NAUGHTY BUT NICE?: an éclair to die for - Chapter 6

Two down, two to go. The odds continued to get better for Lathom. But he had to act quickly. Soon they would get restless, text again or even call. He couldn’t carry on bluffing. At the moment they felt secure. Still felt the other two were looking out for them. He could still surprise them. He wouldn’t be able to creep-up on them both, or burst into the cottage guns blazing, who knew what might get damaged. He needed to think. So while thinking he walked back to the 4x4 with it’s silent passenger, then drove back to collect his colleague.

Half an hour later, still an hour before he was due home. Lathom was driving with some difficulty up the track to his cottage in the 4x4. He was struggling not just because it was automatic(another pet hate), but because he wasn’t in the driving seat. He had driven part way up the track slowly with only side-lights on, then stopped where the track curved. From here is ran perfectly straight up to the cottage, he changed seats.
Now the driving seat was occupied by the driver, black insulating tape holding his gloved hands on the steering wheel and his head upright against the head rest, a scarf covering his smashed face. The passenger seat contained CJ, tied to the seat with the tow rope. Lathom was crouched behind the drivers seat, his right hand holding the driver’s gun and his left reached between the front seats and steered the car. He had switched on the head-lights and put the car in drive and slowly crept up the track to the cottage. He stopped alongside the cottage pulling the selector into park.

Whoever came out first he would kill, then worry about the other. He thought they would have broken in through the back door, so would come out that way. But the first one came out of the front door behind the car. He couldn’t see Lathom due to the privacy glass. Stormed up to the car and hammered on the glass.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’
Lathom reached over and opened the driver’s window. The man leaned inside shouting.
Then saw the corpses staring dead-eyed straight ahead, opened his mouth and received a bullet in the side of his head. Lathom closed the window reaching over pulled the keys from the dash-board. Three.

Slowly he opened the near-side rear door and slid out, shutting it behind him. He crept along the side of the car. Where was that little shit?
The front door mirror exploded in a shower of glass. 'Ah, that’s where' he thought.
behind the old pig-sty. Lathom slowly slide down the side of the car to the tail-gate. Things were certainly looking up. The odds were now even. Two men, two guns.

Now it was just a matter of holding your nerve, who ever moved first would die. He needed to get him to move from the pig-sty. How could he do it?
It was dark, every time one of them moved the security lights came on. Lathom cursed himself, he had just installed the lights. There was a switch which allowed them to be permanently on, or controlled by the infra-red sensors, but that was inside.

He moved very slowly along the tail-gate, if he moved very slowly he didn’t trigger the lights. Occasionaly the rear light would come on as the man tried to move round the side of the pig-sty, but he quickly retreated and stayed put. How could he get him to show his face, so he could get a clear shot?
‘Are you having a good day out? No, I suppose not’ Lathom shouted.
‘Must have seemed like such a good idea, a nice trip to the country and a murder.’
‘Four young thugs in shiny suits, with shiny guns and their shiny hearse.’
‘Now, there’s only you, don’t worry there’s room in the back for one more.’
Lathom was crouching behind the off-side rear light his gun trained on the side of the sty, if the man leaned out he would have a clean shot.
‘Which brother are you, Tweedle-dum or tweedle-dee? Oh, he was Dee, so that makes you dumb’
He saw the sihouette of the man’s head as the security light came on and fired.
Click! Click! The gun had jammed.

Lathom had a difficult decision to make. Wait here until the man came to kill him, or run across the open space between the car and the front door of the house, hope the man missed. He had a gun in the house, but once he moved the security light would come on and he would be a sitting target. He needed a diversion.
‘when I get my hands on you I’m going to burn you alive in this shit-hole of yours’. shouted the man.

