by Mark Timlin
D’Arbley put down the phone. ‘Everything’s OK,’ he said. ‘They understand.’
‘Good,’ I replied. ‘Give me your ring.’
‘What?’
‘You heard. That ring you’re wearing on your little finger. Give it to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
‘My wife gave it to me –’
‘Too bad.’ I raised the Colt.
‘OK, OK. Relax,’ he said, and pulled the ring from his finger and laid it on the desk. I went over and got it, then went back and put it on Toby’s little finger, took the heavy knife from the sheath on my belt and slammed the blade down, severing the digit from his hand. The wound didn’t bleed. Dead people don’t.
I picked up the ring and finger, and put them into my jacket pocket. ‘That should convince him,’ I said to no one in particular.
I knew then that I was going mad.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to D’Arbley. ‘And remember, this gun is loaded.’
I left the Winchester behind, slung the MP5K and a satchel full of magazines over my left shoulder, and holding the Colt Commander in my right hand, barrel pointing down towards the floor, I gestured for D’Arbley to unlock and open the doors. He did, and with him slightly in front of me, we left the observatory together.
There were maybe half a dozen geezers waiting for us in the hallway outside. All in suits and all carrying firearms of one kind or another. There had been a lot more guards than Toby had said. Christ knows how we’d got as far as we did.
‘Put those down,’ said D’Arbley sharply as we passed through the doorway. ‘You heard my orders.’
All the guns vanished beneath dark blue and grey serge as one, and we passed through the crowd of security men who moved aside to give us free passage and me a whole bunch of dirty looks.
We walked along the hall and I saw D’Arbley wince at the damage the grenade had done. There were no signs of any bodies. He didn’t know the half of it and I started to worry about the possible intervention of the emergency services. This lot was going to be a bit difficult to explain to the local coppers. We went downstairs past the room where Toby had killed Tyson and I’d shot the girl in white, and down once more to where Toby had been hit for the first time. There was no sign of the two frightened women now, or the dead gunman, apart from bloodstains on the stairs. We walked on to the mezzanine and down the last long flight of stairs to the front door. ‘Open it,’ I ordered. ‘We’re going to take a little walk, you and I. Not far. Just down to the road.’
D’Arbley did as he was told and together we went down the front steps, across the turnaround at the front of the house where I imagined I felt gunsights on my back, and down the drive to the wreckage of the gatehouses and the front wall.
‘You did a lot of damage between you,’ said D’Arbley.
‘Two-man army,’ I said. ‘Not far now.’
We picked our way through the rubble and on to the public road. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ I said. ‘Don’t let anyone be foolish enough to try and follow me. I’ll kill them if they do.’
He nodded.
‘I don’t know what to say about what happened here tonight,’ I said.
‘There’s nothing you can say.’
‘But I can try and get it right when I find Schofield.’
‘If you find him.’
‘I will.’
‘Do it then.’
‘Watch the news,’ I said. ‘With a bit of luck it’ll be on in the morning.’
‘I will,’ he said.
‘If I come out of this alive, what happens?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve done a lot of damage. Killed a lot of your people. You’re a powerful man. You’ve got the real Schofield running scared and he seems to have a lot of friends. I’m all on my own. What happens?’
‘The people you killed were paid to take chances. Soldiers.’ Like all rich men, he was ruthless.
‘Not all of them,’ I interrupted. ‘There was a girl.’ I described her and her dress.
‘Tyson’s assistant,’ he said. ‘She was sweet.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The words hardly rippled the surface of the way I really felt.
‘Make penance,’ he said. ‘Nothing I could do would make you feel worse than you do already.’
He was right there.
‘I’ll try.’
‘Good luck. Maybe we’ll meet again.’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. And with that I left him and headed towards where Toby had parked the Jaguar.
I found it with no bother, tossed the H & K on to the back seat with the satchel, sat for a moment looking at the map I’d found in Toby’s jacket in the dim glow of the courtesy light, then took off.
Trying to drive, read the hand-drawn map and work out what to do all at the same time wasn’t easy. I had too many conflicting thoughts running through my head. All those people. All those innocent people.
But at least the car handled like a dream. That was a plus, and I socked it down the B1140 as fast as I dared. Which was pretty fast, let me tell you, and when I looked over at the passenger seat, Dawn was sitting there.
‘Happy New Year,’ she said.
Then I was convinced I was going Radio Rental. ‘Not for some,’ I replied. It was as if she’d never been away.
She shrugged. ‘Got any music, Nick?’ she asked.
