Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,13

having a barbeque on Christmas Day.’

‘Right now I wouldn’t mind.’

Josh grinned. ‘You should come over. We’d love to have you.’

‘I can’t do that. Christmas is family time.’

‘Yeah, but now I won’t be able to fully relax. When I’m sitting by a warm fire with a cold beer and a plate of food, I’ll think of you alone in your apartment looking pathetic, pulling the ring off a can of soup.’

‘OK, I’ll think about it.’

Josh shook his head. ‘It’s not your decision anymore. I’ll tell Michelle. The moment I do that, it’s a given. Otherwise she’ll head over to your place on Christmas morning and march you over to our house herself.’

Archer laughed. They stopped at a red light at Columbus Circle, then once it turned green drove around the monument and headed uptown on Broadway.

‘Where is this place?’ Josh asked. ‘66, right?’

‘66 and Amsterdam.’

From Columbus to around West 86, Broadway was positioned at a right-diagonal that eventually straightened out. Given its slant, the road met 9 Avenue on 64 Street. Josh held at a red light, then took a left across the intersection and headed down 65. The next Avenue over was Amsterdam. When the light was green, Josh moved out and over to the left hand lane. He pulled up to the kerb just past 66, applying the handbrake and killing the engine.

The two men stepped out of the car, Archer hunching into his coat and pulling his collar up against the blast of the cold wind. Being on the west side of Manhattan, they were close to the Hudson River and the wind had an extra bite to it. Slamming his door and jamming his hands into his pockets, he walked around the front of the car and joined Josh on the edge of the sidewalk. Several stores and a frozen yoghurt place were lined side by side up the block, but the building in front of them had to be the address they were after. Judging by the entrance, a number of different businesses and companies had office space here. A series of company names and logos on metal placards lined the walls either side of the entrance, all in different swirling calligraphy and fonts.

Archer looked up at the building as Josh walked forward to check out the plates.

About a third of the way down, in plain, printed, no-bullshit style was Flood Microbiology.

'Bull's-eye,’ Josh said.

Archer didn’t respond.

Josh looked over his shoulder. ‘Let’s head-’

He stopped mid-sentence.

Archer's head was tilted back and he was staring up at the building in front of them.

There was something wrong.

‘Arch?’

‘Look,’ he said.

Josh frowned and stepping back to join his partner, tilted his head to see what had caught Archer’s attention. The building was about twenty storeys high, but he immediately saw what Archer had spotted.

‘What the hell?’ he said.

The two men backed up quickly, moving out onto the street beside the car to get a better look.

They could see a man standing on the edge of the roof.

Eleven blocks uptown, a man in his early thirties was just finishing cooking a late breakfast, some eggs and bacon sizzling in a pan. He lived alone in an apartment on the Upper West Side. He wasn’t a social guy and had never been particularly comfortable around women, so he much preferred his own company in his own private place to having people around. It had been a long week and he was looking forward to relaxing all day by himself, just the way he liked it.

But suddenly, the doorbell rang.

It made him jump. He wasn’t expecting a guest. Maybe it was a delivery, or someone from downstairs.

‘One second,’ he called, tipping the frying pan and sliding his breakfast onto a plate. Turning off the cooker and wiping his hands on a cloth, he walked over to the door and pulled it open.

There was a man and woman standing there.

The man had bleach-blond hair, with a sharp jagged scar across one eyebrow. In contrast to his hair, he had dark, emotionless eyes that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a shark.

The woman was dark-haired with a harsh face, her hard eyes emphasised by thick black eyeliner.

They stared at him, expressionless.

The man had a roll of duct tape in his hand.

And the woman was holding a silenced pistol.

SIX

The lift inside the building on 66 and Amsterdam dinged, opening on the 20 floor.

Before the doors had fully parted, Archer and Josh sprinted out. The door to the stairwell was straight ahead. Archer wrenched it open and the