The Devil's Graveyard (32 page)

Emily grasped the steam iron in her right hand and raised it above her head. She found she was trembling with fear. Was this the right thing to do? Or even sensible?

She waited as Gabriel dragged the other security guard into the room. His back was to her, which was fortunate. She didn’t think it would go over so well if he were to see her standing with a steam iron held above her head. He kicked the door closed and began moving backwards towards the closet, stooped over, with his hands under the dead guard’s armpits. Towards her.

When he was close enough, she took a deep breath, and, using all her strength and weight, swung the steam iron at the back of his shaved head. And she swung it good.

CLUNK!

The iron hit him squarely on the right side of the back of his head. It caught his right ear, but mostly it connected with a part of his skull, covered only by a very thin layer of skin and stubble. Gabriel went down like a sack of corncobs, falling on top of the body of the security guard he had been dragging along.

Emily peered down at him. He seemed vaguely conscious, if the slight murmuring sounds he was making were anything to go by. She had definitely dazed him, but how badly? She didn’t want to kill him, so she held off striking him on the head again, and instead tried to step over the pile of bodies between the bed and the wall, and now blocking her path to the room door. There was the security guard that she had dragged to the edge of the closet. Then there was Gabriel, and underneath him, the second security guard. Muttering a slightly hysterical apology, she stepped gingerly on to the first guard and attempted to take a giant stride over Gabriel and the other guard.

As she reached a leg over Gabriel’s body, he snapped into life. The momentary dizziness she had inflicted on him had passed all too quickly. He grabbed her left leg and pulled hard on it, causing her to lose her balance. She tripped and fell to the floor by the bed, narrowly missing striking her head on the wooden bed post. The awkward landing made her drop the steam iron on to the carpet by her side.

‘You fuckin’ bitch!’ she heard Gabriel shout. She had succeeded in riling him up, not knocking him out.

He climbed to his feet behind her. As she tried to get back up, he struck her a heavy blow on the back of her neck with his right fist. She fell flat on her face. She now had an idea of how he had felt when she had whacked him with the iron.

‘That was really fuckin’ stupid,’ he snarled malevolently. She looked sideways and up, to see him rubbing the back of his head where she had hit him.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

The biker seemed to have recovered completely from the blow to his head. He crouched down and she felt his knee push into the small of her back, pinning her to the floor.

‘I gave you a chance to live, bitch.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘
Sorry
ain’t gonna get rid of my headache. You goddam fuckin’ worthless bitch.’

He pushed her head hard down into the carpet. With his knee in her back as well, she was completely disabled. Then she heard the sound she most dreaded – Gabriel pulling his gun back out from within his jacket. He pressed it into the back of her head. She was now more terrified than ever. She had messed up completely. Hitting him on the head with the steam iron had been stupid. And unnecessary. Although, she thought fleetingly, given the chance she would go back and do it again, only a hell of a lot harder.

‘Not nice having a metal object thrust into the back of your head is it?’ Gabriel growled. He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into her skull. ‘See how it feels? Huh? Pretty fuckin’ unpleasant, ain’t it?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Emily began to sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Yeah, you’re fuckin’ sorry. Well, you had your chance!’ With his free hand he grabbed a handful of her hair, lifting her head up a few inches off the carpet. ‘For fuck’s sake, I was doing you a fuckin’ favour!’

He slammed her face into the floor. Her forehead hit first, just saving her nose from taking the brunt of the impact. It still hurt like hell, though. She felt dazed. Again, Gabriel pulled her head up by her hair and then slammed her face back down. Emily felt sick. She couldn’t hold back the tears any more. She was about to die, and she’d let her mother down. She felt the barrel of Gabriel’s gun press into the back of her head again. She screamed out in pain. Then she heard a metallic click. He had released the safety catch.
This was it.

She closed her eyes and waited for the moment of truth. How would it feel? How long after the bullet entered her skull would she be able to feel the pain of it?

As these questions and a million other thoughts raced through her mind, she heard an almighty crashing noise from behind. The barrel of Gabriel’s gun stopped pressing into the back of her head. This was the moment.

BANG!

She heard the gunshot as clear as day, deafening inside the room. Was this what it felt like to be shot? Or dead? She felt nothing. She felt the same. She felt – wait a second. As far as she could tell, she was still alive and breathing. What the –?

THUD!

In her dazed state she twisted her head and glanced to her left. Gabriel’s face swam in and out of her vision. She focused on it and realized that he was lying on his side next to her, staring at her. They looked into each other’s eyes. Then Emily watched Gabriel’s eyes slowly roll up in his head.

She was still lying prostrate on the carpeted floor, unsure what had happened. There was blood seeping out from beneath Gabriel’s head. It was creeping along the cream carpet towards her.

Then, without warning, her feeling of dizziness magnified. She raised her head to look behind her. Standing over her and the dead body of Gabriel was the man in black she had seen earlier in the day. He was holding a pistol in one hand, bluish smoke still drifting hazily from its muzzle. As she slipped out of consciousness, she realized that the man known to the world as the Bourbon Kid had come to her rescue.

And had blown the back of Gabriel’s head off.

