Asking For Trouble (31 page)

‘But I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What about Squib? And what about Jamie Monkton?’

Nick chuckled. It was a cold, mirthless sound and made my blood freeze. ‘Jamie Monkton? He led me to her. I knew he was looking for her and all I had to do was watch him. He’d find her for me.’ He leaned forward again, earnestness on his face and in his voice. ‘I thought, I’ll learn about it from Kelly. She’s always dropping by the farm and chattering away. So I waited and one morning, bingo! I didn’t need Kelly. I’d taken the old truck down to the garage in Abbotsfield. It was in the repair shop and I was in there talking to the mechanic about it, when I saw Jamie’s car outside by the petrol pumps. He was standing by it, talking to the proprietor, Jepson. They were always pals, those two. Both driving around in flash cars. I could hear every word. He said he knew now where his cousin was living. He’d had a bit of luck. He’d been asking around in pubs and he met some rock guitarist or other—’

‘Declan!’ I muttered fiercely. By the worst mischance, Jamie, scouring the pubs, had come across Declan and Declan, whom Terry had rather fancied, had betrayed her. Even Squib hadn’t done that. I just hoped, if I survived this night, I’d run into Declan again. I had things I wanted very much to say to him.

‘Jamie talked about the place and how the whole street, Jubilee Street, was due for demolition and most of it empty and boarded up. He’d been there but no one had been at home. He said he was going back the next day and was filling up the car with juice ready for the trip. He asked Jepson not to say anything to Alastair, if he came by. He wanted to get it all sorted out first.

‘It was my chance. Ma was away from the farm, over at the shop in Winchester. I told Biles I was taking the next day off and gave him a tenner to stop him telling Ma. I went up to London, to Jubilee Street, broke into an empty house opposite and waited. I saw you all go out. The one with the dog first and then you and some other fellow. I hoped Theresa was on her own there. I saw Jamie arrive and go to the door. He knocked for some time and I was afraid he was out of luck again. Then an upstairs window was pushed up and Theresa put out her head. I’d found her.’

‘Did she let Jamie in?’ I wondered, if I was very quick, I could grab the shotgun. But he was too far away.

He nodded. ‘Eventually she did, but he didn’t stay long. He came out and she slammed the door on him. He went off down the road towards an old graveyard of some sort. He looked pretty wild. He’d asked her to go home, I guessed, and she’d refused. I waited a few minutes until he’d gone, then went across and knocked at the door. I thought she’d look out, as she’d done before. But she must have thought it was Jamie come back, because she opened the front door straight away, ready to yell at him again. And then she saw who it was, that it was me.’

The horror of that moment must have been complete. Terry had opened the door to the one person she feared more than any. The one she’d run away from and hidden from so successfully.

I’d remembered something and frowned. ‘I found a piece of blue chalk in Jamie’s car.’

Nick nodded. ‘I put it there. But I didn’t pick it up that day in London, I got it – later.’

‘When you killed poor Squib,’ I accused him. ‘If you’d given him twenty quid, he’d have gone away happy. He was a simple soul.’

Nick began to look angry. ‘I didn’t know that, did I? He came to the farm. He said he was looking for the Astara Stud. I didn’t know whether he’d really made a mistake, was looking for Jamie, or whether he was looking for me. I couldn’t take the risk he’d mess things up. I was on my own at the farm when he came. I offered him a cup of tea. It was easy . . .’

How could he just say it like that? He might have been talking about someone else who had done this dreadful thing. He appeared to feel no guilt or responsibility.

‘I got rid of the chalks,’ he said, ‘and all his gear. But I kept a small piece of blue chalk, hoping I’d get a chance to plant it on Jamie Monkton somehow. You see, I wanted the police to know he’d been to the house, just in case he continued to keep quiet about it. I wanted them to think that it was Jamie’s finding her that had made her kill herself. It was already clear to me that old Alastair Monkton and Mrs Cameron knew nothing of Jamie’s visit to Jubilee Street. It was as he’d told Jepson, he meant to drive up to the Astara one day in triumph with Theresa in his car, that was his idea. Then, when she was found dead, he panicked and decided to tell no one he’d been there. Jepson would’ve kept quiet. Like I said, he and Jamie Monkton were always as thick as thieves. But I wasn’t lettting him get away with that!

