Last Rites (31 page)

She arrived in Cinderhill first, fair putting the wind up Preston. Jacky breezing in with her own key, hold-all slung over one shoulder. “Hi, you must be Michael. I’m Jack. Jacky.” Smiling as she held out her hand.

More than a touch of the tar brush about her, Preston thought, skin a sort of Milk Tray color, though she sounded north of the border. A looker, though—tight jeans tucked down into her boots, white top that could have been put on with paint.

“That the wife?” he asked, when Cassady arrived twenty minutes later.

“Don’t,” Cassady said, “be so fucking stupid!”

Jacky kissed Cassady on the mouth and lightly cupped his crotch.

“It’s like Dodge City out there all of a sudden,” Cassady announced. “Not that it’ll do us any harm. But we’ll make our move tonight, Michael, I’m thinking. Not tomorrow.”

“Why the rush?” Preston asked.

“My inside man. A mite nervous all of a sudden, too many of his colleagues buzzing round, asking questions.” He looked at Preston. “That’ll not affect your plans? For after, like?”

Preston shook his head: now everything was so close, the sooner the better.

Planer owned a
pied-à-terre
in west London and a villa in the Algarve; where he lived was a listed building in Southwell, the house set back from the road, a brick archway with an electronically operated wrought-iron gate barring access from the street.

It was a fine night, clear yet mild. Even this short distance from the city it was possible to see more stars in the sky. They would need, Cassady had said, no driver tonight, no extra risk. This not being a case of in and out, piston sharp. Preston was pleased with that. Pleased to be sitting there in the passenger seat of the BMW, the short barrel of the Uzi hard against his knee. Two thousand it had cost, Liam had been sure to tell him. Two grand and worth every penny.

“How much longer?” Preston asked.

Cassady looked at his watch, the details illuminated green in the dark of the car. “Two thirty,” he said. “We go in at two thirty.” He angled his wrist round toward Preston. “Four minutes from now.”

“What’s so special about two thirty?”

Cassady shrugged and smiled. “Sometimes he watches the late-night movie before turning in.”

Finney had drawn for him the layout of the house. Shown him where to find the control box for the alarm, the whereabouts of the safe—not the obvious one in the second bedroom, the decoy with fifty quid inside and a copy of his will—no, the real McCoy. Of course, all this had cost him, the combination to the safe most of all, and Cassady had been glad to pay. Expenses to be recovered from Preston’s end when it was done.

What had cost him more, though of a different kind, had been the code controlling both the gate and the front door. Planer’s housekeeper, her son had a virulent crack habit in need of constant fueling. Pulling on his gloves, Cassady had a nasty thought the combination of numbers and letters he’d committed to memory might have been changed. The sort of precaution someone as security conscious as Planer might easily have taken. “Okay,” he said, the minute hand flicking round to signal the half-hour. “Michael, let’s go.”

Getting out of the car, Cassady had a sudden vision of jacky, waiting for him back at the house in Cinderhill, upstairs in the bedroom probably, sheet pulled up to her chin, eating cereal and watching one of her favorite videos,
Something Wild, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married To The Mob.
Jacky, who would be Michelle Pfeiffer if she could.

The buttons on the gate control were small and shiny, chrome against matte black. A second, maybe two, in which the muscles of his stomach knotted tight, then Cassady heard the click of the mechanism and when he pushed against the curve of iron, the gate swung back.

He’d left the shotgun locked in the back of the car, no need. A canvas bag, loose over one shoulder. Michael had the Uzi, for God’s sake, armament aplenty.

The same combination, in reverse, let them through the front door. The box controlling the alarm system was in the closet to the left of the paneled wall. Cassady knew that the first-floor landing, the windows, the door to Planer’s bedroom and study were all alarmed. The last switch to the right. Cassady levered it carefully upward and the system went dead.

When he eased back the closet door, it squeaked and Preston, advancing down the hall, brushed against a low oak table as he turned, scraping the legs along the floor.

