boat. He had tried when he phoned her earlier, but it wasn’t a successful attempt at passing a message. She had not been ‘with it’ at all.
And also the shop. It had to be opened for business, which was the main reason for him being in the UK in the first place… and also his need for accommodation. Now he had nowhere to bed down. The thought of crashing out nightly at the Tawny Owl was very appealing, even though it was hardly in the most convenient of locations. Maybe he’d get one more night out of it, but anything beyond that would be very unfair to Alison — and Henry, he supposed. At some point he would have to pay and that was money he didn’t have. He was not a wealthy man at all.
But when he saw the dog, his rusty but still functioning cop instincts surged to the fore.
He had been a good detective. Maybe not in Henry’s league, he was reluctantly forced to admit, but one rung above competent and hard and ruthless with it.
He made his way around the perimeter of the house on the gravel path, carefully looking into each room and seeing nothing.
Then he found himself at the kitchen window, where he saw Henry looking at something on the floor. From his position, he could not quite see what, but the expression on Henry’s face was grave and thoughtful as he backed out of the kitchen without even spotting Flynn at the window.
‘Ten out of ten for observation skills,’ Flynn muttered, about to move away from the window — until he saw the door to the utility room open slowly at the far end of the kitchen.
A man emerged.
Henry had once been winged by a shotgun blast, dozens of pellets hitting his shoulder like pebbledashing. After the numbness and disbelief, the pain had been incredible, right off the scale. But he’d survived.
He knew he would not survive this one.
Whatever was loaded in the shotgun would hit him in the sternum and drive a massive hole through the centre of his body and shatter his spine on the way out, after shredding his heart and lungs on the way.
As he faced the man in the door and his mouth dropped open, and the thought about taking a shotgun blast in his chest went through his mind, he was already throwing himself sideways.
Then there was a roar and a blur combined as Steve Flynn powered into the man, roaring like an attacking lion and using all his brute strength to take him down. But in so doing the shotgun jerked up and a barrel was discharged, splattering shot at an upwards angle into the top corner of the en-suite shower room.
Henry saw the men disappear and roll through to the bedroom.
The man held grimly on to the shotgun as he and Flynn tumbled untidily across the carpet, Flynn completely aware that the weapon between himself and the gunman was still loaded with one barrel.
They hit the floor and rolled, grappling desperately for control of the weapon, the man trying to tilt it away from him just enough so he could take Flynn’s head off; Flynn, totally knowing this was what he intended, and fighting the opposite way. The man had one big advantage, though: his right forefinger was hooked into the trigger guard.
Then they struck the corner of the bed hard and they came apart.
Flynn knew it was over.
The man still held the gun. He contorted, trying to aim the weapon, but Flynn saw that his finger had come out of the trigger guard. He reacted. In that nanosecond before the finger once against instinctively found its place on the double trigger, Flynn’s right hand shot palm-out and smashed the barrel upwards just as the finger jerked on the trigger.
The sound of the blast was incredible.
Flynn’s face was only inches away from the discharge. He heard the hammer connect and hit the cartridge. He felt the kickback of the explosion within the chamber, but at that exact moment he was forcing the gun hard against the man’s chest, so it was pointing upwards under his chin.
Flynn cowered away as the man’s face disintegrated, completely removed by the force of the blast that went straight up into his lower jaw and lifted his mouth, nose, eyes and forehead away from the rest of his head.
Flynn rolled away, came up on to his knees, gasping, horrified, but unable to tear his eyes away from the bloody, faceless mask, who, although twitching horribly, and his right forefinger was still pulling back the triggers, was dead.
NINE
‘Here.’ Henry handed Flynn coffee in a mug. Flynn took it with a murmur of thanks and had a sip. It was hot and bitter. Good. ‘How’re you feeling?’
Flynn was sitting half-in, half-out of Diane’s Smart Car, still parked in the driveway of Joe Speakman’s house, now surrounded by an array of police vehicles of various descriptions.
He pouted and considered Henry’s question.
There was no doubt about it, Flynn was a tough guy.
As a teenager he had served as a Royal Marines Commando in the Falkland Islands conflict with Argentina and beyond that in various well-known and not so well-known campaigns.
In his subsequent police career, on the streets and as a detective in CID and the drugs branch, he had mixed it and faced up to some of the hardest, meanest guys out there, people to whom violence was second nature. Flynn’s physical prowess, courage and sheer determination — and delight at confrontation — had always seen him through. He had once been led away by two very professional hit men for questioning and then a bullet in the brain. He had emerged victorious and their bleached bones lay undiscovered, and probably would for another hundred years.
Not much got to him. He could dole it out and take it.
But a shotgun going off between himself and a man he was fighting to the death had made him a bit dithery.
Had the weapon been angled a few more degrees in his direction, it would have been his face removed, not the attacker’s. He would have been dead and no doubt Henry Christie would also have been dead.
‘I’m fine,’ Flynn responded. He took another sip of the coffee and the tiny shake of his hand was noticeable to no one except himself. He eyed Henry and wondered, ‘Are you going to arrest me for murder? I’d expect nothing less from you.’
‘Mm, good point,’ Henry toyed with him. ‘Are you going to do a runner, leave the country?’
‘Course I am… I live in the Canary Islands, not here.’
‘Will you make a statement before you go and then come back for any court hearings?’
‘Yep.’
Henry shrugged. ‘In that case, no arrest.’ His face became serious in a way that Flynn had never seen. He touched Flynn’s shoulder. ‘I know what you did. Thank you.’
‘I’d have done the same for any arsehole.’
‘I know you would.’
They held each other’s look for a deep and meaningful moment but broke it off before it became embarrassing.
‘I will need your clothing for forensics.’
‘You want me to strip now? I’m kinda running low on things to wear
… I’m down to socks and underpants and I don’t think it would be a good idea to help myself to anything from the shop again. Running up a bit of a tab there.’ Flynn glanced down at himself. ‘Although I think I’m going to have to.’
Even though the shotgun had gone off away from him and the force of the blast was also away from him, he had been splattered with blood as though someone had flicked a big paintbrush full of red paint across his upper chest.
Henry said, ‘If I get someone to follow you to the shop with some forensic bags, can you get changed there? How does that sound?’
Flynn nodded. Good idea. He had expected Henry to be awkward and demand he strip right there and get into
