“Tommy . . . He — he has a gun,” Michael said finally, dispelling Tommy’s ten-second reverie.
“Where’s Maddy?”
Michael explained.
“Michael, she’s pregnant! How could you let her . . . ?”
Tommy headed silently up the muddy lane, the Glock at the ready. Michael followed.
Maddy saw Joe the second she had emerged from the building. The staff inside had encountered nothing unusual, and she surmised that she and Michael had arrived first. As she exited the side door of the home, there he stood under a tree, his clothes and hair soaked. He held a large, battered gun in one hand.
“I’ve seen you,” he said in a daze.
“We talked,” Maddy called to him. “At the funeral.” Joe was several yards away and it felt awkward conversing at this distance. “Your sister called me. What do you hope to gain here, Joe?”
“That bitch killed John. It wasn’t the book dealer.”
“How do you know?”
“From a solid source. There’s a murder warrant out for her. She’s killed other people.”
“She won’t come back for her mother or her sister . . .”
“She keeps in touch with them.”
Maddy thought it significant that Joe hadn’t rushed inside. He had hesitated, but if he chose to shoot her, he would to try to breach the side door and probably continue shooting his way up to Ida’s room.
“She’s gone, Joe. Harming these women won’t lure her back.”
Tommy Verden, with Michael trailing, appeared on the path. Maddy saw them first and then Joe turned as he followed her gaze through the fog. Michael moved to one side, prepared to interpose himself between the gunman and his wife. Tommy stayed in place and held his weapon straight out towards Joe Carpenter, who looked in awe at the figure with the gun.
“This isn’t going to happen,” Tommy said.
“This is the second time, fella,” Joe said. He started to whine. “Why shouldn’t I find out where she is? I’ve the right.”
“Are you sure she killed John?” Maddy asked, but it sounded like the delaying tactic it was. Joe swung his gun towards Verden.
Tommy spoke: “It was Dunning Malloway who told you she did it. Malloway is on the take. You can’t trust him.”
“I have the right,” Joe repeated. He held his weapon pointed at Tommy’s head. “Malloway told me Greenwell is dead. The girl killed John.”
Maddy knew a standoff when she saw one. She watched Michael, in an agony of fear, edge forward to block Joe Carpenter in case he swung his gun back towards her. Maddy knew that his intervention would set off the duellists. She moved between the two armed men, altering the trigonometry.
“You can’t kill three people.”
“Why not?” Joe said. “You’re protecting that bitch.”
Maddy took another step towards the mechanic. He couldn’t miss at this range. “Because I’m expecting a son,” she said.
Joe Carpenter took a long time to lower his firearm, and Tommy did not move. Even when Joe relented, the veteran detective kept the Glock trained on him. Maddy came even closer, ensuring that Tommy would have no clear shot, and began to talk softly to the Lincolnshire man, who now seemed forlorn and pitiful. Tommy gave Michael a frustrated look but Michael could only shrug. Neither of them could hear the conversation. The older man kept his aim steady.
Tommy’s mobile phone rang. Maddy continued speaking to Joe, who began to cry. The caller could have been anyone, but Tommy’s decades of experience had made him slightly psychic and he flipped open the cell, all the while keeping his Glock trained on Joe Carpenter.
“Hello, Peter,” he said, as evenly as possible. He listened for a minute before walking over to Carpenter and handing him the phone in exchange for Joe’s weapon.
Maddy insisted that Tommy Verden release Joe Carpenter, who stepped backwards, now unarmed. While the three men stood apart, like western gunfighters who had missed their moment, she disappeared into the rest home.
Fortunately for Maddy, the facility administrator hadn’t heard the confrontation outside and she let her upstairs to the old woman’s room. Mabel Ida Nahri snored peacefully in her bed. Maddy kissed her forehead. Then she went to the bookshelf and took the boxed set of Avatar DVDs, still shrink-wrapped in its plastic, and tucked it under her sweater. No one would challenge her; a pregnant woman had her privileges.
