The men halted just inside the pub, allowing their vision to become accustomed to the relative darkness and the geography of the place.
Jack Vincent was lead, shotgun ready, fingertip laid across the trigger. He also had a semi-automatic pistol tucked into the waistband at the back of his black jeans.
‘OK guys,’ he said and began to move them forwards to the door which led up to the first floor accommodation. That was when the staff-only door had been flung open and the blood-soaked figure of Danny Bispham came out, dancing like a drugged-up raver. Vincent’s mind didn’t fully compute what it was seeing, the fact that Bispham was being held by someone else, but he reacted in the only way he could, by pulling the trigger and blowing a hole in Bispham’s chest.
Bispham’s absence was only noticed by Sim Riddick when he sat up on the double bed in urgent need of a piss.
The pair of them, Riddick and Bispham, were sharing one of the bedrooms that the group had muscled into and intimidated the landlady into allocating to them. Napier and the boss, Jonny Cain, were using the other — sort of. Cain had instructed his men in no uncertain terms that they had to keep awake and alert just in case Jack Vincent should try anything else. Napier had been posted outside Cain’s bedroom to keep guard on his boss. Out there in the corridor, miserable, Napier had slithered down the wall, knees drawn up and his forehead wedged on them. He’d had too much to drink to be much use as a watchman, as they all had, and he had fallen quickly asleep, annoyed by the thought of Cain lording it in comfort in the double bed. ‘Boss’s privilege,’ he muttered. The gun wedged in his waistband caused him discomfort but did not prevent his eyes from shutting, and he quickly nodded off.
In the other bedroom, Cain had ordered at least one of the men to keep watch from the window which overlooked the front of the pub, whilst the other crashed out. So long as one of them kept nicks, it didn’t matter if the other was snoring. They worked it out between them: Bispham would take the first couple of hours and Riddick could get some sleep.
All four men had been anticipating action that night, but Cain had knocked any thought of reprisals on the head because of the presence of the cop, Christie. Cain decided that his revenge could wait another day and take place in another arena, but he couldn’t say the same for Jack Vincent, which was why he ordered his men to keep on guard.
Bispham had pulled a chair to the window and lit up, despite the no smoking rule of the premises. He opened the window a crack and blew his smoke out of it in order not to activate the ceiling-mounted alarm and rouse the whole establishment.
He was also fuming internally. His humiliation at the hands of the big fucking American who had knocked him on to his arse and almost broken his nose was making him seethe with fury. Most people he met and had confrontations with either backed down with their tails between their legs, or he took them on and beat them mercilessly. Despite his stature — he wasn’t a big man — he had an evil temperament coupled with an innate joy at inflicting violence and had often pounded people to the ground, smashing them down, making them beg. He especially enjoyed abusing women.
But even Bispham knew he’d met his match with the Yank. Not only was he a very big guy, but he had a look about him and the eyes of a killer. Bispham realized he would get no revenge on him… but the girl, well, she was another matter.
His eyes glazed over lustfully and he stroked his ponytail and touched his throbbing face as he considered the ways in which he would assault her. That would be his revenge on the American — revenge by proxy.
Jonny Cain’s orders meant nothing to him sitting at that window, his rage smouldering. OK, Jack Vincent may well have sent some ludicrous drunk to have a pop, but the chances of anything else happening that night were slim to zero, especially with the weather being like it was, killing everything. Cain was the main man, Vincent and his pathetic cronies mere nothings. They wouldn’t dare try anything.
And that was how Bispham justified his decision. He flicked his cigarette out of the window, checked on Riddick who was spreadeagled on the bed, pants unzipped, already asleep. He was in a sequence of breathing that would lead to snoring.
Bispham stood up quietly, walked past the bed to the door, stepping out and stopping when he clocked Napier in the corridor, expelled from Cain’s room. He was also asleep. He trod quietly down towards the steps and came out on the ground floor in the bar area. To the left was the door leading to the living quarters.
He went outside to the Range Rover and got the tyre lever from the boot. Coming back into the pub he hadn’t even thought about locking the outside door. He then went to work on the inner door, prising it open around the keypad lock using the tyre lever as a jemmy. He’d broken through tougher doors in his past, and in a moment he was through into the corridor.
Already, in his excitement, the blood pulsed in his groin. He walked silently along the carpet, wondering how he would find the room he wanted. The sign on it, ‘Ginny Sleeps Here,’ was just a bit of a giveaway.
A growl came to the back of his throat. He opened the door and saw her all nicely cuddled up in bed, all warm, safe and ready for him.
Too many beers woke Sim Riddick. He sat up quickly, dreaming he had been urinating, but thankfully it was a dream. He swung out of the bed, groggy, then saw that Bispham had gone AWOL. Riddick guessed that his mate would be paying the waitress a midnight visit.
‘Tosser,’ Riddick murmured and went into the en suite to pee. Relieved, he came back into the bedroom, glanced out of the door and saw Napier asleep in the corridor. He padded over to the bedroom window where Bispham had been sitting, drew back the curtain and looked sleepily at the whitewashed view. At which point his heart nearly stopped.
The three masked figures, each carrying a weapon, running at speed up the road made him discharge an anguished cry of terror.
‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he gabbled, fastening his pants, stumbling around to find his shirt and shoes, then falling out of the room into the corridor. He booted Napier in the backside, then pounded desperately on Cain’s door, before barging through and yelling, ‘They’re here, for fuck’s sake, they’re here. And they’re tooled up.’
Cain sat up dazedly. Napier stood behind Riddick, a stupid expression on his face.
‘Get the guns,’ Cain said calmly after shaking his head.
‘What you reckon, boss?’ Henderson asked, his voice muffled by the ski mask that had slipped slightly askew and now covered part of his mouth.
‘That guy’s not one of ’em,’ Vincent said breathlessly, now hyper after shooting Bispham. He was referring to the man who had chucked the unfortunate Bispham at them, then retreated behind the thick door and locked it. ‘We’ve got one down, only three to go.’ His eyes shone wild and evil from underneath the ski mask slits.
‘The element of surprise has gone down the shitter,’ Henderson mumbled.
‘In that case, we move fast and hard, but remember, try not to kill Cain. He’s cat food.’ Vincent trotted to the door that opened to the narrow flight of stairs leading up to the first floor rooms. He pinned himself to the wall, opened it cautiously, then spun in and arced the shotgun through the tight angle in front of him. ‘Clear,’ he called and led the way, taking the stairs two at a time.
He emerged warily on to the landing, the corridor ahead, off which were the two guest bedrooms on the left side, about thirty feet from where he stood. Henderson and Shannon were lined up behind him, flattened to the wall.
But before they moved, the second bedroom door along opened and a man — Riddick — stepped out incautiously, saw the three of them and yelled something, caught completely by surprise.
Vincent fired the shotgun instinctively, catching Riddick in the right shoulder and spinning him away from the door across the corridor like a top. As Vincent racked the shotgun again, Henderson stepped out of line and fired a short burst at Riddick from the machine pistol he was brandishing. Even though they were badly aimed, a diagonal line of bullets sprayed across Riddick’s body.