Balsam Sirens Page 20

  Kate nodded. They went off and returned a couple of minutes later, Andrea carrying a small sports bag.

  Andrea put the bag down on a chair and came over to me. Her face was full of the most desperate concern. She put her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear. “Please be very careful, Mark. I can’t bear the thought of losing you.” She then began weeping quietly.

  Kate and Mike both came over to us and we had a group hug.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to this guy, Andrea. Old Mike will make damned sure of that!”

  “I think they’re right, you know, Andrea”, Kate said. “After today, I don’t think there’s anything the four of us couldn’t handle.”

  And I think she almost believed that.

  I know I did.

  We all trooped down to the plane. Andrea and I had another long, desperate embrace, one that left me in emotional turmoil.

  “We’ll stay in contact”, I said. “We’ll see each other again in just a few hours. Promise.”

  Andrea kissed me. And it was a deep and hungry kiss we shared. Then Kate helped her onto the float and into the plane, untied the mooring ropes, climbed in herself, started up the engine, and they moved out almost half a mile into the lake. Kate turned the plane to face south, the wash from the propeller suddenly whipping up the water. The plane squatted and began accelerating and a couple of seconds later the deep roar of the engine reached us. The plane picked up speed, lifted free of the surface, and made a long turn toward the west. It felt almost as though Andrea was leaving for the other side of the world.

  Mike and I walked back toward the house. I stopped in front of our three captives.

  “Let’s untie their feet, Mike.”

  “Would you like some water?” I asked them. They all nodded.

  “And if you want”, I added, “you can sit over there on the softer chairs. But take just one wrong step, any of you, and I swear that I’ll throw all three of you into the lake, hands still bound. So do exactly, and I mean exactly, what you’re told and keep your mouths shut.”

  I moved the soft outdoor chairs way over to the far corner, behind the picnic table and right up against the house, then waved them over. Once they were seated, Mike held a large plastic bottle of water to each of their mouths until they had all drunk their fill.

  “What if I have to take a leak?”

  Mike straightened suddenly, walked over quickly, and delivered four massive blows to Blondie’s face.

  “Did you not hear what the man said, Blondie?” Mike roared. “He said keep your mouth shut! You say one more word, and I really will beat you into the middle of next week! Have you got that?”

  Mike’s bellowing left no room for any response, not even a squeaky “Yes, sir”.

  “If any of you has to piss or take a shit, you’ll do it in your pants! End of discussion!”

  “Since they’re too stupid to understand plain English, I think we need to tie them into their chairs again. Do you want the honours, Mike?”

  “With pleasure”, and he set about his task with a will.

  Chuck’s first contact with us was at one o’clock. He seemed to be playing his role well. He had no direct contact with Dickson but then he wasn’t supposed to have any. He was acting in a way that we hoped would say to Dickson that we didn’t know where he was, but that we had his three stooges and they had spilled their guts, and as far as we were concerned, we had won, and the game was up for him. In other words, we wanted Dickson to think that we were cocky and overconfident.

  We had a fairly complete description of Dickson from Blondie. After a little coaxing, he had given us a car make and colour and a licence number. We just had to keep laying the aniseed trail and wait.

  By two o’clock, Chuck had fallen back to the second of the locations we had agreed on. Time dragged on. A hundred personal concerns and stray thoughts clamoured for attention in my mind, but I swept them aside brutally, needing full focus for whatever was about to happen.

  “It’s Chuck”, Mike said, stabbing at his phone. He listened for a moment, nodded, then said into his phone “Good. Fall back to Hemlock.”

  “He’s on the way?” I asked.

  “Looks like he’s on the way”, Mike said. “Excuse me”, and he went into the house, coming out two minutes later carrying a Glock and enough spare ammunition to hold off a battalion.

  “You practise with that thing?” I asked.

  “Every week.”

  And so we sat down to wait.

  We had tried to anticipate what Dickson would do. He wanted his prize and whether it was today or later probably didn’t matter. But he needed to know exactly where it was, and for that he was evidently sure that he needed me.

  How he would try to make his way into Largs we didn’t know. But we did know he wouldn’t come by water. Too exposed. We would see him before he got even close. He wouldn’t come in through the village itself. There were too many people there. He might come through the fields to the south or through the trees along the north side of Arran Street. But whichever way he came, he would be trying for surprise. Dickson hadn’t had contact with his men for some time now, so his information was stale. I was sure that this would bother him, and he likely would try to compensate somehow. Dickson by now probably had made the conservative assumption that Mike would be here and modified his plans accordingly. That modified plan would likely include elements directed at neutralizing Mike, that is, killing him, as quickly as possible so that he could set about getting from me the information he needed. His plan was by now likely pretty desperate. Under calmer conditions, he could have got the information he needed, vanished for a while, and then come back surreptitiously to get the treasure. But there was great uncertainty here, and he had now left such a trail of bodies behind that, unless he made his move soon, any actions he wanted to take would be seriously constrained by the inevitable police presence. Despite all that, I remained fairly sure that Dickson had utter confidence in his own ability to overcome any obstacles.

