‘As I was saying… I think this is a lie, made up by Tom for some reason. He sent her out to get killed, or something,’ Flynn concluded hazily. ‘It doesn’t add up, anyway.’
Henry nodded, trying to take in what Flynn was trying to say, and the content of the phone call just received.
‘That was Alison on the phone,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s been talking to Ginny, her stepdaughter… Apparently Ginny saw Cathy drive past the pub yesterday, just after five o’clock. In the Shogun… only she wasn’t alone, Tom was with her. Thing is, she also saw Tom walk back about an hour later, alone… he told me she went out alone to the poacher.’
The two men digested the words, then slowly turned to a noise at the office door.
Tom James stood there, a tired, desperate-looking individual. But in his hands he held the sawn-off shotgun, the one that had been taken from Callard and which Flynn had left unattended in the kitchen. He raised the weapon to gut height and aimed it loosely at a point somewhere between the two men. His finger hovered over the double trigger.
‘Guys, you’re too smart for your own good and I really don’t have time for this.’
SEVENTEEN
He rocked the weapon. ‘Move back to the wall. Go on, or I’ll blast you both.’
They hesitated, the initial shock on their faces now morphed into disbelief.
Henry, his mouth suddenly dry with fear, said, ‘Tom-’
‘Don’t speak,’ Tom barked.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Henry said.
‘I said, shut your face.’
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Henry said, ‘but I’m ordering you to put the weapon down.’ By his own admission, Henry’s voice was shaky and nervous, but he tried to sound authoritative, hoping for once in his life he could pull rank.
Tom laughed harshly. ‘Just get back to the wall,’ he said calmly and gestured with the gun, making them realize that if it was discharged in this small area, both would be seriously injured if they were standing close to each other. Effectively they would form one big target.
Henry nodded. ‘Do as he says.’ He touched Flynn and pushed him gently backwards and slightly away. His thought was that if there was some distance between them there would be more chance of survival and maybe the possibility of overpowering Tom. The latter option, though, was not Henry’s favourite. Flynn picked up on Henry’s chain of thought, taking a pace backwards and outwards away from Henry.
‘Stop,’ Tom said. ‘Keep together, backwards, side by side, nice ’n’ slow, then face the wall. If you go one foot apart from each other, I’ll kill you. Simple.’
They backed off carefully.
‘You know the gun’s not loaded, don’t you?’ Flynn said.
Tom gave him a pitying look, then said, ‘You screwed my wife.’
‘She wasn’t your wife. Not then, not even close.’
‘But she rubbed it in my face. Hey — you stopped moving. Keep going, right back to the wall.’
‘What’s going on, Tom? Is that what this is all about? Whatever it is, I can help you.’
‘Which cop drama did you get that line from?’
‘It’s true. Whatever’s happening, I can help.’
‘Henry — I very much doubt it.’ Their backs were up to the wall now. Next to the radiator to which Callard was affixed. ‘Turn round, noses to the wall.’
Both men rotated slowly, the shotgun trained on them. Tom had moved with them, keeping the same distance away from them, just out of arms’ length, enough of a gap for him to react if either should be foolish enough to make a heroic lunge. As they turned inward, their eyes met.
Henry’s lips were an inch from the wallpaper and when he next spoke, his voice was muffled. ‘Are you going to shoot us in cold blood?’
‘The only way.’
‘Just like you did Cathy?’ Flynn blurted.
Tom was directly behind them now. In a furious response he jammed the double muzzle of the shotgun into the back of Flynn’s neck, screwing the roughly sawn ends into his flesh. He pushed hard and banged Flynn’s mouth against the wall, knocking the inside of his lips against his teeth. Flynn screwed his eyes tight shut, tasting the blood, and imagining his throat being blown out. Tom leaned into him, mouth close to Flynn’s ear, breath hot on it. ‘Yeah — just like that.’
‘What did she find out about you?’ Flynn asked.
‘Too much, too much.’
‘You’ll never pull this off,’ Henry said, squinting sideways.
Tom backed away a few inches, the gun coming out of Flynn’s neck. ‘Oh, I will. Thing is, you guys turned up too soon, before I could get everything tickety-boo, so I need to wing it now. And as you know, Henry, the beauty of being first detective on the scene is that you can do anything you want. Mr Callard here, such a bad man, gets out of his makeshift cuffs, finds the weapon and blasts the brave detectives who arrested him, but then kills himself in drunken self-loathing. Take a bit of doing, but it won’t be a problem. As regards Cathy,’ he shrugged, ‘Mr Callard here is a known poacher, so I’ll pin that on him, too. Always planned to anyway. Him being dead will make that easy, too. Just another reason for him to take his own life, which was going down the shitter anyway.’
Henry tried to peer round at him. ‘Not a chance in hell, Tom — any detective worth his salt will see through that in a flash. It’ll all get too complicated. Your lies will screw you — as they already have done.’
‘Nah — cops’re thick.’
‘We’ll see.’
Tom raised the weapon up to the side of Henry’s face. Henry ground his teeth together and closed his eyes, but Tom swung the gun away in a short, flat arc and pointed it at Flynn.
‘For screwing my wife…’
Flynn gasped in terror as Tom’s fingertip curled on to the trigger.
But then from his position on the floor, Callard kicked out and smashed the steel toecap on his right foot hard into Tom’s shin, causing him to scream out in agony, twist around and discharge a single barrel upwards, tearing a huge hole in the ceiling above the men.
Flynn spun, as did Henry, as a cloud of white plasterboard poured over them.
Tom staggered backwards, but wasn’t going to be put off his chosen course of action because of a kick on the leg. He tried to bring the shotgun down, but Flynn launched himself low and hard. Flynn was extremely fit and fast and he moved quicker than Tom could have anticipated, but he still clicked his finger back on the second trigger, firing the second barrel at a slight upward angle.
Henry jolted back with a scream, clutching his upper chest and left shoulder.
Flynn ignored this and powered into Tom, who hacked down at Flynn’s unprotected head, catching him a glancing blow off the side of his head and cutting his ear. It knocked Flynn off track, and he smashed into the desk awkwardly.
Tom shrieked something incomprehensible, hurled the gun across the room, ran out of the office, slamming the door behind him, down the hallway to the kitchen.
Flynn came up into a one-kneed starting position and looked worriedly over at Henry.
Pale and wounded, Henry had crashed against the wall and slithered down, sitting there dumbly, his right hand holding his left shoulder. Blood oozed through his fingers.
‘Shit,’ Flynn uttered and scrambled over on all fours to Henry, whose terrified eyes played over Flynn’s face.
‘Just get him,’ he said to Flynn. ‘Don’t let him get away, whatever happens.’
‘You sure?’
‘What’re you going to do — operate on me? Go!’
Flynn gave a short nod, glanced at Callard who, still drunk and glassy-eyed, was sitting up, a look of horror on his face. Flynn got up and ran to the door.
The pain in Henry’s shoulder was incredible. It was like a dozen blunt needles had been hammered deep into his flesh. He took a long steadying breath and began to unbutton his shirt.
Flynn opened the office door cautiously, stepped into the hallway, paused, listened. He kept to the wall, using the staircase as part cover, and edged towards the kitchen, moved across the last gap and flattened himself against the wall next to the door frame. He reached for the handle, turned it slowly and opened the door a crack, trying to remember the layout of the room.