KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (9 page)

Hope flared.

I looked back towards the lane. All I could see was a wall of dense foliage with a gap where the curving farm track led to Topfield. There was no movement in the gap and the only sound was the raucous dawn chorus. Unless they had another camera on the lane my arrival must have been unobserved.

I listened for the high pitched sound of an approaching Mini Cooper.

There wasn’t a peep, no noise of traffic and no movement.

Meanwhile No-Nose moved closer to the barn wall.

‘Yeah, it’s one of them spy jobs,’ he said when he returned. ‘It’s really, really small. They mostly use them indoors and hide them in a flower vase or a bookshelf or something.’

He raised his arms to signify a narrow field of view.

‘So?’

‘So, someone wants to clock you going into your house. I’ll check the back.’

He was off before I could stop him, hugging the barn wall under the spy camera and then disappearing behind the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Clint joined the birds and began whistling tunelessly to himself. He returned my stare calmly.

A long moment later No-Nose returned.

‘There’s another one of the bleeding nuisances stuck on that outhouse thingy you’ve got round there. It’s covering the back porch.’

‘You didn’t, er … ’

‘No, of course not, Mr C. What do you take me for?’

‘You’ve been caught before.’

‘That was only when someone turned up unexpectedly. Believe me, I know my way round cameras. Only the two, that’s all there are.’

I did believe him but where did that get me?

‘I could get in the house without showing up on camera and have a look round if you like,’ he volunteered. ‘It’s not illegal because it’s your house.’

‘Why bother?’

‘I could get in easy just to set your mind at rest. I don’t need the doors. One of them bedroom windows is open a crack. I can get in there easy and I can see what they’ve been up to.’

He pointed out the window.

Damn! It was one of the windows of my bedroom, the same one I’d fired the shotgun from. In the excitement I’d forgotten to fasten it. Still it was too high up to be vulnerable.

‘But the camera …’

‘It’s just focused on the front door, Boss. No one will see me getting in through the window.’

I thought for a minute. Maybe they’d left a message. I had to know.

I got a ladder out of the barn.

Clint carried the ladder and positioned it below the bedroom.

I’ve done a lot of ladder work myself and my ascents are always ploddingly slow but No
-Nose went up like a monkey on a stick. It took him all of five seconds to open the window and disappear into the bedroom.

Clint hugged himself and grinned with pleasure at being able to help out. I stood alongside him to wait for No-Nose. All sorts of fears crossed my mind. What if the cameras were to give a warning to someone inside the house? Someone waiting with a gun or a knife.

When No-Nose reappeared via the ladder he was white and shaking like a leaf.

‘What?’

He clung onto my arm.

‘There’s a bloody big bomb in the living room. We’ve got to get out of here.’

10

Tuesday: Dawn

I backed the BMW down the drive and retreated along the country lane to a lay-by about half a mile away and parked. I left the engine running.

I had difficulty in speaking.

‘What was the bomb like?’ I finally managed to croak. ‘Was it rigged to go off when the door opened?’

‘No, it was far more up to date than that. This was state of the art and it was set up by pros.’

‘Come on, Tony, how would you know that?’

I left unspoken the thought that No-Nose was just a small time loan shark’s runner and unsuccessful housebreaker but he got my drift.

‘I just know,’ he said.

There was a note of desperation in his voice that carried conviction but I had to be certain.

‘It was probably something Lloyd left as a joke and it spooked you.’

‘Lloyd’s your kid, is he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Goes on the internet a lot and finds the web sites which show you how to make bombs?’

‘He’s only five.’

‘Well then.’

‘Go on, I’m sorry.’

‘There was a big wad of grey plastic explosive stuck on your coffee table with a mobile phone on top of it.’

‘A phone,’ I repeated stupidly. I was sickened. I knew what he was going to say next but I needed to hear him say it.

‘Yeah, there was a wire running down from the phone to a detonator. The bastard who set it up sees you going in on his bloody spy camera, presses speed dial on his phone and then
bingo! No more Mr C.’

‘Thanks,’ I croaked feebly.

‘It’s a big f**king mother of a bomb, Mr C. There won’t be much of your nice house left if it goes off.’

‘Listen, there’s only one thing to do. You’ll have to stay here with Clint while I go back to the house and make sure no one goes in by mistake.’

