Paint It Black

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Paint It Black Page 20

by Mark Timlin


  I did as I was told and joined him inside the car. He drove off down the lanes and told me the plan.

  ‘One of us takes the Transit, with the HE all primed and ready to go, smack up against the gate of the house, then bails out. Once clear, the other triggers the charge and hey presto! our entrance is clear.’

  ‘Genius,’ I said. ‘Let me guess who the lucky chauffeur will be.’

  ‘You know the vehicle.’ He sounded dead serious. Like a WWI staff officer sending a regiment over the top at Ypres.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I said. It was almost funny. ‘That stuff could blow at any second. And what happens if one of these guards starts popping off with a gun? If a bullet hit that lot, it would be good night nurse. And good night Nick and all.’

  He glanced over at me and said, ‘I thought you didn’t care what happened to you any more.’

  I glanced back. His face was set hard. ‘OK, Toby,’ I said. ‘You’re right. But it would be nice if you waited until I was out of the truck before you pressed the button.’

  ‘Trust me, Nick,’ he said.

  Somehow, I thought, I’d heard that song before.

  After that I didn’t see Toby again until the big day. We’d arranged for him to meet me at Norwich Station at ten in the morning. New Year’s Eve dawned cold and cloudy, but dry. Perfect weather, I thought. I dressed in a black denim shirt, black jeans, the good old and dependable Docs, my Schott leather jacket with myriad pockets, and black leather gloves. I didn’t take any luggage. I figured it was pointless. If we made it I’d be back in the big smoke by the next morning and if I didn’t . . . well, there were plenty of clothes at home to dress the corpse. If there was any corpse left to dress, that was, considering the cargo I was transporting.

  It was cold. Even colder in Norwich than it had been in London, but I hardly felt a thing. I waited close to the cab rank as arranged and Toby was bang on time. That day he was driving a gunmetal grey Jaguar XJ12. The wheel arches had been flared slightly and the motor squatted on fat, low-profile tyres like a frog waiting to leap. And leap it did, once we got out on to the dual carriageway.

  ‘Nice car,’ I said, as I relaxed into the Connolly hide of the front passenger seat. ‘And never the same one twice.’

  ‘I like to change cars a lot,’ said Toby, as he effortlessly pushed the motor up to the ton. ‘It keeps the opposition guessing. But this one’s my favourite. And a real goer too. Top speed of a hundred and seventy, and nought to sixty in less than four seconds. Even through an automatic box. Christ knows what it’d do on a manual.’

  I nodded, then changed the subject. ‘Everything ready?’

  ‘Sure. The guns are clean. I’ve dug up the ammunition, plus a few other goodies I haven’t told you about yet, and prepared the electric soup.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘The high explosive. The detonator’s in place.’

  ‘Is it stable?’

  ‘Stable enough.’

  ‘Every day I’ve expected to hear about a mysterious explosion in the Norfolk countryside.’

  ‘It’s OK. The weather’s been cold and kept it safe.’

  ‘It’ll hot up tonight.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘So there’s nothing left for us to do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just wait.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘It’s going to be a hell of a long day.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. It’ll fly.’

  And it did.

  We ate frugally at about nine. Over the meal I asked Toby what the deal was for collecting the money. Not that it was the most important aspect of the job, but if we survived, it would be a bonus.

  ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Mr D’Arbley is flying to the continent tonight from an airfield near the coast. It’s not far from the mansion. Once we’ve done the job, we go up there and collect the cash.’

  ‘Where exactly?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ That word again.

  ‘Trust has got nothing to do with it,’ I said. ‘What happens if you don’t make it? How am I expected to find him?’

  ‘You’re a pessimistic bastard, Nick, I must say.’

  ‘But what happens?’ I pressed.

  ‘If I don’t make it, you get your half and my half is paid into my bank. I’ve made provisions. And if you don’t make it, your half will be paid into your bank account and become part of your estate.’

  ‘And if neither of us makes it?’

  ‘The same. He won’t rip us off.’

