upstairs.’
Lee put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t kill him, Ty. Please. You’re no killer.’
He brushed it aside, then swung me round and shoved the gun into my side while Haddock twisted my right arm behind my back with such force it made me cry out involuntarily.
I looked towards Tommy, my eyes watering with the pain, but he’d already turned his back to me, as had Lee, and I realized with a grim finality that I was on my own as Wolfe and Haddock marched me over to the staircase and began pushing me towards the darkness above.
Thirty
I craned my neck and asked Wolfe not to kill me, even though I hated myself for begging to the man who’d murdered my brother. But that’s what the instinct for self-preservation does to you. You’ll say most things to stay alive. But he said nothing in return, and Haddock yanked my arm upwards again, and this time I almost passed out with the pain.
Somehow the arm didn’t break as I was manhandled up the last of the stairs and down a dark corridor, the floor creaking precariously beneath my feet.
‘In here,’ said Wolfe, stopping at a door about halfway along. ‘It’s got a bolt.’ He pulled it open and together they threw me inside.
I stumbled forward in the darkness, realizing I was in some sort of cramped, windowless store cupboard, then deliberately fell to the floor, wanting to show them I was being as passive and unthreatening as possible. Every part of my body ached, my ribs were killing me, and the back of my head and my nose were still bleeding from where I’d been hit earlier with the two different guns. In short, I was a mess. Probably the most battered I’d ever been in my life.
The two of them stood in the doorway, silhouettes in the gloom, looking down at me. Then the door shut and I heard a bolt being pulled across, followed by hushed words from out in the corridor.
‘He’s got to go, Ty,’ I heard Haddock say in a whisper that was so loud it had to be deliberate. ‘But my gun’s fucked. You’re going to need to do him.’
‘I need something to muffle the sound,’ was Wolfe’s response, quieter but still audible.
I heard footsteps moving away from the door. Then silence.
It’s difficult to describe what I was feeling at that point. It wasn’t fear exactly. I was too bruised and exhausted for that. It was closer to resignation. A knowledge that I’d tried to go it alone, for the best of reasons, but that ultimately my plan had been found wanting, and I’d failed.
And now I was the last one of us left, and my life too was about to end, with the grim irony that it was going to be at the hands of the man who’d set so many of the events that had destroyed the Egan family in motion.
The footsteps returned, and I took a deep breath that made me wince. I couldn’t die like a coward. Not after all the effort I’d put into bringing Tyrone Wolfe to justice. Maybe somewhere up there they were all watching, willing me to at least go down fighting. I had to do something to make them proud.
I pictured John then, as he was just before he went off to join the army. A big smile on his face. Full of jokes, as always. My dad clapping him on the back, the pride in his eyes. The three of us having a last game of football in the garden. John letting me score through his legs.
The door opened and I felt a surge of anger as I saw Wolfe standing there with the Sig in one hand and a filthy-looking pillow in the other, the looming, demonic figure of Haddock at his shoulder. I could hear him breathing and his whole body was shaking with adrenalin as he psyched himself up for the kill.
I tensed, moving into a position where I could spring up at him and make a grab for the gun.
But I was too late. Wolfe lunged at me suddenly, dropping his knee into my stomach and driving the wind right out of me. As I tried to recover, he sat astride me, pinning my arms by my side, then everything turned to darkness as he pushed the pillow against my face, and I felt the metal of the gun barrel hard against my cheek.
Clenching my teeth against the impact of the bullet I knew was coming at any second, I struggled beneath him. But it was useless. He was a strong guy with all the momentum, and I was still battered and dazed.
‘Go on, Ty, take him,’ I heard Haddock hiss in the darkness.
Oh God. This was it.
All over.
‘Jesus,’ Wolfe cursed.
‘What is it?’
‘The gun. The fucking thing’s jammed.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
I felt the pressure lift on my face and the pillow slipped sideways. The next second, Wolfe was getting to his feet.
‘Are you just going to leave him?’ Haddock growled.
‘I’m not putting a knife in him. You don’t do that in business. Don’t worry, he’s not getting out of here.’
The door closed and I heard the bolt being moved across, then their voices faded as they moved away.
For a good few seconds I didn’t move. I was too shocked. To have come so close to death and then be spared was almost more than my already shredded nerves could bear.
But it wasn’t that that was occupying my mind as I lay on the hard wooden floor. It was the fact that Tyrone Wolfe had deliberately spared my life. He might have told Haddock that the gun was jammed but there was no way he could have known for sure.
Because he hadn’t tried to pull the trigger.
Thirty-one
Kevin O’Neill had been a self-made man. One of seven children from a village in County Cork, he’d left school at sixteen and come to England to make his fortune, building up a construction and property development company from nothing. He hadn’t been immensely rich, according to what Grier had told Tina, but he’d made enough to send his children to private school and live in a big detached house on a secluded private road in the north-west London suburb of Rickmansworth.
It was ten past eleven and starting to spit with warm summer rain when the two police officers pulled up outside the security gates at the front of the property. Tina waited while Grier got out and pressed the buzzer, noticing the CCTV camera attached to the gatepost above his head. It wasn’t uncommon to have this level of security in London, even out here in the suburbs, but Tina knew that, although it might have acted as a deterrent against opportunistic burglars, the more determined and organized intruders would always get through, simply by bypassing the gate and going over the eight-foot-high wooden fence that bordered the grounds.
Although she wasn’t convinced that someone had killed Kevin O’Neill, the timing of his death was worryingly coincidental, given that his daughter’s murder was the only one of the five supposedly committed by the Night Creeper that stood out.
Grier had been less enthusiastic about coming, telling her as they’d driven through the dark, silent streets that he thought his death was exactly what it looked like, a coincidence. He’d also given her some compelling reasons, the most important of which was the lack of any obvious motive. On the night O’Neill died, Roisin had already been dead eight months, so why would anyone choose to murder him then?
It was a question Tina couldn’t answer.
The gates opened automatically as Grier got back in the car, and they drove down the short driveway that led to the main house, an imposing whitewashed building done in a faux Georgian style.
Derval O’Neill, Roisin’s sister, was at the door when they pulled up outside, dressed in jeans and a halter
