The man looked almost demented. His clothing was dirty and ripped, and one arm was hanging down, the sleeve shredded. His shirt was soaked in blood, which was dripping from his stomach and forming a small, glossy puddle at his feet. He had a wild look in his eyes. For a man who’d just been shot, he looked livelier than he had any right to.
Palmer stayed very still. His gun was by his side but pointing the wrong way. It would take a visible effort to bring it round. If he tried, Henzigger, even in his state, would kill him without blinking.
‘Looks like you’ve lost this one, Toby,’ Palmer said, with more confidence than he felt. His voice was shaky and he felt an insane urge to giggle. His back was burning badly now, and he was beginning to feel light-headed. He tried to rationalise his situation; either he’d taken another shot without realising it and was sinking into shock, or he was just over-excited.
He wondered how Riley was getting on. He hoped she’d got out all right.
Henzigger nodded slowly. His body shuddered. He took a couple of great gulps of air and swayed a bit, but the gun in his fist didn’t waver by a millimetre. Palmer gave him full marks for cool; no denials, no threats, no claims about how he was going to get out of here and live the high life somewhere in the Caribbean. He simply stared in what could have been bewilderment or anger, but which Palmer guessed was just good old, plain disbelief.
‘Damn,’ Henzigger said at last in a breathless whisper, as if reading his mind. ‘I should have listened to Hilary. He said you were bad news. You and your girlfriend.’ He coughed and spat something onto the floor, where it lay glistening wetly in the dirt. ‘Say, as a matter of interest, she’s not butch, is she?’
Palmer shook his head, eyes on Henzigger’s gun muzzle. He knew what the American was doing: the question was meant to provoke him into an unwise move. But he wasn’t going to play. They were thirty feet apart, which was quite a distance for a pistol shot in dubious light. But it was still like staring into a black bucket, and he didn’t doubt that Henzigger knew how to shoot. One wrong flinch and that would be the end of it.
‘Yeah, well who cares, right?’ Henzigger coughed again and shook his head. ‘Are the cops coming?’
Palmer nodded once. ‘Not just ordinary cops, either.’
‘Yeah?’ Henzigger sounded genuinely interested, in spite of the rattle in his throat. Palmer thought he might be balancing on the edge of hysteria. ‘Black-hats, huh? Say, is it right they still carry truncheons over here? Hell of a way to arm cops, you ask me. If they tried that in LA, they’d get the crap beat out of them.’ He tried to laugh but it brought on a fit of coughing instead. He nearly doubled over with the effort, but the gun never wavered, and Palmer had to marvel at the other man’s control.
He heard a noise from out in the darkness. A footfall. Deliberate. If Henzigger heard it, too, he didn’t react. If it was one of the Colombians, Palmer knew he was in trouble. If not, he didn’t want to get in the way. But he might as well play for time.
‘Why did you have to do that to Hilary?’ he asked.
Henzigger shrugged. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. ‘Shit, that was the Colombians, not me. He got in the way and let Myburghe slip away. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I woulda just given him a slap, but they had their orders. That’s how they do things back there. It’s called - what’s it in French?’
Palmer supplied the answer. ‘Pour encourager les autres.’ He’d been right. Hilary’s death had been punishment, not torture.
But Toby didn’t appear to have heard him. ‘Well, can’t stand talking here all day,’ he said suddenly. He staggered away from the stable door and stood directly beneath the light illuminating the yard, suddenly larger than life. He even had a semblance of a smile on his face. ‘Things to do, places to go.’ He was talking louder than before, and making no attempt to hide, as if bidding goodnight to a fellow drinker in a bar.
Palmer stared at him. What was he playing at?
Then he had his answer. John Mitcheson stepped into the pool of light. He looked calm and steady and dangerous and was carrying his automatic by his side. He eyed Toby carefully, assessing the potential threat.
