coming.’
Brock hurried over to Kathy’s side and peered out. ‘You’re right. There’s another vehicle out there, turning into the drive.’
‘It’ll be the farmer up the hill,’ Michael said. He had pulled a cordless drill out of the toolbox and was groping through a case of drill bits, his fingers fumbling in his haste.
‘What’s he like?’
‘Almost seventy, about five foot six.’
‘Will he have a shotgun?’
‘They’ve just been to Liverpool, shopping,’ Michael said.
Brock groaned.‘My God, it’ll be a massacre.’
He heard the whine of the electric motor and turned to see Michael drilling a hole in the wooden breadboard, cursing under his breath about the battery not being charged. Brock hadn’t the faintest idea what he was trying to do, and the image was so bizarre that he called out,‘Michael,for God’s sake,this is no time for woodwork.’
Grant glanced at him with a tight smile, withdrew the drill, and reached for one of the bullets from the box. He lifted the board onto its edge and slid the bullet into the nine-millimetre
hole he’d drilled.
‘Ah.’ Brock looked doubtful.‘Was it a true story?’
Michael met his eye and said,‘I have no idea.’
Just then there was an explosion of shattering glass and splintering timber. They must have found tools, Brock thought- a tyre lever, the axe, a length of wood-whatever it was, they were using it to demolish the other window. Its wooden shutters were shivering and bulging as they worked outside. Brock and Kathy grabbed knives and a monkey wrench and stood each side of it, while Michael called his wife over to hold the breadboard upright on the table while he selected a hammer and a screwdriver from the toolbox.
The shutters burst open with a crash, and the figure of Mark Roach reared up into the void where the window had been. His feet were on the sill,one hand groping the side frame and the other waving his silver pistol. Behind him his brother was pushing him forward, screaming furiously. Brock and Kathy had been forced back by the swinging shutters, and Mark’s blazing eyes focused on Michael Grant and his wife directly in front of him. He gave a roar and lifted his gun. Brock watched helplessly as Michael held the point of the screwdriver against the back of the bullet in the board and smacked it with the hammer,like the firing pin of a gun.There was a loud explosion, but not from Mark Roach’s gun, which wavered for moment, then dropped as Mark toppled forward into the room. Michael gave a loud whoop, scrambled over him and launched himself through the window at Ricky,the hammer still in his hand.
Brock threw himself at the front door, heaved back the bolts, and ran outside.Michael and Ricky were struggling on the ground, and Brock jumped on Roach, pinning down his right arm while Michael held his left. Ricky squirmed under them, twisting his head from side to side. Then he suddenly stopped struggling. ‘Teddy,’ he said.
Brock and Michael both looked up to the figure standing silhouetted in the headlights of the newly arrived car, the bulky outline unmistakably that of Mr Teddy Vexx. From his right hand dangled the strap of the machine pistol he was carrying.
‘About bloody time,’ Ricky gasped.‘Kill these bastards for me, will you, please?’
‘My pleasure, Ricky,’ Vexx growled. He stepped forward and raised the gun.
There was a single loud report, and Vexx hesitated, then slowly turned. He looked blankly around him for a moment, then toppled backwards into the snow.
In the open doorway of the cottage Kathy lay prone upon the floor, Mark Roach’s silver pistol gripped in her hands. She got slowly to her feet,keeping the gun trained on the motionless figure of Vexx. As she came close, she saw his startled expression, eyes open, but moving not a muscle. She thought of the final scene of
‘Bitch,’ Vexx murmured.
Startled,Kathy stared down at him.Had he seen the movie too?
She put her mouth closer to his ear and said,‘That’s for Dana and Dee-Ann.’
Vexx’s glazed eyes focused momentarily on Kathy and he whispered,‘…still don’t get it.’Then he closed his eyes and died.
thirty-three
It had been intended as a very low-key affair, a quiet homecoming for Michael Grant to mark his return to normal life and, perhaps, the start of his rehabilitation as a public figure, but it had turned into a great party. As Kathy squeezed through the crowd crammed into his constituency office in Cockpit Lane, she saw that his popularity had only been enhanced by what had happened, and his supporters (more women than men, it had to be said) were there in force.Not that his rehabilitation was being delayed,from what she’d heard. The Jamaican police had confirmed that they had no outstanding warrants or interest in either Michael Grant or Billy Forrest, while the British government had an amnesty on passport irregularities over twenty years old. Although Michael’s resignation had been accepted and he had said he would begin a new career in journalism, the strength of support among his constituents was so great that the party machine was urging a rethink.
A jolly woman thrust a plate of food under Kathy’s nose. She realised it was codfish fritters-stamp and go-and she felt a stab of regret as she thought of Tom. He wasn’t there, although he had been invited. As soon as the hospital had discharged him, legs more or less intact, he’d taken off on his crutches to stay with old friends in Scotland. On her last visit to his bedside they had both felt the sad inevitability of their final parting.
Almost everyone else seemed to be there, though: Bren and Brock, McCulloch and Savage, Winnie Wellington and Abigail Lavender, and from the far end of the room came the sound of music played by Elizabeth Grant together with George Murray, tilting his one good ear to his keyboard.
The noise level was rising steadily. Everyone seemed so happy, Kathy thought, catching a glimpse of Andrea waving her hand to make a point to Brock. He was subtly different since Suzanne had come back,she realised,more open and expansive,and she was glad. She, too, had reason to feel content, since her promotion to inspector had finally been confirmed.She knew that Brock had forced the issue, taking advantage of the hiatus after the business in North Wales to get it through.So,like him,she had come to Cockpit Lane a sergeant and left an inspector. But then, history had done a lot of repeating and echoing over the past weeks, and her pleasure in the evening was spoilt by the uneasy suspicion-no, more than that, a haunting certainty-that it wasn’t finished with them yet.
Teddy Vexx’s dying words had never left her. She had repeated them over and over in her mind, trying to squeeze every trace of meaning out of them. What had he really meant? That he still didn’t get it? Or that she didn’t? Neither seemed to make sense. And who was the ‘bitch’ he’d referred to in his Belmondo moment? She’d assumed it was herself, yet she vividly recalled the look of surprise in his eyes when he’d then focused on her. But how rational was a human brain in terminal shock? How much meaning could one expect to find in those last whispers really, especially by her-traumatised, according to the staff counsellor, by feelings of guilt towards her victim?
The more she’d worried at it, the more convinced she’d become that things were not right. That was the phrase that kept forming in her mind: things weren’t right. She’d tried to talk it through with Brock, and he had been enormously patient and supportive, but she could sense his underlying conviction that it was she that wasn’t quite right. ‘It’s a terrible thing to kill someone, Kathy,’ he’d said, very gently, ‘even when it’s unavoidable and necessary, as it was in this case. I know, I understand.You must go through the process. Let them help you.’
She’d become obsessed by Vexx’s dying words, she realised that, and accepted that this might be a coping mechanism, concentrating on one little detail to avoid thinking about the big fact that she’d shot and killed a man. But obsession brought other things to the surface: she’d be driving along, noticing the mess in her car, when some thought would strike her and she would have to pull in to the kerb to pester someone over the phone. Or she would wake up in the middle of the night with a forensic image vivid in her mind, and phone Sundeep at his home over
