Canale looked at Dan’s phone and said, “You think you could deal with that after you finish telling me whatever it is you’re telling me?”
“I’m almost done.” He finished up on the phone, then looked up with a smile. “Done. Yeah, they’re okay, unharmed. As for the phone, it’s something I set up earlier, because you people are all the same. Maybe the tape doesn’t prove he killed her, but even so, that tape, and the whole story, and contact details for the people who can back it up, has just been emailed to around thirty news agencies around the world. The Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, the BBC, Le Monde—they’ll be interested. You craven cowards, all of you. You’d rather have an attempted rapist and murderer serving in the US Congress than upset the apple cart. Well, shame on you, because it’s out there now, so deal with it.”
Dan held up his phone and smiled.
Brabham looked rattled for the first time, the color leaching from his face. He reached a hand out to the back of the chair, steadying himself.
He looked at Dan, full of hatred as he said, “You bastard. His wife’s just had a baby, for God’s sake.”
“Two words, Bill—Sabine Merel.”
Bill shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard or understood. He started to walk without conviction towards the door, but there was a strange quality about his movements, as if he might collapse. And then he went, his leg appearing to buckle, and too late Dan saw it was a feint—within seconds, Brabham had scooped up the dead man’s gun and had it leveled now at Dan’s face.
Dan didn’t have time to react, only to take in the hatred and agitation in Brabham’s expression. Patrick and Canale both flinched in response but stopped, seeing the same volatility Dan could see.
Dan had pushed him too far, and with an odd feeling of resignation, he knew this was it. He’d often wondered how he’d feel when he finally faced certain death, and here it was, an almost out-of-body acceptance that the time had come and he could simply stop trying.
Brabham wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger, though, and said again now, “You bastard! He was a good kid and he’s a good man, and he doesn’t deserve this, people like you . . .”
Canale said, “Bill . . .”
“No! You know the script, Frank—he broke in here, killed a load of people before we took him down. It’s what he deserves.”
“I’ll testify to that not being true,” said Patrick.
Without taking his eyes off Dan, he said, “What makes you think you’ll testify to anything?” He stepped forward now, as if wanting more certainty. His hand was shaking slightly but the aim was true, the barrel of the gun oddly compelling from Dan’s perspective. “You lowlife piece of scum.”
Dan braced himself. The shot exploded, the room breaking apart. Patrick fell backwards, almost losing his footing. Brabham’s face distorted and crumpled and he seemed to dive sideways to the floor, gun-hand flailing like a last desperate wave.
It took Dan a moment to take in that he hadn’t been shot himself, another to make sense of the scene, the blood, the wound to the side of Brabham’s head, Canale’s own outstretched arm. Dan looked at him, still not entirely certain that this meant he was out of danger.
Maybe Patrick was just as unsure because he spoke first, saying simply, “Frank?”
Canale holstered his gun, looking remarkably calm considering he’d just shot someone in the head at close to point-blank range. And Dan wasn’t na?ve enough to think he’d done it to save his life—there had been some other calculation, perhaps just a realization that Bill had become a liability.
Now Canale said, “It’s a different script, that’s all—it’ll be easier to tidy up this way.” His phone started to ring and when he took it out and looked at it, a flash of anger crossed his face. He looked with contempt at Dan and put the phone back in his pocket.
“We’ll talk, Patrick.” He pointed at Dan, then, and said, “I hope for your sake, Mr. Hendricks, that we never cross paths again.”
Dan didn’t respond, the last couple of minutes having convinced him that he didn’t want to make any more an enemy of Frank Canale than he already had. Besides, he was still too surprised at being alive to throw it away on a quip.
Canale took one more look at Brabham, bloodied and twisted, and strode out of the room, leaving Dan and Patrick with the corpses and a whole load of uncertainty. The only thing Dan really knew for sure was that he’d done what was right. Maybe it wouldn’t prove to be the right thing for his own future, but it had been right all the same, and perhaps against the odds, he was still alive, for the time being at least.
Chapter Forty-three
Patrick looked down at Brabham and said, “What have you done, Dan?”
“You were gonna sit on it, weren’t you?”