  ‘So why are we seeing him at all tonight, then?’

  ‘Because he wants to see that ring. He told me that it would make this the happiest New Year of his life.’

  ‘Morbid, if you ask me.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘So tell me where we’re due to meet him,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll all be happy.’

  ‘OK. The airfield is at a place called West Caister, near Great Yarmouth. It’s just off the coast road. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  I nodded.

  After we’d eaten, we got ready. We both put on our shoulder holsters and webbing belts, complete with guns. Then Toby brought out the extra goodies. Half a dozen L2A2 fragmentation grenades and two knives. Heavy fuckers. I removed mine from its sheath. It was made by Fairburn and Sykes, was perfectly balanced and had one razor-sharp cutting edge and one serrated. I pushed it home and hung the sheath on my webbing belt on the left-hand side.

  The grenades gave me an idea. There was an old leather belt in one of the drawers in my room. I went upstairs and got it, took the knife and cut a thin strip of leather, doubled it through the ring of the pin on one of the grenades and tied it round my neck. ‘What’s the delay on this?’ I asked Toby as I did it.

  ‘I’ve set them at five seconds. You’re fucking mad.’

  ‘Fine. If the going gets really rough, I pull this off and bye bye anyone within . . . what?’

  ‘Ten metres.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Suicide.’

  ‘But with style.’

  Toby took my shotgun and H & K with him in the Jag. I didn’t need anything to slow me down once I was out of the Tranny and running. Plus he took the other five grenades in a box and most of the ammunition. I just took spare clips for the Commander and loose bullets for the .38 with me. The plan was that I followed the Jag, he parked it up, we watched for the chopper to arrive, then he’d come with me for the last few hundred metres, I’d drop him off, let him get settled, then do my bit.

  It sounded simple, but then the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

  The Transit started on the key and I gingerly eased it over the rough grass back to the road where Toby was waiting in the Jaguar. He took off slowly and I followed. I hadn’t had the nerve to look at the dynamite in the back. Things were bad enough as they were. The journey took a little longer than the last time, because I didn’t let the Ford’s speed get above thirty, and we stopped where we’d stopped before at precisely eleven p.m. I switched off the engine and lights and went and joined Toby, who I noticed had parked his car a good way away.

  ‘Right,’ he said when I was sitting next to him. ‘We push on from here in about twenty minutes. No lights. There’s a spot for me to leave the car down a lane. Then we move on. You drop me off and give me a few minutes to get close and fix the phone lines. They all pass along this road on poles. It’s almost prehistoric. Let the ’copter in, then do your thing.’

  I knew the drill, but I imagined it reassured him to repeat it. The tension in the car was palpable and time crawled, but eventually he checked the illuminated dial of his watch and said, ‘H-hour.’

  ‘Good luck,’ I said, touched him on the arm and got out of the Jag. My legs felt weak as I walked back to the Transit.

  We pushed on again, until he swung the Jag into a side road. I pulled up and he came out of the entrance loaded down with guns and bags of ammo an
d joined me in the cab of the Tranny. I let out the clutch and the van moved off. A couple of minutes down the road we saw the lights of the house and I pulled in again, and we both got out to take a squint.

  The outer walls were exactly as we’d seen them before, their dark bricks and the shiny barbed and electric wire brightly lit by security lights. And as before, there was no sign of human habitation in the gatehouses.

  Suddenly, from a south-westerly direction, came the sound of an aero engine and a medium-sized helicopter appeared over the tree line and made for the house, its navigation lights blinking.

  Toby grabbed my arm. ‘Schofield,’ he said. ‘And Tyson too, I bet. We’re on a runner.’ The sound of the helicopter was deafening as it passed over our heads and hovered over the house, before dropping inside the walls.

  ‘Back to the truck,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll get settled here. As soon as I am, I’ll flash my torch three times. Then go, go, go. And take care.’

  As if I needed telling. I slapped a quick handshake and went back to the Transit, as Toby disappeared into the darkness to fix the landlines and find a good spot to cover the main gate.

