No Time To Cry

by James Oswald

  DeVilliers looks at me like a dog whose owner has just made a funny noise. ‘Pete . . . ? Oh yes. The detective inspector. Your boss, no less. And who did kill him, then?’

  I point at Bailey’s chest. ‘He did it himself, of course. After his lackey on the floor there had spent a couple of hours torturing him to find out what he knew. You know that. Your man Adrian showed me the video footage. Must be useful, having that kind of hold over a detective superintendent.’

  Bailey pushes himself up from the desk and takes a step towards me. ‘Like I said, delusional. Sooner we get her out of here and in a cell, the better it will be for all of us.’ He’s reaching for my arm when his phone rings. I suppress the urge to glance at the hidden camera in the corner. The one Izzy’s monitoring.

  ‘You might want to get that,’ I say, but Bailey’s already on it. The moment he stares at the screen, it stops ringing.

  ‘Unknown number. Come on, Fairchild. Enough of this nonsense.’ He takes another step forward, and then his phone pings at him again. A text this time. He swipes at the screen in irritation at the distraction, then stares at the image on display. ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘You don’t know him, but that’s my brother Ben. The man holding the knife is Adrian there.’ I nod in the bodyguard’s direction, and as if by magic his own phone begins to ring. Veronica should be watching the video feed from the cameras in here too, piped through to her from the control room at the back of the building. Her timing is spot on.

  ‘You’ll really want to answer that,’ I tell him. Ever the professional, he looks to his boss for permission first. DeVilliers was always florid, but his face looks like it’s about to burst now, which would save us all a lot of hassle. Instead of exploding, he nods, and Adrian takes the call.

  ‘Yes?’ He goes silent as whoever is on the other end of the line tells him something very important.

  I turn my attention back to Bailey, still staring at the image of my brother. ‘As I was saying, sir. That’s my brother, Ben. All of us in here are guilty of something, I’m sure. But he’s as innocent as the day. The only thing he ever did wrong was being related to me, and that’s hardly something he had any control over.’

  ‘What are you blethering on about, Fairchild?’

  ‘My brother was abducted by Adrian over there, on the instructions of his boss, Mr DeVilliers. Also over there.’ I point at them, just in case he’s not sure who I’m talking about. ‘They threatened to kill him if I didn’t bring Isobel DeVilliers to them and then hand myself in at the nearest police station. That sounds like a crime to me, so I expect you’ll be wanting to arrest the two of them, won’t you?’

  ‘You’re beyond insane, Fairchild. This could be staged for all I know. For all I care.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s not staged. I can prove that image was sent from Adrian’s phone just a few hours ago. I can also prove that the hand holding the knife is his.’

  Three pairs of eyes stare at me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much concentrated hatred. There’s a fourth pair of eyes in the room of course, but Dan Penny was never all that quick on the uptake. Bailey can see the trap I’ve set for him though. If he doesn’t at the very least arrest Adrian, then he’s complicit in Ben’s abduction. If he does, then DeVilliers will hang him out to dry.

  ‘Clever girl.’ It’s DeVilliers himself who breaks the uneasy silence. ‘It won’t do you any good though. Nothing that happens in this room will get out beyond its walls. And, besides, you’re wanted for the murder of Detective Inspector Copperthwaite. Nobody’s going to believe a word you say.’ He shakes his head in fake contrition, then turns to his bodyguard. ‘Adrian. Put this woman out of my misery, will you?’

  Adrian still has his phone to his ear, which I take as a positive sign. The look on his face is less reassuring. His frown has turned to an angry glare, and he ends the call, puts the phone away with slow, measured motion. Then he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a gun.

  48

  The office isn’t large, maybe four yards by six. I’m at one end, by one of two windows that look down on the street outside. Adrian’s standing beside the door, as far from me as he can get. It’s still not far enough. He’s a trained soldier, guns are second nature to him. And judging by the way he has this one pointed at me, not a shake in his hand or twitch around his eyes to be seen, killing doesn’t worry him much either. Too late, I remember the look on his face when he showed me the video of Pete’s death. It’s back again.

