prolong things as long as possible. My battered face stared back at me from the mirror on the opposite wall, grinning stupidly. I focused on it for a moment as Elaine’s tongue created sensations I could hardly stand.
And then, as I was beginning to turn away, I saw it. A wicked-looking silencer coming into view. Pointing straight towards the back of my head. I heard the creak of a floorboard behind me and knew immediately that I was one second away from death.
In one single movement I threw myself against the wall, ignoring the pain as Elaine bit me in the shock of my sudden withdrawal, and lashed out with my arm, knocking the gun flying. Its owner, a stocky bloke in a baseball cap, looked momentarily shocked. I took my chance and jumped forward, grabbing him as best I could and headbutting him on the bridge of his nose. The cut on my forehead immediately reopened but the gunman had been hurt. He took a step backwards but quickly recovered himself, delivering a sudden flurry of rabbit punches to my kidneys as he struggled to break my grip.
Every part of my body seemed to be burning with pain, and blood from the head wound was dripping down my forehead and into my eyes. But I knew I couldn’t give up. I had to protect us.
Summoning all my strength, I headbutted the gunman again and wrestled him through the bedroom door and out into the hallway, banging him hard against the opposite wall. His cap fell off, revealing a hairless head beneath, and for some reason this seemed to give him a renewed burst of strength, like Samson in reverse. He cursed and managed to push me away, before trying but failing to deliver a punch to my bollocks. I gasped as he got a better shot to my ribs, and took a step back as if hurt, before charging forward, head bowed like a bull, and delivering another ferocious headbutt right to the chin. Something cracked in there and the gunman made a sound half like a cough, half like a scream. Realizing my head was my best weapon, I shoved him back against the wall, then swung round so my back was facing him and delivered a skull-jarring reverse butt. His resistance simply evaporated and he slid down the wall, unconscious.
My head was spinning and my eyes stinging with blood, so much so that I could hardly see. Regaining my balance, I wiped at my face with my forearm, clearing the worst of the obstruction, and tried to focus again.
Which was the moment when the silencer hissed and a searing pain that eclipsed anything I’d yet felt surged through my shoulder, the force of it sending me reeling into the wall.
Gallan
I was just about to knock on the door when I heard a loud commotion from inside and the sound of shouting. I put my head against the wood and listened. It sounded like a fight between two men, and I wondered for a moment if I’d got the wrong place. One of the men howled in pain, and there was a crash as if they’d both just charged into a wall. They were big blokes, I could tell that from the force of the impact, and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and that it was best just to call for reinforcement.
Then there was a pause in proceedings for a couple of seconds, followed by a faint popping sound, then a cry of pain and a dull thud.
I’d seen enough Hollywood films to know immediately that it was a gunshot from a silencer, and the damage it had done was obvious, even if I couldn’t see it. I stepped back from the door and dialled the station on my mobile. The controller answered after four rings. I gave my location and called for back-up.
‘I need firearms units as well as an ambulance,’ I hissed into the phone. ‘Someone in there is definitely armed, and it’s the address of a person we need to question with reference to a murder, although I must emphasize that at the moment the person is not, I repeat not, a suspect.’
I switched off the mobile and went back to the door and listened. There were voices coming from inside, one sounding in pain, the other dominant, firm. Ruthless. I knew I should wait for reinforcements. All my training told me there was no point confronting armed suspects in an enclosed space when unarmed, particularly when it was obvious that the suspect had just shot someone. All my instincts agreed. It was a united stand. But at the same time I also knew I couldn’t stand there and do nothing while someone was murdered, and from the tone of the conversation in there it sounded like that was exactly what was about to happen. Sometimes, like it or not, you simply have to stick your neck out. The alternative is the eternal knowledge that you could have done something to save a life but chose not to.
I pulled a credit card out of my pocket and, using the method a convicted burglar had once taught me, went to unlock the door.
Iversson
I was sitting back against the wall, shaking as my body went into shock. To my left lay the unconscious gunman. In front of me stood the woman I was in love with, half naked, very beautiful, and pointing a long-barrelled Browning at me, the end of the silencer only a few feet from my face. After everything else, it was a sight my mind really couldn’t fathom. It felt like I’d finally cracked and this was the beginning of my short and probably one-way route to the loony-bin.
‘Elaine,’ I managed to say through teeth that were chattering manically. ‘What are you doing?’
She managed a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m sorry, Max, I really am. If it’s any consolation, it’s just business. Nothing else. You’re actually not a bad bloke, even if Joe Riggs does say you murdered his missus a few years back; you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I didn’t want to do this — that was his job.’ She motioned towards the unconscious gunman. ‘In fact, it was Joe’s job, but the thing is, you don’t seem to want to die. And now it’s left to little old me to do the dirty deed. You know something, Max, I’ve never shot anyone before, and I’ve never really wanted to either, particularly someone who was such a good lay, and in my fucking flat as well, but you know what they say, never let emotions stop you from doing your job.’
Still I couldn’t get a grip on what was going on. I heard her words, delivered in a slightly weary matter-of-fact tone, saw her standing there pointing a gun at me, but none of it seemed to register. It seemed like maybe I’d fallen asleep, and that any second now I’d wake up in her arms with her stroking my head, telling me it was OK, it was just a bad dream, like my mum used to do when I was a kid.
‘Elaine,’ I whispered. ‘I love you.’ And I know it sounds stupid, but I really meant it.
‘I know you do, darling,’ she said, her finger tensing on the trigger. ‘I know you do.’
Gallan
The door lock clicked, and slowly, ever so slowly, I pushed it open.
Peeking my head round, I saw a naked man in the hallway about three yards away, bruised and bleeding, and apparently suffering from a bullet wound to the shoulder. He looked a mess, and he was shaking badly. Next to him lay another man in casual clothes, not moving, his head turned away. The naked man was staring into a room right in front of him, from which emerged a slender hand and forearm holding a long gun with a silencer attached, aimed at the naked man’s head. I couldn’t see the actual person holding the gun but I was pretty confident it was Elaine Toms, company secretary of Dagmar Holdings, who owned the flat in which I was now standing.
The naked man whispered something I couldn’t quite make out but which sounded a lot like ‘Elaine, I love you’, and his face suggested he meant what he was saying, which was a bit unfortunate. And I thought I had problems with my love life.
I took a step forward, then another one.
‘I know you do, darling,’ said Elaine Toms in her slightly grating north London accent. ‘I know you do.’
Her finger was tensing on the trigger, I could see it. I took another step forward, frantically calculating what I could possibly do to prevent her from killing him. The naked man’s eyes were widening and his mouth was opening, though no words were coming out. He knows, I thought. He knows he’s about to die.
‘Armed police!’ I yelled suddenly. ‘Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up. You’re surrounded. I repeat, you are surrounded!’ My voice was loud and authoritative, probably the most it had ever been. I hoped Elaine Toms didn’t recognize it from our earlier meeting.
It seemed she didn’t.
‘Get back!’ she called out, still not showing herself and making no effort to drop the weapon. ‘Get back or I’ll shoot him! Don’t think I’m bullshitting either. If you don’t get out of this flat now I’m going to kill him. Do you understand? And you’ll be the one who’s fucking responsible.’
The naked man, his face covered in blood, turned his head and looked at me quizzically, presumably wondering where my gun was.
‘Drop your weapon, Miss Toms,’ I demanded, desperately trying to keep the fear out of my voice. ‘You are in
