“Shaddup!” the leader said, adding softly, “Stay away from his hands…”
“Na, he’s a section eight.” He looked at Quayle, tapping his finger against his head, “Gaga, aren’t you Dad? Shell-shocked!”
“Button it!” the leader snapped, then looked back at Quayle. “Hand her over...”
The third man had moved up on the left and the leader flicked a look sideways at him. Quayle was quick; he used the distraction to edge forward a pace. He was waiting for the trigger word. Something out of place, something pre-arranged that would mean action. He needed to be close, very close.
“I said no, Weaselface. Now, why don’t you take your snotty little yobbos and go back to Milburn and tell ‘em I said no?” As he spoke, he moved forward another half pace. Get personal, he thought. Get them angry. Hot blood is stupid blood…
“Who you calling snotty?”
“Hand her over, Quayle, or we’ll take her,” the leader said, stepping ahead of his hot tempered associate, a step nearer Quayle.
The man suddenly seemed to realise that he was close, much too close, and he smiled quickly. “Can’t we discuss thi..”
The word. That was the word. Quayle recognised it as fast as the other two. As the man reached under his coat, Quayle smashed the tea cup into his face with his right hand, gouging at the eye while his left shot out and grabbed the moving hand of the man on the right, snapping two of his fingers with a vicious downward flick of his own wrist before it could reach the gun.
In his peripheral vision, he could see movement to his right. He pushed both injured men sideways towards the other and turned, lightning fast, to get first cover behind the table as the third man side-stepped his falling partners and pulled his gun clear. The other two were not out of the fight yet, but the last man had been faster than he looked.
As he landed, rolling towards the door behind the falling table, the man fired twice, the muzzle blast deafening at eight feet, the bullets knocking chips of whitewashed concrete out of the wall and hitting him in the face as he scrabbled through the door. Then, suddenly, there were more shots, snapped off very fast, muffled by something.
Quayle dodged around the door jam, his mind racing. Jesus! He hadn’t expected either of the others back into it so fast. He slipped through into the bedroom and cleared the window in one graceless motion, then dropped into the rocky side garden, his fingers seeking and finding a large stone the size of an orange. Holding it tightly, he ducked back against the wall of the house, then began to move towards the front. One would come this way. Take the guns away from them. He didn’t like guns, but when you needed one there was nothing quite like it. On his own, he would have kept moving into the rocks, but Holly was already there. He needed to keep them here. He took a breath and moved forward. It was quiet, very quiet. In short, shuffling, silent steps, he reached the veranda wall. Above he could hear nothing, but something was moving further along.
“Mr Quayle. Please show yourself. It’s finished.”
He recognised that voice. It was Pope.
“Where are you?” he called. That’s why the shots had seemed muffled, he thought. They’d been fired from a distance. If Pope had opened fire then there were dead men there.
“Spare room, end of the veranda. I am standing now. If you have a firearm, don’t shoot…”
Quayle dropped and ran the twelve yards to the far end of the wall, still holding the stone in his hand.
“Hold your gun up where I can see it!” he said, edging backwards to look upward.
There above him was Pope: grimy, dusty, unshaven still in his city suit. The only thing clean was the gun, black, oiled and lethal in his hand.
“They’re Milburn,” said Quayle. “What the fuck is going on?”
Pope said nothing, but his eyes flickered up at Quayle, unable to mask his surprise. Then looked back down at the three bodies. Each had taken a bullet in the centre of the chest and each had a second round either high in the neck or lower face.
“They pulled guns,” Pope said. “That’s enough for me. I didn’t know who they were.”
That seemed honest enough for Quayle. Pope was now a friendly. They could think about the other connotations later.
“I’ll carry ‘em away. You hose down the concrete. Then we better move…”
Pope nodded imperceptibly. As Quayle dragged the limp forms towards the garden’s edge, he took the green hose pipe and did as he was asked, the cool water turning pink and frothy, laced with bits of bone and tissue, as it ran round the wall’s edge.
Holly poked her head round the door as Quayle dragged the last corpse away by its feet. It was the man in the blazer and, below the terrible jagged wound inflicted by the smashed teacup, half his face had been torn away by Pope’s wadcutter bullet.
She threw a hand to her mouth and looked like she was about to vomit.
“Wait inside,” Quayle snapped.
For him death was nothing new. He had seen many bodies in his lifetime and had been forced into personally contributing to the tally on five occasions. The Cambodian incident was the worst. He had killed a twelve year old girl. Trapped sixteen miles out of Phnom Pen by advancing Khmer Rouge, he had been caught and, for once, his silver tongue was unable to get him clear. The man he’d been trying to escort to safety had started crying as the interrogation began, and he knew the situation was getting terminal. His charge was a Cambodian academic, prime target for the hysteria. Century wanted him out.
He had waited until there were only two guards
