Falling Glass (35 page)

The night was clear.

The Bla Hole cliff afforded a view over all Belfast Lough, North Down and Scotland as far as the distant town of Girvan.

Belfast itself was stretched ahead of him under the surrounding hills like an upturned mirror. The old girl winking at him through the lights at the shipyard and the Cave Hill.

Killian carried the tyre to the lodge at Coulter’s house.

It was a one-storey, pokey wee building right on the road. He must have driven by it a hundred times, never once considered it.

A light was on. He didn’t have much of a plan. If he could get in and out without a positive ID or camera angles – the peelers could, maybe, pin this on Ivan. It was
his
gun. His fingerprints. Maybe.

Killian knocked on the lodge window.

No answer.

He knocked again. Someone moved apart a Venetian blind and looked at him. A young guy running a bit to fat and baldness.

Killian lifted the tyre.

“What’s the matter?” a voice said over a concealed intercom.

“I’ve got a puncture. And you are not going to believe, but spare has a puncture too. Could let me use phone?” Killian said in an vague Eastern European accent.

“Why are you carrying the tyre?” the voice asked. He was a Brummie, which pleased Killian. He liked Birmingham and he liked Brummies. He wouldn’t kill this guy if he could help it.

“I thought I would leave car here. I park it up road at corner. I call for taxi to take me to hotel in Belfast.”

“You’re going to leave your car?”

“I get sleep, have spare fixed in morning and get taxi back tomorrow,” Killian said with an embarrassed grin.

“Where’d you park your car?” the man asked.

“On corner, at cliff,” Killian said, catching the man’s drift.

“Are you mental? That’s a blind corner. Someone ploughs around there, hits your car and they’re over the fucking edge!”

“Oh no,” Killian said, sounding foreign and clueless.

“You’re a bloody idiot!” the man said and Killian watched him leave his perch behind the bulletproof glass. A moment later he came out of the lodge. He was a chubby fellow but then a lot of ex-blades piled on the pounds after their military service was done. Eliminate that ten-mile run every morning and suddenly all the sausages, chips and beer took their toll. “You’re going to get somebody fucking killed mate. You’re gonna have to move your car.”

Killian took Markov’s silenced Colt .45 from behind the tyre and pointed it at the man’s heart.

“Let’s go inside and talk about this,” he said in his normal north Belfast burr – maybe the most unlovable and menacing accent on the planet.

He pulled the balaclava down over his face. The Russian accent and the funny games were over. “Take it easy mate, take it easy,” the Brummie replied.

“Hands on the top of your head and if you squeak the wrong way you better hope that the atheists are wrong.”

The man put his hands on his head.

They went inside the lodge.

It was a small single-room affair with a lot of camera monitors, a desk and a set of pigeonholes for the mail. There was a door to a toilet, a microwave and a kettle for making tea and Cup-a-Soup. Some of the monitors were infrared which impressed Killian as did the man’s Heckler and Koch MP5 assault rifle which was lying on the desk.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Killian said.

“Mate, please, please, don’t top me. I’m just a fucking lackey. You know?”

Killian looked about the room for rope or string or a long piece of electrical cord that he could strip.

“I’m lucky to be alive, I know that, I was fucking blown up in Mosul. RPG in the side of the Rover. Fucking Sergeant Halder bought it. I have burns on me left arm, to this day it hurts in the winter and…”

Killian couldn’t see anything that he could use.

He remembered the play of his mentor, one Michael Forsythe. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Viv.”

“Well, Viv, you don’t have any gaffer tape do you?”

“What?”

“Gaffer tape, duct tape, you know the stuff I’m talking about?”

“I think we do. Top drawer.” Viv said.

“Great. Now, tell me where all the other guns are.”

“No other guns, just the MP5,” Viv said with a depressing attempt at cunning.

Killian shook his head and tutted. “And I thought we were getting on famously,” he said and shot Viv in the left ankle.

Viv crumpled to the floor. He didn’t cry out – which must have been that vaunted SAS training – but instead groaned and said between gritted teeth: “In the black drawer, under monitor number one, there’s a police special .38, a Smith and Wesson 9 millimetre semi-automatic and you can see the MP5 for yourself.”

