Free A Wanted Man by Paul Finch Page A

form for extreme violence, is also a suspect in the Lady Killer murders. So I need backup ASAP. Silent approach, over.’
    ‘
Received Sarge … support units en route. ETA five.
’
    Heck shoved his radio back into his jacket and worked his way through the garage to a rear door, which swung open at his touch. He followed a paved side path along the base of a steep, muddy slope, eventually joining with the flight of steps leading up to the maisonette. When he ascended, he did so warily. Realistically, all he needed to do now was wait until the cavalry arrived – but then something else happened.
    And it was a game-changer.
    The shouting and screaming indoors had risen to a crescendo. Household items exploded as they were flung around. This was just about tolerable, given that it probably wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in this neighbourhood. Heck reasoned that he could still wait it out – until he got close to the rear of the building, and heard a baby crying.
    Not just crying.
    Howling.
    Hysterical with pain or fear.
    ‘DS Heckenburg to Charlie Six, urgent message!’ He dashed up the remaining steps, and took an entry leading to the front of the maisonette. ‘Please expedite that support – I can hear violence inside the property and a child in distress, over!’
    He halted under the stoop. Light shafted through the frosted panel in the front door, yet little was visible on the other side – except for brief flurries of indistinct movement. Angry shouts still echoed from within.
    Heck zipped his jacket and knocked loudly. ‘Police officer! Can you open up please?’
    There was instantaneous silence – apart from the baby, whose sobbing had diminished to a low, feeble keening.
    Heck knocked again. ‘This is the police – I need you to open up!’ He glimpsed further hurried motion behind the distorted glass.
    When he next struck the door, he led with his shoulder.
    It required three heavy buffets to crash the woodwork inwards, splinters flying, bolts and hinges catapulting loose. As the door fell in front of him Heck saw a narrow, wreckage-strewn corridor leading into a small kitchen, where a tall male in a duffel coat was in the process of exiting the property via a back door. Heck charged down the corridor. As he did, a woman emerged from a side room, bruised and tear-stained, hair disorderly, mascara streaking her cheeks. She wore a ragged orange dressing gown and clutched a baby to her breast, its face a livid, blotchy red.
    ‘What do you want?’ she screeched, blocking Heck’s passage. ‘You can’t barge in here!’
    Heck stepped around her. ‘Out the way please, miss!’
    ‘But he’s not done nothing!’ She grabbed Heck’s collar, her sharp fingernails raking the skin on his neck. ‘
Can’t you bastards stop harassing him!
’
    Heck had to pull hard to extricate himself. ‘Hasn’t he just beaten you up?’
    ‘That’s cos I didn’t want him to leave …’
    ‘He’s a bloody nutter, love!’
    ‘It’s nothing … I don’t mind it.’
    ‘Others do!’ Heck yanked himself free – to renewed wailing from the woman and child – and continued into the kitchen and out through the back door, emerging onto a toy-strewn patio just as a burly outline loped down the steps towards the garage, only a few yards in front of him. The guy had something in his hand, which Heck at first took for a bag; then he realised that it was a motorbike helmet. ‘Jimmy Hood!’ he shouted, scrambling down the steps in pursuit. ‘Police officer – stay where you are!’
    Hood’s response was to leap the remaining three or four steps, pulling the helmet on and battering his way through the garage’s rear door. Heck jumped the last steps as well, sliding and tumbling on the earthen slope, but reaching the garage doorway only seconds behind his quarry. He shouldered it open to find Hood seated on the Suzuki, kicking it to life. Its glaring headlight sprang across the alley. The roars of its engine filled the gutted