When Maddy emerged, Joe Carpenter had gone and the other two men were standing guard at the door. Down the long driveway, they heard Jasper begin to howl. The dog was hungry.
CHAPTER 43
Like Joe Carpenter, Dunning Malloway had too many targets, but he wasn’t displeased to find Peter Cammon standing in his direct line of fire. He had been waiting a long time to shoot someone — waiting for a hundred thousand pounds sterling to kill the right someone. Dunning had never shot anyone, but he had no qualms. He hadn’t faltered in the Buffalo parking lot when he had a good bead on the girl. The old detective had jogged his arm and now his interfering had come full circle. Dunning would wade through any number of bloodsuckers and bureaucrats and old men to get to the girl — he was sure that she lurked somewhere in the house — and Cammon provided that little extra motive.
It did not appear to Malloway that Peter was armed, but he might have something in his hand hidden by the table top. It was often said around the office, mostly by Counter, that “Old Cammon hides things.” Once, when a junior colleague pressed the matter, Frank Counter had said, “Cammon goes rogue from the get-go. Doesn’t share. There’s a dozen ways he hides things.”
Dunning waited a few seconds longer. He took an extra moment to analyze his situation, and thus, unwittingly, planted a seed of doubt in his own mind. Did Cammon really have a gun? Why didn’t he move? Dunning shifted to his right to flank the dining room table and saw Olivier Seep on the floor behind the detective. At the same time, he caught sight of another man in the kitchen. He was confused. Cammon still wasn’t moving; it was almost as though he had been struck mute by the pistol in Dunning’s hand. Simple arithmetic told Dunning that he now had three times the witnesses to eliminate. But none of them was armed. He began to debate with himself. His gun should have produced clarity of purpose: kill them all and find the girl. Unfortunately, Cammon’s stoic refusal to move provoked Malloway’s indignation, and outrage is the enemy of judgement in a man who has never killed.
Peter Cammon made his own calculations and decided to wait his opponent out. The Lorcin pistol, held just below the table, lacked the stopping force of Malloway’s weapon, although Peter was close enough to take a decent shot. He held to his plan: he would use the unreliable gun only under extreme duress. He could hear Tommy Verden now: “Let’s see, you shot a colleague with an unlicensed popgun probably stolen from a hooker by the hooker’s killer. No gold stars for you.”
Peter hoped to make this a negotiation, otherwise known as buying time. Time burns off impulse, he thought. Talk leads to rationalization. Wait him out. As long as Malloway and Pascal Renaud didn’t panic, the man who spoke first would lose.
“Is the girl here?” Dunning Malloway said.
“No,” Peter said. “She was, but not now.” Malloway was staring at the bloody bundle strapped to the sideboard. Peter registered his confusion at the sight of the blood-soaked near-corpse.
“She did that to Seep? Why?”
“You’ve forgotten in all this, Dunning, that the girl always knew Seep killed her boyfriend. She’s always had that in her mind. This is payback.”
“But she was complicit. Made a deal.”
The more he whinges, the weaker his resolve to end this with gunfire, Peter estimated. “This is over, Dunning. Alida is gone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The fading of Malloway’s hopes might well spark him to shoot, Peter knew, and his objective became to keep him arguing.
Peter decided to prod from another direction while looking for an opening. “The cricket syndicate is going to be rolled up, Dunning. We know about the deal with the gamblers and the Pakistanis. We know the head man.”
“You can’t touch him. You don’t even know his name.”
“His nickname is the Sword,” Peter said mildly. “Real name Devi. Alida told us. Souma in Delhi confirmed it.”
“She wouldn’t dare tell. And if she did talk to you, which I doubt, she can’t be far away. She’ll show up,” Malloway replied. He was justifying himself, and that was fine with Peter.
“She did show up. She was here and she won’t be back. Face it, Dunning, you can’t shoot all of us.”
“A gunfight can be staged.”
It happens sometimes that an innocent civilian facing a gun barrel can’t stand the tension any longer and tries to interact with the gunman. Peter had seen this form of instant Stockholm Syndrome before. And so Pascal Renaud chose that exact unpropitious moment to satisfy his curiosity.
