‘Ready?’ Ray asked, his voice muffled by the mask.
Marty nodded and raised his gun to show he was.
Ray put his weight against the door which led to the snug. He opened it an inch so he could see through. It was quiet, dead, even, as their small informant had said it would be. He could see the barman, but only two figures sat hunched over the bar, deep in conversation. He was unable to tell if one of them was Rufus Callan or not.
One way or another he had to do something, though.
He could not wait where he was for fear of some innocent customer coming in and tripping over them in the vestibule. He pushed the door open and walked smartly — did not run — towards the men at the bar.
‘Snug’ was an inappropriate term for the room because it was extremely spacious and it was perhaps thirty feet from the door to the bar. A long way to walk with a gun in your hand.
As Ray came in, Marty behind him, time seemed to move very slowly. Ray felt like he was walking through treacle, as though his hearing had been tampered with and he was wearing mufflers. Nothing seemed real — except for the realization that Rufus Callan was not sitting at the bar.
The barman was first to notice their approach. His head jerked up and he shouted something which, to Ray’s ears, was loud, strange and distorted. It was obviously a warning, but Ray could not distinguish the words.
Instinctively Ray raised his chosen weapon, the Glock.
The two men at the bar looked over their shoulders. Expressions of horror creased their faces as they reacted to the sight of two armed, masked men approaching.
One of the men pushed himself up and away from the bar, his stool tipping over, and turned to run, but even in the slow-motion time in which Ray was operating, he did not have a cat in hell’s chance.
Ray shot him in the back, two bullets double tapped from the Glock, driving between his shoulder blades. The man’s arms flew up, he pitched down on to his knees, then smack down on to his face where he squirmed on the beer-sticky carpet.
The other man at the bar belonged to Marty. He did not move, just stared rigidly at their approach and raised his hands in surrender.
Not a good enough gesture for today. Marty waltzed up to him, jammed his gun hard into the man’s temple, forced his head to the bar top and pulled the trigger.
Ray stood over the man he had taken out and, shot him in the head.
Time returned to normal for Ray with a blinding flash, as though he had stepped out of a time tunnel.
‘Where the fuck is Rufus, where is he?’ he yelled. He jumped across to the bar and pointed his gun at the cowering barman. ‘Where is he?’
‘B-bog,’ stuttered the terrified man. ‘In the b-bog, having a shit.’ He pointed to the toilet door.
Callan pulled up his trousers and flushed the toilet. He tucked his shirt into his jeans and went to wash his hands, which he dried under the hot-air machine. It was because of the combined noise of the toilet flushing and the hand drier that he did not hear any of the shots being fired in the snug. Unaware of any problem, he left the toilets and wandered back down the corridor towards the bar.
For a few vital nano-seconds, it did not even register with his brain when a masked figure appeared at the door ahead of him. It did not register because it did not seem real, because he was not expecting it. But as the gun rose in the hand of the masked man, it became all too real and he reacted.
‘You keep an eye on that fucker!’ Ray screamed at Marty and pointed at the barman. ‘Kill him if you have to.’
He jumped over the body of the man he had shot and ran to the door leading down to the toilets. As he pushed it open he came face to face with Rufus Callan.
Ray hesitated and Callan threw himself against an emergency exit by his side, slamming the release lever down and lurching out of the door.
Ray fired, but because he was slightly off balance, he missed. The bullet gouged into the wall by the door. Then he gave chase.
Callan banged the door shut behind him. Ray booted it open again with the flat of his foot, paused, then leapt through it. It opened on to an alleyway at the back of the pub. Callan was running hard towards Duke Street. Ray fired another shot, not really expecting to hit him, but Callan screamed, staggered, clutched the back of his left leg and fell to the ground. He managed to execute a forward roll and was back on his feet straight away, holding his leg and hobbling towards what he hoped would be the safety of a public road.
Ray pursued him relentlessly. He was experiencing that sense of utter elation one feels when taking someone’s life from them. It did not matter that he was going to kill someone in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy street, because he believed absolutely that he would get away with it.
Callan stumbled out of the alley, howling for help.
The first person he approached was a middle-aged woman out shopping. When he raised his blood-soaked hands to stop her, she screamed and recoiled.
‘Callan,’ came a voice behind him, a voice which sounded like the devil calling his name.
He twisted, the agony of his damaged leg smeared across his face. He fell over on to his backside on the pavement and Ray raised the Glock again. Callan tried to crab away backwards on all fours, bawling, ‘No, no, no?’
Ray fired. The bullet rammed into Callan’s right shoulder, pinning him to the ground.
The woman screamed horribly again, a car screeched to a halt, and people started to run and hide. But Ray Cragg had stepped back into his distorted time tunnel and all he could see and feel was the figure of Rufus Callan, a man he hated, a man who had dared to encroach on his drug-dealing patch, who had taunted Ray, who’d had the temerity to think about taking on the most powerful drug dealer in the north of England.
Ray hunted the crawling man. He fired another shot into him as he dragged himself into the road between two parked cars. The bullet went into Callan’s thigh, but he continued to drag himself away from Ray, leaving a trail of thick blood behind him.
A car swerved, just missing him. Another car stopped with a squeal of brakes and tyres as Ray stood over Rufus Callan and shot him twice in the head.
And once again, Ray Cragg’s normal world spun back into focus. He did not vacillate. Making sure that every onlooker saw his pistol waving in his hand and did not dare approach him, he turned and legged it back down the alley and into the King’s Cross through the emergency exit. He burst into the bar, shouting, ‘Go!’ to Marty, who was still covering the barman. Ray had to hurdle the two splayed-out dead bodies to get to the door, which he yanked open. Marty was right behind him.
Seconds later Crazy was driving them away, very coolly, very sedately, not drawing any undue attention to them. Ray ripped off his ski-mask, sweat drizzling down his forehead and face. He was breathless.
A police car, sirens wailing, hurtled past them in the opposite direction, going to the scene.
Crazy kept glancing at Ray, saying nothing, but eager to know what had happened.
Ray gulped deep breaths, calming himself. Eventually he looked sideways at Crazy and smirked victoriously. ‘Fuckin’ good,’ he snarled. ‘Well done, Marty, what a fuckin’ scene that was! Shot the bastard like the dog he was.’
Henry came back to the table balancing two coffees and two plates of Eccles cakes in his hands. Jane Roscoe took hers from him, their eyes catching each other fleetingly, their insides churning. Henry seated himself and took a sip of the hospital cafeteria coffee, wincing at the bitter taste.
‘It was just so false, me being at home all the time,’ Jane said. ‘Making his breakfast and having his tea on the table when he got home, usually late. Then sex!’ She snorted. ‘Just to try and have a baby to keep us together. I think he thought it was wonderful, but it just wasn’t. . right.’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘I didn’t really want to conceive — even though I do want to be a mum — because deep down I don’t really want to be married to him. I just don’t love him,’ she concluded sadly with a shake of the head. She took a bite from her Eccles cake, wiped some crumbs from her mouth and smiled. ‘How did you know an Eccles cake always makes me feel so good?’