Nobody Walks (21 page)

The door to the building opened with a hiss. The floor was clean, hard, tiled. He crossed it making little noise, but not caring unduly if he did. Speed mattered more than stealth.

Upstairs, the talking stopped.

Halfway up to the first landing, he produced an automatic from a shoulder holster, and began screwing a silencer onto its barrel.

“
It was
Flea.”

“Flea didn’t go out,” Boo said. “That was the front door.”

He was on his feet, putting a hand to his head. His palm came away moist.

“Call the police,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Call the police. And lock the door. Does this door lock? Lock it.”

“Boo—”

But Boo was already lumbering from the office. The jarring motion as he pulled the door shut set his head ringing. Damn Bettany for clubbing him when he needed to be sharp.

A man was coming up the stairs, a short man with frizzy hair and a heavy blue chin. He held a gun in one hand.

Boo’s morning kaleidoscoped, and trains rattled past. The slapping of feet on wet grass and the barking of dogs. The warmth of the kettle against his palm. His knee gave a twinge, and his head was abuzz, and he’d spent the past six years half-expecting a moment like this one, and here it was. If he didn’t feel ready, that was just how life worked. You were never ready for the really bad moments.

The man levelled his gun at Boo as he crested the stairs, moving swiftly towards him.

Then Tom Bettany stepped out of Flea Pointer’s office and pressed the barrel of his own gun to the man’s temple.

“Drop it.”

The man stopped, dropped his gun and raised his hands, without—it seemed to Boo—altering the blank expression on his face.

Bettany kicked the gun away.

Boo said, “So you came back.”

“I never left. Ever seen him before?”

Boo shook his head, then realised Bettany wasn’t watching him. His eyes were fixed on the newcomer. He said, “No. Never.”

“Well, take a good look now. He came here to kill your boss.”

“You know who he is?”

“I know he likes to hang around crematoriums. You bring your thermos with you?”

The man’s lip twitched, but he said nothing.

“What’s going on? Who’s he?”

It was Flea, coming up the stairs behind them, a glass of water in one hand and a plastic first-aid satchel in the other.

“Tom?”

“He came back,” Boo said.

Flea stopped on the staircase. She could only see the back of the newcomer’s head, but the gun on the floor told half the story, and Bettany’s gun told the other.

“You knew he was coming.”

“I warned you.”

“No, you
knew
.”

She put the first-aid kit on the stair in front of her.

Bettany said, “I told you Driscoll was in danger.”

“You didn’t tell us he was
bait.
”

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

As if to settle this matter, Vincent stepped into the hallway.

He said, “I couldn’t call the police. My phone’s in the car.”

Bettany glanced towards him, and the gunman made his move.

PART FIVE

He was half a
second off his game. Maybe less.

Enough of a gap for the gunman to slip through.

Bettany had glanced away and the stranger had been waiting. He didn’t go for his weapon, which was smart, because that was on the floor behind Bettany.

He went for Flea Pointer instead.

Who screamed.

Bettany levelled his gun at the man’s head but couldn’t get a clean sight, because the man had an arm round Flea’s neck, and had swung her in front of him.

“Let her go.”

That was Driscoll.

Bettany didn’t speak. He moved sideways, arms outstretched, gun level. The man retreated in synch, Flea’s heels dragging on the floor.

“Let her
go
!”

“Shut. Up,” Bettany said.

Flea’s eyes were wide as doorways, and she was gripping the man’s arm with both hands but couldn’t speak. A gurgling noise was all she could manage.

Bettany changed sides and still the man moved with him, edging back towards the stairs, half his head shielded by Flea’s.

There was a yard between them, if that. A yard and Flea Pointer, whose face was scarlet.

Now Berryman spoke.

“We can take him.”

Flea’s frantic look suggested otherwise.

“Stay back,” Bettany said without turning.

“He won’t hurt her. He won’t dare.”

“Stay. Back.”

It was noise. The two men behind him, Flea herself, were noise. Only the signal mattered. The signal was the gunman. It was what his eyes broadcast. That was where Bettany would read the future, or the next little fragment of it.

And the signal passed both ways, because every move he made, the other echoed.

They’d slow-waltzed to the top of the staircase. Without looking behind, the gunman sensed this and halted.

His hair was a grey frizz, his eyes dark. Like a rubber ball, he radiated the impression of stored kinetic energy.

Had he killed Liam?

Bettany pushed the thought away. The man was Ingrid Tearney’s tool, that was clear, but all that mattered now was whether he’d hurt Flea Pointer before Bettany could take him down.

He said, “Let her go.”

No reply.

“You can’t make it down the stairs. Not without releasing her. Let her go.”

There was movement behind him and Bettany cursed inwardly but didn’t turn.

The man said, “I could break her neck.”

Was that an American accent? But he might be disguising his voice, or parroting English learned at his television’s knee.

Bettany said, “And you’ll be dead the next second.”

“You don’t want to kill me.”

Boo Berryman said, “Maybe I do. Let her go.”

He’d picked up the discarded gun and held it the same way Bettany held his, right hand clasped around the handle, left hand steadying his wrist, with the crucial difference that the idiot didn’t know what he was doing.

A brief smile tickled the lip of the gunman.

Bettany said, “Put that down. Get back in the office. Leave this to me.”

“This is my job.”

“It’s not a job, you moron—”

And there was the second gap.

Bettany’d barely flicked his eyes Boo’s way but it was enough, because Flea Pointer was crashing into him and he only just had time to raise the gun, point it ceilingwards in case the contact caused him to pull the trigger. It didn’t, but the impact of Flea’s body knocked him down anyway—

“Stop!”

