The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour

Author:Gerald Seymour
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9781848947313
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2010-07-07T21:00:00+00:00

11

‘Don’t embarrass me, Mr Gillot, don’t go near her.’

‘Big talk for a bloody gardener – or am I just the last to be told?’

‘Just keep out of the way, Mr Gillot, and nobody gets upset.’

‘As long as we understand that for all your hard work this morning, and your duties as protector and baggage carrier for my wife, it’ll be she who pays you, not me.’

‘Cheap, Mr Gillot. I think she’s coming now so, please, don’t interfere.’

Did he want a fight? Nearly did. The front door was open. Also open were the driver’s door and boot of her car, parked on the driveway. Beside it, loaded with the wheelbarrow and the rest of Nigel’s paraphernalia, was his pick-up. They would leave, he assumed, in convoy from the Portland front line, the Lulworth View salient. The gardener had inserted himself between Harvey Gillot and the front door. It was an hour since she’d said she would go. He had not begged. There had been none of the bent-knee-and-welling-eyes stuff about his inability to see ‘this’ through without her.

He heard the small but shrill squeal of the suitcase wheels.

The cartridge cases had rolled on the kitchen table, which had been sufficient to start them off. She was not hanging about to have her head blown off by a gunman who might just, next time, get to aim straighter, with her alongside him. He was not about to miss her, and did she want some help with her packing? She was not considering setting down shallow roots in a god-awful ‘safe-house’ that was vetted by policemen. He had no intention of bugging out, as rats did. She had done nothing, but he had brought this on himself, through deceit. He had worked damn hard to put clothes on her back, and food on her table. She had called him a ‘cheat’ who’d reneged on a done deal. He had tried to laugh with irony, but made a poor fist of it, and had called her the cheat, the deal reneged on her marriage vows … which had concluded the shouting match. He noticed that the gardener had – step by step – positioned himself so that he could intervene if his employer had come at her with a knife from the kitchen block.

She carried one case and pulled another.

That left a dilemma for the gardener. He could do polite manners, pick up her bag and lug it to the car, leaving her without defence against her husband’s potential violence, or leave her to shift it. Harvey revelled in the moment. He reached past the gardener, took the bag she carried and murmured something about ‘always here to give a helping hand’.

His wife, Josie, started it again: ‘It was your greed that did it, and you ripped off those people. You deserve what’s coming to you.’

‘As long as you’re happy – and safe – I have no other concern.’

‘Don’t you realise what a shit you’ve become, Harvey?’

‘Having gained that stunning insight, I’m surprised you lasted so long with me.

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