  I slid in behind the wheel and waited. A long minute passed, then two, and I wanted to take a piss but didn’t dare, and wanted to light a cigarette but didn’t dare do that either. But most strongly I just wanted to get out of the vehicle and start walking and get as far away from where I was as possible. Then I saw three short flashes of light from Toby’s torch and I knew the waiting was over.

  It was now or never, and I twisted the key in the ignition and the engine caught, spluttered, then caught again, as I slammed my right foot down on the gas. I worked the clutch, put the stick into first and let the pedal bang out again. The worn tyres slid on the surface of the road, throwing gravel, and I was away.

  I powered the old truck down the straight towards the gate and it picked up speed, ten miles per hour, up into second gear, twenty, thirty, third gear, thirty-five, forty, and I aimed straight at the door. Just before the road junction I slapped on the headlights, main beam, and they threw shadows across the walls like smoke and the van responded and seemed to jump forward eagerly. The gate loomed up ahead of me, and when it seemed that I must crash straight through it, I slammed down into second gear, dropped out the clutch with a jerk, spun the steering wheel hard right and pulled up the handbrake with all my strength. The Tranny attempted to do a three-sixty-degree turn, but instead its coachwork slammed into the wood of the door with a crash that shook it on its hinges, and before the truck had stopped vibrating from the force of the collision, I was out of the driver’s door and running back towards Toby.

  Forget my bad foot. Fear leant my legs wings. Fear. And the bullets from at least a pair of automatic weapons that kicked up dirt from the ground beneath my feet as I sprinted across the junction, the grenade that I’d hung around my neck banging on my chest.

  Toby answered with automatic fire of his own and for a moment I was terrified I’d be caught in the cross, and I aimed myself slightly to the side of the muzzle flashes I saw coming out of the darkness. I was into the undergrowth and beside him within a few seconds, even though it felt like hours.

  ‘Doesn’t it work?’ I blurted. Referring to the detonator. ‘After all that.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to miss the fun,’ he said calmly as bullets ripped through the leaves above our heads. ‘And I didn’t want to lose you either. I don’t know how big a bang it’s going to be. Hell of a sense of humour, those Irish.’

  ‘Well do it then,’ I said, and I saw him shrug in the faint reflection from the security lights as he thumbed the button on the transmitter that he held in his hand.

  Jesus Christ! Fuck knows exactly what was in those boxes.

  The charge went off with a sound like planets colliding and a flash as bright as the sun. I saw the Transit split in two as it jumped at least ten feet into the air, and both pieces were thrown bodily in our direction.

  Smoke and dust rose in a mushroom cloud as rubble rained down around us.

  Toby looked at me and said in a voice that I could hardly hear through the ringing in my ears, ‘Nice work. Let’s go.’

  I slung the H & K over my shoulder by its strap, picked up the Winchester and a couple of bags of magazines and cartridges and we did just that.

  We doubled over the road, keeping low, but temporarily at least, no one was shooting at us. Close up, the gate was completely gone, blown to matchwood. The fronts of both gatehouses had been destroyed too, leaving complete rooms and staircases open. There were some bodies hanging down. Probably the people who’d been shooting at us. We ran through the gap made by the HE, guns at the ready, and crunched up the winding drive towards the house itself. It seemed much longer than on the plans I’d studied, but we made it.

  Schofield’s house was a bastardisation of every architectural style of the last five hundred years. Tudor gables sat uneasily next to a Georgian wing and an old stablehouse had been converted into a twentieth-century swimming pool with glass all along one side.

  A man in a dark suit, gun in hand, looking shocked, came out of a door in the right-hand side of the main building and Toby iced him with a burst from his Scorpion.

  ‘Schofield will be inside,’ he said. ‘Come on. Quick.’

