Blackwater - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,18

smile, he opened the cupboard under the sink and showed me how he’d unscrewed the plastic tubing. ‘They’ll probably never ask, but I thought, what the hell. If they do, all they’ll find is a little plumbing job. I was in the middle of it when I had to go out and look for a place that sells another piece the same as the one I cracked so artfully. While I’m away, you have a visit from two men who have threatened you before.’

I looked at him and I swear he was calmer than I was. In just a few minutes Denis Tanter was going to come charging into my house for the third time. I pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge and drank from it to quiet my stomach.

My brother reached into his jacket and showed me a vicious-looking knife.

‘They come armed with this. It’s sold in any hardware shop in the country. Not surprisingly, you panic and swing at them with a bit of pipe. You call the police, and before they arrive I come back. We handle their questions together.’

‘You think it will work?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think it will even go to court. Two against one? Self-defence will see you clear of it, Davey. No problem at all. You just trust me and we’ll see it through, all right?’

I looked him in the eyes, and for a moment I could feel tears come. I nodded, turning away, knowing he had seen.

‘Now concentrate, Davey. They should be here any minute. You have the easy bit. You just sit down in the kitchen like we planned it. Have a drink, if you have to, just look miserable.’

As I sat down, my brother went to the front door and left it on the latch.

‘Remind me to break the lock in afterwards,’ he said as he came back to the kitchen and stood behind the door. He hefted the metal bar in his hand and I couldn’t look at him.

Outside, we heard a car engine roaring closer, being driven too fast. It screeched to a halt. I took a deep breath.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DENIS TANTER CAME INTO my home at 9.28 in the morning. I looked up at the wall clock, so I know. He hit the front door so hard that I think he would have smashed the lock right off if we’d locked it. It hammered back against the wall and then bounced off his shoulder as he bulled his way in. I’d read him right, I was pleased to see. I’d told my brother he wasn’t the type to send Michael in first, not if his blood was up. It didn’t seem to worry my brother, but I wanted Denis in first. He was the dangerous one, not his man. I’d known that from the beginning.

He hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. I could see that from the moment he caught sight of me in the kitchen. I was looking pathetic, with tear trails down my face and an expression of stunned fear. It wasn’t hard to fake when you know someone is going to die in the next few minutes and it could very well be you.

‘Where is she?’ he roared at me. He was flushed with high emotion, and for an awful moment I thought he was going to go charging upstairs to search the bedrooms for her. I shook my head and gestured vaguely across the kitchen. He scowled at me and I saw his fists rise as he stepped inside the door. Michael was a shadow in the hall behind him, but I could only watch Denis as my brother struck. God, he was fast. You’ve never seen anything like it.

It wasn’t a crunch. It sounded like a bag of flour bursting, a sort of soft thump. Staring straight at Denis, I swear I saw the end of the bar sink into his head before it came back. The anger, the light, everything that called itself Denis Tanter went out in an instant. My brother hit him again as he began to fall, and then once more. I couldn’t help remembering the way he’d kicked and kicked at the man in Camden and I knew there was at least one other body in his wake. There are moments in our lives when the lies we tell ourselves just fall away. This was one of them, for me.

My brother ignored Michael as the man stood stunned in