by Frank Lean
I cursed myself for allowing myself to be taken in. No-Nose had probably got all that stuff about IEDs from films or science fiction books.
I could only put my weakness down to delayed shock about the night’s events.
Then the sound of gentle snoring from the back seat penetrated my frantic mind. Clint had mastered the seat belt and was curled up with his feet doubled up across the seat. He took up as much room as three large people. His gaunt face was completely relaxed. He was smiling in his sleep.
Traffic was starting to move as early morning commuters set off to Manchester and the Cheshire towns. No red Mini-Coopers but plenty of four wheeled drives passed us. The intermittent rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing. It was starting to look like a fine day. I was getting eyestrain as I stared up the road towards the bend where No-Nose would appear if he’d survived. There was a thick hawthorn hedge there and a narrow pavement. Horses had recently left their calling cards on the roadway.
Unexpectedly there was a loud rap on the offside window. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was No-Nose. His twisted features were stretched into a wide grin. He resembled a gargoyle after five hundred years of erosion.
‘It’s OK, Mr C. All clear!’ he said. His voice was unnaturally strident in the morning stillness.
11
Tuesday: 6 a.m.
‘What did you have to sneak up on me for?’ I asked, trying to cover up my surprise.
‘Yes,’ agreed Clint, chiming in with my complaint. ‘Bob says you can give people a heart attack, sneaking up on them.’
Tony’s eyebrows shot up. Clint is in the habit of creeping up on his brother.
I got out of the BMW. No-Nose was clutching a bulging plastic carrier bag.
‘What’s in there?’ I asked, suspecting he’d reverted to burglary.
‘It’s just the doings,’ he said offhandedly. ‘I’ve not nicked anything.’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered.
‘Not that you’ve got much worth nicking, Mr C.’
‘For God’s sake, Tony, call me Dave. What’s in the bag?’
‘C4, NATO military explosive, that’s what. It’s not as powerful as octocellulose.’
‘What?’
‘Just joking, octocellulose doesn’t exist. It’s in a science fiction book, four times more powerful than C4.’
I looked at him. So he had been getting ideas out of science fiction books. Maybe the ‘reconditioned brain’ was a fantasy.
‘There’s at least four kilograms of C4. They wanted to make sure of you.’
He held the bag open revealing a large lump of off-white coloured plastic explosive. There was also a Nokia phone enclosed in a Ziploc sandwich bag.
‘That’s not still connected, is it?’ I gasped, suddenly distrustful of his bomb disposal expertise.
He put on the gargoyle grin again, switched the bag to his left hand and waved wires and a detonator under my nose.
‘Tra-la!’ he crowed, holding them up.
‘Brilliant,’ I muttered, clapping my hands quietly.
Clint joined in noisily. His applause echoed down the lane like a car backfiring. I signalled for silence with a finger on my lips.
‘I put the phone in the bag in case there are prints on it, but as these guys are pros I don’t expect there are.’
‘So what’s your brain telling you now?’
‘I’ve an idea where they’re hiding.’
‘Go on.’
‘I came back by a shortcut.’
‘There are none.’
‘There are. You haven’t found them. I came through the hedge because I wanted a look round. There’s any number of broken down sheds near your house, Mr C.’
‘I know. Call me Dave. I don’t like Mr C.’
‘Yes, Dave, there are a lot of places where they could hide. I thought if I go back now and keep my eyes open and then you enter the house by the back door they’d set off the bomb and come out of hiding and get lost when it doesn’t go off. Then we’ll find out who they are.’
‘Very logical that new brain of yours, but suppose they just decide to correct their mistake and come out firing sub-machineguns?’
‘We’ll scarper in that case unless you want to try and take them out with that shotgun you left on your kitchen counter.’
‘I was in a hurry,’ I mumbled.
I couldn’t think of any further objections to his plan even so the situation was unreal. What was I doing, following the instructions of No-Nose Nolan’s reconditioned brain?
