by Nick Oldham
‘You are going to get it,’ the man said huskily. A smell of alcohol joined the other fine aromas. ‘And you’re gonna like it.’
Donaldson allowed himself to emit a slight squeak of air from his lungs, hoping it would sound like the sort of noise a girl might make. He snuggled down deeper under the duvet, aware of the figure leaning over and a hint of warm breath, garlic laden, wafting across. He must have had the garlic mushrooms as a starter, Donaldson thought.
‘I’m gonna shag you silly, you little bitch.’
It was at that point that Donaldson felt enough was enough.
Although he was sick and injured, the sugar-rush of adrenalin ensured that these disabilities were sidelined.
He moved fast and hard and violently, all his training kicking in – particularly the offensive tactics he had learned and continued to practise to perfection over the years.
The duvet went down. The back of his left hand, bunched into an iron fist, arced upwards and slammed directly into Danny Bispham’s face. It was a perfect landing and even as he continued to move, Donaldson patted himself mentally on the back for this excellent blow. It may only have travelled less than two feet, but the power of the punch was tremendous, rather like being hit by a flat iron.
Donaldson felt the gristle crack, the septum snap, and the resultant mush get forced back into Bispham’s face. The second punch he had received in more or less the same spot that evening.
He fell backwards, the combination of the blow and its surprise knocking him back against the bedroom door. His senses reeled, the pain was intense, the shock overwhelming. He sank down on to his backside, uncomprehendingly holding his face.
By which time Donaldson was out of bed, giving the intruder no respite, dragging him to his feet, driven by that terrible combination of rage and precision. Rage at the gall of the man to think he could continue what he had started in the restaurant by putting his hand up Ginny’s skirt; precision in the way he clinically proceeded to beat the man senseless. The assault lasted less than a minute, though to Bispham it felt more like a month, until he was curled up in a ball, whining for mercy, sobbing.
Towering over him, Donaldson growled, ‘Still want to screw me?’
Tom James had been stuffed down into one corner of the office with firm orders not to move. He sat wedged there, knees drawn up, his cable-tied hands resting on his knees, watching everything that was going on. Callard was still asleep.
Flynn stood in the open doorway, one eye always on Tom, whilst he talked in whispers to Henry. ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ Flynn said. It was approaching midnight now and both men felt as though they had lived three lifetimes that day. ‘Good news is the snow seems to have eased off.’
‘Now it looks like it’s starting to freeze.’ Henry was in the hall, looking past Flynn into the office, angled so he could see Tom and Callard’s outstretched legs. ‘At least if it’s clear, they’ll be able to get the helicopter out to us at first light . . . some relief.’
‘Don’t bank on it.’
Both men exhaled simultaneously, caught each other doing it and grinned.
‘You know I didn’t take that million, or have anything to do with it,’ Flynn said, and added, ‘apropos nothing.’
‘We’ll have to see what your ex-partner says about it, won’t we? If he ever gets caught. And anyway, why are you so bothered? Do you crave for my, I dunno, stamp of approval or something?’
‘Just want you to see the truth . . . I don’t like clouds hanging over me.’
Henry gave him a scornful look. ‘I’ve got clouds queuing up to hang over me.’
‘But you’re still in the job.’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said tiredly and rolled his injured shoulder, which was stiffening up painfully, still weeping blood.
Behind them, the living-room door opened and Alison stepped out.
‘How is she?’ Henry asked.
‘OK – tired, wants to sleep.’
‘I don’t suppose you could . . .?’ Henry’s voice trailed off.
‘Put her up? I’m afraid we’re full at the inn,’ Alison said biblically.
‘She’ll have to bed down here, then. There’s a guest bedroom made up. Not ideal, but we need to keep hold of her.’
They were talking in hushed tones, but not quietly enough it seemed.
Tom piped up. ‘This is my house. You are taking liberties. This is an invasion of my civil liberties . . . you cannot do this.’
All three heads turned to him, the withering expression on all three faces identical, though Henry’s suddenly morphed into something much more serious. He stalked over to Tom, who scowled.
