The Valley 42

Kerwin put aside his frustration as best he could and focused on what he needed to do; in the absence of any real money, he needed things that he could turn into money, jewellery being the best bet, but anything he could sell at a pawnshop would help. He knew that his father still had some of his mother’s jewellery somewhere, he just wasn’t sure whether it was worth anything; valuable or worthless, it was better than nothing if he could find it. He found a dress watch he had never seen his father wear, but had no luck beyond that until he reached the wardrobe he had damaged; it was there that he found the jewellery box containing his mother’s rings, earrings and necklaces. He Didn’t think what he had found would add up to more than five hundred Rands in value, but every cent he could get would help. He searched Tara’s bedroom next, raiding it rapidly for anything that might have value. He doubted he would get much for the small amount of jewellery he found so he left it behind, focusing instead on his sister’s CD collection and the small number of electronic gadgets she had: mobile phone, iPod, the tablet she had convinced their dad to get for her last birthday, as well as the few other trinkets of possible worth he found. He yanked open the door the moment he reached it and stepped inside. He Didn’t bother fumbling for the light switch or trying to remember whether he had his key on him, he didn’t want to waste the time, he simply put his boot into the door of the cabinet where he and his father’s shotguns were kept locked. The first kick cracked the door while the second destroyed it, leaving it in pieces, which he quickly pulled out of the way. He was stuffing extra shells into the pockets of the jackets he had pulled on, having already loaded two into his shotgun, when a loud banging came from the front door. ‘Kerwin Wright, open up, it’s the police, if you don’t open up, we’ll have to break the door down,’ Mitchell called through the door. Kerwin hesitated in the doorway of the cupboard for a moment, but when Mitchell knocked again he sprang into action. Hurrying along the passage, he raised the shotgun, pulling the trigger the moment the muzzle was at stomach height and just a couple of inches from the door. He immediately reached out to open the front door and look around for another target, which he spotted almost straight away. Intellectually, Lemark knew there was no separation of sight and sound at that distance, both the visual and audio aspects of the event should have reached him at the same time. That was not what happened, however. He saw a section of the door explode outwards and Mitchell fly backwards, a large, bloody hole in his stomach, but he heard nothing until the door swung open. It was then that the sound of the shotgun blast and Mitchell’s quickly cut off cry washed over him. Mitchell’s death was shocking, but not so much that Lemark was unable to react to the sight of the shotgun when it appeared around the edge of the door. He dived for the nearest piece of cover there was, his car; he didn’t make it, however. Kerwin raised the shotgun and fired the moment he saw the inspector. He Didn’t care that he was shooting the man in the back, that didn’t matter to him in the slightest, all that did was increasing his chances of getting away. He saw the blast take Lemark in the back, sending him sprawling, though whether it had killed him he couldn’t say. He hoped the shot had killed Lemark, but it was enough to have another of his would - be captors out of action. Kerwin looked around quickly for some sign of the two constables he had seen when he looked out his sister’s bedroom window; when he didn’t see them, he assumed they were using one or another of the cars in the yard for cover. He Didn’t care as much about the constables as he did Mitchell and the inspector, so he ignored them for the moment and retreated into the house. Ejecting the spent shells, he reloaded his shotgun as he made his way upstairs to retrieve the bag he had been filling with his family’s valuables so he could fund his escape. ‘What was that?’ Tara’s head snapped around from Jack’s laptop, which she had been given to distract her from the morning’s events, to point, unerringly towards her family’s farm, as though she could see what was going on there despite the walls that prevented her seeing the road, let alone the half a mile up it to the farm. ‘What was what?’ Jack asked, he hadn’t heard a thing. ‘It sounded like a shotgun,’ Tara said. She had never handled a shotgun, but she had heard her father and her brother using their shotguns often enough to recognise the noise. ‘There it is again.’ Jack heard the noise the second time, and would have guessed at it being a gunshot, but he wasn’t practised enough with the sounds of the countryside to be able to say it was a shotgun blast. Four months of country living simply wasn’t long enough for him to become an expert on such things, but to his mind it didn’t matter what variety of gun it was that had been fired, the only thing that did matter was that someone, somewhere was shooting; given the situation that was ongoing, it didn’t need him to be a genius to figure out where the shot had come from, or what it might mean. Melissa recognised the noise immediately and felt herself gripped by a wave of panic; since none of her colleagues had gone to the farm with a shotgun, she was sure it had to have been Kerwin who fired the weapon, and that made her worry that one or more of them had been hurt, Snatching her radio off her belt she brought it to her lips, ‘DI Lemark, this is Constable James, come in please. DI Lemark, come in please.’ Melissa tried again and again to get hold of the inspector, and when she was unsuccessful she tried Sergeant Mitchell instead. In the end, it was Constable Brown who responded to her radio calls, though he sounded very unhappy to be doing so. ‘Mel, it’s Mike, the inspector’s down, so’s the sergeant, he shot them both.’ His shock was audible despite the crackling of the radio signal, it was strong enough to render him almost incapable of speaking." He shot the sergeant right through the door, and then he shot the inspector in the back.” Melissa went cold at that news, “What do we do now?’