Dead Heat (33 page)

Silence hit the room with the speed of a lightning strike.

Henry felt a chilly draught from the kitchen door as though someone had come in through the front door and let the night in.

Please cops, get here soon, he prayed.

No one moved. Jake sat there, chin resting on the barrel of the gun, stricken by fear into immobility, having realized he had said the wrong thing, in the wrong situation, as Tara's head revolved slowly to look directly at her husband.

Henry knew in that instant just how John Lloyd Wickson must have felt. It was that single occasion when something dark is revealed, some inner secret outed, when your stomach churns over and a frozen prickle runs over your body, and every square millimetre of skin contracts tighter than cat-gut strung across a tennis racket.

Wickson shook his head. ‘I didn't,' he croaked, wilting under Tara's eyes. ‘It's not true,' he back-pedalled, sensing the imminent danger to himself.

‘You are as much a bastard as him,' she said. Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to maintain control. Henry recognized the moment: she had lost it.

Everything then slowed down. Every infinitesimal detail of what took place in the following seconds was seen and analysed microscopically in Henry's head and, he had no doubt, in the heads of the people fortunate enough to stay alive.

He was watching the shotgun and Tara's fingers on it.

The forefinger that was wrapped around the trigger.

The trigger being pulled back at the same time as the muzzle was pushed harder into the soft skin underneath Coulton's chin, the shotgun angled upwards.

Henry heard himself roar: ‘
Nooooo!
'

He flung himself towards the gun, like a goalkeeper diving for the low, hard-struck penalty. Both feet left the ground. His hands were outstretched, but he knew he could not stop it happening.

The trigger went back.

There was a massive blast.

There was recoil.

And Henry would never forget what happened to Jake Coulton's head.

The blast went in below the chin, diagonally up and through his head.

Henry's ears pounded with the shock wave.

He was still in mid-air.

The cartridge blasted a hole in Coulton's chin no bigger than the diameter of the muzzle.

The shot burst through his skin up through the ‘V' in his jaw, expanding and widening all the time as it travelled, destroying bone, tissue, skin and organs, until it emerged, ten times bigger than it had entered, from the roof of his head, completely removing the top third of Coulton's skull, taking with it brain, blood and membrane, covering the wall and cupboards. At the same time, Couton's body was lifted completely from his chair and thrown back against the wall with a thud.

Tara recoiled, controlling the shotgun, racking another shell into the breech like an expert. She twisted away from Coulton, knowing she had done the job she set out to do, with the intention of carrying out another job, one that had just come along: to murder her husband.

Henry knew intuitively what she intended.

Tara turned the weapon on Wickson. He threw his arms up. Some defence!

But Henry was on her now, grappling for the gun, forcing his weight on to her. She attempted to push him away and in so doing discharged the weapon again, the shot this time blasting into the ceiling.

Henry tore it out of her hands. She turned on him with the look of a tigress blazing in her eyes. For safety he threw the shotgun across the kitchen, skimming it across the floor before turning back to Tara. She powered into him, beating his chest with her fists, hitting his recent wound, hurting him. He wrapped his arms tightly round her and held on for dear life as she squirmed, fought, wriggled. All the while he spoke hypnotically to her, did not raise his voice.

‘Tara, Tara, hold it, come on down, it's over, just hold it,' he said. She managed to free an arm and punched him on the jaw, cricking his head back with a snap. That hurt too. But he trapped her arm again and held on, never easing his grip, until the fight dissipated out of her and she became a floppy mess in his arms, could no longer stand up. She sank to her knees. Henry let her down and she began to sob dreadfully.

Henry looked over at John Lloyd Wickson. He sat there wide-eyed, stunned and speechless. Henry panted, gathered himself and turned to Jake Coulton.

He was sitting against the wall, having slithered down like a ragdoll, his head lolling forwards on to his chest, exposing the massive, gaping wound on the crown, which was disgusting. A mass of blood smeared the wall. His right foot twitched as though he was keeping time with music.

