Garton-Jones regarded him levelly. “It wasn’t optional, Mr Meyer,” he said. His cold stare shifted to me. “Ladies first, I think.” He waved the shotgun briefly in my direction. “Over here where I can keep an eye on you, Miss Fox, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I glanced at Sean before I moved, caught the faintest flicker of his eyes, and understood instinctively what he was driving at. To follow Garton-Jones’s orders, I kept out of his line of fire, and that meant crossing behind Sean.
In the middle of Sean’s belt, tucked into the small of his back, lay the Glock. As I moved close behind him it took only the smallest of movements to reach out for the gun. My right hand closed round the butt, warmed to the touch from his body heat. I felt Sean breathe in, loosening the barrel to my grip.
Smoothly, I brought the gun out into view round his body. I didn’t trust Garton-Jones’s bulky clothing not to be hiding body armour of his own, so I took a bead dead centre on the exposed flesh of his neck, just below the ear.
Garton-Jones heard the precise, sharp double click of the first round snapping into the breech, and froze.
The barrels of the Browning were down and away from me by then. It would have taken him much too long to have brought them to bear. He turned his head slowly, blinked twice into the business end of the Glock’s muzzle, ten feet from him, then almost seemed to relax. He turned his head back towards Sean.
“It would appear that your girlfriend’s been watching too many bad movies, Mr Meyer,” he said, with a nasty grin.
Sean smiled back at him, harmless as a shark showing its teeth before the bite. “My girlfriend, as you call her,” he said with calm deliberation, “is ex-Special Forces. She’s lethal. At that distance she could shoot your eyeball straight out from between the lids without even smudging your mascara.”
Just for a moment, Garton-Jones looked shaken, then he laughed. “Nice try,” he said, “but I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to take the safety off,” and started to bring the shotgun up.
“Hold it!” I snapped. He halted on a reflex to the command, and once I’d got his attention, I aimed to keep it.
“This is a Glock 19 nine millimetre semiautomatic,” I said, speaking fast. “There is no conventional safety catch; it’s built into the trigger. As soon as I depressed the first stage of the trigger, the weapon became active. It’s active now, and my finger’s getting twitchy.” I paused, then added quietly, “Don’t think I can’t or won’t do this, if you leave me no other choice.”
I saw Garton-Jones register the utter conviction in my voice and start to waver. Watched as he weighed up the chance that I might be bluffing. Knew precisely the moment when he finally realised that I was not.
He carefully thumbed the safety back on and dropped the Browning into the mud at his feet. An amateur, with no respect for a decent gun. His hands went up as Sean’s came down.
I heard Sean’s breath hiss out, relief escaping like steam as he ducked to rescue the shotgun. He retrieved it, and moved back to my right. Madeleine took the knife, trying to hide her revulsion at the amount of blood that still covered it.
All the time, I kept the Glock level, kept the front sight up, pointing straight at Garton-Jones. And all the time, he kept his gaze locked on mine.
It took every ounce of sheer bloody-minded will I possessed to keep the gun steady, not to let my arm and hand tremble. I was damned if I was going to show him a sign of weakness and I silently thanked all those hours I spent at Attila’s, working out.
“See,” West spat, disgusted by his boss’s capitulation, “I told you they killed the Asian lad. He was shot with a nine-mil, right?”
“Oh shut up, West, you’re starting to bore me,” Sean snapped, swinging the Browning in his direction. It was enough to silence the other man.
I turned back to Garton-Jones, and played a hunch. “I have no idea what’s going on here,” I said, lowering the Glock, “beside the fact that your man West is trying his guts out to persuade you that we’re guilty of something we haven’t done. Maybe you can shed some light on why that is.”
As if on cue, we all turned towards West. His eyes swivelled in panic and he started to hutch backwards, still clutching the now sodden handkerchief to his leg. “She stabbed me,” he repeated, his voice almost a squawk, as if that answered the question.
“Yes, I did,” I admitted. I eyed Garton-Jones again. “But if it’s Sean’s knife, as he’s claiming, then how do you explain the fact that Friday’s also been injured. Do you think we’d stab the dog ourselves? And how does West know what sort of knife was used to kill Harvey Langford? Unless he was there.”
I let that one settle on them for a few moments. Jav had pointed the finger firmly at the security men the last time we’d spoken to him, and he’d been too frightened to lie to us again. It wasn’t his fault that we’d lumped them all together and automatically assumed he meant Garton-Jones, rather than West . . .
“But you were there, too,” Garton-Jones said now, and it was a statement.
Sean nodded. “We were manoeuvred into being at the building site just after West killed him,” he said. “He even took pot shots at us to try and keep us pinned down until the cops arrived.”
Garton-Jones looked at the blood on Sean’s shirt. “Is that what happened to the shoulder?”
“He got lucky.”
The security chief gave West a long considering stare, and it was impossible to guess from his impassive face what thoughts were passing through his mind.
“He told me it was all down to some long-running feud between you and Langford going back to your National Front days,” he said at last, curling his lip. “He told me that Langford had winged you before you’d stuck him. Oh when fascists fall out.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care as long as you didn’t bring it onto my estate.”
“So how did he know what kind of gun was used to kill Nasir?” I asked.
Garton-Jones seemed suddenly weary, barely able to look at his second-in-command. He sighed. “He was responsible for that one, too, was he?”
“No! Ian, you can’t believe these lying shits,” West said, pleading now. “We’ve been working together for ten years. For God’s sake, trust me on this.”
Madeleine, who’d gone back to tending Friday’s wound, had been listening without taking part in the exchange. Now, she got to her feet and moved forwards. “How did you find out about the contract on Lavender Gardens?” she asked.
Garton-Jones stared at her blankly for a moment, as though he couldn’t see the relevance, then something connected. “He put me onto it,” he said, waving a hand in West’s direction, “through a pal of his from the TA. He works for the Community Juvenile office. Chap called Eric O’Bryan. We pay him a commission for putting work our way.”
“O’Bryan’s the one who’s running the crime ring on the estates,” Madeleine said, breaking the news to him almost gently. “O’Bryan’s gang of kids crank the crime rate up until the residents are prepared to pay you to come in and sort it out for them. West and O’Bryan have been making money twice over from the scheme.”
“You can’t believe this crap, Ian,” West broke in, but the desperation was clear in his voice. “I wouldn’t do something like that to you. You’re my mate.”
“You’re his fall guy,” Sean said clearly. “His scapegoat. Once this riot’s over, who d’you think they’re going to blame for antagonising the Asian community, stirring it all up? West and O’Bryan will skip with the proceeds and you’re going to be left carrying the can. Face it, you’ve been had.”
West made another failed attempt to rise. “Ian, I—”
“Shut up, Mr West,” Garton-Jones said without turning his head. “Don’t dig your grave any deeper than it is already.”