“Here,” he said, giving the card to Preston. “Read them out, why don’t you?”
Cassady punched in the numbers and nothing happened, nothing budged.
“Read them again, careful. You must’ve got one wrong.”
Again no reaction. Cassady snatched the card back and held it in one unsteady hand, while he used the other.
“It’s not gonna fuckin’ work,” Preston shouted.
“Hush your mouth, can’t I see that?”
“What the fuck we gonna do?”
“Keep your voice down, will you? Get Planer down here, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Cassady snapped on the light in the hall. Planer was already midway down the stairs, a fleshy man in his late fifties with silver-gray hair. He had a silk Paisley dressing-gown on over his pajamas, a pistol, one of the ubiquitous Glock 17s, in one hand.
“Drop it!” Preston shouted. “Drop it fuckin’ now!”
Carefully, Planer extended his arm until it was over the banister rail and dropped the pistol to the floor, where it bounced and skidded against the oak skirting board. Preston picked it up, ugly fucking gun, and stuck it into his belt.
“Come on along down here,” Cassady said to Planer. “We’re in a little need of your help.”
Planer started to descend, but not quick enough for Preston, who ran toward him, two broad steps at a time, and jammed the Uzi in his ribs. “Get fuckin’ down!”
In the study, Planer looked over at the safe and smiled.
“Open it,” Cassady said.
Planer turned toward him. “Surely you’ve got the number?”
Cassady moved in very close. “I wouldn’t advise it now, being clever. Foolin’ around.”
“There’s an extra number,” Planer explained. “It changes all the time. A bit like the Lottery, I suppose. That’s why, when I thought Paul Finney had the rest of the combination, I wasn’t overly worried.”
Preston swung at him with the barrel of the Uzi and Planer fell heavily to his knees, a bloody line raked across his face.
“Never mind your fucking mouth, give us the fucking number. Now.”
Wincing, Planer touched his cheek. Preston raised the gun.
“It’s two numbers,” Planer said. “Seven and one.”
Cassady moved quickly to the safe.
“I called the police, you know,” Planer said, pushing himself up on to one knee. “From the bedroom, before I came downstairs.”
“You’re lying.”
Planer smiled his smug smile. “Do you really think so?”
Faint, not so very far off, the sound of sirens filtered through the heaviness of the room.
“Bastard!” Preston said and squeezed the trigger.
As if in the grip of a sudden fit, Planer’s body flailed and shook along the floor.
“Jesus!” Cassady exclaimed. He fumbled with the numbers, all fingers and thumbs.
“Quick! Quick!”
The sirens were louder, closer.
“It’s too late. Get out!”
They ran for the front door, flung it open, and raced across the courtyard, out through the gate. Cassady pulled the car keys from his pocket, dropped them on the road.
“What the fuck!”
At the second attempt, he retrieved them and unlocked the doors. The engine fired to life first time. The sound of police vehicles was almost upon them now, headlights visible on the road behind. Cassady floored the accelerator and took off with screaming tires.
“Lose ’em, fuckin’ lose ’em!” Swiveling back in his seat, feeling Cassady accelerate again, Preston snapped his seat belt into place.
Swerving left and right, the car rode up on the curb, skidded, kept its balance: when they turned at the intersection leading back toward the city, another police car was heading directly toward them.
Cassady gripped the wheel tight and held both line and speed. At the last moment, the driver of the police car swung over hard, his off-side striking a low wall, before spinning broadside on to block the road. The BMW struck the other side of the police car as it passed and glanced off, careening on its way.
“Great!” Preston yelled. “Fuckin’ great, man. You did fuckin’ great.”
“Didn’t I, though,” Cassady said. “Though I say so myself and shouldn’t, didn’t I just?”
At a fork in the road beyond Oxton, he took the turn too fast, went through a hedge and crashed, head on, into the trunk of an English oak.
For several moments, Preston couldn’t breathe. He felt as if he’d been slammed against something invisible but strong. There was pain across his chest and down his spine, his neck. One of the headlights was still shining, a spool of light spilling across a field of yellow rape. He released the seat belt and got, unsteadily, out of the car.
Cassady had been hurled through the windscreen and now lay wedged between the front of the BMW and the tree, his neck at an impossible angle, his face shredded by glass.
Preston could hear another vehicle, one at least, approaching from a distance. The Uzi he pushed under the driver’s seat and seizing the keys, opened the trunk and lifted out the shotgun and as many shells as his pockets would carry. The Glock was still in his belt. Limping slightly, he ran off into the dark.
Forty-two
Resnick was awake when the phone rang: downstairs at the front of the house, listening in the near dark to Thelonious Monk warily threading his way through “Ghost of a Chance”; fingers testing the keys as if afraid what each cluster of notes might hide. It was close to three-thirty. Resnick had given up trying to sleep and was drinking coffee, strong and black. If he thought of Lynn, that thought led him, as often as not, to Hannah’s sardonic, knowing face. When he began by thinking of Hannah, he finished up imagining himself in Lynn’s arms. It was a relief to pick up the ringing telephone.
Helen Siddons’s voice was loud and jagged. “More shit on the fan, Charlie. Big time. Planer, you know the …”
“Yes, I know who he is.”
“Seems as if he was woken by intruders in the house. Rang us. Then instead of staying low, waiting for the cavalry to arrive, he went downstairs to investigate. Either that, or they dragged him out of his bed.”
“They?”
“Two men, we think only two. Liam Cassady and one other.”
“Jesus.”
“Trying to break into Planer’s safe and didn’t succeed. I think we got there too soon.”
“This second person, Planer couldn’t identify him, didn’t know who he was?”
Resnick heard Siddons lighting a cigarette at the other end of the line. “Planer’s not identifying anyone. Half a dozen bullets in him, more. And from close range. My guess the same weapon used on Raymond Cooke; same team probably, same shooter.”
“Clean away?”
“Not exactly clean. Cassady wrapped himself round a tree. DOA on the way to hospital. Totaled the car. Looks as though whoever was with him got away on foot.”
“No sign?”
“Not so far. There’s a helicopter out waking all the sleeping farmers. Tracker dogs, the works. If he was injured in the crash, he’ll be lying low. If not, my guess is he’s hijacked another car somewhere.”
“There’s road blocks?”
“Where we can. Main roads, motorways. He’ll be wanting to put as much distance between himself and the incident as he can.”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“I said, no. He won’t. Listen, where are you speaking from?”
“Headquarters. There didn’t seem …”
“Meet me at the corner of Woodborough Road and Mansfield Road. Four, five minutes. I think I know who he is and where he’s going.”
Preston had already arrived.
The owner of a Ford Mondeo, heading back late after the annual pharmacists’ dinner-dance, had been left at the roadside in evening dress, lucky to be unharmed. Preston’s neck hurt him as he drove, and as he crested the hill that would take him down to Lorraine’s house he ground his teeth, sensing the relief. Since being back in the city, the only sounds of police activity he’d heard had been distant and sporadic, moving away.