Relentless: A Novel Page 15

  ‘Fuck you, Meron,’ he hissed as I went down in a heap.

  My head throbbed, but I ignored it, swinging round on my behind so that I could see what was happening. From my less than advantageous position, I saw that Daniels was staring hard at Kathy, the gun pointing once again in her direction. The receiver dangled limply from her hand, and her face was as pale, I think, as I’d ever seen it.

  ‘What the fuck did I tell you?’ shouted Daniels.

  ‘Don’t shoot, for Christ’s sake,’ I told him.

  ‘There’s no need,’ said Kathy. ‘The phone’s dead.’

  There was a long silence then. The sound of the rain crackling on the concrete outside the window was the only background noise.

  Finally, Daniels spoke, and his words had a grim inevitability about them.

  ‘They’re here.’

  28

  Keeping low, Daniels moved to the switch on the wall by the porch and killed the lights. ‘Everyone get down,’ he whispered, creeping through the semi-darkness and squatting down below the bay window that looked out on to the front driveway. Slowly, he lifted his head and peered over the edge.

  We obeyed his instructions. I crouched down behind the sofa, and Kathy slid down the wall and rested on her haunches. Our eyes met briefly in the gloom, and I could see the fear there. But there was nothing else, no regret, and she turned away quickly.

  ‘Can you see anything out there?’ I asked Daniels, my voice a loud whisper.

  ‘Nothing yet, but they’re there somewhere.’

  ‘How did they find us?’

  ‘Don’t think about that now. What we need to focus on is how the hell we get out of here. Where does it lead to out the back?’

  ‘The garden backs on to forest,’ I said, ‘but there are gorse bushes planted all round the border to keep people out. They’re pretty much impenetrable.’

  ‘So there’s no back access at all?’

  ‘You can get into the forest through the studio,’ said Kathy. ‘It’s a separate building at the end of the garden. If you climb out of its rear window, you’re directly into the woods.’

  As she spoke, Daniels scanned the area outside, his head moving slowly. Suddenly it stopped. He was looking left in the direction of Kathy’s car.

  ‘Have you seen something?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice.

  Outside, the rain tumbled down relentlessly.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he whispered, still watching the same spot. ‘I think so.’

  I needed to arm myself, to have something to hand that I could use as a last resort. There was a set of Japanese chef’s knives in the kitchen – Midge’s work colleague was an enthusiastic cook – and I decided that they would have to do. It was difficult to imagine actually stabbing someone with one of them. It was difficult to imagine stabbing someone full stop, but I was getting sick of being defenceless. Staying in a crouch, I retreated into the kitchen.

  The knives – six in all, each sheathed to the hilt in a triangular slab of wood – were on the tiled work surface, directly next to the cooker. I reached out and slid a large kitchen knife with a wide blade eight inches long from the slab. The blade itself was thin but razor sharp. I’d chopped meat and vegetables with it in the past and could testify to its effectiveness. I imagined how easily it would go through the flesh of that sadistic bastard Mantani, and found myself enjoying the thought. I’m not a cruel man, and I genuinely believe I’ve got a strong sense of justice, but I also harbour vengeful thoughts to those who’ve wronged me, and there was no doubt that Mantani was one of that number. Him and my old friend Jack Calley, but Jack was well beyond my reach now.

  I gripped the knife in my left hand and stood up, staring at my faded reflection in the kitchen window. Rivulets of rain ran down the glass, following uneven patterns. I still looked like shit, yet Kathy hadn’t once asked me about my injuries. She didn’t care. She obviously hadn’t cared for a long time, but like the fool I was, I hadn’t noticed.

  The face shot up like a ghost behind the glass, its identity obscured by a black balaclava. Then a gloved hand appeared holding a long-barrelled pistol. Before I had a chance to react there was a loud explosion and a cracking sound behind me. The windowpane became a huge spider’sweb crack with a hole like an eye in the middle. The bastard was shooting at me! Fire shot out of the barrel and a second explosion filled the room. This time the whole window seemed to collapse, and razor-sharp shards of glass rained down over the floor like lethal snowdrops.