‘Oh, yeah, I stay here with Clint then when I hear a f**king big bang I go to Bob Lane and tell him that I’ve let his mate get blown into tiny pieces and don’t tell me you aren’t intending to shift that phone.’

I looked at him sideways.

‘Think about it Mr C. The guys that set that bomb can’t be far away. Those spy cameras can’t send a signal very far. They have to be near. If you go charging up there it’s ten to one they’ll spot you.’

‘And if they see you they’ll do nothing?’

‘I’ll go in and out the same way I did before. They’ll never spot me.’

‘But they just need a glimpse.’

‘Logically, they wouldn’t have set up electronic observation if they were also eyeballing the place.’

It was hard to fault his reasoning. If they’d had Topfield under close watch we’d all be dead already. Reasoning? What was I reasoning with No
-Nose Nolan for?

‘I don’t like this, Tony. I’d rather let the house be blown up than have you taking a chance with something you know nothing about.’

He let out a long sigh.

‘I haven’t told anyone this but I trust you, Mr C.’

‘Yes?’

‘Last time I was in prison I caught meningitis. They got my mother in and the priest and everything and said I was going to die, that there was irreversible brain damage. But I didn’t die.’

‘Yeah, I can see that.’

‘When I recovered everything was different. My mum says I even talk differently but the thing was I only had to look at something once and I could remember it perfectly. I can do sums
in my head too.’

‘What’s twelve twelves?’

‘A hundred and forty four, but I meant harder sums than that.’

‘What’s five hundred and seventy six times ten thousand and twenty one?’

His eyes closed for no more than a second and then rapped out, ‘Five million, seven hundred and seventy two thousand and ninety six.’

I took out my phone and turned on the calculator function. He was right. It took me much longer to find the answer than it did for him to say it.

I had little time to waste on astonishment. I gaped at his battered face for a second. ‘What does this have to do with bombs?’

He looked embarrassed.

‘I don’t like to say where I did it but I’ve had a good look at several books about bombs, things terrorist groups and anarchists have downloaded from the internet and there’s other stuff as well.’

‘Yes.’

‘The bomb in your house is like one of those IEDs they use against our troops in Afghanistan.’

‘IED?’

‘Improvised explosive device, it’s a NATO acronym.’

‘You’re serious aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, it’s like my brain’s been reconditioned.’

‘Reconditioned?’

‘You know, like the cars on Discovery Channel. These people buy a heap of junk, like I used to be, and they recondition it. They rebuild it and sell it for thousands of dollars.’

‘So your brain’s worth thousands of dollars?’

‘No, you know what I mean. I can’t stop wanting to learn things.’

He patted his jacket pocket. There was a thick paperback book in it. He pulled it out and handed it to me. I read the title in the poor light,
Engineering Mathematics: A Foundation for Electronic, Electrical, Communications and Systems Engineers
.

Full of suspicion, I flicked the book open to check that it
wasn’t some collection of porn. It contained a mass of diagrams and formulae. I glanced at the information on the back of the book. It said the text was useful up to second year honours degree level.

‘Honestly, Mr Cunane, I have to keep reading. It’s like a disease. I’m afraid that if I stop my brain will go back to what it was before.’

‘God, Tony, your brain really has been reconditioned,’ I said, handing back the book. ‘It must be turbo charged if you think this is light reading.’

‘All right then, I’ll be off,’ he said.

‘Be careful, Einstein.’

‘I will be. You keep your ears open for a bang … just joking. It should be easy but I need to be there sharpish. They may decide to put up more cameras.’

He opened the passenger door. I grabbed his arm.

‘I can’t let you go. I can always rebuild the house but…’

‘No, listen, Mr C, I need to do this for myself. I don’t want to become a nerd who only knows things in books. I’ve wasted a lot of time out of my life and now I need to do things, hard things. If there’s an anti-handling device on this IED I’ll cope with it. Believe me, I’ll be perfectly safe.’

He pulled free and began jogging up the lane. His slight figure quickly merged into the long early morning shadows.

Ten minutes later I was parked nearer Topfield Farm waiting to hear whether No-Nose had achieved death or glory. The alternative of phoning the police had occurred to me. I like to tell myself that I’m not that different from a normal citizen.