  ‘Sit.’ He nods his head in the direction of the chair. I haven’t really got much option but to comply, even though I can’t help thinking about the last person who was in this position. I should be terrified, should be on my knees begging for mercy, but somehow the fear isn’t there. Instead I feel nothing but calm.

  ‘The thing I don’t understand,’ I say as I settle myself gently into the seat. ‘The thing that’s been bothering me ever since this started, really, was why you had to torture Pete before you shot him. Were you worried he knew more about your operation than you thought?’

  Bailey opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again, glances up at the ceiling rose and shakes his head.

  ‘Worried this is being recorded?’

  ‘Tie her up.’ Bailey ignores me, directing his order at Dan Penny. For a moment I think the detective constable’s going to ask ‘What with?’ but he’s come better prepared than that. Once more I suffer the indignity of having my wrists bound with cable ties. Penny loops them around the back of the chair so I can’t stand. Close up, I can see the sweat on his scalp, smell the fear on him like body odour. I never much liked the man, but I feel a tiny bit of sympathy for him. It’s clear he never imagined things would go this far.

  ‘You really want to do this, Dan?’ I whisper, stare past him at DeVilliers and Bailey. ‘Those two are old. They’ll be dead soon enough. But you’re still young. A life sentence, no chance of parole. Reckon you’ll go mad long before they let you out. Prison’s not a good place for ex-cops either.’

  He says nothing, but I can see from the way he shakes his head that I’ve got to him. When he stands up from tying my ankles together, he won’t look me in the eye, either, so the lickspittle does have a tiny sliver of conscience.

  ‘My guess is the girl will be in the control room at the back of the building,’ Bailey says. ‘Go fetch her.’

  Penny nods, then disappears out the door, leaving just the four of us.

  ‘You know this doesn’t end well for any of you.’ It’s meant for all of them, but I stare at Adrian as I say it. ‘Everything that’s happened so far has been recorded, and I meant it when I said you could be identified in those photographs.’

  ‘Divide and conquer, is that it?’ DeVilliers almost laughs at me. ‘You have no idea the kind of people who work for me. Reputation is everything for them. Adrian would no more turn against me than shoot himself.’

  ‘I never thought he would. He’s not the only one with his life at stake here though.’

  From where I’m sitting, I can’t see much of the reception area outside the open door, but I’ve been watching the play of shadows on the wall out there. Before I can say or do anything, a figure bursts in, smashing into Adrian, one hand reaching for the gun. The noise is deafening as it goes off. Then someone lets out a scream of pain. Tied to the chair, all I can do is watch as Adrian swiftly overpowers his attacker. I’m only half surprised to see that it’s Dan Penny, but my surprise turns to horror as Adrian kicks him to his knees and shoots him in the back of the head. Blood spatters the window and the dead body slumps to the floor.

  ‘Stupid fucker.’ Adrian gives Penny a kick in the ribs, even though he’s past caring.

  ‘Never mind him. You fucking shot me.’

  In all the noise and commotion, I hadn’t noticed that Detective Superintendent Bailey has collapsed into the only other chair in the room. He’s hol
ding on to his chest, blood oozing between his fingers, face white as a sheet.

  ‘Shouldn’t have got in the way, then.’ Adrian raises the gun, aims it straight at Bailey’s forehead. I tense for the shot. This has not played out the way I hoped it would. Not by a long way.

  ‘Not here.’ DeVilliers reaches out and pushes the gun down so that it’s pointing at the floor. ‘Things are getting a little out of hand. Take him somewhere quiet and get rid of him. Bloody man’s more of a liability than a help. You’ll need to get a clean-up crew in here too.’ He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket, shakes it open and wipes his hands, even though I know he’s not touched anything.

  Adrian grabs Bailey, hauling him to his feet, then nods in my general direction. ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’ll deal with Miss Fairchild. We have a great deal to talk about.’

