He'd heard, hadn't listened.
He turned accusingly to stare at the screen and at Massey and Olssen walking side by side, slipping away and back through the camera's arc.
Massey… Who the hell was he?
He shook the puzzle of the man's identity away like heavy, dragging bedclothes.
Stared out across the hangar, tensed against sudden darkness or the glimpse of others. He heard his own breathing, then the quick patter of what had to be rubber soled boots, but saw nothing. Two, at least.
Massey… was being protected, the tidy-crew had come to make certain there was nothing left lying around-himself.
Lights… He stared wildly around the grubby, cramped space, aware of himself framed in the windows, backlit as if on a screen. Switch darkness for an instant, "then the hangar lights came flowing in as if on a breeze. Cord in his left hand. He jerked it and the dusty blinds rattled down across the scene. He stifled a cough as he crouched with his back to Halvesson's desk, seemingly mesmerised by the TV screen and the images of Massey, moving in real time, walking away from the camera — stopping. Gant listened intently, as if he expected Massey to whisper, expected he might just catch his words as his lips moved.
Olssen must have called out to him. The office was hotter. He embraced his knees as he sat, his back pressed against the desk, the shirt dampening.
Rat noises again… Yes. His breath was loud as he exhaled. They knew where he was… Lights? The office was illuminated from outside, but the images on the screen shone out more vividly, in an etched, outlined way. He had to move. Take the videotape out of the machine, damn you, and move… Massey, facing the camera, Gant's heartbeat raised, senses heightened, sweat on his forehead in a narrow, cold line Strickland. Behind the moustache, the greyed hair, the leather jacket and the boots. Something in the smile, the angle of the head as he paused, the whole posture. The Preacherman had been his code name, his soubriquet, his means of being known and insulted. The psychopath with the gentle voice and manners of a pastor… Strickland. He knew him, knew what he was Gant turned his head as the window-wall shattered and the blinds swelled inwards for a moment to allow something to roll across the floor, something that smoked comically like a bomb in a cartoon. It burst even as he turned his gaze from the blinding flash. The smoke was suddenly everywhere in the room and he was coughing. He lurched forward and on to his knees, head bent to the floor.
He rolled away from the shattered window towards the door. He crouched behind it, the videotape images still flickering, shining in his head.
Strickland. They were here to protect Strickland. The smoke from the grenade obliterated the TV screen.
His eyes watered, blinding him, and he could not stop coughing.
Door…? His back was against the door. Other door through…? He scrabbled across the floor towards the door which led into the next office. He opened it and blundered against heaped boxes which smelt of metal and protective grease. He slammed the door to the storeroom. An identical windowed wall with a blind, a desk, filing cabinets… He had left the videotape behind. He glanced wildly back but it was already too late. He heard a voice shouting.
AII the rooms were connected… He couldn't open the door to the third of the offices. Something was stacked against it. He realised it was blocked by the filing cabinet in Olssen's office… The smoke had followed him into the second office, slipping beneath the door. His throat rasped with it.
He gripped the handle of the door out into the hangar. They'd be watching the other door only feet away only chance.
He ran, crouching, hearing a shout and a reply. He hunched his body against the first shot.
"No! Do not open fire under no circumstances!" Roussillon shouted into the RT, his whole body tensed as if he were on the point of running wildly towards the hangar. The grenade was unnecessary, Lucien who fired it?" They had wanted to make a game of it, startle him out of the security man's office like a rabbit blinking in the light. The grenade must be recovered, every fragment — no shooting!" Gant must simply disappear, there must be no sense in which his death was declared or his vanishing a police matter. Gunshot scars would be like fingerprints.
"Is he armed? You don't think so make certain! When you know, close in on him-!"
He flung the arm holding the RT aside, as if discarding the instrument.
His hand banged achingly against the flank of the Land Rover. For the sake of God, how difficult is it to take one unarmed man by surprise?
Don't let him get out of the hangar, don't'Lucien what is he doing?
Where is he?" he snapped into the RT.
"Sorry, boss can't see him at the moment. There are vehicles parked down at the far end of the hangar. Pascal and Edouard are moving in on him from different sides—"
"Until they can be certain that they can hit him and the slug won't pass right through his body, no shooting. You understand me, Lucien?"
"Yes, boss I've given the order."
"A fucking smoke grenade! There was no need—"
"No, boss—"
"Can you see him?"
"No, boss—" He crouched in the lee of a parked aerial platform, squashed down on its hydraulics like an abandoned concertina, smelling its small rubber tyres. He listened to their movements, their urgency.
It was almost as if they were the ones panicked by danger, not himself except that his breathing was ragged, trapped as he was. There had been no shots. They didn't want evidence left behind, shell cases, spent bullets. The smoke grenade had been to startle him into the open.
Lights… He slid back from the parked platform to the corrugated wall as if only that moment remembering why he had bolted for this far end of the hangar. Red box on the wall. Main f use box His skin crawled with the anticipation of his exposure, the impact of a bullet. He reached above his head as he remained crouching against the wall, his hand scrabbling for the lever. Threw it — darkness.
Then the breath was knocked from his body, the noise of the collision rumbling through the corrugated wall. He rolled over, a heavier body pressing against his, hands gripping his arms. He gasped, the air expelled again as he collided with one wheel of the aerial platform. A hand over his mouth, his own hands striking as ineffectually as those of a baby as the dark-clothed, black-faced man sat astride him, his other hand against Gant's windpipe, pressing down with damaging force.
Gant struck out at the black-streaked face with his hands, trying to hit, trying to hold. The man's breath smelt of food and triumph, sickly-sweet.
"Edouard got him?" he heard someone call. English with a heavy European accent.
"Oui-! I'd-!" His breath failed, gargled out, as the edge of Gant's hand struck across his throat. The pressure on Gant's windpipe was released.
He bucked his body, twisting it out from beneath the man as eager hands reached for his eyes. Gant struck sideways and upwards with his forearm, catching his assailant across the cheek and nose. He heard a muffled explosion of breath and the man's body jerked away from him, his hands feeling for his own face now.
Gant rose to his knees, then into a crouch. Kicked twice, jaw, side of head as the man went down.
"Edouard-!" he heard, then: "Where are the lights!"
"Fusebox they're not working!" came a voice from near the hangar doors.
He hit the fallen man again as he struggled to get to his feet, bruising his knuckles against the man's temple. Something had skittered away in the darkness gun? He stared wildly round but could not see it, then scrabbled at the man's pockets, looking for a weapon, an identity. Took what felt like a leather wallet.
"Edouard! Christ find the fuse box Claude stay by the doors!"