‘Whoa,’ grunted Toby. ‘Who’ve we got here?’ He turned his head unsteadily to stare at Palmer with almost comical accusation. ‘A new boy? You been playing sneaky, Palmer. That’s not cricket.’ He turned back to Mitcheson and said, ‘What’ve you done to my vaqueros, huh?’ He waved a vague hand, like a drunk talking to a lamppost. ‘No need to answer that. Believe it or not, they were supposed to be good. Top notch. Just shows, you can’t trust anybody these days.’ His voice trailed off into a faint gargle and he spat again, then shuddered as if in revulsion.
‘Put it down,’ Mitcheson urged him quietly. ‘It’s over.’
‘Uh-uh.’ Henzigger winced, then spoke in a rush, his chest heaving. ‘Can’t do that. If the black-hats get their hands on me, they’ll lock me up for a gazillion years. And that ain’t me. I’m too keen on the open air and the wind in my face.’ He smiled softly. ‘Sorry.’
As he finished speaking, he swung the gun with an almost casual air towards Palmer and pulled the trigger.
The shot was shockingly loud. But the bullet hit the ground a long way beyond Palmer and whined off into the darkness like an angry hornet, embedding itself in a stable door and tearing off a large slice of wood.
Henzigger swore and went to pull the trigger again. Mitcheson didn’t flinch. He fired twice. Both shots took Henzigger high in the chest and slammed him backwards against the stable wall. The gun fell from his hand, and with a long sigh, the American toppled lazily forward.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
********
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
By the time the first of Weller’s troops arrived in two blacked-out Range Rovers, the men inside scattering throughout the grounds with guns and torches, Palmer was standing with Riley at the front of the house under the porch light, hands empty and in clear view. Mitcheson had disappeared, pausing only to press the guns he and Palmer had used into the hands of Henzigger and the Colombians. When the forensics team came to match gunshot wounds with weapons on the scene, there had to be none that could not be accounted for.
Weller’s helicopter dropped in as Palmer and Riley were being searched and documented, and the body count being logged.
The man Riley had encountered up on the roof was still alive, although he’d taken a tumble off the scaffolding while trying to get away and was now nursing a broken shoulder and jaw. A member of the armed support unit had tried talking to him in broken Spanish, but he had remained sullen and defensive, claiming he was the victim of a misunderstanding.
His two fellow-countrymen were found dead among the trees. Both had died from gunshot wounds.
Riley glanced at Palmer when she heard this bit of news. He shrugged innocently. ‘I blame it on the films me dad took me to when I was a kid.’
‘Jesus, you two were lucky,’ commented Weller, after he’d been briefed by his senior man, a tall, grizzled figure in a dark jump-suit who gave Riley and Palmer a sceptical look before walking away to find someone to intimidate. ‘Especially with the rest of them managing to shoot each other so conveniently.’ His expression didn’t change as he stood over them, but it was clear he knew the scene wasn’t as clearcut as it seemed. He stared at Riley in her borrowed sweatshirt. She still had a smear of Myburghe’s blood on her cheek. ‘You look like you fought a battle on your face.’ He turned to Palmer and added knowingly, ‘Whereas you don’t. How’s that, then?’
‘I always carry a rabbit’s foot,’ explained Palmer, when the silence had lengthened to an awkward degree. ‘My mum swore by them.’
Weller almost smiled. ‘A resident in the village said he saw a vehicle leaving the scene shortly before my men arrived. Reckons it was a Toyota Land Cruiser going like the clappers.’ He took out a bag of mints and popped two together. For him, it was probably a sign of the stress he was undergoing. He didn’t o
ffer the bag round. ‘You wouldn’t know who the driver was, I suppose?’
They shook their heads. With luck, Mitcheson would have got clear of the area before the police managed to throw up a cordon.
‘Didn’t think you would.’ Weller stuffed his sweets back in his pocket and lifted Palmer’s hands then Riley’s, sniffing at them in turn. If he had any thoughts about the unusual aroma of cleanser, a large tub of which they’d discovered in the main kitchen, he kept them to himself. ‘When we look – and we will look, believe me – are we likely to find any fingerprints where we shouldn’t?’
‘Yes,’ said Riley. ‘Mine. There’s a small machine-pistol thing somewhere by the side of the house. I threw it over the parapet because I couldn’t work out how to use it.’ She kept her face blank. ‘And I handled a shotgun the other day, but I’m not sure where it is now.’
