The Business Of Dying

I tried to balance it and take aim, but time was too short. The weapon kicked in my hand and a huge meaty chunk of his left leg just above the knee disappeared. The leg collapsed uselessly, and he collapsed with it, dropping the gun as all his efforts were put into howling in agony. He was still sitting upright when I got his head in my sights and pulled the trigger again.

But the weapon was empty.

The Chinese had gathered around the door and were looking down at the carnage with a mixture of fear, shock and morbid excitement on their faces. I was panting heavily, I was exhausted, but this wasn't over yet. In the distance, above the ringing in my ears, I could hear the sound of sirens converging on the scene from all directions, but it sounded as though they were still some way distant.

I got to my feet and waved the weapon at my audience. They all scuttled out of the way and I stepped forward, grabbed the wounded would-be assassin by his hair and dragged him outside, before picking up his gun and putting it in my pocket. I shut the door and turned to face him. His howls had now subsided into heavy, desperate breathing interspersed with little shrieks of pain through clenched teeth. He was holding on to the huge wound with both hands in a vain attempt to stem the copious flow of blood.

I leaned down. 'Who sent you?' I hissed, between pants. 'Who sent you?'

He looked Mediterranean, Turkish perhaps, and I put him in his early thirties. He could easily have been the guy who'd spooked Danny. Probably was. He could even be the man who'd killed him. Because, by now, I was sure he was dead.

He didn't answer. He didn't even look at me. In the distance, the sirens were getting louder and more numerous. Time was running short. I hit his hands with the butt of the shotgun, forcing him to release his grip on the wound. As he did so, I thrust my hand into the torn flesh and scraped my fingernails along it. His scream would have deafened me under normal circumstances, but by now I was partially deaf anyway.

'Who sent you?'

'No speak English,' he whimpered, shaking his head. 'No speak English.'

This time I slammed the butt into the wound, and when he put his hands on it instinctively, I slammed it into them too. He was screaming, so now I cracked him in the face to shut him up, cutting his lips. Blood spewed down his chin.

'Who the fuck sent you? Tell me! Now! Who?' I grabbed him by the hair again and snapped his head back so he was looking me right in the eye.

I think he saw the ruthlessness in my expression and realized there was no point delaying any further, even though the sirens were coming in from all sides. 'Mehmet Illan,' he whispered.

'Who?'

'Mehmet Illan.'

'Who the fuck is he?'

Before he could answer, there was the sound of footsteps from inside the kitchens and I heard someone running through. I took a step back and raised the butt so that it was level with my head. This time, as the door opened, Coke Drinker emerged, panting into the darkness and right into my line of fire. I heard one of the Chinese staff shout 'Look out!' in a high-pitched, dramatic voice, but it was way too late for that. I hit him full on in the face with the butt, demolishing his nose like soft fudge and scattering flecks of blood across both cheeks. He went down on both knees, hands covering his injured face, and I knew he was no longer any problem. There were other voices coming from the street, shouting, giving orders. Coppers' voices, doing what they do best: bringing situations under control.

Still packed with adrenalin, I dropped the shotgun, turned, and ran for the wall, vaulting up onto it in one less-than-graceful movement before manoeuvring myself over. I slid down the other side and landed in more sacks of rubbish. I was now in someone's ill-kept back garden. There was an alley running down the side of the adjoining house, so I clambered over the rickety wooden fence separating the two gardens and followed it, emerging on the next street. I crossed it straight away, then began jogging in the opposite direction to the Gallan, trying to wipe the blood from my face.

I heard a police car approaching behind me so I darted into another side street and kept running. The car continued on, missing me, and I kept going, trying to put as much distance between myself and the carnage as possible.

But exhaustion was taking hold. I had a stitch in my right side and I was having difficulty breathing. My legs felt as though they were going to go under me at any moment, and the only thing keeping me going was the fear of getting caught.

And the desire for revenge. One way or another the people who were trying to fuck me up and put me out of existence were going to pay for their crimes. I wasn't going to die that fucking easily.

Another hundred yards, another hundred and fifty, and then I could run no more. I half jogged, half staggered into a dingy-looking back alley by the side of a school and found a spot out of sight of the road. I sat down against the wall and panted my breath back to normal – a task that seemed to take for ever. Above my head, the clouds unloaded their rain on the city. Slowly, the sirens faded away.

The desire for revenge. It was the only thing I had left in the world.

Part Four. THE BUSINESS OF DYING 30

I could have walked away from the whole thing. Gone underground, waited a few months, then left the country. That was basically what I'd intended to do, but, in the end, I felt that I couldn't leave things as they were. Questions needed answering, and scores needed settling. It was as simple as that. Everyone had fucked me up: my bosses at work, Raymond Keen, and now even Carla Graham.

Carla Graham. That she was somehow involved in the murder of Miriam Fox was no longer in doubt. It was almost certainly not her who'd pulled the knife across her throat, not given the size and depth of the wound. But she definitely knew who'd done it. And why. It was her motive for being involved that intrigued me the most because for the life of me I couldn't understand what it could be. She was right about the blackmail plot – it just didn't seem enough to kill someone for. And what about the evidence against Mark Wells? Were he and Carla in it together? It was difficult to conclude otherwise, given the evidence against him, and yet it made no sense. Neither could I understand why he'd gone round to Miriam's flat after the murder and been genuinely shocked to discover police officers there. If he'd been the killer, surely he'd have expected that and avoided the place?

I was still in the dark, and I didn't like it. I should have cut my losses, but I guess I'd simply hit the point where everything had gone so far downhill that I no longer cared what happened, as long as I got the chance to get even with the people who'd been pulling the wool over my eyes through all this.

That night, after getting my breath back and wiping the worst of the blood off my face, I hurried home through the back streets and threw on a single set of new clothes, before hailing a cab on City Road and getting it to take me to Liverpool Street station. From there, I got on the Underground and took the Central Line right back across town to Lancaster Gate, before making my way to Bayswater using a combination of walking and the bus.

It was five to eleven by the time I arrived at the hotel where I kept the safety deposit box. I knew the owner vaguely from my previous visits, and he was at the desk in the cramped foyer when I walked in, smoking a foul-smelling cigarette and watching football on a portable TV. He nodded as I approached, and I told him I wanted a room. Without taking his eyes off the TV he leaned over, removed a key from one of the numbered hooks on the wall behind him, and put it down on the desk.

'Twenty pounds per night,' he said, in a thick foreign accent. 'Plus twenty deposit.'