Hurt (DS Lucy Black) by Brian McGilloway

arrived. An old guy, grey hair. He was getting into a car. It was red, I think. I didn’t see what make. But it was small. Like a Fiesta or something.’
    ‘What about the stuff from the graveyard?’ she demanded. ‘Did you take that?’
    Marcus glanced at the officers standing around and nodded.
    ‘We’d best leave this till we get to the station,’ Tara cautioned.
    Ignoring the comments, Lucy pointed to the fencing from Mary’s grave. ‘This was taken from a child’s grave. Who stole it?’
    The man shook his head. ‘Not me. That was Shaun. In the red T-shirt. He did the graveyard while we did the church roof.’
    He nodded towards the piled cars. Shaun was evidently one of the two men still hiding there.
    As they glanced across towards where the man had indicated, they suddenly saw that one of the columns of cars, close to the fencing, was beginning to sway. Below it, in the small pathway between the carcasses, they could see the uniforms moving, searching for the two missing men.
    ‘Jesus,’ Tara shouted, as the uppermost car of the moving pile, a red Skoda missing a door and bonnet, seemed to teeter at the edge, then fell forwards, knocking into the adjacent pile in the next row. In a moment, in a domino effect, the piles of scrapped cars began tumbling one into the next, bits of the car bodies dropping into the gaps between the rows where the three uniforms were, trapping them beneath the debris.
    With the uppermost car now fallen, Lucy could see Shaun, the man in the red T-shirt, his back pressed against the far fence, using his legs as leverage to the uppermost car in the next pile over, recreating the effect again. Then he turned and began scrambling up the metal fence, using the barbs at the top as a grip to pull himself up.
    As Tara and the two uniforms ran towards the fallen cars to look for their colleagues, Lucy sprinted down the roadway out of the scrapyard, trying to keep an eye on Shaun’s progress. As she reached the main gateway, she saw him swing over the top of the fence, as if to drop to the ground beyond.
    Puffing furiously, she sprinted the circumference of the fence, aware now that at least one other TSU officer was following some distance behind her, realizing that she needed support.
    As she neared the spot where Shaun had been climbing, she realized that he’d not made it down, as she’d expected. His trousers had become entangled in the barbs and he was caught at the top of the fence, tugging at the material, trying to tear himself free. Just as Lucy approached, she heard the rip of fabric and he fell onto the ground in front of her. He struggled to get to his feet, but Lucy covered the final few yards and fell onto him, pinning him back down.
    He writhed beneath her, trying to buck her off his back as Lucy laid her full weight against him. Finally, the TSU officer arrived and, dropping beside her, laid his weight on Shaun’s legs, effectively pinning him to the ground.
    ‘You’re under arrest for theft,’ Lucy managed. ‘Put your hands in front of you.’
    Shaun tried to kick and shifted his weight, but he was overpowered. Finally, Lucy felt him slump, and he extended his two hands out in front of his head, his face pressed into the dirt of the ground where he’d fallen.
    Lucy moved quickly, looping the cable ties around his outstretched hands, pinching them tight against the skin of his arm. His hands lay flat on the ground, the wrists bound together, his arms outstretched above his head.
    The TSU man stood up, dusting himself as he did so, then turned quickly to look into the yard through the gaps in the fence to where one of his colleagues lay on the ground beneath the scrapped Skoda.
    ‘Are you OK, Danny?’ he called.
    Lucy leaned down close to Shaun’s ear. ‘You stole from graves, is that right?’ she said.
    Shaun looked up at her, his face smeared with mud. ‘No comment.’ He smiled.
    Rising, Lucy stepped on his hand with her steel-capped boot, pressing down