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

‘You.’

The video was the CCTV footage taken at the Hungarian-Romanian border; it showed Gold pulling up in the Range Rover and the carnage as she and I shot the goons and bumped over one as we left.

‘You.’

‘No, not me.’

‘Yes, you, Mr Nevis. You killed my brothers, and now I will kill you.’

I played for time. ‘Doesn’t even look like me. I’ve got a limp, that’s not me.’

He laughed. ‘You haven’t got a limp. I am not stupid, Mr Nevis. Alexandru kept a file on Randall and Cohen. I watched you at Randall’s wife’s house an hour ago. No limp. How would you like to die, Mr Nevis? I think slowly would be good – a bullet in each leg, and then each arm, and then finally the head.’

‘Why waste four bullets? One to the head will do.’ I was thinking that I would push up the desk from my side quickly towards him. If I was quick enough, any bullets he fired might lodge in it.

‘You don’t deserve to die quickly. You have five seconds to pray.’

Pray? Me? If there is a God, he gave up on me long ago.

‘Five… four…’ I tensed my arms ready to move. ‘Three… two...’

‘ONE.’ It wasn’t Danut’s voice. He turned quickly to see Gold standing in the doorway, her gun held two-handed and pointing his way. A small puff of smoke left the end of the silencer long after the bullet left a jagged exit wound in Danut Bogdan’s head. He fell sideways onto the desk, blood seeping onto my mail.

I felt I should embrace her and thank her for saving my life, but me and Gold, we don’t do embracing.

‘I thought you had business to see to?’

‘It can wait. I changed my mind about the meal – not often you buy.’

I smiled. Gold has a way of trivialising things; things like a dead body across my desk.

‘He followed us from Marcia’s,’ I explained.

‘You sure there aren’t any more Bogdan brothers likely to pop out of the woodwork?’

‘No, Clancy said there were five so he’s the last – two at the border post and three here.’ I showed her the video on Danut’s phone. ‘I need Clancy to get his mates in Romania to destroy that.’ I took the SIM card out and flushed it down the toilet. ‘Right, we’d better get rid of this body.’

I gave the twins a call.

‘You’re like the buses, Nevis – none for ages and three come at once. You’ll want wholesale rates next.’ He laughed. ‘How many this time?’

‘Just one.’

‘Ready now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give us an hour, see you there – and Nevis...’

‘I know, cash only.’

‘That’s right,’

Click.

    CHAPTER 19

It was past three o’clock in the morning when we got back from the crematorium. We’d taken my car with Danut wrapped in plastic bin bags in the boot. Too late for that meal; I did offer to take Gold for a cheeseburger on Battersea Bridge, but the offer was declined. She said she’d come round to the office in the afternoon and give me a hand breaking up the desk and taking it to the tip. I could paint it over, but you never know; evidence is what law enforcement lives on, and I never leave any.

I slept well; my mind was free, no plans buzzing round it of how to get Janie back, or what was happening with Harry Cohen – all done and dusted, case closed, job done. If Clancy wanted to chase the missing money, he was welcome to. Not my problem.

Gold turned up at the office after lunch and the desk came apart pretty easily. After throwing it into the skip at the local council tip she persuaded me to detour on the way back to Ikea and buy a new flat pack desk, which we managed to put together in half an hour. I arranged my leather blotter, the phone and the laptop on it. All very professional looking. We sat with a coffee as Gold checked her mobile trying to find an expensive restaurant to book. She was determined to get that meal out of me.

My laptop beeped, incoming mail. I checked it; an email from Marcia thanking me once more and saying my fee had been sent through. I checked my bank account; it had, all one hundred and twenty thousand was sitting in my account.

‘Marcia’s paid,’ I told Gold as I pulled up the ‘Pay Somebody or a Business’ page on my bank site and put the figure fifty thousand in. ‘What’s your account? I’ll transfer your share.’

‘I’ll do it.’ She came round the desk and tapped in her account number. ‘Not that I don’t trust you with my account number Ben, but, I don’t trust you with my account number Ben.’

I had to smile. I was about to press pay when Gold stayed my hand. ‘Now that is interesting.’

‘What is?’

‘The account Marcia Johnson sent the money from is held at an Isle of Man Bank.’

     THE END

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