Anchored by the DCI, Tyler threw out his other hand and grabbed Jameelah’s arm. She had gone limp soon after falling, and while this made her a dead weight, at least she wasn’t wriggling around in his grip.
“Got her!” Tyler announced.
With a grunt, Logan pulled, dragging both of them back up onto solid ground.
“Cheers, boss. Don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful to have my bollocks jammed up my own arse,” Tyler wheezed. He lay the motionless Jameelah down on the ground, and started working at the string holding the hood in place.
“You got her?” Logan asked, already turning to where Alan Rigg was clambering up the steep embankment towards the lighthouse.
“Got her, boss. Go!”
Logan charged. That was the best description for it. It wasn’t a run. It wasn’t a dash. It was the charge of the fucking Light Brigade. He wasn’t a man giving chase, he was an oncoming storm.
He reached the embankment, dug his hands into the soil and the grass, and kicked upwards, scrambling and heaving his way towards the top.
As he grabbed for the top, a boot came down, a plastic bag crinkling inside it. Pain ignited in Logan’s hand, then in his cheek when a dropped rock cracked him just below his eye socket.
His fingers lost their grip. He spat out a string of obscenities as he slid down the embankment, and Alan Rigg—Bernie the Beacon—disappeared from sight.
Constable Dave Davidson was sitting back in his car, twiddling his thumbs and minding his own business, when he saw the straggly-haired man come racing up from the shore like the devil himself was at his heels.
Dave wasn’t entirely sure that this was the suspect they’d come to apprehend, but he felt that, given the state of him, the speed at which he was running, and the rictus of terror on his face, there was at least a good chance.
That was why he disengaged the handbrake and lurched the Peugeot into reverse, just as the man who was now running through the car park entered the space directly behind the car. There was a solid-sounding thunk, and quite a high-pitched cry. Something broke, and not something, Dave thought, that could be fixed at a garage.
Sure enough, the cry of shock became a squeal of pain. Dave checked his wing mirror, and watched as the man who had been running very quickly away from the scene now hopped quite slowly, both arms thrown out for balance, and one leg flapping unpleasantly.
He managed half a dozen good hops, but gravity was a fickle mistress, and on the seventh hop, he lost his balance, toppled to the ground, and lay there screaming at the top of his lungs.
Dave faced front in time to see Logan come clambering up the embankment, his shirt stained brown with mud, his face red with rage and exertion.
Winding down his window, the constable stuck his head out, then jabbed a thumb in the direction of the screaming man behind the car.
“Is that the guy?” he called. Then, when Logan nodded, he let out a sigh of relief. “Well, thank fuck for that.”
It was a little less than ten minutes later when they heard the first thrumming of the rotor blades. The sound coincided almost to the second with the wailing of sirens from somewhere out east.
The helicopter, unsurprisingly, arrived first. It roared overhead, downdraught sending dust and debris swirling across the car park. Then, once the pilot concluded that there was no safe landing spot available, it pulled up and weaved a figure of eight that took it in to land in a field a little way back along the road.
By the time it had touched down, the polis 4x4 was howling to a stop, the piercing chirps of its siren grinding Logan’s teeth together.
“Shut that bloody thing off,” he instructed. Then, he sighed with relief when the Uniforms obeyed and cut the siren dead.
One racket was replaced almost immediately by another, though, when his BMW pulled in off the road with Taggart barking excitedly from the partially open back window.
“It’s a puppy.”
Logan looked down at Jameelah, who was standing in close beside him like she was trying to make herself invisible to the still-downed Alan Rigg. The man formerly known as Bernie the Beacon was having his injuries tended to by Tyler and Dave. Logan almost felt for the bastard. Murderer and kidnapper he may be, but did anyone deserve those two handling their medical care?
Actually, aye. Aye, he did.
Jameelah was a striking wee lassie, with eyes so big and wide she looked like she’d stepped out of a Japanese cartoon. Her frizzy hair was matted and tangled, and she pulled and fiddled nervously with it, like she was trying to bring it back to life.
Her wrists were raw where the rope had been, her clothes were dirty, and she’d already gone through a big bottle of water and two whole scones, but she didn’t seem badly hurt. Not on the outside, anyway. Mentally, there was no saying what lay ahead for the girl.