NATIONAL TREASURE Barry Faulkner (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📖

moved fast. Their attention was on the car; the one standing in the building doorway took my first bullet in the side of his head and crumpled to the floor. I heard Gold’s shot take out the goon on her side of the car before the other two realised what was happening and didn’t know which way to look; I took out the one standing at the front of the car with two body shots, and the one on the passenger side hadn’t time to turn my way before the bullet in the back of the head from such a short distance pushed him forward to slump over the car roof and slide slowly down past Janie’s look of horror as his bleeding head left blood smears down the passenger window beside her.

I jumped into the back and Gold floored the accelerator; we bumped over the body of the goon in front and were away. We had a few minutes before the people in the cars behind would be able to gather their thoughts and get out, and then a few minutes more before the guards were released and able to call their base. They hadn’t seen us, so any description of the car was going to be amateur; and anyway, there’s plenty of Range Rovers in Hungary and we’d be in Debrecen and at the airport before anything organised could happen.

Janie was quiet. I leant forward and put my hand on her shoulder. ‘You okay?’

She half turned. ‘You just killed four people.’ Her voice shook.

‘I wasn’t counting.’

I could see a smile on Gold’s face in the mirror.

‘They might have families.’

Oh no, not that old chestnut again. I sat back. ‘Yes, they probably do –and probably the people they killed in the past had families too.’

‘Are there many people like you, Ben Nevis?’

‘Not many, but you’re lucky – mum hired the best.’

‘You’re a killer with no conscience.’ It was said quietly and without any malice, but she’d nailed me perfectly.

‘And you’re a young lady with all her fingers and two ears.’

Gold stepped in. ‘Don’t worry, Janie. It doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes the world isn’t a nice place, and things have to be put right.’

Janie mirror-traced a blood smear on the outside of the passenger window with her finger. ‘I thought this kind of thing was just in films and Netflix.’

So do a lot of people, Janie, I thought to myself, so do a lot of people.

  **********************************

Everything at the airport was going smoothly, the pilot had done his job and the papers were all in order; nobody questioned that one person came in on the flight and three were going out on it. That’s the beauty of charter flights; officials have enough paperwork to navigate their way through with the regular timetable passenger flights, yet alone adding any for a light charter flight, especially at two in the morning. Mind you, the company I use are good; they register flights as ‘freight’, so immigration take no notice of them. Crafty, eh? It was as we taxied to the end of the runway that things hotted up.

The pilot turned to me. ‘The tower want us to return to the parking area.’

I shook my head. ‘No way, we go.’

‘Okay.’

The pilot didn’t reply to the tower and put the intercom on speaker.

‘One seven four five two, return to your stand.’

‘One seven four five two to control, you’re breaking up – please repeat?’

‘One seven four five two, abort your take off – repeat, abort your take off.’

‘One seven four five two, your message is unclear – lots of static on the line. Please repeat.’

By now we were on the departure runway and gathering speed. The pilot shut off the speaker and waved a thumb over his shoulder pointing behind us. I looked back and two cars with blues flashing were on the tarmac and gaining on us.

‘Friends come to see you off?’ The pilot was a sarcastic so-and-so when he wanted to be. I’d used him before, and he knew I wasn’t always strictly legit.

‘Definitely not.’

‘Okay.’ He pulled a switch on the controls and a valve on each of the kerosene tanks on the wings opened, spilling the fuel out onto the runway behind us. ‘That should do it,’ he said after a few seconds and shut the valves.

Behind us the cars hit the fuel spill and danced together like two drunks on ice, spinning into each other and sliding across the runway out of control.

Then we were airborne and heading home.

 Janie spent the flight back in silence. I thought it best to leave her alone with her thoughts. At Stansted Dick Clancy met us, introduced himself, put Janie in an unmarked police car with a couple of plain-clothed protection officers and sent her to Marcia’s house with strict instructions to talk to no one. I thought about going with her, but maybe best to let mum and daughter sort themselves out on their own in the peace of the family home. I knew there would be officers inside and outside the house, so I didn’t have any worries about their safety.

Darkness was turning into morning daybreak. I invited Gold back to mine for breakfast, but like me she wanted to just relax and unwind so we went our separate ways. I said I’d call later that day, so home to a long hot bath and bed.

 

     CHAPTER 10

Harry Cohen was slumped forward over his desk. The exit wound of the bullet that had killed him showed large and jagged in the back of his head.

‘The brothers are getting impatient.’ Clancy stood with me beside the desk watching SOCOs in their paper suits going about their forensic business around the body and the office. A pathway of PCR plates led from the door to the desk;