She saw two cars disappearing down the dirt track, away from the cottage, their tail-lights gradually swallowed by the gloom and the relentless downpour.
‘Donna,’ she gasped.
Donna said nothing; she just dropped to her knees, the .38 still gripped in her fist, face bruised, her lip bleeding.
Julie dropped the hammer and found she was sobbing uncontrollably. She was standing in a pool of blood.
Sixty-Nine
It wasn’t a matter of
if
they would return; it was merely a question of
when.
Donna sat at the sitting-room window, the Beretta on the sill in front of her. On the coffee table to her right lay the .38 and the .357. All had been reloaded.
On the sofa behind her Julie was sleeping fitfully, a blanket covering her, her face pale and drawn, dark rings beneath her eyes. The cuts on her hands and arms had been cleaned and bathed, then covered with plaster. She’d been fortunate to escape more serious injury from the flying glass.
Donna herself touched her lip tentatively with one finger, feeling how it had swollen. There was a dark bruise surrounding it; she hoped that the discoloration wouldn’t last too long. Her sides ached when she inhaled, and when she moved too quickly she felt a sharp pain in her lumbar region. As the night wore on it began to diminish. There were more bruises on her arms and legs, and some on her shoulders.
The house had been cleaned as well as was possible. The broken windows had been boarded up with pieces of wood from the attic. Donna had re-attached the back door to its frame as well, while Julie mopped up the blood in the hallway - although she finally passed out during the task. Donna had helped her onto the sofa, woken her gently but then realized that she was becoming hysterical. She had been forced to slap her face to quieten her. Tears had followed, both women understandably shaken by their ordeal, by the knowledge of how close to death they had come.
And of how close they might come again.
Donna felt herself dozing and sat upright, shaking her head free of the crushing tiredness that threatened to envelope her. Another fifteen minutes and she would wake Julie. They had agreed to keep the vigil between them. One would watch for two hours while the other slept.
Donna reached out to touch the butt of the automatic, as if the feel of the cold steel would somehow shock her from her lethargy.
How easy it would be to surrender now, she thought, not only to sleep but also to the demands of these men. How easy to give them the book they sought, to be done with the entire affair.
And just walk away?
Donna knew that was impossible. Even if she did tell them the whereabouts of the Grimoire, there was no way they were going to spare her or Julie. Too much damage had been done; she knew too much about them now. They would have to kill her.
As they had done her husband?
She still didn’t know for sure if Chris had been murdered. The police had been convinced it was a genuine accident that took his life
(
and that of his mistress
)
but after what she’d been through, after what she had discovered, Donna could not believe that men willing to kill for the possession of a book had not taken the life of the man she’d loved.
Once loved? Before his affair?
She administered a mental rebuke. She and her sister had almost been killed only hours earlier and all she could think about, it seemed, was her dead husband’s infidelity.
No one can be trusted.
How prophetic had been those words he’d written. How apt. How irritatingly, fittingly, fucking appropriate. She gritted her teeth in anger and pain.
And frustration?
No. She would not give in to these men. She would not let them have the Grimoire.
She wanted it. Not because she needed it, but because she was determined no one else should have it. It was like a prize. This hunt for the book had become a contest and Donna intended winning.
Life and death.
Win or lose.
There was no turning back now, even if she wanted to.
Life or death.
She looked at the guns.
Seventy
‘Farrell, he’s dying.’
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
‘Help him.’
Brian Kellerman looked down at Frank Stark, then at Farrell.
Stark was lying on his back in the motel room, his shirt open to reveal the bullet wound close to his navel. Blood pumped slowly from the hole, which was tinged black and purple at the edges.
Kellerman himself looked bad. His nose was little more than a bloodied lump and the bruising around his left eye was so severe he could barely see out of it. He had two or three minor cuts and grazes on his cheeks; they looked as if someone had pulled a fork through the flesh.
On the other bed in the double room of the Travelodge David Ryker sat, head bowed, hands clapped to both sides of his skull. Every now and then he would spit blood onto the carpet. He had bandaged his cut hand so tightly his fingers were beginning to go numb. He touched his shattered front teeth with his other hand, feeling part of one smashed incisor come free. He spat out enamel and blood.
Farrell was sitting at the table in the room, thumbing 9mm bullets into two magazines for the UZI. Each held thirty-two rounds.
Fucking women, he thought, pushing the high calibre shells into the box magazine. Fucking bloody women. They were spoiling everything, those two troublesome cunts. He gritted his teeth, loading the bullets more quickly. Jesus, he’d make them pay. Especially Ward’s wife. That fucking bitch would wish she’d never seen the book or
him
or anything to do with it. He’d put a bullet in her brain himself. No, he’d put several in. Hold the UZI against the base of her skull and let rip. Blow her fucking head right off. Turn her face and head into confetti. He slammed the full magazine into the weapon and gripped it for a moment, the veins in his temple throbbing angrily.
