Nick Oldham - Nightmare City

Perhaps he would soon find out.

The MI5 team followed them, Conroy, Hamilton, de Vere and the Mayfairs to Blackpool, where they liaised with the four who had tailed Tony Morton and recorded his activities for posterity that morning. The four produced photographs of Morton, Tattersall and WDS Robson removing weapons from the armoury.

FB looked at the photographs and began to boil.

‘ They took all these guns to a club,’ Summers said. He handed over the final shots of Conroy, de Vere and Hamilton entering Rider’s club.

‘ The place is under observation by my team and they’ve told me that McNamara has just turned up.’

‘ You have done some excellent work here,’ FB said genuinely. ‘Can you tune your radios onto our frequency?’

‘ They already are-’ Summers began, but was interrupted when the airwaves crackled to life and one of the MI5 watchers reported hearing the sound of gunfire from inside the club.

‘ You did a good job with the prostitute,’ McNamara said suddenly and savagely to Conroy. The conversation about financial arrangements was brought to an abrupt close.

‘ You know, then?’ Ronnie asked, slightly bemused. ‘I was going to tell you later. How did you find out?’

‘ The police were waiting for me when I got home last night,’ McNamara said. ‘You also shot my wife, or at least the tosser you hired did. I had to go and identify her body last night, for God’s sake.’

Conroy had heard another woman had been hit alongside the prostitute named Gillian, but he’d assumed it was just another hooker.

He was stunned.

‘ Philippa was with her. I don’t know why, but my wife was with that piece of filth.’

McNamara closed the cylinder and pointed the Ruger at Conroy’s throat.

Rider shifted uncomfortably, not realising that when he did so, more dust and grit were dislodged. They fell in a tiny cloud of particles onto Wayne Mayfair’s shoulder.

He turned slowly and casually lifted an AK47 from the table and eased a magazine into the breech. Tiger reached for a Sig 9mm on another table.

Morton approached them.

‘ You got someone watching from up there?’ Tiger asked. He raised his eyebrows to the ceiling. ‘Don’t look up,’ he added with a hiss.

Morton caught on. He shook his head and thought: Rider and Christie.

‘ In that case, you won’t mind if I test this gun, will you?’ Wayne announced. He stepped back, knocked the safety off and swung the barrel of the gun up.

He pulled the trigger back at the same time that McNamara shot Conroy in the throat.

The bullet from the Ruger slashed into Conroy’s Adam’s apple and exited through the back of his neck, creating a huge hole. Conroy stood where he had been shot, astounded — it seemed — that someone should have the effrontery to even point a gun at him, let alone fire the thing.

For a moment, McNamara could see daylight through the wound, but he didn’t peer through it. Instead he put another couple into Conroy’s chest. These two went right through him, leaving a swathe of organ destruction behind them.

Henry saw — sensed — something was wrong below, then glimpsed the AK swinging upwards.

He shouted something which stuck in his dry craw and rolled away from their viewing aperture as a spray of armour-piercing bullets exploded through the ceiling.

Rider had not moved. He took two full in the face and as the shells came up through the floor, took another seven down the whole length of his chest and stomach, making his body twitch like it was being given a series of massive electric shocks.

Wayne continued to hold down the trigger and kept firing through the ceiling in no particular pattern. The magazine was empty within two seconds, some thirty bullets having been discharged.

Henry rolled and scrambled across the unsafe floor to the edge of the room where he curled into a ball, hands covering his head, as if this protective gesture would fend off bullets.

The sound of the shooting died away.

On the dance floor Conroy’s body lay twitching, floundering in a pool of blood like a stranded fish on a deck.

McNamara stood impassively over him.

Wayne stared at the ceiling and smiled when a gob of blood blobbed down through the gap. He glanced triumphantly at Tiger, grabbed another magazine, discarded the empty original and slammed the new one home.

Morton stared, transfixed by the sight of Conroy and McNamara’s smoking gun and the pool of blood.

Everyone else in the room was petrified, as in stone, trying to make sense of what had just taken place.

Wayne raised the AK again and gleefully pulled the trigger.

It was as though intercontinental ballistic missiles were coming through the wooden floor as the deadly shells forced their way all around Henry.

He stayed rigid; one tore through the boards perilously close to his head.

Then they stopped again.

The gun was empty.

‘ We’re going hunting,’ Wayne said to Morton.

He threw the AK down, grabbed another Sig and the two brothers ran to the door at the back of the ballroom and disappeared through it.

‘ I love her… I loved her,’ McNamara wept over Conroy’s body. ‘I treated her badly, but I loved her. I did.’ He sank to his knees.

‘ Get these fucking guns together and let’s get out of here,’ Morton screamed at his officers, shaking himself and them out of their trances. They reacted instantaneously.

Hamilton grabbed de Vere’s arm.

They walked quickly towards the door but were stopped in their tracks by the sight of Gallagher, Siobhan and Tattersall accompanied, and covered by, two firearms officers, guns drawn and pointed with menace.

Four more officers sprinted into the club, followed by FB and Donaldson, then Summers and six of his team.

‘ Where the fuck d’you think you’re going?’ Donaldson said, standing in Hamilton’s path. Hamilton took a swing and gave the FBI agent the most pleasure he’d had in ages when he decked the other man with a perfectly weighted right which sent him staggering back over the tables.

Henry breathed out, removed his hands from his head and looked across to Rider’s unmoving body. Henry struggled to see the damage. He dragged himself silently and unwillingly towards him. When he was only inches away, he gasped. Rider’s head looked as though he’d been chewing a grenade.

Henry needed to vomit. He retched.

Then he heard the sound of footsteps running down the corridor. They came to a halt. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ he heard a man sing out playfully — Jack Nicolson style.

‘ Wherever you are, you’re fucking dead,’ came another voice. Less tuneful, less playful.

Two voices. Two men. Two killers.

Only one Henry.

Henry had the advantage. He had been in the dark for several hours. He could see everything very clearly in the room. The broken furniture. Planks of wood. An old desk. Rider’s body…

He also had a blood-soaked gun which he had prised out of Rider’s clammy, dead hand which didn’t seem to want to let go.

And, supposedly, there were two bullets in the gun.

So, yeah, technically, he had the advantage.

Except he was a crap shot. His hand was shaking like mad. They were probably armed to the back teeth and no doubt ex-SAS members, with the ability to kill with deadly efficiency in a darkened, smoke-filled room whilst fighting off Dobermans at the same time.

So if he didn’t make the bullets count, he was dead.

If he missed, he would have betrayed his position.

And he would be dead.

He lay on the floor, desperately trying to remember the intricacies of the prone firing position. Flat out on your stomach, legs together, gun in right hand (of course), supported by the left, forefinger on trigger — just the tip of it — breathing, watch the breathing, for fuck’s sake…