'Now muzzle him.'
Bill found a muzzle on the worktop, beside a kettle and a couple of mugs, and leant down to do the honours.
I turned back to Bill's colleague. 'Move away from the desk and face the wall.'
He paused, staring at me like he knew it was the end, and I had to tell him again, adding that if he co-operated nothing would happen to him. I motioned with the gun towards the wall. Finally, he did what he was told, but he still didn't look too sure about it, even with my words of reassurance.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bill move his hand towards the hook. He was going to try something. I couldn't believe it. I swung round and his hand stopped six inches from its target. He tried to put on an innocent expression, but it didn't really work. I started to tell him that it wasn't worth dying a hero, but before I could finish, his friend lunged forward and rugby-tackled me round the waist with surprising speed, one hand grabbing wildly for my gun arm, before clamping over my wrist with a strength driven by adrenalin.
'Help me, Bill,' he shouted, panic in his breath.
Bill went for the hook again, and I fell back hard against the door frame under the weight of the assault, my gun arm forced skywards.
Reflexively, I pulled the trigger. It might even have been completely accidental, I'm not sure. Either way, the result was the same. The silencer spat and the bullet caught Bill in the head. At least, I thought it did. He cried out and fell backwards, tripping over Prince before landing on his arse, both hands clutching at the side of his head.
'I'm hit!' he wailed, as blood seeped through his fingers. Prince jumped on him, whining balefully. 'I'm down, help me.'
As Bill's colleague turned round to see what was going on, he relaxed his grip on my wrist and I took the opportunity to pull my arm free and shove the silencer against his cheek.
'Oh God,' he said, at which point I kneed him very hard in the bollocks and pushed him away. As he doubled over in pain, I grabbed hold of him and pushed him back into the seat he'd been occupying until a few seconds earlier.
I turned to Bill. He was wailing, and Prince was now licking the blood running down his fingers with worrying enthusiasm. 'You've shot me,' he said, sounding like he was going to be with us for a few seconds yet.
'In the ear,' I replied. 'I shot you in the ear, and it was an accident. If you want to blame anyone, blame your friend,' I said. 'Now get up and muzzle that dog, like you were meant to do in the first place.'
At first he didn't move, but when I threatened to shoot him in the other ear he finally managed to take his hands away from the wound and do as he was told. It was still bleeding but, unlike Jamie Delly's, the ear remained largely intact.
I got Bill's colleague to open the drawers of the desk in front of him, and located a pair of plastic handcuffs in the second one down. I sat them both in the corner, next to Prince, and got Bill's partner to cuff them both together at the wrist and throw me the key. They assured me that they wouldn't do a thing if I left them as they were, but they were hardly immobile, or likely to be true to their word, so I hunted round until I found a ball of thick green string and a pair of scissors in another drawer, and bound them together back to back, before tying a double reef knot at the end. You wouldn't have to be Houdini to get out of it, but it would take a while, and a while was all I wanted.
'I need an ambulance,' said Bill when I'd finished. 'I'm losing a lot of blood. I feel faint.'
He wasn't losing a lot of blood. The bullet had somehow only managed to cause a minor flesh wound, but I was beginning to feel sorry for them both, so I found a clean rag, wet it in the sink and wrapped it round his ear.
I removed a small bunch of keys from Bill's belt and asked him which one opened the house.
'I don't know,' he answered. 'He never told us. This cloth's really cold. It's dripping water everywhere.'
I got back to my feet. 'Remind me never to hire your security outfit,' I said, and left them there, explaining that I'd call an ambulance shortly so long as they were quiet. 'Make a noise and you can stay like that all night.'
When I was outside, I found the key for the gatehouse door and locked it. Then I turned and, as quietly as possible, began making my way towards the house, keeping close to the foliage.
43
The rear of the property looked out onto a second lawn as large as the first, with a swimming pool at the far end. There were lights on inside the house, but the curtains were drawn so I couldn't see anything. I moved quietly forward and listened at one of the windows, picking up the sound of muffled voices. So they were here. I looked at my watch. Nine twenty-five p.m.
A substantial conservatory jutted out from the house and I walked across and tried the French windows that led into it. They were locked. I fumbled in my pocket for the keys, and tried them one by one. The fourth one opened the door and I crept inside, gently closing it behind me and removing the Browning and silencer from my pocket. The interior of the conservatory was bathed in the dim quarter-light provided by the lamps in the other rooms. Two long sofas ran down each side of it and a mahogany coffee table in the middle contained a selection of magazines. I noticed a Country Life and a Good Housekeeping, as well as the latest statement of accounts for Thadeus Holdings. Nothing controversial, then. But that was only to be expected. Like so many paedophiles, Eric Thadeus was bound to be a good actor.
The door connecting the conservatory to the rest of the house was open, and I went through into a panelled hallway with impressive watercolours of country scenes on the walls. The door to my left was ajar and I could hear voices drifting through from further inside the house. I stepped across the polished floorboards carefully, not wanting to make any noise as I made my way over to the door.
It led into a large pine kitchen with black granite worktops. On the far side of the room, another door was open, through which I could hear the clink of glasses as well as the voices of the people I'd come to kill, far clearer now.
'I'll open some more wine,' I heard the man say, and a second later his chair legs scraped across the floor as he got up from the table.
I made no move to hide as Eric Thadeus, a bigger man than I'd been expecting, dressed casually in chinos and a cotton shirt, came striding into the room carrying an empty wine bottle. I noticed he had worn leather slippers on. Then, as he saw me and opened his mouth to speak, I shot him in the left leg about six inches above the knee. He gasped, dropping the wine bottle as his leg went from under him. The bottle shattered on the floor's terracotta tiles and he fell awkwardly amongst the glass, banging his head on the door frame as he did so. I stepped over him and into the house's lavish dining room, leaving Thadeus moaning in agony and clutching at his shattered leg.
'Hello, Emma,' I said, raising the gun so it was pointed at her head.
She was at the far end of the table, the remains of a glass of white wine still in her hand. Her red-gold hair was tied back in a ponytail, and the elfin face beneath it a mask of shock. 'Dennis, please, I can explain.' She put the glass down on the table and burst into tears. 'He made me come here,' she sobbed.
'Sure he did. You look like you're under a lot of duress.' I walked over to the table, keeping the gun pointed at her head. 'Do you have any idea what this man's done, or the suffering he's caused?'
'You don't understand,' she replied, looking at me pleadingly through the tears. She was a damned talented actress, I had to give her that, and her expression was so genuine it made me doubt her role in all this myself. Even though I knew she was as guilty as sin. 'Thank God you're here,' she continued. 'He's got my parents hostage. He's had them for days. Either I do what he says or he's going to kill them.' She got to her feet and I saw that she was wearing a sleeveless white dress that made her look years younger.