Both men froze.

Small sounds only, no more.

Nothing moved.

The housekeeper went home every evening between nine and nine-thirty; the gardener and odd-job man who slept in the basement was away visiting family in Glasgow. Planer’s daughter was in her first year at Swansea, reading philosophy; his two sons were boarders at Oakham School. His recently ex-wife was in Santa Cruz de la Palma, living off the proceeds of the divorce. The blackjack dealer with whom he was having an affair had left at a quarter to one.

Planer aside, they had the place to themselves.

Cassady drew level with Preston and flicked on the pencil torch. The study was down three steps and to the left. The brass handle stuck and then turned.

Books were shelved floor to picture rail along two sides; an old-fashioned roll-top desk, big enough to hide a man inside, took up most of the third wall. There was another desk toward the center of the room. Two broad armchairs upholstered with studded leather, one with a green-shaded reading lamp close behind it, a Dick Francis on the table nearby, an empty whisky glass.

“Now,” Cassady said quietly, “just give us a hand.”

Working from either end, they maneuvered the rolltop far enough away from the wall to give them access to the safe. This was the series of numbers he’d not been able to commit to memory; the Gold Standard business card he’d written it on was in his back pocket.

“Here,” he said, giving the card to Preston. “Read them out, why don’t you?”

Cassady punched in the numbers and nothing happened, nothing budged.

“Read them again, careful. You must’ve got one wrong.”

Again no reaction. Cassady snatched the card back and held it in one unsteady hand, while he used the other.

“It’s not gonna fuckin’ work,” Preston shouted.

“Hush your mouth, can’t I see that?”

“What the fuck we gonna do?”

“Keep your voice down, will you? Get Planer down here, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Cassady snapped on the light in the hall. Planer was already midway down the stairs, a fleshy man in his late fifties with silver-gray hair. He had a silk Paisley dressing-gown on over his pajamas, a pistol, one of the ubiquitous Glock 17s, in one hand.

“Drop it!” Preston shouted. “Drop it fuckin’ now!”

Carefully, Planer extended his arm until it was over the banister rail and dropped the pistol to the floor, where it bounced and skidded against the oak skirting board. Preston picked it up, ugly fucking gun, and stuck it into his belt.

“Come on along down here,” Cassady said to Planer. “We’re in a little need of your help.”

Planer started to descend, but not quick enough for Preston, who ran toward him, two broad steps at a time, and jammed the Uzi in his ribs. “Get fuckin’ down!”

In the study, Planer looked over at the safe and smiled.

“Open it,” Cassady said.

Planer turned toward him. “Surely you’ve got the number?”

Cassady moved in very close. “I wouldn’t advise it now, being clever. Foolin’ around.”

“There’s an extra number,” Planer explained. “It changes all the time. A bit like the Lottery, I suppose. That’s why, when I thought Paul Finney had the rest of the combination, I wasn’t overly worried.”

Preston swung at him with the barrel of the Uzi and Planer fell heavily to his knees, a bloody line raked across his face.

“Never mind your fucking mouth, give us the fucking number. Now.”

Wincing, Planer touched his cheek. Preston raised the gun.

“It’s two numbers,” Planer said. “Seven and one.”

Cassady moved quickly to the safe.

“I called the police, you know,” Planer said, pushing himself up on to one knee. “From the bedroom, before I came downstairs.”

“You’re lying.”

Planer smiled his smug smile. “Do you really think so?”

Faint, not so very far off, the sound of sirens filtered through the heaviness of the room.

“Bastard!” Preston said and squeezed the trigger.

As if in the grip of a sudden fit, Planer’s body flailed and shook along the floor.

“Jesus!” Cassady exclaimed. He fumbled with the numbers, all fingers and thumbs.

“Quick! Quick!”

The sirens were louder, closer.

“It’s too late. Get out!”

They ran for the front door, flung it open, and raced across the courtyard, out through the gate. Cassady pulled the car keys from his pocket, dropped them on the road.