I must have gaped at him.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘We’ll have to get a rattle on or they’ll be getting jumpy.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Stands to reason, Dave,’ he said condescendingly. ‘They’d have preferred to set the bomb off in the night and get away without anyone seeing them. The later it gets the more chance there is that someone will get a look at them or they might even get blocked in by traffic on these country lanes.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Brain 1, Cunane 0.’
‘Give me five minutes.’
I nodded. He handed me the bag. Gingerly, I took the phone out, still in its bag. Even if the bomber had left his prints there was no chance that I’d be able to run them through the police systems.
As No-Nose set off back into the foliage I noticed that his clothes were soaked but the electronics book was now in a plastic sandwich bag off my kitchen counter. He must have been crawling on all fours.
A few moments later I was standing at my back door and feeling through my pockets for the key. I felt as if someone had plastered me onto a giant target. Suppose there was another bomb? These guys believed in back-up … but come to that they couldn’t be same guys. One of them was badly injured and the other hurt.
I felt my stomach roll over. These bastards were coming at me in waves. Petrol bombers fail, so send in the plastic explosive guys.
I’d stared at the foliage until my eyes ached but couldn’t spot Tony’s spy camera. How could it be so obvious to him but not to me? Doubts surfaced again until I remembered that I couldn’t see the other camera until he pointed it out. Clint was at my side. He’d refused to stay in the car and I knew him too well to start arguing.
I opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Everything was normal except for the shotgun, which I immediately picked up. As I laid hands on the gun the detonation phone rang.
Red mist descended.
Grabbing up the gun I ran outside. I needed to fight someone. Anger pulsated through my body. People I didn’t even know had casually decided to end my life. Somehow this was more vicious and less forgivable than the petrol bombs. With them there’d been a human agent that I could prepare measures against.
Now death was to be delivered at the push of a button.
I scanned the open fields at the back of the property. My gaze flicked from feature to feature; a shed, a cow byre, coloured pony-show jumps with the paint flaking off, a rusting old horse-trailer abandoned in a corner.
Nothing was moving. I was an idiot. As No-Nose would say, it stood to reason that the bombers wouldn’t hide in plain sight of the house. Otherwise why would they need spy cameras?
Then I spotted Tony in the corner of an adjacent field. He was down low. He was indicating something beyond my line of sight, nodding his head. He only lacked a wagging tail to be a pointer dog.
I ran to the extreme corner of my land. From this point Topfield Farm and the barn were invisible because of an intervening hedge.
Tony was visible though. He was standing up, waving his arms and pointing.
Diagonally across the adjacent field two people were scrambling through the door of an abandoned hen house. It was big and mounted on wheels, proper poultry farm equipment not something you’d keep in your back garden for half a dozen hens. I could just about make out the killers in the long shadows cast by the trees.
One of the men, and they were both men, was lugging a large suitcase with bo
th hands but the other was unburdened. They were making for a gate, which opened onto the winding tarmac lane.
I completely lost it. If they’d been in range I’d have shot them both but I couldn’t. I yelled at them in frustrated rage. Clint began climbing over the fence round the poultry field.
‘Bastards!’ he yelled.
The one who wasn’t carrying anything turned, pulled out a gun and fired a rapid burst.
The sound wasn’t loud; pock, pock, pock, pock, just like that, not a frightening sound at all. The gunman was a good two hundred yards away so if he hit us it would be incredible bad luck but I heard the bullets whistle past.
‘Get down!’ I roared at Clint. Even at long range his size made him vulnerable. Taking no notice of me, Clint vaulted over the fence and began sprinting across the field like an Olympic champion.
‘Bastards, bastards!’ he screamed.
More bullets whistled above my head and I realised that I was the target, not Clint.
I experienced another spasm of blind rage.
