Jimmy said:
‘We could lie low here for a couple of days until the police are certain we’re gone and they definitely lift the roadblock. Then we drive off the island like any good tourist.’
Donny was ogling the women again.
‘A couple of days here. I could find things to do.’
‘We’re on a clock, remember,’ Chris said. ‘Sooner or later that artist and his model are going to get free.’
‘I’m betting on later,’ Donny said, his eyes still on the women.
‘We tied them up pretty tight,’ Jimmy added.
‘But someone is bound to find them,’ Chris said.
‘So?’ Karen said. ‘He can’t go to the cops, given what he was up to.’
‘I know that,’ Chris said impatiently. ‘But the longer we’re on the island the longer Earwaker and his client can figure a way to get their pictures back.’
Natasha Innocent sat back in her chair. She was trying to hear what the captors were saying in the yard but all she got was the rumble of conversation. She was worried Josie was going to walk straight into this.
She needed to stay low. She figured the giant punk was the type to have a thing against cops. She could tell by the way he was looking at her and the other women he had an itch. If he found out she was a female cop he’d go berserk.
She’d been watching the interplay between the intruders. The punk was obviously trouble. She guessed from the look that passed between Chris and the skinny guy that the skinny guy and the giant paired together. From the way the woman and the older man moved around each other she was figuring them for lovers, past or present.
She was assuming the couple could restrain the giant with his skinny friend’s help. The giant seemed to be the only danger at the moment. The others just wanted to wait things out for a few hours then be on their way.
She wondered whether word had got out about the robbery before they could clear the island or was it something else? She’d been thinking about the paintings, if that’s what they were. Maybe they were from Frank Bartram’s house? He was wealthy enough to own expensive paintings. But his house was a fortress and since it had the only harbour on Paradise Island surely thieves would come and go by boat?
She wondered again what else they’d done to end up here, trying to steal a car to flee the islands. If they were hiding their van – he’d heard them talk about a van – then that must be hot. So whatever they’d done had been public. Robbed the bank? Heisted the jewellery store?
Tom Haddon slid across the floor towards her.
‘I remember where I’ve seen these guys,’ he said, his voice low. He glanced over at Phoebe. She was talking quietly to Ruth.
‘I was cycling past Phoebe and Julian’s place. Coming back from the beach. There was a white van across the road from the house. I wasn’t paying attention but a couple of people were ferrying something from the house to the van.’ He smiled as his recollection clicked into place. ‘Then I saw this big guy and a little guy – George and Lennie here – come out and get in the van. As I cycled by I hadn’t paid them any conscious attention but now I remember them both looking into the back of the van. So I couldn’t see their faces.’
Innocent looked at Phoebe.
‘Best not say anything in case they’ve harmed Julian.’
‘That older couple don’t look the killing type,’ Haddon said.
Innocent nodded, her eyes still on Phoebe, wondering what they might have done to her husband. Was Chief Wilson looking for them right now? Was he trying to get hold of her? Bizarrely, the very moment she thought that the tall woman came in from the yard and hurried over to the window looking out onto the dirt road. She called to Chris, the grey-haired man:
‘Cop car across the road.’
Donny and Chris both went over to the window. Jimmy kept his gun loosely pointed at the group on the sofas.
The police car had pulled up on the road outside the house opposite. It blocked the exit of a Pontiac in the carport. A big, handsome man stepped out of the car, put his hat on and went up to the porch door.
He rapped on it. Peered through the window.
He came off the stoop and looked over at the house in which they were hiding. He walked over, setting his hat on his head as he went.
‘That’s just fucking great,’ Donny said. ‘But okay, let’s kill him and hide his car out back.’
‘A cop car?’ Jimmy called from the back window. ‘Why don’t we use the cop to get us off the island?’
‘I think he’s the Sheriff,’ Chris said. ‘Taking the chief of police hostage is going to bring a whole lot of shit down on us.’
