by Rob Johnson
There was a lengthy silence as Bracewell glared at him, all traces of feigned good humour now entirely obscured beneath a mask of sheer loathing. ‘No, no. I think it would be best if you keep them where they are,’ he said when Harry made to lower his arms.
MacFarland watched Bracewell screw a silencer onto the barrel of his gun, and his whole body tensed when he heard the faint click of the safety catch. He wondered again whether he should risk making a grab for his own weapon, but it was almost as if Bracewell had read his mind.
‘I wouldn’t advise it, dear boy,’ he said without diverting his attention from Harry. ‘We wouldn’t want to ruin the English-Scottish entente cordiale, now would we? In fact, perhaps this might be an opportune moment to relieve you of temptation. – Delia, if you’d be so kind?’
MacFarland’s immediate confusion intensified when he turned to see Delia coming towards him and gesturing at him to raise his hands. He did as he was told, and Delia reached inside his jacket and removed the gun from his shoulder holster. MacFarland studied his face the whole time for some kind of clue, but all he got was a half grin that seemed more like a facial shrug of apology. Okay, so maybe this explained his strange behaviour on the train and then later on the station platform, but why Bracewell? What was the connection?
He watched Delia cross the floor to the window, giving Harry the widest possible berth as he went. When he got there, Bracewell rested his free hand on his shoulder and, in return, Delia kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Bloody hell. So that was it.
‘Fuck me,’ said Harry, whose mouth had hung open in silent horror from the moment he had witnessed Delia’s betrayal.
‘I’d really rather not, old boy, if it’s all the same to you. Besides, I’m very much a one-man man nowadays, aren’t I, Michael?’ Bracewell said with an impish smile and moved his hand from Delia’s shoulder to his waist.
Although still in a state of shock himself, MacFarland found the look of disgust on Harry’s face highly entertaining and in any other circumstance would have been hard pressed to have stifled a snigger. Despite his obvious revulsion, Harry seemed to have no such inhibition, but there was no trace of amusement in his scornful laughter.
‘Michael? Michael? Fucking Judas, more like. Or maybe that should be Judy, eh? I’ve been bloody good to you, I ‘ave. Scabby little cocksucker.’
‘You see, Harry, it’s exactly that kind of—’
It was the first time Delia had uttered a word since they’d entered the flat, but Harry wasn’t about to let him get any further. In fact, he ignored him altogether and turned his attention on Bracewell instead.
‘And since when ‘ave you been a knob jockey? Still, I s’pose I should‘ve known with a name like Joooolian and that poncey fuckin’ accent of yours.’ Then a thought seemed to occur to him, and his eyes blazed like a shark’s in a feeding frenzy. ‘Hey, maybe you developed a liking for takin’ it up the arse ever since I screwed you over that Croydon job.’
Even though MacFarland had been half expecting it, he still flinched at the dull pinging sound and the flash from Bracewell’s silenced gun.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Convincing DS Logan about the dead body in the flat had not been easy. From the moment Swann had brought Trevor back into the living room, he had been intent on one course of action alone – to continue questioning him about Imelda’s disappearance. He had completely ignored Trevor and Sandra’s protestations, and it was only when Sandra had told him the man was a Member of Parliament that he had begun to hesitate. Then she had shown him the MP’s identity card, and the hesitation had turned into a full scale pause, at the end of which he had instructed Swann to make some enquiries.
She had made a couple of calls, but there had been no reports of a missing MP. Logan had seemed satisfied that Trevor and Sandra had invented the whole ridiculous story and asked them what the hell they’d expected to gain from it. But before they could answer, Swann had pointed out that the absence of any reports didn’t really prove anything one way or the other.
‘Maybe he hasn’t been gone long enough for anyone to have noticed,’ she had said. ‘Besides, if what these two say is true, it would certainly explain why the spooks have got their oar in.’
