There was hardly any blood. There was no exit wound, and no fountain effect where the bullet had gone in, somewhere above the right temple.
Then, it seemed, there were enough corks popping to signal a twenty-first birthday: a veritable cacophony of fizzing champagne.
The young man was hit for a second time before his falling body hit the ground. The other must have been hit four or five times, in the chest as well as in the face.
Now they were both bleeding, but with an odd decorum. The red tide simply flowed out of them on to the floor, forming ever-widening circles on the scrubbed and scoured floor.
Canny looked up at the hayloft, where a man in a dark blue boiler suit was standing on the platform rim, holding a pistol with an absurdly long barrel. It seemed impossible that one man could have fired so many times, with such amazing accuracy—but there had been only the one shooter. The man in the brown raincoat who was now emerging from the clutter had no weapon in his gloved hands.
While the boiler-suited assassin was reloading his weapon the second man said something in French, which Canny didn’t quite catch—except for the word “Toyota”. The shooter nodded before setting himself on the ladder.
Stevie Larkin was barging about in the back of the Datsun, trying to maneuver his bound hands into a position from which they could grip the inner handle—but it was all to no avail. The door didn’t respond. It probably had a child-lock.
Canny was in no hurry to let Stevie out; he stood where he was until both of his unexpected allies had descended to floor-level. He was still marveling at the absence of any sign of their impending intervention. His old habits persisted in their effect, though—he was possessed nevertheless by a sense of the inevitable, an acute consciousness of his entitlement to his amazing good fortune. He was also slightly ashamed of the fact that he had triumphed only by remaining completely passive, letting fate take care of him. He would have liked to be able to feel proud as well as relieved, by virtue of having done something slightly heroic.
“You cut that rather fine,” Canny said—in English, because he didn’t know the French for “cut it fine”.
“Yes, that is so,” the man in the raincoat agreed, in the same language, but speaking with a very noticeable accent. “We had intended to wait until you and Monsieur Larkin had departed, so that you would not be placed in danger.”
“Very thoughtful,” Canny said, drily. “And you’d have had the million Euros too.”
The man in the raincoat had even darker eyes than the young man with the heavy gun. He looked Canny up and down before saying: “From which we would have taken our standard commission, before returning the remainder to you. I hope you will have no objection if I do that in any case.”
“How much?” Canny asked.
“Ten per cent,” the other replied. “It would have been higher, had you not already made a down payment.”
Canny had to raise a hand to request that Stevie Larkin be patient, because the footballer was writhing around with increasing urgency. He ventured a small laugh. “You mean the cash you recovered from my win at the casino? You’re treating that as payment for protection—membership in the club?”
“In expectation of further commerce, Monsieur le Comte. Not criminal commerce, I hasten to add. We have many potential interests in common, all above board, as you say.”
“We have earls in England, not comtes,” Canny said. “But I take your point. Ten per cent is perfectly satisfactory. Take Euros, if you wish, or the dollars, if you prefer.” He didn’t doubt that what the other said about their future commerce not necessarily being criminal was true. Unlike the kidnappers, who were fledglings in the world of organized crime, the Union Corse had been around long enough to have moved a substantial fraction of its wealth into legitimate businesses.
“You’ve been following them all along, haven’t you?” Canny said. “You could have taken them any time. You didn’t have to let them kidnap Stevie, or put the bite on me. You could have taken them out before they made a move.”
“We did not know what they planned to do, Monsieur. Had they not involved you...the footballer is not our responsibility. Had it not been your money, I would not feel honor bound to settle for ten per cent and the hope of a fruitful association in the future—but we have a reputation to uphold.” He went to the door as he spoke, and opened it by a crack in order to look out, then opened it much wider. Over his shoulder, Canny could see the Toyota approaching, with a different driver at the wheel.
