Chapter 51
667 Words
51
John Lucas ran his finger along the blade of the carving knife inside his jacket pocket, the baseball cap pulled down low over his face, as he stood outside the Prince Albert pub, the building next door to Mildenheath Police station.
He could feel the whisky running through him, making him breathe heavily. It hadn’t dulled the anger at all. Nothing ever would now. He’d been wronged too many times, and this time it was his turn to try and make things right. Because no-one else was going to bother.
He didn’t care what happened afterwards. They could bang him up for the rest of his life for all he cared. What use was it being out here, anyway? He’d been safer on the inside. He’d known who to trust and who not to trust, known there were people there employed to watch out for his safety. Out here there was nothing.
He knew the police just wanted to see him go down again. They were pissed off that one of their own had been shot all those years ago. They were like that, the police. Tribal. If you so much as looked the wrong way at one, the others would be on you like a ton of bricks. They didn’t do forgiving and forgetting. They did constant revenge, persistant reminders. And he was never going to be allowed to move on from what had happened eleven years ago, what had happened since.
So what was the point? If you were never allowed to move on from injuring one officer — despite showing plenty of remorse when required — why not take out more of the pigs? He had nothing to lose. And it was their own stupid fault that they’d put him in this position. They’d given him no option. And they were about to realise that was very stupid indeed.
He took a deep breath, adjusted the peak on his cap, took a firm grip of the knife inside his jacket pocket and walked towards the front doors of the police station.
‘Mrs Wilson, I promise you absolutely we’ll look into it for you. I’ve got it all here: Russian spy dogs, radio signal interference, switching your TV on to find it tuned to Russia Today. I must admit it sounds very compelling. We’ll get straight onto it.’
Wendy looked over Mrs Wilson’s shoulder as she spoke, meeting the eye of the civilian officer on the front desk, who was trying her best not to laugh out loud.
Mrs Wilson signalled that she was happy with that response and remarked that she expected to see a dawn raid on her neighbour’s property. Wendy knew she would have forgotten all about having even made this report by dawn tomorrow, so she nodded and smiled, vaguely aware of the sound of the front door to the police station opening behind her.
He looked down at the ground as he walked in, but tried not to look too suspicious. Closing the door behind him, he looked up, seeing two people in front of him.
One was some doddery old b***h with a walking stick, and the other looked somewhat familiar. She was clearly a copper, so he guessed she could be any one of a... No. He knew exactly who it was now. It was that cow of a detective who’d interviewed him after he was arrested for the fire at Freddie Galloway’s.
Oh yes. This was just too good to be true. This was perfect. This was the ideal way to take a stand and go down in a blaze of glory. It was beautiful.
As the old woman started to walk towards the exit, the detective woman headed towards a door that seemed to lead to the back of the station, protected by an electronic key fob and number pad.
He decided he needed to take his chance now.
He ran towards her, shoved her against the door, and brought his left arm around her throat, dragging her back into the waiting area, the blade of the knife digging into the side of her neck.
- Writer
