Chapter 8
“Which way did they go?” Ben glanced right, then left at the Y in the road.
“You’re asking me?” Lawrence growled incredulously. “Youwere the one who was meant to keep watch on ’em while I was driving.”
“Iwas!” Ben shot back. “But we waited too long in the valley between those hills, and I lost sight of ’em.”
“And whose fault was that? You said they were parkedand that we needed to hold steady to make sure they hadn’t spotted us.”
“Theywereparked. And for a bloody long time too!”
Red once more tried to crowd Lawrence’s vision, but he blinked it away. He couldn’t let his anger consume him. He had to keep sight of the goal, which was saving Ben’s sorry hide, saving his own sorry hide, and finally balancing the scales of justice for his family.“Damnit, Ben! We’re not meant to be fighting about this. We’re not each other’s enemy.They’rethe enemy.”
“Why?” Ben shook his head perplexedly. “BecausemaybeChristian Watson was the stupid prat who got our brother killed? We don’t even know for sure if—”
“Weknow,” Lawrence insisted, his fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. Time was of the essence. And this conversationwas wasting precious amounts of it.
“No. Wedon’t,” Ben insisted, the vein pulsing in his forehead.
Lawrence’s little brother could be infuriatingly stubborn when he wanted to be. Lawrence recalled the time when Ben was eight years old and had gotten fed up with his older brothers always picking on him. To solve the problem, Ben had pitched a tent in the back garden andlivedthere fortwo whole months. It was only once winter set in and their mother feared her baby boy would die of hypothermia that she finally, with great crocodile tears in her eyes, convinced him to move back into the house.
“Wedon’tknow if Watson is guilty,” Ben continued. “Wesuspect. That’s a different thing entirely. As for the others? They’re innocent. I think we needa slow down and rethink this—”
“Innocent?” Lawrence spat incredulously. “Wouldinnocentpeople set off an explosion in a tiny seaside village? Wouldinnocentpeople take the back roads to a private airport hangar when the motorway would have been twice as fast? Wouldinnocentpeople knock off from the scene of a crime? For Christ’s sake, Ben.Thinkabout it. They set off the explosion to escape the press. They took the backroads to avoid the CCTV cameras. They knocked off from the scene at the airport because they don’t wanna speak to the authorities. They. Are.Not.Innocent. They are bad people doing bad things. And even if it wasn’t our job to take scum like ’em off the streets, remember that doing ’em in is the only way we’re getting out of this without being thrown in the clink.”
“Speaking of cameras,”Ben said, “who’s to say what happened at the airport wasn’t recorded, huh? We could’ve been caught on tape—”
“No.” Lawrence didn’t let him finish. He could almosthearthe second hand of an imaginary clocktick-tockingin his ear. “There weren’t any cameras.”
“How can you know that?” Ben’s face had turned candy-apple red.
Lawrence was meant to be the hotheaded one, so it irked himto have to be coolheaded now. “Remember that stabbing six months back? The one where two airplane mechanics got into a row in the car park over a woman, and one came away from the scuffle with a screwdriver lodged in his eye?”
Ben frowned. “The charges on the screwdriver stabber were dropped, weren’t they?”
“Indeed.” Lawrence nodded emphatically. “Because the stabber insisted the victimaccidentally ran into the screwdriver when he went on the attack. And since there were no cameras or recordings to prove the stabber wrong, he walked away scot-free.”
“That was here?” Ben shook his head. “I mean, back at the private hangar?”
“The very same. So as long as we play our cards right, we can get outta this.”
“Butkilling’em all, Lawrence? That’s going too far.”
Lawrencebegged to differ. “Why? They’re obviously mixed up in some bad shit. How do we know they’re not murderers themselves? That explosion back at Port Isaac? It was ruddyhuge. I’d be surprised if there weren’t casualties. And besides, slotting ’em all not only saves our hides, but it also gets justice for our family. Haven’t we always talked about making the one responsible pay?”
“Yeah…but…” WhenBen swallowed, his throat sounded sticky. “How will we explain five dead bodies?”
A slow grin spread across Lawrence’s face. Ben blanched and backed away as if Lawrence had spiders crawling between his teeth. “We won’t have to explain anything. Old Man Murphy is pouring a foundation for his new barn tomorrow night. We’ll simply go in late and dump the bodies in the concrete before it dries.Then pour more over the top of ’em and even it all out. No one will ever know.”
Lawrence had never fancied their neighbor. The stodgy old farmer had always looked at Lawrence out of the sides of his eyes, like he didn’t trust Lawrence, like he sensed something wasoffwith Lawrence. But now the grumpy, gray-haired fart would come in handy.
“You’ve watched too many gangster movies,” Benaccused.
“And learned from the best of ’em.”
“But what about the dead man at the airport?”
“See, the beauty of this plan is that we won’t have to explainanythingas long as we take care of the witnesses.”