“I shall take my money, with your permission,” the dark-eyed man said, soberly. “Then, I think you and Monsieur Larkin should go. We shall tidy up here—you need have no fear that the bodies will be discovered, unless by some freak of outrageous chance.” As he spoke he knelt down beside the body of the tall man, which was already beginning to stink horribly, and fished something out of his breast pocket: Canny’s mobile phone, smashed by a bullet. Had it not been for the other four that had struck the dead man down, the stolen phone might have saved his life. “Sorry, Monsieur,” the Frenchman said. “Shall I dispose of this too?”
“If you like,” Canny said. “The raincoat and the boiler-suit are mistakes, though—they won’t pass for casual wear nowadays, even in Yorkshire.”
“I doubt if we can keep them clean enough to take them away with us,” the other said, as he began removing bundles of banknotes from the suitcase in the Bentley’s boot.
Canny finally went to the Datsun and opened the rear nearside door from the outside. He removed Stevie’s gag.
“Fucking hell, Canny, what’s the fuck’s going on?” Stevie demanded. “You took your time. You bring the SAS with you, or what?” He offered his wrists, which were secured by duct tape. Canny began stripping it away, unwinding it as it came loose. As soon as Stevie’s hands were free the footballer began rubbing his right thigh with his left hand. There was obviously nothing wrong with his knees.
“Or what,” Canny said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Stevie, but it would probably be best for everyone concerned if you forgot what you’d seen here—or anything that happened to you since your car got boxed. It’s not the Toyota or the Datsun, I assume?”
“No—it was a hired beamer. They left it where it was. They moved it off the road and locked it up, although the hole in the back windscreen would have let anyone in who wanted to steal it. It might be still there.”
“I’ll give you a lift back,” Canny said. “If it’s gone, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“How much is he taking?” Stevie asked, as the man in the raincoat zipped up the suitcase again.
“A hundred thousand,” Canny said. “Euros, not pounds. Don’t worry—I’ll stand the loss. It was me they were after, not you. It was just bad luck that you got caught up in it.” He opened the front passenger door of the Bentley to let Stevie in, then went back to the boot and locked the suitcase. Both his saviors were busy lifting the third body out of the front seat of the Toyota. He had been shot in the head—by a single bullet, so far as Canny could tell. He must have been keeping a look-out in the wrong direction as his killer approached.
“I thought you were dead, for sure,” Stevie said, as Canny climbed back into the Bentley’s diving-seat. “Me too—I nearly pissed myself. Who the fuck were those people? And who are the guys who bailed us out?”
“I forgot to ask,” Canny told him, dryly. “Believe me, Stevie, there are things you’re better off not knowing. I’m truly sorry you got mixed up in this—but it’ll be something to tell your grandchildren, if you can keep your mouth shut that long.” He put the car into gear and eased it out of the barn. The man in the boiler-suit closed the door behind him, without bothering to make any gesture of farewell.
“Does this have anything to do with Lissa Lo?” Stevie asked, as they passed through the gate and turned on to the road.
“Nothing at all,” Canny assured him, although he couldn’t help wondering whether the protection that Lissa had offered him on t
he previous evening might have had something to do with the Union Corse hit-man’s fortunate presence. “Why would you think it might?”
“I don’t know,” Stevie said. “Ever since that night when we all bet on that zero, things have been a little crazy. The newspapers are still banging on about her and me being an item, although it was pure coincidence that we both turned up at your Dad’s funeral. You know that, right?”
“Pure coincidence,” Canny echoed.
“We didn’t even leave together,” Stevie said. “You know that, right?”
“She had nothing to do with your being kidnapped, Stevie.” Canny said. “The publicity might have helped to call their attention to you, but there’d have been publicity enough if you’d turned up on your own, with all the transfer rumors going round. You were just unlucky that our friendship became a notch tighter at the wrong moment—but it all worked out okay. Nobody got shot. Nobody even pissed himself.”
“You must have nerves of steel, then—that’s all I can say. If I’d been looking down the barrel of that chopper...friends, you say? We’re friends?”