  That was when I finally moved. I hit the deck fast, realizing with relief that I hadn’t been hit, even though my attacker had been only feet away from me. Then I realized why. As I scrambled across the floor towards the doorway, ignoring the pain as my body slid over pieces of broken glass, I heard something being thrown into the kitchen. There was a loud whump, and the room was filled with light and heat. Craning my neck, I saw that a large portion of the cupboards and work surfaces were on fire, the flames licking angrily towards the ceiling. He didn’t want me dead; he was trying to force us out into the open.

  Thick, acrid smoke billowed towards me, and I used it as cover, jumping to my feet and running through the door back into the sitting room. At exactly the same moment the cottage’s front window blew inwards in another lethal shower of glass. I saw that Daniels was already on his feet and well away from the flying shrapnel. He had the gun in his hand and was swinging it round in a tight arc, searching for a target. Kathy was also upright and standing rooted to the spot like a deer caught in headlights.

  ‘They’ve got petrol bombs!’ I yelled. ‘The kitchen’s on fire!’

  A split second later, before either of them had had a chance to respond, the blast of a shotgun rang out and a huge hole appeared in the front door, just below the handle. Daniels dropped into a shooting crouch and fired three shots into the door, their noise reverberating around the room with a deafening intensity.

  The shotgun erupted into life again, and the hole grew bigger. Pellets flew into the room too fast to see and Daniels yelped in pain, clutching an arm. He screamed at us to get upstairs, and I grabbed Kathy’s arm and pulled her towards the staircase as he recovered himself and switched the gun to his other hand. I could see a tear in his jacket where he’d been hit, but he seemed to be holding up.

  Suddenly the front door flew open, slamming against the shoe rack in the porch. The hearth was empty, the only view the rain pouring down out of the darkness onto the driveway. Behind us, the smoke poured into the room, black and choking. Daniels waited, gun outstretched in front of him, still keeping the crouching pose.

  A hand came round the door containing a fuel-filled milk bottle with a burning rag pushed into it, and as Daniels pulled the trigger for the fourth time, the bottle skidded and bounced along the floor towards him. He leaped to his feet, fired a fifth shot wildly in the direction of the door, and charged towards the staircase.

  ‘Get up the fucking stairs!’ he roared, bumping into my back.

  I pushed Kathy forward, and she scrambled up the staircase on her hands and knees, Daniels and I bringing up the rear. There was a second’s pause, and as I turned my head away the fuel ignited and the petrol bomb exploded, a sheet of flame shooting across the wood floorboards and engulfing the sofa.

  ‘Is there an upstairs window we can get out of?’ yelled Daniels above the noise of the fire.

  ‘The master bedroom,’ I shouted in return, falling over in my haste to get away from the thick, cloying smoke. ‘It faces on to the back garden. You can get out onto the extension from there.’

  ‘Head for there, then.’

  As we reached the top of the stairs, Kathy turned right onto the landing. The light was on up here and it felt unusually bright, causing me to squint momentarily. She ran over to the door of the master bedroom and flung it open. I was right behind her, so when she ran inside and suddenly cried out, I was there in seconds. Not that it did me any good.

  In the darkness of the room, a masked man in black –
possibly the same one who’d thrown in the first petrol bomb – had Kathy in a chokehold. In his free hand he held a sawn-off shotgun which was shoved roughly against her cheek. Both of them were facing me, and Kathy’s expression was one of absolute terror.

  As I came into the room, the gunman retreated slowly, barely visible in the gloom, still keeping a firm grip on Kathy, who was forced to retreat with him, her upper body bent back at an uncomfortable angle. Behind the two of them I could see that the bedroom window was open, and as I watched, a second man, identically dressed, appeared on the roof of the single-storey extension that stretched out from the old part of the house, just below the bedroom, and from which the gunman had obviously made his entry. This other man didn’t appear to be armed, and as he negotiated a path along the roof, he slipped on the wet tiles and landed on his behind.

  Daniels appeared behind me, and instinctively I moved aside. I heard him curse, and he raised his gun.

  ‘Don’t do a fucking thing, Daniels,’ said the gunman, and I immediately recognized his voice. It was that bastard Mantani. ‘Now, drop it or she dies.’