Now here’s a guy who doesn’t like his authority being undermined, Trevor had thought as he’d caught the look of thunder which Logan directed at his colleague. But any tirade that might have followed was nipped in the bud when Sandra had launched into the briefest of explanations as to what had led them to their discovery of the dead MP.
After she’d finished, Logan had crossed the floor of the living room and stared out of the window in silence for several seconds. Then he had turned and pointed his finger at Trevor.
‘And you needn’t think this is going to get you off a murder charge,’ he’d said. ‘As soon as we get there and find out you’ve been pulling my pisser, I’m nicking the pair of you for wasting police time. That’ll do for starters anyway.’
‘As soon as we get there?’ Trevor had repeated.
Logan’s laugh had sounded more like an elongated grunt. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let you out of my sight after the merry little dance you’ve been leading me already, do you?’
Trevor’s sister had been adamant that there was no way he was leaving his vandal of a dog behind, and although Logan had been equally resistant to taking her with them, Milly was now wedged between Trevor and Sandra on the back seat of the car as they sped through the streets of Bristol.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
There was little doubt that the favourite colour of Flat 13’s absent occupant was a particularly gaudy shade of purple. Every surface that could be painted purple had been – not only the doors, walls and ceiling, but tables, chairs and even the casing of the television in the corner of the room. The carpet was almost exactly the same colour, and anything unpaintable, like the two-seater settee and the single armchair, was covered in purple fabric.
‘God almighty,’ said Patterson when Coleman had let him and Statham into the apartment. ‘It’s enough to send you blind. – And speaking of which, what’s our friend with the white stick been up to since his chums arrived?’
Jarvis was sitting on one of the purple wooden chairs at the side of the room, wearing a pair of headphones. These were attached to a black box on his lap, and this in turn was connected to a small square of plastic fixed to the wall. He lifted the headphones clear of his right ear and half turned towards Patterson. ‘Bit hard to tell without a visual, guv, but I’m pretty sure there’s a stiff in there.’
‘A stiff?’
‘A dead body, guv.’
Patterson rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I do know what a stiff is, thank you. Any idea who it is?’
‘Dunno,’ said Jarvis with a shake of his head. ‘Seems like he’d already croaked when the blind guy arrived. One of them’s called Julian Bracewell and then there’s a Harry and a bloke with a heavy Scottish accent. Oh yes, and somebody called Delia.’
‘Delia?’ Patterson thought back to the three people who had emerged from the taxi a few minutes earlier. He was sure that all of them were men. And what about this Julian Bracewell? He told Coleman to run a check on him, although he wondered whether there was much point. If, as he suspected, the dead body belonged to Gerald Quicke MP, then the whole job was screwed anyway.
‘Hang on a sec.’ Jarvis adjusted the headphones so that both ears were covered once again and frowned in concentration.
‘What is it?’ said Patterson, guessing from Jarvis’s expression that he was hearing something that wasn’t going to be good news.
Jarvis held up his hand to motion him to silence. ‘Sounds like there’s a bit of an argy-bargy going on… Cockney-sounding bloke – I think that’s Harry – calling somebody a Judas… Something about a— Agh, Jesus!’
He snatched the headphones off and dropped them to the floor before clasping his hands to his ears and rubbing them vigorously. Even without the aid of a l
istening device, the wall was thin enough for Patterson and the others to be in no doubt as to the sound which had almost deafened him. It was a man screaming in pain.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Statham.
‘Not exactly sure, but I think there might have been a shot,’ said Jarvis, still massaging his damaged ears. ‘Gun with a silencer maybe.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Patterson was aware that Statham was looking at him, apparently waiting for a decision about what they should do next. He considered his options, but there seemed to be remarkably few. Their main reason for being here at all was to ensure the safety of the kidnapped MP, but it seemed more than likely they had already failed on that score. They could always burst into the flat and grab whoever was still alive in there, but at least one of them had a gun – perhaps they all did – so the risk to him and his men was not inconsiderable. Besides, what would be the point when he knew that the case would never come to trial?
