Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

‘I can’t get the Saab started,’ she said. ‘So let’s go. You drive.’

I got in. She crammed herself back against the passenger door, the SIG pointed at my ribs.

We drove into the forest. She hadn’t killed anyone yet and I didn’t know if she had what it took to go that far. So I asked, just to gauge where she was, when she’d realised Finn and Saoirse were ripping off her trust fund to start all over again in Cyprus.

‘Just drive,’ she said.

‘Was Maria in on it?’

‘Maria, Jesus.’ She shook her head. ‘All she had to do was play the game, sit tight, marry Finn when the time was right.’

‘Which’d net him a Cypriot passport.’

‘Except she couldn’t help herself. Started screwing around with you. Thinking she’d teach Finn a lesson.’

‘And then she gets pregnant.’

She shrugged. ‘He couldn’t be told. Couldn’t go without taking you out too.’

‘He was here all along,’ I said, ‘wasn’t he?’

She nodded. ‘In the boatshed, yeah. I thought, yesterday morning, you’d worked it out. When you went for a stroll down to the cove.’

‘Which is why you started on about the will, Finn making changes to the trust fund. Just to see how much I knew.’

‘Pull in here,’ she said. The Saab looming large in the headlights. I eased the Rav4 to a halt, careful not to make any jerky movements. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘get it out of the way.’

I got out and went around to the Saab, sat into the driver’s seat. She came and stood by the driver’s off-side, the SIG still braced. I reached under the dash, found the wires. A couple of sparks, then a low hum. I gave the accelerator a nudge, let the engine roar.

‘Now get it off the road,’ she said.

I put the Saab in reverse, went bumping down into the undergrowth.

She waited on the verge of the road as I climbed back up the incline. When I was close enough so she couldn’t miss, she said, ‘Far enough. Down.’

Not so much as quiver in those delicate hands. I went down on one knee, then the other.

‘Grainne,’ I said, ‘think it through. Right now you’re walking away clean. You want to give them a reason to hunt you down?’

She took it onboard, a faint glitter in the ice-blue eyes. Hunkered down so that we were on the same eye-level, the SIG in one hand now, resting on her knee.

‘And you’ll do what?’ she said. ‘I mean, when the cops ask you what happened here, what’ll you say?’

‘I won’t even be here. I’ll be gone.’

‘Chasing Maria?’

‘There’s a good chance the kid is mine.’

‘And you wouldn’t be even slightly interested in the money.’

Seventeen years old and neither woman nor girl nor fully human, but flesh drawn tight over the machinery of greed.

A survivor, this one. She’d do okay.

‘I’ll do you a deal,’ I said. ‘I find you Maria and you get the money. She has Finn’s flash-drive, the codes.’

She nodded slowly, pursed her lips. ‘Y’know,’ she said, ‘I’d probably be just as quick tracking her down myself.’ Then squeezed the trigger.

Not a knee-capping, exactly. She wasn’t all that precise. But she was so close she couldn’t miss and the round punched through my thigh.

No pain at first, just the shock of the impact sending me into convulsions as I keeled over into the dead leaves. I was vaguely aware of her standing up and dropping the gun, swearing as she cradled her wrist. Then a spurt of flame and pain bolted through my thigh, set my bones on fire. Screaming made it worse, every nerve scraped raw. And no one to hear anyway, not after the drone of the engine finally faded away.

I lay still in the leaves with my eyes closed and teeth clenched, trying not to breathe. After a while the pain dulled and I began to get cold. I heard a whoo-whoo, the sound faint, its tone curious. Then the shakes started, just a shiver at first, but soon I was shuddering all over. Numb below the waist and faintly damp, the artery pulsing slow now, draining out.

This motionless ease, measure me by …

It could have been minutes or hours. No way to know.

Just as it all started to fade away, the world bleeding dark from the edges in, I had one last glimpse of a shadowy Ben, those hopeful eyes peering up from under his fringe, but when I reached to brush the hair from his eyes I found he had no eyes, no features at all save a raw hole of a mouth twisted into a leer and it was Gonzo, yes, Gonz waiting for me and saying put it down, just let it go, you can’t go on, you’ll go on, and the leaves faintly rustling, whispering, yes, I will, yes, yes