“Don’t you want the Booth letters?” Pascal blurted, now positioned near Peter. “They’re worth a fortune. If you kill us, they may never surface.”
“I couldn’t care less about the letters,” said Malloway.
“He cares about the girl,” Peter said, trying to keep his voice even. He shifted to block the gunman’s angle of fire on Pascal, while continuing to shelter Seep on the floor behind him. He held the pistol motionless under the table. “His patron, the Sword, wants her dead.”
Seep began to revive, exhaling deeply between groans and whimpers. He struggled against the cable that bound him to the sideboard. Malloway took two steps to the right and fired a shot into Seep’s right foot. The professor screamed and flailed, his left foot slamming against the floor. The blast caused Peter and Pascal to jump, even as Peter noted the accuracy of the shot. He fought to stay in position. Fortunately, Malloway still failed to see the tiny pistol under the table.
“Where’s the girl, Professor Seep?” Malloway said.
Peter risked a step to his left, so that he half-shielded Seep. “Dunning, you don’t get it, do you? He doesn’t know where the girl is planning to go. If he did, she would have killed him rather than just beating him. She’s covered her tracks.”
Malloway’s dilemma was evident to Peter and Pascal. Guns transform men, it is said. Malloway, having fired once, felt the authority of the pistol, Peter could see. Malloway turned to Olivier Seep and started to crouch down. Peter took the opening to raise his weapon.
The back of Dunning Malloway’s head exploded in a way that morbidly recalled to Peter the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination. The right rear quadrant of his brain burst from its cavity. Minute pieces of the carapace carved like shrapnel into thirty expensive paintings, while brain matter and blood re-coated the artwork in arterial red. The paintings rattled with the discharge of the .45.
Peter clutched the unfired pistol in his hand. He looked from the gun to Neil Brayden, who seemed as if he might fire the .45 again.
Cammon saw what Brayden saw, that a second bullet would be unnecessary. Brayden pointed his gun slightly downward but did not immediately move from the far doorway. His left arm hung at an odd angle. Peter noted that like himself and Pascal, Brayden had tiptoed in without shoes. His big toe was sticking out through a hole in his sock.
“I saw all your shoes in the entrance,” Brayden said, his voice hoarse. “It’s like an effing mosque out there.”
Pascal Renaud leaned against the kitchen doorway with relief, Malloway’s brain spray not having quite reached him. But Peter knew that the crisis wasn’t over. For one thing, Brayden wasn’t moving and it was a short segment of a circle to a new deadly vector. Peter made sure the safety on the Lorcin was off.
“Neil, why did you do that?”
Brayden’s eyes were glazed. “I killed him.”
Peter grasped that he wasn’t referring to Dunning Malloway. “Who?”
“An hour ago. Tom Hilfgott.”
Of all the people Peter had encountered lately, Tom Hilfgott was the least connected to violence. “What happened?”
“He thought I had slept with Nicola last night. He got it wrong. Any other night, sure, but it was Malloway who slept with her. Tom thought I had screwed his wife. Ironic, isn’t it? He must have heard something going on in her bedroom. He came after me with a golf club.”
“Self-defence,” Pascal whispered. Peter wasn’t sure if his friend was trying to comfort Neil Brayden or reflexively offering an academic’s observation.
“Shut up, Pascal. Neil, what made you come here?’
“Nicola tried to stop the fight,” Brayden said. “She told me Malloway was on his way here.”
“Neil, you have to put down the gun.”
“I have to go,” Brayden said. He was out of the room in five seconds. Peter moved quickly to Seep and checked his vital signs. His breathing was harsh and his pulse was elevated, signalling shock. Peter wadded his jacket and jammed it against the foot wound. He had Renaud unhook the bleeding man from the sideboard and check for major cuts and bruises while Peter went to the telephone in the kitchen and dialled 9-1-1.
