‘Drop it or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off!’ Davy said when he saw Dom’s piece.
Dom gave a slow smile and dropped the gun before raising his hands.
‘And the knife,’ Davy barked.
‘We cool,’ Dom drawled, doing as he’d been told. ‘No need to panic.’
‘We ain’t panicking, mate,’ Davy replied coolly, gesturing for him to move away from the chair on which Rob was slumped.
‘It’s just business,’ Dom said, moving slowly back. ‘Nutt’n for anyone to get upset about.’
‘They were going to kill us,’ Suzie cried.
‘It’s over,’ Gee said, eyeing Dom and Austin and praying that they didn’t have any more weapons concealed anywhere as he loosened the rope that was binding her hands together behind her back and her ankles to the chair legs.
Out front, Holly was dangling out of the bedroom window as Carol’s sons held out their arms to catch her.
‘Let go!’ Carol yelled at her, no longer bothering to be quiet in her urgency to get her away from the house since she’d seen the text Steve had sent to one of his brothers telling them that they were going in.
Holly squeezed her eyes shut and let go, squealing with fear as she plummeted towards the ground.
At the exact moment she landed in the arms of one of Carol’s sons, a car turned the corner, its headlights illuminating their faces.
‘Let me do the talking,’ Carol hissed when she saw that it was a police car. ‘Take her to mine. And warn your brothers!’ she added, shoving her keys into Steve’s hand and pushing them out onto the pavement.
‘Stay where you are!’ one of the two coppers who had jumped out of the car yelled as Carol’s sons ran across the road with Holly.
‘It’s not them, they’re my sons!’ Carol hissed, rushing towards them. ‘The ones you want are in there, and they’re armed!’ She pointed back at the house.
In the kitchen, Davy had received a call from his brother Pete. Still aiming the gun at Dom, he said, ‘The pigs are outside and they’re calling for armed backup. We need to get moving.’
Reacting instinctively when Dom lurched forward as if to make for the open door, Davy smashed the gun into the side of his head, sending him sprawling, blood pouring from a cut at his temple.
‘I didn’t mean you, dickhead,’ he spat, grabbing a piece of the rope Gee had taken from around Suzie’s ankles and quickly tying Dom’s hands together behind his back while Ben did the same to Austin, who was crying out in pain.
‘Go!’ Gee urged at the sound of approaching sirens. ‘I’ll tell them it was just me here.’
‘Don’t you wanna come with us?’ Davy asked.
‘No.’ Gee shook his head. ‘I wanna make sure these two don’t escape.’
Nodding, Davy pushed his brother out through the back door and they were quickly swallowed up by the darkness.
‘Let me go, man,’ Austin begged Gee as the sirens grew louder. ‘My missus is due any day. It’s our first kid and I need to be with her.’
‘Should’ve thought about that before you broke in and terrorized this man and his missus,’ Gee said.
‘Don’t do this, brother,’ Dom said quietly, looking up at Gee from the floor. ‘I can pay you nuff money, blood. You’ll never need to work a day in your life.’
‘I ain’t your brother,’ Gee said, staring down at him. ‘And I don’t want your dirty money.’
Dom hawked up phlegm in his throat and spat at Gee’s feet. ‘You is a dead man!’ he snarled. ‘Yuh hear me? You is dead!’
Outside, several vehicles screeched to a halt, their sirens deafening in the confines of the tiny kitchen.
‘ARMED POLICE!’ someone yelled at the front of the house, followed by a boom and the sound of wood splintering.
At the same time, the back gate flew open and the shout of ‘ARMED POLICE!’ went up again as several dark figures rushed across the grass.
‘It wasn’t him!’ Suzie cried when one of the armed men ran in and aimed a gun at Gee who was standing beside her.
‘On the floor!’ the man ordered. ‘Both of you! Get down!’
The front door crashed into the wall as Gee and Suzie lay down on the floor with their hands raised.
‘In here!’ one of the officers yelled, his gun trained on Dom. ‘Two restrained, one wounded, we need an ambulance ASAP!’
45
Carol’s sons had taken Holly up to their mother’s flat, and Steve had quickly stashed their weapons under her bed before doing a quick sweep of the living room to remove any traces of her weed and rolling paraphernalia.
Sitting on the sofa on either side of Holly, who was shivering despite the jacket one of them had placed around her shoulders, both lads nodded respectfully at the four coppers, two of whom were female, who walked in with their mum a short time later.
‘Has she been seen by the paramedics?’ Spencer asked, noting how pale and disoriented Holly looked. ‘She’s probably in shock.’
‘You’re the first ones who’ve come up since we got here,’ Steve told him, standing up.
As one of the female officers spoke into her radio, requesting medics to come up to the flat, the other sat in Steve’s vacated place, and said, ‘Holly, my name’s Annabel, and I’d like to talk to you about what’s just happened, if that’s all right?’
Holly’s body jerked as if she’d been electrocuted and her eyes widened alarmingly.
‘It’s OK, love,’ Carol said, waving for her other son to move so she could sit next to the girl. ‘I’m here; you’re not on your own.’ Holding Holly’s hand when she started to hyperventilate, she said, ‘Just take a nice deep breath, sweetheart. In . . .’ She inhaled deeply through her own nose to demonstrate. ‘Then out . . .’ she exhaled through her mouth. ‘In . . . out . . .’
‘Where are her parents?’ one of the female officers asked.
‘Her mum’s sleeping,’ Carol said, still demonstrating the breathing technique to Holly. ‘She got
