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‘Mike?’ she thought aloud.
‘Waterford?’ He nodded. ‘I saw him on breakfast television, sneering about you, making those vile suggestions about you and Fenn. And you’d told me how much you hated him, so I knew you would want him to pay. I’ll always protect you from men like that – men like Fenn, and Waterford, and Halifax here, men who try to abuse you and hurt you, the way my father hurt my mother.’
What was she going to do? He was mad. And she still loved him. But he had to be stopped. If she didn’t stop him he would kill Sean. And she couldn’t let him do that. He mustn’t kill again.
Johnny frowned, sighing. ‘A pity about the house … I meant us to live there forever; we would have been so happy, wouldn’t we?’
He looked at her and she managed a quivering smile, nodding. ‘Yes, Johnny, we’d have been happy.’
His eyes burned. ‘And we still will, I promise. I’ll find us somewhere else – somewhere better. We’ll be together, Annie, just the two of us, and I’ll take care of you and make you happy.’ He bent and his mouth searched hungrily, caught hers, held it. Annie surrendered, fighting the shudder that ran through her entire body. She knew she would feel the touch of his mouth for the rest of her life.
When he lifted his head she asked him, ‘Could I have some more tea, Johnny? I need another drink.’
He got up, took her cup. ‘More brandy, too?’ he asked, smiling down at her as if she was a child, teasing her.
She nodded, watching him with an aching heart. ‘I love you, Johnny,’ she said, and his eyes blazed with answering love.
‘Darling. I know you do. Of course I know. You wouldn’t betray me, the way your mother did, you wouldn’t lie to me.’ He glanced at Sean. ‘Don’t go near him, darling. Just pretend he isn’t there. I’ll get him away soon.’
He walked out and as soon as he had gone Sean opened his eyes, jerked his head peremptorily, lifting his arms to ask her to untie his hands.
She didn’t get up. She ignored him, the way Johnny had told her to, and Sean made stifled, angry sounds, his body struggling violently.
Annie opened her handbag and got o
ut the gun Sean had made her put there. He saw it, his eyes widening, and he was suddenly still.
Annie held it the way she had been taught, her finger on the safety catch, watching the door to the kitchen.
Johnny walked through it a second later. He halted mid-step, seeing the gun. ‘Where did you get that from?’ His eyes rose to stare at her face – he looked startled but not afraid. ‘Guns aren’t a good idea, too much blood … I told you, we mustn’t have any blood, it’s so hard to clear up, it takes too long to make sure you’ve got rid of every trace. Better give the gun to me.’
He held out his hand, coming towards her. She was shaking. She’d never been so cold in her life, she could quite literally hear her teeth chattering. But she clicked the safety catch off and Johnny heard it, went very pale.
‘Annie, for God’s sake … what are you doing? Stop pointing it at me. Don’t play silly games, guns are dangerous.’
‘I can’t let you kill anyone else, Johnny. You can’t go on killing people.’
His eyes went oddly blank as if he didn’t want to hear what she was saying.
‘But I did it for you, Annie – I couldn’t let anyone hurt you and get away with it. I stopped my father hurting my mother, and I’ve stopped Keats and Fenn and Waterford too – they had to be dealt with. I was only taking care of you, darling. Tomorrow we’ll go away together, we can cross over to France on the ferry and wander across Europe like gypsies. Do you remember how we used to talk about doing that, in front of the fire?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and her finger tightened on the trigger. ‘There won’t be any tomorrow for us, Johnny.’
She saw his face change, the realisation coming into those dark blue eyes. ‘Annie … Don’t, Annie!’ he cried out, springing forward.
She had been trained by a first-rate marksman. She killed him with her first shot, but she couldn’t stop firing. Her finger was frozen on the trigger; the crash of the shots echoed inside her head, and she knew she would hear them for the rest of her life.
Johnny was flung backwards violently, his body arching, his arms thrown back. The cup smashed, tea soaking into the carpet.
Annie stopped firing and dropped the gun, almost falling out of the chair, to run shakily, stumbling, to where Johnny had fallen.
She didn’t hear Tom Moor shouting, or hear the window implode as he smashed it with a spanner, she didn’t see him reach in and open the latch then leap through into the room over the showered broken glass littering the floor.
He stood there, briefly taking in what had happened, trod carefully over to where the gun lay on the floor, wrapped a handkerchief round his hand and reached for the gun.
Annie knelt down beside Johnny, sobbing hoarsely; she cradled his head in her arms and rocked him like a baby, kissing his face over and over again, telling him, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I had to, I couldn’t let you kill anyone else, you had to be stopped, I didn’t want to do it, God knows I didn’t want to do it.’
Sean made angry, jerky movements at Tom, muffled sounds from under the scarf. Tom wrapped the gun entirely in the handkerchief and pushed it into his jacket pocket, then knelt beside Sean and untied him.