That’s what the petrol was for thought Lathom. So far the man hadn’t realised the gun had jammed. Lathom was furious as he had left CJ’s gun in his jacket as he was sure one would be enough, serve him right for being too smug. It could be a fatal mistake, he thought. If he could trigger another of the lights it would shake things up. In his pocket he still had the remote control for the garage door. He wasn’t sure if it would work from this distance. He hoped that if the door opened it would trigger the rear light keeping the man behind the pig-sty. Then he could sprint to the house as the man wouldn’t see his light come on. He would have to time it carefully.

Lathom pressed the remote, heard a faint whirring. The rear light clicked on, he was immediately on his feet and sprinting for the front door. The side light clicked on and he threw himself through the door, bolting it behind him. Then charged through the cottage and bolted the rear door. They said an englishman's home was his castle, this was Lathom‘s. Now he needed a weapon. Switching off the lights as he went he went up stairs to his study. He knew the cottage so well he could easily move around in the dark.

In the study he slid open the role-top desk, pulled out the draw and reached into the secret compartment. There he Withdrew a package which contained the Webley and the twelve apostles. He loaded it with , Peter, John, Paul, Matthew, Luke and Thomas, with the other saints in his pocket as reserves.

From the study window he could see the sty, but couldn’t get a clean line of sight. He needed to draw him out. Lathom went down stairs to the light switch and switched it on. The security lights were now permanently on, lighting up the land all around the cottage. Effectively trapping the man behind the sty. He quietly opened a small side window on the side of the kitchen furthest away from the sty, and shouted.
‘Still enjoying yourself, sitting shivering and shitting yourself in your shiney suit?’
‘Wait til’ I get my hands on you, you bastard!’was the reply. Followed by a shot which hit the stone wall along side the window.
‘I’d be more concerned by what I’ve got planned for you’ said Lathom. ‘As far as I can see you’ve two choices. Make a run for it, but I’ve got your car keys and anyway I’d cut you down before you got half way.’
‘Or you can throw out your gun. Come out from behind your sty, kneel down and I’ll put you out of your misery’ Another bullet hit the wall.
‘Don’t worry it’ll only take one bullet, like your brother’. A third shot hit the wall. Now he only had three bullets left while Lathom had all twelve.
The snow had stopped and the moon was illuminating the fields around the bright oasis of light that the cottage had become. Lathom was sitting on the floor by the back door which he had quietly un-bolted and opened. The bright spot lights cast the dooway in shadow, from outside you couldn’t tell it was open. He had his eyes tightly shut to accustom himself to the dark.

‘Coming ready or not.’ he shouted and switched off the main power supply. All the light went out. Crouching down he slipped out through the door out into the pale moon light. A bullet smashed into the wall above his head. Two left he thought.

He only had a brief time before the mans eyes would become accustomed to the dark. He pulled back the hammer on the Webley, and ran straight towards the sty, the man heard his foot steps and fired wildly in his direction. One left.
Then turned and began to run. Lathom could see him quite clearly and could have easily killed him from this range but chose to shoot low and hit him in the leg. He was running quickly so tumbled head over heals in a cloud of snow, his chromed gun reflecting the moon-light as it tumbled out of his hand. Lathom strode over toward the prone man, who was frantically scrabbling in the deep snow looking for his gun.
‘Time to meet St. Peter’said Lathom.
The man looked frightened and puzzled ‘What?’
‘No, not at the pearly gates, he’s here in this’
The pumpkin face imploded.

Lathom sat in his kitchen, a glass of malt in front of him, together with the chrome gun. The silencer from the 4x4 fitted perfectly as did the cartridges from CJ’s gun. He was looking through the man’s phone for clues to his betrayer. There it was in the contacts, a name he recognised. RICHARDSON.

He would have to act quickly, once Richardson realised the hearse wasn’t coming back he would send someone else. So it had to be tomorrow.
The hearse was parked safely in his locked garage, three bodies inside and their boss in the boot. When he returned he planned to dump it into the swollen river. Hopefully the police would think it a drug deal that had gone wrong.