After another fruitless day spent staking out Maya and Osborne, I drove to Newton to catch up with Vittoria, Alan and Mac.
Observing our regular pattern, Mac and I walked through the sand dunes while Alan and Vittoria strolled along the beach. Today, they eschewed the flotsam and jetsam. Instead, they talked in earnest fashion, or rather, Vittoria talked while Alan listened intently.
With the sun slipping towards the horizon, I raised a hand to shield my eyes. Once again, the weather had become changeable as grey clouds gathered above us, driven on a brisk westerly breeze. The grey clouds served as a deterrent so the beach was largely deserted, though I did spy a man with a camera and a frisky puppy. Incongruously, the man carved ‘Merry Christmas’ in the sand and captured the image while the puppy dug furiously and threatened to burrow through to Australia.
“I received a call today,” Mac said, his tone heavy, sombre.
“Oh, yes,” I said.
“From Grant Osborne.”
I turned sharply, twisting my heel in the sand. “He doesn’t know that you’re protecting Vittoria?”
“So far, we’ve managed to keep that mum.”
“What did he want?” I asked.
“You, Lassie. He asked me to kidnap you.”
I nodded. In truth, Mac’s words did not come as a surprise. All the same, they did send icicles down my spine. “What did you say?”
“Well, I offered him the first word that came to my mind...I said, ‘yes’.”
I scowled at Mac, a full-powered glare, on the megawatt scale, registering a million.
“Don’t look at me like that, Missy. Lucky I’m not drinking a glass of milk or it would curdle.”
Mac adjusted his greatcoat, turned the collar up to protect the back of his neck. The breeze was chilly this evening and I started to shiver. At least, I told myself that it was the breeze, and not Osborne’s threat.
“Let me explain,” Mac continued. “I said ‘yes’ because I figured that if I agreed to his offer he wouldn’t ask anyone else, for the time being at any rate.”
“Thanks, Mac.”
He nodded. “So I’ve bought you a little time. But maybe I should stick around, in case he goes behind my back and hires someone else to do the snatching.”
“No,” I said, “you stay with Vittoria. She needs you. She trusts you.”
Mac frowned. He glanced at Vittoria and me, caught on the horns of a dilemma. A man of action, Mac disliked sitting around; it made him restless, allowed too much time for thought; he’d prefer to tackle Osborne head-on, and damn the consequences.
“The good Dr Storey would be very upset if anything happened to you.”
I nodded then asked, “What do you know about Osborne, his background?”
“He’s from Bavarian stock, so I believe. His family made a fortune out of recycling scrap metal before recycling became popular.” Mac paused. He frowned, “You have a plan for dealing with Osborne?”
I shook my head then bit my lip. “Not yet.”
“We could always shoot him,” Mac said. “After all, the scumbag deserves a bullet; several, in fact.”
The puppy ran into the sand dunes followed by the man with the camera. On the beach, the tide rolled in, over the words ‘Merry Christmas’, while Alan and Vittoria continued their walk and talk, disappearing into the distance.
Mac and I stepped on to the beach, on to an area covered in shingle. As we walked, I asked, “Have you shot anyone in cold blood?”
Mac paused. He stooped then picked up a pebble. The pebble was round and smooth, as smooth as Mac’s bald cranium. While running a thumb over the pebble, he said, “I’ve shot people, as you know, to prevent a killing or in self-defence. But to shoot someone in cold blood...that takes a different mindset, a mind that doesn’t register any emotion.”
“A mind like Gorgeous George’s, Rudy Valentine’s hit man.”
“Aye,” Mac agreed. “George would do it, no questions asked.”
Mac bent a knee. Carefully, he placed the pebble on the sand; for a big man and a brute, he could be so delicate.
As Mac straightened, he turned to me and said, “Did I ever tell you about this guy, a hit man? He’d been hired to take someone out. He did his homework, set up his target. Then, when it came to the crunch, he couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“The target was naked. It takes a cold mind to carry out an assassination. It takes a mind in the freezer to put a bullet into naked flesh, a mind that can live with the images.”
At that moment, an image flashed through my mind, a picture of a semi-naked Grant Osborne with yours truly behind the trigger. Could I fire the gun? Could I kill him? Call me a coward, but I wasn’t keen to find out.
“So,” Mac asked, “what are you going to do about Grant Osborne?”
I shuffled my feet on the sand. I looked along the beach, across the bay, but could find no answer. I was thinking too hard; experience told me to let it go, to submit to my subconscious, because within that intuitive world I often found the answer.
“Sleep on it,” I said, “and hope that I come up with a plan.”