  “Chuck”, Mike said to me, picking up his phone. He listened for a moment then set the phone down again.

  “Dickson just turned in at Arran Street. Chuck got a look at him.”

  “We’re on”, I said, and we took cover.

  Thirty-two

  We both heard the sound of a car revving, tires squealing, and then a loud clunk. Suddenly a smallish blue SUV rounded the corner of the house, swung out past the carport, entered the back garden, raced across the grass, smashed chairs and picnic table to pieces, and went head first into the infinity pool, where it stopped.

  I almost missed Dickson. He was running in a crouch across the grass toward the boathouse. He must have jumped from the car while it was crossing the grass.

  “There he is, Mike! There! Heading for the boathouse!”

  “Got him!” Mike said, and then the shooting started.

  Suddenly I panicked. The barbecue gas tank!

  From where Dickson had taken cover, he didn’t have a view of it, but I realized, all at once, that this was probably something he wouldn’t have missed in his planning. There is reliably one in every garden in cottage country. Somewhere within me, second thoughts about this whole business started to rise up, but I crushed them back down. There was nothing I could do now about the tank and about the situation we were in.

  Dickson and Mike were taking turns firing at each other, and every few shots there was the ricochet whine of a bullet glancing off the stone of the boathouse or our back wall. It’s terrifying being anywhere near a firefight, and I was acutely aware that one of us was likely to be hit sooner or later. There was a pause in the firing, the third one by my count, probably for reloading, and it seemed like the shooting had been continuing for a very long time. But most likely it had been not much more than a minute. During this third lull in the shooting, I became aware of the shouts of alarm from Dickson’s three men, bound into their chairs and sitting ducks for any stray shots. The firing resumed, and suddenly th
ese shouts of alarm rose to wails of panic. I had no time to be concerned about that. It was just another of the things I could do nothing about.

  I had been trying to think of some way we could shift the situation to our favour when a desperate idea occurred to me. I took one quick look at the shooting gallery, just in time to see Dickson duck back behind the boathouse, as another bullet whined out over the lake. There was a smear of red on the stone at the corner of the boathouse, probably blood, and probably the result of one of Mike’s shots producing a spray of stone chips that had then grazed Dickson’s hand or arm.

  I was taking cover just around the side of the house. I had to try to get around behind Dickson. Going completely around the house and into the square would put me in full view, but if I could get through the house – the root cellar! A little further along from where I was sheltering was the outer wall of our root cellar, essentially a cold storage room. That wall has an opening connecting the cellar and the outside air, and I thought I could squeeze through it and into the cellar. That would mean knocking out the heavy metal screening that covered the opening. I ran to the screened opening in the wall. It wasn’t large, and the more I looked at that opening the less certain I was that this was a viable plan. There’s no time for this, Whelan, I said brutally to myself and began kicking at the screen.

  The screen was made of heavy gauge wire, and I cursed Jimmy’s diligence at fixing it very securely, making sure that no animals would have an easy time getting in. After the seventh or eighth kick, the screen began to yield. Two more kicks, and my foot went through. I stuck my head and one arm through the hole and began squirming. For a moment, I began to panic as I thought I had become hopelessly wedged in the hole, but then both shoulders were through, at the cost of sharp bits of wire shredding the left arm of my shirt. Something was trickling down and off my left elbow, but then two more pushes sent me tumbling headfirst into the cold room, where I landed heavily on a pile of bricks and some sacking.

  I made my way through the cold room, limped up the half flight of stairs to the kitchen, went through the house, out the front door, and along the north side of the house. Jimmy had built some storage shelving at a spot beside the path that was shielded from external view by a line of cedars, and on this shelving he had piled irregular offcut lengths of planking. I picked up a four-foot length of two by two, wondering vaguely at the same time what use it would be against the cannon Dickson was wielding.

  The firing raged on. I was coming to the corner of the house, the path continuing on ten feet or so to the boathouse between two rows of cedars. Dickson would be somewhere ahead of me. I had no idea just what it was I had in mind to do, and the absurdity of my situation was quite plain. I had no weapon apart from a scruffy piece of wood. I knew the external layout of the boathouse, and as a result I knew that the only thing concealing me was the trees that lined the path. I couldn’t just rush Dickson, because I didn’t know exactly where he was. Taking a wild guess at his precise location was ridiculous. If he caught me in his peripheral vision, he would have me. And it was clear that it was me he wanted. If that happened, if I was captured, Dickson would hold all the cards again. I inched forward, relieved at least that the noise of the firing would easily cover any sound my advance might make.

  Then I saw a movement. Crouching down slowly, my line of sight came to a small break in the foliage. Suddenly, I could see Dickson’s arm and shoulder and the gun in his hand. He was half-turned away from me, about four feet distant, firing left-handed. It would have been impossible for me to move on him without him noticing from the corner of his eye.

  There was another lull in the firing. Was this a chance? Was Dickson turned away from me sufficiently? Was he preoccupied enough for me to mount a surprise? I had no real way of knowing. And even though I was concealed behind the cedar foliage, I had to be careful about moving, since peripheral vision is very sensitive and Dickson’s was probably honed to razor sharpness. And I was close enough to him to smell the smoke from his firing. In the relative quiet of the shooting lull, I had to remain frozen in place.