  I let my mouth drop open slightly, watching as Adrian escorts a weakly protesting Bailey from the room. DeVilliers paces back and forth for a while, pauses to stare out the window, then turns on me.

  ‘None of this needed to happen, you know.’

  I look past him, down at Dan’s dead body. I hated Penny, but I still wouldn’t have wished such a brutal execution on the guy. And it seemed like he was trying to come to my rescue at the last too. One futile, final shot at redemption. That’s going to make me feel guilty for a while.

  ‘If you’d just seen sense when I first contacted you, then this man would still be alive and there’d be no need to frame you for his murder.’

  ‘You do realise this has all been recorded, right? There’s half a dozen video cameras in this room alone and they’re all active right now.’

  DeVilliers smiles like a shark, leans on the desk with both hands and looms over me. ‘The video cameras that recorded that idiot Bailey shooting your colleague? Have no fear, my dear. They’ve been taken care of. I own the company that supplies all the equipment.’

  ‘Of course you do. That’s how you found out all about Gordon Bailey so quickly once you started looking into me.’ I’m playing for time, trying to distract him while I work away at the cable tie around my wrists. There’s a metal edge on the back of the chair I can rub it against, hoping to break it, but it’s hard to do that and not draw attention to myself.

  ‘Yes, that came as quite a surprise. He has a very sophisticated operation running. Must have taken him years to set it all up. Who knows how many officers he’s got on his payroll.’

  ‘You know I had no involvement in his operation.’

  ‘Of course. That was a bit of a disappointment, really. If you’d been bent, then corrupting you to my own ends would have been so much easier.’

  ‘Is that why you increased the price on my head? Got a few more crazies out there to try and have a pop at me?’ I can feel the plastic of the cable tie stretching even as it cuts off the circulation to my hands. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about the one around my ankles though. It’s going to be hard to choke the life out of this fucker with useless fingers and my feet shackled.

  ‘Oh, they were never going to kill you. Just chase you away. It worked, for a while. If you’d only stayed away, things would have been just fine.’

  ‘For you, maybe. Izzy, not so much.’

  ‘Ah yes. Isobel.’ DeVilliers shoves his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a tiny pistol. The kind of thing they sell in American big-box stores as ‘handbag guns’. The essential accessory every girl needs. It looks stupid in his fat hand, but lethally stupid all the same.

  ‘I don’t much like getting my hands dirty.’ He holds the gun awkwardly, looking around it until he finds the safety catch and slides it off. ‘But needs must. Isobel was a pretty little thing, when she was younger. Very willing once she learned what was good for her. I looked after her well too. It would have broken poor Margo’s heart if something bad had happened to her. But now, after all the trouble you women have given me of late, I find I don’t really care what Margo thinks any more.’

  ‘And Charlotte?’ I flex my wrists and feel the cable tie snap. Relief is tinged with pins and needles, but I need to keep this megalomaniac idiot talking while I work out what to do with my feet.

  ‘She’ll get over it. Poor brainless Charlotte doesn’t have the intelligence to be sad for long. An expensive cruise with her mother, a couple of months in the sun. She’ll have forgotten all about your feckless brother and you.’ He raises the tiny pistol and points it at my head. ‘You know, in a way I should be grateful. I didn’t know about vein pattern matching until you told me. That’s not a mistake I’ll make again.’

  I’m sitting in the chair that Pete died in, the same office that he died in too. With the grey light filtering in through the windows behind him, I can’t really make out the details of the gun or the expression on Roger DeVilliers’ face. I should be panicking, fearful, shaking even, facing certain death here. Instead that strange calm that’s settled over me since I first walked in here a half-hour ago now coalesces into a clear, familiar voice speaking a single, simple word.

  ‘Duck!’

  Something flies across the room from the still-open doorway as I throw myself sideways out of the chair. DeVilliers tenses, spasms, his finger pulling the trigger. Another loud explosion sets my ears ringing, and I feel the heat of a bullet whip past me, through the space where my head just was. As I crash to the floor, the chair comes with me, cable tie still looped around my ankles and the central pole. I expect another shot any second now. Tangled up as I am, I’m in no position to avoid it.

