I was slammed back against the door and collapsed on the welcome mat, writhing with the pain of 50,000 volts of power invading my central nervous system.
There was the immediate loss of motor skills and muscle control. I was writhing on my back and then my entire body stiffened and spasmed with a back-arching agony that made me groan and drool and cry out with pain. Five seconds lasted for a hundred years. A century of pure, incapacitated pain. And then the pain was in my eyes, and I saw a slowly shifting universe of tiny white stars. Tick-tick-tick went the thing in the dark figure’s right fist and every metallic-sounding tick was like being hit in the head with my guard down.
I gasped for the breath that would not come.
And I looked up and the first thing I saw was the haircut, the brutal Depression-era haircut, shaved at the back and the sides and shorn to a short crop on top, and I did not understand, because George Halfpenny was sitting in a jail cell.
And then my mind or vision cleared, and I was looking up at his brother, Richard Halfpenny, thick and fleshy and built like a small bull, his surly face staring at the Taser X3 in his hand and cursing it. The X3 model fires three shots and I realised with a sinking heart that he was planning to shoot me again. But I saw now that the Taser was wrapped in brown duct tape and that he must have picked it up during the riots rather than buying it from a reputable weapons dealer.
And it would not fire again.
He leaned over me, this strong, stocky man who stank of junk food, and he easily lifted me to my feet with his large calloused hands, and then those hands were inside my leather jacket, searching for the keys to my home. He found them.
And as he bundled me into the lift, half-carrying and half-dragging my limp body, my frazzled muscles still twitching with a damaged life of their own, I could imagine him slipping into the building when one of my neighbours had let themselves in.
And then I felt my stomach fall away.
Perhaps it wasn’t one of my neighbours who he came in with. Perhaps it was Edie.
He threw me into the lift and I bounced off the far side, sliding to the floor until he grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt and pulled me up.
I watched him press the button for the top floor.
He knew it was the top floor.
He smiled at me.
‘Time to play,’ he said.
We got out of the lift. He fumbled with the keys. The door of the loft flew open. And I was shouting as he bundled me inside.
‘Go! Get out! Go!’
But the loft was empty.
Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
Halfpenny left me crumpled on the floor of that vast open space and checked both the bedrooms. They must have been empty because I heard no sound. He saw me slowly trying to get to my feet as he came out of my bedroom. He had been heading for the bathroom but now he made a detour. I swayed uncertainly before him.
That’s the problem with any Taser. It disables the victim for just long enough for the arresting officer to apprehend, subdue and dominate. But even 50,000 volts wasn’t going to keep me on my back all night long.
So Richard Halfpenny swiped me backhanded across the face with the duct-taped Taser and I felt it make instant mush of my lip and cheek. I sank down on one knee, my nerve ends flaring with pain. I spat out a gob of blood.
‘You killed Ahmed Khan,’ I said. ‘You stuck that old Nazi knife in his neck. Whitestone was always looking at the wrong brother. Blut und Ehre.’
‘Blood and honour,’ he said proudly. ‘He deserved to die, raising those murdering bastard sons.’
‘And it was you who ran down Ludo Mount,’ I said.
‘I was aiming at you,’ he said. ‘But Sir bloody Ludo would have been no great loss. Because he protected them. He took their side against his own people.’
He kicked me in the ribs and I went down on both knees.
‘Just like you,’ he said.
Keep him talking, I thought. Buy time. Get stronger.
‘The Ten Commandments was a nice touch,’ I gasped. ‘I was looking forward to the one about coveting my neighbour’s donkey – or is it his ass? I can never remember.’
His face clouded.
‘Don’t make fun of the Bible,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t make fun of their religion, would you? So don’t make fun of ours.’
‘You never struck me as the religious kind, Richard. Can I call you Richard?’
His boorish face got an almost wistful look.
‘I want to believe,’ he said. ‘I really do. But I think that if God ever existed, then He must have died, or forgotten us, or just walked away disgusted with it all.’
Keep the moron talking, Max.
‘But why top the weapons dealer?’ I said. ‘He’s on your side, isn’t he? You believe in the same lost cause, don’t you? The Thousand-Year Reich and all that.’
But then I saw it.
