‘After all this fannying around, that was all I needed all along,’ he said, almost incredulous. ‘For you to know that bastard’s in Hell.’
He took a deep, satisfied breath, lifted his gun, aimed it right at her face and pulled the trigger.
Eighty-Seven
Danny
Danny opened his door again, and closed it again.
He knew it was a bad idea to leave the van, but staying here, doing nothing, made him feel impotent. Action, that was what he needed. He had been threatened with knives and guns. He had taken beatings at the hands of vicious people. And he’d done all that in return. You could take the man out of the fire, but you couldn’t take the fire out of the man. And the fire had been reignited the moment he learned that Ron had been killed. Right then he knew heads had to roll. People would have to be put under pressure to give up what they knew, and others would have to be sent a stern message that Ron’s death didn’t mean his empire was ready to be sliced up like free cake. That was action he wanted in on. And this time Ron couldn’t stop him. His legs, though. They might.
He cast his mind back to that day when Ron had forced him to leave. Just a few weeks after the bike crash. Somehow, the man had known. He’d been called into a quiet spot, where nobody could overhear, and hit with a line that changed everything: ‘I can’t have a man around who’s in love with my wife.’
And that was that. No denial, because the boss was never wrong, even when he was. And no argument, because loving a man’s wife was a whole lot more than just being attracted to her, and he’d seen what happened to guys who didn’t hide the fact that they thought Liz was hot. He remembered a chap behind her in a post office queue. Ron had been waiting outside, and through the window he’d seen the guy’s eyes run up and down her body. That was all. Probably as much boredom as physical attraction. No move to chat to her, no step closer to smell her perfume. Just the eyes, up and down, taking her in. He probably would have forgot her within minutes. But Ron had sent a guy to follow him. Now the guy with the roving eyes would remember that day with his last old-man dying breath. So, friends or not, Danny had got off lightly. Liz, of course, never knew a thing about it, having been fed some bullshit about Ron taking Danny out of the game for his own good. Which meant she never learned of Danny’s true feelings for h––
Lights hit his wing mirror. He was parked sixty feet from the path out of the cul-de-sac and now watched a vehicle coming along it. It was moving slowly, which was not a good sign, but then again the lane was thin and slow was the order of the day.
The vehicle slipped out of the path and speeded up. It drove past the left side of Danny’s van, and he lifted an A–Z and lowered his head.
He watched the van drive down the road with two people inside. The street led to a roundabout, and from there the roads went in every direction, so the guys could be going to Scotland, or to Dover to catch a ferry to France. But if he was wrong…
Danny opened his door again, then slammed it. By the time he got his chair out and wheeled himself halfway to Gold’s house, it would all be over. And if he drove in pursuit of the van, he would alert the bad guys and lose the element of surprise.
He cursed. Nothing he could do except what he’d promised Liz. So, angry, impotent, lost, Danny lay on the horn.
Eighty-Eight
Karl
The timing was perfect. A horn, just as Mick fired. Distant, muted, so it wasn’t the volume that had made Mick shift his aim a fraction. At a hundred yards, the bullet might have missed Liz by ten feet, but here it ruffled her hair and blasted a hole in the wall two inches from Karl’s head. If she’d been a yard closer to Mick, the bullet wouldn’t have made the wall. She dropped to her knees in shock, which opened a space for Karl to see the suspicion on Mick’s face at the horn. Way out here in the quiet and the dark, all but this place closed for the night, someone had let off a long blast of their horn. Not one of those watch-where-you’re-going blasts a thousand motorists did every day. Longer, harder, something to get someone’s attention, or give a warning. It had put enough shock and suspicion in Mick’s mind to cause the gun to jerk and waste the bullet.
Liz, seething with anger, said: ‘That noise means you’re in big trouble, McDevitt. Thought we came unprepared, did you?’
He had, and he shouldn’t have, that’s what Mick’s face was saying. He backed off, still aiming the gun. Still watching them, except for a moment when, at the bay window, he turned away to haul open a curtain and peer out. Just one second. Not enough time for Karl to do anything.
But in that second, Karl saw lights beyond the window. Headlights. A vehicle turning into the car park, towards the house. His hopes flared and died in the same moment, because it had to be Danny out there; what could he do apart from extend their lives for another few seconds before getting killed himself?
Mick let the curtain drop. He stood with his back to it and grinned at them. ‘My friends are here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s good we didn’t have a quick kill. I couldn’t bring myself to touch that bitch, but my friends can have whatever they want from her. You and I will watch, Seabury.’
Not Danny after all. The plan had been to honk the horn if he saw trouble, not honk to announce his arrival.
‘Sit down, backs against the wall,’ Mick ordered.
Sitting made them more vulnerable, but they had no choice, sitting side by side against the wall behind the desk, with the fallen chair and the dead solicitor in front of them. This close, his lethal throat wound looked much worse. His open eyes seemed to be staring right at their feet, but that, Karl felt, was better than their faces.
‘How do you think you’ll sell this?’ Liz said, her composure on its way back. ‘Are you going to be the hero? You find us dead and claim the glory, maybe make superintendent, write your memoirs, play yourself in a film version?’
Mick laughed. ‘Not this time. I won’t make that mistake again. No bodies. You won’t get a funeral. You’ll get a yellowing missing persons poster.’
Liz’s hand grabbed Karl’s for reassurance. They looked at each other, and in her eyes he read strength. That strong new persona of hers, arisen like a phoenix upon news of the death of her husband. She didn’t want reassurance: she was giving it.
They heard two doors slam outside. Mick’s friends, about to join the party. Karl felt time slipping through his fingers. He shut down an image of Katie and their unborn baby, knowing his fear of losing her would only weaken him.
He heard the front door open. Mick’s guys, just seconds away.
And then the office door opened, and the man called Brad Smithfield entered. With him was another person. Karl had a dizzying sensation. He refused to believe his eyes, but it was real. There, with her arm clutched in Brad’s fist, was Katie.
‘Let her go!’ he yelled, and rose to his feet. Mick fired his gun into the air as a warning, but Karl kept rising. Only when the second bullet tore into the wall beside his head, causing plaster and paint chips to sting his face, did he stop. Or rather, Liz stopped him. She still had his hand, and she tugged him down with surprising ease.
He clutched his stinging eye and felt his heart thudding. A foolish move, trying to save Katie like that. Mick would have blasted him into nothingness. Now, because of Liz, he still had a heartbeat.
Then he saw that Mick’s gun was aiming at Brad.
Brad was frozen. ‘Wow, pal, easy. I’m in your corner, remember.’
The gun tracked back to Karl. But Mick seemed unsure, and the weapon wavered again and settled on a blank wall. Not Karl. Not Brad. Aimed at nothing but equidistant from both men. Half a second from targeting either one. As if he wasn’t sure who was the biggest threat.