‘I know, Mac, I know. You returned to work and it was the first thing you said. Nobody is to mention what happened. Nobody is to talk about it. We stick to talking shop. But I think we’re past that now. Is all of this because y—’
Gondal stopped as the kitchen roll flew at him. He put a hand up to deflect it, shocked by the attack. In that time, Mick had covered the five feet between them. He landed a hard headbutt, right into the nose, and Gondal dropped straight down onto his knees. Then Mick had the knife in his hand. A big guy with a knife, and an overweight man on his knees was no contest.
Mick grabbed Gondal’s hair at the back and pulled him forward, into the blade.
‘I killed that fucking cunt. For playing a part in it.’ Mick dragged Gondal deeper into the kitchen and dropped him. His colleague’s blood began to mix with the petrol on the lino. Gondal rolled onto his front, hands clutching his neck as he tried to get his knees under him.
Mick said: ‘When you get to Heaven, tell God you said the wrong thing to the wrong man, okay? He’ll roll his eyes and wonder why we never learn.’
He picked up the kitchen roll. He stepped into the back doorway.
‘By the way, Gondal, here’s something else you can take with you. I killed Grafton. There you go. You solved your final case.’
Gondal’s fading eyes registered a moment of disbelief. Then the man’s movements slowed and stopped, as if his batteries had run out.
Mick lit the kitchen roll aflame, but held it and watched Gondal until the blood pumped no more, until the ragged breathing had stopped. Only when he was sure his long-time partner was beyond the reach of more suffering did he toss the flaming roll.
But at his back fence, ready to climb, he stopped as he felt his heart lurch. He turned, wanting to go back, wanting to drag Gondal out of the burning kitchen, but it was too late. For a moment, he fought back tears, watched black smoke pour out of his doorway, and wished he’d never learned the story of a lucky twelve-year-old Danish girl.
Seventy-One
Karl
Liz was looking out the back window. At first he thought she was still stressing about Brad Smithfield, but he corrected himself with a mental kick. Her husband was dead, that was what was haunting her. Earlier, under the bridge, he’d seen glimpses of her fortified resolve. But it was gone now. The woman before him was again meek and helpless.
‘How did you find me, Liz?’ Karl asked.
As she answered, she didn’t look away from the outside world. ‘We went to the meeting. I wanted to make sure that everything went okay for you with the detective. We followed the police car. And then we followed the van after they took you. Through a window I saw them go into the warehouse office.’
Now she looked at him. ‘How is Bradley Smithfield involved in this with a policeman? Why would they work together to kill my husband?’
At that point Danny put the radio on, loud. Probably his effort at deflecting her thoughts. She looked out of the window again. Karl copied, his mind on Katie. As soon as he got to a phone, he would call hospitals and police stations to try to find her.
The van turned down a street lined with terraced houses. The road was slim, made tighter by twin walls of cars parked nose-to-end. Danny barely avoided hitting a neighbour’s vehicle as he turned sharply into his driveway.
Karl got out, glad to feel the fresh air. There were people out and about: women talking at gates, kids playing in the road, men fixing cars, just as if it were any old sunny afternoon. He half-expected someone to yell and point, recognising him as a wanted man. But it didn’t happen.
He got a shock when the driver’s door opened.
Danny was in a wheelchair that took the place of a driver’s seat, with braces on his legs that connected to the pedals – no clutch. The vehicle had been converted to allow a disabled guy to pilot it. A mechanical framework around the door was designed to hydraulically lift the wheelchair in and out.
Danny caught him staring. ‘Ah, you didn’t know. Bet you thought I was a pig for not getting out of the van to help you escape, eh?’
‘No, I… er…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He set the mechanical framework going. Karl watched as Danny’s chair was lifted out of the cab and placed on the ground. He tossed Karl a key. ‘Lead on and I’ll follow.’
He pegged Danny as one of those self-sufficient guys who abhorred the offer of help. Karl would just offend the guy if he tried to give him a hand getting his wheelchair into the house. So, he stepped up to unlock the door and went inside.
He had expected the house to be modified to accommodate a guy in a wheelchair, but that wasn’t the case. It looked like any other house. Maybe it was an ego thing – rather than adapt his surroundings, Danny preferred to push himself and struggle. Or maybe he didn’t want visitors to see his house as different, that he was different. Hell, maybe he believed he’d miraculously wake up one day able to walk. The only concession was the hand grabbers, the sort of tool he had seen street cleaners use to avoiding bending down to retrieve trash. They were everywhere. They were on chairs, on floors, leaning against walls.
Liz said she needed the bathroom and vanished. Danny led Karl into the kitchen, where he proceeded to make tea. He used a grabber to drag the kettle along the worktop, close enough to the edge. There was a lot of overreaching to fill it and to extract mugs from a cupboard. Karl noted that the mugs were in a high cupboard and that Danny pushed the kettle far back along the worktop when finished with it, as if making things hard for himself. He was tempted to help, especially when Danny had trouble hooking a cup, but knew his help would be seen as interference.
They took their teas into the living room to continue their conversation. Again, Karl wanted to help because Danny had trouble wheeling himself. Mug jammed between his legs, he manoeuvred himself slowly to avoid spillage. Karl could hear a shower running upstairs.
Danny caught him looking at a desktop computer in a corner, with a phone nearby. His agitation was unmissable. Danny nodded in that direction. Karl literally ran over to try to find his wife.
Seventy-Two
Dave
Mick might not be raging around like a psychopath, but he was acting without thinking and that made his actions just as dangerous. The idea to send him to kidnap Seabury’s wife, for example. A fucking joke. No way would he have obeyed that order. He would have pretended the girl was out.
Dave’s street was lined with semi-detached houses at the end of sloping gardens. A peaceful place, much coveted. Full of old people and respectable couples. He was glad to be home.
He wandered into the living room, and Lucinda sat up sharply. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
Fuck. He had to work on his poker face. He said: ‘Nothing,’ but knew it was useless. He could feel his clenched jaw, and the sweat on his hands. Sure enough, she got up and asked him what the hell had him worried. He knew there was no point in lying. So he said it. Mick had gone off the rails and he’d quit, got out of there.
‘You abandoned him? Did you just run away?’
Sure did, he told her. ‘We’re done with that. Is there any of that chicken left?’
Earlier, while she was counting the cash again, he’d seen that lovely smile, the one that had drawn him in and made him eventually slip a ring on her finger. Now, as she lifted two handfuls of notes from the bag by her chair and shook them before his face, the expression he saw beyond money was all anger.
‘You fucked him over? He’ll come for you, you dickhead. I’m not losing this because of your stupidity.’
‘He’s gone wild. The cops will be after him. No way he can stay out of custody with how mindless he’s become. Relax.’
He regretted that final word even as it left his lips.
Lucinda stamped a foot, like a child. ‘Relax, you moron? You think he can’t fuck us up from jail?’