I put on the radio and fiddled with the dial until I pulled in some continental FM station. The DJ was jabbering away and I was just about to find something else when I heard him say ‘Jim Morrison’, and on came ‘Riders on the Storm’ by the Doors. Heavy duty spooksville. I turned up the volume and the sound of thunder and rain filled the car just as I hit the A1064. I touched a hundred and forty on the dual carriageway, almost too fast for the headlights, but traffic was non-existent and I was at the turnoff for the B1152 almost before I knew it. I had to slow on the narrow two-lane highway, and as the song finished, Dawn said, ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Fuck knows.’
‘You’d better think of something.’
‘I’m sick and tired of it, Dawn,’ I said. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘That’s fair. It’s about time you got on with your life.’
‘You reckon? After all that happened tonight?’
I knew she’d know. ‘Sure. Why not just take the money and get lost? Go somewhere where you can enjoy it.’
‘Sounds like a good plan. How’s Daisy and Tracey?’
‘Fine.’
‘Good.’
‘This is it, Nick,’ she said. ‘I’m going now, and I won’t be back until we’re going to be together permanently.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Thanks for thinking of me.’
‘I’ll never stop.’
‘I know. You poor fucker. ’And when I looked again the passenger seat was empty.
I almost missed the turning on to the unnumbered road that led directly to the airstrip, but caught it just in time. In front of me the countryside was pitch black and I wondered if I was on a wild goose chase.
But then, I caught the flash of a light off to my left, saw a track leading in that direction and steered the car on to it. There was an open five-bar gate in front of me and dimly through the windscreen I could see the silhouette of a low building, and next to it, the shape of a medium-sized plane.
The landing strip was made of crumbling tarmac and the control tower was an old Quonset hut left over from the war. But the plane looked fit, and as I bounced the motor on to the hardtop and up to the hut, the door opened and Simon, the butler/bouncer from the real Schofield’s office appeared, hauling a Sig Sauer nine-millimetre semiautomatic. I got out of the motor and walked towards him, hands away from my body. I left the H & K on the back seat where I’d thrown it.
‘You,’ said Simon.
‘In the flesh.’
‘Where’s Toby?’
‘Dead.’
He didn�
�t seem very perturbed. ‘The boss is inside,’ was all he said.
‘Then let’s go and see him. By the way, Happy New Year.’
He didn’t echo my sentiments. Miserable son of a bitch.
We went into the hut. It was warm inside, courtesy of a Calorgas fire in one corner. The real Schofield was sitting on a straight-backed chair, sipping at a hip flask. Another bloke, one I hadn’t seen before, dressed in a long cashmere-looking overcoat, sat on the edge of a scarred old desk. Another stranger, in leather jacket, jeans and boots, about my age and height, who I took to be the pilot, was pouring coffee from a thermos. They all stopped what they were doing when I walked in with Simon.
‘Morning,’ I said.
‘You,’ said Schofield, just like Simon.
‘The one and only.’
‘Where’s Toby?’ Just like Simon again. No ‘Glad to see you’ or anything like that.
I told him what I’d told his employee.
‘And he told you where we were due to meet?’
‘He left me a map.’
‘What about Schofield?’
Things were getting confusing and I had to think carefully. ‘He’s dead too. And Tyson and a good percentage of the security force at the house.’
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘There was some talk about a ring,’ I said.
‘That’s correct.’
‘There you go,’ I said, and pulled out the ring, still attached to Toby’s finger, and tossed it on to Schofield’s lap. He jumped about a mile, shoved it off and it lay on the floor in front of us.
‘Satisfied?’ I asked.
‘What the fu –?’ said the geezer in the cashmere nanny.
‘Proof of purchase,’ I interrupted. ‘In exchange for the jackpot prize.’
Schofield broke his gaze away from the finger on the floor, and looked at me. ‘Take out your gun,’ he said. ‘And put it on the floor.’ Obviously he’d got wind of my mental state too. A normal person doesn’t go around with a finger in his pocket. At least not someone else’s.
Simon brought the Sig round to bear on me and I did as I was told.
‘Search him, Simon,’ said Schofield. ‘Keep him covered, Jacko.’
The bloke in the overcoat pulled out a gun of his own, which he pointed at me, and Simon put his away, came up behind me and relieved me of my .38 and the knife.
‘Check the car,’ said the big boss.
Simon went outside and we waited. He came back carrying the H & K and the bag of magazines, which he added to the arsenal on the floor. ‘That’s it, chief,’ he said. ‘I looked in the boot.’
Now they were either going to kill me or pay me off. I fancied the former but I was wrong. Not that I cared much either way. Schofield got up and fetched a briefcase from where it was standing next to the desk. Just one, I noticed. And put it on the top. ‘Do you want to count it?’ he asked.
I walked over, thumbed the catches and opened the case. Inside were bundles of new banknotes, all neatly banded in packs of ten thousand quid.
‘I trust you,’ I said.
‘So go,’ said Schofield.
