Attack!

…

It seemed to me that trouble gravitated towards Juliet, especially when I was around.  Perhaps between the two of us we had that sort of chemistry going.  The sort that attracted bullets.

She had got up to collect her computer from a desk on one side of the dais, and I had just turned after taking her hand to assist her off the dais when I caught sight of a movement out of the corner of my eye, and with barely enough time to consider what it was, I pushed her to one side and dived towards the floor, feeling the plucking effect of a bullet ripping at my sleeve.

“What the…”, was as much as she got to say before she too realised, we were being shot at from the top of the aisle, bullets thumping into the floorboards barely inches from us as we scrabbled to get behind the seats of the first aisle.

Nineteen shots from a silenced gun, then silence.

Was the shooter reloading.

“Is everything alright in here?”  A deep male voice yelled out from above.

Was it the shooter of our saviour?

Juliet put her head above the seats and recognised the man and slowly dragged herself up from the floor.

“Mr Roberts.”

“Is everything alright?”

“No.  We were just shot at by someone up there on the other side of the hall.  Be careful.”

I slowly got up, shook out my clothes and saw the tear from the bullet.  Any closer would have hit my arm and another injury.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She glared at me.  “Who did you bring with you?”

“No one.  I made sure no one was following me.  Of that much, you can be assured.  Whoever it was, they were here for you.”

“And you being here, you know who it is?”

The man from the top of the hall, invisible, yelled out, “There’s no one up here now.”

“You’d better call the police.  We have a wrecked floor with bullet holes in it.  It might give some indication of who was shooting at us.”

He came out from behind a wall near the top row of seats.  “What do you mean, shooting at you?  Bullet holes?”

He came down the steps and Juliet took him over to where we were standing when the shots started.  “Why would anyone be shooting at you?”  He looked at the damage to the floor and groaned.

“This is all I need.  The place is booked solid.”

She looked at me.  “Evan?”

“It seems you might be entitled to a share of an estate worth quite a lot of money, and there are people who might not want you to inherit what they think is theirs, not yours.”

She had an expression that conveyed a degree of astonishment, not forced, which told me that it was a surprise.

I don’t know anyone who would have that sort of money.”

“Not immediately, but perhaps we should wait for the police, then have a talk about it.  I was hoping we could have a few glasses of wine first, but that’s not going to be possible.”

The police came and looked at the crime scene, and then one of the constables called a detective who also looked at the crime scene, who then called in the forensic team. 

The hall manager was told the hall would be out of action for a few days, the last news he needed to hear.

The detective asked Juliet a half dozen quests, the usual like, do you know anyone who would want to shoot at you, do you have any criminal connections, a interesting question she answered with a qualified yes, the man was now dead, and did you see anyone suspicious now or earlier in the day, where she was staying, a friend’s apartment in Bloomsbury, how long was she in the city, what she was doing here, and how long was she staying.

It answered nearly all of the questions I’d intended to ask her.

The detective looked at me, asked me why I was there, and was it possible I was the target.  Of course, I had to ask him why he thought I was, so he asked me my profession, and I told him that I was a journalist specializing in Archaeology, which I was.  She too learned where I lived, answers that seemed to amuse her.

Especially the one where he asked what the nature of our relationship was.  I let her answer with exes catching up. 

When he was done, an hour and a half later, along with the forensic team, we were allowed to go.  Her lecture the next day was now not going to happen, calls going to the organisers, and the hall owners.

“Well,” she said, once everyone had left, “you now owe me dinner, and some of your time tomorrow since I now have a free day.”

“You don’t seem overly worried that people are trying to kill you.”

“Why should I.  You’re here to protect me, are you not?”

I don’t think that was in the terms of my remit.

© Charles Heath 2023