Maitland stared at him. ‘Mark didn’t have the balls.’
‘He was paranoid, said you were planning to kill him. So he went to the police, did a deal.’
Maitland pulled up a chair and sat opposite Carter. ‘I’m listening.’
Carter looked back at Maitland. What to tell him? What was he most likely to believe — or least likely to disbelieve?
‘He was high on something,’ Carter said. ‘Came at me like a wild thing. Completely off his head.’ The reality was that Mark had crawled towards him, his fingers digging into the damp sludge of plaster dust and accumulated filth. His pelvis was shattered: Carter had felt it crack under the heel of his shoe, yet Mark had found the strength from somewhere. It was fascinating how the life imperative seemed to survive long past the point at which rationality would demand release from pain and suffering — from life itself.
Mark begged him. Take the baby. Take Bryony with you.
An unreasoning instinct had made Carter fearful of this almost-corpse. He’d backed away, feeling the steps creak and sag under his weight. He’d gripped the rail with both hands for support, raised his foot and brought it crashing down onto the first step. It exploded in a cloud of splinters and dust. He’d slipped, overestimating the force that would be needed, had gouged his leg on a shard of wood. He took greater care with the next, keeping one foot on the next riser for balance, backing out of the basement as he broke each step, and with it, any chance of escape.
By the time Carter reached the top step, Mark had passed out. The torch had fallen from the stair post and shone orange-gold through the dust, like a dying sun. The child was still, the silence unnerving.
Suddenly, the timbers shifted and the building moaned, a sound almost of anguish, as if the earth was waiting to swallow them up. Carter pulled the door closed and ran.
‘The little shit wouldn’t talk,’ he told Maitland. ‘When he came at me, I had no choice.’
Maitland eyed him. ‘Mark couldn’t keep his mouth shut to chew his food,’ he said. ‘My guess is he told you everything from his National Insurance number to precisely where the drugs were stashed before you laid a finger on him.’
That was the trouble with Maitland: he was a thug, but an astute thug.
‘You took my drugs, pocketed the money, figured I’d write it off as a business loss.’
‘No, Rob. He died before I could—’
Carter’s head whipped round so fast he felt his neck crack.
‘We’re not on first-name terms,’ Maitland said. ‘Not since you robbed me.’
The slap stung like a burn on Carter’s cheek.
Maitland began pacing back and forth in front of the windows. Carter tried to follow his progress, but the constant movement made him sick. So instead, he stared into the glare of the dying sun until his eyes watered.
‘Mark was an opportunist,’ Maitland said. ‘And not a very bright one at that. He took the bags because they were there, he was a shit-for-brains, and he thought he could get away with it.’
‘He told me — he went to the police.’
‘Now you’re contradicting yourself. You just said he wouldn’t talk.’
Carter concentrated on breathing. Just breathe, he told himself, and don’t say anything else that will show you up as a liar.
Maitland stood squarely in front of the chair and placed a hand on Carter’s shoulders, leaning over him. ‘Mark didn’t have the nous or the nuts to work out a scheme to get me out of the way and steal the money.’ He straightened up. ‘You, on the other hand, are sharp — in that weaselly way accountants are. And you’d sell your granny for a twenty-percent return on an unsecured investment.’
Carter flinched as Maitland raised his hand, but Maitland only patted him on the cheek. ‘Did you think you could file me away all neat and tidy under “life sentence”?’
‘You’ve got me wrong, boss.’
Maitland smiled. ‘Now he’s calling me “boss”,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘I’m embarrassed to admit it — I trusted you. Believed that line you spun me about Mark getting away.’
‘Boss—’
‘There he goes again.’ This time, he looked over Carter’s head, towards his men, playing cards, waiting their turn. Carter realised with increasing dread that their turn had almost come. ‘I’m not your boss, Carter. Not anymore.’ The way he said it made Carter think about Mark, about the night he died. About the pain and the blood.
