivered as she saw again the way his eyes had gone fixed and glassy while she held his head between her hands. Watching him die had affected her more than she was letting on. She had never been more relieved to hand over to another crew. Gary was going to be very pissed off. Not only was a block of chalets now out of commission — the whole beach would be a no go area for the next forty-eight hours at least. Buntin’s Lakefield Holiday Village just couldn’t catch a break this season.

She walked back to the ambulances, where Craig and Nikki were being treated for shock and minor injuries. Craig, wearing an oxygen mask, lay on a stretcher, his eyes closed. His brow had a nasty welt from a blow dealt with Mike’s gun. Apparently the Head of Security had made Craig cuff Nikki to the pipes and then struck Craig half-senseless, so he could cuff him, too ,without a struggle.

Nikki was sitting nearby, getting a graze on her leg cleaned. She looked grey with exhaustion.

‘You’ll be OK,’ said Kate, kneeling down beside her and taking her hand. ‘It’ll take some time… but you will be OK.’

Nikki nodded. ‘Did we really drive that man to kill us?’ she murmured. ‘Did we really do that?’ Tears leaked out of her eyes, painting thin streaks of mascara down her face.

‘His sister died,’ said Kate. ‘I think that just broke him. He needed someone to blame.’

‘And he blamed us,’ said Nikki. ‘And you know what… we weren’t… we weren’t blameless, were we? All those things he said to me and Craig when he had us at gunpoint… about all those horrible things we said about his sister. They were true. We did say them. We just… we didn’t know she heard us.’

Kate nodded. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘But…’ Nikki sniffed, then winced as the medic applied antiseptic spray to her wounds. ‘We did know