Weller nodded sourly. ‘Regular little Annie Oakley, aren’t you?’ he murmured.
Up on the roof, a party of medics was preparing to bring down the body of Sir Kenneth Myburghe. He had died of blood-loss, which Riley thought was probably the best outcome. A trial would have served no useful purpose other than to hurt the wrong people. She felt sorry for Lady Myburghe. She really had now lost her husband for good, and his daughters their father.
The steel briefcase, which turned out to be packed with money, caused a stir when it was discovered in the stable where Henzigger had been lying in wait for Palmer. Not as much of a stir, however, as a confessional piece of paper in Sir Kenneth’s pocket listing details of where the money had come from and who else was involved in the drugs operation.
‘Looks like His Excellency decided to take a few people down with him,’ Weller commented, studying the list. He gave a carnivore’s smile. ‘There’s a Yank I know who’s going to owe me a lot of favours by the time I get through with this little lot.’
Riley knew he was talking about Portius, and felt almost sorry for State Department man. The list must have been Myburghe’s last-ditch attempt to account for his actions, and to gain some revenge for what had been done to his son. If only, she reflected sadly, he’d thought of it sooner.
‘How much of this is going public?’ she asked Weller.
He threw a pointed look at the helicopter clattering about overhead. Its searchlight beam was lighting up half the county as it checked the woods and fields for further bodies or runaways, and the noise of the rotors must have ecgoed for miles. No doubt the press corps of half the known world would soon be on its way in, opening up the sleepy area of Colebrooke to the glare of international scrutiny.
‘Bloody difficult to hide any of it at this rate,’ Weller said bluntly, and gave her a hard look. ‘But I decide what doesn’t get reported. Got it?’
‘Okay,’ said Riley. She was happy to let the tabloids and news crews fight over the stark headline details, just as long as she got to write up the full background story. She didn’t much like the idea of Weller having any kind of say in what got published, but that was a fight she’d leave to Donald Brask. The idea of a good argument with the establishment might be just the tonic he needed. ‘Can we go?’
Weller nodded. ‘Yeah, get lost. But stay available. And don’t plan any sudden long-haul flights. Otherwise we might wonder about whether you’re ever coming back.’
When they arrived at Palmer’s Saab by the maintenance workshop, he gave an exclamation of dismay and poked his finger through a neat hole in the rear window. There was a corresponding hole in one of the side windows.
‘That should entertain my insurance broker for a while,’ he grumbled, climbing behind the wheel. He winced as he did so, a hiss escaping from between compressed lips.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ Riley asked him. She had noticed he was holding himself oddly just before the police arrived, and discovered a long burn mark across his back, with a thin line of blood dots where the skin had broken. It had been a close call. After some resistance, she’d persuaded Palmer to let a police medic give him a quick check and put on some plasters to prevent his shirt sticking to his back, with a promise to go to a doctor later that day. Neither of them had mentioned how the burn had occurred.
‘I’m fine,’ he insisted, adjusting the seat until he was comfortable. ‘It’s only a flesh wound.’ He laughed, wincing as the movement brought a stab of pain. ‘Damn. I always wanted to say that without wimping out.’
They didn’t speak much on the way back to London. There didn’t seem to be much to say. In between adjusting his position to ease his back, Palmer kept an eye on Riley until she caught him doing it and told him to stop or she’d slap him. He smiled and did as he was told. Her spirited response was a good sign.
‘What happened at the stables?’ Riley asked, as they approached the end of the motorway near Chiswick. She’d been dying to ask ever since Palmer had walked back from the stable block. His mood had been clearly sombre. Mitcheson, encouraged by Palmer to leave before the police arrived, had already disappeared into the night. ‘All that shooting. You could hve been killed.’
‘I was lucky,’ he said shortly, then added, ‘If Mitcheson hadn’t been there…’ He rolled his head in place of a shrug, and she wondered what he wasn’t telling her.
‘He shot Henzigger, didn’t he?’
Palmer nodded.
‘Wasn’t there any other way?’