‘Somebody put the police right where they needed to be,’ Maitland theorised. ‘Now, we’re agreed Mark didn’t have the brains, and the Dutch had a vested interest in a smooth handover. That just leaves you, Bernie.’
Carter sensed that a denial might be as dangerous as an admission, so he hung his head, unable once more to meet Maitland’s flat, grey stare. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to steady himself, to think of some way out of this.
A faint draught of air made him flinch, and his eyes flew open, anticipating another blow. But Maitland was gone. He took a couple of breaths. Lowe looked almost healthy in the red wash of light from the setting sun, but he was weakening, the rise and fall of his chest barely discernible.
Maitland crashed about in the kitchen, through the doorway at the end of the hall, turning out drawers and scooping plates and hardware out of cupboards onto the floor.
‘Little lies . . . big betrayals — it’s all the same to me.’ Maitland raised his voice over the crash of crockery. He sounded almost cheerful. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, then Carter heard the unmistakable zing of metal on metal.
‘If I can’t trust a man, he might as well be dead.’ Maitland stood in the doorway, his arm relaxed at his side. In his hand, a black-handled knife with a five-inch blade. ‘But you know that better than anyone, don’t you, Bernie?’
Carter had arranged payments for maybe fifteen such circumstances over the years. Circumstances in which the victim had lost Rob Maitland’s trust.
I’m going to die, he thought.
He tried to maintain eye contact, but the knife flashed at Maitland’s side, reflecting the vivid red of the sunset like a premonition.
‘Blood fluoresces, given the right treatment,’ Maitland said. ‘I bet that basement lit up like Blackpool Illuminations when the forensics team worked their magic on it.’
‘I was trying to get your money back,’ Carter said, his eyes straying to the knife again.
Maitland shook his head. ‘You killed Mark to silence him and to put yourself in the clear. If his body hadn’t turned up, you still would be. Ironic, isn’t it? It’s entrepreneurs like you and me turned this city around. Crumbling dives like Black Wood Children’s Home are suddenly prime redevelopment sites. You shopped yourself, mate, with your reinvestment strategies.
‘Now,’ he said, suddenly brisk. ‘How many slices d’you think I could take before you die of blood loss or shock?’
Two strong hands seized Carter’s shoulders. He strained against them, staring wildly at the blade in Maitland’s hand.
‘Must be worse for you, Bernie,’ Maitland said. ‘Having been on the other end of it. Knowing how much pain you can inflict without actually killing a person.’ He registered Carter’s surprise. ‘Did you think I didn’t know about your arts-and-crafts sideline with the girls?’
Carter concentrated on his breathing.
‘I know all about you, Bernie.’
Not all, Carter thought. Not the bank accounts under false identities, the skimming of profits for the past ten years.
Maitland again read something in his expression. ‘’Course, I didn’t see this coming. Funny thing, Bernie — Rickman did. He saw it straight off. Said you’d be sitting somewhere counting your cash. Comes with the job, I suppose — lack of trust.’
Bright light shone through the windows at the front of the house, sliding up the wall to Carter’s right, then across the ceiling. Carter’s heart leapt. He remembered the call from his wife, his furious words when he realised she had used their home
number. ‘A visit from the police,’ she said. ‘They think you murdered that girl.’
He was packing a suitcase when Maitland forced his way into the farmhouse with four armed mercenaries. But if the police had picked up on the call, maybe — just maybe — there was a chance for him. He strained to hear the sound of a chopper, but his ears were still buzzing and booming from the gunfire.
Maitland jerked his chin towards the door and two of his men walked past Carter, weapons in hand. They turned right, towards the kitchen, heading for the rear of the house.
Maitland watched his men leave, then turned back to Carter, as if returning to a business negotiation. ‘Tell you what — you give me my money, I’ll make it easy for you,’ he said.
Carter watched the blade as a rabbit watches a snake.
Maitland stepped forward and Carter spoke fast and low. ‘When I joined the firm, you were a low-end drug peddler whose greatest ambition was to make a deal with the Mancunian Mafia.’ No point in begging — he’d seen too many men try that. ‘I made you a multi-millionaire.’
