Pawn, page 8
But at least he finally had somewhere to run to. That was so much better than just running away.
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Chapter Seven.
“So let me get this straight Hopkins.” Hopkins winced, fearing what was coming, knowing he would be in the inspector’s firing line. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. It never mattered. The inspector was understandably upset and someone had to be held accountable to his biting tongue.
“Three shooters, fourteen people injured, all in a well frequented hotel during the early evening with people all around, and we don’t have a single idea who any of them are? Is that what you’re telling me Hopkins? Plenty of blood and witnesses. Lots of shell casings, but no bodies. Cameras that were down for maintenance. Witnesses who can’t get their stories straight. And we still have nothing. We don’t even have Hennassy either?” Hopkins gulped nervously before nodding. He didn’t say anything though. It would only get him into more trouble. Painful experience had taught him that.
“And how can that be?” Naturally there was no answer. This whole mess was only three hours old and answers were thin on the ground, like the gunmen, two of whom at least had been badly injured. But the inspector knew that as well as he did. In the end he settled for sighing instead of yelling. The sergeant hoped that was a good sign, but there was never any certainty with Barns.
“So lets go through it again. Two men in the room, fighting. One with guns, the other with knives. And a half naked man seen running from the room that sounds very much like our Mr. Hennassy. Bleeding everywhere, and a ring of blood around his throat. Which would fit disturbingly well with that garrotting wire.” He pointed at the evil looking device lying in the corner of the room, still covered in blood and with a little yellow plastic tag beside it. Forensics would probably tell them in due course that it was Hennassy’s blood.
“So one man had him, but didn’t kill him, and then the other man stepped in.” That made no sense to Barns, unless they both wanted something from Hennassy. Something he couldn’t give them if he was dead. Something they hadn’t found in his house. Information. It had to be. Rufus Hennassy knew something.
“And then there’s the money inspector.” Hopkins pointed at the suitcase still filled with money, though more of it was scattered around the room, some of it riddled with bullet holes and more covered with blood.
“Oh yes. Half a million, maybe more in cash. Someone wanted to buy something from Mr. Hennassy. Information probably. The other intended to use more brutal methods. Or maybe they both did. Either way one had him, and the other couldn’t let him keep him. So they fought and our friendly victim made his escape during the confusion. Just what are the odds of that Hopkins?” Hopkins just shrugged, what else was there to say? It was madness and chance all interwoven in a tapestry of crime. He followed the inspector as he walked out of the room, carefully trying to avoid touching the remains of the shattered door or stepping into a puddle of blood, and then down the long hall.
“And then he runs down the hallway, covered with blood, and our second shooter arrives, coming up the stairs, with another cannon. Fifty calibre like the man in the room, so possibly the two were together.” After all there weren’t that many fifty calibre handguns around, and it took a particular type of criminal to want to use one. Someone who valued noise and power over accuracy. The smoke and noise must have been incredible in an enclosed space like a hotel, as was the damage to the walls opposite the landing.
“Witnesses said he was a big man.” Hopkins obviously wanted to bite out his tongue the moment the words slipped out, but it was too late. What had been said was said, and so he waited nervously for the inevitable explosion as Barns blasted him for saying something stupid. After all what could it matter that the man was large? But Barns was in a forgiving mood, and he simply ignored him as he continued his reconstruction.
“Desperate to get away Mr. Hennassy leaps out a third story window on to an awning. And did he even know that there was an awning there?” The inspector walked over to the broken window and looked out over the dark city street, filled with police cars and flashing lights, and of course reporters. They were everywhere, a plague in truth, being held back by the patrol officers, while more were busy interviewing the hundreds of witnesses. Most of them were guests of course, and most of them were hysterical even several hours later. It must have been very frightening for them, which went nowhere to describing what it must have been like for Hennassy.
“Shit he must have been scared.” Terrified and panicking as he ran in every direction, was Barns thought. Though he couldn’t have proven it, Barns would have placed good money on the thought that Mr. Hennassy had been simply running blindly. He’d probably never even seen the window before he crashed through it, never even considered that there might be an awning outside to break his three story fall. He’d just run and who could blame him..
“Then our big man with the cannon shoots at Hennassy from up here, a perfect target, but he’s interrupted by the machine gunners across the road. He or they opened up on him, he returned fire, and there’s blood at both scenes indicating that they were both shot, and once more Hennassy gets away in the confusion. Just how many lives does this man have?”
“There can’t be many left inspector. And he might have been caught by the machine gunners.” Hopkins was only saying what they all knew to be true, and yet Barns knew he was wrong.
“No.” The inspector turned to him, the oddest look on his face. It was the merest reflection of the truly strange places his thoughts were running through his tired brain of late. “I don’t think so.”