I climbed over the fence and fired, angling the gun like an artillery piece. It was an impossible shot. The gunman and his mate were almost invisible against the deep shadows cast by sycamore trees in that corner of the field. However shotgun pellets spread out at long range and the man with the suitcase seemed to stagger. He may have taken a couple of pellets.
Unfortunately the gun was loaded with number 6 shot which is nasty enough to give a rabbit a bad fright at close range but hardly likely to do much damage to a man at such a distance.
Even so, I believe I discouraged him. Luckily for us he didn’t stand his ground. It isn’t much fun being fired at and he speeded up his efforts to escape.
As for the other man, he also decided on a quick exit. Whether it was seeing Clint running towards him, waving his arms like a runaway windmill, I’ll never know, but he turned to escape. Possibly he thought someone as reckless as Clint must be armed. Anyway when he overtook his partner with the case that guy decided he was carrying excess baggage and dumped his burden.
Both disappeared through the gate.
Ten seconds later Clint reached the hen house.
Before I could stop him he raced on after them only to throw up his hands in disappointment when he reached the gate. The sound of a high performance car accelerating startled birds out of the trees.
‘They’ve gone, the bastards,’ he said as I came panting up to him.
‘Did you see the car?’
Car identification is an area where Clint excels. He spends hours poring over motor mags and can recite specifications on most cars.
‘Red Mini-Cooper.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Mini-Cooper S, seventeen inch alloy wheels. It costs more than twenty thousand pounds,’ he said impressively. I looked back across the fields. By the time I got the BMW on the road they’d be far away.
‘At least they’ve left us a party bag,’ Tony shouted.
He was kneeling on the grass next to the discarded case. His fingers were exploring the locks.
‘Don’t open it!’ I warned. ‘It might be booby trapped.’
‘Nah, they didn’t have time for that,’ he said confidently. He flicked a small penknife open and quickly jimmied the locks.
Carefully slotted into polystyrene cut-outs was all the equipment needed to blow me or any other target to hell and back. Screens, receivers, aerials, spy cameras, computer, all neatly fitted in detachable trays. There was also a bulky automatic pistol, with a spare magazine alongside it.
‘I’ll have that,’ I said, pulling the gun out.
The pistol was enormous. I have big hands but the grip was huge.
‘That’ll make a fair sized hole in someone; it’s a Desert Eagle, fifty cal,’ No-Nose opined.
A glance at the weapon confirmed this.
‘Is there anything you don’t know, Tony,’ I snapped peevishly, regretting my words even as I spoke.
‘Not a lot, Dave, but it says it’s a Desert Eagle fifty cal here.’
He held up the spare mag on which the words were printed.
‘If you’re taking that, do you mind if I keep all this gubbins here?’
‘Why?’
‘I can find a good use for it.’
‘Blowing up safes? I thought you were as straight as a spirit level these days.’
‘Sorry, I misspoke. I didn’t mean the C4. I meant the surveillance gear. Damn useful that is.’
A wave of frustration swept over me.
For a minute there I’d allowed myself to think that we might lay hands on at least one of the men trying to kill me. Then maybe, just maybe, I could have bargained my way out of this mess. That wasn’t going to happen now. They were going to keep coming after me until they succeeded. It hadn’t escaped me that the latest pair was dressed in suits. Where was there an office full of suit wearing assassins ready for action at a moment’s notice? The odds were so far against me that even thinking of escape was fantasy. The red mist of rage that had buoyed me up faded.
I’m not at my best in a muddy field at crack of dawn. My shoes were offering no protection from the rain-sodden grass.
I checked out the hen house.
I was desperate for a clue to their identities.
Naturally it was empty. There wasn’t a trace of their presence, no handy till receipts, no tell-tale sweet wrappers, not even a cigarette butt or a lump of chewing gum. If I’d been quicker off the mark or more cunning I might have bagged one of them. But no, I had to go charging across an open field like a maniac and worse, encourage Clint to follow my example.
It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit.
I tried to think of the next move.
Fight or flight?
