Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [98]
He clattered after the camera teams as the street opened into a small square or plaza just opposite the main gates of the cathedral.
And there they were.
First he saw Artie, standing by the cathedral wall. Then he saw the man called Vincent standing up and moving away from a bench surrounded by pigeons.
Across the street Creed and the Bowmans were watching the man and suddenly Raymond Bowman said something to Creed and turned away. Creed tried to stop them but he had already reached the guy. The guy was standing, still half turned towards the girl who sat on the bench surrounded by pigeons. He looked like he was about to kiss her. He never got the chance.
Webster sucked air into his aching lungs. He shouted, ‘Wait!’
But it was too late. He saw the expression on the girl’s face change from joy to horror as she realized what was happening.
* * *
Justine was staring at the man in the black baseball cap. He was holding something in his hand, pointing it at Vincent, and Justine knew what it was. But she couldn’t believe it. Even as she shouted at Vincent to look out she was praying that she was hallucinating. A spike in her hormone level making her see something that wasn’t there. A trick of the light.
But the gun was indeed there, clutched tight as the man squeezed the trigger and fired. And the impact was high on Vincent’s back, just above the shoulder blade, catching him as he was turning towards Justine and spinning him around with its momentum so he completed the turn and did a kind of little bow as he fell at her feet.
She sat on the bench and stared at him lying there with the blood oozing slowly out of him and she tried to scream but she couldn’t. She was surrounded by people wearing black baseball caps. She could see the words on the baseball caps now. IDEA. They were arguing among themselves and shouting at other people with TV cameras and brandishing identity cards at gawkers and ordering the crowd to stay back and some distant part of her brain registered recognition. They were cops.
Two of the cops came towards her. A man and a woman with swaying black pony‐tails. The woman grabbed Justine while the man dropped to his knees beside Vincent. She realized that it was the same man who had shot him.
One of the other cops was shouting now. He was blond, with sweat‐drenched dreadlocks. He looked like he’d just run a marathon. ‘Don’t touch him, Raymond!’ he shouted.
But the man called Raymond ignored him. He wore a smile of satisfaction as he began to frisk Vincent in a deliberately leisurely fashion. At the same time the woman began running her hands over Justine. Justine hardly felt it. All her attention was riveted on Vincent’s left hand.
It was moving. Vincent was alive. As the cop frisked him Vincent’s arm suddenly twitched. Before the cop could react, Vincent had reached out and clamped onto his wrist.
* * *
Raymond Bowman was a simmering volcano of suppressed rage. When he had first met his richly dysfunctional wife they had spent hours just talking, sitting up all night in his car in a sparse, salty stretch of grass outside Atlantic City, watching the empty grey beach being gnawed by the endless waves. Then they kissed for the first time and he lost his heart. Chrissie was beautiful and she had the additional glamour of being emotionally wounded. Raymond had wanted to heal her.
He had always been a sucker for a bird with a broken wing. When he heard the tragic story of Chrissie’s childhood he knew he’d be