Slash and Burn (8 page)

‘Hey, asshole!’ a man shouted at me from the passenger window. ‘You gonna move your fuckin’ ass? Can’t you see we’re trying to pull in?’

Two things were apparent in the split second it took to relax the tension on my gun’s trigger. I was standing at the entrance to an alleyway and the man shouting at me wasn’t the same one as I’d brained with my gun barrel.

If it was possible, this man was even bigger and more powerfully built than the man in the woods. He had his hair shaved up the sides and back with a crest of hair on top like a grown-out Mohawk. He looked pissed at my inconsiderate blocking of the road and he’d twisted his face into a mask of rage. When he glared at me I saw that there was something unusual about his eyes. A touch of the David Bowie look.

‘Don’t make me get out this truck,’ the giant shouted at me. ‘Move your fuckin’ ass!’

I gave him a weary nod, stepped up on to the kerb. I watched as the SUV swung into the alley, my eyes on the driver now. I’d only seen his face in darkness, and a relaxed state of unconsciousness, but there was no doubting that the driver and the man I’d knocked out were one and the same. Judging by the dark stain on his jacket the cut on his skull was still bleeding.

As he gave the SUV throttle and drove down the alley, I moved off the kerb and watched the vehicle’s progress. The alley ran between two tall buildings. Even in the darkness I could make out a loading dock about a hundred yards down. The SUV stopped, brake lights flaring, and the big man with the mismatched eyes got out. He reached for something that I guessed was a padlock. His curses were discernible even at that distance. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a roller shutter forcefully thrust upwards.

Serendipity.

I put down the bag, held my SIG against my thigh, then walked along the alley.

Chapter 11

When he’d wakened from his enforced slumber, Larry Bolan should have been apoplectic with rage. However, surfacing from the thick cloud of confusion with his brother patting his cheeks, he found he was only mildly annoyed. Some of the turnaround in his mood had to be down to the fact he was still alive, but even more to the fact that he would get another chance at killing this man. A bullet in the dark would have been too painless. This way he got to do it with his hands.

‘Your head’s split wide,’ Trent remarked, helping him to his feet.

Larry touched the cuts on his skull. ‘Tell me about it.’

A rifle cracked almost by Larry’s ear and he flinched from the noise. Looking towards the trail, he caught a glimpse of tail lights as the Grand Taurino sped round the curve.

Larry looked at the tall youth with the smoking rifle.

Without warning, he grabbed the boy’s throat between his massive fingers and squeezed. The boy was lifted off the ground, toes scrabbling for purchase on the dirt.

‘The hell you doing
shooting at my wheels
, Jeb?’ he roared in the youth’s purpling face. Then he tossed Jeb aside and the gangly youth cartwheeled into the nearby bushes. He landed awkwardly on his back, twisted among branches.

Larry and Trent stomped down on to the road. Looking in the direction where their vehicle had disappeared, they both stood in silence. Behind them, the rest of their friends dragged Jeb out of the undergrowth.

Larry turned and looked dispassionately at the dazed youth. ‘You OK, Jeb?’

Jeb nodded in confusion, wiping at scratches on his forehead.

‘Be thankful I’m not in a bad mood,’ Larry told him. Then turning to the group of men surrounding him, he warned, ‘Any of you motherfuckers mess up again, believe me, I’ll rip your fucking heads off.’

The men all nodded in acquiescence.

‘Any of you idiots got a phone with a signal?’

One man handed over his phone. ‘One bar only, but it might be enough, Larry.’

‘Go get the fucking cars,’ Larry told the men. ‘We ain’t achieving nothing standing round here, are we?’

The men scattered, and only Trent was with his brother as he reported in to Huffman.

‘How did he take it?’ Trent asked when Larry hung up.

‘In his usual way,’ Larry said. ‘He’s bringing in some help for us.’

‘We don’t need help.’

Larry touched the tender spots on his head. ‘No,’ he said.

Before they returned to town, they backtracked up the hill. They laid out the four dead men in the living room of Imogen Ballard’s house, then Trent got busy with a can of gasoline off the pick-up. Flames fought back the flurries of snow falling on the disintegrating A-frame.

Sending the others ahead, Larry and Trent commandeered Tom-Boy’s SUV.

‘It’s full of shit,’ Trent complained as he surveyed the blood and tissue sprayed through the interior.

‘It’ll clean up back at the shop,’ Larry said.

As was the norm, Larry drove.

They caught up with the others at the pass. Trent got out the SUV armed with his can of gasoline and doused the Ford Explorer. Then there were two fires raging on the mountainside.

Good job it’s winter, Larry thought, otherwise Trent’d probably burn the entire forest down. Trent’s growing fascination with flames was another thing that concerned Larry about his strange sibling.

Trent grumbled all the way to town, brushing at drips falling on him from the roof.

‘I ain’t cleaning this fucking thing,’ he told Larry about a dozen times before they reached Little Fork.

Larry didn’t bother arguing. His head felt like someone was beating it with a hammer and all he wanted was to get back to their workshop where he could find something to take away the pain.

They’d left the snow up in the hills, but it was still a gloomy night. Not too many people out on the streets. The others continued on, but Larry slowed the vehicle as they approached the back alley that led to the workshop where they’d customised the Dodge. A guy with a bag of groceries was standing in the mouth of the alley, watching them warily.

‘The fuck’s his problem?’ Trent enquired, then he leaned out the window and yelled at the man. Larry closed his eyes, flinching with every word rocketing around inside his skull. When he blinked open his eyes the man had stepped up on to the kerb. Larry drove into the alley.

‘Should have run the fucker over,’ Trent said. ‘Inconsiderate bastard!’

‘Trent . . .’

Trent blinked across at him. ‘What’s up, bro?’

Larry could only shake his head.

