Vernay’s flat was on the third floor. MacLean rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened so he rang once more and then a third time. He heard a door open on the landing below and cautiously looked over the railings. An old woman was looking up at him. She seemed disappointed when she didn’t recognise him. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I thought it was Mr Vernay.’
MacLean thought she sounded distraught. Is something wrong?’ he asked.
‘Mr Vernay must have a leak,’ said the woman. ‘Water’s coming through my ceiling.’
Alarm bells went off in MacLean’s head. His first thought was to break down the door but the woman was a problem. He made sympathetic noises and asked if she had a screwdriver he could borrow. Anticipating some remedial action the woman went off to find one.
As soon as she was out of the way MacLean took a couple of steps back from the door then, lifting his foot he crashed it into Vernay’s door just below the Yale lock. He leaned his shoulder against the door and it swung slowly open.
It was dark inside. There were no windows in the hall and all the room doors were closed. MacLean could hear the sound of water pattering on to the floor. He followed it. He called out Vernay’s name but knew there would be no reply. He did it to release some of the tension that was building inside him. The floor was wet beneath his feet and the sound of the waterfall was becoming louder. He took care not to slip on wet linoleum as he opened the bathroom door.
The room was lit solely by the light coming in from a street light. Vernay was in the bath. His huge dead eyes stared up at him from below the surface of the water. MacLean swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and leaned over to turn off the water. He recoiled as he saw that two of Vernay’s fingers had been cut off from his right hand.
‘Yoo hoo! Are you there?’ came the old woman’s voice from the hall. MacLean suddenly realised that she was coming in and it shook him out of his trance. He came out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He stood in front of it as the woman came towards him. ‘I’ve found the trouble,’ he said. ‘My stupid friend left the taps running in the bath and the overflow seems to be blocked. I’ll have a strong word with him when he gets back and tell him in no uncertain terms that he is responsible for the damage to your ceiling.’
The woman seemed pleased at the attention MacLean was giving her. She offered to help him clear up the mess.
MacLean ushered her to the door kindly, ‘I’ll have it cleared up in no time,’ he insisted, breathing a sigh of relief when the door was closed behind her. He steeled himself to examine the other rooms of the flat. He needed to understand what had happened.
There was no evidence of a struggle in any of the rooms. Vernay must have been taken by surprise, thought MacLean. He found nothing out of the ordinary until he went over to the kitchen sink and saw the wooden chopping board with Vernay’s missing fingers on it. MacLean turned away for a moment and suppressed the urge to retch. He looked back and saw with a professional eye that something heavy had been used to cut them off, an axe or a meat cleaver.
It was clear that they had tortured Vernay to make him talk. He would have told them everything he knew. Lehman Steiner knew about Tansy and Carrie. They could even be on their way to the bungalow right now.
A gun! He had to have a gun! Vernay had carried one. Maybe it was still in the flat. MacLean started searching like a man possessed. He pulled open drawers and threw open cupboards until he found what he was looking for under a mattress. The pistol was still in Vernay’s shoulder holster. MacLean took off his jacket and slipped it on. The gun was under the wrong armpit for him but it didn’t matter. It was much more important that he was armed.
MacLean took the stairs three at a time and burst out on to the street. A taxi driver looked the other way when he tried to flag him down. His dress and the way he was behaving said that he was a bad risk. A second one stopped but looked sceptical. He was waiting to hear if MacLean sounded drunk.
‘Craiglockhart canal bridge! As fast as you can!’ said MacLean getting into the back and slamming the door.
‘Aye, ah saw that picture too,’ said the man laconically.
MacLean took out money from his wallet and waved it in front of the driver. ‘I mean it. I’ll pay double if you move it!’
The taxi took seven minutes. MacLean watched all of them pass on his watch. He urged the driver to greater efforts, despite being thrown from side to side at the current rate of progress. The cab screeched to a halt on the bridge and MacLean rammed a handful of notes into the driver’s hand and leapt out. The driver shook his head but MacLean was gone.
There was a black Ford saloon parked thirty yards down the hill from the bridge. How many? MacLean wondered. How many of the bastards? He ran down the slippery earth to the towpath and started to run along it. It was dark but he knew it well enough and reflections on the water helped.
MacLean saw the lights of the bungalow appear through the trees. Carrie would be upstairs in bed. Tansy would be in the sitting room or maybe the kitchen preparing the evening meal. Please God! Let there be time!
There was a movement in the trees ahead and MacLean dropped to one knee. Another movement and this time he saw the silhouette of a man against light coming from the sitting room window. He was holding something in his hand. MacLean thought at first that it was a gun but then he decided it was too big for that. The man drew back his arm and MacLean suddenly realised he was about to throw something. He yelled out a warning to stop but the missile left the man’s hand and crashed threw the French windows of the bungalow. The world was silent for three seconds then an explosion rocked the night as the incendiary grenade went off. A vivid sheet of flame shot skywards.
The man had not heard MacLean call out. He was standing directly in front of him at the bottom of the garden, framed in the firelight. MacLean pulled out the pistol from under his arm and levelled it at the silhouette. He shot the man without compunction, putting three bullets into him before he hit the ground.
He ran towards the flames, which were ripping through the bungalow, sending showers of sparks up into the night sky, continuing to run towards them, oblivious of the heat which seared his eyes but not of a scream. It was a woman’s cry but more of anguish than of pain. It came from Tansy!
MacLean followed the sound on all fours as the intense heat threatened to set his clothing alight. He found Tansy kneeling on the grass staring into the flames. She looked to MacLean as if she had lost her mind, her wide eyes refusing to accept what she saw before her. ‘Carrie!’ she cried out, ‘She’s still in there!’
MacLean tried to pull Tansy back from the flames; she struggled and resisted. ‘Carrie’s upstairs!’ she screamed. ‘Do something!’
The whole ground floor of the house was ablaze. There was no way in for MacLean. He looked up to Carrie’s window and saw black smoke billow out from it. Not only was Carrie going to die, he was going to have to stand there and watch it happen. Tansy tried to break free and rush towards the flames. MacLean held her back. ‘Let go of me, damn you!’ she cried.
An explosion from inside the house shook the ground and MacLean saw the dormer window of Carrie’s room break away from the roof and crash to the ground in a shower of sparks. Through the hole left by the window he caught a glimpse of a small white bundle and knew it was Carrie in her nightdress. She was unconscious or worse. If only he could get on to the roof he might be able to reach her but the heat was intense and he had no ladder.