Lew’s warning not to trust the police rang in my ears like the Crack of Doom. Thinking of him brought on a twinge of guilt. I persuaded myself that there could be good reasons why he hadn’t answered his phones.

It was hard to believe that just twenty four hours earlier I’d been sleeping in my bed with just a routine Monday morning in front of me. No, that wasn’t right; I had the coming baby to look forward to. The ups and downs of family life had become my focus. The days when I would charge around Manchester thinking I was some sort of latter-day Robin Hood were long gone.

Or were they?

I was allowing poor battered No-Nose Nolan to risk his neck and his ‘reconditioned brain’ to save my property. I’d accepted the flimsiest of evidence that he’d suddenly become a bomb-disposal expert and let him go ahead.

I cursed myself for allowing myself to be taken in. No-Nose had probably got all that stuff about IEDs from films or science fiction books.

I could only put my weakness down to delayed shock about the night’s events.

Then the sound of gentle snoring from the back seat penetrated my frantic mind. Clint had mastered the seat belt and was curled up with his feet doubled up across the seat. He took up as much room as three large people. His gaunt face was completely relaxed. He was smiling in his sleep.

Traffic was starting to move as early morning commuters set off to Manchester and the Cheshire towns. No red Mini-Coopers but plenty of four wheeled drives passed us. The intermittent rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing. It was starting to look like a fine day. I was getting eyestrain as I stared up the road towards the bend where No-Nose would appear if he’d survived. There was a thick hawthorn hedge there and a narrow pavement. Horses had recently left their calling cards on the roadway.

Unexpectedly there was a loud rap on the offside window. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was No-Nose. His twisted features were stretched into a wide grin. He resembled a gargoyle after five hundred years of erosion.

‘It’s OK, Mr C. All clear!’ he said. His voice was unnaturally strident in the morning stillness.

11

Tuesday: 6 a.m.

‘What did you have to sneak up on me for?’ I asked, trying to cover up my surprise.

‘Yes,’ agreed Clint, chiming in with my complaint. ‘Bob says you can give people a heart attack, sneaking up on them.’

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. Clint is in the habit of creeping up on his brother.

I got out of the BMW. No-Nose was clutching a bulging plastic carrier bag.

‘What’s in there?’ I asked, suspecting he’d reverted to burglary.

‘It’s just the doings,’ he said offhandedly. ‘I’ve not nicked anything.’

‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

‘Not that you’ve got much worth nicking, Mr C.’

‘For God’s sake, Tony, call me Dave. What’s in the bag?’

‘C4, NATO military explosive, that’s what. It’s not as powerful as octocellulose.’

‘What?’

‘Just joking, octocellulose doesn’t exist. It’s in a science fiction book, four times more powerful than C4.’

I looked at him. So he had been getting ideas out of science fiction books. Maybe the ‘reconditioned brain’ was a fantasy.

‘There’s at least four kilograms of C4. They wanted to make sure of you.’

He held the bag open revealing a large lump of off-white coloured plastic explosive. There was also a Nokia phone enclosed in a Ziploc sandwich bag.

‘That’s not still connected, is it?’ I gasped, suddenly distrustful of his bomb disposal expertise.

He put on the gargoyle grin again, switched the bag to his left hand and waved wires and a detonator under my nose.

‘Tra-la!’ he crowed, holding them up.

‘Brilliant,’ I muttered, clapping my hands quietly.

Clint joined in noisily. His applause echoed down the lane like a car backfiring. I signalled for silence with a finger on my lips.

‘I put the phone in the bag in case there are prints on it, but as these guys are pros I don’t expect there are.’

‘So what’s your brain telling you now?’

‘I’ve an idea where they’re hiding.’

‘Go on.’

‘I came back by a shortcut.’

‘There are none.’

‘There are. You haven’t found them. I came through the hedge because I wanted a look round. There’s any number of broken down sheds near your house, Mr C.’

‘I know. Call me Dave. I don’t like Mr C.’

‘Yes, Dave, there are a lot of places where they could hide. I thought if I go back now and keep my eyes open and then you enter the house by the back door they’d set off the bomb and come out of hiding and get lost when it doesn’t go off. Then we’ll find out who they are.’

‘Very logical that new brain of yours, but suppose they just decide to correct their mistake and come out firing sub-machineguns?’

‘We’ll scarper in that case unless you want to try and take them out with that shotgun you left on your kitchen counter.’

