We didn’t have to wonder how he’d died. The knife was still embedded in his chest, leaving only the camouflage-coloured plastic handle showing. The blade had been inserted somewhere between his sixth and seventh ribs on the left-hand side, slanted slightly upwards, and driven home with a vengeance.
Langford’s eyes were open, rigid, frightened. Incredulous, even. He’d never thought it was going to happen. Hadn’t believed that he was destined to die this way.
Sean crouched by the body and regarded it for a long time without any emotion showing.
“They were aiming for his heart,” he said at last. “Looks like they missed.”
He was right. The wound was too low, or the angle was too shallow for that. Instead, Langford must have suffocated slowly as his lungs flooded with his own blood. It would not, I judged, have been an easy way to die.
The heart is a small organ, all things considered, barely five inches by three, and not easy to hit. Our weapons handling instructors had always advised us to pick another target, if we had the chance. Like the throat.
My own scar prickled in nervous sympathy. I stepped round the body on the pretence of examining the rest of his hideaway, but it was more so I didn’t have to keep looking at the knife, and at the dead man’s eyes.
I was careful to keep my feet out of the spilt blood. I noticed, with a detached eye for detail, that his hands had been bound behind him with wicked thin cord. He’d fought against the restraint, which had cut deep into the flesh of his wrists.
I was making a conscious effort to breathe through my mouth, so I didn’t gag from the sickly stench of the blood. Instead, I could almost taste it, and I’m not sure which was worse.
I glanced away, took in the contents of the table instead, the coffee cup and the ashtray. It was only then that I noticed what was wrong about that cup. There was a wisp of steam still rising from it. I passed my fingers over the rim, felt the faint warmth, and then the implications started to roll in.
I turned to find that Sean had leaned over and touched the backs of his fingers to the dead man’s cheek, almost a parody of affection. He stood up fast then, tense.
“Come on,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of here – now!”
“The coffee’s still warm,” I told him.
But Sean was already on the move. He turned back as he reached the far wall of the office, and nodded towards Langford. “I know,” he said, grim. “So’s the body.”
We set off across the office floor with much less regard for stealth than we’d exercised on the way in. I reckon we made about one-third distance. Then the gloom of the interior shattered in a flare of light and deafening sound.
I heard the sound of the shot change abruptly as it swerved off one of the partially-completed walls. It must have hit part of the wooden framework, rather than the blocks.
I dropped instantly, diving behind the nearest pile of thermalite blocks and thankful of the solid cover. Sean, I saw, was already down, making a mockery of my reflex time. He’d been forced further away from me, and was only just sheltered by a low wall of plasterboard off-cuts. He was trying to ease a look over the top of them.
I kept my own head well down. It was getting to the stage where I’d had enough experience of being shot at to recognise the fact without needing visual confirmation.
Sean didn’t even manage to get his head up to clear his eye-line before the second shot discharged. I don’t know what it hit. One of the block walls to our right, by the sound of it, and sizzled off harmlessly into the darkness.
Breathing hard, Sean delicately tried to alter his position.
“Charlie,” he whispered, “can you pinpoint him?”
I screwed round, keeping low, and peeped cautiously over my protective stack of blocks, expecting the blaze and the thunder of another shot. None came. I glanced back to Sean, shook my head.
“Keep looking.”
I’d just time to cram my fingers into my ears before he risked another exposure. It helped stop them ringing as we were treated to a third deafening concussion.
The shooter was getting his eye in with practise. This time the bullet hit close to Sean’s head, scouring across one of the sheets of plasterboard and disintegrating part of it into a puff of white chalk. He ducked back fast, swearing under his breath.
I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision, but the four dazzling outward streaks of the muzzle flash in the low light seemed permanently burned across my eyes. I shut them, but it didn’t help much.
“He’s in the stairwell, I think,” I told Sean quietly.
“In that case,” he murmured, “you’d better take this.”
I opened my eyes again to find the Glock was out in his hand, and he was offering it to me. Before I’d a chance to argue, he threw it across the gap that separated us. I caught it automatically, closed my hands round the pistol grip, and slipped my right index finger onto the trigger.
And, suddenly, I was back in the killing house on camp. Back inside the skin of the girl who’d trained to be a soldier. Back up against the system that hadn’t wanted me there, didn’t believe I had what it took to succeed. Back with the observers waiting for every hesitation, and mistake.
I swung my arms over the top of the blocks, holding the gun straight out in front of me, and snapped off two quick shots in the direction of the stairwell.
I dropped back into cover almost, it seemed, before the empty shell cases had finished bouncing onto the chipboard.
As my ears cleared, I thought I heard movement, the clatter of feet, but by the time my hearing had recovered enough to be sure, the noise had faded. I glanced across at Sean, still keeping low.
“D’you think he’s still there?” I whispered.
“I don’t know.” He slithered round again, grabbed a piece of plasterboard in front of him and rattled it enticingly, but there was no further response. “I think you might have scared him off.”
“I damned well hope so,” I said, shaky. “It would have been enough to scare me.”
I left my protective stack of blocks reluctantly, tiptoed round the obstacles between me and the stairwell, keeping the gun up and ready. Nobody shot at me on the way there. I rushed the last few metres, hit the wall and waited a beat, listening, before I swung my body round it, breathing hard.
The stairwell was empty.
I crossed to the window, stared down through the glass at the unfinished site below. At first there was no sign of anyone running away, then I caught a silvered flash of movement, right over by the road. It was brief, disappearing quickly behind one of the earth movers, but it had to be our man.
As I watched, I realised that the very character of the moonlight was changing, from silver to blue.
Flashing blue.
I spun round, to find Sean at the doorway behind me. “Come on!” I shouted. I was compensating for the ringing in my ears, speaking too loudly. I lowered the volume and went on. “It’s the police – we’ve got to get out of here, right now!”
I was on the first step before I realised Sean wasn’t hard on my heels. That he was still in the doorway, leaning against the wall. I stopped, and found myself invaded by a swift, stark fear.
Shoving the Glock into my pocket, I moved back to him. He started forwards then, belatedly, but as he reached the top of the stairs, he staggered, and almost fell.
I grabbed him on reflex, recoiling as my hands came away slick with blood.
“Christ! Where are you hit?” I flipped him round, braced him against the handrail, and yanked open his coat with numbed fingers.
“Left shoulder,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “That first one ricocheted and got me. Don’t worry. It’s not bad.”
His words seemed to convince himself as much as me. He went first down the stairs, moving faster than I’d feared he might. I kept a wary eye on his back as we stumbled across the lower floor, and burst out through the fire door.
The moon, which had proved so useful to light our way into the site, now seemed like a curse. We had to
