He was at the door of the counting house only seconds after he had watched the four masked men force Dix back inside ahead of them at gunpoint. With his back to the wall by the front door he reached out and pushed with his left hand, hoping the door would be open. It was.
The masked man held his gun steady, pointing unwaveringly at Ray Cragg’s upper body. Very briefly, Ray thought about the impact of the slug into his small frame: it would shatter him. Then he dismissed the thought because it wasn’t going to happen. No one was going to shoot him because he was invincible. This was merely a battle and he would live to fight another day and annihilate the people who dared to be so brazen as to steal from him.
He glanced at Crazy, still seated by the dead TV monitor. He had not moved, just sat there quietly, taking everything in. One hell of a cool bastard, Ray thought. Didn’t even look worried. And where was Marty? Typical of him to choose the wrong moment to go for chips.
Next he looked at Dix, his hand grasping the handles of the holdall with close to?270,000 in it, all counted, all sorted.
Ray’s mind flashed: was Dix up to some scam or other?
No. The expression on his trusted gofer’s face told its own story.
‘It’s okay, Dix, pick up the bag. Do as they say,’ Ray told him.
Ray turned back to the masked man who seemed to be the leader. ‘Take the money and fuck off,’ he said, ‘but don’t think for one second I won’t find out who you are.’
The man laughed behind his mask. ‘Don’t count on it.’ He gestured for Dix to come. All four men, plus Dix, began to reverse out of the room, into the hallway, leading to the front door.
The first of the men backing into the hall turned towards the front door and stopped dead. The last word to leave his mouth was, ‘Shit!’
Miller stood there on the threshold of the front door like an avenging devil. His face was hard but deadpan, almost lacking expression. The shotgun was held with the sawn-off butt to his groin, ready to fire.
The one thing Miller’s military training had taught him was that to hesitate is to die. Miller did not feel like dying on that particular night.
The shotgun came up, fast. He pulled the trigger and the man staggered backwards into one of his colleagues. The shot had whacked him right in the middle of his chest, causing his sternum to disintegrate with massive damage to his heart and lungs. His arms flailed and his gun flew out of his hand. He died before he hit the floor.
One down, three to go.
Miller twisted out of the door, standing with his back pressed tight to the wall, and racked the shotgun. The action was smooth and well oiled. The spent cartridge ejected and a new one slid easily into the breech to replace it and those few seconds were as long as Miller was prepared to give them. He spun back into the doorway faster than ever and saw the three remaining men in disarray, shocked at having been ambushed so spectacularly, stunned and unready for Miller’s next onslaught.
He came round at a crouch, as low as a shadow.
The shotgun roared again and he gritted his teeth as his body jerked against the kickback.
Another masked man went down with a scream, this time hit in the belly and the groin area. He continued to scream horribly.
The remaining two men dragged their unwilling hostage, Dix, into the kitchen, slamming the door behind them just as Miller reloaded and loosed his third, and penultimate, shot into the closing door.
He racked the final shell into the breech and flung himself against the wall as a bullet was fired back through the kitchen door, down the hall, whizzing dangerously close to his head. Another bullet splintered through the door, then another.
Miller dived low through the living-room door and came up into a crouch, breathing heavy.
Ray and Crazy stood stock still for a frozen moment, then seemed to come to life.
‘Well done,’ Ray said. ‘Let’s get these fuckers, Crazy.’
Crazy jumped out of his seat, crawling underneath the table on which the TV monitor was positioned, tearing away at the tape which held three guns to the underside. He tossed a revolver to Ray, kept one for himself.
The remaining two men were not about to wait. Things had gone wrong and they knew time was against them, that the odds had changed. They bundled Dix out through the kitchen door into the backyard, then out into the alley where they did a right turn towards the Irwell, pushing, prodding, forcing Dix ahead of them.
One was definitely dead. The other would probably die sooner rather than later. Ray yanked the stockings off their heads, firstly to see if he recognized them — he didn’t — and secondly to ask the living one some quick questions. It was obvious that the pain he was in made him impervious to any quizzing. After a few yelled questions, Ray dropped the man’s head hard on the floor and left him to die.
Miller picked up a discarded gun — another Star revolver — and tucked it into his waistband, then took up position at one side of the kitchen door with Crazy at the opposite side. Ray Cragg hung back.
Miller counted to three, then twisted to face the door. Crazy reached across, pulled down the handle, then stood back as Miller booted the door open. It flew back on its hinges revealing the empty kitchen.
‘You don’t need me, let me go,’ Dix pleaded. ‘Here’s the money, just take it and run.’
‘Shut it,’ the lead masked man snapped, and pushed his gun into the small of Dix’s back, urging him forwards.
They had run across a grassed area and over a low fence taking them to the steep river bank. They had been hoping to loop back to where they had left their cars, but in their panic to escape, they had become disorientated. At the point where they reached the Irwell it was perhaps only twenty feet wide. Normally it was quite shallow and easily crossable. But the river was running heavily following torrential rain on the moors high above. On the opposite bank was a road and more terraced housing.
‘Down there — and keep hold of the bag,’ the man ordered Dix. ‘We go across the water.’
Dix peered down the almost perpendicular bank. The rise and fall of his throat made the sound like that of the mouse in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. ‘It looks a bit dangerous to me,’ he said.
‘It’s either that or a bullet in your spine.’
Ah, certain death either way, Dix thought. ‘I’ll go for drowning, then,’ he said. He took a firmer grip on the holdall and dug his heels into the bank as he stumbled, tripped and fell towards the water, accompanied by his two captors.
One shot a glance back. ‘They’re coming,’ he said, spotting the low approach of Ray, Miller and Crazy. ‘Move it,’ he urged.
Dix stepped gingerly into the fast-running water. Its bitter coldness immediately took his breath away. He gasped.
‘Get across.’ He felt a jab in the back from the gun muzzle.
Dix stepped further in, expecting it to be fairly shallow. Instead, his right leg went in as far as the knee and he had to fight to keep balanced.
‘This is friggin’ dangerous,’ he shouted.
‘Just get across and keep hold of the money.’
Only just keeping on his two feet, Dix heaved the cash-laden holdall on to his back, putting his arms through the handles and wearing it as though it was a haversack.
He put another foot into the water, feeling for a steady place to put it down. The water was freezing cold, so cold it burnt his legs. He wobbled unsteadily.
‘Go, you fucker,’ one of the men shouted and pushed him hard.
‘Right, I’m going,’ he said, stepped into the current and lost his balance completely. It was as though the river was practising its judo throws as it swept his legs away from under him. He toppled over, caught his right ankle between some rocks on the river bed and fell sideways.
He had expected to be able to stand up again, but the strength and depth of the water were too much for him. Before he could surface properly, he was sucked under and dragged downstream. Now he was sure he was going to drown.