I bring my arm up instinctively across the blanket as if I can protect the baby from a bullet.
He brandishes the cable tie in his left hand.
‘Time for you to disappear. Both of you. Now put Mia down on the stage and hold your hands out to me, wrists together.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘You can have me, but not her.’
He cocks the pistol’s hammer back, raising it so the blued steel muzzle is level with my eyes. ‘I’m taking both of you, Ellen, that’s just how this is going to work.’
I raise myself up to my full height, blood pounding in my ears, rolling onto the balls of my feet.
‘OK then,’ I say. ‘You want her? You can have her.’
I gather the baby in the blanket and throw her at him.
68
He stumbles backwards, flailing a hand at Mia’s thick white blanket, his eyes widening in alarm at the baby rolling out of its folds, the cutest blonde baby in a white sleepsuit with perfect little fingers, silent and smiling as she falls out of the blanket and her head hits the stage with asmackof plastic. The doll only fools him for a second but I’m already fumbling for the shotgun hanging on its strap beneath my raincoat, my right hand grabbing for the smooth walnut stock, left hand raising the barrel, heart smashing against my ribcage.
Too slow too slow.
I flinch at the explosion of a gunshot close to my head, thecrackof a bullet passing an inch from my left ear, and then I have the shotgun up and levelled at his chest and he’s staring at me in alarm, each of us with our guns trained on the other.
‘Put it down!’ he shouts. ‘Put it down or I’ll shoot!’
‘You pull that trigger again and I’ll do the same. We both lose.’
‘What have you done with the baby? Where is she?’
‘Somewhere safe.’ My palms are damp with sweat. ‘I wasn’t going to risk another life by bringing Mia in here.’
‘What the hell is wrong with you? Have you got a death wish?’
The lights are behind him, dazzling me, making me squint.
‘Deception, Stuart. Just like you said.’
He lets out a heavy breath, shaking his head. ‘Christ, you’re impossible.’
‘That’s what my husband used to say.’
He laughs, a short maniacal hoot, and just for a second I see a glimpse of the madness behind his eyes. The blank space. The evil.
‘Why don’t you lay the gun down nice and slowly, Ellen. So we can talk about this like rational adults.’
I keep the shotgun tight into my shoulder, levelled at his chest.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well then, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a stand-off.’ His smile fades, the pistol in his hand steady again. ‘So you’d figured out it was me before you walked in here, had you?’
‘Almost, but I had to be sure. I had toknow.’
‘And now you do,’ his voice is thick with sarcasm. ‘Does it make any difference to anything? No.’
