There was a half-heartbeat pause, then I straightened up slowly, letting the gun drop to my side. What was the point?
Thirty metres is a long shot with a handgun. Don’t believe most of what you see in the movies. The greatest distance I’d fired over with a pistol on the army ranges had been fifteen metres, and most of the time it was half that.
Even so, I’d been good enough to have winged O’Bryan, despite the distance involved. It wasn’t that which stayed my hand, and had Sean lowering the Browning defeatedly.
“Sensible people,” O’Bryan called, close to jeering.
He had Roger in front of him as a shield, holding the boy roughly by the collar of the coat Sean had put him into. If I’d been more familiar with the Glock, I might have risked it even at that range, but I just couldn’t. Until this whole sorry business, I hadn’t even picked up a gun in more than four years, for Christ’s sake.
Roger looked white. There was a smear of blood across his cheekbone which stood out starkly in contrast. He seemed dazed, stumbling over the uneven ground, but at least he was still alive. I was suddenly aware of an overwhelming urge to keep him that way.
O’Bryan shook the boy, as though he was faking it, snapping his head back and forth. I could feel the rage building in the tensing of Sean’s body beside me.
I growled his name under my breath, wasn’t sure the warning had any real effect.
“Let’s see those guns. Nice and slow,” O’Bryan ordered. “Take the magazine out of the pistol, Charlie. That’s it, good girl. No tricks, or the boy’s dead.”
I complied with stiff fingers, thumbing the release and dropping the magazine into my hand with slow and deliberate movements. Only Sean knew the weapon was already cocked, the first round already lying snug in the breech.
I threw the magazine out sideways into the darkness, making a big show of it. But the gun itself I let fall much closer, so that it came to rest only a little way past Sean. I saw his eyes skim over it, and knew at once that he was aware of what I’d done.
O’Bryan made him break the shotgun and pick out the live cartridges, then send the weapon spinning into the rubble. It landed with a dull clatter, kicking up the dirt. Sean did as he was ordered with a rigidness born of a cold, icy anger, needle sharp.
When it was done O’Bryan smiled widely, the light from the fire behind us flaring on the lenses of his glasses. In his grey anorak and his sensible shoes he looked like everyone’s idea of the friendly uncle, or the family vicar. How many people, I wondered, had trusted him. How many kids had he corrupted, and betrayed.
“Why?” I said. I didn’t think about the question. It arrived already spoken. “Why did you do all this?”
If anything, O’Bryan’s smile grew wider. He tut-tutted. “Oh Charlie, so naïve for one so cynical,” he said with mock sadness. “Money, of course. I like money. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it certainly has a healthy cushioning effect against the harsher realities of life.”
“That’s it?” I demanded, filled with a sense of anti-climax, of disbelief. “You’re not trying to tell me that a few nicked video recorders are really worth killing someone for?”
O’Bryan almost snorted. “You really don’t see the big picture, do you, Charlie? The annual turnover from the credit card haul alone is worth killing a dozen punk kids like Nasir Gadatra.”
“There must have been another way to make a decent living,” I said quietly.
“Oh, probably, but why go to all that trouble when I had the perfect means and opportunity handed to me on a plate? These kids are cheap, willing to learn if you give them the right motivation.” O’Bryan was still smiling as though this was all some big joke to him. “Besides, I hate to see things go to waste, get put on the scrap-heap. I suppose that’s why I like my classic cars so much.”
“And what do you think you’ve been doing to kids like Roger by getting them involved in your grand design, if not wasting their lives?” Sean said tightly.
O’Bryan’s smile faded, as though he’d hoped we’d understand his vision, and was disappointed that we obviously did not.
“They were already well on the scrap-heap by the time they got as far as my office,” he said, sharply. “They were never going to be useful members of society, but they did have certain – talents, in other directions.”
He paused, settled himself. “All I did was tap into that latent talent and utilise their existing skills,” he said, as though he was expecting adulation. “In return for that I gave them order, discipline, and a suitable financial reward. I gave them more stability than most of them ever got from their damned families! I care about these kids! Where were you when Roger needed you, hmm?”
“So,” Sean bit out, “where do we go from here?”
“We?” O’Bryan asked with a nasty grin. “Oh, we don’t go anywhere.”
Once he’d got the two of us disarmed, he’d urged Roger forwards, until we were only three or four metres apart.
I could see the sweat rolling down O’Bryan’s temples. Realised that he was as hyped up with the thrill as with the fear. I’d seen that look before, and it terrified me.
In the split second before he moved, it came to me what he was going to do. I had no time to react, to do anything to intervene.
I could only stand beside Sean and watch, horrified, as O’Bryan shifted his grip so he had Roger held firmly across the throat with his forearm. He looked straight at Sean, and he smiled.
Then he shot his brother in the back at point-blank range.
Roger’s body jerked with shock, limbs dancing. He gave a single hiccuping cough, then his eyes rolled upwards leaving only the whites showing, and he went down like a stone.
O’Bryan let go and allowed the boy to drop away from him without a glance, as though he was no more than a carelessly discarded cigarette wrapper. His eyes never left Sean’s taut face, and an expression of savage glee never left his own.
Sean stood locked, immobile. Both of us stared at the slumped figure, desperately searching for some flicker of life. A trickle of breeze ruffled a lock of Roger’s hair. Apart from that, there was nothing.
He’d landed half on his face, one hand stretched out towards us, the fingers curled in the dirt. The smell of cordite hung thick and bitter in the air. The hole in the back of Roger’s jacket, surrounded by scorched powder burns from the cloaked muzzle flash, seemed a damning confirmation.
I glanced at Sean, but could read nothing from the bleakness of his features. Surely the vest should have been enough to save the boy. Did they work at such close distance without the extra plates he’d mentioned?
I looked back towards Roger, but still he hadn’t moved.
“You bastard,” Sean whispered, giving me my answer. I turned my head numbly towards him, saw a cold death in his intentions, and was suddenly so afraid for him, what he might do, that it was like being dropped into a winter sea. “I swear you’ll burn in hell for that.”
“Very probably,” O’Bryan sneered. “But I’ll see you there first.”
The clock stopped. I turned my head back, so slowly it seemed, and watched with a mildly detached kind of interest as O’Bryan started to bring the gun up to fire.
My mind flashed ahead like a data-squirt down a modem line. One course of action came zinging back, almost blinding in its intensity. When I tried to analyse it afterwards it all seemed so cold-bloodedly simple, and so simply cold-blooded, that for a long time any thought of it made me shudder.
As O’Bryan’s hand came up, my feet had already started to stir. I felt the sluggish transfer of my own weight from even spread, across onto my left leg. The rugged sole of my boot twisted a little until it gripped into the dirt. I used that purchase to launch my body sideways.