‘I went up to the Astara on the pretext of seeing Alastair. Only Lundy was in the yard. But Jamie’s car was by the garage. I pushed the chalk under the front passenger seat. You found it, did you?’ He scowled. ‘You messed up all my plans, Fran. You shouldn’t have done that.’ He lifted the gun and the twin barrels swung to point their ugly mouths at my chest.

I knew I had to put on the best acting performance of my life.
For
my life. I had to act someone who was calm and in control when my every instinct was to start screaming. I started thinking, with a crazy vanity, what a mess that shotgun was going to make of me. He must have quite an armoury at home. In the plantation he’d shot at me with a rifle.

‘Now, Nick,’ I said, ‘you really can’t do this. You can’t go round killing people. It’s got to stop.’

‘I’m only going to kill
you
,’ he argued, ‘and you’ll be the last.’ He added, rather to my surprise, ‘I’m not going to shoot you. I’m going to make it look like an accident. Just like I tried to do before with Theresa, but this time I’ll get it right. You’re going to lie down again on that quilt. Only take that plastic wrap out from underneath it and drape it over the top. They’ll think you did that for some reason and it got over your face and suffocated you.’

Oh, nice. This was the same person at whose kitchen table I’d sat, drinking coffee and talking to him and his mother. Telling them everything. I was angry with myself for being such a fool. I was angry with myself for telling Ganesh I’d be all right here, when obviously I wasn’t and, if I’d thought it through properly, I’d have realised that.

But you never know what’s going to happen, that’s for sure. And right now I’d seen something he hadn’t.

He was sitting with his back to the door. It had swung closed behind him but not clicked shut and now it was slowly and silently opening again.

Chapter Nineteen

I didn’t know who it was out there in the hall. But unless they were lining up in turn to have a crack at killing me, it ought to mean help. The trouble was, I didn’t know if whoever was out there, knew Nick had a gun.

Nick must have sensed something, either from my manner, or because a draught from the opened door brushed his neck. He swung round.

At the same moment the door opened wide and Ganesh stepped in.

I jumped up and yelled, ‘He’s got a gun!’

At the same time, I threw myself across the room at Nick and crashed into him, knocking him to one side.

There was a deafening explosion. Large chunks of ceiling fell down round our ears. Then Ganesh and Nick were wrestling for the gun which swerved terrifyingly back and forth between them as they lurched to and fro.

I was as sure as I’d ever been of anything that someone was going to get killed and it was more than likely to be me, because the ugly twin mouths of the barrels kept swinging round to point at me as I dodged around the room and the two men.

It’s not my way to do nothing and, as usual, I acted on instinct. Lacking any weapon except the torch which was a small thing and useless, I grabbed the crate, swung it up and cracked it on the back of Nick’s head. It might not have been the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances as I realised after I’d done it. He staggered forward and the gun went off again.

This time a whole section of the wall fell out. Plaster dust filled the air, getting into my eyes, nose and mouth. In the semi-darkness and dust, Ganesh yelled, ‘What do you think you’re doing, Fran?’

It was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard because I thought he’d just had his head blown off.

Nick had regained his balance in the distraction and was trying to swing up the gunstock to use it as a club. Ganesh grabbed his arm and slammed him back against the wall, dislodging another lump of plaster.

I grasped the torch in both hands and held it out level, trained on them, because I couldn’t see what was going on.

To my surprise, somehow Ganesh had got hold of the shotgun and had it pressed lengthways across Nick’s throat. Nick’s eye$ bulged and he was uttering a strangled gargle.

Ganesh said very nastily, ‘Right, my son! That’s both barrels fired. Now it’s just you and me!’

I have to say that – with all due respect to Ganesh – Nick was an awful lot bigger and even if he was pinned against the wall at the moment, I wouldn’t have bet he couldn’t get free. But just then, a massive great chunk of ornamental cornice fell out of the corner of the ceiling above them. It landed right on top of Nick’s head and he went down like a skittle.

There was a silence. More plaster dust had filled the air and my nostrils, and I coughed. Gan stepped back, holding the shotgun.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes!’ I croaked. ‘Why did you come back?’

‘I couldn’t sleep, worried about you.’ He pushed the still form of Nick with his foot. ‘I started to climb through the window and I heard his voice. So I kept it as quiet as I could.’

‘He was going to kill me. He killed Terry and Squib. He’s nuts.’

