I had the nasty feeling that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.
West wasn’t a fool, he’d seen the tide turning against him, knew when he was beaten. He sat back in the mud, looked at the blood on his hands and gave a high-pitched laugh. “You won’t be able to prove any of this,” he said. “You won’t make any of it stick.”
“You’re forgetting my little brother,” Sean told him. “He’s a witness. You were trying to get rid of him tonight, and you’ve failed. It’s over.”
If anything, that made West laugh louder. “Of course it’s not over,” he said scornfully. “As soon as we saw the jeep and realised you were here we knew you’d probably have found the kid, got him out, so O’Bryan went looking for him while the rest of us kept you occupied. He’s been out there, all this time.” Triumph made his voice a crow. “Your brother’s already dead.”
“You’d better hope not,” Sean told him, his voice icy. “For your own sake.”
Garton-Jones jerked his head to some of his men, who moved forwards to grab hold of West, haul him to his feet. “Get him out of here,” he said, his face twisting with distaste. “And watch those two, as well,” he added, pointing to Harlow and Drummond, who’d been trying to slink back into the ranks.
He glanced again at Sean’s shoulder. “You look as though you need a medic, too.”
Sean shook his head. “I’m OK,” he said. He looked pale, tired, but I knew it was useless to try and talk him out of his objective. “If you’ve got transport, though, can you get Friday out of here? Get him sorted?”
“Of course,” Garton-Jones said, but when a couple of his men tried to approach him, the dog opened his eyes and did his best to snarl at them. Even battered and wounded, the Ridgeback presented a fearsome obstacle. They hesitated, and I couldn’t say I blamed them for it.
“One of us is going to have to go with him,” I said, my voice hollow. I looked at Sean and Madeleine. There was no way I wanted to let Sean go out after O’Bryan alone, and I didn’t want to let Madeleine go with him, either. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe the dark-haired girl could take care of herself, or of Sean. That wasn’t what I was afraid of.
Pauline had been right. Sean was after blood, and if the chance came up I was afraid Madeleine wouldn’t be able to stop him from taking it.
It was a fast downhill route, through anger to death. Coming back from the power and the thrill of it left you constantly unsure of yourself, like a newly sober alcoholic.
“Don’t worry, Charlie, I’ll go with Friday.”
I realised it was Madeleine who’d spoken. She bent down by the dog’s head, talking to him and stroking his ears while two of Garton-Jones’s men got a coat under him, using that as a sling. This time, the Ridgeback didn’t protest, allowing them to pick him up, start to carry him away.
I put my hand on Madeleine’s arm as she moved past me. “It should be me,” I argued, stumbling to find the right words. “He’s my responsibility. I promised Pauline I’d—”
“Don’t,” Madeleine interrupted, but kindly. “I can take care of Friday. Sean needs you.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve seen him change like this before – when he’s working. He drops into another mode, another skin,” she said, almost sadly. “You move just like he does, Charlie. You can’t help it. Just watch his back for me, OK?”
She smiled at me quickly, and then she was gone, jogging nimbly over the rubble to catch up. I noted that the security men were taking a great deal more care with the dog than they were with West.
Garton-Jones watched them half-carrying, half-dragging his former lieutenant over the rough ground, then he turned back to Sean. “This O’Bryan character,” he said. “How dangerous is he?”
“We know he’s killed once, and he probably still has the gun,” Sean told him.
“In that case, you’d best keep the shotgun,” Garton-Jones said. He eyed us both, subdued, diffident even, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Sean still had hold of the Browning. “Are you sure we can’t help you search for the boy?”
“Positive,” Sean said. “If Roger’s managed to evade O’Bryan this long he’ll run a mile if he sees your lot. He doesn’t know you and West aren’t in this together.”
Garton-Jones looked disappointed to be denied the chase, but he nodded.
“Thanks for the offer, anyway,” Sean said, sounding sincere. “I appreciate it.”
They shook hands. It seemed an ironic gesture of civility, somehow, in view of the circumstances.
“You gave me a good runaround,” Garton-Jones told him, then added in my direction, “and if I’d known how handy you were, young lady, I’d have offered you a job.”
Sean smiled at him. “You’ll have to get in the queue for that,” he said.
We stood and watched the last of Garton-Jones’s men disappear into the shadows, moving quickly in a direction that took them away from the worst of the conflict.
It seemed to be getting nearer all the time. The sounds of it swelling like surf on a beach, relentless and profound. If we didn’t find Roger soon, the gangs would do O’Bryan’s work for him.
For a moment Sean didn’t seem in any hurry to move off himself, and I thought that maybe he was more badly hurt by his altercation with West than he’d wanted to admit. He just stood, staring at the burning hulk of the Patrol, as though mesmerised by the wheel and twist of the fire.
“You do realise, Sean,” I said quietly, “that even if O’Bryan’s—” I broke off, unwilling to voice what was so clearly running through both our minds. I tried again. “No matter what O’Bryan’s done, you can’t kill him.”
“If West’s right, and Roger’s dead,” Sean said evenly, “he’s got to pay for it, one way or another.”
“He will pay – in prison,” I said. “They’ll lock him up and throw away the key for what he’s done here.”
But even as I spoke I knew that the courtrooms didn’t always bring justice to the guilty. I could just see O’Bryan swivelling his way onto a lesser charge, overriding the evidence of a fourteen-year-old thief.
Particularly if that thief was no longer alive to give it in person.
Sean knew it, too. “Even if he gets life,” he said. “Life doesn’t mean life any more, Charlie. With good behaviour and remission, he’ll be back out sooner than you think.”
He glanced up at me then, and although the firelight crackled in his eyes, his face was very calm, as though he’d had a vision. “I want more than that for him,” he said. “I need more than that.”
“You can’t have it, Sean,” I said, and the pain of denying him cut like glass. “If you’re thinking of trying, you know I’ll have to stop you, don’t you?”
Sean didn’t answer right away. He carefully flexed the fingers of his left hand, finding they were still just about under his control. He broke the Browning and checked the cartridges, snapped it shut again.
“Well,” he said at last, cold, hard, almost a stranger, “let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Twenty-nine
In the end, we didn’t have to look far.
We’d commenced the best search pattern we could manage with just the two of us, moving in a zigzag layout across the waste ground, when a shout rang out.
“Hold it right there!” O’Bryan’s voice rolled across the brickwork and echoed around us like gunfire.
We spun round fast, hearing the crunch of the broken-up masonry under our feet. Automatically, I brought the Glock up in a double-handed grip, heart revving.
O’Bryan was thirty metres away, edging out from behind the rubble with the FN 9mm he’d used to kill Nasir Gadatra gripped clear in his fist.