Killian opened the drawer and took out the handguns. He shoved them into his coat pocket. They were useful but without question the MP5 was going to be his weapon of choice.

“What about that duct tape?” he asked.

“Drawer next to the kettle.”

“Next to the kettle? Ahh, I see.”

Killian strapped the MP5 over his shoulder, inserted the long 9 millimetre magazine and got the duct tape.

He bent over Viv. “Flip over on your stomach, there’s a good chap,” Killian said.

Viv flipped. “Please don’t kill me, please…”

“I suppose you’ve got a wife and kids?”

“No, I don’t, but I’ve got a season ticket to Villa Park. Mr C lets me go every home game. This is going to be our year,” he said.

Killian was impressed by this piece of bullshit. It was just the sort of thing that the guy thought might impress someone like Killian.

“Gimme your paws,” Killian said.

He rolled up the man’s sleeves and duct-taped his wrists tightly together. Killian had a look at Viv’s ankle. It was nasty. Bone sticking through the skin and the bullet had awkwardly travelled down through the man’s foot.

“This is going to hurt, I’m afraid,” Killian said.

He rolled up Viv’s jeans and duct-taped his ankles together, wrapping the tape around a dozen times.

Viv grunted but was still flying with this stiff-upper-lip stance.

Your standard Mike Forysthe move now would be to hog-tie him or beat him unconscious or lock him in a cupboard, but Killian reckoned that that was going overboard. Viv would just need a good talking to near the end of the convo, to impress upon him what kind of a man he was dealing with.

“You did well, Viv. We’re done,” Killian said.

Viv grunted and lay there on the floor blinking back the waves of pain. And he wasn’t alone. Markov had given Killian a good beating and anything around the ribs smarted for a long time.

“Okay now, this is how it’s going to go: I’m going to ask you a series of questions and you’re going to tell me all the answers. If I find out that any of your answers were incorrect or incomplete I’ll come back here and put a bullet in your brain. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Viv said.

“Okay. Let’s do this fast and I’ll get you a smoke. How many other guards are on duty tonight?”

“Two. Ginger’s in the grounds and Bobby’s in the house. Ground floor.”

“Where on the ground floor?”

“There’s an ante-room off the entrance hall. Little cubby. He sits in there, reading, wanking.”

“You must have a plan of the house, somewhere,” Killian said.

“Over there on the noticeboard, there’s a fire exit evacuation plan, that’s got the whole house except for the greenhouses and the hangar.”

Killian looked at the plan, memorised it.

“Now you fellas must do a radio check or a shift change or something.”

“Radio check every hour, shift change every two hours.”

Killian nodded. “Go on,” he said.

“Go on what?”

“When’s the next radio check? When’s the next shift change?”

“What time is it now?”

Killian didn’t have a watch but there was a clock above the microwave.

“Two-twenty if that clock’s right,” Killian said.

“It’s not right, check my watch,” Viv told him.

Killian rolled down some of the duct tape and found that it was actually two thirty-one.

He took the watch off and slipped it on his own wrist.

“Two thirty-one,” he said.

“You better move fast if you’re going to burgle the house,” Viv said. “Ginge is supposed to come and relieve me at three and then I go over and swap with Bobby.”

Killian nodded grimly. Did he really think that this was all about a burglary? A man would take on the three ex-SAS types just to steal some pictures or antiques or whatever? Well, maybe if they were really valuable, which they probably were.

“Do you talk on the radio before you do the shift change?”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“We talk on the radio all the time. All night.”

Shit. That was a fucking fly in the ointment.

“Viv, that causes me some difficulty doesn’t it?”

“How so, mate?”

“Well, if they give you a buzz on the radio and you don’t answer they’re going get all Red Alert on me, aren’t they? Red alert, this is not a drill, call the fucking peelers.”

“I suppose they would,” Viv admitted.

“Where is this walkie-talkie of yours?” Killian asked, looking around the surfaces and not seeing anything.

“I may have left it in the toilet,” Viv said.

Killian went to the toilet and the radio was indeed there sitting on the spare toilet rolls next to a copy of
Viz
. He picked it up and carried it back.

“When Ginger calls, you’ll just act natural, you won’t try and fuck me will you?”

“No way,” Viv said.

