Even Paddy looked impressed.
"Jesus!" said Eddie again. "Je-sus!" He scrunched his foot on some broken glass. "Listen, lady," he offered, "about these windows." He gestured to the youths behind him. "We'll clear up and put some new ones in. It's only fair."
"You can do better than that, Eddie," said McLoughlin pleasantly. "It's names we want. Let's start with who attacked Miss Cattrell?"
Eddie shook his head with genuine regret. "I can guess, same as you can, but if it's proof you need, then I can't help you. Like I said, queer-bashing doesn't turn me on." He indicated one of his mates. "Me and Bob took a couple of birds to the flicks that night. I don't know about the rest of them."
A chorus of denials greeted this statement.
"Not me. I was watching telly with my folks."
"Jesus, Eddie, I was round your sister's place. You bloody know that."
"Fuck that. I only heard about it the next morning, same as you."
Above their heads, McLoughlin caught Paddy's eye and saw his own disappointment mirrored there. The truth had an unmistakable ring about it. "And what about you?" he asked Peter Barnes, knowing the little bastard would get away with it. "Where were you?"
Barnes grinned. "I was with my mother all evening until half-past midnight. Then I went to bed. She'll sign a statement if you ask her nicely." He raised his middle finger and jabbed it in the air at Paddy. "That's to you and your beggar crap, shithead." He giggled and crooked his arm over his other fist, thrusting the finger skyward. "And that's to your pathetic little set-up. What a joke. It was so fucking transparent, a blind man could have seen through it. You think I haven't creepy-crawled this place, seen the tame fuzz they've got watching over them?" He giggled again.
Alarm bells rang in McLoughlin's head. What the hell sort of psychopath was this boy? A Charles Manson freak? Je-sus! "Creepy-crawled," he knew, was an expression the Charles Manson Family had used to describe the way they had entered Sharon Tale's house before they murdered her. "So what brought you up here?" he asked, loosing some handcuffs from his jacket pocket. "Gives you a buzz, does it, being arrested?"
"It sure as hell gives me a buzz to see you cretins screw up. That's got to be worth a slapped wrist and a fine any day. Hell, it was a bit of high spirits. Dad'll ante-up for the damage."
There was a moment of silence before Jonathan's cool voice spoke from the shattered window. "That seems reasonable," he said, "in return, I'll ante-up for the damage I'm going to do to you."
It was the element of surprise that held everyone frozen. Like a slow motion sequence they watched him cross the room, release the safety catch on his mother's shotgun, shove the barrel between Barnes's legs and pull the trigger. The explosion left them deaf. Through a dense cloud of dust they saw, rather than heard, the screams that issued from the boy's writhing mouth. They watched the pool of liquid collect on the floor at his feet.
McLoughlin, stunned, tried to intervene, only to find a pair of thick arms clamped around his chest, holding him back. "Jon!" he yelled, his voice muffled by the ringing echoes in his ears. "For God's sake! He's not worth it!"
"Leave him be, sir." It was Fred's voice. "He's waited a long time for this."
Shocked beyond belief, McLoughlin watched Jonathan Maybury drive Peter Barnes against the wall and ram the shotgun into the boy's screaming mouth.
25
Gap-toothed where the windows yawned, its finery ruffled by birdshot, the old house slumbered on, a silent witness to many worse things in its four-hundred-year history. Within half an hour, three patrol cars had arrived to ferry the culprits to the Station with PC Gavin Williams in firm but reluctant charge. "It's down to you, Sarge," he protested. "You should be taking them in."
"Nn-nn. They're all yours. I've some unfinished business here."
"What do I do about Maybury, Sarge?"
McLoughlin folded his arms and didn't say anything.
"Barnes is bound to mention it."
"Let him."
"Shouldn't we charge Maybury?"
"What with? Accidental discharge of a licenced firearm?"
"You'll never get away with that. Eddie, for one, knows it wasn't an accident."
McLoughlin was amused. "I think you'll find Eddie's somewhat disenchanted with Peter Barnes. Apart from anything else, he doesn't take kindly to being set up as a fall-guy for Barnes's warped sense of humour. He tells me he and his mates were looking the other way when the accident happened."
Williams looked worried. "What do I say?"
"That's up to you, Gavin. I can't help you I'm afraid. When the gun went off, I had my back turned, taking down the names and addresses of the intruders. After that I couldn't see anything for dust."
"Hell, Sarge!"
"I thought you were taking down the names and addresses of all the witnesses to the vandalism. It's standard police procedure in incidents of this sort."
The constable pulled a wry face. "And how do you explain Barnes's confession? I mean if it was just an accident why would he want to stitch himself up? Jesus, Sarge, he was so bloody terrified, he was pissing all over the floor."
McLoughlin clapped him amiably on the shoulder. "Is that right, Gavin? I couldn't see a damn thing because of the dust in my eyes. So don't ask me what loosened his tongue, because I couldn't tell you, unless it was the shock of the gun going off. Explosions react on people in different ways. Left me temporarily blinded but with my ears working overtime. Some sort of compensation effect, I imagine. Couldn't see worth a damn, but I heard every word the little weasel said."
Williams shook his head. "I was in a blue funk. I thought the doctor shot his balls off."
So did I, thought McLoughlin. So did I. And so it seemed had Peter Barnes. Swept back by the violence of Jonathan's assault and numbed by the blast of the shotgun between his legs which had discharged itself harmlessly into Phoebe's drawing-room wall, he had burst into tears of self-pity as Jonathan rammed the barrel against his teeth and threatened to pull the second trigger. "I didn't mean to do it," he babbled. "I was creepy-crawling the house. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to do it," he screamed. "She came back. The silly bitch came back. I had to hit her."
Jonathan's finger whitened on the trigger. "Now tell me about nine years ago."
"Oh, God, help me! Somebody help me!" The front of his trousers was saturated with urine.
"TELL ME!" roared Jonathan, his face white and drawn with rage. "Someone ransacked this house. WHO WAS IT?"
"It was my dad," the boy screamed, sobbing convulsively. "He got drunk with some friends." His eyes widened alarmingly as Jonathan started to squeeze the trigger. "It's not my fault. Mum's always giggling about it. It's not my fault. It was my dad." His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed on the floor.
Jonathan lowered the gun and looked across at McLoughlin. "We never knew who it was. Mum, Jane and I locked ourselves in the cellar and waited till they'd gone. I have never been so frightened in my life. We could hear them shouting and breaking all the furniture. I thought they were going to kill us." He shook his head and looked down at the twitching boy. "I swore I'd make them pay if I ever found out who they were. They used the house as a toilet and wrote 'Murdering Bitch' all over the walls in tomato ketchup. I was only eleven. I thought it was blood." His jaw tightened.
McLoughlin shook off Fred's bear hug and started to slap the dust out of his clothes. "That was a hell of a close shave, Jon. What happened, for God's sake? Did you trip on some broken glass or something?"
"That's it, Sergeant," said Fred impassively. "I was watching. Could have been quite nasty if young Jon hadn't kept his wits about him."