‘He did what he thought was right. He thought Henzigger was going to shoot me.’
Riley stared at him, trying to read his expression in the poor light. There was something in Palmer’s voice that didn’t sound right. ‘But you don’t think he was?’
‘I don’t know. He pulled the trigger but I was lucky. He missed.’
Riley knew instinctively that it was all she was going to get out of him. He wasn’t defending Mitcheson, but neither was he condemning him. She guessed it was all she could expect and was grateful for it.
After dropping her outside her flat, he drove away into the dawn with a promise to keep in touch.
*******
CHAPTER FORTY
They kept their heads down, urged by Weller to keep a low profile while the press furore grew like an insatiable monster, feeding on every scrap of information, real or imagined. Initial reports of an armed siege at a country house gave way to lurid accounts of fire-fights in the Royal Triangle and dead terrorists being carried off in body bags, then drug smugglers being tracked across three continents before being cornered in rural Gloucestershire in what was described as a co-ordinated undercover police operation.
Riley stayed busy working on the wider story, drafting and re-drafting words which she knew would be subjected to the closest scrutiny by Weller and his people, and even then might never see the light of day. Donald Brask, healthy once more and fired with enthusiasm, left his electronic hideaway to sit with her in her flat, helping her put together the story for maximum effect. In between, he made a series of phone calls, narrowing down the list of editors to be approached when – and if – they were given the green light.
‘What if they kill it?’ she said sombrely, meaning the Home Office. A momentary lull in activity had brought a faint deadening of optimism. The idea that she had deliberately not gone to press with the account of the shoot-out in Colebrooke House in favour of producing the wider story later kept disturbing her waking hours. If the authorities didn’t let her publish what she knew, she would be too late to do anything.
But Donald seemed impervious to doubt. ‘Trust me, sweetie,’ he told her, ‘they won’t kill it. They can’t. They might quibble over bits and pieces… a name here, a detail there. But they can’t stop this ball rolling, I promise. It’s already gone too far.’
When she saw the twinkle in his eye, Riley felt a knot of excitement in her gut. Donald was planning something. ‘What are you up to?’ she asked him.
He replied by placing a finger alongside his nose. ‘Building expectation, sweetie. Enough of this is in the public domain to have gained its own momentum. Even Weller mu
st know that. The shootings, Myburghe’s alleged involvement, the Colombians. But the dots need joining together. Without that, it’s a series of random events. And that’s what you’re doing: joining up the dots.’ He smiled like a cat with a large bowl of cream. ‘I’m merely letting it be known in certain quarters that I have access to the full story, and that it will come out. And Donald Brask, sweetie, as everyone knows, never makes claims he cannot deliver.’
It wasn’t until the second week after the shootings that Weller put in an appearance. He was cheerfully open about the progress of the case.
‘The Americans are smarting a bit,’ he told her. ‘They don’t like admitting that one of their people went bad. Neither do we, but we don’t make such a song and dance about it. Myburghe was a blue-blood, and everyone knows they’re as mad as snakes, anyway.’
Mention of Myburghe reminded her of the funeral. Sir Kenneth’s ex-wife and two daughters had been captured on camera, attending a private service at Colebrooke village church. Pale and nervous, they had flitted briefly across the public consciousness, before disappearing behind a solid screen of friends and wider family. Starved of willing subjects, the press had soon discovered other targets for their attention in the shape of official releases in the UK and the US about new measures to tighten up accountability in government and state agencies, to ensure nothing like it happened again. Quite what it was that had happened, however, hadn’t yet been fully disclosed.
Weller watched the cat, which was circling Riley’s living room with its tail erect, eyeing the policeman with a cold, flat stare. ‘What’s his problem?’
‘I think he fancies you,’ said Riley. ‘Why haven’t Palmer and I been interviewed?’
‘You will be, in due course. We’ve been collating background facts, making sure we don’t trip over our feet. There’s a lot of muck to sort out.’ He noticed Riley’s laptop on the table. ‘I’d like to read your notes when you’re done. I can’t demand them of course, but it would help me fill in a few gaps. Confidentially. You happy with that?’
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