Craig Russell - Lennox

Bullseye. McGahern turned to Lillian, as if looking for guidance.

‘Where is Gillespie?’ she asked.

‘Safe. Somewhere you can’t touch him.’ At least that much was true.

‘No…’ Lillian shook her head. ‘No, something doesn’t fit with all this. If Lennox knows so much and others know the same, how come he’s here alone?’

‘I thought you said there would be no loose ends?’ The red-haired officer type spoke for the first time. He had an English accent and his voice was high with fear. ‘You promised that no one would see me. That I would be in the clear.’

‘There won’t be any loose ends,’ said Lillian. ‘You will be in the clear.’ She gestured to McGahern who handed her his sawn-off. It looked like my headache was going to disappear for good. But she didn’t aim at me. The sound of the blast was deafening in the warehouse. I was still breathing: Lillian had ruined the army guy’s houndstooth. He was on the floor now, blubbering and leaking blood and piss. Lillian walked over to where he lay and fired the other barrel into him. He stopped blubbering.

I looked down at the dead Englishman. ‘This is nice,’ I said. ‘We really should try to get together more often.’

Lillian handed the gun back to McGahern, who plopped two fresh cartridges into the chambers. I heard footsteps coming up the metal stairs behind me. A woman’s high heels. The woman came into view and stood next to Lillian, totally eclipsing her looks.

‘Hello, Helena,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d be seeing you here.’

‘You never did know when to leave things be, Lennox,’ she said, her face genuinely, beautifully sad.

‘So you ran the honey-trap operation for them? All along I thought that McGahern here was cracked up on Lillian. But it was you, all the time.’

‘I run things here,’ said Lillian. ‘You weren’t smart enough to work that out.’ She looked over my shoulder to the Dutchman. ‘Go down and get the driver to load the sample cases. But leave the Arab here. I want him to deal with Lennox. Slow and painful.’

I heard the Arab move behind me. I knew he’d loop the garrotte over my head and strangle me to death. I’d wait until he made his move before I went for the switchblade in my jacket pocket. The Fat Dutchman had been careless in not frisking me. I’d maybe get the Arab and one other before they shot me dead. Like Gillespie, the idea of choosing my departure route appealed to me.

The leather flashed in front of my face. This was it. But then I heard a shot and the Arab dropped the garrotte and crashed onto the floor. I looked up. Helena Gersons was holding an automatic and had it trained on Lillian and McGahern.

‘Put the shotgun down,’ she ordered McGahern. ‘Nice and slow.’

I stood up. McGahern put the shotgun down on the floor. I saw him exchange a look with Lillian. Helena looked at me and smiled an agitated smile. ‘Things are never what they seem,’ she said. ‘Remember I told you that once?’

I moved towards the shotgun. At that moment the Big Dutchman appeared at the top of the stairs. Helena swung her automatic around to bear on him and I made a lunge for the shotgun at McGahern’s feet. McGahern threw himself at me and checked my dive. We fell onto the floor. Somehow McGahern got on top of me and sliced at my Adam’s apple with the side of his hand. I twisted sideways and his blow hit the side of my neck instead.

There was the sound of a shotgun blast.

We both looked in the direction of Lillian. She was holding the shotgun and Helena was lying on the filthy floor of the warehouse, a great plume of blood and bone and flesh stretching from where her face should have been. I heard myself scream and found the switchblade in my hand. I rammed it under McGahern’s ribs and up. He looked into my eyes with an expression of shock. I added to his surprise by giving the knife a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree twist. I felt the heat of his blood on my hand, running down my wrist and under the cuff of my sleeve.

I pushed McGahern off and got to my feet in time for Lillian to let me have it with the other barrel. The blast hit me in the side. Lower left, just above the hip. There wasn’t that much pain, but suddenly I felt as if someone had plunged me into a vacuum and I gasped to fill my empty lungs. I fell down beside Helena’s body, my cheek on her thigh. It was still warm. I grabbed the automatic lying next to Helena’s body and fired wildly in Lillian’s direction.

Still clutching the automatic, I hauled myself to my feet. Lillian was gone, but dodging my bullets she’d left the holdall of cash behind. Helena lay with her face gone. The army officer, the Arab and McGahern weren’t providing much company either. I leaned against the wall and pressed my hand to where the blood was pulsing out of my side. I tried to catch my breath and listened to the rain and the dull metallic thumping from somewhere across the docks.

I looked over at the Dutchman, who was still standing at the top of the metal stairs.

It is raining. The entire world beyond the grime-smeared window is as grey and heavy as wet lead. The snappy wind grabs handfuls of rain and throws them like pebbles against the glass, as if trying to draw my attention to just how crap everything outside is. The dull sound of some massive industrial blunt instrument rhythmically hitting metal stretches through the rain, sometimes loud, sometimes muffled, depending on the whim of the wind.

But my attention is pretty much focused on this room. In my life, I have had to explain my way out of a lot of tight corners, but this tops them all.

I am leaning against the wall of an upper-storey room in an empty dockside warehouse. I am leaning against the wall because I doubt if I can stand up without support. I am trying to work out if there are any vital organs in the lower left of my abdomen, just above the hip. I try to remember anatomy diagrams from every encyclopaedia I ever opened as a kid, because, if there are vital organs down there, I am pretty much fucked.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse trying to remember anatomy diagrams and there is a woman on the floor, about three yards in front of me. I don’t need to remember childhood encyclopaedias to know that there is a pretty vital organ in your skull, not that I seem to have made much use of it over the last four weeks. Anyway, the woman on the floor is Helena Gersons and she hasn’t got much of a skull left, and no face at all. Which is a shame, because it was a beautiful face. A truly beautiful face. Next to her is a large canvas bag that has been dropped onto the grubby floor, spilling half of its contents, which comprise a ridiculously large quantity of used, large-denomination banknotes.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse with a hole in my side trying to remember anatomy diagrams, while Helena Gersons without her beautiful face and a large bag of cash lie on the floor. That should be enough of a pickle to be in, but there is also the Fat Dutchman looking down at the girl, the three dead men, the bag and now, at me. And he is holding a shotgun: the same one that took Helena’s pretty face off. De Jong walks across the floor, swings the shotgun up and aims it at my head. He pulls both hammers back and squeezes the triggers. There are two almost simultaneous hollow clicks.

‘Bad luck,’ I say. ‘Lillian was in too much of a hurry to reload.’ I aim the automatic at his face. He drops the shotgun with a clatter and puts his hands up. ‘That’s a good Dutchman,’ I say with a smile, but I am finding it difficult to breathe. ‘Now take two steps back.’

He does what I ask.

‘I’m afraid there’s more bad luck for you,’ I say apologetically.