‘Henry fucking Christie,’ Tom sneered. ‘I know all about your chequered past, all about your very dicey history of bad judgement calls. I know you’ve been suspended before . . . you’re a freakin’ legend, mate . . . and this is all bollocks, it’ll be the icing on your cake.’
‘And yet here you are in handcuffs and I’m a superintendent.’
‘Only because you’re up the chief constable’s arsehole. Everybody knows – everybody!’
‘And yet you’re the one in handcuffs,’ Henry repeated, ‘suspected of murdering your wife, consorting with known OC targets . . . and much, much more. When the dawn comes, you’ll be fucked and facing justice, Tom. You’ll be going down for life and you’ll never set foot outside again for at least what, thirty years?’ Henry grinned. ‘By which time I’ll be in my dotage, bouncing great-grand-kids on my knees.’
Tom laughed. ‘Don’t think so, Henry,’ he said smugly. ‘You just don’t know who you’re dealing with here.’
‘And plainly, nor do you.’
Henry felt someone grip his arm and squeeze gently. It was Flynn. ‘Henry,’ he said, and did not need to speak another word. Flynn had watched him get sucked into a fruitless confrontation, a tit-for-tat argument, the only winner of which would be Tom because he had nothing to lose.
Henry nodded and withdrew from the room. In the hallway, this time definitely out of Tom’s earshot, he said, ‘Got my goat. I’m just tired and irritable.’
‘Oh I know that, but you know what worries me most?’
‘What?’
‘His confidence.’
‘Mm,’ Henry mused. ‘That phone call.’
For good measure, Donaldson bashed Bispham’s head against the door frame, a blow that caught the edge of his temple against the right angle of the door jamb and instantly split the skin. There was a slight delay, then blood poured out down the side of his face.
Bispham was thin and wiry, built like a scrapyard dog, all bones and bollocks, and he was light enough for Donaldson – much bigger and stronger and fitter – to manage easily. He forced one arm up his back, trapping the hand between his shoulder blades. Donaldson twisted the man’s ponytail around his other fist and could easily have torn it out of his skull by the roots.
Holding him thus, like a Roman shield, he manoeuvred him out of the door into the corridor. Directly opposite was the door to Alison’s bedroom and Ginny, disturbed by the commotion, had emerged sleepily in her jim-jams, her face falling with shock at the sight of Donaldson coming out of her room carrying Bispham in front of him.
‘Night-time visitor,’ Donaldson said, turning left and marching him along the corridor, Bispham’s toes hardly touching the floor. He led him to the door that opened out to the bar and noticed the splintered wood around the lock, answering a question in Donaldson’s head. Bispham had jemmied his way into the living accommodation, naughty man. Donaldson pinned him to the wall and toed the door open. He said, ‘Gonna be a cold, cold night for you, buddy boy.’
The man’s bloodied face was crushed up to the wall and he could not respond. Then, as the door opened, Donaldson reaffirmed his grip on the ponytail and the hand, and pushed him out of the door so they emerged into the pub, the bar to their left.
It was fortunate for the American that he was holding Bispham up like a shield because he was faced with
three masked and armed men who, in turn, were surprised by his sudden appearance.
The men were in a V-shaped formation. The lead man, the point of the V, was armed with a pump-action shotgun and he swung it around and pointed it at Donaldson’s writhing captive, who had also seen what was in front of him.
Donaldson had little time to react. Just enough for him to take in the situation – the weapon coming around in his direction – so he drew himself in as tightly as he could behind Bispham and held him forward like an offering.
And the shotgun was discharged from a distance of about ten feet, not giving the cartridge load the space to spread before it slammed into Bispham’s chest, right on the sternum, blowing a fist-shaped hole in him.
Donaldson held on, even though the force of the blast waved through his arms, and Bispham suddenly went limp. Dead.
He heard the cartridge being ejected, the weapon being racked as a new round slid into the breech. He held Bispham slightly to one side, now literally a dead weight, and saw the man racking the shotgun was blocking the way of the other two, causing them to hesitate unless they shot their colleague by mistake.
