One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (28 page)

The drenched gunman took a step back as the liquid hit the floor, then aimed his machine gun upwards at a steep angle. An ear‐
bursting fury of tearing and exploding metal erupted around Ally, sending shudders through him which at first he thought must be bullets. The deafening volley continued and continued and continued, gouging and hacking at the aluminium less than a foot from his head, until something gave above him and the shaft split open with a sudden lurch. The vent dipped sharply forwards and sent him sprawling head‐
first through the ceiling‐
tiles. He landed face‐
down in the giant centrepiece commemorative reunion cake, baked in the shape of the St Michael’s school building.

This sort of thing never happened to Bruce Willis, not even when Luc Besson was directing.

Ally felt a sledgehammer blow to his back as the bevommed baddie bore the butt of his machine gun down upon him in vengeance. He recoiled and rolled off the cake‐
splattered table to the floor. His assailant rammed the stock into his mid‐
section, winding him and doubling him over in breathless agony. Ally covered his head with his arms, then reflexively pulled them away again as a boot was driven down with all weight into his shins. His head again exposed, the gun‐
stock was sent into his face, smashing bloodily into his cheek.

The building cacophony of pain in Ally’s head and body was amplified by the terror of understanding that he was being beaten up by someone professionally proficient in violence, and there was no reason why it should stop. After all, he’d just been sick on the guy. There was another crushing impact on his ribcage, then a blow to his nose and mouth that sent blood welling over his lips and chin, causing him to splutter as it ran also into his throat.

‘
Leave him alone!
’ shrieked a voice, high, shrill and loud, insistent rather than appellant. The gunman stopped in surprise and turned to see where it had come from. Ally looked across the floor in his daze. Mrs Laurence had climbed to her feet and trilled out the order in that universal classroom register, comparable with Jedi mind‐
control. Grown men – terrorists, even – might not obey it now they were adults, but they were powerless to ignore it.

‘That’s enough, Bill,’ commanded a voice. ‘Put him with the others. Give him a handkerchief or something.’ The accent was impossible for Ally to place, especially with the ringing in his ears and the pain searing through his body. It was definitely on the plummy side, though, like a Brit golfer who doesn’t spend much more than the odd fortnight back in Blighty and is reaping the tax benefits as a result.

Ally’s assailant, ‘Bill’, pulled him roughly to his knees and handed him a clutch of paper napkins from the nearby table, muttering ‘here’ as he thrust them at Ally’s bleeding face.

‘Oh, the humanity,’ Ally muttered, holding a napkin to his nostrils.

‘Don’t push it, pal,’ Bill warned, urging him into the centre of the room. Charlie O’Neill and Mrs Laurence both moved forward to help him, but they were instantly ordered back to the floor. Ally wasn’t sure what kind of assistance they were planning to offer, but he appreciated the gesture. He stumbled across and sat down between them.

‘So what’d I miss?’ he asked, wincing as various throbs beat out a continuous tattoo all around his body. He placed his hands in his lap, about the only spot where they wouldn’t be resting on something tender. His elbow scraped a hard object under his shirt, which had been pulled outside his trousers. It was the knife, still tucked into the beltloops and concealed by the M&S polyester and cotton. He felt another wave of nausea at how close he might have come to disembowelling himself when he fell.

‘No’ much,’ Charlie replied. ‘Your man there was just tellin’ us tae sit at peace an’ toe the line before you dropped in. I must admit, I was wonderin’ where you’d got to, but then I saw spew comin’ oot the ceilin’ an’ I says tae mysel’, “Aye, that’ll be Ally.”’

‘Very fuckin’ funny.’

‘Silence!’ It was the bossman who spoke, standing tall in front of the main doors. Now it really was like being back in school: assembly in the big hall, everyone sitting, legs crossed, on the floor, and some blowhard at the front abusing his authority to compensate his ego for a lifetime of inadequacies. It was likely there’d be prayers before long, as well, though not aloud.

‘Now,’ the bossman continued. ‘Could Mr Gavin Hutchison please make himself known to one of my assistants?’

There was a tense, expectant silence, which lengthened as Gavin failed to emerge. After a few seconds, people began looking around for their erstwhile host, but sure enough, he wasn’t to be found.

‘Oh, do come on, Mr Hutchison. The sooner you identify yourself, the sooner we can get this whole business over with.’

Still there was no response.

