He kicked me in the ribs and I went down on both knees.
‘Just like you,’ he said.
Keep him talking, I thought. Buy time. Get stronger.
‘The Ten Commandments was a nice touch,’ I gasped. ‘I was looking forward to the one about coveting my neighbour’s donkey – or is it his ass? I can never remember.’
His face clouded.
‘Don’t make fun of the Bible,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t make fun of their religion, would you? So don’t make fun of ours.’
‘You never struck me as the religious kind, Richard. Can I call you Richard?’
His boorish face got an almost wistful look.
‘I want to believe,’ he said. ‘I really do. But I think that if God ever existed, then He must have died, or forgotten us, or just walked away disgusted with it all.’
Keep the moron talking, Max.
‘But why top the weapons dealer?’ I said. ‘He’s on your side, isn’t he? You believe in the same lost cause, don’t you? The Thousand-Year Reich and all that.’
But then I saw it.
‘Because he sold you the knife that killed Ahmed Khan,’ I said, seeing it in my mind. The nickel-plated pommel, the grip of black Bakelite with the gold-etched black swastika on a red-and-white diamond. Blut und Ehre. ‘You bought the knife from your pal Peter Fenn. Ozymandias. And then he tried to blackmail you, didn’t he?’
‘He called it a loan. He needed a loan. He wanted to get back to Thailand. There was some girl who he met in a bar there.’ He shuddered at the weakness of human flesh. ‘Some little whore. And so he needed money to go back and see her.’
Richard Halfpenny sighed, and looked around the loft absent-mindedly as if he was thinking about making me an offer.
I started getting up. He aimed another kick at my ribs but I dug my elbows in and let my arms take the point of his shoe. It still hurt. But not as bad as a broken rib. But I was so tired that I could no longer stand. He watched me as I slid to the floor, his mouth twisting with disgust.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to coax my breath back now, the nerve ends still ringing in every part of my body.
‘But what about you, copper?’ he said. ‘Why do I want to see you crawl before I slot you? Any final thoughts before I cut your face off?’
I looked up at him, rubbing my ribs.
‘How did you even get my phone number?’
‘Because,’ he said, his face clouding with fury, ‘you gave it to my brother.’
And the mention of his brother George sent him into a frenzy of kicking and stomping and punching, and he beat me until I was crumbled in a heap, curled up and trying to protect my head and my balls and my ribs. He stood there panting for air.
‘My brother,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion, ‘could have been a great man. And you ruined it. You spoiled everything. You made sure he got put away. Because you always hated him, right from the first night. I’ll be watching you, you said. How dare you talk to a great man like that? How dare you, you stupid copper?’
I looked towards the door, torn between wanting Edie to arrive before the end, and hoping that she came back too late. I held up my hands.
‘Nothing to do with me, Your Honour,’ I said. ‘Your brother George seriously injured a policeman and that’s why he will do hard time. And it’s not true that I always hated your brother. I liked him. It was you I couldn’t stand, you freak.’
He came toward me, planning to kick me to death but I held up my hands higher.
‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘Please. Listen, Richard. You need to understand something. Your brother George is a smart guy. But he was never going to be a great man. Wrong parents, wrong schools, wrong accent. Fifty years ago, maybe, he might have had a shot at greatness. But not now. The fix is in at birth. The attention your brother got on Borodino Street was going to be the high point of his life. Can’t you see, you dumb, ugly bastard? Your brother – and everyone just like him – is beat before they begin. George was going to push that rickshaw until the day it killed him.’
‘I told you,’ Richard Halfpenny said. ‘I told you again and again. You’re going to crawl.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, getting unsteadily to my feet. I wasn’t going on the floor again unless he killed me. ‘I don’t crawl for anyone.’
He took a knife from his jacket.
‘Waffen-SS dress dagger with totenkopf – literally, dead head – on the handle,’ he said proudly.
‘I’d ask for my money back,’ I said, squinting at the knife. ‘Looks like a fake.’
I saw the six-inch double-sided blade, with the eagle and the swastika on the hilt, and the skull and bones on the black grip, and I saw the same bleak dreams of world domination that have been ending in the nightmare of tears and misery and ruined cities for a hundred years.
It looked very old. It didn’t look like a fake. I was just pulling his leg.
It must have been from his collection.
And I knew he had been saving it for me.
‘Crawl for me,’ he said. ‘Or I will start cutting bits off you that will make you beg to crawl.’
‘No.’
‘Crawl.’
‘Just get it done, you fat bastard.’
And then the toilet flushed.
We both stared at the bathroom door.
A slow smile crept across Richard Halfpenny’s bloated face.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘She’s home! The lady of the house. That hot little redhead. Hiding in the smallest room. Even better.’
‘I am going to kill you,’ I said.
He kicked me in the stomach. The air came out of me with a sickening ooof ! And I doubled up.
‘Unlikely,’ he said. I watched him move across the loft and try the handle of the bathroom door. It was locked.
He pressed his shoulder to the bathroom door.
He took his stance and braced himself to smash it down.
He grinned back at me and winked.
‘She’s playing too hard to get,’ he said. ‘I love that shit. I do hope you are going to enjoy watching me with her.’
I took a step towards him as he turned his face to the door and in that sliver of a second the air tore apart with the sound of a 9 mm handgun being fired from inside a confined space.
A single shot from inside the bathroom.
Richard Halfpenny was thrown backwards and I was watching him die at my feet before the sound of the air being split wide open had faded away.
The gunshot wound was in his chest.
Centre of mass. The way the experts learn to shoot.
Black blood bubbled from the corner of Richard Halfpenny’s mouth.
And I saw the shot was perhaps one inch to the left side of the medial line, the midline of a human body where the core of human life is located directly to the left or right – the heart, the lungs, the spine, the liver.
So just off the medial line. But still a bullseye, still the work of a highly skilled operative who was aiming for the middle of his target.
My bathroom door now had a hole in it the size of an espresso saucer at the Bar Italia. I heard the lock slide back.
Jesse Tibbs walked out, not looking at me, standing over the man on the floor, the Glock that Jackson had given me still aimed at his centre of mass.
Because Tibbs had been taught that one shot is not always enough.
But it was enough for Richard Halfpenny. It was enough for Bad Moses.
Tibbs lowered his Glock 19, released the magazine, stuck the gun and the clip in separate pockets.
I sat on the floor, rubbing my ribs, my ears ringing.
‘I wanted my gun back,’ he said, kneeling by Halfpenny’s side, checking his pulse. ‘Very clever, hiding it in the ceiling. It was the second place I looked. What was wrong with under the mattress of your bed?’