Using Bispham like a battering ram, Donaldson emitted a warlike roar and charged the intruders, driving the dead man into the shotgun guy before he could fire the next round, then barged on, using all his power to force him backwards, before with one last heave he threw Bispham ahead of him like a demented zombie.
Donaldson knew he had only seconds.
The element of surprise, both ways, had gone.
He turned, moving quickly, and before the men could regroup and work out what had hit them, he threw himself back through the door into the living accommodation, slammed it shut and slid the three big old bolts across.
Ginny was standing in the corridor.
‘Get down,’ he screamed, gesticulating wildly – but she was affixed to the spot, still did not know what had happened. He ran towards her, keeping low, and, being as gentle as he could about it, tackled her and carried her through into her bedroom. The door behind them seemed to explode as two shotgun cartridges ripped into it. But the door was almost as old as the pub, constructed over a hundred years before of thick oak and fitted together by craftsman-made joints and pride. It held well against the shotgun blast and the bolts made the thing virtually impregnable.
He gave Ginny a ‘shush’ gesture and on his belly he wriggled into the hallway and along to the door, keeping to the edge of the corridor, moving like a lizard, or maybe a crocodile.
At the door he stopped, listened hard, but could hear nothing and he knew why.
The intruders were not remotely interested in anything on this side of the door. They had not broken in for him or Ginny.
TWENTY
Entering the Tawny Owl had been easy, simply because the front door next to the revolving door had been left unlocked unwittingly by Danny Bispham, whose mind had been on other things. They had parked their vehicles down the road and run silently through the snow, each of the three men in black, ski masks pulled down over their features, had gone in through the front door and into the bar which was in darkness, other than for the faint glow of some low-level security lighting. The bar itself was secured by a roll-down metal mesh, and all the chairs had been upended on to tables for cleaning purposes.
The men halted just inside the pub, allowing their vision to become accustomed to the relative darkness and the geography of the place.
Jack Vincent was lead, shotgun ready, fingertip laid across the trigger. He also had a semi-automatic pistol tucked into the waistband at the back of his black jeans.
‘OK guys,’ he said and began to move them forwards to the door which led up to the first floor accommodation. That was when the staff-only door had been flung open and the blood-soaked figure of Danny Bispham came out, dancing like a drugged-up raver. Vincent’s mind didn’t fully compute what it was seeing, the fact that Bispham was being held by someone else, but he reacted in the only way he could, by pulling the trigger and blowing a hole in Bispham’s chest.
Bispham’s absence was only noticed by Sim Riddick when he sat up on the double bed in urgent need of a piss.
The pair of them, Riddick and Bispham, were sharing one of the bedrooms that the group had muscled into and intimidated the landlady into allocating to them. Napier and the boss, Jonny Cain, were using the other – sort of. Cain had instructed his men in no uncertain terms that they had to keep awake and alert just in case Jack Vincent should try anything else. Napier had been posted outside Cain’s bedroom to keep guard on his boss. Out there in the corridor, miserable, Napier had slithered down the wall, knees drawn up and his forehead wedged on them. He’d had too much to drink to be much use as a watchman, as they all had, and he had fallen quickly asleep, annoyed by the thought of Cain lording it in comfort in the double bed. ‘Boss’s privilege,’ he muttered. The gun wedged in his waistband caused him discomfort but did not prevent his eyes from shutting, and he quickly nodded off.
In the other bedroom, Cain had ordered at least one of the men to keep watch from the window which overlooked the front of the pub, whilst the other crashed out. So long as one of them kept nicks, it didn’t matter if the other was snoring. They worked it out between them: Bispham would take the first couple of hours and Riddick could get some sleep.
All four men had been anticipating action that night, but Cain had knocked any thought of reprisals on the head because of the presence of the cop, Christie. Cain decided that his revenge could wait another day and take place in another arena, but he couldn’t say the same for Jack Vincent, which was why he ordered his men to keep on guard.
