Rankin had his head and his shoulders, his arm, out of the passenger side window, the wrong side window. He tried to aim, but couldn't hold steady. The Glock was a close-quarters weapon. Practice on the range, with the Glock, was at never more than twenty-five metres. The Heckler amp; Koch that he'd carried all day, that he would have given his right ball for, would have done the job perfectly but was back in the Wendy hut with the relief.
"Brake, Joe, and give me some goddamn light."
The braking bloody near cut him in two. His back thudded against the door-frame.
Rankin went out through the window, fastest way, and tumbled on the tarmac. The breath was squeezed out of his body. He dragged himself up, winded and so bloody confused.
Paget spun the wheel.
The headlights hit the man as he straddled the graveyard's boundary wall.
Rankin was down low, kneeling, and saw him. The lights threw huge shadows off the stones. He was at fifteen paces and going fast, but the headlights held him. They didn't practise it at the range, but he knew what to do. Rankin's fists were locked together on the butt on the Glock, and he punched his arms out and made the isosceles. He tried to control his breathing, to hold the aim steady. His finger was on the trigger. Thirty metres, going on thirty-five. He took the big deep breath to steady himself. Forty metres, going towards the shadows thrown off the stones. He aimed at the back of the running man, into the middle of the spine, and squeezed hard on the trigger. The running man was between a cross and the shadowy form of an angel stone. He fired again. The crack belted his ears. He saw the back of the running man as it dropped. Double tap… Rankin shouted, "I got him I fucking got him, Joe."
The engine was left running.
"Bloody good, Dave."
"Had him, I dropped him."
Paget went over the wall and right, towards the church porch. Rankin covered him, heard the shout, scrambled over and circled to the left. It was what they had endlessly practised, both of them, at Lippitts Hill, until it was routine and boring: two guns, never presenting a target, and closing for a kill. One going forward the other covering, the other going forward and one covering. They closed on the gap space between the cross and the angel. There was a dark place, a little beyond where the shadows of the two stones merged, and beyond it there was clear lit ground. They stalked the space, sprinting between the stones, freezing and aiming, calling the moves to each other.
"You ready, Dave?"
"Ready, Joe."
Rankin's aim was into the shadows. He was behind the cross.
Paget reached up with his torch from behind the cover of the angel.
The torch beam wavered through the shadow, and fell on the grass.
There was no body on the grass, no corpse and no wounded man.
The beam moved over the grass and there was no weapon discarded there, no blood.
"I thought I saw him go down…"
"You thought wrong, Dave."
"After fifteen bloody years… "Sixteen years, actually, Dave you waited sixteen years and then you fucked up."
Dave Rankin knelt on the grass where there was no body, no blood, no weapon, and he shook. As a pair they were laid-back, private, superior bastards. They always did well on the range and never had to be sent for a coffee and a smoke to calm themselves before trying again to get the necessary score to pass the reappraisal. They were the best, they were the ones the instructors pointed out to the recruit marksmen. Sixteen years of practice and sixteen years of training no body, no blood, no weapon. He knelt on the damp grass and the energy seemed to drain out of him. He hung his head until Paget pulled him roughly to his feet.
"In this life, Dave, you get what you pay for. They didn't pay much."
"I would have sworn I'd hit him."
"There's no blood, Dave… They got us."
The noise of the explosion had careered around the village.
It pierced the doors and windows of the houses, the cottages, bungalows and villas, where the televisions blared the argument of the evening's dramas. It split into kitchens and dissolved desultory meal conversations. It hammered into the talk in the bar and silenced them there. It startled a man with a dog on the road, a woman who was in the back of her garden filling a coal bucket, a man who worked at a lathe on the bench in his garage, and a couple making love in the flat above a shop. The blast sounded in the houses, gardens and lanes of the village… and in the barricaded house.
It murmured its way into the safe area between the mattresses, past the filled sandbags, and Blake swore softly. Davies dropped his hand on to Frank Perry's shoulder, and there was silence. Then the radio started screaming for them… Nobody in the village moved quickly to leave the protection of their homes. There had been the noise, then the silence, then the howling of the sirens. Only after the sirens had come and the quiet had descended again, did the villagers gather their coats, wrap themselves in warmth and come out of their homes to go to look and to gawp.
The rain had come on heavily.
Eventually, they came from their corners of the village. Their shuffled steps muted, huddled under umbrellas, the first of them reached the house, lit by arc-lamps, as the ambulance pulled away.
They gathered to watch.
He came back.
She had heard the explosion and had rejoiced. He could not have done it without her. Now she would persuade him.
Vahid Hossein came as a shadow out of the darkness, to the car, to her. She tried to take him in her arms to hold him and kiss him, but he flinched away. He gripped the launcher to his chest and rocked. Then he slid down, against the wheel arch of the car. There should have been triumph, but his eyes were far away.
"What's the matter? You got him, didn't you? What happened there?"
~He never replied to her.
Farida Yasmin stormed away from him.
She blundered across the common ground towards the lights of the village. The rain sheeted down on to her.
She backed off the road as a police car came past her with its siren wailing, splashing the puddled rainwater on to her thighs and waist. She had heard the clamour of the explosion and clenched her fists and believed she was a part of it. She saw the crowd ahead of her, in front of the cottage home she had identified for him.
She joined the back of the crowd. She came behind them and watched as they stared ahead, heard their whispered voices. She was not noticed. The rain fell on her hair and her face. The crowd was held back by policemen but she could still see the blackened walls of the room through the gaping window. The arc-lights showed her the firemen picking through the room.
She listened.
"They say it's a gas explosion."
"That's daft, there's no sodding gas."
She was behind them. They were not aware of her.
"Was it the new people?"
"It was the Perry woman, not the new people."
"Was it Meryl Perry?"
"Just her."
"Where's he? Where's Perry?"
"Never came, it was just Meryl who came."
"That's rough. I mean, it wasn't anything to do with her, was it?"
"Frank was in his house with his guards, it was Meryl. The stupid bastards got the wrong place, the wrong person… She slipped away. She left as she had come, unseen. She walked back, the rain clattering on her. She felt small, weak. Emergency traffic passed her and ignored her as she cowered at the side of the road. She was little and unimportant. She had thought that night, beside the car, as the sound of the explosion had burst in her ears, that she would love him, that she would be rewarded because he could not have done it without her and he would take her with him and she would be, at last, a person of consequence. She stumbled across the ground, went between the thicket and gorse clumps, splashed in the rain puddles. She was Gladys Eva Jones. She was an insurance clerk, she was a failure. She was sobbing, as she had sobbed when her mother had carved criticism at her and her father had cursed her, as when the kids at school had ostracized her and the kids at college had turned their backs on her. She saw the outline of the car and the rain spilling from the roof on to his shoulders. He had not moved.