you might have a tiger by the tail here.’ Henry suppressed a giggle at the irony of that and ended the call, turned to see Flynn leaning on the office door watching him. He lifted up the phone and said, ‘Your mate Jerry Tope.’ He knew Flynn and Tope were old friends. ‘Tom and Vincent go way back, and it transpires that Tom knows just about everything there is to know about Jonny Cain’s operation.’
‘I gathered — I eavesdropped.’
Henry slumped back in the chair, his shoulder feeling as though it was being squeezed by six tiny vices. He gasped.
‘You OK?’ Flynn asked. Henry shook his head. Then, in the hallway, Donaldson hurried past clutching his stomach and ran upstairs, saying, ‘You know I said I had an hour? So wrong.’
Flynn’s head went from one man to the other in disbelief.
Donaldson came downstairs a few minutes later, shaking his head despondently, entered the office and said, ‘Hell, I thought I had that beat.’
Henry, who had been sitting at the desk with his eyes closed, trying his best to deal with the pain, the feeling of sickness and dizziness, also shook his head.
‘We’re not going to be much use,’ he admitted.
‘No,’ Donaldson agreed, ‘so where do we go from here?’
Henry’s whole body deflated, a feeling of defeat overpowering him, something he had rarely experienced. One thing he always did was keep going to the bitter end, never gave up. Being shot in the shoulder shook that up somewhat. ‘Where’s Steve?’ he groaned. ‘We need a conflab.’
‘Kitchen, I guess.’ Donaldson walked down the hallway, peered into the dining room at the worried faces of Dr Lott and Ginny, still tending Laura, who looked very ill, but was now awake and talking. He went into the kitchen saying, ‘Steve… we need to- Shit,’ he said as he saw that the Skorpion machine pistol and the Chinese-made semi- automatic pistol had gone, as well as the bag of ammunition. Nor was there any sign of Flynn.
TWENTY-TWO
It was tough going. The snow was deep, and trudging through it in jeans and trainers was energy-sapping and unpleasant. Flynn followed the tyre tracks up the road until they veered off and disappeared underneath the gates at the end of the driveway leading up to Mallowdale House. The high, wooden electronically controlled gates were closed. Flynn surveyed them for a moment, then looked up at the CCTV camera with which he’d had a conversation about a million years before.
He knew assumptions were bad things to make, but he guessed that under the present circumstances it would be unlikely that the security system was on and the CCTV was being monitored. Tom and Jack Vincent, plus cronies, would be scurrying around like rats to get out of the place. They were hardly going to settle down and bust open a bottle in celebration. They had to get moving soon, although Flynn didn’t quite see what their plans for escape might be. But that wasn’t his problem. They’d made the play, killed people, shot cops, destroyed a house, sprung a man from lawful custody and the rest. They’d opened that particular door and had to accept whatever it was that came charging through.
In this case, Steve Flynn. A man driven by the fact that one of his best friends of the last twenty-odd years had been murdered and he did not wish to see the murderer get away. If Tom did escape somehow, then there would be no chance of Flynn ever coming face to face with him again, which would be a tragedy. Flynn wanted to get his hands on him now, not have to sit back whilst the cops carried out a manhunt that would probably be a shambles. People like Tom and Jack Vincent, Flynn suspected, knew how to evade the police and it was highly likely they would be out of the country within hours.
He stood in front of the gate, then unslung the Skorpion he’d snaffled and flung it over. He scrambled up and over and dropped untidily on to the other side, where he crouched in the shadows, getting some of his breath back and brushing the snow off the machine pistol.
He’d thought of using Alison’s four-wheel drive to get him up to Mallowdale House, but decided it would be more trouble than it was worth. Although it was a fair distance from the police house to the gates, he thought approaching on foot would give him the greater advantage.
First, if he had used the car it would have alerted Henry Christie instantly. As it was, with Donaldson firmly rooted to the toilet and Henry half-comatose from the shotgun wound, sneaking off on foot probably gave him the lead he wouldn’t otherwise have had. Also, if he turned up in a car, it might have alerted Tom straight away. As tiring as it was on foot in the snow, to Flynn this seemed the better option all round and he knew his fitness would see him through.
So far, so good. He was on Mallowdale House property and hadn’t yet been spotted, he hoped. But he did have a slightly queasy feeling about the big cat that had cropped up in conversation a few times, the one Jack Vincent was supposed to own. Did it really exist? If so, where the hell did he keep it? Did he allow it to roam free? Flynn doubted it was real, sounded like a local myth. And if it was a mountain lion, that didn’t bother him too much anyway. He knew they were cowardly cats where humans were concerned… but if it was some other species… He dismissed the thought.
He cut into the trees by the driveway and made his way slowly and carefully to the house, a distance of about two hundred metres, following the snaking drive like a river. Then the tree line stopped and the drive cut through a wide lawn, opening out into a semicircular gravel-covered parking area at the front of the house.
Flynn crouched, keeping cover. There were external lights on the house walls which would normally have illuminated the building, but they were all switched off and the house was a big black shadow. As Flynn’s eyes adjusted and took in the light available, he could make out the features of the building, and the fact that Jonny Cain’s Range Rover was parked directly between himself and the front door, which provided some cover for his approach to the house.
He remained perfectly still for a minute, watching, listening. There was no movement, nothing to hear, just his heart pounding against the wall of his chest, the throbbing pulse in his temple.
He thought he heard a swish of movement behind him. Gritting his teeth and not allowing any sound to pass from him, he turned slowly, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. There it was again, up in the branches. A large, dark shape, and he relaxed and exhaled. An owl.
Stop it, he told himself.
He took another moment to control his breathing and get ready. The Skorpion was slung across his chest at an angle, the iffy Chinese pistol tucked down the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. Keeping very low, he emerged from the cover of the tree line and ran towards the Range Rover, maybe fifty yards away from him. He ran quickly, scrunching the gravel underneath the snow, then dropped by the vehicle, twisted and leaned against it, once more catching his breath. He’d only come a short distance, but it had felt like a quarter of a mile, exposed, and fully expecting to be picked off by a sniper at one of the house windows, or brought down by a fucking lion.
Scratch the cat crap from your brain, he ordered himself. He could not resist checking the tree line, though, to see if there was movement other than a barn owl. Or a pair of feline eyes watching him.
Satisfied there was nothing, he looked at the house through the rear passenger windows of the Range Rover, except that the view was obliterated by something smudged and smeared across the nearside window.
For a moment, Flynn could not work it out, then it clicked. The inside of the window was covered in blood and for a horrible moment he thought it was Alison’s. He rose a little higher so he could see inside the car, making out the figure in the back seat, slumped over. Not Alison, but the bigger shape of a man — one of their own guys.
Flynn came up even higher, knees still bent, but getting a better view inside. Yes, definitely a man, he reassured himself, his head lolling between his legs. Flynn swallowed and suddenly realized how reckless he was in coming here alone. Thinking he could take on these men, when clearly they had no hesitation in killing members of their own gang. They would simply be conditioned to put him down. But on a lighter note, the odds had improved slightly. Now three to one.
He came up almost to his full height, still using the cover provided by the rear offside of the car, his head ducking in and out, checking the front door, the windows — and then something else caught his eye. The second body in the vehicle, Jonny Cain stuffed into the luggage space behind the back seats.
Flynn dropped down again and ran a hand across his face, then over his hair to flick off the snow.