‘I was in a hurry,’ I mumbled.

I couldn’t think of any further objections to his plan even so the situation was unreal. What was I doing, following the instructions of No-Nose Nolan’s reconditioned brain?

I must have gaped at him.

‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘We’ll have to get a rattle on or they’ll be getting jumpy.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Stands to reason, Dave,’ he said condescendingly. ‘They’d have preferred to set the bomb off in the night and get away without anyone seeing them. The later it gets the more chance there is that someone will get a look at them or they might even get blocked in by traffic on these country lanes.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Brain 1, Cunane 0.’

‘Give me five minutes.’

I nodded. He handed me the bag. Gingerly, I took the phone out, still in its bag. Even if the bomber had left his prints there was no chance that I’d be able to run them through the police systems.

As No-Nose set off back into the foliage I noticed that his clothes were soaked but the electronics book was now in a plastic sandwich bag off my kitchen counter. He must have been crawling on all fours.

A few moments later I was standing at my back door and feeling through my pockets for the key. I felt as if someone had plastered me onto a giant target. Suppose there was another bomb? These guys believed in back-up … but come to that they couldn’t be same guys. One of them was badly injured and the other hurt.

I felt my stomach roll over. These bastards were coming at me in waves. Petrol bombers fail, so send in the plastic explosive guys.

I’d stared at the foliage until my eyes ached but couldn’t spot Tony’s spy camera. How could it be so obvious to him but not to me? Doubts surfaced again until I remembered that I couldn’t see the other camera until he pointed it out. Clint was at my side. He’d refused to stay in the car and I knew him too well to start arguing.

I opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Everything was normal except for the shotgun, which I immediately picked up. As I laid hands on the gun the detonation phone rang.

Red mist descended.

Grabbing up the gun I ran outside. I needed to fight someone. Anger pulsated through my body. People I didn’t even know had casually decided to end my life. Somehow this was more vicious and less forgivable than the petrol bombs. With them there’d been a human agent that I could prepare measures against.

Now death was to be delivered at the push of a button.

I scanned the open fields at the back of the property. My gaze flicked from feature to feature; a shed, a cow byre, coloured pony-show jumps with the paint flaking off, a rusting old horse-
trailer abandoned in a corner.

Nothing was moving. I was an idiot. As No-Nose would say, it stood to reason that the bombers wouldn’t hide in plain sight of the house. Otherwise why would they need spy cameras?

Then I spotted Tony in the corner of an adjacent field. He was down low. He was indicating something beyond my line of sight, nodding his head. He only lacked a wagging tail to be a pointer dog.

I ran to the extreme corner of my land. From this point Topfield Farm and the barn were invisible because of an intervening hedge.

Tony was visible though. He was standing up, waving his arms and pointing.

Diagonally across the adjacent field two people were scrambling through the door of an abandoned hen house. It was big and mounted on wheels, proper poultry farm equipment not something you’d keep in your back garden for half a dozen hens.  I could just about make out the killers in the long shadows cast by the trees.

One of the men, and they were both men, was lugging a large suitcase with both hands but the other was unburdened. They were making for a gate, which opened onto the winding tarmac lane.

I completely lost it. If they’d been in range I’d have shot them both but I couldn’t. I yelled at them in frustrated rage. Clint began climbing over the fence round the poultry field.

‘Bastards!’ he yelled.

The one who wasn’t carrying anything turned, pulled out a gun and fired a rapid burst.

The sound wasn’t loud; pock, pock, pock, pock, just like that, not a frightening sound at all. The gunman was a good two hundred yards away so if he hit us it would be incredible bad luck but I heard the bullets whistle past.

‘Get down!’ I roared at Clint. Even at long range his size made him vulnerable. Taking no notice of me, Clint vaulted over the fence and began sprinting across the field like an Olympic champion.

‘Bastards, bastards!’ he screamed.

More bullets whistled above my head and I realised that I was the target, not Clint.

I experienced another spasm of blind rage.

I climbed over the fence and fired, angling the gun like an artillery piece. It was an impossible shot. The gunman and his mate were almost invisible against the deep shadows cast by sycamore trees in that corner of the field. However shotgun pellets spread out at long range and the man with the suitcase seemed to stagger. He may have taken a couple of pellets.