Maitland stopped, surprise and perhaps a grudging admiration on his face.
The police will be through that door any minute, Carter thought. All you have to do is keep Maitland talking a little longer. Keep him talking and delay the first cut. That was always the worst. His heart raced and he felt a tingling in his fingertips and lower limbs. ‘I gave you the respect of the movers and shakers in this city.’
‘I always had respect,’ Maitland spat.
The threat was imminent, but Carter knew he would hear the rest. Maitland’s only weakness was his need for respect, his only insecurity that he hadn’t quite attained it from the business class he aspired to join.
‘Don’t kid yourself, Maitland.’ He wound himself up to a rage. Close to collapse, Carter knew that a show of strength was his only chance of survival. Succumb to terror, and he was as good as dead.
‘You were just another messy, small-time thug with more power than you knew how to handle. You spent money like a lottery winner from the Dingle, flashing it around with little sense and less taste.’
‘You grassed me up because you didn’t like my style?’ Maitland seemed more puzzled than angry. ‘What you did to Jasmine — was that stylish?’
Carter’s gaze flickered towards the kitchen door. Jesus — where are they? How long had it been since his wife called? An hour? Two? How long could it take for the cops to trace a landline? He licked his lips, tasting blood on them.
‘I grassed you up because you were too stupid to stop me.’
He waited for the first hot slice of metal through flesh, but Maitland simply nodded and the last of the four men came around to the front of the chair. It was Graham. He knelt and began to remove Carter’s shoes and socks.
‘I want my money. And the drugs.’ Maitland unplugged a lamp, cut the flex and then carefully stripped the wires. ‘When I have them, we’ll talk about the cash you’ve been creaming off my businesses for the past ten years.’
Carter thought he had reached a plateau of fear, but now his heart began to beat so hard that he felt a sharp pain in his chest.
‘You’ll never find the money, the drugs — any of it.’ He could barely get the words out, his breathing was so ragged.
Maitland smiled at him. ‘Never say never.’
Where are the police?
Maitland pushed the plug back into the socket and held up the wire.
Jesus! Where the fuck are they?
Chapter 49
Cass crunched up the path to the farmhouse. Traffic at Switch Island and a couple of wrong turns had delayed them, and it was nearing nightfall by the time they found the place. He’d told the others to stay put — give him the chance to have a word with Carter, sort out some kind of game plan. Gormley’s BMW idled on the rutted track beyond the sandstone wall that divided the farmyard from the house. Frost glittered on the bare stems of the rose bushes and fringed the leaves of a small shrub next to the front door. The mist that lay like poured milk over the fields was beginning to thicken. The air was still and faintly redolent of brassicas and damp clay. The only sound was the distant razz of a motorbike a few miles across the flat farmland of the Lancashire plain.
The spectacular colours of the sunset were already fading, and in the shadow of the farmhouse, dusk was gathering. Beyond the net curtains, the sitting room was visible, though faintly, as though the mist had penetrated the house. The room extended through to the back of the building. The lighting was subdued — perhaps a couple of table lamps, giving an orange glow. Cass stood to the left of the front door and peered in. Playing cards lay face down on a circular dining table near the front window, as though something had interrupted the game and the players intended to return.
Two men stood just inside the archway leading to the back section of the room. The man on the right rested his hands on something — Cass couldn’t see what — a chair maybe.
The second man stood slightly side-on, his hands clasped in front of him, respectful and discreet. Carter’s bodyguards, no doubt. Someone else flitted back and forth beyond the two men, shielded from view by their bulk.
He hesitated, wondering how to get their attention without creating a confrontation. His instructions were to phone ahead if he needed to come out to the farmhouse, and he wasn’t supposed to come anywhere near the place unless it was life or death.
He heard footsteps behind him and spun round. ‘Fuck! Smithie — didn’t I tell you to wait in the car?’
Smith peered past him, through the window. ‘There’s three men in there, Sarge,’ he whispered. ‘Why don’t we just call for backup?’