Canny realized that Stevie actually thought that being counted a friend by an earl was a big deal—even though the loyal readers of every tabloid in the land would reckon Canny the luckier man for having made a friend of a star like Stevie.
“We’re more than friends, Stevie.” he said, coolly. “We were friends even before you put that bet on zero. Now, we’ve been saved by the Union Corse from being slaughtered by the Albanian mafia—from now on, we’re practically blood-brothers.”
Stevie thought about that fir a moment or two, before daring to say: “Were they really the Albanian mafia?”
Canny felt free to laugh at that. “If they weren’t,” he said, “they were the next worst thing. Globalization, eh? What’s the world coming to? You don’t mind if we stop off at Cockayne on the way to pick up your car, do you? I’ll feel a lot better when that money’s in a safe—I’ll have to get it back to the banks first thing in the morning, though, or the interest payments will suck me dry.”
Stevie was silent for a few minutes, while the Bentley whizzed through Sicklinghall and Canny steered towards Wetherby. “Thanks, Canny,” he said, finally. “I really couldn’t see any reason why you should stick your neck out, you know—and a million Euros. You might have lost the lot.”
“True,” Canny said—although now that it hadn’t happened, he was flooded by the conviction that it couldn’t possibly have happened, and that he must have been an utter fool ever to have had a moment’s anxiety. “Well, next time you get kidnapped, you know where to come—but leave it for a while, will you? And keep quiet about this one. In my experience, it always pays not to advertise one’s implication in multiple murders.”
“Is that what it was?” Stevie asked, hesitantly. “I was thinking of it as a daring rescue.”
“One man’s daring rescue is another’s multiple murder,” Canny said. “And to answer the unspoken question, no—I haven’t been a witness to very many multiple murders. None, in fact, before today. And you’re right—if I’d had an atom of sense I’d have pissed myself when that kid decided to blow me away. You will keep quiet, though—as a friend?”
“We’re more than friends, mate,” Stevie said. “Anything you need that I can provide, you only have to ask.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By the time Canny finally got home after delivering Stevie Larkin safely to his original destination, Bentley was in a complete stew. The butler was acting far more like an anxious mother than Canny’s actual mother, who was swanning around the house in blissful ignorance, and he was doubtless doubly stressed by the necessity of keeping her out of the loop.
“You could have telephoned, sir,” Bentley complained, when Canny had assured him that everything was fine.
“Actually, I couldn’t,” Canny told him. “Somebody took my mobile, as well as the one they sent me, and it stopped a bullet. Lucky he was holding at the time instead of me, eh?”
The butler didn’t think that was at all amusing, and got himself caught up in an absurd internal struggle to determine the most polite way to make further enquiries. In the end, he settled for the astonishingly anodyne: “There are such things as public telephones, sir.”
“Never use them,” Canny told him, as he sank gratefully into the armchair in the drawing-room that his mother would have been using if she’d been there. “Never have any change, let alone one of those silly cards. But you’re right—I should have asked Maurice to tip you off when I dropped the money at the mill before driving Stevie to Bolton. I sort of took it for granted that he would, even though he didn’t know that you were worried, not having known that I’d been in any danger himself...sorry, I’m babbling.”
“I expect you’ve had a stressful day, sir,” the butler observed, sarcastically.
“Not one of my better ones,” Canny confessed, wondering why his heart had begun to hammer again, and why the atmosphere in the room seemed to have grown a little darker, as if fate were mocking him by saying oh, here’s a warning I forgot to give you earlier.
“But it all worked out in the end. Mr. Larkin’s knees are in perfect working order.”
“He’s fine. I ended up a hundred thou down—Euros, mercifully, not pounds—and I think I might have been drafted as a money-launderer for the Riviera mob...although that might not be such a bad thing, given that I’ll probably get the hundred thou back in no time, with abundant interest. On the other hand, it could have been a lot worse. The psychopath who wanted to kill me is safely underground, and if I’m reading between the lines with sufficient accuracy, I made a lucky guess when I told Alice Ellison to spread it around that Stevie’s on the brink of signing for Leeds United. All things considered, I guess I came out ahead of reasonable expectation. I’m truly sorry about not phoning, though. Could you possibly arrange for Securicor to pick up some bundles of cash at the mill, first thing tomorrow? They have to go back to three Leeds banks as soon as humanly possible.”
