“Did you know that you can pick up virulent infections from dogs’ blood?” he lied conversationally, then turned on his heel and walked away, with the polluted knife still dangling from his fingers.
Sean moved back to where Madeleine and I were trying to patch up Friday’s wound. He held the knife out towards me without speaking, and for a moment I didn’t understand what he was showing me.
It was just a knife. A combat knife with a long serrated blade and a camouflage-coloured plastic non-slip handle. Then I suddenly realised where I’d seen it before.
Well, maybe not
In fact, I hadn’t seen the blade. That had been buried deep in Harvey Langford’s chest, but the rest was identical.
I didn’t have time to react to the discovery, though, because it very quickly became apparent we weren’t alone any more. That the burning Patrol had served as a beacon for trouble.
Madeleine and Sean turned a slow circle, staring out beyond the area lit by the flames. I came to my feet, also, aware of a tightening in my chest, a drumming in my ears.
Slowly, gradually, there came the slip and slither of feet approaching across the rubble from all sides until at last more than a dozen men took shape out of the darkness, and formed a semicircular perimeter in front of us.
A final figure appeared, and they parted to let him through. Ian Garton-Jones looked much as he had done at our last meeting, shaven-headed and dressed in black. There was one notable exception, however.
This time, he was carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, and he was pointing it unswervingly in our direction.
Twenty-eight
The shotgun was a twelve gauge Browning with stacked over-and-under barrels, a middle-of-the-range sportsman’s gun. Garton-Jones probably used it for clays.
A brief picture of one of my old army weapons’ handling instructors flashed into my mind at that point. There was nothing to beat a shotgun for house clearance, he’d said. In a confined space you hardly even had to aim. They were deadly.
On open ground, though, there was always a chance you could sprint out of effective range. Providing you were prepared to risk it that the gun hadn’t been choked down too far, and the shooter’s aim wasn’t too accurate. With a normal spread pattern of the shot you’d probably escape serious injury at anything over thirty metres. Forty, to be on the safe side.
I glanced across at Sean, but he had that stubborn look about him that said he wasn’t going to run away from this one, even if he got the opportunity. And besides, Friday wasn’t in any state to sprint anywhere. There was no way I was going to abandon the Ridgeback to Garton-Jones’s tender ministrations.
I stood my ground.
West squirmed round, recognised his boss, and started making a lot of noise. He pointed to the knife which was still in Sean’s hand, screaming that we’d stabbed him, and exhorting Garton-Jones to shoot us.
Garton-Jones silenced him with a dark look, the play from the firelight emphasising the older man’s deep eye sockets, making it difficult to read him. He jerked his head to one of his men, who approached warily and snatched the knife away from Sean.
The man trotted back across to Garton-Jones and handed it over. He studied the knife for a long time, turning the blood-smeared blade over so it caught the light.
“Look at it,” West shouted then. “It’s just the same as the one they used to kill that vigilante bloke.”
I half-turned in surprise at his words. Whatever tactic I’d been expecting from West, that certainly wasn’t it. My eye caught Harlow and Drummond, both now back on their feet and trying to merge in with the other security men. They looked edgy, ill at ease.
Sean ignored them, pinning West with a contemptuous stare. “And just why would I want to do a thing like that?” he demanded in a deadly quiet tone.
West tried to stand, but his leg wouldn’t support him. He fell back heavily, addressing Garton-Jones rather than Sean.
“Like I told you, Langford knew Meyer was trying to take over the turf now he was back on Copthorne,” he said, the lies forcing the sweat out of his skin. “He knew Meyer had killed the Gadatra boy for getting his brother into the shit. That’s why they got rid of him.”
Sean took a step forwards then, intent. “You miserable, lying little—”
“That’s enough,” Garton-Jones rapped. He brought the barrels of the Browning up, just to hammer home his point. “I think I’d like your hands where I can see them, all of you. Now – if you don’t mind.”
Sean put his out by his sides. The left one wouldn’t lift more than a few inches. The blood had reached as far as his hand, trickling down his wrist and dripping from his fingers. West must have blown my father’s neat and careful stitches wide open. He was going to be livid.
At that moment we caught the sounds of shouting, breaking glass, and missiles being thrown. The riot was moving closer, only a few streets away now. The sky was lightening up all the time as more houses fell to the flames.
“I think we should continue this interesting discussion from a fallback position,” Garton-Jones said. He raised his voice. “Let’s move it out.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Sean said, between clenched teeth. “My brother’s still out there.”
Garton-Jones regarded him levelly. “It wasn’t optional, Mr Meyer,” he said. His cold stare shifted to me. “Ladies first, I think.” He waved the shotgun briefly in my direction. “Over here where I can keep an eye on you, Miss Fox, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I glanced at Sean before I moved, caught the faintest flicker of his eyes, and understood instinctively what he was driving at. To follow Garton-Jones’s orders, I kept out of his line of fire, and that meant crossing behind Sean.
In the middle of Sean’s belt, tucked into the small of his back, lay the Glock. As I moved close behind him it took only the smallest of movements to reach out for the gun. My right hand closed round the butt, warmed to the touch from his body heat. I felt Sean breathe in, loosening the barrel to my grip.
Smoothly, I brought the gun out into view round his body. I didn’t trust Garton-Jones’s bulky clothing not to be hiding body armour of his own, so I took a bead dead centre on the exposed flesh of his neck, just below the ear.
Garton-Jones heard the precise, sharp double click of the first round snapping into the breech, and froze.
The barrels of the Browning were down and away from me by then. It would have taken him much too long to have brought them to bear. He turned his head slowly, blinked twice into the business end of the Glock’s muzzle, ten feet from him, then almost seemed to relax. He turned his head back towards Sean.
“It would appear that your girlfriend’s been watching too many bad movies, Mr Meyer,” he said, with a nasty grin.
Sean smiled back at him, harmless as a shark showing its teeth before the bite. “My
Just for a moment, Garton-Jones looked shaken, then he laughed. “Nice try,” he said, “but I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to take the safety off,” and started to bring the shotgun up.
“Hold it!” I snapped. He halted on a reflex to the command, and once I’d got his attention, I aimed to keep it.
“This is a Glock 19 nine millimetre semiautomatic,” I said, speaking fast. “There is no conventional safety catch; it’s built into the trigger. As soon as I depressed the first stage of the trigger, the weapon became active. It’s active now, and my finger’s getting twitchy.” I paused, then added quietly, “Don’t think I can’t or won’t do this,