“He survives a fatal car crash with only a few scratches. He survives being machine gunned down in the road. He survives two firefights again with only scratches, despite being half garrotted. If there’s one thing that our Mr. Hennassy seems to be, it’s unbelievably lucky. Unbelievable cursed, always in the absolute wrong place at the wrong time, and yet also unbelievably lucky.”
“He got away. The witnesses said it. A half naked, blood soaked man, haring down the street in the middle of the night, no one chasing him. He got away. Anyone else would be dead half a dozen times over, but not him.”
“He got away, and by now he’s deep in hiding.” The question was where? They needed to find him and not only to confirm the details of the attacks. He needed protection, serious protection. But even then Barns knew that they wouldn’t find him. Something was going on, something impossibly strange, and he was the very epicentre of a storm of the bizarre. Deep in his marrow Barns knew that they wouldn’t find him. Not until that storm had finally blown itself out.
“We could tell the press. Maybe we can use them to find him.” Barns would have hit his sergeant then as he suggested the obvious answer. The press were the natural enemy of the police, and most especially him. Except that it was what they had to do. He hated the press. He hated giving statements and having people shoving microphones in his face. He hated the endless flash of cameras in his face and the endlessly repeated questions. And he hated them even more than usual of late.
After someone had tipped them off about the painting, and he had his suspicions as to who, he had not only become their newest target, but he had also had strips torn off him by the chief. A leak like that was more than unprofessional. It was disloyalty. But Barns was sure the story hadn’t come from his people. There was simply too much information along with photos of the painting. He couldn’t vouch for the techs of course, since they didn’t come under his purview. But if he had to guess who, Barns would have said it was Venner who’d leaked it, along with the photos.
The man was playing an angle of course. There was some way that he still intended to profit from the theft. Even if the painting was uninsured. Though he couldn’t quite see how yet, Barns would have bet his last penny on it. People were true to their nature and Venner’s nature was greed. Maybe he thought that he’d get the painting back, which considering that Barns was still certain he’d had a hand in stealing, wasn’t impossible. Maybe he hoped that the publicity would give any buyers second thoughts about receiving it. Or maybe he even hoped that when he got the painting back, the notoriety would drive up the price. A stolen Rembrandt, recovered. That had to be worth more than a normal one.
Still going to the press was a good suggestion. The only one they had. Hopkins was right. And they had to flush Rufus Hennassy out and get him into protective custody as quickly as possible. If they could. Before someone else found him, and another fire fight broke out. Barns knew there were people looking for him. People who didn’t want to protect him. All they wanted was the painting, and they thought he had it. By now Mr. Hennassy did too.
Yes, the media was the right choice. It was their only choice. But it would have to be very carefully done. They’d have to be very selective about what they said and what they didn’t. And above all else, they couldn’t actually link him with the painting. That would just set more people on Mr. Hennassy’s tail, start more fights and turn a slowly evolving nightmare into a full-scale disaster.
The inspector sighed quietly as he realised it was going to have to be him who made the statement. All those people, the cameras and microphones, the endless questions. And even though he would give them nothing more than a bare statement, something about a person of interest, they would hound him for days.
Sometimes it wasn’t an easy life being a copper. But it must be so much worse being Rufus Hennassy just then.
If only they knew where he was.
Yet even as he wondered about that he had to also ask himself if it was really the best choice, finding him. The man had powerful enemies. Enemies with deep pockets. And too many police liked money as much as crooks. Even their best protective custody might not be so secure. It was something he suspected that their missing victim already knew. Rufus Hennassy was the only person Rufus Hennassy would trust. If he could find a hidey hole and keep his head down for a few months, maybe that would be the safer path for him. Certainly he would think so.
But it wasn’t safe. Not for everyone else. Already Barns was becoming convinced that Mr. Hennassy would survive. That seemed to simply be the way of things. But all around him as his enemies hunted him relentlessly, others would fall. Getting him into protective custody might not be enough to save Mr. Hennassy. He wasn’t sure anything would be. But maybe it would stop the innocents getting caught up in this mess.
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Chapter Eight.
The doorbell rang, and for a second or two Rufus’ heart started racing. He’d barely stopped his heart from racing during the entire previous two days and several times he’d worried he was having an attack. The slightest sound made him jump, and the noise of a car driving past down the street was enough to set his knees shaking. He’d barely slept at all, and those few times he’d drifted off, he wished he hadn’t.
Every time he closed his eyes, a man with breath of garlic and mouthwash was with him, whispering in his ear, and pulling a wire noose tight around his neck, while another was shooting at him with a thousand machine guns. And then at night in the dark, it became a thousand times worse as his new enemies were joined by the dark memories of his childhood and the sound of footsteps creaking on the stairs.