Bentley accepted the apology and promised to make the necessary arrangements—but he couldn’t resist having one last dig. “Is life going to be exciting from now on, sir?” he asked, making the prospect of excitement seem like the innermost circle of hell, in a manner that no one but a true Yorkshireman could ever have contrived.
“I don’t know,” Canny said. “History suggests that things will soon calm down, especially if I follow Daddy’s dying advice and get married—with or without your help in locating a suitably old-fashioned bride. But we’re living in the twenty-first century now, and I’m not sure that history is any longer a reliable guide to the future. For the time being, at least, I’m inclined to suspect that the excitement will get worse before it gets better—or vice versa, depending on your point of view. Do you think you’ll be able to stand it, or should I start looking for a younger man?”
“Your father communicated a few dying wishes to me, to, sir,” Bentley said, with a sigh. “He asked me to look after you, in case your devil-may-care attitude should lead you into trouble. I promised that I would do my best, circumstances permitting. I fear, therefore, that I shall have to resist any attempt to replace me with every passive-aggressive weapon known to modern psychiatry.”
“According to legend, Bentley,” Canny told him, “the devil may care. On the other hand, he might not. Either way, we all have to decide which chances to take and which to pass over. I’m not about to start passing on all but the safe ones—not yet, anyway. I’m sorry if you disapprove. Sometimes though, you take the Jeeves act just a little too far, if you don’t mind me saying so. I need to go to bed now—it’s been a long and eventful day, and even your ear-bending skills pale into insignificance by comparison with some of the abuse I’ve endured since my alarm failed to go off this morning.”
“Perhaps you forgot to set it, sir.” Bentley suggested, in a manner that almost suggested that he’d had his own copies of the library keys for many years.
> “Perhaps I did,” Canny agreed.
Canny was certainly tired, but he found himself returned to that awkward condition in which mere exhaustion wasn’t nearly sufficient to carry him over the threshold of oblivion. His mind was still far too active to let go of consciousness, even if it fell into delirium. Oddly enough, though, it wasn’t the memory of looking death in the face that came back to haunt him; it was Alice Ellison’s sarcastic account of the illusions that might be born of flashes of apparent light.
At the time, he’d rejected the account, not merely because the family luck had the statistical evidence of Henri Meurdon’s computer to support it, but also because Lissa Lo had confirmed the objective reality of the streaks that lesser mortals couldn’t perceive. Now that he was in reduced mental circumstances, though, doubt began to nibble away at both convictions.
How often had he played roulette or chemin de fer, rather than poker, in Meurdon’s casino? And how often had he played more than one game in the course of a single twelve- or sixteen-hour session? Given that the only thing Meurdon could conveniently tabulate was the record of the chips that he bought and cashed in, how could Meurdon know that his winnings were as consistent in games of chance as they were in games of skill? Wasn’t it possible—probable, even—that Meurdon had been reading more into the figures than could be legitimately deduced, perhaps because he wanted to be convinced himself that luck really did exist, and could be tamed?
Then again, how much did Lissa Lo’s claims really amount to, even if they were honest? She saw streaks when he saw flashes, but how could either of them know that they were the same streaks? More importantly, how could either of them know, given that the streaks coincided with similar events, that the flashes of light and clouds of darkness were not reflexive physiological responses to similar circumstances and similar anticipations? They had both seen streaks when zero came up on Meurdon’s wheel, while Stevie Larkin and the other players had apparently remained oblivious to any deconstruction of the moment, but might that only mean that they had similar nEurological disorders, likely to react to surges of excitement—or surges of anxiety—in the same pathological fashion?
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