The Savage Day - Jack Higgins [19]
And they found what they were searching for, those fingers, and fear blossomed on her face, the kind that a child might feel standing at the top of the stairs, aware of some nameless horror, some presence in the darkness below.
I said gently in Irish, 'This is not on you, old woman. None of it.'
She pushed me out into the rain and closed the door.
I found a dark corner of shadows near the footbridge with some bushes reaching over the wall above to give me some sort of shelter. I couldn't smoke. The smell would have been too distinctive on the damp air, so I waited as I had waited in other places than this. Different lands, hotter climates, but always the same situation.
There was the sound of cautious footsteps and a moment later, two figures emerged from the alley. Binnie and Norah. I saw them clearly in the light of the lamp as they went up the steps to the bridge. Their footsteps boomed hollowly for a moment, then faded as they passed along the other side.
I returned to my waiting. Strange the tricks memory plays. The heavy rain, I suppose, reminding me of the monsoon. Borneo, Kota Baru, the ruins of the village, the stench of burning flesh, acrid smoke heavy on the rain, the dead schoolchildren. They, too, had been butchered for a cause, just like the little girl and her sister in the square tonight. The same story in so many places.
A stone rattled in the alleyway and they emerged a moment later. Lucas was well out in front. He stood under the lamp, then went up the steps to the footbridge alone, probably to test the ground.
Riley paused in the shadows and waited no more than a couple of yards from me. I took him from behind with the simplest of headlocks, snapping his neck so quickly that he had no chance to make even the slightest cry.
I lowered him gently to the ground, found the Webley in his coat pocket, picked up his old trilby and pulled it on. Then I moved towards the bridge.
Lucas was half-way across. 'Will you get your bloody finger out, Dennis,' he called softly.
I went up the steps head down so that it was only at the last moment instinct told him something was wrong and he swung to face me.
I said, 'You're a big man with women and kids, Lucas. How do you feel now?'
He was trying to get the Schmeisser out from underneath his coat when I shot him in the right shoulder, the heavy bullet turning him round in a circle. The other two shots shattered his spine, driving him across the handrail of the bridge to hang, head-down.
His raincoat started to smoulder, there was a tiny tongue of flame. I leaned down, got him by the ankles with one hand and tipped him over. Then I tossed the Webley and the trilby after him and continued across the bridge.
5
Storm Warning
Most of Oban seemed to be enveloped in a damp, clinging mist when I went out on deck and there was rain on the wind, which was hardly surprising for it had been threatening ever since my arrival two days previously.
Beyond Kerrera, the waters of the Firth of Lorne, when one could see them at all, seemed reasonably troubled and things generally looked as if they might get worse before they got better. Hardly the most comforting of thoughts with the prospect of the kind of passage by night I had in front of me.
For the moment, I was snug enough, anchored fifty yards from the main jetty. I made a quick check to make certain that all my lines were secure and was just going to go below when a taxi pulled up on the jetty and Meyer got out.
He didn't bother to wave. Simply descended a flight of stone steps to the water's edge and stood waiting, so I dropped over the side into the rubber dinghy, started the outboard motor and went to get him.
He looked distinctly out of place in his black Homburg and old Burberry raincoat, a parcel under one arm, a briefcase in his other hand, and he obviously felt it.
'Is it safe, this thing?' he demanded, peering anxiously through his spectacles at the dinghy.