Last Out From Roaring Water Bay (48 page)

I kept the gun levelled at him; a certain gut shot assured and Morgan knew it. I couldn’t help gritting my teeth when I had my say. “Don’t underestimate me, Morgan. You might think I’m inexperienced in the art of killing people, but I’m learning fast, no thanks to you. In fact, I’m quite open that I don’t even possess a certificate to prove my capabilities of being a crack shot. Yes, the gun might wobble when I try to shoot you in the chest because I’m not used to the recoil of this handgun and the bullet might just end up in one of your legs or it might even be in your skull. Either way, I’m not fussy. I can always fire a second or third bullet to finish the job.”

“You’re not a cold blooded murderer, Speed. Put the gun down and be sensible.”

I noticed a few beads of perspiration rolling down Morgan’s forehead. Now he was beginning to worry and I was enjoying watching him squirm.

I said calmly, surprising even myself. “I’ve never deliberately set out to kill a man before, regardless how nasty they are. I’ve hurt a few whose intentions were to hurt me. I’ve even hospitalised a few and I never sent flowers. I could do the same to you, shit breath, but I know I would suffer from horrible nightmares and that you would come out from under the gallons of excrement that surround your murderous regime smelling of prize roses; that you’ll slip away from justice with terrible ease, to live in a lavish and undeserved lifestyle.” The more I talked the angrier I got. “I can’t have that. I could never live with the guilt of allowing you to escape punishment for the deaths of my friends you had killed.”

I started to squeeze the trigger without a care in the world.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Speed! You’ll be killing the wrong man! Do you want that on your conscience for the rest of your prison life?”

“What makes you think I’ll see the inside of a prison?”

“For Christ sake man, I’m a government official. You’ll never explain my death away!”

“I no longer care what happens to me.”

I squeezed the trigger a little more. Morgan perspired from every conceivable pore in his body; his face horrified. He realized he was about to die. He flinched when I fired the gun. We all heard the metallic click of the gun firing when it shouldn’t have.

For a moment I stood there dumbfounded. The click from my gun should have produced an explosion of power. But there was no kickback knocking my hand slightly. No acrid stench drifting into my nostrils of a spent bullet. I expected all three, maybe even two. I’d be unlucky to get only one; but none at all? A misfire, I assured myself. Again and again my trigger finger repeated the firing motions only to receive the same unproductive results. Click-click-click-click-click echoed in my ears. Each click had my sweat glands working over-time. My body became tacky. I knew an empty barrel when I heard one. I looked at Morgan. He had flinched on every occasion I had pulled the trigger. But now he was smirking.

After the last chamber echoed its last metallic click, all I heard was, ‘oops’, and it hadn’t come from Morgan’s or Shayna’s mouth.

There was one deformity I never had and that was having eyes in the back of my head. If I’d have been watching my rear guard I might have reacted far quicker to the piece of cold steel sticking into the back of my right ear. I was suddenly deflated.

I made a futile attempt to look round but my face was shoved back by the nozzle. I managed a glimpse of the gun’s owner. I grinned in defeat and said calmly, “The miracles of modern science-eh-Hamer? I’ve got to admire the witch doctor that stitched you back together.”

“Shut your face, Speed! When you select a gun, choose one with bullets in the chamber; a professional would have checked first.”

I had to smile at that remark too because it made sense. “Why do I get this feeling that you sent out your hired killers with empty guns. Ah-yes, Love and Hate liked to kill silently: up close so as to stare in the eyes of their victim. They weren’t gun merchants in any sense. Maybe the idea was we’d strangle each other to death and save you the trouble. And last man standing conveniently picked off by a sniper or the pathetic car bomb trick. But what else could I have expected from two cunning and deceitful bastards who never check their work.”

“Your deductions are very accurate, Speed. You’ve got it in one.”

I twitched in anger.

Hamer reacted quickly and pressed his gun harder in my ear. “Don’t even think about using that gun as a club, or a projectile. I do possess a sharp shooters certificate that complements this gun in my hand, so drop the weapon, Speed. Do it now!”

I let the gun clatter to the floor. Morgan flew at me as if he wanted to hit me with a right hook but stopped himself; he’ll have probably broken his fingers in trying to break my jaw.