‘I say shoot him,’ Donny said.
‘I say we don’t,’ Chris said. ‘Get back and help Jimmy with these folk.’
Donny gave him a look that combined anger with something less definable but he walked back across the room and joined his brother. Chris and Karen exchanged looks.
‘Can you handle this?’ he said.
‘As long as he doesn’t spot the van, yes.’
Chris indicated the door.
‘Off you go then.’
Natasha Innocent was at the front of her seat again as she heard the conversation between the intruders at the window. She couldn’t let them shoot Sheriff Wilson. She glanced at the fourth man. Ferret face. He was staring right at her. She looked down.
When Chris vetoed shooting the Sheriff and the big man stomped back into the living area she relaxed. She watched as the tall woman walked down the corridor towards the front door, Chris watching the Sheriff from the window.
She stiffened when she saw the big man keep on walking out of the back door into the yard and round the side of the house.
The front door opened as the first bullet took a lump of flesh out of Wilson’s right arm just above his bicep. The impact spun him but he was surprised how he followed through so instinctively and rapidly, though without much dignity. He hit the ground harder than he intended and his ass hung in the air whilst he tried for breath. He rolled and un-holstered his gun as a second and third bullet followed him into the shelter of a live oak.
He had his gun out but he didn’t want to fire until he could figure out what was going on. As his mind raced he was aware that somehow his hat was still on his head. His arm hurt like hell but he was a southpaw so he was still on shooting form. He glanced at the blood soaking his sleeve.
The front door was closed again but the shots hadn’t come from there. He’d seen a woman in the doorway but he’d also glimpsed a big man at the side of the house. He’d been the one firing at Wilson. And, now, he was firing at Wilson’s car. A flurry of shots. He was aiming at the tyres. He got one. And the petrol tank. The shooter had been watching too many cop shows: he wanted to blow the car up but didn’t know that only happened in the movies.
Wilson thought about the hit and run on Natasha’s partner, Josie. He remembered Harry’s bar, just about this time last year. He sighed.
The shooter stopped. Maybe just re-loading. Wilson took advantage of the sudden silence.
‘Hey – you in the house and you doing the shooting – you wanna tell me what the problem is?’
He expected another burst of gunfire but the silence continued. After a couple of minutes he tried again.
‘This is Chief Wilson. I repeat: is there a problem in the house?’
In those two minutes he’d been figuring out backup – such as he possessed - and how he was going to get it. Then he wondered who else was in the house, maybe trapped, and thought about walking up that path to the front door. That was a bad idea. He looked at his blood-soaked sleeve and at the front of the house. He grimaced.
He was proud of his resolve when he stepped out from behind the tree, Magnum in hand, onto Barbara’s lawn. Then his feet got stuck. He couldn’t figure out a way to put one in front of the other. He could only stand there feeling foolish and frightened.
After what seemed an age, with a great effort of will, he forced
himself to move towards the front door. He let his revolver hang in his hand but his fingers were tight around it. He hoped it was the heat that was making his shirt hang heavy with sweat. Sweat certainly soaked the back of his neck and ran down from his hairline. And he knew it was his own blood dripping off the fingers of his right hand.
He walked across the grass, eyes scanning the front of the house. As he crunched onto the gravel a few yards in front of the front door it opened a foot or so.
‘And that’s far enough, Mr Policeman.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Unless you want your quiff trimmed.’
‘Don’t believe I have a quiff, ma’am,’ Wilson said, touching his hat with the barrel of his gun and keeping walking.
‘Stop all the same.’
Wilson smiled, though he was not feeling it. He felt faint and sick and his arm was on fire. He looked down and back and planted his feet square.
‘Right … here?’ he said. ‘This particular sod of God’s earth got some particular significance, does it?’
‘It’s the place if you’re lucky they’ll put a brass plaque to say here died Mr Policeman from being a damn fool and taking the step he’d been advised against.’
