No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

Bram rubbed his face. His face was tingling, as if the nerve endings had been primed by the bullets zinging past and were now on high alert.

The doorbell jangled, making them all jump.

‘It might be Grandad,’ said Max. ‘I texted him. I thought – it might be good if he was here.’

‘No, I’ll go,’ said Bram, pulling Max back. ‘You all stay here.’

Thank God, thank God, it was more police officers. Two, three, four… Six in all. As they filed inside, a sturdy female officer, who introduced herself as DC Gemma something, rattled off a few quick questions about what had happened, finishing with, ‘Your dog was recently shot with an airgun pellet, yes? Could this just have been an airgun too?’

‘I don’t know what kind of gun it was – all I know is he was shooting at us. Deliberately. Even if it was “just” an airgun, they can kill, can’t they?’

‘It has been known,’ the DC conceded. She asked him to fetch Andrew so he could give his statement, and settled herself at the kitchen table with her notepad.

When Bram had ushered Andrew out of the TV room, he muttered, ‘You’d better come clean about all the previous trouble you’ve had with youths in the woods.’

‘All right, but – on reflection, I don’t think this was kids. Someone tried to kill us, Bram!’ Andrew looked at him. ‘You don’t think there could be a connection with – with what happened, back in the nineties?’

‘What connection could there be?’ Bram said weakly.

Andrew just continued to stare at him.

Bram headed across the Walton Room to the kitchen, awful thoughts chasing each other round his head.

‘Okay, thanks, Mr Hendriksen,’ said the DC. ‘We’ll take Mr Taylor’s statement then someone will run him home.’

By that time Scott had arrived, and put on the kettle while Bram gave his statement to DC Gemma. Bram had just finished it when the door from the verandah crashed open and David stormed in.

‘Is everyone okay?’ David rapped out. ‘Where’s Kirsty? Where are the kids?’

Bram stood. ‘In the TV room. David–’

‘How did you get past the uniforms at the track entrance?’ Scott wanted to know.

David waved this minor detail aside. ‘There’s a bloody maniac out there with a firearm shooting at people! Christ! He could shoot through the windows, he could–’

Scott got to his feet. ‘Let’s not panic here, okay?’

‘I’m not panicking, I’m trying to keep my family safe because it seems no one else is bothering their arse!’

‘They’re in the TV room with the curtains closed,’ said Bram, feeling himself bridle. ‘And the windows are all toughened glass.’ Even the ones that didn’t need to be to comply with building regulations – David himself had persuaded them to go for that. Thank God. There was something to be said, it turned out, for David’s jaundiced view of the world when it came to security.

‘Aye, for general safety, not to stop a bullet! Are you a man or a mouse, Bram? You should be out there–’

‘Sit down, David.’ Scott gestured to a chair, indicating to Gemma with a tilt of the head that she should take herself off and give them some privacy.

The next couple of hours passed in a blur. After Scott had talked David down, David went off to ‘protect’ the family in the TV room. Scott downloaded the photographs of the gunman from Bram’s phone, and then went outside, only to return to ask Bram to accompany him and the SOCO team to show them the spot where he and Andrew had been fired on.

Bram knew he was safe now – the gunman was hardly going to have stuck around with this massive police presence – but still he hesitated at the front door, reluctant to step out onto the verandah.

Scott looked back at him. ‘Okay there?’

‘Yes, right. Yes.’

Bram showed them the spot, and the tree the bullet had hit, and then Scott escorted him back to the house, where he sat with the others in the TV room watching cartoons until Scott appeared in the doorway and asked to speak to Bram, Kirsty and David in the kitchen. When they were all seated at the table, he smiled round at them.

‘You’ll be glad to hear that the “bullets” Bram described have been found by the SOCO team, and aren’t in fact bullets at all. They’re not even airgun pellets. They’re airsoft BBs.’

Bram frowned. ‘They’re what?’

‘BBs. Little plastic pellets kids use in BB guns for target practice and play battles? Same idea as paintballing. If one of those hits you, it might sting a bit, but it won’t penetrate the skin. You can relax.’ The smile widened. ‘I won’t repeat what the leader of the armed response unit said when he was told.’

‘But a BB gun is still a gun!’ Kirsty exclaimed.

Scott shook his head. ‘It’s not classed as a firearm. BB guns carry a vanishingly small risk of serious injury at anything other than point-blank range – and this joker was keeping his distance. At that range, the worst that could have happened was an eye injury, or bruising from a pellet impact. It’s nothing to worry about.’

‘What about Bertie? What about the crows?’

‘That must have been an airgun. Or in the case of the crows, maybe a shotgun.’

‘Right.’ David glared across the table at Scott. ‘So the “joker” has access to a shotgun.’

‘Obviously what’s going on in that wood is cause for concern.’ Scott stood. ‘Whoever shot at Bram and Andrew, even though it was just with a BB gun, was committing an offence by behaving in a such a way as to cause “fear or alarm”, as the law puts it.’

Bram went with Scott to the door and out onto the verandah. It was another glorious day, the new gravel of the parking area and the roofs of all the police vehicles searingly bright in the sun.

‘Scott,’ said Bram, as the other man started down the steps. ‘This wasn’t just some kid messing with a BB gun who