  ‘Let her go, Mantani,’ said Daniels calmly. But then he could afford to be calm. It wasn’t his wife in this position. ‘Let her go or I’ll kill you. And you know I’d do it too.’

  ‘Do as he says, Daniels, please. Don’t let him hurt my wife.’

  Mantani was still retreating with Kathy. He was only five feet from the window now. Behind him, the second masked man had found his feet after his initial fall and was approaching the window slowly.

  ‘If you don’t interfere, we’ll let you go,’ Mantani told Daniels. ‘Even though I owe you for what you did to me earlier. We just want Meron and his missus. That’s all.’

  Daniels took a step forward, then another. Black, choking smoke was beginning to billow into the room now, and the crackle of flames downstairs was growing louder.

  ‘Move another fucking inch and she dies.’ Mantani pushed the barrel harder against Kathy’s cheek, his face contorting into a snarl behind the mask. ‘I’ll kill her. I fucking will, you know. Another fucking step and she dies.’

  Daniels took another step.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Daniels?’ I screamed in a voice far higher than I’d ever managed before. ‘He’ll kill her!’

  ‘No, he won’t. You won’t, will you, Mantani? Because if you do, I’ll kill you, and I can tell you don’t want to die.’

  I took a step forward myself, the kitchen knife still in my hand, wondering what the hell I was going to do next.

  ‘Don’t fucking risk it, Daniels. Please. She’s my wife.’

  ‘I’ll fucking do her, Daniels. You know I will. She don’t mean shit to me.’

  Outside, the second man had reached the window. He saw Daniels’ gun for the first time and immediately ducked out of sight. Mantani stopped and leaned back against the windowsill.

  Kathy remained silent. Her jaw was quivering, her eyes racing round in fear. I’d never seen her scared before. Nervous, worried, but never terrified like this. I felt helpless. This bastard was going to murder my wife in front of my eyes. I was sure of it. And Daniels was pushing him into it. The smoke in the room was getting thicker, and I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. We were trapped. My legs felt weak. I thought of my kids. I thought of the day Chloe, my first child, was born. The joy on Kathy’s face; the joy I knew was in mine. Holding her, together, after the first weigh-in. A new family. And now it was all going to end in a burning, smoke-filled cottage, with my wife’s betrayal still acrid on my breath, and all for a reason I would probably never know.

  ‘Last chance, Mantani. Put the gun down. Now.’

  Daniels took another step forward. He was now only six feet away from his former colleague. His voice was even, yet it bristled with tension. Mantani leaned back, as if trying to put as much distance between him and his adversary as possible. It was a sign of weakness, but his grip on the shotgun remained firm.

  ‘Fuck you, Daniels. Put yours down. You’re fucking surrounded.’

  The shot deafened me, and I jumped up in the air reflexively.

  Mantani’s head snapped back, striking the window, and a fine spray of blood covered the glass. The shotgun waved about wildly and then discharged into the ceiling with an even louder bang. His body went limp and he toppled to one side as Kathy pulled away from his grip and ran into Daniels’ arms. The man outside the window jumped up. He had a gun in his hand, but instead of firing it, he ran away along the roof, slipped again, and disappeared from view. Daniels pushed Kathy away and fired a parting shot at him. I assume it missed because I thought I heard him ripping the drainpipe from the wall as he jumped from the roof.

  ‘Get out of here now!’ shouted Daniels, turning in my direction.

  I ran towards the window, needing no second invitation. Neither did Kathy, who was already halfway through it.

  ‘There’s someone coming up the stairs,’ I told Daniels as I passed him, choking on the smoke that was now filling the room.

  At that moment, another black-clad figure loomed in the doorway, a pump-action shotgun in his hands. But this man was different to the others. He was bigger. Much, much bigger, and even surrounded by the thick black smoke he oozed a dark, easy calm, oblivious to the drama going on around him and the death of one of his men. I knew instantly that this was the man they called Lench, and that if he got hold of us we truly had no chance.