It didn’t seem that I had much choice.
A fool’s luck, that was the only thing that’d saved me so far. I felt cold sweat on my forehead when I thought about what could have gone wrong.
Without Tony ‘No‑Nose’ Nolan’s gift for detecting cameras, I’d now be reduced to atmospheric pollution. Maybe there’d be a few shreds of flesh that a forensic scientist could identify. What was the effect of four kilograms of explosive going off in a confined space? The destruction would have been complete. Not a stone would have been left on a stone.
Four kilograms, there had to be a clue there. Military explosives aren’t easily come by.
‘Come on,’ I ordered, ‘back to the house.’
Clint picked up the massive assassination kit with no strain at all and the three of us tramped back to Topfield Farm. Watching him I realised that I hadn’t a chance of saving myself, let alone my family, unless I got help.
I needed people to work with me.
‘Tony,’ I said, making my pitch in a suitably tentative manner, ‘how do you fancy hanging around with me for a while? Do you think Bob could spare you?’
‘Spare me; I think he’ll be glad to see the back of me.’
‘Oh? You’ve been with him practically since he started.’
‘Yeah, and that’s all that’s holding him back but I know. Me and Lee both, he wants rid. I can tell. He’s already told me off for reading a book on his time.’
‘That’s harsh,’ I murmured, implying that I’d never be guilty of such a crime against self-improvement.
We squelched on across the field in silence for a while. We reached the boundary of my property and I clambered over the fence.
‘Mr C, er Dave,’ Tony said when Clint had lifted him over and deposited him next to me. ‘Are you serious about me hanging around with you? Working for you might be interesting.’
‘Bombs in my living room aren’t an everyday occurrence.’
‘No, but somebody’s out to do you and I don’t think they’ve finished yet. An extra pair of eyes could come in useful.’
‘Too right,’ I said looking up at the camera on the barn wall, ‘but it would only be a temporary job. I’ve made a rule not to hire permanent staff.’
‘I don’t mind temporary but there’s a condition.’
‘What?’ I asked cautiously, aware that he had every right to expect my gratitude.
‘I’ll work for you temporary as long as Lee comes too.’
‘Well, we all have our cross to bear. Are you sure?’
‘He’s not so bad. He’s been my mate for a while.’
‘He’ll have to do what he’s told.’
‘I’ll keep him straight.’
‘That’s more than anyone else has been able to do.’
‘I will,’ he insisted.
‘What is it with you and Lee? You’re not in a civil partnership are you?’
‘Mr Cunane!’ he said indignantly, ‘I told you I’m as straight as one of them giant spirit level thingies and I meant straight in every way. I’ve had girl friends, lots of them. He’s just my best mate.’
‘Who’s your current girl friend?’
‘I’m between relationships at the moment.’
I took that to mean that he and Lee were in the closet and staying there. It was none of my business but I needed to know more.
‘Look, Tony, if I’m taking you both on I’m entitled to know the whole story.’
‘Do you want the long version or the short version?’
‘Short will do. You can save the long one for some dark winter evening when we’ve nothing else to do.’
‘Right, well Lee’s dad was the Wythenshawe Telly Man and he was my dad’s best mate.’
‘Tally Man? In the collection business like you?’
‘Telly Man, he used to hang out in this pub in Wythenshawe. This was back in the days when colour tellies were rare and expensive. Everybody wanted one.’
‘And didn’t want to pay for one?’
‘That’s right. So my dad heard he’d nicked some gear and went to see him. Telly Man took him to his mother’s house. He had tellies stacked up to the ceiling in a back room and he tells my dad to pick one. So he does, only when he got it home it didn’t work. They went through another four and none of them worked.’
‘So?’
‘So, my old man got pretty damned annoyed. He started quizzing Lee’s dad and it turned out that the daft bugger had nicked the tellies from a TV repair business and he’d taken the ones waiting to be repaired instead of the ones that were working.’