She shrugged. “OK, it’s your choice,” she said, frowning, “but I go home tomorrow and Sean’s planning on coming out here himself to take over. You know what he’s like. You can’t keep something like that from him forever.”
“I can try.”
Fourteen
The full effect of my dramatic if rather flouncy exit from the café was somewhat spoiled by my immediately colliding with a person who’d been hurrying along the pavement outside. I spun round without caution from slamming the outer door shut behind me and my momentum nearly sent both of us sprawling.
On a reflex, I grabbed at their jacket. It was only when we’d steadied that I realised who it was I’d got hold of.
“McKenna?” I said, my voice sharp and incredulous. “What are you doing here?”
But the youngster just threw me a panicked glance, jerked himself free, and hurried away. I watched, puzzled, until he’d turned the corner. He looked dreadful, his skin grey and clammy. He hadn’t come across as the type dedicated enough to the course to drag himself from his sick bed to take part in a group exercise.
I shrugged and let it go. I had other things on my mind as I stalked across the square with my shoulders hunched down into my jacket and my anger bubbling away under the surface.
Blakemore was just the unlucky one. He was the first of the instructors I came across, but even so, he was the one I suppose I had the most faith in. Maybe it was just fate that it happened that way. I caught him just as he was climbing onto the FireBlade, with the engine already fired up and ticking over.
He nodded when he saw me approaching, unconcerned, but when I reached across the tank and hit the kill switch his eyes narrowed under the open visor of his helmet. I stood there and stared long enough and hard enough for him to slowly sit back, undo the chinstrap and pull off his lid. He put it down on the tank, folded his arms and regarded me, stony, one eyebrow raised.
Temper is never the best thing to wear to a confrontation. It has a nasty habit of disintegrating into tatters just when you need its protection most and the colour has never suited me.
Ah well, nothing ventured . . .
I said, “Tell me about Kirk Salter.”
Blakemore’s eyebrow shifted up another few millimetres. “How do you know Salter?” he hedged. He flashed a quick, almost nervous smile. “What’s he to you? Old boyfriend?”
“Old comrade,” I said, adding deliberately, “We trained together.”
It took a moment for that one to track from starting point to logical conclusion. Blakemore looked up. “He was ex-Special Forces,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“He was,” I agreed.
He made a small snorting sound through his nose. His gaze turned calculating and then he nodded. “It figures,” he said.
“So why did you kill him?” I pushed, ignoring the fact that it was probably unmitigatingly stupid to blow my cover like this, on Gilby’s home ground, with only Madeleine for back-up. “Did he find out what you were up to and try to stop it?”
“Stop us what?” Blakemore asked. After the initial shock of my opening gambit he’d relaxed slightly. Did that mean he was an accomplished liar, on top of his game now, or that I was so far off the right track he felt secure?
“From grabbing the kid.”
He laughed. “Oh no,” he said, “he was with us all the way. Salter wasn’t the one who threw a spanner in the works.”
I could have – should have – pursued that one in any number of directions, but I was blinkered by anger at his amused denial. “So why did you shoot him?” I demanded.
“We didn’t,” Blakemore said, still grinning at me. “What makes you think that we did?”
“Nine-mil hollowpoints fired from a machine pistol,” I said. “That’s what killed him.”
“Sorry, Fox,” he said quickly, “but we don’t use full autos – or hollowpoints for that matter.”
He reached for his helmet, but before he could put it back on I brought the round I’d shown to Madeleine out of my pocket and held it up to him.
“So what’s this?”
He stopped reaching for the helmet. Instead he took the Hydra-Shok round out of my fingers, examined it carefully. “Where did you get this?” he asked and any trace of laughter had been sucked right out of his voice, leaving a dustiness behind that was almost arid.
“I found it on the indoor range,” I said. “I picked it up the first time we shot there.”
“That’s against the rules,” he said, but he was only going through the motions of rebuke.
“It is,” I agreed. “But last time I checked, so was killing people.”
Blakemore glanced up then, pinned me with a straight look. “And you would know all about that, would you, Charlie?” he said softly.
I swallowed, pushed it aside and went on doggedly. “Why did you kill him?”
Blakemore sighed. “I didn’t,” he said. “I thought I knew who was responsible, but now I’m not so sure.” He regarded me for a few seconds, that brooding, drawn-down stare he had as though he was mentally walking through his options and not finding any of them to his liking. Eventually he held up the round. “Can I hang onto this?”
“Why?”
“I want to plant this in front of someone, like you’ve just done, and see what it shakes loose.”
I found a half-smile from somewhere. “Didn’t work too well on you,” I said.
He grinned again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “but that’s because I’ve got nothing to hide.”
He tucked the Hydra-Shok round into his jacket pocket and fired the ‘Blade up again. I caught his arm.
“What’s going on, Blakemore?”
He shook his head. “It’s too complicated to go into right now,” he said. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”
I hesitated again, then stepped back. He nodded, rammed his helmet on and toed the bike into gear, as though afraid I’d change my mind. It was only as he ripped out of the square that I relayed the conversation through my mind and cursed myself for all the gaps I’d left unplugged with questions.
By the time our allotted research period was up, Blakemore still hadn’t returned. I hung around by the back of the truck, hoping that he would still show, until Todd impatiently herded me in with the others.
I scanned the phys instructor’s broad face for some sign that I was walking into a trap by allowing myself to be taken from a public place to a private one without a struggle, but there was nothing to alert me there beyond his usual arrogance.
Even so, as we rumbled out of the square I was aware of a tightness in my chest, a prickling in my hands that made me clench them together in my lap hard enough to turn the skin white around the knuckles.
Had Blakemore been telling the truth? Or had he just been stalling for time, putting me off my guard? His denial when I’d first mentioned the hollowpoint had seemed genuine. But faced with the evidence, there’d been something missing. Now, in the back of that lurching truck, it took me a while to work out what it was.
Surprise.
Whatever I’d triggered in Blakemore, whatever I’d said to him that had acted as a spur, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t suspected already. Suddenly, I remembered the little drama they’d organised for us on the range with Craddock. “So that’s how you did it,” Blakemore had said. Did what? And how was it done?
Behind us I could see Todd at the wheel of the second truck, trying to steer with his elbows while he lit his cigarette. When he caught me watching him he threw me a cocky salute that only served to increase my uneasiness.
Then, without warning, our truck braked hard, swerving to the right.
The students were thrown against one another as the heavy vehicle skidded slightly. Declan’s shoulder hit mine and I grabbed on to the tailgate to stop myself pitching out over it.