Over my shoulder I said to Hamer, “The apparition of your spirit rising from the grave, Hamer, should have had me scared shitless. Strange, though, how I predicted your resurrection was imminent.”

“So my horrific death on the boat didn’t convince you?”

“It almost threw me,” I said coolly. “It could almost construe as a nice deception, Hamer. Plant a bomb with a quick timer, slip aboard a waiting craft and sail back to the
Flying Fish
, nobody the wiser.”

“It was necessary to prevent you and your seafaring partner from escaping by sea.”

“It upset Shamus; he thinking you’d died on his boat. Such a nasty trick, but then your middle name is
nasty!
”

“How does it make you feel, Speed, knowing I’m alive and well?”

“I’m sick in the stomach to be totally honest. Fat bastards like you don’t warrant any sympathy whatsoever.”

Hamer seethed and twisted the gun barrel into the side of my head to silence me.

He’d no chance of doing that. I was too wound up to stay tight-lipped, and I was verbally at him again. “I had you down as dodgy the first moment you turned up on my doorstep; the coincidence was too great. But then I’ve never really trusted policemen regardless of what walk of life they descend from. I played along. It was tripping you up which proved to be the hard bit. And all that eagerness to help and the bullshit you concocted about chaperoning me for my safety; that was a real classic. Setting me up more like! When you inadvertently told me about McClusky’s warehouse, stupidly, I believed you were relaying useful information, not sending me into a frigging trap to be fucked up by warring terrorists. And while I was supposedly getting shot to pieces, you took the opportunity to break into my home with the sole intention of searching my place for the aerial photographs extracted from the reconnaissance camera; remember? And all that bullshit about Winston barking, and that you were worried about me. Your problem was gaining the dog’s confidence, so you took along with you a bag of dog biscuits and fed the mutt. I saw the screwed-up wrapper in your jacket pocket.”

“How observant you were, Speed.” From the point of facing death only moments earlier, Morgan was confidently rejuvenated. He stabbed his forefinger into my face. “You’re absolutely wrong, Speed. The main intention was for McClusky to capture and scare you enough so you’d run into our caring hands for protection. Only you’d disappeared, unfortunately. It rather screwed our plans. It didn’t help matters that McClusky’s double crossing antics to sell our merchandise to pissed-off terrorists forced our hand dramatically and we had to send in the troops.”

I sneered. “It was a diabolical disaster.”

Morgan flicked his forefinger into the air. “On the contrary, Speed, it worked in our favour. All the mess McClusky created was wiped out in that gun battle at his warehouse. We couldn’t have anticipated a more perfect solution. It saved us the problem of killing the bumbling baboon ourselves. The whole episode blamed on warring terrorists; you couldn’t have made it up; just perfect”

“You drew lucky, that’s all Morgan. What if I had been killed? Who would you have got to find the I-52?”

Morgan waved his hand in acceptance of his flaw. “Your death wouldn’t be a great loss. With you out of our way we would have eventually found the photographs you had in your possession. We’d have ripped your home apart piece by piece until we got what we wanted. But never mind, everything has now fallen magnificently into perspective.”

I gave Shayna a hard glare. “What about Miss blabber-mouth over there. Where does she fit into your long lost dream of heading nowhere?”

“You have me all wrong,” Shayna protested her innocence.

I wasn’t listening to her.

“You think you’re fucking clever, don’t you Speed?” Hamer seethed.

“You’ve got to be frigging kidding, Hamer. I’d stupidly missed a vital piece of information when we first met at the ‘Greaseless Grill’ in London.”

“What was that, know all?”

“That you’d met Old Tom at his farm but you never even recognized his dog Winston when you saw him at my place; he’s a very distinctive dog. Winston was always beside his master; always! Winston wasn’t there because the poor dog had already been clobbered with a large spanner by either Love or Hate so that would put you there at the farm around the time of Tom’s death. And I being an idiot allowed you to tag along when in fact it was like having shit lodged in the pattern on the sole of my shoe which was difficult to clean but the smell never seemed to go away.”

Hamer smashed the barrel across my ear. “Your mouth is full of shit, Speed!”

Morgan said, “What happened to Love and Hate?”

