He looked down the left flank of the road and saw what appeared to be an end to the commercial properties because the world turned black.
As if reading his mind, Danny said: ‘Where it gets dark, just after the businesses end on the left, there’s a food warehouse called Gustafson Foods that’s got no lighting on the exterior, so it’s the darkest spot here. The best place to hide and watch, so that’s where McDevitt will be lurking, if he’s here. By coming the way we did, we avoided the entrance to this road, which they’ll be watching. If they’re there, that is.’
He sounded pretty happy with this turn of events, but the optimism didn’t last.
‘The problem is they can see the entrance, and they can also see Gold’s house. If we drive right up there, they’ll spot us long before we get close. There’s light on us and none on them, so they’d also see us before we saw them. There’s no creeping up.’
‘So, we can’t get there?’ Liz asked.
Danny grinned at them both. ‘Think I came all this way without a plan?’
He outlined his idea. Liz was up for it. Karl was dubious because he sensed something like gloom in Danny’s voice.
He understood why when Liz touched Danny’s arm and said: ‘I know you want to do this, Danny, but we’ll be fine.’
So her pal was worried that he was sending these two amateurs out there alone. Karl grew extra respect for the man.
‘If I honk,’ Danny said, ‘it means trouble’s coming, so run for a galaxy far, far away.’
Liz threw open the door and slipped out. Danny turned off the interior light before it really got a chance to come on.
‘Are we not waiting here?’ Karl said, worried.
Liz said: ‘We’ll wait around back, in the fields, so we’re closer when he calls.’
Karl paused. He didn’t want to go anywhere until he’d spoken to Katie.
As if reading his mind, Liz said: ‘We’ll call your wife from Mr Gold’s phone.’
He nodded.
Danny said: ‘Once you’re in, call the police, lock the doors and stay there with Gold until they come. I’ll wait here and watch until they arrive, then be off. Luck be with.’
‘Thanks, Danny,’ Karl said to this man who had saved him. A world of supervillains and superheroes, and normal old him in the middle. He’d never felt weaker in his life.
Eighty-One
Brad
The junction seemed to be some kind of boundary where council workmen took a lunch break during slum clearance. On the far side was what Sink had called a posh kind of poncy street. Old detached houses with garages and bay windows. On this side were cramped terraced houses with no gardens.
A break on both sides of the terraced street had been used for retail. Nine-to-five joints like hairdressers’ and post offices, now closed and dark, faced nocturnal beasts like mini-marts and takeaways alive and bright. Teenagers with nothing to do hung around outside. Sink’s T3 lurked on the other side, in the gloom, but no one paid it any heed. Up front of the vehicle, Sink and Guff were playing a card game Brad couldn’t work out. But he wasn’t watching anyway. He was looking beyond, eyes on the third house on the money side of the street.
Eight minutes ago, Sink had knocked on the door, just like Mick asked. The bay window had prevented Brad from seeing who answered, but according to Sink, who had pretended to be collecting old washing machines, the owner was some old guy getting ready to go out. Now, Brad saw the guy, tall, grey beard, leaving the house and getting into his car. And then Mick called, perfect timing, as if he knew.
‘We do it now,’ Sink said as he hung up. That puzzled Brad: how was this guy going to ‘regret the error of his ways’ if he was gone? Was this a house-trashing job? Not Brad’s style, and why would it take three to do that anyway? Anxiety crept over him. He didn’t like this.
Eighty-Two
Mick
Mick hung up the phone and watched Gold’s fat frame, with a big I-love-life grin on his face, as he chatted on his mobile. Mick slapped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt his hand, and immediately regretted it. But not because of the pain: why abuse the vehicle, which had done everything he’d asked of it?
The phone and the ride and that big belly of Gold’s were all products of criminal money. Suited, briefcase in hand, phone against his ear, didn’t he just look like one of the good defenders of the law? This man who’d kept the wheels of Grafton’s criminal empire oiled with blood. Mick gripped the steering wheel and tried to pull it towards him. Planted his feet on the brake and clutch to get the leverage. He leaned back and pulled, angry, and didn’t stop until the steering column began to groan. Then he relaxed.
He needed a release for his rage, but why take his anger out on something innocent?
He waited for Gold to get inside the house, then he climbed into the back of the van and opened a toolbox bolted to one wall. The plan had been to await the arrival of Seabury and the bitch, but all main events needed a support act. And he needed to get his blood pumping.
Thirty seconds later, he was scuttling across the road, aimed at Gold’s lair. With a hacksaw.
Why unleash his fury on something that didn’t feel pain and regret?
Eighty-Three
Brad
Sink stopped the campervan right across from the target house, other side of the road. Brad scanned the other homes. A metal Neighbourhood Watch sign on a lamppost seemed to glare right at him. But there was no one about and every lit living-room window had the curtains pulled. Brad still wasn’t happy about it.
‘Too close,’ he said.
‘Calm down,’ Guff said. ‘In and out. Are you gonna be the one crying to mummy after all?’
‘What are we doing here?’ Brad asked, panic rising in his throat.
Both men ignored his question. Then they did something outlandish: played a round of Paper Scissors Stone, and Guff lost. But it was Sink who got out of the van and crossed the road. As he walked, he pulled on a balaclava. Nice and casual, like a guy putting on a woolly hat against the cold.
Then, in the upstairs window of the target house, Brad saw a woman step into view. So, the old man wasn’t the target after all. She approached the window and started to pull the curtains. There was a towel slung over her shoulder. Rising dread turned to shock when he recognised the face.
Seabury’s wife.
‘What’s the plan?’ Brad asked, trying to sound casual. He moved back, and sat on one of the armchairs. Just to think.
Guff slid between the cabin seats and took the facing chair, their knees almost touching. ‘We wait,’ he said.
Through a chink in a curtained side window, Brad watched Sink walk casually down the driveway and leap over a tall fence, lithe as a cat. Lithe as a man who’d had lots of practice at breaking into houses. But he also watched Guff because something was afoot here beyond hurting Seabury’s wife.
‘So what did you do to piss off Mick?’ the brother asked from the darkness.
He knew he should have reacted then, right then, as the realisation that Mick had tricked him sank in. But he didn’t. He allowed himself a moment of doubt, a moment to think he had it wrong, that Mick wouldn’t do this: they were friends; they looked after each other. And in that moment the chance to strike first passed.
By the time Brad had knocked away doubt from his mind, the bruiser had leaped forward with surprising speed for his bulk and grabbed his hair. The other hand pressed something cold and sharp against the side of his neck.
‘I guess we just reached “S” in the alphabet,’ Brad said.
Eighty-Four
Karl
Danny hung up. ‘We go in the back way, he says. Right now.’
They bid him good luck, and got out. But then the phone rang. It was Katie. Karl scuttled out of earshot to take the call.
‘Oh, God, Katie, are you okay? That crash. I tried to call. Your dad—’
‘I’m fine. Forget me. Dad unplugged the phone until I was ready. What about you?’
‘You got away, thankfully. He didn’t hurt you?’