have a clue. He lifted it so it was pointing in my direction. ‘Hold on, stop there. What are you talking about?’
I stopped. ‘I think Kalinski’s snuffed Krys. I heard some movement down here; it woke me up. I came down, saw that the cellar door was open, and went to take a look.’
Tugger didn’t move. ‘Where were you going just now?’
‘I was checking the doors to see whether they were locked.’
‘And are they?’
‘That one isn’t,’ I said, motioning towards the kitchen door. ‘Look, you can put the gun down now, Tugger. I’m not the one who’s offed Krys.’
‘You put yours down, then.’
I did. ‘Look, Tug, how long have we known each other? A long time, right? I’m telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, take a look. Krys is dead and there’s no way I’d want to kill him.’
He stepped over to the cellar door, and peered down, switching on the light as he did so. He watched me carefully out of the corner of his eye as he put his foot on the first step. It was funny what a lot of money did to people’s personalities.
‘I’m going to check on Kalinski,’ I said. ‘See if he’s done a runner.’
At that moment, the sound of a car starting came from out front. Tugger jumped back through the cellar door. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Go see who it is,’ I snapped. ‘I’ll see if Kalinski’s gone.’
Once again, he gave me a suspicious look, then turned and hurried out to the kitchen door. I ran up the stairs, wondering why Johnny hadn’t surfaced by now, and tried Kalinski’s door. It opened immediately and I knew he’d gone, an assumption that lasted as long as it took me to reach for the light switch and flick it on.
Kalinski lay on his back under the covers of his bed, his eyes open and staring at the beamed ceiling. The pale sheets covering him were stained with blood around the chest area, and he didn’t seem to have made any attempt at a struggle. I stepped forward and pulled them back. Three deep knife wounds an inch to the right of his left nipple suggested that death had been instantaneous, the result of stab wounds to the heart. Whoever had killed him had known what he was doing. But then, I already knew that, because he’d left two people dead with hardly a sound. My bedroom was right next door to Kalinski’s, and I’d been lying no more than ten feet away from him while the knife was going in. And I hadn’t heard a fucking thing. My luck was still holding, but only just. Whoever was trying to kill me — to kill us all — was getting closer and closer.
I thought I heard a shout from outside and it was at that point that I made a decision: something had gone badly wrong and I needed to get out of there with the money, and fast. I flung the sheets back over Kalinski, turned and ran back to my own room, knocking on Johnny’s door as I passed but not bothering to wait around for an answer. I wondered whether the Holtzes had the place surrounded and who among us was the one feeding information to the other side.
I pulled on some shoes, grabbed the holdall from under the bed, and went back out onto the landing. Johnny wasn’t responding. I knocked again, then opened the door. Even in the gloom, I could see that the bed was empty. What the fuck did that mean? Was Johnny the traitor? All kinds of thoughts were flying through my mind, clouding an issue that was already as murky as a peat bog. But there was no time to stand around and analyse, so I ran down the stairs and pulled open the front door.
The van we’d used for the ransom pick-up was about ten yards away in the middle of the driveway. It was in the exact spot where Kalinski had parked it earlier but the lights were on and the engine was idling. I stepped outside and looked for Tugger, but he was nowhere to be seen. The thick walls of trees on both sides of the driveway were silent and empty, but who knew what or who was behind them.
Clutching the gun in one hand and the holdall in the other, I jogged up to the driver’s side of the van, keeping my head down and turning round every so often, just to check I wasn’t being followed, and pulled open the door.
Johnny Hexham’s body tipped out unceremoniously and I had to jump out of the way to avoid being knocked over.
‘For Jesus’s sake …’
Johnny stared blankly up at me, glassy-eyed and dead, his throat, like Krys’s, cut from ear to ear. But this time the wound was fresh and bubbling, the blood still dripping down onto his shirt. Blood dribbled out of the sides of his mouth like something out of a horror film. For a moment I couldn’t move, so stunned was I by the turn of events. I’d been set up, and set up beautifully, and I still didn’t have a clue why, or by who. Johnny lay dead in front of me, probably murdered only a couple of minutes ago, if that, and his killer was almost certainly still in the vicinity. And where the fuck was Tugger? Had he taken out Krys and been coming after me when I’d turned round and spotted him? But there’d been no blood on his clothes. Still, that didn’t mean anything. He could have changed. Could have stood out of the way of the blood’s trajectory as it spurted from the wound. And what had he been doing creeping around down there?
I chucked the holdall across the driver’s side and onto the passenger seat of the van, then went to jump in.
Which was when I saw the front tyre. A deep slash ran all the way down it. I looked at the back tyre. The same. Set up perfectly, absolutely perfectly. I’d never been in a situation like this, one where I was so alone, so utterly out-thought, facing an enemy I couldn’t see, let alone identify, and who seemed to know every step I’d take before I’d even taken it. At that moment in time I was the most frightened I’d ever been in my life, and the most certain that this was a situation I wasn’t going to get out of alive.
I stopped for a few moments to compose myself, to calm down so I could take stock of the situation. But Johnny’s dead eyes continued to stare up at me like something out of some murderous, madness-inducing dream and I was forced to use every ounce of self-discipline to stop myself from falling into a blind panic.
Then I heard movement over by the side of the house. Turning round, trigger finger tensed, I saw Tugger coming back round. Shoot him, my instincts screamed. Shoot the bastard now! Except he was staggering drunkenly, not seeming to focus on anything. He stumbled, then fell to his knees, eyes making contact with mine, surprise in them, blood dribbling down his chin.
Instinctively, I started to run towards him, and that was when I saw the knife sticking straight out of his back, only an inch of blade still visible, and there was something in his eyes, and his mouth was opening in a desperate effort to speak. It looked like he was trying to warn me of something.
And then I heard footsteps coming round fast from behind the van, and the next thing I knew something smashed hard into my face, knocking me completely off balance. I felt the gun drop from my hand and I fell to my knees, my vision blurring into watery colours. Someone was standing above me and whoever it was had what looked like a sharpened spade in his hand. He hit me again, this time in the side of the head, and I felt my face smack against the concrete drive.
I was still conscious but couldn’t seem to move. Vaguely, I heard my assailant walk over and pick up my gun, and I knew that this was it. The end. Strangely the blows seemed to have knocked all the fear out of me as well. My head ached ferociously and I was still having difficulty focusing, but slowly, I rolled over and lifted my head up, wanting to at least take a look at the man who was about to kill me.
‘How are you feeling, Max?’ asked a smiling Joe Riggs, the shovel in his hands.
Even in my dazed state, I felt the shock surge through me. ‘Joe,’ I managed to say, through split and bloody lips, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’
‘Getting payback, Max. Getting payback.’
I spat blood out of my mouth and managed to sit up. I still couldn’t believe that it was Joe who’d killed Krys and the others. ‘Why? What for? I thought you were dead. I kept your share. I was waiting here for you.’
‘I know you were,’ he said. ‘I was watching. In fact, I was back here before you were.’
My whole world seemed like it was as blurred as my vision. ‘Why?’ I managed to ask again.
Joe stared down at me grimly. There was no humanity in his eyes, just a quiet intensity. I’d already come round to the fact that I was going to die but couldn’t work out whether the bang on the head was causing me to see things or whether it really was true that my friend and business partner was going to be the one doing the killing. ‘Why these blokes? Because it’s business. They mean nothing to me. Not your friend, Hexham, who’s a fucking coward, not Kalinski, not even Tugger Lewis. He was an OK bloke but nothing special, and I remember once he fucked me over in a game of cards. Cheated, and took money off me that wasn’t his. I don’t forget things like that.’