His instructions had been unequivocal in that respect. Whatever the outcome, not a single detail of the operation could ever be made public. A general election was looming, and the government’s standing in the opinion polls was already causing alarm bells to ring in the corridors of power. A recent string of scandals involving some of the higher ranking party members had been particularly damaging, so the last thing the PM wanted right now was another one. If the media got even the faintest whiff of what Quicke had been up to and why he’d been kidnapped, the consequences would be disastrous. Not only that, but if it became known that the government had agreed to pay the ransom, its frequently repeated mantra never to give in to terrorist demands or any other form of blackmail would be ridiculed as a sham of the highest order.
Oh bollocks, thought Patterson, realising that he was getting nowhere with his decision-making process, and he began instead to calculate the kind of pension he might be entitled to if he took early retirement. But his financial musings were short lived.
‘You’re not gonna believe this,’ said Coleman when he ended the call on his mobile phone.
‘Don’t piss about,’ Patterson snapped. ‘Just tell me what you’ve got.’
‘Well, assuming it’s the same Julian Bracewell, he actually died four years ago.’ He paused for a reaction, but all he got was a raised eyebrow and a look of impatience, so he cleared his throat and carried on. ‘Bit of a bad lad apparently. Head of some gang in South London. Armed robbery mostly. In fact, he was out on bail over a bank job when he snuffed it.’
‘Bail?’
‘Yeah, I thought that was a bit weird. Anyway, before he croaked – when he was being questioned, like – he tried to put someone else in the frame. Er…’ Coleman glanced at his notebook. ‘Name of Harry Vincent.’
Patterson felt as if his frontal lobe had been poked with a cattle prod. Harry Vincent. Of course. He knew he’d recognised him from somewhere when he’d seen him get out of the taxi but hadn’t been able to put a name to him until now. He hadn’t even twigged when Jarvis had said one of the men in the flat was called Harry. Patterson remembered him from his Flying Squad days before he’d joined MI5. Everyone knew what a nasty little bastard he was, but there’d never been enough solid evidence to pin anything on him. Even when they’d tried to manufacture the evidence, Vincent could afford to hire the most expensive lawyers in the country to make sure he wriggled away scot free every time. The last Patterson had heard was a couple of years or so ago when the police had finally been able to put together a case which was not only likely to stick but which would also have put him away for a very long time. Unfortunately, though, Vincent had been blown to pieces in a car explosion before they’d been able to run him to ground. At least, that was the story at the time.
‘So what do we do now?’
This time, it was Statham who cut short his deliberations. Patterson stared at him as if he was struggling to remember who he was.
‘Do?’ he said at last. ‘I’m really not sure what we can do.’
‘But if they’re starting to shoot people, shouldn’t we be—’
‘Look,’ said Patterson. ‘It seems a pretty safe bet that this MP we were supposed to keep alive has already shuffled off his mortal coil, and what’s more, there are two dead men in there who appear to be very much in the land of the living. No, we listen and wait and see what happens. With a bit of luck they might all end up killing each other and save us the bother.’
Statham opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the flat. Of the four men, only Jarvis did not turn instantly towards it. His eardrums having recovered sufficiently, the headphones were now back in place, and all he could hear were the sounds from the next door apartment.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Harry pitched sideways when the bullet hit, and instinct made him throw out his hands to break his fall. One of them caught the top of the armchair, and he brought it crashing down on its back with the dead MP still attached.
‘Ah, don’t they make a lovely couple,’ said Bracewell, clearly enjoying the sight of Harry sprawled on the floor next to the upturned corpse and clutching at the still-smoking hole in his foot.
‘What the fuck d’you do that for?’ said Harry through teeth clamped shut from the pain.
‘Let’s just say I’m not at all keen on your attitude towards the gay community, old boy.’
MacFarland laughed. Harry’s complete lack of sympathy for the injury to his own foot made the scene especially comical. Harry screwed his head round to glare up at him, his face twisted into a fusion of agony and rage. Whatever happened from that moment on, MacFarland realised he was suddenly out of a job. What else did he have to lose?
