struggling to sit up.
The sudden stabbing pain in my chest made me gasp. I looked down and saw two small torn holes in the front of my sweatshirt, no bigger than the end of my finger. It was a sobering moment, but at least I didn’t have a matching pair exiting out of the back.
O’Bryan’s first hit had landed dead centre and, I discovered later, had cracked my sternum. He’d pulled his second, as people do when they’re not used to, and not compensating for, the spent-shell eject mech. That struck about three inches higher up and to my right, and left me with an exotically bruised cleavage, but did no lasting damage.
Sean met my eyes without speaking. As much as he could, one-handed, he helped me ease the sweatshirt off over my head. He yanked open the Velcro straps to release the vest, peeling it away from my body. The inside of the chest section had two inch-deep indentations in the polycarbonate sheet, that corresponded exactly to the bruises I could already feel forming.
The vest itself was ripped and torn, the yellow kevlar inner showing through the holes. As Sean tossed it aside I thought I heard the metallic jingle of the stopped rounds rattling together somewhere in the lining. I made a whimsical mental note to retrieve them. Some souvenir.
Then I looked past him, and my heart lurched at the sight of two still figures lying near me on the ground.
“How’s Roger?”
“He’s OK,” Sean nodded towards the inert form of his brother. “He fainted. He’s probably bust a couple of ribs, but he’ll be fine.”
I swallowed. “And O’Bryan?”
“He’s not so fine.” Sean gave an evil smile and for a moment I thought he’d given in to instinct, and to blind anger. “Don’t worry, he’s not dead – he’s just out cold,” he said.
The relief made me sag. “What happened?”
“I managed to get to the Glock just before O’Bryan realised what I was doing. I think we must have fired at each other at almost exactly the same time.” He flashed me a quick grin. “He missed. I didn’t. Took a nice gouge out of his forearm.” He nodded towards his own injured shoulder. “It levelled the playing field a bit.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “But I heard another shot,” I said, puzzled.
Sean stood up then, seeming very dark and very dangerous. “I said he wouldn’t get away scot-free, Charlie,” he said. “You just told me not to kill him. You didn’t say I couldn’t kneecap him.”
I had no sympathies for O’Bryan, but I winced at the thought of his shattered joint. “Which leg?”
“The right,” Sean told me. He smiled again, a look of ultimate satanic satisfaction, of perfect revenge, but when he spoke his voice was completely calm and matter-of-fact.
“Even if he does get away with this, I’m afraid he’ll have to sell those classic cars he’s so fond of,” he said. “Now he won’t even be able to drive an automatic.”
Epilogue
The riot on the Lavender Gardens estate went on for two days and nights. By the time it subsided the estimate of the damage ran into millions. The police officers involved suffered numerous minor injuries. One unlucky constable lost an eye. The rioters themselves came off worse, on the whole, but there were no reported fatalities.
Later, they referred O’Bryan to an orthopaedic specialist for his shattered knee, but the man only confirmed Sean’s field prognosis. The bullet, the specialist announced with no discernible irony, couldn’t have done more damage if it had been carefully aimed.
Of course, O’Bryan had tried to claim that Sean had taken the FN away from him, wilfully breaking his arm in three places in the process, and had then deliberately shot him. By that time the jury weren’t in any mind to listen.
The bullet Sean had fired from the FN entered O’Bryan’s leg at an oblique angle, just above and to the inside of his patella, then exited again through the outside of his shin. En route it completely destroyed his knee joint beyond any hope of viable repair.
The best the surgeons could do was bolt the top and bottom of his leg solidly back together and leave it at that. Even the prospect of an artificial joint was ruled out. Prison hospitals are little more than glorified health centres, and I gather that they aren’t too well-equipped for that sort of procedure. Even if they thought he was worth the effort.
Besides, his now-permanent inability to operate an accelerator pedal was a bit of a moot point, anyway. The back of a prison sweat box was the only vehicle he was due to be climbing into for what was adding up to be a very long time.
MacMillan got O’Bryan cold for masterminding the local crimewave, and for Nasir’s murder, thanks to the ballistics match on the FN 9mm Sean took away from him, and the evidence supplied by Roger.
They tried to rip the boy apart in court, of course, but Roger stubbornly refused to deviate from his statement. Besides, he had his brother sitting behind him every single day of the trial, to give him silent support, and I must admit I envied him that. In the end the jury was forced to believe the boy’s dogged persistence.
And speaking of dogs, Madeleine managed, by luck or good judgement, to get Friday to the best vet in Lancaster. They reckon the Ridgeback will probably always carry a hind leg in cold weather, but it could have been so much worse.
It transpired that Mr Ali had skipped the country after our last encounter, but the police caught up with him at his holiday home in southern Spain. He was only too ready to come clean about his part in the build-up to the riot, and his involvement with Langford, and West.
The police were all set to arrest West for Langford’s killing, but he seemed to have done a disappearing act. By some unspoken agreement, Madeleine, Sean and I conveniently omitted to mention our last sighting of the man.
And wherever Ian Garton-Jones has found to hide the body, it must be weighted down somewhere deep, because it still hasn’t come to light. It gives me the odd passing qualm, the odd sleepless night, but it’s no worse than my other nightmares.
I think I’ll learn to live with it.
As for me, Sean offered me a job with his security firm. Quite a compliment, if rumours in the trade about the exclusivity of the outfit are to be believed, but I understand that the demand for female bodyguards generally far outstrips the supply.
Gender aside, he told me it takes a certain mindset to do what I’d done. To react coolly under that kind of intense pressure, and intentionally place yourself in the line of fire. He was really quite flattering about it.
Nevertheless, I turned him down.
You see, Sean thinks the reason I stepped in front of him was because I had complete faith in the stopping power of the body armour MacMillan had provided. But the truth is, having seen Roger go down with such apparent finality, I didn’t really have the faintest idea if it was going to save me or not.
The implications of that one are not something I’m ready to think about just yet.
Sean gave me his business card, with his private line penned across the back. I’ve taped it to my phone so I don’t lose it, and I probably look at it just about every day.
And who knows? One of these days, when I’ve worked out exactly what I still feel for him, I might even be able to make that call.
But I’m not holding my breath.
From the Author’s notebook
This story was inspired by the real-life problems in the town near where I used to live. An Asian shopkeeper had bought a store on a predominantly white, run-down sink estate and a nastier element of the local population seemed intent on making his life a misery. I remember reading the regular news reports about the latest trouble
