Murray let the Rover freewheel down the gentle incline toward the station. Save for two schoolchildren already stepping onto the footpath, the station seemed to be deserted. One boy's face was streaked from crying, his school-bag dragging along the path. Murray saw the panels of the red lorry over the rows of parked cars. Coke, the ubiquitous banner of American civilization standing out against the pastels of sea and sky. Moore was to the sea-side of the lorry.
Murray braked and turned the Rover into the carpark. As he turned, he noticed a car turn in off the coast road behind him. A bolt of alarm ran down his back. He stopped just inside the carpark and waited. The car pulled into the curb. A casually-dressed man stepped out from the passenger side. He carried a soft-sided briefcase and a newspaper. He smiled at the driver, seemed to crack a joke, and strode on toward the station. Murray watched the car in his mirror as it turned back onto the coast road.
Murray waited until he saw the passenger pass the entrance to the carpark. Then he reversed the Rover to the end of a cluster of cars. Out of sight of the station now, he could get to the lorry, walk to Moore's car from behind. Murray's fingers slipped as he leaned across to unlock the passenger door. His hands were moist and they trembled. He placed the keys under the front seat and wiped his hands with his handkerchief. He couldn't keep his hands steady. He took the silencer out of his pocket and matched it to the muzzle of the automatic. Sure he had a purchase on the thread then, he rolled the silencer with his palm. The cylinder fell off and landed between the seats. Murray swore. He reached down and tried again. He tightened it this time, using the handkerchief for grip-Murray stepped out of the car. He felt he was entering a different world. Small polka dots sailed down in his vision and burst. He held the door from slamming and braced his knees to banish the feeling of feebleness in his legs. Have to do it, his mind was shouting furiously. He felt vulnerable as he started walking. He stared intently at cars, expecting some to be occupied but none were. The grilles of the cars seemed to be animate presences, vague threats as if they'd spring into motion. The lorry was about ten cars down from where Murray had parked. The pistol scratched his thigh, the five inches of silencer jammed under his belt to secure the gun. Murray looked down at his fly tt) see if the outline of the silencer was visible as he walked. He approached the car next to the red lorry and paused. He looked around. Nobody.
Christ, he thought, Moore is in too deep: he'd never come over. Not a chance. If only he could have ten minutes, though, he could… Useless, couldn't think like that now: he must commit himself to action. Murray stopped again by the back of the lorry and edged out to take a look down toward the station.
Over the car roofs he could see the white roof of the Ford, still by the station entrance. A puff of smoke escaped from the driver's window. He heard fragments of pop music. The newspaper flapped, page turned. It dawned on him that he'd have to kill Moore right in his car.
Murray thumbed the safety off and walked around the back of the lorry. Make it quick, in and out. He felt the ice-pack grip him tighter around the chest and hold. Moore spotted the movement in the mirror right away. Murray saw the head turn to look through the back window. He heard a car engine from the carpark behind. Too late now to back around the damned lorry to check, he knew. Murray kept walking instead and grasped the passenger door handle of the Mini. Locked. Moore's face appeared in the window as he leaned across the passenger seat to unlock the door. Murray tried hard to smile but his face felt set, frozen. Moore's puzzled gaze searched Murray's face.
"Hello, Moore," Murray managed to say in a choked voice. Moore blinked. His eyes darted down from Murray's face as his fingers closed on the golf-tee stalk for the lock. Murray saw the manila envelope on the seat below him, half-covered by the stretching Moore. He tried the door again, but too soon: Moore's fingers had slipped. Moore suddenly froze, his fingers tight on the lock now. Murray wondered what he was staring at.
Murray looked down. A wrenching tremor seized at his heart when he saw that the grip of the automatic had slipped sideways in his belt. Moore had seen it. Both men stayed perfectly stiff for several seconds.
Murray broke the spell first. He grasped the automatic, drawing it cleanly from under his belt. Moore was turning the ignition key. Murray yanked at the doorhandle in one last try. The Mini's engine came to life, the roar of the small engine's revs rattling the tappets. Murray let off a shot as the Mini lurched forward. The glass whitened in the rear passenger window, but the Mini was still squealing away, engine screaming. Murray crouched and fired through the back window. The Mini turned sharply but still accelerated, shedding pellets of glass. Murray stood, uncertain. He thought about his own car and turned to run around the rear of the lorry. Rounding the lorry, Murray heard the squeal of tires, the crash of metal and glass.
"Mother of the Divine Jesus!" Corrigan shouted.
The yellow Mini rocketed out from behind a lorry. The driver of the Mini almost lost control as he swerved. Minogue believed that he saw two wheels of the Mini lift off the ground.
"Box him!" Corrigan roared.