‘Looks like you’ve really shot yirself in the foot this time,’ he said.
‘You’re a dead man, Scotchboy,’ Harry snarled as he dragged himself into a sitting position with his back against the side of the armchair, blood now running freely from the hole in his tan-coloured brogue.
‘Perhaps you should have stayed in Greece,’ said Bracewell. ‘In fact, I can’t for the life of me understand why this MP chappie was so important that you felt the need to come back at all.’
‘Thought your little bum-chum there would’ve told yer all about it,’ said Harry and grunted as he struggled to untie his blood-soaked shoelace.
‘Michael told me all I needed to know for my purposes of course, but not the… nitty-gritty, so to speak.’
‘What d’you care anyway?’
Bracewell shrugged. ‘Shall we say… professional curiosity?’
‘Well yer know what you can do with that, don’tcha?’ Harry said, finally releasing his shoe and tossing it weakly in Bracewell’s direction. ‘’Cept a fucking shirt lifter like you would probably enjoy it.’
‘Our wee deid MP here stitched ye up good and proper, didn’t he, Harry?’ said MacFarland. ‘And nobody messes wi’ the great Harry Vincent, do they, eh?’
‘Oh do tell, dear boy,’ said Bracewell.
MacFarland needed no further encouragement to add the insult of humiliation to his ex-employer’s physical injury and explained how Harry had bribed the MP about a year ago to ‘do him a wee favour’. As well as his less-than-legal enterprises, Harry also had his podgy little fingers in some rather more legitimate business pies and even had his own construction company. When he heard there was a major government contract in the offing, he’d decided to try and tip the balance his way, and that’s when he nobbled Gerald Quicke.
The MP had been on holiday in Greece when Harry met him by chance in one of his local watering holes. A fair few sherbets later, Quicke had started bragging how he could influence which way the decision went when it came to awarding the contract. What Harry didn’t know was that Quicke was so far down the greasy pole, he wouldn’t even have had a say in what brand of bog roll they used in the House of Commons toilets, never mind influencing who got what contract. But Harry was taken in by all the guy’s blether and decided that bunging him fifty
grand would be a sound business investment.
Of course, when it was announced that some other company had got the job, Harry did his nut. And when it turned out that Quicke had done bugger all to fight Harry’s corner, the writing was already on the wall.
‘Ah, I see. A simple matter of revenge then,’ said Bracewell. ‘One can only assume that our recently departed dishonourable member had no idea who he was dealing with or what he might be capable of.’
‘Should’ve just ‘ad the little bastard wasted, but I wanted me money back, didn’t I? Plus an extra hundred k for seriously pissing me off.’
‘Punitive damages, eh?’
‘If you like,’ said Harry, who by now had removed his sock and was using it to try and stem the flow of blood.
‘Still, I suppose one could say you’ve had your cake and eaten it too,’ said Bracewell, nodding towards the body of the MP in the overturned armchair.
‘Yeah, all except for a fucking ‘ole in me foot and the twenty-five grand that bitch and ‘er boyfriend waltzed off with.’
‘Oh?’ said Bracewell, raising an eyebrow at Delia.
‘Bit of a long story,’ said Delia. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘But do I take it that the remainder of Mr Vincent’s ill-gotten gains is in safe keeping?’
‘Of course,’ said Delia with a smile, and he pointed to the briefcase he’d left just inside the door when they’d first entered the flat.
Bracewell beamed back at him and patted him softly on the cheek. ‘Well then, I do believe our business here is concluded. – Shall we?’
He ostentatiously held out his arm, crooked at the elbow, and Delia slipped his own arm through the gap. MacFarland couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Not the gay thing. He didn’t give a flying fart about all that stuff as long as nobody tried it on with him. No, it looked like they were just going to mince off into the sunset and that would be that. Surely Bracewell wasn’t going to leave Harry alive. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? And what were they planning to do with him?