“Assassin,” says Amy. “There’s only one of them. Not a very good one either—all this shooting is just giving away their location. Sounds like a Glock 22, so I’m guessing police. If they’ve got Scroggie on the payroll, they could have all sorts of cops on the lookout for me.”
“You know a lot about guns,” says Rosie.
Another gunshot, further in the distance again, the gunman trying to scare them out of hiding.
“I’ve just realized we’re in the shallow end and I can put my feet on the bottom,” says Rosie. “Do you get shot at a lot?”
“Yes,” says Amy.
“First time for me,” says Rosie. “No, wait, second. Even so, I told you we’d have fun if we left the island. You didn’t believe me.”
“Who do you trust most in the world?” says Amy.
“Who do I trust?” says Rosie. “Goodness. At a push, maybe Cher?”
“We’re going to need help,” says Amy. “We can’t go back to London. Where can we stay, within a four- or five-hour drive?”
“My friend Barb will put us up,” says Rosie. “You just worry about stealing a car. Does this mean you’re not going to leave me behind?”
“You don’t leave my side,” says Amy. Jeff was also supposed to be dealing with the Vasiliy Karpin problem. Jeff being out of commission means Karpin will remain a threat to Rosie. Another complication for Amy.
The gunshots are becoming faint now. Give it three minutes, then go. Steal a car, visit whoever Barb is, and regroup. Try to work out what the hell is going on. Why is François Loubet after her? Why has Jeff warned her about Henk, his former best friend? And how is it all linked to Andrew Fairbanks, Bella Sanchez, and Mark Gooch? It’s too much for Amy to take in.
“Who do you trust, by the way?” Rosie asks. “We might need more help than my friend Barb. She’s eighty.”
And that was the biggest question of all. Who did Amy trust in this world? Who can she turn to now?
She trusts her husband, Adam, implicitly. Early in their relationship she’d had a lie-detector machine in her carry-on suitcase, and he’d agreed to be hooked up to it and answer any question she had. Which is how she knows that Adam loves her, that he will never cheat on her, and that he secretly loves “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.
But Adam is in Macau, and Adam curls up into a ball at the first sign of trouble. That’s why they work so well together.
Jeff Nolan. She trusts Jeff Nolan with her life. Has literally trusted him with her life many times. But he has now found himself caught up in all this trouble himself.
Rosie? Does she trust Rosie? Amy supposes so, as she watches her now, neck deep in water, reapplying her lipstick by the light of her phone.
But she needs immediate help, and there’s only one other person in the world that she truly trusts. And he would actually be useful in the current situation. Someone who has solved a murder or two in his time.
Steve.
But Steve is not going to like it. Amy turns to Rosie.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“If it’s the question I get asked most often,” says Rosie, “then the answer is Jack Nicholson.”
“Did you say you have a private plane?”
Rosie laughs. “Of course I’ve got a private plane. I’ve got eighties money.”
Okay, then. Time to go steal a car and send for the cavalry.
Nope, Steve is not going to like this one bit.
25
As Steve is contemplating the BMW full of blood and bullet holes, his phone rings. It’s Amy.
“Jesus Christ, at last,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“I’m always okay. What are you doing this evening?” Amy asks. Straight out.
“It’s Italian night at The Brass Monkey. Where are you? I’ve got very bad news.”
“That makes two of us,” says Amy.
“I think Jeff Nolan might be dead,” says Steve.
“What?” says Amy. “Where are you?”
“Or he’s been kidnapped,” says Steve. “Or he’s killed someone. But I think he’s dead. Are you in a car?”
“Yes,” says Amy. “Steve, you’re not making sense. How do you know this?”
“He came to see me,” says Steve.
“Jeff came to see you? Why?” says Amy. Steve hears an older woman’s voice in the background, asking, “What’s happening? Is he coming?”
“I thought you might know,” says Steve. “He came to see me. Then he told me to meet him at Hollands Wood—it’s a campsite—which I did, and his car is all shot up, blood everywhere.”