Dunne shouted too and swung the car back toward the road. The Mini did not brake. The impact threw Minogue against the front seat and then dumped him across the back seat on the rebound. Dizzy, he heard Corrigan kicking at his door. Dunne was out first. Corrigan lay back on Dunne's seat then, gave a shout and landed a tremendous flat-footed kick on his door. It flew open and Corrigan was up and scrambling to get out. Minogue saw that Corrigan's forehead had been cut. Corrigan's hand was clutching for his pistol as he levered himself out of the door.
Minogue stepped unsteadily out of the car. A man was running up from the station. One of us, Minogue thought indolently. He rubbed his eyes. His head was still buzzing. Corrigan was pulling on the door of the yellow Mini. Minogue couldn't see anyone in the car. Dunne saw the gunman first.
"Gun!" Dunne screamed.
Corrigan looked over the roof of the Mini. Minogue looked down at the running man. He was zig-zagging around the cars, banging their panels with his arms and hand as he charged through. As he ran he was tugging at a pistol under his arm. The pistol out, he began shouting, the gun jabbing the air with each piston stab of his arm.
The gunman hesitated. A gorgeous brown suit, Minogue observed dreamily from somewhere behind the enormous, numbing nose. Incongruous, silly. A gun? Minogue looked to the slip-on shoes. A hundred quid, easy. Minogue's nose was pulsing slowly now. It felt like a slowly inflating balloon. The elegant gunman darted a look toward cars then, thumping panels heavily to slow himself as he ducked. Who was doing all that shouting now? Dunne, yes. Shouting at me, Minogue realised. Guns? Kathleen'll be livid with me…
Corrigan had the heels of his hands resting on the roof, aiming the Walther. Dunne screamed at Minogue again.
"You!" shouted Corrigan. "Put down that gun! Put it down or we'll shoot. Drop it now! Police!"
The gunman frowned, his arm wavering. Looked shocked, Minogue thought. So he should be… Maybe he was hurt? Well-dressed, but…
"Drop it now!" Corrigan roared. "Drop the gun now!"
Minogue heard the car radio come to life. The gunman's face eased then he raised his arm.
Corrigan shot him once. The man fell backwards with a surprised shout. The detective crouched by the car stood up and ran on tiptoe toward the fallen man. Standing near him, his gun pointed down, it seemed like a party game to Minogue. The detective moved to the side and gently toed something metallic, sending it skittering a few feet across the tarmac. Not smart,
Minogue's faraway brain tut-tutted. An automatic with a single-action could go off if you so much as open a box of Rice Krispies in the same room… Everybody's scared, aren't they? The man on the ground drew up his legs and groaned. The suit, the suit: it'll be ruined, Minogue's thoughts fluttered about nearby. That's blood, that is, Minogue's eyes began arguing with his brain. Concussed, the brain sneered back. You're concussed, my dear man…
A blue Nissan came tearing down the road and slewed to a stop, the driver's door flying open. Minogue stood up slowly from his crouch. He felt dizzy and pleasantly limp. He saw that one of the man's slip-on shoes was off. Dunne grabbed at the radio and began talking. While he waited for a reply, he pointed to Minogue and gestured toward his own nose. Minogue looked down at the blood on his own shirt. He touched the bridge of his nose and felt a resonant throb, not yet painful but vaguely warm. He walked slowly to the driver's side of the Mini.
Moore's window was open. The door was jammed, the front wing of the car crumpled and pushed up near the door-hinge. Moore was lying sideways across the front seats.
"Moore, are you all right there?" said Minogue. His voice vibrated in the lumpy blockage which was his nose. He saw liquid gleam, oily, on the seat-back.
"Can you hear me, Moore? Are you…?" Minogue wheezed out.
"Something in my back, I don't know," Moore said in a quiet, level voice. He did not try to move. "It's kind of numb there now…"
Minogue saw Moore's fingers moving slowly then, the eyelashes fluttering. The fingers clenched and loosened. A runnel of dark liquid crept out on the rubber matting of the floor, met a rubber vein on the pattern of the mat and spidered around it. Blood, Minogue saw. He turned to Corrigan's ashen face now framed in the window opposite.
"Tell 'em to get a move-on, Pat," he heard the nose say. "Two."
Corrigan's eyes bulged as he stared at Minogue. Then he nodded and shouted Dunne's name. Another car skidded to a stop next to him. Two detectives jumped around the open doors as they bounced back on their hinges. Minogue wondered if it really was a police siren he was hearing in the distance.
"I didn't know this…" Minogue began to say. His voice was completely trapped in his head, somewhere behind his face. "We'll look after you, don't-"
"He would have killed me, you know," said Moore. The voice carried a tone of fearful, lucid warning, at once earnest and pleading. Minogue would later remember the strained tenor in Moore's plea, as from his children's fevers or as they woke from nightmares, still pursued into their waking worlds.