He jumped down and started running right towards them, but surely he couldn’t know where they were hiding?
A moment before they got up and fled in panic, Mick fell. He’d only managed one step, and then he was down, hard. They heard it. They saw his face hit the ground, saw blood from his nose spray across the dark tarmac. Heard his gun scrape across the ground.
Then they saw a hand clutching one of Mick’s feet.
Brad was suddenly on Mick’s legs, climbing, pulling himself out from under the back of the van. Somehow the entire vehicle had missed him when Danny’s van hit the doorway, just like before. Mick tried to turn, but then Brad was astride him, mounting him, and raining down hammer-drill fists. Mick fell away and lay limp, but Brad’s fists continued to rise and fall.
Eventually Brad rolled off and crawled to the dropped gun. Both men stood at the same time. Eight feet separated them. Mick’s legs were wobbly, and he was covered in blood.
Liz struggled again and this time slipped Karl’s anchor.
‘Shoot him!’ she screamed. She stumbled out from behind the car. ‘Shoot him!’
Brad made the mistake of turning to look at her, and that could have been it. Eight feet, one second to close that distance. Game over.
Instead, Mick turned and ran. He was injured, though, and his gait was a messy stumble. But it did its job: distance grew between him and the gun. Brad took a step forward, meaning to pursue, but his leg gave out because of his injured hip and he went down onto one knee, his free hand clutching at his lower spine. The gun continued to track Mick as he stumbled away into the dark. But the gun did not fire.
‘Shoot him!’ Liz rushed to Brad and tried to grab the gun, but he swatted her away. The gun continued to aim at Mick’s back, but the gap between him and the bullet kept growing.
Karl emerged from behind the car and went to Liz, and Katie followed. Six feet behind Brad, they watched the gun and, beyond it, Mick’s staggering form, a trick of perspective making the weapon and the man look the same size.
‘Shoot that bastard!’ Liz screamed.
But the gun did not fire. Beyond it, Mick’s shape shrank, and the darkness closed around him, until there was nothing to watch except the inactive gun.
Which continued to stare its single eye at nothing.
* * *
Violent enforcer, gun in hand, but no longer a threat. They approached him cautiously.
At first, there was a conflict of realities as Brad pointed his gun at them, yet said he was not here to cause any more hurt. Eventually he lowered the gun, although he refused to drop it. He then sat on the kerb and lowered his head. Ready to talk, because he had waited for them.
He’d waited while they had rushed to Danny’s van. Liz wanted to remove his body from the van, but it was obvious to Karl it was a no-go: the mechanism designed to extract the chair from the van had been twisted when the vehicle hit the house. Liz tugged at his chair, but failure only increased her woe, and Karl stepped in to pull her away.
‘This is no place to leave him,’ she cried, but she didn’t again try to heave her friend free. She ordered Karl to fetch a cover, and he found a jacket of Danny’s in the back. He stepped up to lay it over Danny, but she snatched it in order to perform the task herself. She kissed Danny’s cheek, and closed his eyes, just like in the films. She lay the jacket over him, rested her head on his leg and waved Karl away. She wanted to say her goodbyes. He gave her time. When she walked away a few minutes later, she went straight towards Brad.
Liz and Karl stopped eight feet away from him, as if for safety, although it meant nothing while he held the gun. Katie joined them. Karl stepped up, ahead of the women, and said: ‘It seems like you want to make amends. The only way would be to give yourself up to the police.’
A firm no.
‘But I will help you. Closure, I guess. I will tell you what happened last night.’
Karl heard a sharp intake of breath from behind. Liz. ‘Let me call the police. You can help clear our names.’
A firm no.
‘I’ll help you though. Closure, like I said.’
He looked up. Liz stepped past Karl and in front of him, into the firing line. He put a warning hand on her shoulder, but she flicked away his fingers.
‘He was good to you, Bradley,’ she said. ‘I was good to you. Why would you do this? Why would you kill my husband?’
‘I broke into his house.’
‘I damn well know that, I was there—’
‘I attacked you in the clothing shop.’
‘That’s not an answer, you bastard. Why—?’
‘I hunted you down.’
Liz said nothing.
‘So why would I lie?’ Brad asked.
‘What? What are you—?’
‘The nightclub shooting, Elizabeth. That’s why. I know you don’t want to hear this, but this is what I’m going to tell you. Believe it or not. Just ask yourself why I’d lie, after all this.’
Brad said: ‘Ron wanted a major rival out of the way and set him up. Me and a guy called Dave, we were meant to shoot the place up, make it look like a robbery, and make sure a man called Razor Randolph got hit. Shot at in the nightclub of a major rival by guys who got past his security. But he survived. How could Randolph not suspect Grafton? Grafton’s only option, apparently, was to give the shooters up. So he did. He betrayed us. He sent us in there, and then he sold us down the river when it didn’t work. He put out the word that we were good suspects, to give the impression he was eager to see justice for his good friend and business partner. It was as good as a death sentence.’
Her head said she refused to believe it. Loyal to her husband, Liz snorted with scorn. ‘That’s not what happened. So, what, you thought you’d been betrayed so went to that dodgy cop for help? What was his reason for wanting revenge? For wanting to slaughter my husband?’
Brad looked at her for a long time. Then he said: ‘If Ron didn’t tell you—’
She cut in: ‘He told me everything, you bastard. Everything. I know everything. And he wouldn’t have lied. Not to me. There was nothing he did to that cop.’
Calmly, Brad said: ‘Then he didn’t care enough to remember what he did. It was just another day in the park to him.’
It was exactly what Mick had said.
‘And if you don’t know,’ Brad added, ‘it’s not my place to tell you.’
‘I saw his chest wound,’ Karl said.
Brad laughed. ‘Yeah, you did. He made sure that fucker didn’t heal properly, as a reminder. But that’s all I’ll say about that.’
She said: ‘That man tried to kill you, and you’re going to defend—’
‘Shut up,’ Brad shouted, surprising her into silence. He jumped to his feet. She staggered back, as if physically hit by the shockwave of his yell.
‘If you don’t know what your husband did to Mick then he was right: it meant nothing to Grafton. Go find out yourselves.’
He paused and then sat on the kerb again. He saw them looking at the gun. A second later it was gone, tucked away. In its place was a mobile phone. His eyes hit the ground again.
‘Mick McDevitt wasn’t always bad. He started off good. He didn’t get knocked off the rails by money or power, unlike your husband.’
‘So, what turned him insane?’ Katie snarled from the back. Karl grabbed her, terrified that her outburst was going to make the gun and the anger and the violence reappear. But Brad didn’t even look up.
‘I’m not even sure he turned. Maybe it was in him all along. Nature versus nurture, eh? Maybe it’s in us all.’