‘All right,’ the bossman sighed. He stepped forward and grabbed Lisa McKenzie by the hair, dragging her to her feet and sticking a pistol to her temple. ‘Point him out,’ he demanded.

Lisa scanned the room, her eyes flitting hurriedly from face to face. Ally could see the desperation as she looked again and again for someone who wouldn’t be found.

‘He isn’t here,’ she said, her voice little more than a mumble.

‘What?’

‘He isn’t
here
,’ she stated more firmly. ‘I think he left the ballroom shortly before you arrived.’

‘Christ,’ he hissed, then backhanded Lisa, knocking her to the floor. Ally noticed Charlie bristle, his shoulders moving a little, but he was restrained by the sight of all that hardware. Charlie’s face burned with rage and shame, the humiliation of helplessness.

One of the gunmen was doing a head count, the total of which he related to Bill, the bloke Ally had been sick on. Then another came in from the lobby, carrying a sheet of paper.

Bill approached Bossman. ‘We’ve a print‐
out of the guest list,’ he said. Bill’s accent was unmistakably Scottish, further confusing Ally’s political speculations. He couldn’t guess at a region, but he was definitely north of Carlisle. ‘We’re four short. Two males, two females.’

At that point there was a loud thump from behind Bossman, followed by a low groan. One of the gunmen yanked the drapes away from the ‘Welcome’ table nearest the main doors, heaving with mostly empty champagne bottles. A familiarly blotto Kenny Collins was dragged out from within, eyes entirely failing to focus through sleep and drink.

Poor Kenny had failed to subvert anyone’s memories or expectations, ending up by his early thirties a pathetic if not pitiable fixture around the pubs and street corners of Auchenlea. It didn’t really sound adequate to say he was an alcoholic, as that didn’t cover the wide spectrum of drugs Kenny was widely known to be using, dealing or cadging at any given time. When he turned up at the coach, Ally was aghast that he’d been invited, and took it to be evidence of either admirable altruism, poor memory or staggering naivety on the part of their host.

Ally’s evasive action in grabbing a seat beside Mrs Laurence had proven partially unnecessary and partially ineffective. Kenny had sat himself down immediately on a free double seat and proceeded to use it as a homebase for forays up and down the vehicle, bothering everybody in turn with dismally incoherent attempts at conversation.

‘Aw right? Aw right? Aye, I mind o’ you, ya cunt. Fuckin’ brilliant. Fuckin’ brand new. Mind me? Aye. Aw right? Mind me? Fuckin’ brilliant. Any cunt got a spare fag?’

Which was about as interesting as it got. He’d been fairly anonymous throughout the party, remaining obstinately within a short radius of the free bar and choking back a quite valiant number of shots before deciding it was ‘a fuckin’ celebration’ and stumbling off to the front in search of champagne.

‘Make that one male and two females,’ Bill corrected, as the thoroughly confused Kenny was escorted past him. ‘And I’m assuming that’s not our man.’

‘Fuckin’ hauns aff me, ya cunt,’ Kenny grunted, belatedly deducing that he was being manhandled. He threw an arm back to ward off his molestor, the effort causing him to trip and fall forward to the floor. Kenny climbed unsteadily to his feet again and turned around, eyeing Bill and Bossman with drunk but concentrated scrutiny.

‘Fuck are yous cunts?’ he asked. The import of the weapons had clearly failed to register, if he could even see them. Ally feared the worst. ‘’S no a fuckin’ fancy‐
dress pairty.’

‘Get him out of the way,’ Bossman urged testily.

‘You fuckin’ talkin’ tae, ya black bastart?’ Kenny challenged. ‘You want your go, ya nigger cunt? I’ll fuckin’ take yous aw, right noo.’

One gun‐
butt later, he was out cold. Sometimes terrorism did bring its compensations, though it was actually one of the less enthusiastic gubbings Kenny had ever talked his way into.

Gunman Bill unclipped a walkie‐
talkie from his belt. ‘What’s the score with the staff headcount?’ he asked the man with the list.

‘All present apart from two males.’

‘Including the guy downstairs?’

‘Oh yeah, sorry. That would make it one male unaccounted for.’

Bill raised the radio to his mouth. ‘Booth, this is base, come in, over.

He waited a few seconds then repeated the call. Eventually a screechy hiss came in reply, but Ally couldn’t make out the message. Bill continued.

‘That stray you retrieved. Please tell me it was staff and not our Mr Hutchison.’

There was another screech.

‘Good man. Out.’