That was Boo, standing at the top of the stairs, pointing the gun at the fleeing stranger’s back.

“Stop!”

But he didn’t. He took the stairs a flight at a time, leaping down to each landing like an Olympian in a hurry.

Bettany tried to get up, but Flea was clinging to him.

“Couldn’t … breathe …”

“I need to get after him—”

“Here.”

Vincent Driscoll prised her loose.

She went to him readily, wrapping her arms round him while she sobbed and gasped for air.

Bettany scrabbled to his feet and took off.

Boo Berryman was left standing, the gun he’d snatched hanging heavy at his side. He said “Stop” again, but mostly to himself, and nobody noticed.

Two drops
of water raced each other down the window pane, enjoying random bursts of speed they then frittered away on unnecessary diversions. Before either reached the sill, JK Coe lost patience with them. He wanted to raise a hand and smash the glass. That he didn’t spoke more of torpor than restraint.

He was in his kitchen. Coming on lunchtime, but he wasn’t hungry. If he ate he’d throw up everywhere, and that would be another room closed to him, another place he couldn’t stand to be. His sitting room was already out of bounds, where Thomas Bettany had robbed him of … He couldn’t list precisely what Bettany had stolen, but knew he was no longer the person he’d been. Once you’d faced torture, even if that torture never laid blade on skin, you were diminished. You knew the floor of your own fear, and how it felt to be dragged along its surface.

One drop of water won the race, and the other lost. Coe had forgotten which was which.

If he smashed the window, glass would go tumbling down onto passing strangers, leaving ears severed, lips like burst strawberries. Wounds blossomed whenever Coe closed his eyes. He couldn’t walk into his sitting room without seeing it draped in black plastic.

He scrunched his hands and punched his cheeks. For hours he’d been unable to stir himself to life. The small time he’d not been brooding on Bettany, he’d been brooding on Dame Ingrid
instead. Who had not only fed him to the cut-throat bastard, but had seen no evil in what she’d done.

You’ve had an upsetting experience.

Thanks. He’d worked that out.

If he’d killed you we’d have swept it under the carpet. You’d have been a random victim of city crime.

A few short days ago, admiring the view from Ingrid Tearney’s office, he’d thought he was on the inside track. He understood now that he’d been chosen for precisely the opposite reason. Dame Ingrid, reaching for someone from one of the Service’s lesser departments, had plucked the slightest nobody. When you’re staking out bait for a tiger, you don’t use your best goat.

And take the rest of the day off, he’d been told.

You don’t look yourself. We all need a sick day now and then.

So he was expected to turn up tomorrow as if everything was normal.

He laid a hand flat against the window. Didn’t punch but pushed gently, enough to feel the glass pushing back—to know that it was solid, and wouldn’t give without effort. Even glass was capable of that much. And he remembered again how he’d shit himself when Bettany had stepped into view, naked, wielding a knife.

Enough.
He grabbed his car keys from their hook. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but simple movement might suffice. Perhaps he could lose himself on the grey streets, in the grey traffic. If he managed that much, he’d never have to turn up anywhere again.

The gunman
had left by the towpath door, and by the time Bettany burst through it he’d vanished. Cramming the gun inside his coat, Bettany ran for the bridge.

On its near side a muddy slope between bushes led up to the road, a shortcut for kids. Bettany, taking it at a gallop, was two strides
up when he lost his footing, and felt the air rush past as everything turned somersaults. He landed flat on his back, the breath knocked out of him, and the Makarov clattering on the towpath.

A young man stared at it in horror.

Bettany grabbed the gun and snarled, “Police.” It came out a breathless gobbet. He shoved the Makarov out of sight and tried the slope again, his hands grabbing at spiny branches. His fingers were bloody when he reached the top, and there was no sign of his quarry. Behind him was a garbled alarm, a young man shouting into his phone. Bettany kept moving.

Cars lined the road. The gunman could be yards away, crouching behind a wheelbase, but Bettany didn’t think so. Hiding places left you immobile. When the chance to run presented itself, you ran.

The street hit a main road a hundred yards ahead, and traffic criss-crossed the junction. Bettany jogged that way, conscious of the gun in his pocket, of the call being made on the towpath. A running man on a London street was someone to notice. He might as well be wearing a rhinestone jacket … He stopped at the corner. Both pavements were busy, pedestrians ambling past or popping in and out of shops, queuing at bus stops, crowding the pedestrian lights on the next block. Still no quarry, which didn’t mean he wasn’t near. Bettany had pulled that trick himself—dumped a coat, affected a slouch, adjusted a collar. It could earn you two minutes’ grace in a crowd.

Motionless, he tried to take in everything, alert for that tiny giveaway, the turned head, the altered speed. But there was nothing. A bus trundled past, stopped yards away, and disgorged more extras. In the distance a siren whined.

Bettany didn’t bother with the slouch, or adjusting his collar. He didn’t check the bus’s destination either, but joined the queue boarding it, and allowed it to carry him away.

Never set off into
city traffic without a plan in mind.

If you do, other drivers will hate you and try to kill you.

The third time he’d caused mass outrage by hesitating at a junction—the screaming of horns a mechanised fatwa—JK Coe thought he’d better choose a destination, even if he allowed the signage to dictate it.

East, something read.

If he drove far enough east he’d reach the sea. But even as the plan formulated it dissolved into spray, splashed into nothing, and he was passing another sign, and flashing his indicator far too late for the car behind him—

Another metal threat, spelt out in five blasts on a horn.

But he’d made his decision and was circling the roundabout, finding his exit.

N1.

Where Bettany’s lair was, his late son’s flat.