The bloke was stronger and larger than Jason, and no matter how hard he fought, even with fury on his side, he found himself being driven back again and again. With a bellow of frustration he head-butted him. The goon stumbled backwards into a wall of boxes stacked high, and the whole pile crashed down on him. Jason grabbed a saucepan, and when the other man emerged again, Jason brought it down on his head with a sickening thud. He did not get up again.
‘Jason …’
He swung around at the sound of Helen’s voice, saw her focus had shifted to the last person in the warehouse. He turned, saw the hand coming out of a bag, the matt-black gun, the flash of light accompanied by a bone-crunching crack, felt as if someone had shoved him in the chest. Puzzled he took in the spray of red droplets and the stain on his white T-shirt, before a searing pain registered.
‘Jason!’ Helen screamed.
He stumbled backwards as fire and ice spread through his limbs, blocking out everything but the horror on her face and the agony. He gasped, a long drawn-out sound which echoed in his own ears, and felt his legs give way under him.
The abrupt silence was Helen’s undoing.
Her body went into spasms. Lights flickered in her head. Her jaw locked. A groan rose behind her swollen tongue. Helpless against the oncoming seizure, Helen watched Letitia advancing on her.
‘I meant what I said earlier,’ she said. ‘I hate having to do this, but the company means more to me than anything. There’s no other way.’ She pointed the pistol at Helen, then lowered it for a moment and looked at her with amusement. ‘Or maybe I should just let the seizure take you. On second thought, that would be leaving things too much to chance.’
‘Ngnh.’ Helen tried to move, to get to safety before blacking out, but her body wasn’t cooperating, and the lucidity of her brain was narrowing down to a single point.
Letitia raised the pistol again. ‘You’ve been nothing but trouble since you set foot in the country. Well, it’s coming to an end now.’
Helen shook, and involuntarily her fingers twisted themselves into claws, useless like the rest of her body. Letitia would pull the trigger, and she would die. Like Charlie, who’d been stabbed by a cheap screwdriver, or like Jason, who lay lifeless on a pyre of plastic flowers. And Mimi, whose blood had coated the windscreen of her car in an all too real imitation of a Jackson Pollock.
Letitia had destroyed everyone she loved.
Her disabled body convulsed with rage and despair. Her eyes fell on the statue. Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles. Within an inch’s reach of her foot lay the piece of wood she’d used to prop it up. Struggling against the hardest obstacle of all, her failing brain, Helen willed herself into action. A single message from her mind to her foot bypassed the seizure, and she kicked the piece of wood away.
Ancient stone ground against modern concrete, and Ganesh wobbled on his base, teetered and toppled forward, crushing Letitia beneath him.
Horrified, she watched her aunt lifting her head in one last act of defiance. Blood bubbled from her twisted mouth. ‘You …’ she breathed before her head dropped back to the floor with a final flump.
Then Helen entered the realm of oblivion.
She woke to a reception of flashing blue lights and a clamouring of noise, and found herself looking up into the friendly face of DI Karen Whitehouse.
‘Welcome back,’ said the detective. She smiled and stroked Helen’s hair.
She was on the floor with a recovery blanket around her. The warehouse was packed with ambulance staff shouting orders and bringing equipment. A vague sense that something dreadful had happened stole over her.
‘Jason!’ she moaned.
Whitehouse took her hand. ‘He …’
Helen gasped for breath, and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the world. Choking and crying, she tried to get up but her spine was rubbery and detached from the rest of her. A strong arm was around her, supporting her, someone, Whitehouse maybe, was talking to her but the words made no sense.
‘… is here. Jason’s here.’
The arm was Jason’s. She flopped against his shoulder and gave herself up to his embrace, weeping and yelling, tears streaming, letting out all her anger and fear of the past twenty years, pounding his chest.
Jason simply held her.
Finally her tears subsided, but her chest continued to heave with greedy hiccups.
‘She shot you,’ she whispered.
‘In the shoulder.’
‘I saw you die.’
‘No, you didn’t. I’m still here.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘It bloody hurts, but I’m still here, and I’m not going to leave you.’ He kissed her again.
‘Your arm …’