She smiled at me quickly, and then she was gone, jogging nimbly over the rubble to catch up. I noted that the security men were taking a great deal more care with the dog than they were with West.
Garton-Jones watched them half-carrying, half-dragging his former lieutenant over the rough ground, then he turned back to Sean. “This O’Bryan character,” he said. “How dangerous is he?”
“We know he’s killed once, and he probably still has the gun,” Sean told him.
“In that case, you’d best keep the shotgun,” Garton-Jones said. He eyed us both, subdued, diffident even, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Sean still had hold of the Browning. “Are you sure we can’t help you search for the boy?”
“Positive,” Sean said. “If Roger’s managed to evade O’Bryan this long he’ll run a mile if he sees your lot. He doesn’t know you and West aren’t in this together.”
Garton-Jones looked disappointed to be denied the chase, but he nodded.
“Thanks for the offer, anyway,” Sean said, sounding sincere. “I appreciate it.”
They shook hands. It seemed an ironic gesture of civility, somehow, in view of the circumstances.
“You gave me a good runaround,” Garton-Jones told him, then added in my direction, “and if I’d known how handy you were, young lady, I’d have offered you a job.”
Sean smiled at him. “You’ll have to get in the queue for that,” he said.
We stood and watched the last of Garton-Jones’s men disappear into the shadows, moving quickly in a direction that took them away from the worst of the conflict.
It seemed to be getting nearer all the time. The sounds of it swelling like surf on a beach, relentless and profound. If we didn’t find Roger soon, the gangs would do O’Bryan’s work for him.
For a moment Sean didn’t seem in any hurry to move off himself, and I thought that maybe he was more badly hurt by his altercation with West than he’d wanted to admit. He just stood, staring at the burning hulk of the Patrol, as though mesmerised by the wheel and twist of the fire.
“You do realise, Sean,” I said quietly, “that even if O’Bryan’s—” I broke off, unwilling to voice what was so clearly running through both our minds. I tried again. “No matter what O’Bryan’s done, you can’t kill him.”
“If West’s right, and Roger’s dead,” Sean said evenly, “he’s got to pay for it, one way or another.”
“He will pay – in prison,” I said. “They’ll lock him up and throw away the key for what he’s done here.”
But even as I spoke I knew that the courtrooms didn’t always bring justice to the guilty. I could just see O’Bryan swivelling his way onto a lesser charge, overriding the evidence of a fourteen-year-old thief.
Particularly if that thief was no longer alive to give it in person.
Sean knew it, too. “Even if he gets life,” he said. “Life doesn’t mean
He glanced up at me then, and although the firelight crackled in his eyes, his face was very calm, as though he’d had a vision. “I want more than that for him,” he said. “I
“You can’t have it, Sean,” I said, and the pain of denying him cut like glass. “If you’re thinking of trying, you know I’ll have to stop you, don’t you?”
Sean didn’t answer right away. He carefully flexed the fingers of his left hand, finding they were still just about under his control. He broke the Browning and checked the cartridges, snapped it shut again.
“Well,” he said at last, cold, hard, almost a stranger, “let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Twenty-nine
In the end, we didn’t have to look far.
We’d commenced the best search pattern we could manage with just the two of us, moving in a zigzag layout across the waste ground, when a shout rang out.
“Hold it right there!” O’Bryan’s voice rolled across the brickwork and echoed around us like gunfire.
We spun round fast, hearing the crunch of the broken-up masonry under our feet. Automatically, I brought the Glock up in a double-handed grip, heart revving.
O’Bryan was thirty metres away, edging out from behind the rubble with the FN 9mm he’d used to kill Nasir Gadatra gripped clear in his fist.
There was a half-heartbeat pause, then I straightened up slowly, letting the gun drop to my side. What was the point?
Thirty metres is a long shot with a handgun. Don’t believe most of what you see in the movies. The greatest distance I’d fired over with a pistol on the army ranges had been fifteen metres, and most of the time it was half that.
Even so, I’d been good enough to have winged O’Bryan, despite the distance involved. It wasn’t that which stayed my hand, and had Sean lowering the Browning defeatedly.
“Sensible people,” O’Bryan called, close to jeering.
He had Roger in front of him as a shield, holding the boy roughly by the collar of the coat Sean had put him into. If I’d been more familiar with the Glock, I might have risked it even at that range, but I just couldn’t. Until this whole sorry business, I hadn’t even picked up a gun in more than four years, for Christ’s sake.
Roger looked white. There was a smear of blood across his cheekbone which stood out starkly in contrast. He seemed dazed, stumbling over the uneven ground, but at least he was still alive. I was suddenly aware of an overwhelming urge to keep him that way.
O’Bryan shook the boy, as though he was faking it, snapping his head back and forth. I could feel the rage building in the tensing of Sean’s body beside me.
I growled his name under my breath, wasn’t sure the warning had any real effect.
“Let’s see those guns. Nice and slow,” O’Bryan ordered. “Take the magazine out of the pistol, Charlie. That’s it, good girl. No tricks, or the boy’s dead.”
I complied with stiff fingers, thumbing the release and dropping the magazine into my hand with slow and deliberate movements. Only Sean knew the weapon was already cocked, the first round already lying snug in the breech.
I threw the magazine out sideways into the darkness, making a big show of it. But the gun itself I let fall much closer, so that it came to rest only a little way past Sean. I saw his eyes skim over it, and knew at once that he was aware of what I’d done.
O’Bryan made him break the shotgun and pick out the live cartridges, then send the weapon spinning into the rubble. It landed with a dull clatter, kicking up the dirt. Sean did as he was ordered with a rigidness born of a cold, icy anger, needle sharp.
When it was done O’Bryan smiled widely, the light from the fire behind us flaring on the lenses of his glasses. In his grey anorak and his sensible shoes he looked like everyone’s idea of the friendly uncle, or the family vicar. How many people, I wondered, had trusted him. How many kids had he corrupted, and betrayed.
“Why?” I said. I didn’t think about the question. It arrived already spoken. “Why did you do all this?”
If anything, O’Bryan’s smile grew wider. He tut-tutted. “Oh Charlie, so naive for one so cynical,” he said with mock sadness. “Money, of course. I like money. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it certainly has a healthy cushioning effect against the harsher realities of life.”
“That’s it?” I demanded, filled with a sense of anti-climax, of disbelief. “You’re not trying to tell me that a few nicked video recorders are really worth killing someone for?”
O’Bryan almost snorted. “You really don’t see the big picture, do you, Charlie? The annual turnover from the credit card haul alone is worth killing a dozen punk kids like Nasir Gadatra.”
“There must have been another way to make a decent living,” I said quietly.
“Oh, probably, but why go to all that trouble when I had the perfect means and opportunity handed to me on a plate? These kids are cheap, willing to learn if you give them the right motivation.” O’Bryan was still smiling as though this was all some big joke to him. “Besides, I hate to see things go to waste, get put on the scrap-heap. I suppose that’s why I like my classic cars so much.”
“And what do you think you’ve been doing to kids like Roger by getting them involved in your grand design, if not wasting their lives?” Sean said tightly.
O’Bryan’s smile faded, as though he’d hoped we’d understand his vision, and was disappointed that we obviously did not.