Unfortunately the gun was loaded with number 6 shot which is nasty enough to give a rabbit a bad fright at close range but hardly likely to do much damage to a man at such a distance.

Even so, I believe I discouraged him. Luckily for us he didn’t stand his ground. It isn’t much fun being fired at and he speeded up his efforts to escape.

As for the other man, he also decided on a quick exit. Whether it was seeing Clint running towards him, waving his arms like a runaway windmill, I’ll never know, but he turned to escape. Possibly he thought someone as reckless as Clint must be armed. Anyway when he overtook his partner with the case that guy decided he was carrying excess baggage and dumped his burden.

Both disappeared through the gate.

Ten seconds later Clint reached the hen house.

Before I could stop him he raced on after them only to throw up his hands in disappointment when he reached the gate. The sound of a high performance car accelerating startled birds out of the trees.

‘They’ve gone, the bastards,’ he said as I came panting up to him.

‘Did you see the car?’

Car identification is an area where Clint excels. He spends hours poring over motor mags and can recite specifications on most cars.

‘Red Mini-Cooper.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Mini-Cooper S, seventeen inch alloy wheels. It costs more than twenty thousand pounds,’ he said impressively. I looked back
across the fields. By the time I got the BMW on the road they’d be far away.

‘At least they’ve left us a party bag,’ Tony shouted.

He was kneeling on the grass next to the discarded case. His fingers were exploring the locks.

‘Don’t open it!’ I warned. ‘It might be booby trapped.’

‘Nah, they didn’t have time for that,’ he said confidently. He flicked a small penknife open and quickly jimmied the locks.

Carefully slotted into polystyrene cut-outs was all the equipment needed to blow me or any other target to hell and back. Screens, receivers, aerials, spy cameras, computer, all neatly fitted in detachable trays. There was also a bulky automatic pistol, with a spare magazine alongside it.

‘I’ll have that,’ I said, pulling the gun out.

The pistol was enormous. I have big hands but the grip was huge.

‘That’ll make a fair sized hole in someone; it’s a Desert Eagle, fifty cal,’ No-Nose opined.

A glance at the weapon confirmed this.

‘Is there anything you don’t know, Tony,’ I snapped peevishly, regretting my words even as I spoke.

‘Not a lot, Dave, but it says it’s a Desert Eagle fifty cal here.’

He held up the spare mag on which the words were printed.

‘If you’re taking that, do you mind if I keep all this gubbins here?’

‘Why?’

‘I can find a good use for it.’

‘Blowing up safes? I thought you were as straight as a spirit level these days.’

‘Sorry, I misspoke. I didn’t mean the C4. I meant the surveillance gear. Damn useful that is.’

A wave of frustration swept over me.

For a minute there I’d allowed myself to think that we might lay hands on at least one of the men trying to kill me. Then maybe, just maybe, I could have bargained my way out of this mess. That wasn’t going to happen now. They were going to keep coming after me until they succeeded. It hadn’t escaped me that
the latest pair was dressed in suits. Where was there an office full of suit wearing assassins ready for action at a moment’s notice? The odds were so far against me that even thinking of escape was fantasy. The red mist of rage that had buoyed me up faded.

I’m not at my best in a muddy field at crack of dawn. My shoes were offering no protection from the rain-sodden grass.

I checked out the hen house.

I was desperate for a clue to their identities.

Naturally it was empty. There wasn’t a trace of their presence, no handy till receipts, no tell-tale sweet wrappers, not even a cigarette butt or a lump of chewing gum. If I’d been quicker off the mark or more cunning I might have bagged one of them. But no, I had to go charging across an open field like a maniac and worse, encourage Clint to follow my example.

It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit.

I tried to think of the next move.

Fight or flight?

It didn’t seem that I had much choice.

A fool’s luck, that was the only thing that’d saved me so far. I felt cold sweat on my forehead when I thought about what could have gone wrong.

Without Tony ‘No-Nose’ Nolan’s gift for detecting cameras, I’d now be reduced to atmospheric pollution. Maybe there’d be a few shreds of flesh that a forensic scientist could identify. What was the effect of four kilograms of explosive going off in a confined space? The destruction would have been complete. Not a stone would have been left on a stone.

Four kilograms, there had to be a clue there. Military explosives aren’t easily come by.

‘Come on,’ I ordered, ‘back to the house.’