He hadn’t been this frightened since he’d been a young boy, always waiting for his older brother to beat the crap out of him, or worse, the sound of his father’s heavy tread on the stairs. It had been a long time since those days, he’d done his best to put them far behind him, he’d almost forgotten. But now the fear was back and worse than ever. He’d lost the safety of his home and its deadlocks. He didn’t even have his normal refuges to flee to, the school or the hospital. Like a worm flushed out of its hole by heavy rain, he was exposed, lying there out in the sunlight, helpless, waiting to be eaten.
When the doorbell rang for the second time though, he remembered where he was, that no one knew of this place, and he knew that it had to be innocent. There was no way anyone could find him. Besides, bad people, murderers and monsters in the night didn’t ring doorbells. He hoped. Still as he dropped his oily rag on the bench beside the Jaguar, and straightened his overalls, the only clothes he had left since his escape from the hotel, he knew a few more twinges of terror. After all he had no idea who was after him or how many, and he wasn’t completely sure how they’d found him at the hotel.
He couldn’t really be sure of anything. Which was why he kept his hand on the solid steel wrench in his pocket. It was comfortably heavy and he hoped it would make a good impression on someone’s head if the need arose. And he promised himself, if it looked bad, he would hit first and ask questions later. Never again would he let someone slip a cord around his neck.
Rufus made his way in through the house from the garage, he loved the fact that the small beach house had an internal access between the garage and the living room, especially now when people were hunting him. His own house in town only had a carport, and he couldn’t have parked a classic Jaguar there let alone worked on it. That was why he’d rented the lock up.
In the main room, he stopped for a moment by the kitchen bench to take a good look at the front door, which happily had full length glass insets on both sides. The glass was textured which made it difficult to see anything clearly on the other side, but still he could see enough to know that his visitor wasn’t a huge Russian with a cannon, or a smaller man with a chain, or even someone holding a machinegun. It wasn’t a policeman either. She was a woman and by the looks of things she was holding a cake tin. That seemed odd, but at least not threatening.
Wiping his hand on his overalls first, he didn’t want to mess up Kirby’s house, it wasn’t the most well decorated house in the world but the man would never stop complaining if he left a single mark, he walked the rest of the way through the lounge and opened the front door. Then he just stood there, dumbstruck.
The woman was gorgeous, a vision of loveliness, a dream in the flesh. Dressed in something summery and colourful that swished around a little in the breeze, she was soft and blond and willowy with all the right curves where a man would want them, and the face of an angel. In fact if someone had gone through and created a list of all his likes and wants, she would have been the woman that ticked all his boxes. Every single one of them. And then she smiled and he knew he’d done her a terrible injustice with his thoughts. She was beyond that.
“Hello?” It was embarrassing how long it took him just to find that single word, but she was far from what he’d expected. Then again, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Kirby was often going on about his surfer chick neighbours at work, and how they all jumped into his arms, but this was no teenage hottie in a bikini. This was a woman in all her splendour.
“Oh, have I come at a bad time?” The woman seemed genuinely concerned, something he simply wasn’t used to. Maybe she had good reason though, since he was covered from head to foot in grease. Jaguars, especially classic E types, weren’t the most reliable of vehicles, and getting at the engine’s innards even to do something as simple as clean a few sparkplugs was a messy job. But it had to be done. Especially when he needed a reliable car, just in case. And besides, he’d figured when he’d first moved in that a little grease on his face would make for a good disguise.
“No, no that’s fine. Just working on the car.” He answered on automatic, really only staring at her face. She was a stunningly beautiful woman, the sort whose face would be found on great works of art, and whose body should have been gracing the catwalks of Paris. In all his life he’d never seen such a dream given form. And when she smiled, she only became more so.
“Will it live?” She smiled some more in good humour, and he almost went weak at the knees. What was wrong with him? He never reacted like this to a woman. And yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“Yeah, she’s just old.” Was that the right thing to say to a vision of beauty standing on his doorstep? Letting her know that he drove an old wreck of a car? Surely no woman ever wanted to hear that. And why yeah instead of yes? He knew how to speak the Queens English properly, and not like some vagrant street kid.
“She’s a classic Jaguar.” Desperately he tried to cover up for his lapse, and failed again. As explanations went it was probably ok, but as recoveries went it was simply awful, and he would have kicked himself if he could have. In a single sentence he’d just switched from an uneducated street kid to a stuck up petrol head who referred to his car as a woman. What woman would ever find either of those attractive? And he wanted her to find him attractive. Desperately. He’d never wanted anything so much in his entire life.
“Can I help you?” Mentally he kicked himself a few times as the words slipped out as though he was a shop assistant, wondering if he was really as bad with woman as it appeared. Maybe he was. But it had never mattered before.
“Yes, I’m Di. My home is just next door and I saw that there was someone new in Mr. Winstone’s home and thought I’d introduce myself.” Of course she was. Kirby had always said he liked his neighbours, but he’d never said what was so good about them. Suddenly it was all becoming obvious. Lucky dog! So why did he suddenly hate him so much?
