Stuart Pawson - Deadly Friends

"Just pray that one of those trigger-happy bastards doesn't open fire,"

I whispered, holding the phone at arm's length.

"Keep still!" we heard someone bellow, quite distinctly, followed by what might have been a Heckler and Koch's rifle stock being slammed into the extended position.

"Put your hands on your head!" They had a very loud voice.

"Now! Slowly. Kneel down."

"Face down on the floor."

"Stretch your arms out."

I counted to ten, to give them time to put the cuffs on, and shouted:

"Hello! Hello! Anyone there?" into the phone.

More rumbles and scrapes, before a voice demanded: "Who is this?"

"This is DI Priest of Heckley CID," I told him. "Who are you, please?"

"Oh, er, Sergeant Todd, sir. Tactical firearms unit."

"Good evening, Sergeant. Rodney is a friend of mine, so treat him kindly. Remember, he did give himself up. Please tell the superintendent that I'm glad to have been of assistance. Goodnight." I clicked the phone off and clenched my fists in a gesture of triumph.

Nigel was grinning like a fireplace.

"You jam my so-and-so!" he said.

I rang Annabelle, the long way, and told her we were running late but homing in on a fair wind and a wide throttle.

"You sound happy," she said. "Have you been drinking?"

"Nothing stronger than tea has passed these lips," I told her. "Coming to see you always fills me with the joy of life."

Nigel tutted and looked away.

Guns have a language all their own. You cock a single-action revolver by pulling the hammer back with your thumb. Pawls mesh into gears and rotate the chamber one sixth of a turn, bringing the next cartridge in line with the barrel. The resulting c-click has been used in a thousand westerns to terrorise goody, baddy and audience alike as the gun was pressed against someone's head.

It's different with an automatic. You slide the mechanism back to bring the first cartridge from the clip into the breech, with aka-chink that is as familiar to armchair fans of gangster films as the smell of a smoke-filled speakeasy or the tinkling of a honky-tonk.

A sawn-down repeater shotgun says chunk-chunk as the next round is jacked into the chamber, and you know that death or serious bleeding is coming to someone.

But the Heckler and Koch is a disappointment. There's nothing like that with the Heckler. You put the safety to fire and you're away. The gun comes with an extending rifle stock and they usually snap it into position silently, in the privacy of the van, before moving into position. For more intimate situations a few officers have invented a little strategy that's not in the manual. They will have the stock loosely extended but not locked. At the right moment they will bark their instructions at the target and yank the stock home, hard. The resulting chuck of catches snapping into place is mundane and meaningless, but in the psychology of brinkmanship it strikes terror in the already sweaty palms of the hearer.

Annabelle had cooked one of my favourites trout and almonds for me, followed by home-made cheesecake. We'd called at the Granada services on the M62 and I'd bought a bunch of carnations, to put me in the good books, and the JFK video, to save time collecting Sparky's copy from home. Only trouble was, I was wearing the clothes I'd been sitting and standing about in all day and was unshaven. I apologised for my appearance and told her about Rodney, which was a mistake. All her sympathy immediately transferred to him.

"So," I said, after I'd topped up her glass with the last of the Spanish red we both like, 'how did the trip go?"

"Very well," she replied. "I'll show you my ideas." She stood up and left the room. We'd eaten off the large refectory table in her kitchen. I cleared our crockery away and when she returned we spread the drawings out.

"Unfortunately the fabrics have already been ordered," she said, 'so we have to work around them. Actually, it makes it easier, I suppose."

They were architects' impressions of the interiors, and Annabelle had coloured them in. Her schemes looked good, although her skills with the pencils required polishing. "Use the edge, like this," I said, and coloured a wall on a spare drawing. "And make the end of the wall that is nearer to you a little bolder. If you're doing it quickly, for an immediate impression, use big zigzags, full of confidence. Don't be faint-hearted. Like this."

I handed her the pencil and made her show me. We were talking about drawing, which I know about, and avoiding discussing her trip to London, which I didn't. She was grateful for the diversion, I accepted it.

"These are very good," I told her, pointing, meaning it. "You have brilliant colour sense, and you're prepared to be adventurous. Zorba should be delighted."

"He's called Xavier," she reminded me.

"Sorry. So when is your next expenses-paid jaunt?"

"I have to go to the new site, near West Midlands Airport, to meet the architects, sometime on Thursday."

"Will you stay down there?"

"I think so. It's called market research. If it's a morning meeting it might be easier for me to go down tomorrow night. I'll stay at the Post Chase our big rivals to see what I can learn, and consider ways of improving upon same."

"It sounds fun," I admitted.

"Mmm, it is. I'm enjoying myself."

"Will you drive down?"

"Yes, I'll have to. I can manage the West Midlands."

"You know you've only to say the word and I'd gladly take you."

When she smiles at me like she did I know there is nothing I wouldn't do for her. I almost wished some great catastrophe would overtake us, some suffering we could rise above that would hold us together for ever. But all I had was a lopsided grin and a few stumbling phrases.

"I know you would, Charles," she said. "You're very kind to me. Shall we take our tea in the other room and watch the video?"

I was a child of the Kennedy era. We believed we were poised on the brink of a new age, when war would be waged against poverty and ignorance, and not against our fellow men. "Let us begin," he told us.

Those shots at Dallas didn't just kill a president, they blew out the dreams of a generation. I'd never known that a prosecution had been brought against factions of the mafia and their Cuban connections. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison pursued his case until it almost destroyed his family, but in the end he lost the trial and saved his marriage. I'd call that success.

Annabelle's head was on my shoulder as we watched it, my arm around her. I had cramp for the last hour, but bore it stoically. "Do you think we'll ever know the truth?" she asked, as we washed the supper dishes.

"Not really," I replied. "Where does this go?"

"In there, please."

"We'll know it, but not recognise it. It's there, somewhere, along with all the other stuff."

"Do you believe there was a conspiracy?"

"Yes," I replied. "I'm a pathological believer in conspiracies."

I stayed the night. We went to bed and made love, because that's what grown-ups do when they go to bed together. Afterwards, I lay awake for hours, wondering what might have been. I think Annabelle did, too. She was snuffling in her dreams when I sneaked away at about six thirty, my car engine rattling like a clarion call in the stillness of the vicarage close.

I was close-shaved and clean-shirted when I took the morning meeting.

The petty criminals of Heckley hadn't taken a day off while I went to the seaside, so there was plenty to talk about. After that the first team met in my office for an update on the doc's murder. I let Nigel tell Sparky and Maggie all about the Siege of Scarborough.

"And the psychiatrist is calling in the local nick this morning to make a statement," he finished with. Sparky put a number three in the appropriate box on his chart and looked glum.