Arriving at their lock-up, Trent clambered out and set to the padlock. As Trent cursed loudly, Larry reached for his Magnum. But it wasn’t there. Good job, because this time he really would have put a round through his brother’s skull.

When Trent opened the door, Larry drove the SUV into the workshop. He didn’t turn off the headlights until Trent found the light switch and bathed the shop with stark light. Larry climbed out of the vehicle, trailing a string of viscous gunk that clung to the sleeve of his jacket. Gross! he thought, wiping the congealed blood on the hood of the SUV.

‘Jesus Christ, Larry,’ Trent moaned. ‘You don’t have to make things worse than they already are!’

‘Shut the fuck up, will ya?’ Larry walked over to a tool bench arranged along the far wall. He was pretty sure he had a stash of morphine somewhere. His head was pounding, and his nose was full of the stink of Tom and Richie’s brains. God knows what the hell he had sticking to his clothes. ‘How could things get any worse?’

Chapter 12

‘Maybe I can answer that.’

At the sound of my voice the two men turned to stare at me. They were the biggest human beings I’d ever seen, and between them they almost blocked out my view of the far wall. I’d thought that Rink was big, but next to these men he’d have looked slight. It made me feel like a child in comparison.

The difference between us was really measured by the fact that I was armed and they weren’t. The SIG made me the top dog in the room.

Both men looked at me, then down at the gun.

‘Either of you fancy your chances?’ I brought up the SIG so that it was aimed directly at the face of the man with the odd eyes. He was the most vocal and likely to be the most irrational.

‘You’re the asshole who was blocking our way,’ he said, pointing a hand at me. He rolled the hand into a fist the size of a Sunday roast. ‘You want to fuck with me because I bawled you out?’

The other man turned fractionally. ‘Trent? It’s the goddamn man from the woods.’

Nodding in confirmation, I moved further into what I now could see was a mechanical workshop. There were tools arranged on the wall, a pit under the parked SUV. Perished oil made dark patches on the floor and had made its way on to the walls and furniture too.

‘I recognise your voice,’ said the man I’d pistol-whipped. ‘What are you? English?’

I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I asked, ‘Why are you after Imogen Ballard?’

Both men exchanged glances. I saw something in their faces that I hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t obvious face-on, but when they turned in profile I saw that they had the same shaped features. Kind of Neanderthal.

‘You’re brothers, right?’ I said, advancing a step. ‘So who’s the youngest out of you?’

‘We’re twins,’ said the man with the odd eyes. Trent, the other had called him.

‘So you’re the youngest then?’ It was the way he’d answered, as though in defence of his pride, that told me. I turned my attention to the eldest brother. ‘OK, it’s like this: you tell me everything or I shoot your little brother. How does that sound?’

A strange look passed over the man’s face, but it wasn’t fear of my threat. ‘He’s big enough to look after himself. Why’d I care if you shot him?’

Trent scowled at his brother, but it was as if he saw the humour in the words and he started huffing out a laugh.

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

Then I shot the youngest brother.

His left knee buckled where my bullet punched through it, and as big and strong as he appeared, he still went down on the ground screaming.

‘Motherfucker!’ His brother lurched towards me. I brought up the SIG so he had a good look directly down the barrel.

‘See,’ I said. ‘I knew you were bluffing.’

The older brother had come to a halt again. His face was painted with rage. ‘I’m gonna rip your fucking head off for that.’

‘No, big man, what you’re going to do is start talking.’ I moved the SIG so it was once more pointing at his brother. ‘Otherwise I’ll show you what a hollow-point can do to a face already that ugly.’

Some people have decried the effectiveness of the P228 over its predecessor the P226. With the nine mm parabellum ammo having less stopping power than .45 ball, some military and law enforcement officers prefer other sidearms. However, I didn’t see the problem. When loaded with hollow-point ammunition, the P228 has enough power to stop a charging rhinoceros. It would easily blow the man’s face apart, however huge his head was.

Taking another step, I held out my gun with both arms at full stretch in what’s known as a stressfire isosceles stance. It’s one of the stances favoured by Israeli Special Forces, designed for point shooting under extreme duress. It’s also damn intimidating as the stance suggests that you are aiming directly at a specific target and about to discharge your weapon.

The older brother’s hands came up. ‘OK, OK, easy now. I do care about my goddamn brother. What is it you want to know?’

‘Start with your names,’ I told him.

‘Larry. That’s Trent.’

‘Second names.’

‘Don’t fucking tell him,’ Trent groaned from the floor. Some of the shock of having been crippled had dissipated, but none of the agony. I guessed these men were used to pain. So I shot him in the other knee.

‘Aw,’ was all Larry said as he looked down at his screaming brother.

‘Let’s keep this conversation strictly between us from now on,’ I told him.

‘Bolan,’ Larry yelled. ‘It’s fucking
Bolan
, OK?’

‘Got it. Now you tell me who you work for.’

There was a little reticence in Larry’s posture, so I fired again. This time into the wall behind his head. He must have felt the heat of the bullet passing his ear, it was so close.

‘Robert Huffman.’

‘Is he from here? Little Fork?’

‘Dallas, Texas. He has offices there.’

‘But he also has offices here?’

‘Yeah.’

I fired another round the other side of his head.

‘Let’s speed this up a little, shall we? Give me the address.’

There was murder in Larry Bolan’s eyes but he told me the address. Some office block in the affluent central district. Above a restaurant, he said.

‘Why does he want the woman?’

Larry Bolan must have known the consequences of lying because he told me enough to make a considered guess. I shook my head in disgust: people dying for greed was nothing new.

When he was done, I saw Larry glance down at Trent and there was tenderness in his gaze not normally associated with hard-asses.

‘You going to let us live?’ Larry asked me.