‘I’m all a tremble.’ She got inside the cab and hit the ignition.
‘Over here! Over here!’ yelled Lambert-Chide, waving his arms energetically.
At that moment a number of loud bangs rang out, and Gareth heard the sound of bees. Then he realised they were bullets whipping close by his head. He instinctively ducked down. More shots crackled from out of the dark undergrowth, the strident sounds echoing slightly in the curve of the natural amphitheatre, and he flinched when Caroline let loose a few rounds from behind him.
‘What are you hanging around for? Get inside, Gareth!’ she hollered.
‘Gareth! Do as she says!’ Erica pleaded.
He estimated there were around three or four people out there in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, judging from the bright gun flashes. A fresh round swept the spot where he crouched and he felt that if he raised his head he’d have it blown away. Lambert-Chide was still shouting, wafting his arms like crazy. Then unexpectedly the old man staggered backwards, as if someone had pushed him in the chest with the flat of their hand. He glanced over at Gareth, a look of utter astonishment in his eyes that turned quickly to terror as his hand came away from his chest where the bullet had hit home, his fingers covered in blood. He tottered uncertainly, shaking his head defiantly before giving a rattling, rushing gasp as he collapsed.
Gareth bound over to him at a stoop. ‘He’s been hit!’ he called to no one in particular. He crouched down before Lambert-Chide. The old man’s eyes had rolled into the top of his head, almost completely white. His bony hand clutched at Gareth’s sleeve like a man tumbling down a cliff grasps at the earth to prevent the fall. He gasped out a final, gurgling breath and went completely limp, his hand slipping away.
Randall Tremain ran out into the clearing a little way, taking shelter behind one of the huge boulders, two men at his back. Thankfully the CCTV in the cell where he’d been locked away was scheduled to be checked every hour. He hadn’t had to wait long, but it had been long enough to stoke up one hell of a fury.
He pumped out a couple of shots, looking with some satisfaction at the indistinct, crumpled heap that was Lambert-Chide, laid on the ground some fifty yards away, lit partially by the headlights from the car that Caroline had gunned into action. His had been the shot that had brought Lambert-Chide down. In the confusion it would be claimed to be a sad and unfortunate accident, but Tremain had made sure to take very careful aim. He knew what the old tycoon had in store for him, after all these years of loyalty and confidence. In the end he thought he’d get in first. Consider yourself well and truly retired, you old devil, he thought bleakly.
He’d already been working on a story to cover the old man’s death, that Lambert-Chide was being kidnapped, possibly to be held for ransom, that security had given chase, the kidnappers had fired upon them unexpectedly. That’s when Lambert-Chide had been accidentally hit. On which note he was mindful of his nest egg up front. And what a fucking auction that’s going to be! He had both Russian and Chinese contacts that were falling over themselves to get their hands on these two. But first he had another score to settle — that bastard woman Caroline Cody had managed to outflank him somehow and that hurt like crazy. He was going to make sure she paid for it. He signalled for his men to take up positions on either side of him.
Tremain shouted, ‘Give yourselves up!’
More shots rang out, whether from his men or from the direction of the car he couldn’t be sure; the noise was bouncing around the rocks making it difficult to tell where anything was coming from. He’d instructed them to fire high, not to hit them — they were worth far, far less dead — but they were panicking under fire.
Gareth rose to his feet, dazed. He could not believe that Lambert-Chide had died right in front of him. Two more bullets whizzed over his head. Erica dashed out of the car and went over to him, raising the gun as she came to a halt and letting off three rounds, firing blindly towards Tremain and his men. She dashed in front of Gareth, pushed him towards the car.
‘In heaven’s name, Gareth, get inside!’
Then a volley of shots rang out and Erica lurched into Gareth, almost knocking him over. She groaned and slumped against him.
‘Erica!’ he said, grabbing hold of her, trying to support her dead weight. He put his arms around her and immediately felt the warm pulse of blood course over his fingers.
‘No! Stop it, you idiot!’ cried Tremain, dashing from out of the cover of the boulder to the man who had fired the shots. ‘Stop firing — you’ll hit them!’
Gareth saw the plum-dark silhouette bound from behind the rock. He prised the gun out of Erica’s tight grasp. As he backed away towards the car, half-carrying, half-dragging Erica with him, he raised the gun and let off a quick succession of rounds, firing wildly towards to where the shots had come from, surprised at the gun’s recoil. More shots flashed out of the dark in return and he heard a bullet strike the car with a dull, metallic ring. Caroline opened the passenger door and together they heaved Erica onto the seat.
‘Inside, quick!’ she demanded, thumping him between the shoulder blades with something like fury.
Caroline threw herself behind the steering wheel, ramming home the gear stick and jamming her foot hard onto the gas pedal. The car careered away in a cloud of dust, spraying pebbles far behind it. Gareth struggled to reach out and close the passenger door, almost being thrown out in the process. The car sped towards a barely visible opening in the trees which he hadn’t been aware of, and he closed his eyes briefly when he thought they might lurch headlong into a cliff wall or a boulder or straight into a tree trunk. He wrapped his arms protectively around Erica to prevent her being bounced around as the car hit a series of deep ruts, rattling the suspension.
‘You’ll kill us!’ he shouted as branches rapped the windows.
‘I didn’t want to feel left out!’ she said, wrenching the wheel this way and that. Finally the car burst out of the undergrowth in a veritable storm of leaves and twigs and onto hard tarmac. She slid the vehicle round and hit the gas again, forcing Gareth back in his seat. With a squeal of tyres the car raced down the black road.
Randall Tremain lay on his back, gasping for breath like a fish out of water, and every inhalation sent searing shards of pain spearing into his chest. He knew he had taken one of the bullets fired randomly by Davies; perhaps it was even the last one. He had been shot through the lung. He could even hear the sound of blood filling it up, or thought he could. He coughed, spewing up blood, and he screwed his eyes in pain. He suspected the bullet had gone on to lodge in his spine, because he could not feel his legs anymore. The two men came to his side, one of them chattering excitedly on the phone, the other bending down to him, unfastening his coat to check the wound by the dim light of a torch.
‘How bad is he?’ said the man with the phone.
‘Bad,’ returned the other, putting his gun away. He checked for a pulse. ‘He’s losing a lot of blood by the looks, getting weaker. I reckon he’s only just this side of alive.’
Randall Tremain winced as the words from over thirty years ago came back to peck at him like hungry crows attacking carrion. But the irony wasn’t lost on him.
Soon, very soon, he knew he would be just this side of dead.
44
A life. That’s what all this represented, he thought. His life. In the end, as with his grandfather before him, it all came down to the impermanence of physical things. This room, filled with an accumulation of the worthless, the seminal, purposeful and inconsequential. Drawn to people like iron filings to a magnet, and when that magnet is removed they will all fall away and be dispersed again.