‘Jesus,' Henry hissed.

John Lloyd Wickson moaned, turned on his chair and dropped to the floor, retching.

Henry swallowed back his own revulsion. He had seen such death before, seen people shot to death, but had never watched someone have their head blown off with a shotgun. He had always turned up post-event at shotgun deaths. He knew he was deeply shocked by the spectacle and wondered what he had got himself into – not for the first time. Involved with a family cut through with abuse, adultery, mistrust and criminality. It was like many of the families he dealt with on council estates, but of a much greater proportion. Everything with this family seemed to be magnified and he put that down to one thing: money.

Wickson coughed up vomit.

Tara wept at his feet on the floor.

Jake Coulton sat there, horribly murdered.

Upstairs, a young girl shivered after being raped.

Henry blew out his cheeks, his eyes and mind not believing the tableau around him. His hands rested on his hips. He prayed even harder for the arrival of the cops because he just wanted to hand it all over.

The kitchen door creaked and opened slightly.

‘Charlotte, love, don't come in,' Henry called. ‘Please stay out there.'

The door continued to open. And it wasn't Charlotte who was standing in the hallway.

Henry stiffened up; his jaw, though, fell slack.

‘Hope you don't mind me coming in?'

Not as if there was any choice in the matter. Verner pushed the door open, and stepped into the kitchen, as confident as he could be, a smile of victory on his face and a pistol in his right hand. He placed his foot on the shotgun which Henry had thrown across the floor. ‘Goodness, what a mess. Still,' he said, looking at Henry with a big smile, ‘saved me a job.'

T
he mobile-phone gun was one of several toys that Verner liked to have at his disposal. Always useful in case of emergencies, such as being arrested. He would never have used such a weapon for an actual contract killing because they were unreliable and apt to explode in the hand, which would never do when face to face with someone you have been contracted to assassinate. On those occasions a proper weapon would always be used as unreliability was not an option. But as a standby, to have a mobile-phone gun or a cigarette-packet gun or even a belt-buckle gun was very reassuring. They came in handy if you didn't want to be in police custody.

Verner knew that on the continent of Europe, the police were very aware of disguised weapons, but that British cops, being the smug island race they were, still thought they were the stuff of fiction and did not expect to find them pointed in their face in the same way, say, French cops did.

That was how Verner had been able to get underneath the guard of the two armed officers who had been escorting him at the hospital.

By playing on the British sense of fair play, which still existed within the police, he had been able to persuade the officers to let him make a phone call on the understanding they could record the number dialled and then listen in to the conversation. Except their sense of fair play had ended up with them dead. He had then been able to coerce the petrified X-ray nurse to get the handcuff key from one of the dead cops and release him.

It had seemed almost surreal to him to be pointing a mobile phone at someone and threatening them with death.

When free, he had of course been obliged to kill her too. Verner did not like leaving witnesses, even innocent ones. He had actually felt a tinge of remorse for that, for a few minutes, but having to apply his mind to escaping had flushed that idiotic emotion right out of him.

Getting away had been a breeze.

Within an hour he had been in Manchester, dressed in clothing stripped from a poor soul unfortunate enough to be about his size and build. He had left the guy stripped naked and trussed up like a turkey in an empty room. He hadn't even seen Verner hit him, which is why he was allowed to live. He had stolen a Ford Focus from the staff car park and tootled unchallenged away from the hospital.

He dumped the car on a side street near Manchester city centre and made his way to the Radisson Hotel on Deansgate, booking in for a couple of nights under an assumed name. Using a credit card, also in a false name, which had been taped to his inner thigh, together with £150 in ten pound notes – Verner rarely left anything to chance – he visited Marks and Spencer and was reclothed, fed, re-moneyed through cashback and a cash machine and feeling good within an hour. He also visited Boots the Chemist for some ointment for the dog bites on his arms.

His next port of call was the bed in his hotel room where, after taking some aspirin, he lay down and slept for a few hours.