‘That’s a mite gabby for a plaque.’
‘This is a big country. It can accommodate a big plaque – or they can write small.’
He could see the woman now and she was a looker. Capable too, he would guess, from the steady way she was holding her gun.
‘One of your friends has just shot at a peace officer. That’s kind of a serious offence. Especially as I was that peace officer. Plus he hit me. I’ve taken that personal – and it takes it into a whole other league.’
‘Makes you stupid walking up the front drive with such a desperado around doesn’t it? You think you’re Clint Eastwood?’ She indicated his bloody sleeve. ‘How did you know he wasn’t going to finish the job?’
Wilson shook his head.
‘He got interested in shooting my car to death instead.’
He shifted his feet.
‘Did you run anybody down today, Miss?’
‘Mrs. ‘
‘Married. Alas, the best generally are.’
She gave a little smile at the compliment.
‘I hope it’s not your husband who’s been shooting at me. If so I’d have to question your taste in men.’
That quick smile again.
‘I wouldn’t blame you. My husband has not been shooting and neither of us have been driving today.’
‘Then that must make at least three of you and that means you must be holding me up for some whole other reason.’
She didn’t respond. Wilson glanced towards the window.
‘Barbara and that English couple in there with you?’
‘There’s a party’s worth of people.’
‘And I’m not invited. I’m generally regarded as the life and soul.’
She said nothing.
‘You don’t quite know what to do with me, do you?’ Wilson said. ‘Invite me in or send me away. Except you sending me away you know I’ll come back with a few more party-crashers. I wonder if perhaps your colleague round the side of the house has shown your hand too soon and taken away your options?’
‘If I were you, I’d get a tourniquet on that arm before you bleed to death.’
Wilson squinted at his arm.
‘This little scratch? What kind of schoolgirl do you think I am?’
‘The kind that’s forgetting there’s still the third option,’ a coarse male voice shouted from the side of the house.
Wilson cocked his head.
‘Ah, Mr Bushwhacker,’ he said to the woman. ‘I look forward to making his acquaintance real soon.’
‘You must not know him then.’
‘Well, my first impression isn’t favourable, I’ll admit.’
‘You might not have the opportunity for a second.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘Do you think it’s that serious?’
She gave a little shrug.
‘I’ve got a question for you, Sheriff,’ the man called.
‘Shoot,’ Wilson called back. He looked at the woman. ‘Actually, let me rephrase that.’
The woman held down her smile.
‘How are you planning to get back to your car?’
Wilson leaned forward as if he wanted to whisper in the woman’s ear.
‘Movie dialogue. Your boy’s doing a little riff on Paul Newman and Richard Boone in Hombre. Elmore Leonard wrote it, you know. The Mr Majestyk guy? The new Charlie Bronson film?’
The woman too leaned forward a little.
‘Do you always babble when you’re nervous?’
Wilson smiled.
‘I babble in dancing distance of a beautiful woman.’
‘Is that also why you’re looking a little green, Mr Policeman?’
Wilson glanced down.
‘I’m green because I figure I’ve got about three pints of my blood puddling round my feet.’
‘Go get a tourniquet.’
‘I won’t get shot?’
‘I’d be surprised.’
‘And I’d be dead.’
She stepped back and started closing the door.
‘Goodbye, Sheriff.’
‘Hasta luego,’ he said to the door.
When the first shot came from the side of the house, Natasha was watching Tom Haddon fiddle with an LP. He abruptly switched from reading the label on the vinyl to holding it by its edge. Now it was a sharp-edged Frisbee. Still sitting he drew his forearm in front of his chest then let the vinyl fly at ferret face, whose head was turned as he strained to see out of the back door. His neck was exposed. The sharp edge of the disc hit his exposed neck.
Haddon didn’t wait to see if the vinyl was going to down the guy before he followed with a low slide at his legs. As the man grunted Haddon’s feet smacked into his shins and he fell back.
