Blackwater - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,15

my kitchen I had stopped caring how it happened. Perhaps it was when my first finger was bent far enough to snap. Shame leads to rage in men, did you know that? If you want to see a white-hot tantrum, try humiliating a man, especially in public. Try making one afraid and then laughing about it.

I was too cold to take pleasure in the conversation with my brother, but I could see that he did. Even without his coat he seemed too full of interest to feel the wind off the sea. He moved his hands in sharp cutting gestures when he talked, and he laughed at my description of Michael, making me repeat details so that he would know either of them on sight.

I hadn’t realized how much planning would go into removing two men from the world. My brother was my single extra card, my one advantage that no one else knew about. He’d parked a mile from the house and walked. No one had a clue where he was and no one would ever be able to connect him to anything that happened. For a few days at least, he was going to enjoy himself. No guilt, no conscience.

We sat at the kitchen table and he swore when I told him there wasn’t anything left to drink in the house. I’d thrown the empty bottle of Laphroaig into the sea before he came, a better splash in imagination than it actually was.

‘You’ve seen Michael alone, so they’re not joined at the hip,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘It would be easier for me if I can catch each one by himself.’

‘But if you make a mistake and get caught, the other one will kill me.’

‘Or you’d kill him, little brother. Don’t think I don’t know you,’ he said, with a strange glint in his eye. I remembered him kicking the limp head of the man outside the club in Camden and I shuddered.

‘I’d try,’ I promised him. He nodded.

‘You’d do it to save Carol, I know you would.’

I didn’t like him mentioning her. I wanted to think about the problem, not what would happen afterwards. I didn’t want her to know anything about it. Denis would just be found somewhere and his death put down to one of his unpleasant business partners. No one would suspect me and no one would know my brother had even been in Brighton. I wanted it clean.

‘Mind you, the only way to get him somewhere we can prepare is to tell him Carol wants to see him. A pub car park at night, say. When he gets fed up waiting, he comes out in the dark and I do something very violent for ten or fifteen seconds.’ He seemed to be enjoying the prospect and I had to swallow hard to clear the burning trail that surged up under my tongue.

‘It’s too risky. You can’t predict when he comes out so there could be a family standing by his car, or a group of drunks peeing in the gutter – witnesses. Even if you managed to… stop one of them, the other one would shout, or run. We’d never get away with it. It’s madness to think you could –’

‘All right, Davey, don’t get in a froth,’ he said curtly, cutting me off. ‘You might run down to the off-licence before it closes and buy me something stronger than orange squash. I might get the ideas flowing then.’ He smiled then, so cold and self-assured that I wanted to throw up. ‘Best to do it here, anyway, in this house,’ he said, looking around the kitchen. ‘We’ll get them where we can control things. He’s a man who employs a thug and breaks fingers. You’ll get away with a self-defence plea and they’ll never even know you had help.’

‘Are you wearing gloves?’ I asked him, suddenly. He was.

‘That’s more like it, Davey boy. Now you’re thinking.’

The front door clicked open and I jumped to my feet in fear. My brother didn’t move and when he saw who was standing there he just smiled, his eyes half hooded with interest.

‘Hello, Carol love,’ he said. ‘Did you bring anything to drink?’

I saw her flicker a gaze to me and then back to him, wondering what we had been discussing. She looked rested and she’d had her hair cut. There was a new bag on her shoulder and she looked as beautiful as always. New shoes too, I noticed, when my eyes dropped at last.

‘It’s