Brute Force

110

The camera panned to the right of them until I could see Dom holding Siobhan's face into his chest for protection.

Mairead froze the frame and placed the camcorder on a table beside her. She squatted down in front of Lynn. 'In a minute, Colonel, Stone is going to kill you, and then—' she held up a length of det cord, a battery, the whole enchilada – 'I'm going to kill Stone.'

She turned to me. 'For all the pain and suffering you have caused me and my fellow countrymen – for the distress that you caused my mother – I want you to know that after I've dealt with you, I'm going to kill them.' She nodded at the camcorder.

She waited for a reply, but she wasn't going to get one from me. How the fuck would that help?

'Has little Ruby ever tried cocaine? I bet her mother has. She looks the type.' She grinned. 'There was a couple I supplied once . . . they had a crack-addicted baby. She smiled a lot as she grew up, but only ever talked gibberish.' She rolled her eyes back in her head in case I hadn't got the message.

I didn't even flicker.

She stood up, pissed off that I hadn't given her the reaction she was hoping for. She called out for her boys to join her and a second later I was reunited with a couple of faces I'd last seen in Norfolk.

She turned, picked up the camcorder and walked out of the room.