“Cos whatever else happens you’ll be for the memorial wall at Hereford,” Killian said.

“I know. Don’t worry.”

Killian sat down in what turned out to be a comfortable, leather swivel chair.

“Who else is in the house?”

“Mr C, Helena, Mrs Lavery, Paul,” Viv said.

“Who the fuck’s Paul?”

“Butler type. Must be seventy if he’s a day. He’s in the right front bedroom on the ground floor.”

Killian looked at the chart. Right front bedroom. Check.

“Mrs Lavery?”

“She’s all the way at the back of the house in the other bedroom.”

“And how old is she?”

“I don’t know. Fifty-five?”

“Okay.”

“She might have her niece staying with her. Sometimes she does. It’ll be on the visitor’s chart in Bobby’s room, but I haven’t checked it.”

“Niece. Christ. How old is she?”

“Eleven, I think.”

So that was another maybe seven people to deal with.

The radio crackled. “Joke for you,” a man with a London accent said. Killian held the radio up to Viv’s mouth and pushed the Talk button.

“Go on then,” Viv said.

“Don the Brummie lorry driver’s been on the road for thirty years, always local. He gets into work one morning to find that he has to drive to London for the first time with a big load of timber. He sets off down the M1 and after a bit he’s on the Edgware Road.”

“I’ve heard it before, a million times,” Viv said to Killian.

“Let him tell it,” Killian said and pushed Talk again.

“Go on,” said Viv.

“He’s in the Big Smoke, traffic, tall buildings, people. He pulls over at a bus stop, winds the window down and shouts across the road to some bint waiting for the number 17: ‘Oi love, is this London?’ he asks. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Well, where do you want this wood then?’ he asks.”

Killian looked at Viv. “Laugh and tell him that’s a good one,” Killian said. He pushed the Talk button and Viv laughed and said, “Oh mate, that’s a good one, ya cockney bastard, ya.”

Laughter. Laughter right outside the lodge door.

Killian checked the watch. It was only 2.40. Ginger was twenty minutes early.

But he was laughing and completely at ease.

Killian looked at Viv, put his finger to his lips, held the MP5 in his right hand and put his left hand on the door handle.

The door opened outwards. Ginger would see it opening, but he would be expecting Viv so he wouldn’t be in a weapon-ready stance and it—

As Killian turned the handle Viv suddenly yelled: “Ginger, look out! There’s a fucking cunt in here with a gun!”

Killian kicked the door open and forward-rolled out of the lodge into
the Belfast night. A drizzle of automatic fire and Killian kept rolling until he reached a mature palm tree that must have been here long before Coulter.

Every single second would be precious now.

If they called 999 immediately the nearest peelers would be coming from Carrickfergus, Killian’s own manor, and Killian knew those boys well – yeah, they were slow and a bit thick but they wouldn’t take half an hour. Maybe not twenty minutes.

Killian stepped from behind the tree, gave himself a covering burst and ran for the house – not the obvious escape route of the front gate. He reached the portico before Ginger fired back at him.

He dived for the marble steps and Ginger’s MP5 9 millimetre bullets carved holy hell out of the front door, a line of splinters making its way at a thirty-degree angle up the wall. He was firing the MP5 on full auto and Killian waited for the silence. When it came he stood up and took aim. Killian saw Ginger switching clips with remarkable speed and proficiency.

It wouldn’t save him.

Killian squeezed one well-aimed single round into Ginger’s chest, topping the poor bastard immediately.

Killian had no time for remorse.

He shoulder-charged the front door and burst into the hall.

Pistol fire from the side room.

Killian hit the deck. Crawled behind a pillar.

Pistol fire.

Killian took a quick look: a hand connected to a wrist from behind a door. No person standing there exposing himself, just the pistol and maybe a mirror on a piece of stick.

No. 3 was being cautious.

“The cops are on their way!” No. 3 shouted. He was called Bobby or something, right?

“Bobby, I don’t want to kill you, close that fucking door, don’t come out, and wait for the cops!” Killian yelled.

“Fuck you, arsehole!” Bobby yelled and shot at him.

Killian looked at No. 3’s door. Some kind of dark expensive tropical hardwood no doubt, and sleekit old. No. 3 knew that 9 millimetre slugs wouldn’t penetrate it.