‘Because, if we got the wrong house, we’re gonna look like a bunch of dickheads and we don’t want that, do we, Smithie?’ Cass hissed.
Smith frowned, distracted, dipping his head, as if to get a better look inside.
‘What?’ Cass asked, turning back again.
‘A light just went off in the back room.’
The second man knelt down. ‘Think we’d better stop them before he gets the guy’s kecks down.’ Cass grinned, but Smith remained serious. ‘For God’s sake, lighten up, will you?’
A noise to their right made Smith flinch.
‘Bloody hell, you’re a bag of nerves, mate,’ Cass exclaimed. He raised his hand to the door knocker as the second man took a step back, lifting his hands up, as if in surrender. A chair — he was definitely standing in front of a chair — and there was someone in it.
A scream tore through the quiet and Cass swore. Maitland. It has to be Maitland. How the fuck did he find this place?
Gormley poked his head out of the car window. ‘What the fuck was that?’
Smith grabbed Cass’s arm. ‘We need to make that call!’
Cass hesitated. A second scream, and every hair on the back of his neck stood up.
‘Police!’ he yelled, and shouldered the door. It creaked but didn’t give. Two figures emerged from the back of the house and Cass saw Smith reach into his inside pocket for his ID.
The night exploded in light and sound. Cass dived for cover, dragging Smith with him. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus, they’re firing on us.’ All he could think was, And I’m the only pillock not wearing a vest.
‘Police!’ he screamed. ‘Unarmed officers!’
Gormley jammed the BMW into reverse, accelerating back up the single-track roadway towards the main road. He misjudged the curve and the car skidded sideways off the track onto the frozen sward and got bogged down in a patch of mud.
‘Go! For fuck’s sake, move it!’ Williams screamed.
Gunfire flashed. Shadowy figures loomed monstrous in the headlamps.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Wright yelled. The engine screamed but the wheels spun uselessly. One of the figures raised his arm in their direction and they ducked. Simultaneously, the tyres got a grip and the car shot backwards, spitting clods of earth and spraying gravel like lead shot.
A bullet
hit the windscreen. Momentarily it held, then shattered as they hit a rut, showering Gormley and Williams with beads of glass.
Gormley revved the engine, cutting a corner off the bend of the track, crossing the grass. The car’s tyres slipped and whined on the icy surface, slewing left and right.
‘Jesus!’ Wright yelled. ‘Watch out!’
The car tilted crazily, pinning them to their seats as it thudded into a ditch. The engine revved, stalling as mud and icy water sluiced into the exhaust pipe, and for a moment there was silence. Wright groaned.
Three shots, in rapid succession. ‘They’re still firing!’ Gormley shouted.
They piled out, Williams first. He fell, his knees and hands cracking through a thin film of ice. He gasped at the shock of freezing mud and water, then he was up and running. They stayed in the ditch, using it for cover, slipping and slithering across the ice, occasionally plunging through and cursing the cold.
At the bend, Gormley looked back at his ruined BMW, its headlamps angled skywards like searchlights.
Chapter 50
Rickman looked up as Foster burst into his office. ‘The Comms Room’s had half a dozen calls — shots heard on farmland out near Ormskirk.’
‘This could be it,’ Rickman said. ‘Armed Response?’
‘On their way.’
Kirkland came puffing into the room after Foster, his round face red and sweating. ‘DC Williams just called in, sir — he’s under fire.’
‘Do we have a location?’ Rickman demanded, already on his feet and reaching for his stab vest.
Kirkland shook his head, leaning on a chair as he tried to catch his breath. ‘Got cut off.’
‘See if tech support can triangulate a location based on the last signal.’ Rickman was moving fast, heading for the stairs. ‘Send it through as soon as you have it.’
* * *
A squad of cars barrelled through the night, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Rickman talked on the radio while Naomi Hart manoeuvred the car smoothly through rush hour traffic. ‘Williams, Gormley and Wright are accounted for,’ he said. ‘Cass and Smith aren’t.’
DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 37