Skypoint

TWENTY-TWO

Owen had made two charges. The ingredients were tightly packed into a couple of small pickle jars that he’d found in Marion Blake’s fridge. He’d punctured their lids with a corkscrew and used some twine he’d found in another drawer as a couple of fuses. He wasn’t sure what she ordinarily used the twine for but figured that of all the SkyPoint residents that could have ignored the fire alarm, he was glad that it had been an S amp;M call girl. As he set the makeshift explosives aside on Marion’s kitchen work surface, he caught the face of his watch, and couldn’t quite believe that a part of him was actually wondering if he was still going to have time to go looking for the man-munching twins from Constantine’s coffee shop.

Hey, what else was a guy who didn’t sleep going to do once he’d got the Lloyds and Mistress Marion to safety, then made it up to the penthouse and kicked Lucca’s arse into a twenty-five storey freefall?

It had taken him half an hour to mix the chemicals. You had to be careful around explosives, especially the homemade variety. There was a reason so many terrorists had only one eye or used hooks for hands. Owen hadn’t wanted to blow his face off. A talking corpse was one thing – you could get away with that – but a talking skull? That was going to make people take a second look in any light.

‘Are you finished?’

It was Marion. She had used the time to shed her work clothes. She hadn’t quite gone back to the Mary Whitehouse look, but they wouldn’t have thrown her out of church, either. She was curled up on the sofa at what she clearly hoped was a safe distance.

Owen noticed that they were alone. ‘What happened to Alison and her mum?’

Marion cocked her thumb towards her bedroom. ‘I think Wendy took Alison to lie down. It looked like you were going to be a while.’

Just as likely, they were under the bed in there in case the madman with the busted hand blew them all to hell, he thought.

‘What about Ewan?’

‘He hasn’t come out of the loo yet.’

Owen didn’t feel his blood chill, but he felt distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. I’m telling you, if he’s made a mess in there…’

He had heard Wendy tell her about what was supposed to be stalking SkyPoint. If the significance of something coming through walls at people and Ewan not having shown after half an hour in the bathroom hadn’t clicked with Marion, Owen wondered if he should be checking her over for signs of something nasty as a result of her profession.

He got up and walked towards the bathroom, dreading what he might find there. He rapped on the door, and called out Ewan’s name.

‘Yeah – yeah, I’m coming!’

Owen felt the tension fall off him like a heavy coat. ‘OK, well hurry up. We need to get moving. And I need to splint up that ankle first.’

The bathroom door opened and Ewan stood in the doorway, his injured ankle held slightly off the ground. His shirt was damp down the front. Owen guessed that he must have been sick after all. He certainly didn’t look any better, his face was pale and shone with sweat, and his eyes were red-rimmed, like he’d been crying, and wouldn’t stop moving. This was a guy that was very close to the edge.

‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ said Owen, and he put one arm across his shoulders and helped Ewan as best he could back through to the lounge.

As they went, Owen spoke to him gently. It was the kind of voice he had used a lifetime ago sitting next to nervous patients in ward beds. ‘Take it easy, Ewan. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise. I’m going to get you and your family out of here. Believe me, we do this sort of thing all the time.’

They reached the couch, and Owen let him down gently. Ewan didn’t look all that comforted.

Owen glanced up at Marion. ‘Have you got any painkillers around? Paracetamol? Hash? I think he could use something.’

‘I think I can find something,’ she said hesitantly and left the lounge to go get it.

Owen gave Ewan a playful wink. ‘Let’s hope she finds the good stuff.’

Then he picked up the two whips, moved back across to the kitchen and selected a knife from the rack she had fitted there. He could have performed surgery with them. All he needed to do was separate the whips from their handles. The knife he chose did the job easily. He took the handles and the whips back to Ewan and started to bind the handles into place with the first of the whips.

‘This is going to hurt a bit,’ he warned.

Ewan said nothing.

The next thing Owen knew was that Ewan had the other whip around his throat and was pulling it tight. Very tight.

The immediate thought that shot through Owen’s mind was that generally since he had been reanimated as a walking, talking corpse the advantages of his condition were comprehensively outnumbered on a day-to-day basis by the ball-crushing downsides. Right now, though, a real bonus was the fact that he no longer needed to breathe – which meant that any attempt to strangle him was going to be pretty futile.

Briefly, he thought about just waiting it out – it wouldn’t take too long before Ewan got bored or, in his condition, exhausted. Then Owen thought about his neck and how – whether Ewan meant it or not – snapping it would be all too easy. And if Owen had to be a living corpse, he’d rather be part of the walking-dead rather a quadriplegic cadaver for the rest of his unnatural life.

So he fought back hard, and broke Ewan’s nose with his head.

Noses are pretty easy to break, and there wasn’t much in Ewan’s that was going to do Owen any harm. A broken nose also hurt like hell and, as Owen expected, Ewan gave up on throttling him pretty fast.

Owen just wished he’d had a gun to push into Ewan’s bloody face when he turned on him and demanded to know what the hell was going on.

The blood from Ewan’s smashed nose was mixed with tears as he shuddered with grief and shame, and tried to protect himself with hands that shook like fragile leaves.

‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ he wailed.

Owen grabbed the other man’s shirt front, and would have made a fist to threaten him with – only he remembered that hand was busted and bandaged.

‘You’re sorry?’

‘He told me he would get Wendy and Alison out if I killed you!’

‘Who?’

‘Lucca! Besnik Lucca! I work for him, God help me! I’m an accountant, not a killer! I couldn’t – I couldn’t have done it! But he said ’

‘You’ve spoken to him? When?’

Ewan pulled the mobile phone from his trouser pocket. ‘In the bathroom.’

Owen grabbed the phone and saw Lucca’s number. His mind raced. There had to be a way he could use this.

Then Wendy burst into the lounge and screamed.

Alison had gone.