  Nothing happens, and as the ringing in my ears from the gunshot subsides, so I hear an odd gurgling noise. Then a thump on the carpet as DeVilliers falls to his knees. He’s twitching and jerking like he’s having an epileptic fit, but the rapid clicking suggests a more satisfying explanation. I kick out, breaking the last of the cable ties as he slumps onto the floor alongside Dan Penny’s dead body. As I haul myself to my feet I can see the twin wires of the Taser stretching back across the room to where Izzy stands, a wide grin of triumph pasted across her face.

  ‘Oh my God. That felt so good.’

  49

  It takes me a long time to get my brain working. All I can do is lean against the desk and stare. Eventually the clicking stops as the Taser runs out of charge. I’m not sure you’re supposed to keep on using it once the intended target’s been incapacitated, but I can appreciate just why Izzy might want to give Roger DeVilliers more than the recommended dose.

  ‘Ben?’ I ask after what seems like an hour.

  ‘He’s OK. In the car. They’d locked him in the back.’

  I’m unsteady on my feet, but I force myself first to stand, then to crouch down and put a finger to DeVilliers’ neck. He has a pulse, but is unconscious, a bubbly smear of drool leaks from the side of his mouth, and he smells like he’s let go in the trouser department. The gun’s still in his hand, one pudgy finger stuck in the trigger guard. I’m about to reach for it and disarm him when it occurs to me that leaving him in very obvious possession is a much better idea. There’s a fresh hole in the wall behind where I was sitting that the forensics experts will find fascinating. He might still find a way to wriggle out of the child abuse charges, but I’ll settle for possession of a handgun and attempted murder just now. It’s all on tape anyway.

  ‘Where’s Adrian?’ I remember the short, one-sided fight. The way he casually executed Dan Penny. Looking over at the dead body sprawled on the floor I can feel the puke rising in my throat and fight it back. This crime scene’s messy enough as it is already.

  ‘Blondie? He’s gone. No idea where. There’s a man tied to the chair outside though. Looks like he’s been shot.’

  I stagger across the room, push past Izzy and see Gordon Bailey sitting on one of the receptionist chairs. The way his head’s lolled to one side I can tell he’s passed out. There’s a fair slick of blood on the floor bene
ath his drooping hand too, every chance he might bleed out. It’s tempting to just let him, but then I wouldn’t get to see him in the dock. A quick check shows the bullet has gone through his arm, not his chest as I’d initially thought. More’s the pity. I search around for something to use as a tourniquet, settle for his belt in the end. Cinching it tight brings a grunt of pain, but Bailey stays unconscious. I’m surprised the police aren’t here already. Suppose I’m going to have to call them.

  ‘You were meant to use the Taser on the driver, not your— DeVilliers there.’ I point back at the office.

  Izzy shrugs. ‘There wasn’t a driver.’

  It takes a moment for my brain to catch up. ‘What?’

  ‘It was weird. I was watching you on the cameras. Making sure it was feeding to the address you gave me. I waited like you said, then went out and tapped on the car door. But there wasn’t anyone in the front of the car, and it was locked. I came back and shut myself in the control room. Watched what was happening. Then Blondie shows up, opens the door like it’s just an unlocked cupboard. He still had that gun on him. You know, the one he used to . . .’ Izzy’s got her back to the office door now, the Taser still in her hand, its wires trailing behind her and into the man who used to be her father.

  ‘He didn’t shoot you though.’ I hear how stupid it sounds as the words come out, but I’m still trying to understand what’s happened and how different from my hastily concocted plan it is.

  ‘Well, duh.’ Izzy drops the Taser and raises her hands in an unhelpful gesture. ‘Thought he was going to, mind. But he just looked at me, said, “You win” and chucked me a set of keys.’ She shoves her hand into a pocket and brings them out. There’s a security swipe card for the tower block on the keyring too, which will come in very handy.

  ‘He did a runner? I guess that makes sense if he knew the game was up.’