Warren had betrayed him. Warren was helping Walker to do this to him and maybe the others were helping too. Maybe there was nobody he could trust anymore.
He could hear Warren saying his name as he looked on but he didn’t answer and the calls grew louder.
‘GEORGE!’
He jolted awake. Warren was staring at him and holding the phone out. ‘Slater’s on.’
For a moment he did nothing. Dazed and bewildered he knew he was in his own living room and he realised that he must finally have fallen asleep but the dreams had come again and this one had been so clear. He pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to clear the image and snatched the phone.
‘Keith?’
Late in the afternoon Gresham had sent Slater to go and swap places with Warren. As his number two he had wanted him on hand, close. But Slater had been restless and grown more edgy as the time passed and eventually Gresham had relented, deciding that the man’s energy might be better put to use elsewhere.
‘George. Something’s kicking off.’
‘Where the fuck have you been?
‘We were watching the place and it had been quiet for about ten minutes or so and I decided to have a poke around inside while Keano waited in the car. Then fuck me if Campbell didn’t pop up out of nowhere, right there in the hallway,’ Slater explained, barely able to believe it himself.
‘Where did he come from?’ demanded Gresham.
‘Christ knows. And he had some bird with him. Anyway, I was creeping around with the lights off and heard something in the kitchen. I turned the light on and it was just this girl. No idea who she is. Then, two seconds later and he appeared behind me and smashed a fucking huge pot over my head. Put me out. Little bastard.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Keano saw them loaded into the back of a car — Walker’s lot turned up. I came round as they were walking out the front door. Keano pulled the car up and we followed them.’
‘So now Walker has Campbell and Angie? We’ve got nothing,’ Gresham was staring at the floor, his eyes blank.
‘Listen to me George. We’re sat here for a minute or two and Drennan just appeared with his fat little sidekick. They just kicked the front door in.’
‘Drennan? As well? What the fuck is going on here Keith?’
‘Search me. You want us to follow him in there?’
Gresham paused for a moment. His instinct was to send them in. God knows what was happening in there but his Angie was there too, of that much he was certain. But if there were too many of Walker’s men about then it would be over before it began. Slater and Keane wouldn’t get two inches inside the front door and that wouldn’t help her one bit.
‘Sit tight Keith. Wait and see what happens for a minute.’
Wondering if anybody even lived in this house Campbell was trying to make mental notes of the place in case he needed to give details to someone in the future, like the police, and he was struck by the dank and run-down look of the place. The wallpaper was faded and had a garish design the likes of which he had last seen when stripping the walls in his own flat and discovering aged layers beneath.
The carpet at his feet was a smudgy brown colour with a number of stains and tears in it and worn through to the wood beneath on the lip of each step of the staircase. He noted once again that the lightbulbs had no shades.
From the front of them came a loud, thumping, crashing sound and he heard wood splinter noisily. Suddenly he was alert again and trying to see over the shoulder of the man in front who obscured his view.
The twin popping sounds he heard were only vaguely familiar to him and for a split second he could not understand why. But then the big man’s hands were flung into the air as something slammed hard into his chest and he staggered against the wall and dropped to his knees.
The man at his rear had released his hands now and as Campbell looked from the big man’s slumping form to the hallway in front of him, he saw a spray of crimson splashed across that grimy wallpaper and carpet. And then he saw a coated figure in the doorway, a handgun with a sleek lengthened barrel gripped in two hands still aimed at the man down on his knees.
Campbell found himself yanked backwards almost off his feet and he slammed shoulder-first against the wall and toward the staircase, struggling to keep upright. A hand was placed roughly in his back, propelling him forward and the momentum took him onto the first of the steps but it was too quick and he wasn’t ready and tripped, falling onto his knees.
With his hands tied behind him he pitched forward, unable to balance and he landed face first on the coarse carpet.
Behind him the other man was desperately trying to get him back on his feet and moving back up, away from the door before he heard that pop-pop sound again.
Tyler swung himself in behind Drennan and followed him through the door.
The shots had come as a shock. He hadn’t expected that things would escalate so fast but almost as soon as his foot had landed on the door he had seen a huge figure of a man lumbering toward them and he had ducked back to the side to allow Drennan his clear shot.
The big man had slumped against the wall, eyes wide. They had been just as surprised to get visitors it seemed as he and Drennan had been to see a welcoming party. Drennan had obscured his view as he moved quickly into the house, gun raised still and trained on the first man but Tyler had caught a fleeting view of two other figures turning and scrambling for the stairs beyond but they seemed to stumble.
Perfect.
Drennan dropped slightly to the side, his aim moving to the two figures scrabbling at the foot of the staircase, and Tyler had a better view now and covered the big man on the floor with his own weapon. The two of them stepped along the hallway and everything seemed to be going their way already. One down, two to go.
Another two steps and he could hear the distressed, laboured breathing of the big man slumped against the wall. His chest was leaking blood profusely and he looked bewildered, as if he wasn’t quite convinced that this was really happening.
Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement off to the right of Drennan and another figure burst from a doorway and slammed straight into the surprised man. Tyler watched as they tangled, Drennan stumbling backward and tripping over the wounded man on the floor.
As Drennan fell over, the wounded man seemed to come to attention, suddenly aware that his attacker was now vulnerable. He used the momentum of Drennan’s fall to drag him to the ground where he rolled and shifted his bulk up on top of him.
Tyler raised his gun to aim it at the wounded man before he could pin Drennan down but there was no time to pull the trigger as the new figure turned away from Drennan and span to face Tyler.
The man rushed him and for the first time Tyler realised that he was armed; a huge kitchen knife gripped in his fist. He shifted the aim of the gun toward his attacker but the man slashed wildly with the knife and hot pain lanced up his arm as the blade flashed through his jacket and cut him.
Startled, he drew his arm away instinctively from the slashing blade.
And then realised that he had surrendered the advantage.
The knifeman was onto him all too quickly, the blade still flailing wildly in front of him and as Tyler tried to duck back away from him to avoid it the man pounced and the two of them staggered backward. Tyler had caught the knifeman’s wrists as he came and his gun was knocked from his fist. He tried to avoid falling to the ground and to hold the knifeman off, but as he did so the long blade stabbed at his face.
He had slowed the forward momentum of the knife and the wound was not deep but it had glanced across his forehead and opened a long cut. He felt blood running into his eyes and they blinked shut automatically.
Half blind, Tyler felt himself begin to panic and he tried to wheel away back toward the door, tried to remember his training. He felt the man’s hands pulling free of his grasp and he raised his own to his eyes, frantically trying to rub the blood from them to clear his vision.