Part 40 (2/2)

'She w's there 'lone one mornin' quite early, not that long ago. Just for 'bout five minutes. I saw her go in with a heater.'

Fizz's face froze in an expression of shocked disbelief and, since he was currently questioning the efficacy of his own hearing, Buchanan had to a.s.sume that he looked much the same. n.o.body said a word.

Then the door crashed open, rebounding off the wall and sending the smashed handle flying across the room. 250.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Fizz was stone-cold sober. If she hadn't been a moment

ago she sure as h.e.l.l was now. Even before the door had hit the wall, or so it seemed to her, she had dived over the arm of her hugely overstuffed chair and was now crouched on her knees beside it making herself invisible. Only not invisible enough.

'You!' roared an unfamiliar voice. 'Out of there and round here where I can see you!'

There wasn't much doubt who he was speaking to since both Poppy and Buchanan were trapped in the embrace of the couch and staring past her with their eyes on a level with their kneecaps. She stood up and moved, as if someone new at the job was operating her with strings, into the middle of the carpet, discovering as she did so that the intruder was the centurion-type she'd suspected of tailing her. He was streaming wet, throbbing with potential violence, and waving a ma.s.sive gun that would have made Dirty Harry's look like a cigarette lighter.

'Over there.' He waved the pistol and Fizz made haste to obey, flattening herself against the wall facing the fireplace.

Buchanan and Poppy were roughly the same shade of pale blue; Buchanan rigidly unmoving, Poppy gasping for air and clinging to him like a condom.

The centurion gave a chuckle, deep in his chest, which did all sorts of unpleasant things to Fizz's sphincter muscles. 251. 'Well, well, well. Now this is a pleasant surprise. Three fish in the one net. That's something I hadn't expected.'

He stepped forward into the room and stood there, straddle-legged and grinning, while he looked them over with almost obscene rapacity.

No-one could have called him an attractive man, but Fizz had failed to register on their previous encounters just how ugly he was. His face was big and muscular, like his body, with a large, fleshy and discoloured nose like an aged s.c.r.o.t.u.m, and his jaw alone was, to Fizz's inflamed senses, a weapon of ma.s.s destruction. It was heavily boned and too wide even for his big face, and it was set with big yellow teeth that leaned this way and that like old tombstones.

Now that his hair was plastered to his head Fizz could see a square scar above one temple: probably the result of an operation or the repair of an old wound.

Moving crabwise and keeping them all covered with his cannon, he grabbed the open bottle of whisky and sunk a couple of large gulps.

'Right,' he said, allowing a trickle of amber liquid to run unchecked down his chin so that he could retain his grip on the bottle. 'Now let's not do this the hard way, folks.

n.o.body's going to get hurt. You're all going to stay very quiet. No talking. No fidgeting around. You're going to sit there and I'm going to sit here and we'll all get along like a house on fire.'

He lowered himself carefully to the seat Fizz had just vacated and, keeping the gun swinging backwards and forwards between all of them, he took a mobile phone out of his jerkin pocket and, using the same hand, thumbed in a number.

'It's me. I got good news for you.' He leaned back on the cus.h.i.+ons and grinned all over his face. 'Yeah, but not just her, I got the other two here as well . . . the lawyers . . .

Yeah. No, Curly didn't lead me anywhere, in the end. It was the copper you were talking to in the pub . . . Yeah, eventually . . . with a little persuasion. Sure. Had to, didn't 252. I? But don't worry, I tidied up real careful. The lawyers?

Yeah, sure they're alive. You said to ... yeah, well I didn't know that, did I? They was all sitting here, like Sunday school, havin' a quiet drink. Well . . . Yeah sure. No prob lemo.

How long . . .?' The grin withered abruptly and he sat up, struggling against the pull of the fat cus.h.i.+ons.

'You're b.l.o.o.d.y joking. Can't you make it before that? Why can't I do it myself? Yeah, but the other two? Yeah, well okay Jerry, but put your foot down, for f.u.c.k's sake. I've got another migraine and it's f.u.c.kin' blinding me. Yeah, well try.'

His good humour hadn't lasted long. He put the phone down on the arm of his chair and, standing up, carefully shrugged off his wet jerkin, one arm at a time, and threw it on the floor. As he sat down again, Fizz could hear Buchanan shhhhh-ing Poppy who was gargling like a coffee percolator and trying to hide inside his jacket.

That's right,' the centurion growled, pouring some more whisky down his gullet. 'You just keep her quiet and we won't have any trouble.'

Fizz's intellectual faculties were not operating on all cylinders. In fact, she was in such a state of panic that her brain had virtually shut down to permit all support systems to be diverted to the primary task of keeping her conscious.

Had it not been for the proximity of the wall, she thought, her legs would have given way minutes ago. Even as it was, they were twitching so hard she was sure Buchanan could see her jeans flapping, and the way he was looking at her, she was afraid he'd do or say something and get himself pistol-whipped at the very least. Hurriedly, she moved a hand a little to attract the centurion's attention and said, 'I'm sorry, but I'm going to faint. Can I sit down?'

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