‘Right, Bill, so we’re missing Mr Hutchison and two women,’ Bossman confirmed. ‘Well, I suppose it is a party. Chances are he’s upstairs screwing one or indeed both of them. Okay. I want three men keeping this lot in order and the rest can get on with finding our shy host. I’m going to take the air for a while. I expect Hutchison to be here by the time I get back.’

Ally watched the delegated search party march urgently out of the ballroom, spare clips, knives and radios jangling weightily on belts and bandoliers.
Please tell me
, he thought, remembering what the gunman had said, calculating the horrible logic. Please tell me that stray you retrieved
wasn’t
Mr Hutchison? The very man they’re looking for?

Good man.

It could only mean that the poor bastard who
had
been ‘retrieved’ was now in a condition that was, well, irretrievable. And as for ‘the guy downstairs’, it didn’t sound too good for him either. Ally didn’t know who these men were or what they were up to, but he was damn sure of one thing: this was no posturing, no stand‐
off. The killing had already begun.

Davie made a light hop on the balls of his feet to position himself just inside the door, a microsecond before it flew open with angry force. The intruder took one determined step inside and was instantly seized, Davie pinning the man’s wrist to the small of his back with one hand and placing another just below his nape. He charged forward and slammed the intruder face‐
first into a wall, unknowingly eradicating Gavin’s sole distinction among his St Michael’s peers.

‘Who are you?’ Davie demanded as his captive’s face recoiled from the plasterwork.

‘Ccchh‐
gllg … I’m Gavin,’ he spluttered, his breath ripe with whisky.

‘Fuck, so you are,’ Davie observed, letting him go and stepping away. Catherine emerged uncertainly from the wardrobe, looking pale despite the make‐
up.

‘Oh for God’s sake, hiding in the cupboard,’ Gavin mocked, eyeing her with some distaste. ‘It’s like a bloody sitcom. How could you do this to me?’

‘Do what?’ she asked.

‘And you,’ he grumbled, staring dazedly at Davie. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s not enough to gatecrash my party, you have to fuck my girlfriend and beat me up as well? Christ, it’s not a sitcom: it’s a bloody teen movie.’

Davie grabbed him around both shoulders, causing Gavin to flinch and his eyes to close, evidently terrified Davie was about to send the head in.

‘No, Gavin,’ he told him, sharply but quietly. ‘It’s something a wee bit more serious than a teen movie. And we cannae have very long before it becomes a snuff movie, so quit babblin’ and sober up. We’re in a lot of trouble.’

Gavin swayed a little, a tipsily bemused expression on his face. ‘What the hell are you on about?’

Davie decided the newcomer hadn’t grasped the gravity of the situation. He frog‐
marched Gavin out to the balcony and stuck his head over the side for half a second, then pulled him back in and sat him down on the edge of the bed. That Gavin began hyperventilating assured Davie he had not failed to notice the gunmen standing guard outside the Laguna’s main entrance.

‘Wh‐
who are they? What do they want?’

‘Does it matter?’ snapped Catherine, having had a little longer than Gavin to assess the situation.

‘C-can’t you do something?’ He looked at Davie, desperation and booze dilating his pupils.

‘Like what?’

‘Well, I mean, you re … aren’t you … weren’t you …’

Davie rolled his eyes. ‘Aye, Gavin. I’ll just nick doonstairs the noo an’ kick fuck oot the lot o’ them. Just the sound of my name’ll have them shitin’ it. Get a fuckin’ grip.’

‘I just thought you’d have had more, more …
experience
with this sort of thing than us.’

‘No, Gavin, I’ve the same amount of experience with terrorists as you: about two fuckin’ minutes. If it was half‐
a‐
dozen screws comin’ in wi’ their truncheons raised, then yes, I could give you an object lesson on how to lie on the floor and take a quality doing. But it isnae, so the way I see it, the only thing we can do is stay out of these people’s way.’

Gavin nodded eagerly. ‘You’re right. You’re right. Hole up and wait for help. Maybe they don’t know we’re up here, right?’

A loud ratcheting resounded from the hallway, like two dozen hammers hitting two dozen lumps of wood at once. The three of them exchanged looks in a moment’s silence.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Davie’s voice dropped to a whisper, his breathing speeding up by the second.

‘I think it was the doorlock override,’ Gavin offered, his voice wavering. ‘For emergency evacuations. You can unlock every room in the hotel from … from the computer downstairs.’