With Angela a bare fraction of an inch away from death, Bronson knew he had absolutely no choice. But he made one last appeal to the man’s reason.
‘You don’t have to do this, Westman. As far as I’m concerned, you can destroy the parchment but simply let us go. That way you get rid of all the proof, and nobody gets hurt.’
‘If only things were as easy as that. I know it’s a cliché, but the two of you really do know too much for me to allow you to live. Now drop that pistol on the floor and kick it over towards me.’
Bronson eased the weapon out of the holster and dropped it onto the floor of the room. Then he kicked the pistol, which slid well out of his reach, over towards Westman.
‘Good. I’m pleased to see that you can follow simple instructions, because I will have another one for you in a minute or two.’
Westman relaxed slightly now that he had disarmed Bronson, and appeared to consider the situation.
‘I hadn’t actually expected you to be here this morning, Bronson, and your presence in this room does make things a little more awkward for me. I had hoped I could have arranged Angela’s accident, taken the parchment and the other stuff and just slipped quietly away. I suppose the real question is how much you love her. Do you, for example, love her enough to cut your own throat? If you do, and if you do that right now, then I promise you that she won’t suffer when I kill her.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Bronson demanded.
‘Not at all. It’s a very simple matter. You’re going to die, be in no doubt about that, but I’d rather not shoot you because of the noise. Angela Lewis here is also going to die. The only thing in doubt is how. If you do as I tell you, you’ll suffer a sharp pain in your throat as the knife cuts into your neck, but if you do it properly and sever the carotid artery you’ll be dead inside a minute, so you won’t have to suffer for long.
‘Angela, on the other hand, could take a very long time to die. I’ve wanted to bed her for the last couple of years, but for some reason you’ve always been in the background, like some kind of a looming threat, and she’s never responded to my advances. But now, in these circumstances, I don’t think she’s in a position to refuse. And I’d probably enjoy it just as much, maybe even more. So I’m offering you a choice. Kill yourself now, and I give you my word that I won’t do that. I’ll just break her neck, that’s all.’
Bronson stared at the man, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing. Then he glanced at Angela’s face, and as he did so she gave a quick but deliberate wink.
Then she spoke for the first time since Westman had grabbed her, her voice laced with fear and panic.
‘Chris, please. God knows what he’ll do to me if you don’t agree. If you love me, really love me, do this one last thing for me.’
Bronson stared at her, an expression of disbelief on his face. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but he knew she must be planning something.
‘I give you my word that she won’t suffer,’ Westman said again. ‘That’s a promise.’
Bronson shook his head and closed his eyes briefly. He just hoped Angela knew what she was doing. Then he looked back at Westman and nodded.
‘Give me the knife,’ he snapped.
‘I thought you’d see reason,’ Westman said. ‘You must be very proud of him, Angela.’
He brought the revolver up to Angela’s shoulder, so that the muzzle rested against the right-hand side of her head, then he moved the knife away from her throat and tossed it gently across the room towards Bronson.
And at that moment, as Westman’s attention was directed towards Bronson, Angela moved. She whirled around to her right, hitting out at Westman’s right arm with the blade of her forearm, instantly knocking the pistol to one side.
‘Now, Chris,’ she shouted.
But Bronson was already in motion. Because as well as the pistol in the shoulder holster, he also had a second Glock tucked into the waistband of his trousers in the small of his back. As Angela moved rapidly away from Westman, ducking down and away from him, diving for cover, he reached behind him and smoothly drew the weapon.
Angela’s sudden and unexpected action had taken Westman by surprise, but he was reacting quickly, bringing his revolver around to bear on Bronson again, his finger tightening on the trigger as he did so.
Westman fired first, but his pistol still wasn’t accurately aimed, and the bullet slammed into the wall of the office about eighteen inches from where Bronson was standing.
Bronson took the extra tenth of a second to make absolutely sure that the muzzle of the Glock was aimed directly at Westman’s centre of mass. And then he squeezed the trigger, twice, the heavy crack of the larger nine-millimetre cartridge much louder than Westman’s small-calibre revolver.
He didn’t need a third shot. Both of his bullets had slammed into Westman’s torso, the first just below his ribcage, the second a few inches higher.
For the briefest of instants, the other man stayed on his feet, his pistol dropping to the floor from nerveless fingers.
‘That wasn’t supposed to happen,’ he murmured.
Then he tumbled backwards, collapsing on the floor in an untidy heap. He gave one deep and pain-filled moan, and then stopped breathing.
‘Quickly,’ Angela snapped, scooping up Bronson’s discarded Glock and the dagger with the Damascus steel blade. ‘This place will be swarming with people in minutes. Give me your shoulder holster and his revolver.’
In a few moments, Angela had placed the holster and all the weapons apart from the Glock Bronson had fired at the bottom of a cardboard box, and emptied another box of potsherds on top of it. Then she almost ran to the door and wrenched it open.
‘I’ll hide these in the laboratory,’ she said. ‘Get his fingerprints on that pistol.’
‘I’ve always said she’s good in an emergency,’ Bronson murmured to himself, and bent down beside the dead man.
He wiped the outside of the pistol, placed it firmly in Westman’s limp right hand and did his best to transfer his fingerprints onto the weapon. Then he grabbed it around the slide, as if he’d been struggling for possession of it, and then held it in a firing position and dropped it near the dead body. And that was pretty much all he could do.
As he straightened up, Angela stepped back into the room. Behind her Bronson could already hear the sound of running footsteps, getting closer.
Angela stepped behind her desk, stuck her tongue between her teeth and then slapped herself twice across the cheek, hard, before slumping back in her chair. A thin trickle of blood emerged from one corner of her mouth.
‘You went to the loo,’ she said. ‘When you came back, Westman was attacking me and you grabbed him to pull him off me. He pulled out the pistol, the two of you struggled, and the gun went off.’
‘Twice?’ Bronson asked, raising his eyebrows.
‘Maybe it’s got a hair trigger or something. I don’t know. Guns are your thing. Think of a good reason.’
Moments later, the door burst open and a burly security guard stood framed in the opening, a two-way radio in his hand. He took one glance into the office and spoke urgently into the radio.
‘We’ll need an ambulance and you better call the police as well,’ he added as he noticed the pistol lying on the floor. ‘Are you all right, miss?’ he asked, seeing the blood trickling from Angela’s mouth.
And then it seemed as if the whole world arrived in the office, and the rest of the day passed in a blur of questions and uniforms and still more questions.
112
In the train on the way back to Sevenoaks, Bronson and Angela sat in the half-empty carriage in virtual silence, both still shell-shocked by the events of the day. As the train accelerated away from Orpington, Angela finally stirred herself.