Angel Touch (34 page)

I even kept the speed up in the hope of getting a ticket.

No such luck. Kids doing 31 miles per hour on a skateboard were probably being loaded into Black Marias somewhere in the city, but not down Sidcup way. I was doing 90 as we hit the motorway and I put my faith in the Kent County Constabulary. Maybe they were on church parade. They sure as hell weren't on the M20.

‘Turn off. Up here.'

‘I know,' I said.

Cawthorne hadn't said much during the trip. Well, not much that made sense. Now something clicked inside the bit of his brain still working on demist.

‘You were snooping for the black bitch the other day. Did she put you up to it?'

‘Nobody put me up to anything, Cawthorne. I found out how you worked your little scam and I set you up. Look on it as private enterprise.'

I felt oddly calm. The guy's hatred seemed to be reserved for Salome – he said ‘spade bitch' to himself a million times – and I was a poor substitute. But then I was the one with the gun in my side.

‘Why? What's in it for you? You're nothing in the city.'

I took umbrage at that, then I realised he meant the City as in financial. In the real city, I reckoned I had more street cred than wheel clamps.

‘I told you, I made a few bob buying Linton shares that you then bought off me.'

‘Chicken feed. Peanuts. Small fucking change.'

‘Maybe,' I said cautiously.

‘So why take the risk? Eh?' Jab, jab.

I thought about saying ‘What risk?' but that might have destabilised him. Keep it conversational. After all, he wasn't going to shoot me while I was driving his car, was he? Did he know how much an upholstery valet on a Porsche cost?

‘You took all the risks, Cawthorne. Especially trying to get rid of Salome and Alec Reynolds. Why did you do that?'

My ribs told me that was a mistake. He jabbed so hard this time, the Porsche weaved across two lanes. Fortunately there was no traffic to speak of.

‘So that's it,' he said more to himself. ‘You're sniffing after that black whore. You like a bit of chocolate, do you? Do you?'

He went on in that vein, getting cruder and more excitable, until the sign for the Wrotham turn-off. I suppose I could have spun the Porsche or driven into a field and risked it, but I didn't. I just followed his instructions until we were going up Blackberry Hill and then turning left on the unmade track and coming out at Pegasus Farm and the Exhilarator.

And I knew – I think I had all the time – what he had in mind for me. It was no consolation that I was there because I'd gone for the milk that morning. He'd been after Salome in his coke-zapped imagination.

Still, if I was here, Salome was safe. It was going to be a far, far better thing, and all that.

Heroes – aren't you sick of ‘em?

 

He made me park the Porsche in the courtyard and give him the keys. The main gates were shut and chained and the farmhouse and changing-rooms deserted and locked. It looked like the creditors were in already.

Cawthorne withdrew the gun an inch and looked at his watch, then showed it to me.

‘I'm leaving here in exactly 55 minutes. I'll be in France by lunch-time.' Via Dover, most like. ‘And I'm not coming back.'

He dipped his hand into his pocket and fed himself another snort. ‘So I'm treating myself to one last game here before I go.'

He waved the gun around, indicating towards the Paddock and the Exhilarator course.

‘What –? A paint gun against that thing?'

He shook his head. ‘You don't even get a paint gun. All you get is two minutes' start.'

There were a hundred things I wanted to say – pleading, threatening, joking to defuse the situation – but a look in his eyes told me there was no point.

I got out of the Porsche and started running.

 

I was banking partly on the fact that he would be operating below par. It was obvious from his clothes and the stubble on his face that he'd been up all night, and a fair chunk of the Colombian economy had gone up his nose since then.

I worked out that if I could get to the wood, I could cut across to the hop field and hide in there. With my luck, they would have harvested it yesterday. No, they don't pick hops until the first week in September. How do I know this stuff? Why did I think of it then?

I'd reached the edge of the courtyard when a bullet smacked off the cobblestones about six inches from me.

I wasn't going to get my two minutes.

I stopped dead and slowly turned around.

Cawthorne was sitting on the bonnet of the Porsche, pointing the gun at me. I'd managed about 40 yards.

‘You said two minutes,' I shouted.

‘Just getting my eye in!' he yelled back, quite friendly all of a sudden.

I took a pace towards him without really knowing what I was doing, and his reaction surprised me. He stood up and began to back away, fumbling in his jacket pocket. But this time, the right one. Then he stopped and worked the action of the gun. I saw a cartridge case eject and even heard it ting on the cobbles, then he was feeding another in and working the breech. Confident again, he levelled it at me.

‘Clock's ticking.'

I ran to my left, towards the corner of the farm building, and dropped from his line of sight. That meant the wood was that bit further away for me, but it might delay him for a minute just checking to see if I'd tried to hide in the farmhouse. If he was rational, that is, and not in the process of rapidly leaving his skull.

I didn't stop running, just veered left again and into the Paddock.

If I'd realised early that the long-barrelled gun was a single shot target pistol, I'd have had a go at him in the car or on the street back in Hackney, I told myself. Made him fire one and then got away or even disarmed him. Of course I would. I almost convinced myself. In a fair fight, he wouldn't stand a chance. Well, not if he took about an ounce more coke and I could have first go from behind with half a brick.

If he didn't have a gun – or if
I
had one ...

I damn near twisted my ankle veering right and heading away from the wood towards the pillbox.

 

I should have known as soon as I saw the iron door hanging open.

Cawthorne had probably spent the night there. He'd been
covering his tracks but at some point had realised that he couldn't fit the personal computer and the fax machine and stuff in an overnight bag, so he'd gone bananas and lashed out.

