The cocking handle was sited on the top of the weapon. I shoved a mag into the housing in the pistol grip and listened for it to click home, then pulled back.
The Jock was off the Richter scale. 'I'm trying to run a fucking business here!'
He stormed out and I went straight to the back door. I'd got what I'd come for. Time to fuck off. But everything round the back was more than just locked: nails had been punched through the door into the frame. I decided to wait for things to calm down in the bar. It wasn't my fight.
I went to the part-open door. Stu was trying to make himself heard over the music. The two Serbs were up on their feet and carrying. Mr Sheen had rammed his pistol into the fifteen-year-old's mouth. She was on the sofa, her head pushed hard against the backrest. Her chest heaved with fright and tears streamed down her face.
One of the Americans he'd been yelling at before lay motionless on the floor behind her. He had a hole in the side of his head that leaked on to the wood.
The old wizard lay in a pool of blood this side of the bar. His .53 lay next to him, the empty cases scattered about.
Everybody else had faded to the edges, but Stu was as close to the Serb as he could get. 'Fuck off, and don't come back. I don't want no more of your shite. Go!'
They weren't impressed. Top Lip pointed his weapon at Stu's head. Like Mr Sheen's, it looked to be a PPK, a small weapon, easy to hide down by your bollocks. 'No. We're staying.'
Mr Sheen nodded back to the body and his three mates hovering round it. 'That fuck started this. They should be kicked out. Kick them out now, or we will kill your whore.'
Stu was coming to the boil. 'I don't think you heard me right, son. I'm not having no more of your shite—'
Mr Sheen pulled the trigger.
Settee stuffing exploded behind her head, then got soaked with blood and brain. The monkeys' screeches filled the air once more.
Fuck this. Stu was about to get it and I might be stuck here all night.
Gripping the Mini-Ero like it was a pistol, arm straight out, right hand on the pistol grip, left hand over right and pushing back with a bent arm to make a stable platform for the weapon, I kicked the door wide open and charged into the room.
The two of them were straight ahead of me, maybe eight or nine metres away.
I stood ready to fire, the web of my hand hard against the pistol grip to release the safety, both eyes open, legs shoulder-width apart, left foot forward, left toe pointing where I was intending to shoot. Almost the classic shooting-range stance, so there could be no doubt that I knew what I was doing.
They swung to face me. There was fuck-all to say. They knew what was required. But Stu didn't want them to be in any doubt. 'I told you – fuck off, don't come back. Fucking animals.'
He was just noise to them. It was me they stared at.
Would I? Would I open up?
My eyes broadcast I would. They were clear – and the weapon stayed rock steady.
They exchanged a glance. Very slowly, their PPKs came down. Without saying a word, they walked to the door. Mr Sheen wiped the girl's blood off his hands on a seat cover on his way out.
Stu bellowed for his son. He came running downstairs. Then, as the Serbs' wagon sparked up, he called for the guards. They stumbled in and he barked commands. They shouldered their AKs and started dragging the bodies away.
Stu looked from them to his boy, and then to me. He stretched out a hand. In it was my three hundred.
'I owe you, lad. Fucking animals, they should leave that sort of shit out on the street.'
The guards were getting very busy now the shooting had stopped. They grabbed hold of the wizard's feet and dragged him past. We both looked down.
Stu spat on his face. 'He was also a shite. He gave two of the girls gonorrhoea last month.'
The boy came over to his father and he slapped him affectionately round the back of his head. 'One of them's his mother.'
I followed the body outside and stepped back into the shadows as the Serbs' 4x4 screamed out of the compound.