his feet as soon as the door opened, casting a nervous glance at his brother.
The two of them were fairly new recruits and this was their first solo job. The fact that it had gone so awry was clearly making them antsy and Xavier intended to capitalize on that. ‘Tell me!’
As Xavier grabbed the chair, whipped it round and straddled it backwards, Danny shuffled over next to his brother. ‘We picked up the package like we were supposed to and were heading to the safe house to await further instructions. Then Jase noticed we were being followed, like. She kept coming up close and then lagging behind and then right up close again. She were on her phone and …’
‘You panicked?’
Relief flooded Jason’s face as he nodded.
Keeping his tone conversational, Xavier inclined his head slightly to one side. ‘And do I pay you to panic?’
Again, the boys exchanged worried glances and Xavier had to swallow a chuckle. This was such fun. He hardened his tone. ‘Then what happened?’
Words splurged out of Jason’s mouth like diarrhoea in a shithouse. ‘We braked really hard and she rammed into the back of us and Danny got out of the van and shot her. But she wun’t dead and then we saw that the package had punched out the back light.’ He gulped in a breath before continuing. ‘And so we shoved her in the back with him and kicked him a few times till he conked out. Then we came here instead of the first safe house.’
‘Why did you do that?’ Xavier jumped to his feet, his body full of bristling anger as he paced the room, nervous energy zapping off him like thunderbolts as he moved. The two idiots in front of him had no idea what to tell him … no idea at all. That’s what happened when you relied on inexperienced yokels. They made mistakes and then had no idea how to rectify them, so instead they compounded them.
‘What possessed you to bring her with you?’
Danny Boy bit his lip, like a 2-year-old. ‘Thought she might talk otherwise? Thought it best to keep her close, like.’
Give me strength. ‘And who is she?’
This time the colour drained from Danny’s face and Xavier thought he was going to be sick, so he looked at Jason. ‘Well?’
Jason blinked. ‘Dunno.’
Lowering his voice till it was barely a whisper, Xavier, punctuated each word with a pause. ‘You … don’t … know?’
Both men shook their heads and Xavier jumped to his feet, sending the chair toppling across the floor and began pacing. They’d had one simple transportation job to do. Not rocket science, not complex, not requiring more than a half-functioning brain and yet still they’d messed up. Messed up big time. Okay, so it wasn’t disastrous, but they didn’t know that. They had to be taught a lesson. Mistakes could be fatal and they needed to learn not to make any more. He stopped pacing and spun round to glare at them. The younger one backed up a step, glancing at his brother, looking for guidance.
‘It’s stupidity that gets us into this sort of mess. Things have been under the wire and I’d intended to keep it that way until we had full control. Now you imbeciles have scuppered that. Now we have to react and if there’s one thing I hate doing it’s reacting. Reacting implies a lack of control. Reacting adds variables over which we have no control.’
He glared at the vacant looks on the boys’ faces. Before this day was over, they would no longer be reacting, they would have learned their lesson … the hard way.
Xavier kicked the toppled chair and it crashed against the wall, making the brothers jump. ‘Take me to them.’
It was almost comical the way they scampered to the door, in their willingness to please. ‘They’re in the van in the barn.’
Xavier smiled. He’d already decided that they needed to dispose of Glass, after all it was his stupidity in trying to escape that had landed them here in the first place. Now that they’d got the bank account codes off him there was no need to keep him alive. How he’d had the gall to syphon money from his deals, Xavier couldn’t understand. The idiot would pay dearly for trying to cheat him, but perhaps nature would have done its job and the cheat may have frozen to death. That still left the problem of the woman … but hell … they’d just have to dump the bodies separately.
Using torches, the three men made their way through a fine drizzle of rain to the ramshackle old barn. Xavier was pleased to see that despite the isolated location, they’d still padlocked the doors shut. Maybe they weren’t quite as useless as he’d first thought. Perhaps he’d give them the benefit of the doubt this time. After all, he, Xavier, was nothing if not merciful and help was hard to come by these days.
Danny Boy opened the back door and Xavier jumped up. His torch danced over the male body sprawled near to the door.
‘What you waiting for? Get the fuck up here. Find out if he’s still with us. Then get the body disposed of. Get a move on.’
Jason jumped up. ‘Yes, boss.’
‘He dead?’ Xavier’s tone was hopeful.
Jason went over and held two fingers on the man’s neck, before looking up at his boss, shaking his head. ‘Nope, still alive.’
Ah well, that wouldn’t last. Xavier turned to the other figure, his torch dancing over her face taking in her blood-soaked coat and blouse, the paleness of her face. Shit! It’s her! Would you fucking believe it? ‘She’s a pig, you idiots.’
Jason placed his fingers on her neck, then looked up, all colour wiped from his face. ‘Aw crap, boss. She’s a dead pig.’
Dumping the body of a lowlife was one thing but killing a police officer and then disposing of her was another. Xavier didn’t feel quite as generous towards his two goons, now that he saw the extent of the mess they’d created. But he had more to worry about … much more. He couldn’t be sure that there was no forensic link back to him. The last thing he needed was to be drawn into the investigation of a murdered police officer and held up to any sort of public scrutiny. Not when he had a family and a legitimate job as well as his other sidelines to consider. ‘You got a spot in mind?’
‘Leave that to me and Jase. We’ve got the dump spot all sorted, like. We won’t let you down. Not again.’
‘They both need to be disposed of. But separately. She needs to be dumped where she won’t be found for months – the middle of the moors or somewhere. And him …’ Xavier kicked the prone man. ‘Finish him. And make sure you use the usual forensic measures – yeah?’
‘Eh?’ Jason looked puzzled, but his brother nudged him and said, ‘Bleach, ya tosser. Bleach.’
‘Okay, I’m counting on you. Get on with it.’
By the time Nikki, with the help of the young police officer, had coaxed her Vauxhall Zafira back to life at the crime scene and managed to set off back to Trafalgar House, it was getting dark and although the snow had stopped, the clouds still looked heavy with the promise of more to come. In truth, whilst the young lad had got out the jump leads Nikki always kept in her boot for such emergencies,