Although the man hit the window hard he retained his grip on his gun. Haddon twisted forward and sprawled over him, lunging for the gun with one hand whilst scrabbling for a wine bottle standing near the back of the sofa with the other.
Innocent pushed herself out of her chair. She heard two more shots from outside. She looked down at Haddon struggling with the much smaller man and made the decision to go after the shooter. She ran through the open windows into the garden.
That was her intention, at any rate. But Chris, the grey-haired man, moved quickly. He grabbed her arm as she went through the door, pulled her back and swung her round. When he released her arm centrifugal force sent her crashing into the wall.
Shocked rather than stunned, she scrabbled on the floor to get upright, aware of Chris taking three quick steps and clubbing Haddon behind the ear with the butt of his gun. Haddon went limp and Chris went off into the yard.
Gus, Grady and Eddie had been slow and only now started to rise from the sofa. The skinny man pushed the unconscious Haddon off him and stood.
‘Sit yourselves down,’ the tall woman ordered as the unmistakeable sound of a bullet being chambered chinked in the room.
They stopped and turned. She gestured to the sofas with her gun. They sat.
‘You fucking asshole,’ the skinny man shouted as he kicked Haddon’s prone form.
‘Hey!’ Phoebe said, cradling Ruth. ‘Leave him alone, you bastard.’
The tall woman started towards Haddon, her gun still pointed at the sofas. When she reached the skinny man he was poised to kick Haddon in the head. She put her gun to his neck.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
Innocent recognised this as the moment and so, surprisingly, did Gus the pastor. The pastor had only just sunk back into the sofa but now he was off it quicker than Innocent was able to get to her feet. Innocent was dizzy but started towards the tall woman. Gus was within a yard of the tall woman when she swung her gun towards him.
At the same moment ferret face, glaring at his tall accomplice, pointed his gun in Innocent’s general dir
ection. He stepped away from Haddon and turned to face Innocent full on, holding his gun in two outstretched hands pointed at her head.
‘Not another fucking step,’ he said.
Karen glanced out at the yard. Where were Chris and Donny?
‘Things are getting out of control, Jimmy,’ Karen said. ‘Can you be professional?’
Jimmy rubbed the red weal on his neck and nodded slowly.
‘Tell them my name, why don’t you? Karen.’
‘What does it matter?’ Karen said. ‘Lot of Jimmys in the world.’
‘If you’re Jimmy,’ Grady Cole said, ‘the Incredible Hulk must be Donny.’
‘How you know that?’ Jimmy stepped forward.
Cole burst out laughing.
‘Priceless. Somebody up in those hills had a major Jones for Mormon Mopheads.’
Jimmy started towards him.
‘Jimmy!’ Karen’s voice was steady. ‘Get to the window and see where the sheriff is at.’
Karen pointed at the dark-haired woman who’d tried to make a run for it. Natasha was it?
‘Once Wonder Woman here sits down on the floor against that wall, cross-legged.’
‘I can’t sit cross-legged,’ Wonder Woman said. ‘Knee injury.’
‘How’d you like to have two knee injuries, sister?’ Karen said. ‘Sit your shapely ass down. Now.’
When Natasha had done so, making a show of wincing as she bent her right knee, Jimmy moved to the window. On the way he bent to pick up a half empty wine bottle. As he passed the sofa, he stopped behind Phoebe and touched her ear with his gun. She flinched but looked straight ahead.
‘Jimmy?’ Karen warned.
‘Don’t you move,’ he hissed at Phoebe as he poured the wine over her head. He leaned in. ‘Don’t ever call me a bastard.’
He put the empty bottle on the kitchen counter and stepped over to the front window. He peered cautiously out for a couple of minutes. Karen glanced at Phoebe – taut-faced, hair dripping. She looked back at Jimmy.
‘And?’ Karen said impatiently. She noticed Natasha staring fixedly at him.
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