Nigel Powell was sitting at the desk in his office with his head in his hands, fingers covering his eyes. His frustration was evident. His two fellow judges, Lucinda and Candy, were seated opposite him. Neither of them was particularly bright, but they would have to have been exceptionally stupid not to have picked up on his bad mood very quickly. They waited patiently for him to take his hands away from his face. When he did so, the first thing he saw was Candy’s tight white leather jacket. As the day was wearing on, her breasts were coming ever closer to popping out of it. The sight distracted him for little more than five seconds. Lucinda’s bright yellow dress caught his eye, reminding him of her presence, so he averted his gaze from Candy’s cleavage and looked up at the two women.

‘Well, you gonna tell us what’s the problem here?’ Lucinda asked, rather more combatively than she’d intended. She didn’t much like Powell, but she was wary of him. Besides, he paid her handsomely.

The hotel owner puffed out his cheeks. He took turns to look them both in the eye to be certain they could sense his frustration.

‘We’ve lost three of our finalists,’ he said bleakly.

‘Lost them?’ asked Lucinda. The way he’d put it made it sound as though they’d all been rather careless.

‘They’re dead. Someone assassinated them.’

Candy looked confused. Nigel knew she was considerably more intelligent than people gave her credit for, but in essence she was still a stereotypical airhead blonde.

‘What? Who? Which ones?’ she asked.

‘We’ve lost Kurt Cobain, Otis Redding and Johnny Cash.’

‘
Oh my God
. What about the other two?’ she asked. Her agitation visibly increased the strain on her jacket’s zip.

‘I’ve arranged for them to be kept under armed guard,’ Powell replied, somewhat pompously. ‘I believe one of the other contestants discovered who the five finalists were going to be and hired a hitman to kill them off.’

Lucinda shook her head. ‘Man, this is insane. I ain’t never told no one who the finalists were goin’ to be.’

‘Me either,’ Candy quickly added.

Lucinda leaned forward over the desk. ‘You any idea ’tall who’s behind all this shit?’ she asked Powell.

‘That I
don’t
know. The hitman and the guy who hired him were apprehended by another hitman a few hours ago. Him and two guys from security took them out to the desert to kill them, but those three haven’t returned. And now I can’t get hold of them.’

‘Sweet Jesus!’ Lucinda yelped loudly. ‘What in the hell we gonna do now? Cancel the show?’

Powell shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Like the cliché says, the show must go on. We’ve just got to find replacements for the three dead guys.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Any suggestions? We’ve got about two minutes to decide. I want to get this final up and running as soon as possible. This year is turning into a fucking nightmare. So which three acts do we go for? Who did the audience like?’

Lucinda offered up an idea. ‘Whyn’t we pick one act each? Seems like a fair idea, yeah?’

Powell shrugged. ‘Yeah, I like that. Candy, who do you want?’

Candy looked surprised. ‘You want me to name an act right now?’

‘No, I would like you to name one at whatever leisurely pace you think is acceptable. Please ignore my remark about us only having two minutes.’

‘Are you being sarcastic?’

‘Yes. Clever of you to notice.’

‘Fine. In that case, I’ll go for that Elvis guy. He was cute.’

‘That’s not a reason to pick him,’ Nigel snapped.

‘You said we get one pick each, and he’s mine.’

‘No way. You’re not picking someone just because you have the hots for him.’

‘Gimme one reason why I shouldn’t pick him. One that isn’t personal.’

‘Okay. I don’t like him. As in,
really
don’t like him.’

Candy let out a deep sigh. ‘Fine,’ she pouted. ‘Then I pick Freddie Mercury. You happy?’

‘Yes,’ said Powell, smiling for the first time. ‘He was pretty good, without being too good.’ He turned to the other judge: ‘Lucinda, what about you?’

Lucinda frowned and considered the question for a moment. ‘That Blues Brother guy was good,’ she said ruminatively.

‘The one with the harmonica? And the red pants?’ Candy couldn’t hide the scorn in her voice.

‘Yeah. I like him. He had somethin’ about him.’

Powell pulled a face. ‘Really? I thought he was rather a one-trick pony with that whole harmonica thing.’

‘We pickin’ one each here, or what? I said Blues Brother and I’m stickin’ with him.’ Lucinda was clearly far more determined than Candy. And Powell didn’t have the time to argue.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That gives us four finalists. So who shall I pick?’ He drummed his fingers on his desk for a few seconds as he cast his mind back to all the singers they’d seen earlier.

‘You didn’t even see but half the acts,’ Lucinda pointed out. She was right. His constant to and fro-ing during the auditions had meant that he had missed watching many of the contestants.

‘True. Everyone I saw was dreadful, too.’ Suddenly a name popped into his head. ‘I know. While I was in the lobby earlier I heard a lot of audience members raving about a Janis Joplin performer. Seemed to be a body of opinion that she was the highlight of the show. Think I’ll go with her.’

Lucinda and Candy both looked stunned. Lucinda spoke up for both of them. ‘You didn’t even see her!’

‘Oh, what does it matter? Judy Garland has this show sewn up anyway. No one’s going to beat her. Besides, I think it would be good to have another woman in the final.’

‘Yeah, but, trust me, that woman ain’t the one,’ Lucinda protested.

‘Enough already,’ said Powell waving a dismissive hand. ‘We had one choice each, and she’s mine.’

‘But…’

‘No buts, damn you!’ he almost shouted, before continuing in a calmer voice. ‘That’s it. Now let’s just get out there and announce it. God knows, this show is running over schedule already. I’ve got a couple of calls to make. You two can go and tell Nina who we’ve chosen for the final. Go on. Go. Close the door on your way out, won’t you?’