Wolfe was in the passenger seat now, Haddock doing the driving, and he swung round in the seat, the sharp, unforgiving features of his face pinched into an angry glare, the squint even more obvious than usual. ‘He got shot because he went for me, all right?’
‘But you got the guy off you,’ I snapped back. ‘At that point he wasn’t offering any resistance, so you could have just left it at that. Or if you were that worried, given him a whack with the butt of your gun. But no. Instead, this prick’ — I pointed at Haddock’s huge bulk — ‘shoots him, and now we’re going to have every copper for a hundred miles after us, not just for kidnap but murder as well. Maybe more than one, after the way you shot up the unmarked car that was following.’
‘Who are you calling a prick?’ demanded Haddock, glaring at me in the rearview mirror and slowing the van as he did so. ‘You apologize, or I’ll cut your fucking head off.’
Wolfe told him to keep driving. ‘We don’t want to attract any attention. And you,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘apologize to him. Now.’
I faced him down, no longer bothered about angering either of these two psychopaths, and finding it close to impossible to keep a lid on my emotions. More than anything right then I wanted to turn the shotgun on them, tell them who I was, and remind them of what they did to my brother. Then pull the trigger. Instead, I shook my head angrily. ‘Fuck you. Fuck you both. You’ve landed me in all kinds of shit.’
‘Come on, boys, calm down,’ said Tommy from behind me. ‘What’s done is done.’
He’d already expressed his displeasure at the fact that a cop had been shot. But typical Tommy, after what could be described as a bit of a moan, he’d accepted it as an occupational hazard, and was now clearly trying to return everything to some sort of status quo. Like most violent criminals I’ve come across over the years, he rarely wasted time worrying about the plight of his victims, particularly those who wore a uniform, and I wondered if he used the same words to summarize what had happened to my brother. What’s done is done. Then just carried on with a big shrug of his shoulders, unworried by the havoc he’d caused in my family.
‘Well put, Tommy,’ said Wolfe. ‘What’s done is done. And I did what I had to do. If I’d tried to give him a slap and he’d grabbed the gun again, the whole thing could have been a complete fuck-up. There were four cops there as well as paramedics. We had to send a warning. That’s all there is to it. It was either put a hole in that copper, or run the risk of getting caught and spending ten years apiece inside.’ He sighed. ‘No one wants to shoot a copper—’
‘I do,’ said Haddock. ‘I hope the bastard’s dead. And I still want an apology from this dog.’
‘Leave it, Clarence,’ said Wolfe, before turning back to me and putting on a conciliatory expression. ‘What I’m trying to say, Sean, is that I don’t like hitting cops either, it’s always way too much hassle. But the fact is we’ve done what we were paid to do, which is get hold of this little fuck.’ He motioned towards Kent, who remained stock-still with his eyes shut. Instinctively, I pushed the barrel of my shotgun against the small of his back. After every other mistake I’d made with this investigation, I wasn’t going to let a dangerous and deranged sex killer escape.
I sighed, wiping sweat from my brow with a gloved hand. The minibus had no air conditioning and the night was muggy and warm. ‘I want the rest of my money,’ I said, knowing I had enough evidence now to bag both Wolfe and Haddock, and finally avenge my brother. ‘Then I’m gone.’
‘You’ll get it when I’ve spoken to my client.’
I wondered how the client was going to take the news that his plan for revenge had led to the death of at least one innocent person. If he was that interested in obtaining real justice, he was going to be very unhappy.
‘Speak to him now,’ I said.
‘Don’t order me around, Sean. I’ll speak to him at the rendezvous.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘It’s a nice, quiet spot, a long way from any nosy neighbours. About half an hour’s drive away.’
‘Who does it belong to?’
‘What do you need to know that for?’
‘Because I want to make sure there’s no paper trail that’ll lead the police to your client, and then back to me. That’s why.’
‘There’s no paper trail attached to this place. It’s been abandoned for years.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The client told me, all right?’ Wolfe was sounding exasperated. ‘Now stop asking me questions. You’ll get the rest of your money later, and that’ll be the end of it.’
I fell silent, knowing I was going to have to keep my wits about me for the next few hours because one thing was certain: no one in this van could be trusted. I’d had an uneasy feeling about this job from the beginning, but now, sitting here in the stifling heat, a trickle of fear ran down my spine.
It was a feeling that grew a whole lot worse when Andrew Kent opened his eyes, looked up at me — his eyes full of the same kind of fear I’d seen in the uniformed cop in the moments just before he was shot — and said something very strange indeed.
Twenty-six
‘You’re not one of them, are you?’
Kent spoke the words in a high-pitched, effeminate voice that fitted perfectly with the soft, boyish features of his face — features that I knew to my cost were dangerously deceptive. He’d almost escaped earlier, and my stomach still ached from where he’d caught me with what had been a particularly deft karate kick.
I tensed. Surely he couldn’t know my true identity. I’d never seen him in my life before tonight.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.
Wolfe shot round in his seat. ‘Shut the fuck up, you little runt! No one’s interested in what you’ve got to say. Tommy, gag this bastard.’
‘I’m innocent,’ said Kent desperately, staring up at me. ‘I swear it. You know that. They’re never going to pay you.’
‘I told you, shut it or I’ll kill you myself!’ roared Wolfe, pointing his Sig down at Kent’s face.
But Kent didn’t back down, and when he spoke again there was a new defiance in his voice, and a glint in his eye. ‘But you can’t, can you? Because you need what I know. Don’t you?’
A flicker of doubt crossed Wolfe’s face, then disappeared. ‘I can still put one in your kneecap easily enough. And I’ll do it with pleasure too. Cos I’ve got no truck with filthy little sex cases. Tommy, get that gag on him.’
Tommy bit off a length of extra-thick parcel tape from a roll he had on him and grabbed Kent by the hair, lifting him off the floor.
But I used my foot to push him back down so that Tommy had to let go. ‘I want to hear what he’s got to say. I thought we were here on a vigilante job.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ said Kent to me, gabbling out the words. ‘This is nothing to do with a vigilante job. It’s much bigger. I’ve got information they need and once they’ve got it they’ll kill all of us. You too.’
‘Shut your mouth now!’ Wolfe’s words reverberated around the minibus’s interior. Ripping off his safety belt, he lurched snake-like between the front seats, grabbing Kent by the throat with one hand and shoving the barrel of the pistol right into his face. ‘One more word,’ he whispered, ‘just one more word, and we’ll have a dead nonce in here.’
As he lay there, unable to speak, the pressure of the gun contorting his features, Kent met my eyes and mouthed two words: ‘Help me.’
I suddenly felt terribly sorry for him, lying helpless on the floor of a filthy van. He might have been a murdering rapist, but there was no excuse for treating him like this. It was sadistic. If I was going to have any future outside prison walls, then I was going to have to behave like a cop and do my best to protect him. And if he had information that might have a bearing on this op and the identity of the client, I needed to hear it.