“They’re dead,” I said with pride. “If you want to claim their bodies you’re going to have to scrape the two bastards from the rocks below Mizen Head fog station.”

“It’s your doing, Speed?” Morgan asked, surprised.

“I’m here and they’re not rather answers your curiosity.”

Morgan shrugged uncaringly. “They fucked up! They deserved their doom. The less people I have on the payroll, the better! We should have hired you as the assassin instead, Speed.”

“I thought they were the best?” I assumed Hamer was talking across to Morgan.

“They got careless and overconfident,” Morgan said, impassively.

Hamer kept moaning at Morgan. “I told you at the beginning if you want a job done, then do it your fucking self!”

I suddenly understood what Hamer was getting at. I said quickly, “Kill me and the whereabouts of the gold goes with me.”

“There was no gold amongst the submarine’s cargo,” Morgan said sharply. “Only dead men past and present; as you so stated, the place was a fucking graveyard. If there had been gold then it’s disappeared for good.”

I said. “I’d reconsider your assumption.”

Morgan gave me a curious stare. “You’re holding out on us, Speed?”

I prodded myself in the chest. “This so called bumbling amateur, you refer to, at least has an inkling of where the gold might be hidden.”

I was telling them all this to prolong my life.

Hamer dug the gun barrel into my cheek. “Where have you hidden the gold?”

“Get a life, Hamer! I haven’t got the wretched stuff.”

“He’s a fucking lying bastard!”

“I might be a bastard, but I’m no liar.”

“Arrogance right to the end, hey, Speed.”

I didn’t like the sound of what he said, but I didn’t show any fear, nor did I flinch when he began his heavy-handed Morse code on my face with the gun in cohesion with his words. “Where’s-the-fucking-gold?”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid, Hamer? At the moment I don’t know.”

I sensed Hamer was getting frustrated and itching to pull the trigger. Morgan was thankfully calmer and finger signalled to Hamer to calm down.

Morgan actually smiled. “I’m beginning to find you quite amusing, Speed. It fascinates me the amount of knowledge you seem to have. What does disturb me is the efficiency you have shown as a killing machine. I find that rather strange for just a metal detector man. That makes me highly suspicious. Maybe you’re not who we think you are, Speed?”

“I’m the genuine article alright, with a few inclusions on the art of being callous. Scum, as you are, Morgan, or better known as the ‘The Housekeeper’, has succeeded in turning me into a machine that I’m not really keen to be associated with. But you chose to mess up my life by murdering my friends which has done more than infuriate me. It has made me realize that my approach to life has been rather boring. I’ve now this sudden passion to rid dirt like you from the face of the earth with a mere flick of my forefinger.”

Morgan grinned. “They’re tough words coming from a man with a gun to his head. A mere click of my fingers and half your brains will be splattered against the wall. Is it your wish to die? Are you brave enough to die for nothing?”

“I take it you mean am I scared to die?”

Hamer pressed the nozzle against the side of my nose this time. “Well are you, Speed?”

“Now let me think! If I base it on the principle that a person has no recollection of being born, as they’re pulled screaming from that orifice of security; therefore I doubt very much a person would remember dying. Take that into consideration, I can confidently predict I don’t fear death. And I can confidently add that along with my demise nobody gets to know where the Japanese gold is or the half a ton of
opium
amongst the cargo. Now imagine the price of narcotics on the open market of this despicable world.”

Morgan’s eyebrows arched. “What opium?”

“The opium classified as medical supplies that was on a check list I managed to inspect.”

I could tell Morgan was thinking hard before he said, “My divers didn’t find anything of any value on the submarine, just the two men you eliminated and a stack of bones inside the submarine.”

“That’s because in 1944 a certain Irish terrorist, who went by the name of McCracken, took the frigging lot.”

“What an interesting context of events, Speed. Drugs could be the icing on the cake, so to speak. There would be enough money for all of us; even you, Speed.”

“You wouldn’t let me live long enough to spend any.” I tapped the side of my head. “But providing I’ve the information stored here, I’m quietly confident you won’t kill me just yet. You might want to torture me but you won’t kill me.”

“He’s fucking lying about the gold!” Hamer blurted out, his face red with anger. “He’s stalling. Let’s get rid of the bastard, now!”