On the bed Stark groaned loudly and clapped hands to the wound.
‘We’ve got to do something about him,’ snapped Kellerman.
‘Have you got any suggestions?’ Farrell wanted to know ‘Do you want to call the ambulance yourself? Why not call the police, while you’re at it? Tell them how he was shot. What he was doing when that crazy mare put three fucking bullets in him. Go on, call them.’ He banged his fist down on the table and glared at Kellerman.
‘We’ll have to leave him here,’ said Ryker, probing another loose tooth.
‘And when he’s found?’ Kellerman asked. ‘What then?’
‘We’ll be long gone,’ Farrell said. ‘There’s nothing to link him to us. We’ll take his ID with us so they won’t be able to identify him.’
Stark coughed, a sticky flux of phlegm and blood spilling over his lips. The movement made the pain worse and he groaned even more loudly.
Farrell regarded the man impassively.
‘I didn’t expect them to have guns,’ said Kellerman, gazing down at his stricken companion.
Farrell didn’t answer.
Ryker got to his feet and wandered into the bathroom. He inspected the damage to his mouth again, wincing as he saw just how much destruction Julie had wrought with the hammer. His lip was torn, a flap of skin hanging uselessly from it. The area between his gashed top lip and his nose was heavily bruised. Blood had congealed on his other front teeth; when he licked his tongue back and forth he could taste the coppery tang. He allowed a long streamer of mucus to hang from his mouth, watching as it struck the white enamel of the sink and trickled slowly into the plughole, leaving a crimson slick behind it.
‘So we leave him here?’ Kellerman protested. ‘Just leave him to die . . .’
‘Do you want to stay with him?’ hissed Farrell, turning the UZI on Kellerman. ‘Do you?’
Kellerman looked at the dying man, then stepped away from the bed.
‘What about the women? Do we go back there? Try again?’ Ryker asked, returning from the bathroom, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Farrell shook his head.
‘We follow them. Let them lead us to it. Then we’ll take care of them.’ He stroked the short barrel of the sub-machine gun. His eyes strayed to the telephone. The other two men saw him looking at it.
‘What makes you think they’ll try to get it?’ Ryker asked. ‘After what happened tonight they might have had enough.’
‘This isn’t over until we’ve got that book. Besides, Ward’s wife will want to get her hands on it. She’s stubborn, like her fucking old man was. She won’t give up now.’
He looked at the phone again then lifted the receiver, aware that his hand was shaking.
He dialled the number and waited.
Seventy-One
Julie Craig sat at the wheel of the Fiesta, her head bowed. She sucked in a deep breath then looked up, squeezing her eyelids tightly together as if to clear the fuzziness which clouded her vision. But it wasn’t her vision that was affected, she realized; it was her mind. She felt as if someone had wrapped her thoughts in a blanket. Reasoning seemed difficult; actions were a major effort.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ Donna asked, looking across at her sister.
‘No, it’s okay,’ Julie replied, starting the engine.
The rain slowed to a fine drizzle which hung over the countryside like a dirty curtain. The yard in front of the house and the dirt track were little more than liquid mud. The rear wheels of the Fiesta spun, trying to gain purchase in the sucking ooze. Finally Julie stepped harder on the accelerator and the vehicle moved off. She flicked on the windscreen wipers. One of them squeaked but neither woman seemed to notice the irritating sound. Both kept their eyes fixed firmly ahead.
Donna dared not settle herself too comfortably into her seat in case she dozed off. She doubted she’d had more than three hours sleep the previous night, and Julie only a little more. It showed, too; despite their make-up, they both looked pale and wan. Donna had managed to disguise the worst of the bruising on her top lip beneath some foundation cream and a little rouge had given at least some artificial colour to her cheeks, but as she pulled down the sun-visor on the driver’s side and peered into the mirror she realized she
looked
as tired as she
felt.
She had no idea how long the drive into Portsmouth would take. Two hours, perhaps less? The road conditions and Julie’s emotional state weren’t going to help. Again Donna asked if
she
should drive but Julie merely shook her head.
‘This man at the waxworks,’ she said. ‘What’s his name? Paxton? Have you ever met him?’
‘No, but Chris got on well with him. He helped him a lot with research about the history of the building, how the models are made, that sort of thing.’ She sighed. ‘Chris must have trusted him in order to hide the Grimoire there.’
No one is to be trusted.
‘But he didn’t say whereabouts he hid it?’
‘No. I doubt if Paxton knows either,’ Donna said, looking at the piece of paper she’d collected the day before. Beside the address of the waxworks, it also had two phone numbers. One she guessed was the owner’s home number; as it was Sunday, she might well need it. Off season, she doubted if the attraction would be open. It was hardly the weather to attract day-trippers, either.
‘So what do we do when we find it?’ Julie asked.
‘I wish I knew,’ Donna confessed. ‘Read it?’ She smiled thinly.
She glanced at the dashboard clock.
1.56 p.m.