Lifting the Lid(24)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Come on, Milly. Shift.’
Trevor was almost sprinting towards the camper van when it finally came into view, and he glanced back to see that Milly was lagging behind and clearly intent on seeking out additional sources of food.
His hand trembled, and he struggled to get the key in the lock. He took a few deep breaths and concentrated… Click. Milly was beside him now and leapt onto the driver’s seat the moment he opened the door. Trevor unceremoniously bundled her over to the passenger side as he climbed in and fired up the engine. He reached down to release the handbrake and then jumped at the sound of a sharp tapping noise on the glass to his right. So swiftly did he turn that he felt a sudden but fleeting spasm of pain in the back of his neck.
The woman’s face seemed familiar. She was smiling, but her eyes gave him the distinct impression the smile was far from genuine. She rotated her index finger to indicate that she wanted him to wind down the window, and he reluctantly obliged.
‘Well, well. Fancy bumping into you again,’ she said. Milly stared at her and wagged her tail. ‘Hello, doggie.’
He remembered now. It was the woman he’d collided with on the hotel stairs.
‘I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe you have something that doesn’t belong to you.’ The smile remained, but her eyes widened as she arched an eyebrow.
Trevor clutched at his chest, and he felt the bulge of the package through the soft material of his fleece.
‘Oh dear. Touch of heartburn perhaps?’ The smile evaporated, and she held out her hand, palm upwards.
Heart attack was more likely, thought Trevor, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He took the tag of his jacket zip between his forefinger and thumb and, millimetre by millimetre, pulled it down with such slow deliberation that he might have been performing a striptease.
‘Today would be good.’
She was obviously getting impatient, and he was about to rip open the rest of the zip when a man’s face loomed over her shoulder. Trevor’s hand froze, and his jaw dropped. He could see the gun reflected in the window of a nearby car.
‘Oh yeah,’ said the woman with a scowl. ‘Someone behind me, is there? Well if you think I’m going to—’
‘I wouldnae turn round if I were ye, hen.’
Trevor’s focus was drawn to the heavy scar on the man’s cheek, the chunky gold earring and the long black hair which was scraped back so tightly into a ponytail it must have been impossible for him to blink. Definitely not the sort of person he’d want to meet on a dark night in some deserted alley. Come to that, not the sort of bloke he’d want to meet in broad daylight in the middle of a busy festival car park either.
‘I see ye have something for me.’
Trevor stared down at the corner of the padded, green Jiffy bag protruding from inside his jacket. Oh God, how he wished he’d never set eyes on the bloody thing, that he’d never checked into the hotel, that he hadn’t broken the toilet lid, that he’d—
‘Don’t piss me about, pal. I’m nae in the mood for playing games. Giz it here.’
He edged the woman to the side, and his left hand reached in through the open window. The right hand followed, and this one was holding a rather heavy looking gun, which was aimed directly at his head. It was at this point that Milly apparently decided she wasn’t at all keen on this intrusion, and she started barking at him like a deranged Rottweiler.
‘Shut yir racket.’ The muzzle of the gun shifted a few degrees, away from Trevor’s head and towards the dog’s.
What happened next was almost too quick for Trevor to take in. The woman’s arm snapped upwards and caught the guy on the elbow so sharply that the gun was now directed at the roof of the van. At exactly the same moment, her hand whipped up from the small bag slung at her hip and shot a fine spray straight into his face. He roared in pain and staggered backwards, clutching at his eyes, then tripped and fell heavily to the ground, dropping the gun in the process.
Trevor grabbed at the handbrake, but before he could even engage first gear, the woman appeared in front of him through the windscreen. He watched the movement of her lips as they made some kind of “tut tut” sound, but he took even more notice of the gun which had been pointing at his head only a few seconds earlier. She waved it back and forth as if wagging an admonishing finger and then aimed it at his chest.
He eased his foot from the accelerator pedal, and she edged around to the passenger door and climbed in. Milly, who had stopped barking and was looking faintly bemused by this whole chain of events, obligingly and uncharacteristically jumped down from her seat and scuttled off into the back.