I wished then I’d had a gun, or the knife, or the hand grenade I’d hung round my neck. Then he wouldn’t be able to dismiss me so easily. If I’d had a weapon, I’d’ve killed him there and then.
But instead I picked up the case, flipped him a carefree salute and left the hut, got into the Jag and drove away.
But I didn’t go far. I stopped the car just beyond the gate, switched off the engine and lights and got out. I found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in my pocket and lit one. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes, looking through the darkness, smoking and thinking about what had happened that night, before I saw the four men walk to the plane and get on board. I heard the cough of the twin starter motors and the engines roared into life.
Go home, I thought. Go home and get on with your life, and I looked through the side window of the car at the case full of money on the passenger seat.
Sod it. That was too easy.
I ran round the Jag, jumped in behind the wheel, switched on, selected reverse and put it into a screaming turn until I faced the gate once more. I drove slowly through the gap and bumped over the grass until I reached the tarmac again and was facing the plane that was just beginning to move. I put the motor into neutral, revved the engine up to the red line until the car was shaking on its wheels, then slapped the stick into ‘Drive’. The rear end dropped, the bonnet reared up in front of me and with a scream from the back tyres, smoke and the acrid smell of rubber, the Jaguar took off towards the aircraft. The G-force pushed me back into the leather of the driver’s seat, the needle on the speedo spun round the clock and hit fifty in the blink of an eye and I saw the plane moving at a forty-five-degree angle away from me. I pushed harder on the accelerator, twitched the steering wheel to the right and saw the white blob of the pilot’s face, his eyes wide. I glanced to my left and Dawn was in the passenger seat again. She turned and winked at me, and I almost stood on the fast pedal as the shape of the plane filled the windscreen, as it struggled to take off.
So this is what it feels like, I thought.
Good job.
From the early editions of the Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1996:
FOUR DIE IN MYSTERY PLANE CRASH
At least four people were found dead in the burnt out wreckage of a car and a small passenger plane, destroyed in what would appear to be a collision between the two vehicles at a lonely airfield near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, early on New Year’s Day. A police spokesman stated that an explosion was reported by a passing motorist on the B1152 at approximately 1.30 am.
It is thought that the car was a late model Jaguar saloon, and the aircraft has been identified as a twin-engined Beechcraft of American manufacture. It is not known whether the aircraft was taking off or landing at the time of the collision, although the driver who saw the explosion, when interviewed, said that he had not seen a plane coming down to land prior to it.
The Civil Aviation Authority has stated that no aircraft submitted a flight plan to or from the airstrip, which has been the subject of local speculation over the past few years that it has been used as a landing place for drug smugglers.
The body of a man was recovered from close to the scene of the incident and, as the car appears to be empty, it is surmised that he was the driver. Early indications are that he died from head injuries.
He carried no identification and is described as white, aged between 30 and 40, six feet tall, with dark hair, dressed in jeans, a leather jacket and Doctor Martens boots.
Any information on the incident or the identity of any of the victims should be reported to Police Headquarters in Norwich, or at any local station.
Find My Way Home
by Mark Timlin
The Twelfth Nick Sharman novel
Harry Stonehouse had been a cop, a good one – and straight, unlike Nick Sharman. After taking early retirement he’d landed a job at a security firm. Now he’s dead, and his wife wants Nick to find out who killed him and why.
Sharman has been taking a close look at hell recently and doesn’t care too much about anything beyond the next Jack Daniel’s. But Harry had been a friend, and Nick had screwed his wife and he feels sorry for her. Big mistake.
In an unlikely partnership with ex-DI Robber, escaping from resentful retirement at his sister’s, Sharman sets off in pursuit – and finds himself swept along in the deadly aftermath of a £20 million heist. And with that much money at stake, betrayal, double-crossing and murder are just for starters . . .
‘Mean streets, sleazy bars, brutal bent coppers . . . as British as a used condom in a fogbound London taxi’ – Observer
978-1-84344-689-7
£12.99
Sharman and other Filth
by Mark Timlin
The Thirteenth Nick Sharman novel
At the end they had so much on him he couldn’t move without thei
r say-so. Not just what he’d done on his own account – there was stuff he’d done for them as well. His name was shit on both sides of the fence. So they came up with one more job, the big one. But they snared him with a honey trap and when he found out, he was mad and armed and ready to kill...
The nastiest story you’ll read this year, rubbing cheeks with a kaleidosscope of sin and substances and truckers’ favourites from the casebook of the Tulse Hill’s very own Nick Sharman...
‘Sharman dishes out his ususal sleazy fast-read fun with tons of profane wit’ – Maxim Jakubowski, Time Out
978-1-84344-693-4
£12.99
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This ebook published in 2015
This edition published in 2015 by No Exit Press,
an imprint of Oldcastle Books
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©Mark Timlin, 1994
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