  Daniels knocked me to one side and pulled the trigger, grabbing Mantani’s corpse. Lench returned fire once, the force of the shotgun blast blowing out yet another of the windows, then disappeared back behind the door. Daniels stumbled but hadn’t been hit. He hauled up the corpse and crouched down, using it and the double bed as a shield, yelling at me again to move.

  I scrambled past him and leaped bodily through the window, knife still clutched tightly, as Lench reappeared, firing. I hit the roof stomach first and began sliding down the tiles to the right in the direction of the guttering, using my free hand to gain some purchase and stop my descent. Directly below me was the kitchen, and I could feel the heat coming from the fire within it. This roof would collapse soon and whoever was on it would fall straight into the flames.

  Kathy was a few feet above me, straddling the roof’s ridgeline at the gable end, leaning forward and gripping the brickwork with her hands. She was looking down to the right where the second gunman was getting to his feet on the grass, the broken remains of the drainpipe beside him. Yet another man, the fourth, was coming round the same side of the house in our direction. He too had a gun. He pointed it up at us. From inside came more shots – the shotgun and Daniels’ pistol.

  ‘This way!’ Kathy shouted, and before I could say anything she was sliding down the other side of the roof on her bottom. I followed her, throwing the knife down into the garden and swinging round so that I was hanging onto the guttering before making the final jump to the ground, not daring to look back. We both landed at the same time, a few feet apart. Fifteen yards away at the end of the lawn was the single-storey wooden studio that Midge liked to paint in. Through there lay safety.

  ‘Run,’ I hissed, fumbling in my pocket for my keys. I kept the ones to the cottage on my main ring, but couldn’t remember if the studio key was still on there. I’d removed it months ago to get a new one cut, and wasn’t sure whether I’d put it back or not. I prayed I had. With my other hand I grabbed the knife, and we ran like hell towards the studio door, knowing that our pursuers were right behind us.

  In the darkness I couldn’t see which key was which and I began to panic as we reached the wooden door. It was a smaller one than the others, I remembered that. Thin, with a round handle. I felt each one as fast as I could, praying that the damned thing was on there. Please let it be. Please. The shooting in the bedroom had stopped now and all I could hear was the driving rain and the roar of the fire as the cottage that was meant to be a peaceful retreat from the stresses of the modern world went up in a mass of unf
orgiving flames.

  Kathy turned round. ‘Hurry up, they’re coming,’ she screamed. ‘They’re coming.’

  I felt a round handle between thumb and forefinger. It was the one. I shoved the key in the lock, trying to force it. I could hear their footfalls approaching fast. Someone shouted for us to put our hands up, the voice sounding muffled but close.

  The key finally slipped into the lock. I turned it once and the door opened. I shoved Kathy inside and followed her into the darkness, not even bothering to remove it. I slammed the door shut and felt for the bolt that would lock it from the inside. The studio’s interior smelled vaguely of varnish and incense sticks. I knew Midge smoked dope in here when she was working, not only because her abstract paintings were so bad they could only have been the product of a drug-addled brain, but also because I’d found roaches hidden away in corners of the room when I’d come in here in the past.

  The door was hit bodily from the outside with a huge shunt that knocked the knife out of my hand. A gap six inches wide appeared and a gloved hand shot through it, grabbing hold of the door, and forcing it further open.

  ‘Do something!’ yelled Kathy, her voice shrill.

  I pushed my full weight against the door, trying to narrow the gap.

  ‘I’ve dropped the fucking knife!’

  The light came on as she flicked the switch on the wall. I felt my feet sliding backwards on the bare floorboards and knew that in a couple of seconds they’d be in here. I saw the knife. It was a yard and a half away from my foot, well out of reach.

  Kathy came forward fast, swept it up from the floor, and a second later she had grabbed the gloved hand by the wrist and sliced the blade deep into the bare flesh of the lower forearm. A line of blood appeared, and a shower of heavy droplets splattered onto the parquet flooring. The man to whom the hand belonged howled in pain and withdrew it with a curse. Kathy slammed the door shut, and I leaned over and shoved the bolt across.

  A shot rang out, and the door splintered as the bullet passed through between us at head height. I felt a stinging pain in my face and turned away instinctively.