  We headed towards the open door the man in the suit had come through and saw the helipad at the back of the pool-house. The chopper sat like a giant insect on the tarmac. It was dark and empty, and Toby disabled it by shooting the shit out of the rear rotors. That was where we met our first serious resistance. Three blokes, also in dark suits, came barrelling round from behind the house, armed with handguns. With our ordnance it was like sending a trio of kids with peashooters to kill an elephant. Toby emptied his clip in their direction and I pulled the trigger of the Winchester, pumped the action and fired again. All three went down. I checked them whilst Toby changed magazines. They were out of the game. I kicked their guns off into the shadows and we made for the open door again, me in front.

  Inside was a corridor, thickly carpeted and dimly lit. It was empty. But not for long. A geezer in a tracksuit carrying a big automatic appeared at the end. He fired and the bullet gouged into the plasterwork beside me. I returned fire, aiming low, and blew his legs from under him. As he went down the gun bounced on the pile of the Wilton. He lay where he fell, moaning gently. I didn’t examine the wreckage of his legs, but it was for sure he wouldn’t be going to any barndances in the near future.

  ‘Is the boss in?’ I asked as I picked up his pistol and stuck it in my belt.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Nasty,’ I said and kicked him in the face.

  Politeness costs nothing, my old Nan used to say.

  Toby and I stepped over the injured man and headed deeper into the house. At the end of the corridor was another door. I kicked it open, waited for a reaction, got none, dropped down on to my face and peered round the doorpost. On the other side was a panelled hall. Empty. Twin staircases went up to a mezzanine floor. I looked up at Toby and he looked down at me. ‘You take the right, I’ll take the left,’ he said.

  It seemed like a fair deal, so that’s what we did.

  When we got upstairs the mezzanine was deserted. At the far end of the floor were a set of ornamental wooden doors. I tried the handles. They were locked. Toby took out his Colt Commander and fired three shots into the mechanisms. Then he kicked at them with his booted foot and they swung open. He went through first, fanning the room inside with his automatic. I was close behind, shotgun at the ready.

  As we burst in, two pairs of frightened eyes turned in our direction. The eyes belonged to two women in party frocks who were huddled together by a huge fireplace where a pile of logs burned fiercely. The room was dimly lit, full of shadows that danced in time to the flames from the fire. Both women were still holding champagne flutes. ‘Happy New Year,’ I said. ‘Where’s our host?’

  One of the women, a picture in pink tulle, said, ‘He’s u
pstairs. Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Santa’s little helpers, bringing the compliments of the season,’ I replied, looking towards another staircase that led upwards into darkness. The bloody place was massive. At this rate we’d be here all night.

  ‘Come on,’ said Toby. ‘Let’s find him.’ And he made for the foot of the stairs. I hung the Winchester over my shoulder, brought the Heckler & Koch into play and followed him, the barrel of my machine gun swinging in front of me. We reached the stairs and started upward, Toby slightly in the lead, when a shot rang out from above and I saw and heard the bullet hit him high on his right shoulder at the front.

  He dropped his pistol, cried out at the shock and pain of the impact and fell back, grabbing at the banister for support with his good arm. I heard the explosion of another shot from the shadows above and fired a long burst at where I’d seen the muzzle flash. I heard a scream and a body fell towards us out of the dark, a large-calibre revolver bouncing down in front of it.

  ‘You OK?’ I asked Toby, as he leant against the banister. Stupid question.

  ‘I’ll survive,’ he said, his face contorted with pain, as he bent down and picked up his gun. ‘Go on. I’ll follow.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  He followed me as I climbed the stairs. At the top, I squinted round the corner and saw an ornately decorated hall with thick-pile Persian carpet underfoot. I moved round and bullets whacked off the wood panels and splinters cut at my face. I fell flat and emptied the magazine of the MP5K into the shadows at the other end, dropped it, pulled the sling of the Winchester over my head and blew several thousand pounds’ worth of antique carpentry to hell and gone. I heard a cry and a body fell full length on to the floor in front of me. I reached for my machine gun, ejected the mag and reloaded, then filled the Winchester’s hungry maw with cartridges, never taking my eyes off the body in front of me for a second.

 

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