‘Because he sold you the knife that killed Ahmed Khan,’ I said, seeing it in my mind. The nickel-plated pommel, the grip of black Bakelite with the gold-etched black swastika on a red-and-white diamond. Blut und Ehre. ‘You bought the knife from your pal Peter Fenn. Ozymandias. And then he tried to blackmail you, didn’t he?’
‘He called it a loan. He needed a loan. He wanted to get back to Thailand. There was some girl who he met in a bar there.’ He shuddered at the weakness of human flesh. ‘Some little whore. And so he needed money to go back and see her.’
Richard Halfpenny sighed, and looked around the loft absent-mindedly as if he was thinking about making me an offer.
I started getting up. He aimed another kick at my ribs but I dug my elbows in and let my arms take the point of his shoe. It still hurt. But not as bad as a broken rib. But I was so tired that I could no longer stand. He watched me as I slid to the floor, his mouth twisting with disgust.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to coax my breath back now, the nerve ends still ringing in every part of my body.
‘But what about you, copper?’ he said. ‘Why do I want to see you crawl before I slot you? Any final thoughts before I cut your face off?’
I looked up at him, rubbing my ribs.
‘How did you even get my phone number?’
‘Because,’ he said, his face clouding with fury, ‘you gave it to my brother.’
And the mention of his brother George sent him into a frenzy of kicking and stomping and punching, and he beat me until I was crumbled in a heap, curled up and trying to protect my head and my balls and my ribs. He stood there panting for air.
‘My brother,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion, ‘could have been a great man. And you ruined it. You spoiled everything. You made sure he got put away. Because you always hated him, right from the first night. I’ll be watching you, you said. How dare you talk to a great man like that? How dare you, you stupid copper?’
I looked towards the door, torn between wanting Edie to arrive before the end, and hoping that she came back too late. I held up my hands.
‘Nothing to do with me, Your Honour,’ I said. ‘Your brother George seriously injured a policeman and that’s why he will do hard time. And it’s not true that I always hated your brother. I liked him. It was you I couldn’t stand, you freak.’
He came toward me, planning to kick me to death but I held up my hands higher.
‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘Please. Listen, Richard. You need to understand something. Your brother George is a smart guy. But he was never going to be a great man. Wrong parents, wrong schools, wrong accent. Fifty years ago, maybe, he might have had a shot at greatness. But not now. The fix is in at birth. The attention your brother got on Borodino Street was going to be the high point of his life. Can’t you see, you dumb, ugly bastard? Your brother – and everyone just like him – is beat before they begin. George was going to push that rickshaw until the day it killed him.’
‘I told you,’ Richard Halfpenny said. ‘I told you again and again. You’re going to crawl.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, getting unsteadily to my feet. I wasn’t going on the floor again unless he killed me. ‘I don’t crawl for anyone.’
He took a knife from his jacket.
‘Waffen-SS dress dagger with totenkopf – literally, dead head – on the handle,’ he said proudly.
‘I’d ask for my money back,’ I said, squinting at the knife. ‘Looks like a fake.’
I saw the six-inch double-sided blade, with the eagle and the swastika on the hilt, and the skull and bones on the black grip, and I saw the same bleak dreams of world domination that have been ending in the nightmare of tears and misery and ruined cities for a hundred years.
It looked very old. It didn’t look like a fake. I was just pulling his leg.
It must have been from his collection.
And I knew he had been saving it for me.
‘Crawl for me,’ he said. ‘Or I will start cutting bits off you that will make you beg to crawl.’
‘No.’
‘Crawl.’
‘Just get it done, you fat bastard.’
And then the toilet flushed.
We both stared at the bathroom door.
A slow smile crept across Richard Halfpenny’s bloated face.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘She’s home! The lady of the house. That hot little redhead. Hiding in the smallest room. Even better.’
‘I am going to kill you,’ I said.
He kicked me in the stomach. The air came out of me with a sickening ooof ! And I doubled up.
‘Unlikely,’ he said. I watched him move across the loft and try the handle of the bathroom door. It was locked.
He pressed his shoulder to the bathroom door.
He took his stance and braced himself to smash it down.
He grinned back at me and winked.
‘She’s playing too hard to get,’ he said. ‘I love that shit. I do hope you are going to enjoy watching me with her.’
I took a step towards him as he turned his face to the door and in that sliver of a second the air tore apart with the sound of a 9 mm handgun being fired from inside a confined space.
A single shot from inside the bathroom.