Bispham had pulled a chair to the window and lit up, despite the no smoking rule of the premises. He opened the window a crack and blew his smoke out of it in order not to activate the ceiling-mounted alarm and rouse the whole establishment.
He was also fuming internally. His humiliation at the hands of the big fucking American who had knocked him on to his arse and almost broken his nose was making him seethe with fury. Most people he met and had confrontations with either backed down with their tails between their legs, or he took them on and beat them mercilessly. Despite his stature – he wasn’t a big man – he had an evil temperament coupled with an innate joy at inflicting violence and had often pounded people to the ground, smashing them down, making them beg. He especially enjoyed abusing women.
But even Bispham knew he’d met his match with the Yank. Not only was he a very big guy, but he had a look about him and the eyes of a killer. Bispham realized he would get no revenge on him . . . but the girl, well, she was another matter.
His eyes glazed over lustfully and he stroked his ponytail and touched his throbbing face as he considered the ways in which he would assault her. That would be his revenge on the American – revenge by proxy.
Jonny Cain’s orders meant nothing to him sitting at that window, his rage smouldering. OK, Jack Vincent may well have sent some ludicrous drunk to have a pop, but the chances of anything else happening that night were slim to zero, especially with the weather being like it was, killing everything. Cain was the main man, Vincent and his pathetic cronies mere nothings. They wouldn’t dare try anything.
And that was how Bispham justified his decision. He flicked his cigarette out of the window, checked on Riddick who was spreadeagled on the bed, pants unzipped, already asleep. He was in a sequence of breathing that would lead to snoring.
Bispham stood up quietly, walked past the bed to the door, stepping out and stopping when he clocked Napier in the corridor, expelled from Cain’s room. He was also asleep. He trod quietly down towards the steps and came out on the ground floor in the bar area. To the left was the door leading to the living quarters.
He went outside to the Range Rover and got the tyre lever from the boot. Coming back into the pub he hadn’t even thought about locking the outside door. He then went to work on the inner door, prising it open around the keypad lock using the tyre lever as a jemm
y. He’d broken through tougher doors in his past, and in a moment he was through into the corridor.
Already, in his excitement, the blood pulsed in his groin. He walked silently along the carpet, wondering how he would find the room he wanted. The sign on it, ‘Ginny Sleeps Here,’ was just a bit of a giveaway.
A growl came to the back of his throat. He opened the door and saw her all nicely cuddled up in bed, all warm, safe and ready for him.
Too many beers woke Sim Riddick. He sat up quickly, dreaming he had been urinating, but thankfully it was a dream. He swung out of the bed, groggy, then saw that Bispham had gone AWOL. Riddick guessed that his mate would be paying the waitress a midnight visit.
‘Tosser,’ Riddick murmured and went into the en suite to pee. Relieved, he came back into the bedroom, glanced out of the door and saw Napier asleep in the corridor. He padded over to the bedroom window where Bispham had been sitting, drew back the curtain and looked sleepily at the whitewashed view. At which point his heart nearly stopped.
The three masked figures, each carrying a weapon, running at speed up the road made him discharge an anguished cry of terror.
‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he gabbled, fastening his pants, stumbling around to find his shirt and shoes, then falling out of the room into the corridor. He booted Napier in the backside, then pounded desperately on Cain’s door, before barging through and yelling, ‘They’re here, for fuck’s sake, they’re here. And they’re tooled up.’
Cain sat up dazedly. Napier stood behind Riddick, a stupid expression on his face.
‘Get the guns,’ Cain said calmly after shaking his head.
‘What you reckon, boss?’ Henderson asked, his voice muffled by the ski mask that had slipped slightly askew and now covered part of his mouth.
‘That guy’s not one of ’em,’ Vincent said breathlessly, now hyper after shooting Bispham. He was referring to the man who had chucked the unfortunate Bispham at them, then retreated behind the thick door and locked it. ‘We’ve got one down, only three to go.’ His eyes shone wild and evil from underneath the ski mask slits.