Everything that could have been smashed or just satisfyingly dented, had been. The Amstrad's VDU had an empty bottle of vodka through it. The fax machine was upside down in a corner, its plastic cover shattered into slivers like broken glass. There were a couple of other bottles rolling around under an upturned chair, an empty Tequila bottle and a half-full Scotch. From the smell, most of the contents had gone on the floor rather than into Cawthorne. There was also a strong smell of the copying fluid the fax used.

The metal trunk I'd come for lay open. Whatever Cawthorne had had in his private armoury had gone now, probably to the bottom of the farm pond if he had any sense. Since the last police armistice for unregistered guns, the penalties for being nicked were seriously heavy.

It wasn't quite empty. Rattling around on the bottom were some cardboard tubes that looked like sticks of dynamite but were probably thunderflashes and a couple of boxes of loose ammunition. Maybe he'd just forgotten them. I suspected that he'd come here in the night – the internal light was still on – and started to remove any traces of his Airborne operation. Then he'd thrown a wobbler, decided it was all Salome's fault and gone looking for her. And found me.

I stuffed one of the thunderflash tubes into the back of my jeans. If all else failed, I could wave it at him, but there was nothing else there for me.

I crouched as I went through the door, and pushed it so that it almost closed behind me, then went down on all fours to sneak around the back.

‘I know where you're hiding ...'

Then a bullet spanged off the concrete and convinced me that I'd better start being scared stiff.

 

I felt safer behind the pillbox, because it offered great armfuls of lovely, thick concrete to hug.

I levered myself up cautiously and peeped into one of the gun slits. Through the box itself and the slits in the opposite wall, I could see Cawthorne reloading his pistol and walking towards me. He was no more than 20 yards away.

‘Not much of a game, Maclean,' he was saying loudly. He must have got that name from the Exhilarator booking. I wasn't going to correct him. I wasn't going to say anything.

‘I bet myself you'd last at least a quarter of an hour in the woods. I didn't think you'd trap yourself like this.'

It dawned on me that he thought I was inside. It was the only thing I had going for me.

I risked another look and almost died on my feet. Cawthorne was standing, feet apart, aiming right at me, like between the eyes. I ducked as he fired and cringed as the sound of a dozen trapped hornets buzzed what seemed like an inch from my head.

‘You'd better come out. It'll be quicker in the long run,' shouted Cawthorne, walking closer, reloading again.

There was another shot, and more hornets.

He was firing into the slits of the pillbox, and the ricochets were bouncing off the walls inside. I wondered what the odds were of a bullet going in one slit and coming out the slit on the other side where yours truly was.

I looked behind me. The fence and the hop field looked too far away. He would see me if I broke that way. The wood was even further, and a run there would put me on a diagonal line of fire for him. I'd have more chance in a shooting gallery. The only thing to do was keep the pillbox between us. He was moving to his right, coming round to the door. He couldn't fire directly in there, because I'd almost closed it. He knew there weren't any weapons inside, so eventually he must get bored with pumping bullets in and have a look. As he got closer, though, my view of him would get less and less.

I risked another look and saw him moving out of my view through one of the slits. He was quite close now. So close, I could hear the snap of the breech as he worked the action of the gun.

I edged my way anticlockwise, away from the door end, hugging the rough concrete until spots of blood appeared on the palms of my hands, checking the slits as I went.

There was no sign of him, which I took to mean he was in line with the door. I hoped it did. I was running out of concrete to hug. If I went much further, I'd be heading back round towards him. But there was nowhere else to go.

Except up.

I stood up between two slits and put my hands on the roof of the box. At that edge, it wasn't much taller than I was, and I estimated I was opposite the entrance. I held my breath.

Cawthorne wasn't saying anything. Maybe he was too busy talking to the voices in his head. Then I heard him sniff quite distinctly. Then silence. In the distance, I could hear church bells and the drone of a car engine.

And then what I'd been waiting for; the metallic creak of the door being opened.

I risked a look through the slit to my right and, sure enough, the box began to fill with light. That convinced me. I scrabbled and heaved myself up onto the roof and rolled and scrabbled across the concrete.

I didn't know if he could hear me through the eight-inch thick roof. I never gave it a thought. Suddenly I was at the far edge and looking over.

The left shoulder of Cawthorne's dinner jacket was just below me. The gun, his head and one foot at least were inside the box. That would have to do.

I put both hands on the top of the door frame, which he'd opened to an angle of 45 degrees, and pulled as hard as I could.

The door hit him and propelled him inside. From the noise of crashing and breaking, right into what was left of the fax machine. There was a magnified boom as the gun went off, and a spang as the ricochet hit the door. I felt it vibrate as I scrabbled and snapped fingernails to get the bolt shut.

As it clicked home, I rolled on my back and looked at the sky and exhaled. Then I looked at my hands, scratched and pitted with bits of concrete, and wondered if I'd be able to play the violin now. It would be a miracle, as I couldn't before.

There was no sound from below me in the box, but I could hear something else: an engine. A diesel engine.

I turned my head, and round the corner of the farmyard I saw Armstrong bouncing across the Paddock to the rescue.

Late as usual.

I was on my feet and waving both arms in the air when Cawthorne opened fire.

I didn't see which slit the shot had come from, nor whether it hit Armstrong or not. I couldn't tell even if Werewolf had noticed he was being shot at.

It had to be Werewolf. No-one else would have such a blind disregard for Armstrong's suspension.