Richard Halfpenny was thrown backwards and I was watching him die at my feet before the sound of the air being split wide open had faded away.
The gunshot wound was in his chest.
Centre of mass. The way the experts learn to shoot.
Black blood bubbled from the corner of Richard Halfpenny’s mouth.
And I saw the shot was perhaps one inch to the left side of the medial line, the midline of a human body where the core of human life is located directly to the left or right – the heart, the lungs, the spine, the liver.
So just off the medial line. But still a bullseye, still the work of a highly skilled operative who was aiming for the middle of his target.
My bathroom door now had a hole in it the size of an espresso saucer at the Bar Italia. I heard the lock slide back.
Jesse Tibbs walked out, not looking at me, standing over the man on the floor, the Glock that Jackson had given me still aimed at his centre of mass.
Because Tibbs had been taught that one shot is not always enough.
But it was enough for Richard Halfpenny. It was enough for Bad Moses.
Tibbs lowered his Glock 19, released the magazine, stuck the gun and the clip in separate pockets.
I sat on the floor, rubbing my ribs, my ears ringing.
‘I wanted my gun back,’ he said, kneeling by Halfpenny’s side, checking his pulse. ‘Very clever, hiding it in the ceiling. It was the second place I looked. What was wrong with under the mattress of your bed?’
Jackson the thief, I thought.
‘Your friend thought he would take my private shooter from my locker and arm you at the same time,’ Tibbs said. ‘Two birds and one stone, right?
He made no attempt to help me to my feet.
‘Once or twice I even thought he was tailing me,’ he said. ‘But Jackson had me wrong. I always hated you but I was never going to slot you. I’m not that dumb. I thought we could take it to the ring or a car park. Anywhere you wanted it. But I thought we might settle our differences like men.’ He looked at the body between us. ‘I guess we did.’
‘Tibbs,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s what I do.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘Well, I didn’t need a bloody shotgun.’
‘I’m sorry about Ray Vann,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about your friend. I know you blame me. And I’m sorry you hate my guts.’
He shrugged as if it was all behind us now.
He stared thoughtfully at the dead man on the floor.
‘I just think you get it wrong, Wolfe. You and the rest of the world. You think it’s a job.’ He looked at me now. ‘And it’s a war, pal. It’s a war.’
He moved towards the big loft windows, pulled wide open for the last of the summer’s heat.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘My war’s over, I guess.’
‘Tibbs,’ I said. ‘We can sort this out. Richard Halfpenny was a serial killer. He was going to kill me. You’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m done. I might get away with topping Bad Moses here. But it’s the Glock with the serial number gone, you see. I can’t explain that. I will never be able to explain that. And that’s jail time. And I can’t be locked up, Wolfe. Maybe Jackson was trying to do me a favour.’ Jesse Tibbs smiled at me for the first time. ‘Maybe he was trying to save both of us.’
Jesse Tibbs stood at one of the big open windows and looked down on the street four storeys below. I could not understand what he was doing. And then suddenly I got it. Checking for pedestrians, I saw, checking for innocent passers-by. And I felt the panic and sadness rise up in me as I got to my feet and staggered across the loft towards him, seeing him slide his right arm between his belt and his jeans, and then the left arm.
The jumper’s insurance policy. Hands and arms locked inside the belt. So the fall cannot be broken. So that the hands can’t be held out at the final moment of life.
So that there is no final chance to change your mind.
And then, with his arms pinned to his sides by his belt, Tibbs sat himself on to the window ledge and I was weak from the serious beating that Richard Halfpenny had given me and I knew that I did not have it in me to stop him.
Then we both stared at the door of the loft as it quietly clicked open.
‘You all right, Jesse?’ Jackson Rose said easily. ‘I knew I would find you here.’
As he crossed the great open space of our loft, Jackson took it all in. The dead body of Richard Halfpenny, the good hiding I had taken, and the last plans of Jesse Tibbs.
Without rushing but without breaking step, Jackson walked calmly to the window and gently pulled Jesse’s arms out from inside his belt. And then Jackson held him tight, the pair of them sitting on the window ledge as if they had all the time in the world, as if it was still a beautiful night, and Jesse Tibbs buried his face in Jackson’s chest so that we could not see him sobbing.
‘You’re all right,’ Jackson told him. ‘And we’re going to take care of you now.’