This time, Magner did not raise his hand. Instead, he reached for the gun and pushed the barrels down so they pointed at the floor. ‘There’s plenty of time for that,’ he said.
Purvis almost sulked, like a child being told he could not watch TV, and Gilchrist realised that Magner wanted to talk. He needed to know how much they knew, how close they had come to nailing him for the McCulloch massacre.
Of course, asking questions could work both ways.
‘How’s your hand?’ Gilchrist asked.
Magner frowned, but said nothing.
‘How did you kill Janice?’
Magner narrowed his eyes. ‘Interesting question,’ he said. ‘How? Not why?’
‘I know why,’ Gilchrist said. ‘She had seen too much. She was going to talk. She was the weak link between you and McCulloch. And after we questioned her, she called you up in a panic.’
‘And…?’
‘Well, I have to admit I’m guessing here, but I’d say you arranged to meet her, maybe even drove behind her and gave her a last-minute phone call to tell her to pull into the side of the road so you could talk where no one could overhear you. Maybe you opened your car door to invite her to cross the road, but you were really just timing it right so your guard-dog there’ – Gilchrist nodded at Purvis – ‘could run her down. And that makes you an accessory even if-’
‘Who the fuck’re you calling a guard-dog?’
Again, Magner raised his hand. ‘Sticks and stones, Jason. Really, you must learn to control that temper of yours.’
‘Ah, fuck.’ Purvis stepped back, raised his shotgun and aimed it at Gilchrist’s face.
Jessie screamed.
The sudden noise of both barrels releasing thudded through the basement like a solid wave that shocked Gilchrist’s body like a punch. If Magner hadn’t swatted at the shotgun, Gilchrist’s head would have been blasted from his shoulders. As it was, the tight formation of pellets made a ten-inch crater in the wall to the side of his head, scattering fragments of concrete over his hair and shoulders like confetti.
The noise reverberated through the basement like a war beat.
Magner took hold of the shotgun and jerked it from Purvis’s grip.
They faced each other in a silent stand-off that seemed to last minutes, but was no more than a few seconds. If the shotgun had still been loaded, Gilchrist was convinced one of them would have blasted both barrels at the other.
Then he caught a hint of movement by his side, and turned his head to catch Jessie fumbling with an ankle holster.
Purvis shouted, ‘Ah, fuck,’ and pushed Magner to the side. He was on Jessie in four athletic steps, just as she retrieved the Beretta from its holster and pulled the trigger.
In the tight chamber, the shot from the.22 echoed like a cannon firing.
Purvis cursed – a guttural grunt that sounded like a wild animal being hit – but his momentum carried him forward and he lashed out at Jessie’s arm, sending the gun flying.
Gilchrist was on his feet at the same time as Stan, but his world had the disconcerting feeling of having its axis tilted in the wrong direction. He stumbled to the side and landed on the concrete floor with a heavy thud that punched the wind from him.
And Stan, as if realising that the shotgun was now out of ammunition, tried to catch Jessie’s gun as it bounced off the wall. He almost had it, but fumbled trying to take hold of the grip, and it skittered to the floor.
Purvis toppled over Jessie, his hands scrabbling for her gun, too.
But Stan was too fast for him. He reached Jessie’s gun, which seemed to go off without him pulling the trigger.
Stan froze, eyes white.
Magner said, ‘The next one won’t miss.’
Purvis groaned, pushed himself to his knees, his face twisted in an ugly grimace that could have destroyed any suggestion that he and Magner, with his pretty hardman looks, were in any way related. He stretched for Jessie’s gun.
‘Leave it.’
Purvis glared at Magner.
‘You can’t be trusted with guns, Jason,’ Magner explained. ‘Now get to your feet and let’s have a look at that arm of yours.’
From his position on the concrete floor, Gilchrist watched the scene unfold before him as if in slow motion…
Purvis reached up to Magner, hand outstretched for help to his feet, leaving Jessie’s gun abandoned on the floor; Stan, still on his knees, glanced at Gilchrist who, even in that fleeting moment, read the intention from the desperation in Stan’s eyes and tried to warn him off by shaking his head. As Purvis was pulled upright, Stan reached for the Beretta, his fingers working around the grip and through the trigger guard.
Magner aimed his pistol and shot him.
Stan hit the floor like a dead weight.
Jessie gasped a scream, then pressed a hand hard to her mouth, tears squeezing through clenched eyelids.
Gilchrist groaned, and tried to say, ‘Stan,’ but the word came out flat and lifeless.
Magner said, ‘I told him the next one wouldn’t miss.’
CHAPTER 35
Gilchrist struggled to his feet, aware of Magner’s eyes on him, his every move covered by a gun – a Sig Sauer P250, he thought, although he never had been the best at identifying pistols.
‘You’ve killed him,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I have indeed,’ Magner agreed. ‘So why don’t you sit next to Miss Piggy while I attend to Jason here?’
Gilchrist felt too exhausted to resist. His body could have been drained of blood. He sat beside Jessie – more collapsed than sat – and placed an arm around her shoulder in a vain attempt to still the tremors that jumped through her body like electric shocks. Her head seemed to fall on to him, and her breath jerked in shivering sobs until he placed a hand over her eyes and turned her face to his chest, away from the morbid stare of Stan’s sightless eyes.
Stan lay less than six feet from them, body motionless, blood pooling around his face. His blond hair above his right temple glistened with a mixture of brains and blood.
Gilchrist had to close his eyes, but images of himself and Stan flickered through his mind in stroboscopic strikes. He struggled to blank them out, but his mind fired through the logic, until a sudden realisation hit him.
‘You’re shutting up shop,’ he said.
Magner looked up from Purvis’s arm, which was leaking blood.
‘That’s why you’re here,’ Gilchrist continued. ‘You’re getting ready to leave.’
Purvis glanced at Magner, who shook his head as if to suggest Gilchrist’s conclusion was pure fantasy.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Gilchrist said to Purvis.
Silence.
‘Was it meant to be a surprise? Sorry. Have I ruined it for you?’
Silence.
‘You knew it was only a matter of time until we found this place,’ Gilchrist pressed on. If he could have raised his arm and cast it around him in an expansive gesture, he would have. But his head ached with a pain that had his left eye wincing and his logic firing in fits and starts. Even so, ideas flickered and held for a moment before fading away, none of them bringing him any closer to finding a way out of their hopeless predicament.
Except one, maybe…
He forced himself to concentrate on the interaction between Magner and Purvis, the way they spoke to each other in muted whispers. But he also thought he picked up an unnatural closeness in the way Magner wrapped a makeshift tourniquet around Purvis’s arm, his touch soothing the fire in the wound, the sound of his voice seeming to salve the heat of Purvis’s anger.
‘If you were ever to be connected to this place, then you’d both be finished, wouldn’t you?’ Gilchrist said.
No reaction, other than a casual glance from Magner and a quick shift of Purvis’s eyes to confirm the Beretta was still lying on the floor, inches from Stan’s dead fingers, but out of Gilchrist’s or Jessie’s reach. Gilchrist suspected it had been left there deliberately, as some sort of test, failing which, they would be shot.