My first thought was, irrationally, “Oh, no. He’s missed.” But then I recalled that missing, or certainly not killing me was what I wanted.
Shorty yelled out: “Christ! Somebody’s shooting in those bushes. Get down!” and he summarily shoved me to the grass.
Then I heard Ben’s voice commanding someone to “Drop that gun! The next bullet kills you!”
Ben’s heart was thumping crazily. He had hit Ginger in the right arm, though he hadn’t caused the man to drop the gun. However, he had fallen and was obviously in some considerable pain. Ben ran through the undergrowth and quickly took the man’s weapon from him. He pointed his own gun at the would-be assassin’s chest and told him to get up and go out into the open.
The two of them walked out onto the open fairway, where they saw Ben’s father and Shorty flat on the rough grass, and Wesley and David running up to see what all the fuss was about.
“My God, what’s going on? This is your boy, isn’t it, Jim?”
“Yes. It is. I can explain some of it, I think. What are you doing here, Ben?”
“Protecting you from this killer,” he answered.
“But how? Why? What do you know? What are you doing?” I was thoroughly confused.
Meanwhile David had approached Ginger and looked at his bleeding arm. “This will need fairly prompt attention. Has anyone got any alcohol?”
Wesley found his hip-flask of brandy and passed it to David. The doctor tore open the man’s right sleeve and dabbed some of the liquid onto the wound. “It’s not too bad. You’ll live.”
“Did you shoot this man,” DCI ‘Shorty’ asked Ben.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Then I’m going to have to arrest you, young man.” Ben was very taken aback by this. He hadn’t seen the consequences of his plan and his actions. But at least he had saved his father.
From the bottom of the previous column
“Look, Josh, don’t jump ahead,” I said. “There’s an explanation for all this. It’s just that none of us know the full story. Before you take any action, let’s just hear what everyone has to say.”
“Well, this is... most irregular,” Shorty objected.
David intervened to say that he would prefer to take the wounded man back to his surgery where he could probably remove the bullet and tidy him up. Everybody should come back to his house immediately and they should all tell what they knew.
“But this is the scene of a crime!” Shorty protested. “There may be valuable evidence in the undergrowth.”
“Is there anyone else involved?” I asked the tattooed man.
“Only—” but I quickly cut him off.
“Anyone else?” I made it clear to him that Spud was not to be brought into the discussion.
“No. I’m acting alone.”
I turned to Shorty; “There’s no more evidence here, on my word. Let’s go back to David’s and we can sort this little problem out, I hope to everybody’s satisfaction, mine and this man’s too, as well as yours, Josh.” I smiled and added: “In any case, you’re off duty!”
We all went to David’s, where I told all I knew. Ben filled in his part of the story, though he was rather reticent to admit hacking into my computer, but I forgave him that. Spud was not mentioned except as ‘an intermediary,’ nor were the actual amounts of money involved.
I hope everyone was as happy with the outcome as they could be. And nobody was charged with anything.
Have you read my other stories: “The Green Flash”, “Millennium” and “The Plutonian”?