Road Kill

on the road.” He checked his watch. “They’ve nearly an hour head start on us but if they’ve any sense they won’t want to risk getting stopped for speeding.” He flashed me a quick hard grin. “If we don’t hang about we should be able to catch them before they hit the border.”

I lifted the receiver back up to my mouth. “Jacob?” I said, my eyes still on Sean. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Thank you,” he said, heartfelt, like he knew we were his last chance.

“Just one more thing,” I said, hearing Isobel start to speak and deliberately cutting across her. “Don’t let Isobel make any phone calls.” And I hung up on her outraged squawk.

“Hell of a time to get caught without a gun on me,” Sean said, rueful. “I didn’t think I’d need one for this trip.”

“Can you get hold of one round here?”

He laughed shortly. “You can buy anything just about anywhere if you know where to go,” he said, then shook his head. “But not without wasting time we haven’t got. We’ll just have to improvise.”

Almost in step, we started for the door.

“Hey, just hold on a minute, guys!” Daz’s voice halted us. We turned back to find the Devil’s Bridge Club members eyeing us in varying stages of dismay. “What about us?”

“What about you?” Sean echoed, cold. “You’ll have to stay here and say your bit to the Irish police.”

“While you two go and try to ambush a moving van from two motorbikes?” William asked calmly. “Not very good odds, are they?”

Sean shrugged. “We’ve had worse,” he said.

“Why go at all? Why not let the little sod get what’s coming to him?” Paxo said bitterly. He’d began to shiver like he was freezing, his thin frame vibrating with delayed shock.

“Can’t do that,” Sean said. “Besides anything else, we’ve given our word to his father that we’ll get him out of this.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Daz demanded, his voice low.

Sean didn’t reply to that one, just stared the other man down. He didn’t need to spell it out that Daz and the others had lied to us, if only by omission. That, if they’d come clean earlier, two ugly deaths might have been avoided.

Daz dropped his eyes and looked away.

“What about the cops?” Paxo demanded. “You said yourself that running would only make things worse.”

“For you, yes.”

“You need us,” Daz said, intensity holding him still now. “Let us go with you.”

“Why?” Sean said, folding his arms and allowing that obsidian gaze to slide over them in turn. “How much experience have you had at ambush techniques?”

“How much has she?” Paxo threw in, jerking his head in my direction.

“More than you think,” Sean said mildly. “More than the rest of you put together, that’s for sure.”

They fell silent. For a long couple of seconds nobody spoke, then William said quietly, “We might not be as expert as you – and Charlie – at this kind of thing, but we can still help.” He took a deep breath, let it out through his nose, flaring his nostrils. “Let us help. We want to help. God knows, we’ve made a balls-up of things so far. Give us a chance to put things right.”

I saw Sean hesitate.

“What about the police?” I said.

“Don’t worry about the local fuzz. I’ll stay and tell ’em what happened.”

I turned, surprised, to see Gleet was awake again and sitting upright on the bed. He gripped his broken elbow a little tighter and gave us a wan excuse for a smile. “I don’t think I’d be much good to you for anythin’ else, like, would I? And I reckon you need all the help you can get . . .”

***

“OK,” Sean said. “You’re clear what we need?”

“Yeah,” Daz said, listing on his fingers as we hustled into the lift and headed downwards. “Glass bottles – preferably with screw caps – sticky tape, sugar, paint. Any preference on colour?”

“I hardly think it matters,” William said, rolling his eyes. “After all, we’re not planning on redecorating the place.”

“So, what is he planning on doing with that lot?” Paxo wanted to know. “It’s like something out of the fucking A-Team. Suddenly he’s turned into Hannibal Smith. Hey, Charlie could be that token chick, whatever her name was; Daz can be Faceman; I could be Howling Mad Murdoch and—”

“You can stop that right there,” William said sharply as we hit the ground floor and the lift slowed and stopped. “I absolutely refuse to be that tosser Mr T, all right?” He waited a beat, scowling as the doors opened, then muttered under his breath, “Fool.”

Sean didn’t join in the banter but that didn’t mean he disapproved, either. He understood, better than most, that it was just tension finding its own release.

In the foyer we split off in our prearranged directions, only too aware of the clock ticking. William stayed in the lift and headed for the maintenance area in the car park, while the others disappeared in the direction of the bar