The shooting stopped.
‘You in there, Cook?’
It was Neesham. A bit late.
‘He was coming out,’ I shouted.
No answer. An honest mistake, Neesham would be thinking. Paperwork, but nothing worse.
I looked back into the filthy room. Streatfield was on his back, what was left of him.
I walked out through the barn, into the yard. Police cars were already backing out, places to be, things to do, lives to ruin.
Neesham shook his head.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
I stared at him, hoping to convey all the contempt I felt for everyone who’d ever sent a man over the top. For the generals who’d murdered Streatfield’s sons as surely as the constables had murdered their father.
‘I’m all right,’ I said, walking past him, walking home.
I’d got the Leckies killed, and I’d made a mistake about the Davidson boys. But the answer wasn’t to put my faith in Neesham and his constables. Nothing good would come of Streatfield’s last stand, but something useful perhaps. A reminder of my guiding principle. One that had got lost in the mess of the last few days. One that I’d learnt the hard way.
If you want something done, do it yourself.
30
Kate’s front door was open. I was still thirty yards from the house, walking loudly on the deep gravel. I wasn’t going for the element of surprise, happy to announce my presence.
Kate and I were going to have words. She’d sent her sons to get the Leckies out, but that hadn’t worked out. Perhaps the second time she’d got someone else in. Perhaps she’d told her boys to get themselves an alibi for the day.
There was a crash, like someone had pulled a drawer out past the stops and let it clatter to a stone floor.
I reassessed the situation. People don’t walk into their own house and leave the front door open. They don’t pull drawers out and let the contents clatter over the floor.
Someone else was in there.
The parachutist?
I took cover behind an overgrown rhododendron.
I had two choices, stay and get involved, or leave and live to fight another day. Rule number one, you win every fight you don’t have. But walking away wouldn’t give me any answers about what had happened to the Leckies, just more questions. So I stayed. Not inertia. A conscious decision. Get involved.
Treading softly on the grass, I closed the distance to the house, until the only thing between me and the front door was gravel. No way to cross it quietly. I ran, aiming at a spot three feet to the side of the front door. No point
in giving the intruder a silhouette to aim at through the open door.
I pressed myself against the wall beside the front door and listened. Another clatter. Someone was ransacking the place. Lucky for me, the noise they were making had covered the noise of my approach. Which told me something. I wasn’t dealing with any great military or criminal genius.
I crouched down and looked in through the open front door. If anyone had been watching, their first shot was likely to come at waist height, where a man would comfortably hold his gun. I kept lower than that, raising the odds of me surviving that first shot.
But there was no shot, and the clatter from the back of the house continued.
Inside the house, I saw a slipper, discarded on the flagstone floor. Next to it, a foot, protruding from the drawing room. Someone was down.
I hurried in, staying low. Ducked into the drawing room.
It was Kate.