He woke at 5 p.m. that day, feeling stiff and sore, but rejoicing in his freedom. It had been a close run thing for him, probably the nearest he had come to being incarcerated in a dozen years.

He showered and shaved and dressed himself in his new M&S gear, smart, casual and practical. He left the hotel and walked across to the Arndale Shopping Centre and bought a pay-as-you-go mobile phone (a real one this time) and a couple of SIM cards from the Carphone Warehouse.

Manchester actually felt quite warm. He strolled up Deansgate and called his controller.

‘Things went slightly awry for me,' he admitted to the man. ‘I did the job, conveyed the message, but I got caught by the police. I got away, though.'

‘I know. It's all over the news.'

‘Have I been named?'

‘Not yet . . . Do you think you will be?'

Verner thought about the question. ‘It's possible . . . I usually leave no traces, but I didn't have time to clean up behind myself this time.' His teeth were grinding as he remembered how things had panned out for him. His job had been simply to frighten the life out of John Lloyd Wickson. Wickson, he knew, had become involved with the importation of drugs for the Mafia and was now trying to extricate himself from any obligation to them. But the Mob did not allow such things. Once they got their hooks into you, they did not let go until the funeral was over. All Verner had been tasked to do was bring Wickson, and his hard-arsed sidekick, Jake Coulton, back into line. It would have all gone OK if not for the interfering of Henry Christie, a man Verner now had a grudging respect for.

‘It's possible then, you may be of no further use to us,' Verner's controller said. ‘One of your attributes was your ability to remain undetected. If the police get to know who you are . . .'

The words chilled Verner's spine. ‘It's true I may need to move back to mainland Europe, but I will still be of great value to you. I offer a service that is second to none.'

There was a beat of silence over the phone which again had a physical effect on Verner.

‘Yes, you are good,' the man conceded, ‘still . . . we would like you to carry out one more task for us, then withdraw to Spain where your role will be reassessed.'

Verner did not like the sound of that. His enthusiasm waned. ‘What is it?'

‘We feel that the target has stretched our patience too far for his own good. He has made contact and made threats. We would like to terminate our correspondence with him, and that of his head of security. Is this something you could achieve with a business deal?'

‘Yes,' he said firmly.

‘Ensure he knows what he has done wrong prior to terminating the contract, please.'

‘Leave it with me.'

Verner did not care why his employers suddenly wanted Wickson out of the picture. All he was concerned about was doing the job well, getting paid for it and then doing a runner. He had banked over half a million dollars and that would keep him going until he decided he could reappear and resume work. He even knew where he would hide out: India was very cheap.

He ate in a pizza place on Deansgate whilst he worked out his plan. The first necessity was to rearm himself. It would be far too difficult to source a reliable rifle, so it would have to be a handgun. He actually liked close-quarter work best anyway. It was far more satisfying than looking down telescopic sights and seeing somebody fall over. The problem with a handgun, though, because of the distance involved was that it was easier to leave physical evidence behind: DNA, fingerprints, eyewitnesses. All these things were a possibility being near to the victim, but they were not insurmountable by any means.

After he had found himself a gun, he would find the correct clothing.

The last slice of pizza marinara slid into his mouth, complemented by the last swig of the one glass of red wine he allowed himself. He paid cash and left the restaurant, emerging back into the mid-evening streets of Manchester.

It was time to mix business with pleasure.

He found his pleasure in a basement club on the edge of Chinatown. It was an expensive place, populated by business types and classy-looking hookers drinking pricey cocktails at the bar.

The one he hit on was in her mid-twenties.

He watched her for a while before making his move. She looked drug clean, which was always a factor for him, and seemed pretty much in control of herself, although he knew both things were unlikely.

‘Can I buy you a drink?' Verner asked her, sliding in next to her.

She was sipping a brightly coloured concoction through a twirly straw. She removed her lips from the top of the straw and smiled at him. ‘You can. A Long-Hard Screw, please,' she said, naming the chosen cocktail and, less than subtly, providing Verner with her job description.