“What the fuck!”

At the second attempt, he retrieved them and unlocked the doors. The engine fired to life first time. The sound of police vehicles was almost upon them now, headlights visible on the road behind. Cassady floored the accelerator and took off with screaming tires.

“Lose ’em, fuckin’ lose ’em!” Swiveling back in his seat, feeling Cassady accelerate again, Preston snapped his seat belt into place.

Swerving left and right, the car rode up on the curb, skidded, kept its balance: when they turned at the intersection leading back toward the city, another police car was heading directly toward them.

Cassady gripped the wheel tight and held both line and speed. At the last moment, the driver of the police car swung over hard, his off-side striking a low wall, before spinning broadside on to block the road. The BMW struck the other side of the police car as it passed and glanced off, careening on its way.

“Great!” Preston yelled. “Fuckin’ great, man. You did fuckin’ great.”

“Didn’t I, though,” Cassady said. “Though I say so myself and shouldn’t, didn’t I just?”

At a fork in the road beyond Oxton, he took the turn too fast, went through a hedge and crashed, head on, into the trunk of an English oak.

For several moments, Preston couldn’t breathe. He felt as if he’d been slammed against something invisible but strong. There was pain across his chest and down his spine, his neck. One of the headlights was still shining, a spool of light spilling across a field of yellow rape. He released the seat belt and got, unsteadily, out of the car.

Cassady had been hurled through the windscreen and now lay wedged between the front of the BMW and the tree, his neck at an impossible angle, his face shredded by glass.

Preston could hear another vehicle, one at least, approaching from a distance. The Uzi he pushed under the driver’s seat and seizing the keys, opened the trunk and lifted out the shotgun and as many shells as his pockets would carry. The Glock was still in his belt. Limping slightly, he ran off into the dark.

Forty-two

Resnick was awake when the phone rang: downstairs at the front of the house, listening in the near dark to Thelonious Monk warily threading his way through “Ghost of a Chance”; fingers testing the keys as if afraid what each cluster of notes might hide. It was close to three-thirty. Resnick had given up trying to sleep and was drinking coffee, strong and black. If he thought of Lynn, that thought led him, as often as not, to Hannah’s sardonic, knowing face. When he began by thinking of Hannah, he finished up imagining himself in Lynn’s arms. It was a relief to pick up the ringing telephone.

Helen Siddons’s voice was loud and jagged. “More shit on the fan, Charlie. Big time. Planer, you know the …”

“Yes, I know who he is.”

“Seems as if he was woken by intruders in the house. Rang us. Then instead of staying low, waiting for the cavalry to arrive, he went downstairs to investigate. Either that, or they dragged him out of his bed.”

“They?”

“Two men, we think only two. Liam Cassady and one other.”

“Jesus.”

“Trying to break into Planer’s safe and didn’t succeed. I think we got there too soon.”

“This second person, Planer couldn’t identify him, didn’t know who he was?”

Resnick heard Siddons lighting a cigarette at the other end of the line. “Planer’s not identifying anyone. Half a dozen bullets in him, more. And from close range. My guess the same weapon used on Raymond Cooke; same team probably, same shooter.”

“Clean away?”

“Not exactly clean. Cassady wrapped himself round a tree. DOA on the way to hospital. Totaled the car. Looks as though whoever was with him got away on foot.”

“No sign?”

“Not so far. There’s a helicopter out waking all the sleeping farmers. Tracker dogs, the works. If he was injured in the crash, he’ll be lying low. If not, my guess is he’s hijacked another car somewhere.”

“There’s road blocks?”

“Where we can. Main roads, motorways. He’ll be wanting to put as much distance between himself and the incident as he can.”

“No.”

“Sorry?”

“I said, no. He won’t. Listen, where are you speaking from?”

“Headquarters. There didn’t seem …”

“Meet me at the corner of Woodborough Road and Mansfield Road. Four, five minutes. I think I know who he is and where he’s going.”