Steadman had taken a couple of steps into the shadows and returned holding the rifle, unsheathed from its tarpaulin. The way he held it – one-handed, with casual confidence, told Flyte she’d got it all wrong. The gun wasn’t Willets’ but Steadman’s, as was the lock-up.
‘Tell her, Dean,’ he said, positioning himself behind Flyte’s shoulder. Close enough for her to smell lemon sherbets on his breath. Recalling his boiled sweet habit and the citrus smell Cassie had mentioned in her cabin.
He hadn’t got here in record time due to lack of traffic; he’d been here before both of them. It was Steadman who’d been visiting his lock-up garage to do final checks, and Steadman who’d tipped her into the freezer when he’d found her sniffing around.
Of course there were no uniforms on the way to secure the scene: the call to the nick had been a piece of play-acting.
Dean’s eyes were wide open, fixed beyond her on the gun. ‘Guv,’ he said tentatively.
Her every cell and fibre was on high alert, aware of the gun barrel just inches from her spine.
‘Come on, Dean,’ said Steadman. ‘You must surely have worked it out by now?’
Willets looked frozen, queasy. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I think Natalie Toussaint is the guv’s wife.’
Steadman’s wife had kept her maiden name.
‘You opened a Canadian bank account in your wife’s name to pay off Bethany Locke,’ said Flyte.
In her peripheral vision, she could sense Steadman nodding and felt the barrel of the gun brush the back of her jacket, making her skin crawl.
‘Well done, Phyllida,’ said Steadman. ‘Although of course you broke a key rule of interrogation. Never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer.’
Should she try to run? She scrabbled to recall the ballistics lectures from her criminology degree. Assuming the rifle was the one he’d used for shooting rabbits it could only be a .22, but a single bullet of that calibre would be more than enough to kill a human – even at long range.
‘So what did happen that night, boss?’ Keeping her voice level. So long as he was talking he wasn’t shooting.
‘It was all just a . . . terrible accident,’ said Steadman. ‘It was a busy night so I took a car out on my own and I caught him at it again in the Abney Park toilets. His playmate did a runner.’ Disgust lacing his voice. ‘I admit I was angry. I had risked my own job to save his bacon. Then he turned his back on me. All I did was give him a shove, but he hit the hand-dryer on the wall pretty hard . . .’ His voice became hoarse. ‘I tried CPR but he never regained consciousness.’
Flyte wasn’t tempted to ask why he hadn’t tried calling an ambulance. She had no wish to hasten her own death.
She tried to catch Willets’ eye, but he looked away. Not a good sign. He had a dog-like loyalty to his master. And he was in far too deep now. She pictured him helping Steadman drag her body back to the freezer.
‘You know, Phyllida, I thought you were going to become my best detective.’ Steadman spoke with finality and what sounded like genuine regret. ‘I’m just sorry you got caught up in this.’
Jesus fucking Christ.
The next second was a blur. From the tiniest movement of the air behind her she knew that Steadman had raised the gun. In the same moment Willets launched himself past Flyte. In that small space the detonation sounded like a bomb going off.
Flyte couldn’t recall hitting the ground, her entire being focused on the pain in her ears. Calling the gunshot ‘deafening’ was wrong – the high-pitched ringing whine in her head was unbearably loud. Then she tasted blood in her mouth. Not good. She knew a shot to the gut or liver could do that.
Next moment, she was blinking the scene around her into focus. Cassie Raven stood above her, legs planted apart, the rifle in her hands aimed at a point on the ground behind her. Her mouth was moving but Flyte couldn’t hear what she was saying.
*
‘Get your hands in the air and face the wall.’ Then, still keeping the gun on Willets, Cassie went over to Flyte. Kneeling down, she opened Flyte’s jacket, looking for any blood. Meeting her dazed gaze, the pupils so dilated by adrenaline there was barely any cornea visible, she mouthed, ‘You’re OK.’
The same couldn’t be said for the big guy in his fifties who lay in a gently expanding lagoon of his own blood a metre or so behind Flyte.
Dropping to her haunches, Cassie cast a clinical eye over him. From the neat entry wound under his chin it was clear he’d shot himself, the rifle bullet scything through soft tissue before ricocheting off bone and exiting his body through the left eye, leaving the socket a bloody void.
Cassie had heard everything unfold from the other side of the garage doors. After the shock of the gun blast she’d gone into automatic mode, operating in a bubble of unreality. Now the protective layer left her and the cold reality returned.
She bent to put her fingers against the big man’s carotid artery.
His hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.
Fuck!
His grip was surprisingly strong, his fingers sticky with blood. She heard the rattle of blood or saliva in his throat. He tried to speak but a wet reflexive cough stopped his words. He gripped her wrist tighter. ‘Tell Nat and Em . . . that I’m sorry.’
Cassie met his surviving eye. ‘I will,’ she promised.
His pulse was erratic, a fading whisper. Seeing his eye lose its spark, the pupil gently expanding, she was overcome by a feeling of dread and awe. She’d dealt with thousands of dead bodies, but she had never watched anyone die before.