  Shit! I racked my brain, drawing a blank.

  Then there was a loud click, and another round of firing broke out.

  I heard a cry, and it hadn’t come from Dickson.

  Mike had been hit! The thought left me cold from dread.

  “Give up, Mr. Jefferson”, Dickson shouted, the sudden volume of his voice taking me by surprise. “I’m a better shot than you. It’s only a question of time.”

  “Go fuck yourself!” Mike shouted, and I’ve never been more relieved to hear his voice.

  So here we were. Mike wounded, possibly not able to return Dickson’s fire effectively, probably not able to hold out much longer.

  Shit! Shit! Shit!

  It was now down to me, and I could see no good options left.

  The firing had ceased for the moment. It was my bet that Dickson was trying to determine how much advantage he had gained by wounding Mike.

  Into this silence, between bouts of firing, a loud splash suddenly intruded. I sensed, as much as saw, Dickson turn to the right in a reflex response to the noise. There was a good chance that that action had taken me out of his peripheral vision, but this would be the case for only a second or two. It was now or never.

  Stepping out from behind my screen of cedar, I had the sudden fear that I might have dithered too long. But there was no time for second-guessing.

  Dickson was beginning to turn back to his previous stance. He had seen me. The man had a sixth sense. But it came just a bit late.

  There was a loud crack as my length of two by two struck Dickson’s gun forearm, which had just begun to swing toward me. The gun clattered off somewhere, Dickson stumbled a step forward, and then my two by two caught him again, this time across the back of the head.

  He went down. I saw Dickson’s gun lying on the stone path about six feet from where he was stretched out, and I kicked it well out of reach under the cedar hedge.

  It seemed that the gun battle had raged for a long time, but probably it had lasted less than two minutes.

  “He’s down, Mike!” I shouted, before stepping out where I was visible.

  Across the way, Mike appeared and walked toward me, his left shoulder soaked in blood.

  “It’s okay”, he said, registering my alarm and waving his Glock. “I’ll get a towel as soon as we’ve got this bastard hog-tied.”

  Once Mike and I were convinced that Dickson was securely bound, I went into the house and got a towel and the first aid kit. I soon had a makeshift binding on Mike’s wound, which would do until the EMS people arrived.

  A subdued chorus of whimpering reached us from our bound prisoners. Or at least from two of them. Those two had tipped over their chairs, trying to stay as low as they could and minimize themselves as targets. Blondie was in the chair closest to the corner of the house and closest to the line between Mike and Dickson. He hadn’t been so lucky. His chair remained upright, and he was in it, flopped sideways to the extent his bonds would allow. There was a gaping angry wound where a stray shot from Dickson had opened the left side of his neck. Almost his entire torso was soaked in his own blood.

  Jimmy emerged from behind the boathouse. I learned later that he had been working on the marine railway inside the boathouse, had ignored our arrival in that phlegmatic way that had Jimmy written all over it, but took cover when the shooting began. The boathouse doors onto the lake were open, and the half concrete block he had been using as a weight in his repair operation inside the boathouse was what he had thrown through the open doors and into the lake as a diversion. At the present moment, he just stood there, looking on in a matter-of-fact way, as though we had done nothing more momentous than burn out a nest of tent caterpillars. I walked over to Jimmy and embarrassed him horribly by giving him a huge hug.

  Though there had almost certainly been a dozen or more calls to the police from people in Largs, Mike now called them from his cellphone. I asked Jimm
y to go out in front of the house and direct them to the back when they arrived.

  Dickson, Tiverton, or whatever his real name was, didn’t sneer, didn’t scowl, didn’t rant. He just stood there, cool and expressionless. The polypropylene rope that bound his hands tightly behind his back probably hurt like hell, because of his fractured forearm, but he didn’t show it. From first sight of him, just a few minutes previously, his presence had chilled me, and even now, immobilized as he was, his expressionless face had me wondering whether he had a Plan B, or indeed even Plans C, D, and E. Did he have something up his sleeve? Were we missing something? At the moment, Dickson gave every impression of simply accepting the situation, not as a final defeat, but as though he was merely digesting the news on some event in which he had zero interest.

  Mike and I had only a couple of minutes to grill Dickson. He didn’t hesitate in answering. But all his answers, each of them just one word or a few words, were easy, glib, as though he were humouring lesser beings. I quickly came to recognize that what he said was being selected from a palette of possibilities, all of them equally suitable, and none, including the truth, having any special significance or priority over all the others. But none of that mattered. The evidence of the firefight Dickson had initiated was everywhere. Very soon there would be many questions to answer, and before this phase began, I used Mike’s cellphone to make a quick call to Cromarty. He would be able to turn this situation into gold for himself, and perhaps indirectly for me, and if I could help him stick it to his cynical superiors, absorbed in their absurd little management numbers games, it would be a red-letter day for everyone who mattered.

  A wailing of numerous sirens began to reach us. The police and the EMS crew turned up within a minute of each other.