There was a stunned silence as Jim fell to the ground, unconscious and possibly dead. Ginger was a good shot and had hit his target well. He emerged from the undergrowth waving his pistol around, almost inviting anyone to take him on.
Ben’s heart skipped a beat as he realised that he was just too late. But he was still in the bushes on the ground, having fallen in grief at the opportunity he had missed, and was crying silently to himself.
David rushed up to Jim saying “I’m a doctor. Please let me see him.” The tattooed man showed no objection.
“And I’m a Police Officer,” said Shorty, “and I’m arresting you...” But he got no further as the man’s eyes pierced him very closely.
“I thought I recognised you from somewhere. You had a go at my mate ‘Spud’ Battersley, if I’m not mistaken. Do you want the next bullet, Mr Copper?” Shorty was silent.
Wesley had no idea what to do next. He couldn’t think clearly. He was a lawyer, and lawyers were supposed to know how to handle awkward cases like this.
David stood up, and said with a break in his voice: “I’m afraid Jim’s dead.”
His words just reached Ben, who had crawled to the edge of the undergrowth. He slowly raised his gun and carefully took aim at Ginger. Nobody had seen him and he had the time to adjust himself to get a comfortable aim.
He fired once. Ginger’s body was thrust forward as the bullet hit him in the back. Ben quickly reloaded, stood up ran forward and fired down at the man’s head, splattering blood everywhere. There was no doubt about it — he was dead too.
Ben threw away the gun and went to hug his dead father.
Shorty was quickly onto his mobile phone to summon further police resources and an ambulance and paramedical staff to take away the two bodies.
When Ben’s case came to court, Wesley advised him, having by then understood what all Jim’s skulduggery for the previous weeks had been about. Shorty gave a glowing account of the boy’s character and obvious love of his father. David, too, explained the nature of Jim’s illness, and how the news of the cure had come just too late for him not to proceed on his chosen course of having himself killed. Even the barman who had spoken to the watchful ‘James Bond’ gave evidence that the boy was clearly tireless in his efforts, whatever they may have been.
From the bottom of the previous column
It was fairly clear that Ben was guilty of killing Ginger, though there were many mitigating circumstances. However, the second shot that he had administered to the back of the man’s head did not help his case; nor did his obtaining a gun, showing that his actions were at least in part premeditated; however Wesley argued that it was never his initial intention to kill the man, merely to protect his father by wounding and incapacitating him.
Ben pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
A rather sympathetic judge gave a lengthy summary of the case, and accepted his ‘not guilty’ plea to murder, and so directed the jury. He eventually sentenced Ben to five years in prison for manslaughter, one year to be served in an institute for young people, and the remainder to be suspended, and monitored by a probation officer.
It hardly needs to be said that Judith was absolutely distraught by losing her husband and also, in a way, her younger son, though the lad’s actions had in some way brought them closer.
Tom had come back home just as soon as he could, to help his mother, though she remained rather cool towards him, even after the years he had been away. After a while he drifted away from home, and ultimately they lost contact with him completely.
After a year Ben returned to his old school, where his courage was admired by just about everyone; and, though his name never came up in court, Hughie Rushton, the supplier of the firearm, turned against crime and resumed a normal school life, having seen the damage that his way of life could affect others.
After leaving school, Ben studied Chemistry at Brighton University, near enough to home that he could see his mother most weekends, and later he joined a large pharmaceuticals company.
Have you read my other stories: “The Green Flash”, “Millennium” and “The Plutonian”?