Tom simply gave a weak shrug. ‘Just exercising my legal right,’ he said smugly.
Nine weapons were laid out on the table. Four pistols, four machine pistols. They varied in make, origin and quality. They had however been oiled, cleaned and loaded with ammunition that had been home produced in a back-street industrial unit in Manchester. Each gun had two spare magazines that had been emptied and reloaded so there was certainty that they were full, even if the quality of the bullets was occasionally suspect.
The ninth weapon was a five-shot sawn-off pump action shotgun, made in China, but with professionally produced cartridges.
Jack Vincent put down the phone. He looked at the other two men, Henderson and Shannon. ‘We’re one down, guys,’ he announced gravely. The men said nothing, their faces impassive. ‘But it makes no odds. We’re still going in because that fool Callard couldn’t do a simple thing, and then we’ll have another job to tack on immediately afterwards.’
‘And that would be?’ Henderson asked laconically.
‘To get the boss out of jail.’
EIGHTEEN
Henry scowled at the cordless handset with infuriation stemming from his stupidity in allowing Tom to sneak the damn thing into the shower with him. He kicked himself inwardly. He was fuming for letting himself be lax, for not doing everything he would have done normally with a prisoner, for being seduced into believing that because Tom was a cop he would play by the rules. Cops, he should have known by now, know how to break the rules. But above all, for not sticking to the motto he had adhered to for the last thirty years: trust no fucker.
‘He managed to delete the number he dialled, too,’ Henry said bitterly. ‘That means it’s not recorded on this handset and it won’t even redial the number… bastard!’
‘I don’t like this,’ Flynn said.
The men were sitting on the double bed. Henry had decided to allow Tom to have the shower anyway, but had insisted on making him strip in front of him, then go into the shower and leave the cubicle door open and the en suite door too, whilst he washed himself off. Tom had complied by removing his clothes slowly, dropping them on to a pile in front of Henry, then doing a twirl and making a disgusting remark about not having anything else on him, or would Henry like to have a feel up his arse? It was pretty standard prisoner fare, so Henry held his tongue and watched Tom get into the shower.
He collected the clothing and deposited it on the landing. He knew he was taking an evidential chance by allowing Tom to shower, but he was prepared to take it. Some evidence might get washed away, but in terms of the evidence Henry was slowly amassing, Tom was in a very bad place as it built up. Once Tom was in a proper cell, the work would begin in earnest. At the moment Henry was just making the best of a bad job.
‘I’m not keen either,’ Henry agreed. ‘He makes a call and deletes the number. What does that say?’
‘Come and help me?’ Flynn suggested.
Henry nodded. ‘It’s not exactly Colditz, is it? Tell you what, go and recover that gun from the car, will you, and lock the car up if you can. Then get back here and have a root around.’
‘For what?’
‘He must have had that pistol stashed somewhere, as well as the extra cartridges for the shotgun. Somewhere not too far away. Kitchen, probably. I’ll look after him until you’re back.’
‘Then what?’
‘Handcuffed downstairs, as I said, then batten down the hatches for the night and hope it stops snowing. We need a bit of help here, I’d say.’
‘There’s a lot of we’s in that. I could just piss off and leave you to it.’
Henry could not be bothered to get into this dispute again. ‘You do what you have to do. If you want to go, go. I can’t stop you. I’ve had enough of being wound up.’
The griping pain came again just as Donaldson was falling properly asleep in Ginny’s comfortable girly bed. It was as bad as ever and he sat bolt upright, cursing for even thinking the worst was over. Now he realized he should have starved himself and foregone the wonderful meal provided by Alison.
He gasped, sat up, and hoped it would pass. It did not, then suddenly there was an urgency to visit the toilet.
‘Damn.’
He crossed over to the en suite toilet and seated himself on the loo as the gripe creased him again. Never had he felt so ill and miserable.
Henry stood at the bedroom window and watched Flynn trudge back through the snow, a plastic bag in his hand which, Henry assumed, contained the pistol Tom had used. Flynn saw him, gave a wave and, raising the bag, made a gun shape out of his fingers and pointed at Henry. Having had to face too many guns that day, Henry almost ducked.
‘Henry,’ a voice came from behind. Alison was at the bedroom door, a mug of steaming coffee in her hand. She held it aloft for him and he went to her, took it with grateful thanks and sipped it. ‘Very nice,’ he complimented.
‘They have nice coffee in their kitchen. In fact, they have very nice everything. The kitchen must have cost an absolute fortune. It’s one of those German ones. Twenty thousand at least.’
‘Lucky them — but no more.’
‘No… how are you?’
Henry cocked his head and said, ‘Let me think about that… Mmm… stressed, tired, hurt and extremely worried that there’s more to come.’ She touched his cheek with her fingertips. ‘Other than that, hunky dory,’ he said brightly.
‘What about that young lady downstairs? I told her to sit in the living room, incidentally.’
‘Almost forgotten her… the one who thinks her boyfriend has been murdered? What the hell goes on in this village? She was in the Owl earlier. Do you know her?’
‘She was, and I don’t. She turned up today. I don’t think she’s local.’
‘I’ll speak to her once I’ve fastened Tom to a lamp post or something. I don’t really think I’ve time to deal with a domestic dispute, which is what it sounds like.’ The shower turned off, Alison backed out of the bedroom. ‘Thanks for the coffee… much needed.’
‘Pleasure.’
Henry stood at the door to the en suite as Tom stepped naked out of the shower and started to towel himself down.
Flynn recovered the pistol from the front passenger footwell of Tom’s Golf. He did a quick search of the rest of the car, found nothing of interest, so locked it up and left it embedded in the lamp post with hazard lights flashing. Another thing that would have to wait until the morning, or when the snow had eased and a recovery vehicle could get through. He handled the pistol carefully, made it safe, and placed it in a plastic bag he’d brought along, one he’d found in the kitchen. Flynn knew guns, having been in the army at sixteen, the Marines at eighteen and the cops at twenty-four. He had spent some time as an authorized firearms officer in the late eighties before gravitating to the drugs branch. He wrapped the bag around the gun and made his way back to the police house.
He spotted Henry observing him from the bedroom window, acknowledged him but grumbled — again — at the thought of the man who he blamed for basically forcing him out of the force. Back then, Flynn had even been to see a solicitor who specialized in employment law, and the guy had been eager to take on the case and sue the constabulary for constructive dismissal. Flynn had backed off at the last moment, a nagging feeling of doubt at the back of his mind. Henry’s earlier revelation about uncovering some real dirt about his past suddenly made Flynn realize in hindsight that it had been a good move not to take the organization to court. At least all those sleazy things had been kept under the carpet and the cloud he’d left under wasn’t actually a hurricane, as it could have been. Although it was bad enough to have been suspected of nicking a million pounds’ worth of drug dealer’s money.
Perhaps Henry wasn’t completely to blame after all.
Not that it made him feel warmer to him. He still disliked him intensely.
Flynn banged the snow off his feet and entered the house. He checked to see if Callard was still attached to the plumbing — yes — and noticed the young lady with the missing boyfriend now sitting primly in the lounge with a coffee in one hand and Roger’s sloppy head on her lap, as she stroked the old dog.