Trevor stared at the pistol and shook his head.
‘Oh well, never mind. You’d better have this instead.’
‘Is that—?’ Trevor began when she held out her other hand and offered him a small black aerosol can.
‘Pepper spray. It’s what I used on MacFarland back at the festival. Totally illegal of course, but I have my sources,’ she said with a wink and a smile.
Trevor took the spray from her and examined it briefly before thrusting it into his fleece pocket. He felt the blood drain from his face and the cold sweat begin to ooze from his pores. Whilst they’d been on the road, he had, to some extent, been able to curb his fear of what unpleasantness might lay in store for them in Bristol. But now that Sandra had produced the gun and the pepper spray, the potential danger seemed all too imminent.
‘You can always change your mind, you know,’ she said when she noticed him wiping his palms on the front of his fleece.
What he really wanted to say was: ‘Okay then, I’ll stay here with Milly and mind the car’, but instead he shrugged and said, ‘In for a penny.’ He wasn’t at all sure what he meant by it though. If it was an attempt to reassure himself with an expression of casual bravado, he had failed completely.
All this hanging about wasn’t doing him any good. His imagination had too much opportunity to fuel his anxiety. He tugged at Milly’s lead, but although her hunting expedition amongst the rubbish sacks had so far proved fruitless, she was not yet ready to give up the search. Trevor had other ideas, however, and he needed most of his strength to drag her back to the car.
* * *
Trevor was surprised at how hard Sandra was breathing as she pressed her ear against the faded blue paintwork of the door to Flat 12. The lift had been out of order, so they’d had to take the stairs, but there had only been two flights – hardly a major climb unless you were asthmatic or seriously out of condition.
Then he became aware of the rapid rise and fall of his own chest, and the realisation struck him that, even though she was an ex-smoker, Sandra’s rasping breath might have had nothing to do with any lack of fitness. It might just be that she was as scared as he was.
After listening for a few seconds, she looked at him and shook her head before bending down to put her eye to the keyhole. Almost immediately, she stood upright again and beckoned to Trevor to follow her. She took a dozen or so paces along the dank, graffiti-infested hallway and stopped.
Turning to face him, she spoke in a low murmur. ‘Can’t hear a thing. And there’s a key in the lock, so I can’t see anything either.’
‘Maybe there’s no-one in there,’ said Trevor, knowing full well that the presence of the key tended to indicate the exact opposite.
‘Now that would be disappointing.’ Sandra smiled mischievously at him and took the gun from her jacket pocket.
Trevor swallowed hard as he watched her eject and then reinsert the ammunition magazine. As far as he was concerned, the nobody-in-the-flat scenario was by far the most popular choice on his list of possible outcomes. Not only would it mean he could feel proud of himself for not bottling out of a potentially dangerous situation, he would also be able to walk away from it with all of his body parts still intact.
‘So what do we do?’ he said.
‘First, we do what any normal person would do.’
‘Run like hell?’
‘We knock.’
With that, Sandra set off back down the hallway, and Trevor followed close behind, wondering whether a simple knock on the door would achieve anything more than alerting whoever was inside to get their own guns at the ready.
She motioned to him to stand beside her against the wall on the hinged side of the door and whispered to him to take the pepper spray out of his pocket. The gun in her right hand, she reached out with her left and rapped hard. There was no response, so she knocked again. Nothing.
She took a step forward and grasped the doorknob, turning it millimetre by millimetre until Trevor heard a faint click and saw a crack of light appear. As soon as she realised the door was already unlocked, she let go of the doorknob and stood back. Nodding to Trevor to make sure he was prepared, she smacked the sole of her foot against the lower part of the door. It flew open, and both of them were inside the flat even before it reached the full extent of its hinges and started on the rebound.
There was no sudden burst of gunfire, and the only apparent occupant was sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room, the top of his head just visible above the back of the chair. Alert for any sign of movement from either of the two open doorways leading off from the main living area, Sandra raced up behind him and rammed the muzzle of her gun into the nape of his neck. His head lolled forward, and, taking a couple of steps to the side, Trevor could see that his wrists were fastened to the chair arms with silver duct tape.