As the emergency operator answered, in French and English, Peter heard a shot from outside. He tried to gauge the direction of the sound. If Brayden had fired the .45 again, it logically should have come from the front of the house, his escape route, but Peter remained unsure. He had no idea of the size or configuration of the backyard, and doubted that he could easily gain access. But however illogical it seemed, Peter was confident that Neil had fired the gun at the rear of the residence. Peter had no idea who the target might be.
“Attends,” Peter said and passed the phone to Renaud, who accepted it with his blood-smeared hand. “Give them directions. Police and ambulance. Tell them one gunshot around the back. But stay here, Pascal.”
Peter slid the patio door open about two feet and got down on his hands and knees. He crept across the threshold and onto a wooden porch, where an opaque panelled railing shielded him from the lawn. He paused to check the small pistol. The dining room chandelier cast a faint glow through the window but otherwise the backyard remained in shadow. He heard movement from the end of the property but could see nothing. Peter had no choice but to stand if he wanted to evaluate the danger. Whoever Brayden had shot at likely had the house under surveillance front and back. Brayden must have seen the men waiting at the front and dodged around the side lane to the backyard, firing a shot as he ran. Too late Peter understood his own mistake. Brayden was still at the side of the house and thus had not triggered the photosensitive floodlights at the rear. But Peter did so now by standing up. Below him emerged Neil Brayden in stark blue-tinged light at the edge of the lawn. He turned to Peter in agony, and then looked back towards the far reaches of the lawn, which remained in darkness.
A shot came from the dark but missed Brayden and slammed into the base of the porch, launching splinters everywhere. Peter had encountered death-by-cop before. He vaulted the railing and landed hard, just behind Brayden. He kept the gun in his hand as he jumped.
The figures hiding in the back bushes saw only two agitated men with weapons in their hands.
Another shot went over Cammon and Brayden’s heads.
Peter shouted, “Deroche!”
Brayden, taller than Peter by several inches, aimed the .45 at a noise in the hedge in front of him. If he let loose with the big pistol he would blow apart everything in range. Peter began to raise his feeble weapon.
Sylvain Deroche rushed out of the shadows directly at Brayden in a foolhardy bid for glory. It was a suicidal tactic and it drew a second policeman from the hedge, pistol drawn. Brayden had both officers in his sights. Deroche’s man fired at Brayden but missed. The bullet struck the picture window in the dining room and imprinted a spider web pattern in the glass. Peter was now pointing his weapon
at a slight upward slant at Brayden’s skull. As the pistol touched the man’s hairline Peter pulled the trigger.
Brayden got off one shot. Another policeman fired twice, bullets zinging over the heads of the men on the grass. Peter fell to the ground. Deroche launched himself to his right and onto Brayden’s crippled shoulder, but the man was already dead. Peter saw the .45 fall from Brayden’s grip.
Deroche turned over to look at Peter, who in all the chaos still clutched his pistol. One of the officers gently wrested it from his hand. Peter turned to the inspector and both men instinctively gazed back at the one thing that had struck both of them as not making sense. The dining room window had not shattered. Olivier Seep had installed bullet-proof glass in his residence.
Sylvain Deroche got to his knees. “Let me guess, Peter. We won’t find any old letters inside.”
Peter nodded. “Not even one.”
CHAPTER 44
Eight men laid into the oars, five on at the down-current gunwales, three to the upstream side. They rowed into the unwelcoming fog. The wind had abated and the surface of the St. Lawrence lay flat as a table, at least until the crew and passengers lost sight of it entirely in the enveloping mist.
The Marylander moved back from the bow and took shelter from the drizzle with the horses at the centre of the vessel, which was as much raft as boat. He marked his large trunk stacked in with the other luggage at the stern. To pass the time, he read the notice tacked to the tethering post. It advertised the Queen’s insistence that excise be paid on imported goods and boxed liquors at the Montreal landing. He smiled his actor’s grin, but only for a few seconds, for he felt a rush of loneliness as he floated between invisible shores. The South lay far behind him.
The Drowned Man Page 39