‘I gathered that.’

I said in a very small voice, ‘Thank you, Ganesh.’

‘Don’t mention it. I’ll sit here with him and you go up to my place and call the police.’ He sat down on the crate. ‘And don’t mention the shotgun to my family because they’ll go crazy.’

As it turned out, Ganesh was wasting his breath with his request. By the time I reached the shop, the entire Patel clan was going crazy. They’d heard the shots, of course. Mr Patel was standing in the doorway with a wicked-looking cleaver. Mrs Patel was already phoning the police and all the aunts and uncles were milling about. It was obvious the action wasn’t over by any means.

They came very quickly, the boys in blue. In the quiet of the night, the shots had been heard, not just up at the shop, but in the surrounding streets from which the inhabitants hadn’t yet been cleared. Everyone was phoning the police. Nick had certainly been wrong about that.

The police surrounded the area in double-quick time and brought up an armed response unit, all kitted out in body armour.

I tried to tell them what had happened, that they didn’t need all that weaponry, it was all over, but I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me. The one in charge just kept bawling through a loud-hailer.

‘Now, everyone keep back! You, too, love! There’s an armed man holed up in that building down there!’

‘No, there isn’t!’ I argued, and Ganesh’s parents and all the aunts and uncles argued, too. ‘The gun’s been fired. It’s a double-barrelled shotgun, both barrels are empty, and anyway, the gunman is unconscious.’

‘No, he isn’t. He’s moving around in there and he’s probably got another weapon or ammunition.’

‘No, he hasn’t! You don’t understand. That’s not the gunman, it’s only Ganesh . . .’

I tried to get it across to them but they just wouldn’t listen. I asked, I begged, them to fetch Inspector Morgan, to wake her up if she was at home asleep, and tell her it was me, Fran Varady, and Ganesh Patel.

Useless. They pushed us all back behind a barrier, me, the Patels, and all the people who’d come running from houses in the street behind to see what was going on. You never saw such a motley crowd in all your life, every kind of clothing from nightwear to daywear, Doc Martens, fluffy slippers, saris, the lot. One old lady in a dressing gown but with a felt hat stuck on her head, kept asking, ‘Is it a bomb?’

‘Tell them to go away,’ whispered a voice by my ear and a familiar smell made itself known. Edna had been tempted out from her graveyard by curiosity and stood beside me. She was nursing the kittens which, safe in their tomb hideaway, must have escaped the charity cat-nappers.

‘I don’t like them,’ she persisted. ‘Tell them to go away.’

I explained, with feeling, that no one listened to me. I suggested she take both herself and the kits back to the graveyard, out of harm’s way. She wasn’t listening to me, either.

‘What are they doing?’ she began to sound frightened. The kittens mewled in her embrace, squirming as she clasped them tighter.

Frankly, I hadn’t time to worry about her. The police had fixed up temporary lights, and marksmen were swarming down the side alley of the squat, and taking up positions in the garden behind, training their weapons on the kitchen window. Nick
was
being over-optimistic when he’d said no one would do anything if they heard the shots and he’d get away. It was like Custer’s Last Stand down there.

The man with the loud-hailer was roaring, ‘Come out with your hands up!’

Mr Patel and the uncles were shouting at them. Mrs Patel and the aunts were wailing. Usha was threatening to call a solicitor. (I suppose she and Jay knew one. I certainly didn’t.) I was jumping up and down, yelling they should get hold of Inspector Janice. To put the finishing touch, Edna began to scream in a thin, high sound like some kind of radio signal. It went on and on, as if she didn’t need to draw breath.

None of our efforts was achieving anything. I had to do something. At this rate, they would almost certainly shoot Ganesh in error. I couldn’t get down the street now because they’d blocked it off. But I knew this area better than they did. I headed for Edna’s graveyard.

Beside it stood the first house of the terrace. I scrambled over the wall and dropped down into the garden. I landed on a stack of abandoned dustbins. There was a hideous clamour, but nobody heard it, or paid it any attention, in the general uproar.

I started across the adjacent gardens, one at a time, hauling myself over walls, getting my feet caught in old fruit netting and beanpole frames. It was like tackling one of those obstacle courses the Army sets up. I ricked my ankle and scraped my hands and just kept going, because I was getting nearer and nearer the back garden of the squat and the scene of the action.