Читать книгу The Pretender’s Gold - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 13

A couple of hours earlier, while Ewan McCulloch was still on the operating table, a phone conversation had taken place. It was a very private and secret call, but if anyone on the outside had been listening they’d quickly have worked out which of the callers was the subordinate, and which of them was clearly in charge.

‘What part of this do you not understand? Your instructions were to beat the truth out of him and then kill him. It’s not rocket science.’

‘We tried to get it out of him. He didn’t seem to know anything.’

‘So not only did you come back empty-handed, you also left him alive. Are you stupid?’

‘It wasn’t our fault. I told you, a car turned up before we could finish him off. We had to leg it before we were spotted.’

‘Yes, yes. I get the picture. Four tough guys, scared of some bloody old biddy on her own. What a bunch of pathetic cowards.’

‘What were we supposed to do, beat the shit out of her as well, in broad daylight? And what if someone else had turned up too?’

‘The road past Loch Ardaich isn’t exactly the M25. You could easily have handled it.’

‘Well, we were unlucky, that’s all. Credit where credit’s due, chief. We took care of the other moron for you, didn’t we? No problems there.’

‘Yes, you did. But now I’m wondering if you didn’t just get lucky with Campbell. Maybe I should have called Hacker back home from Korea to take care of the job. He doesn’t depend on luck.’

‘You had your reasons. Hacker works for you personally. You didn’t want to be too closely connected with it.’

‘Evidently, that was my mistake, trusting a bunch of useless fools on the outside with the simplest of tasks. Did I not pay you enough, perhaps?’

‘Give us a break, will you? We didn’t do a bad job of searching McCulloch’s house. In and out, twenty minutes, nobody any the wiser. If he’d had any more coins stashed away, we’d have found them. And as for him, you don’t have anything to worry about. He’s in a coma. People in comas don’t say much.’

‘They’re also known to come out of them.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely. We hit him pretty hard. He’s got something called an epidural haematoma. Bleeding on the brain. They’re operating on him even as we speak. Chances are, if he ever does wake up he’ll be a drooling vegetable, sucking on a tube for the rest of his life.’

‘You’d better hope you’re right about that. Because you’ve got just as much to lose as I have if he suddenly remembers who worked him over and starts blabbing. Next thing the trail leads back to me.’

‘That would never happen.’

‘Damn right it won’t. I want you to keep a close watch on things there at the hospital. If Ewan McCulloch so much as bats an eyelid or twitches a finger, I want to know about it. And then I’ll expect you to finish what you started. We’re not taking any chances here.’

‘Killing a man inside a hospital, that won’t be easy. Not with doctors and nurses coming and going twenty-four-seven.’

‘Don’t you watch the news? Medical staff kill patients all the time. If the National Health Service’s finest can do it, you can do it. I don’t care how it’s done. I just want him permanently out of the picture. Whatever it takes. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘That’s wonderful to hear. Now stop wasting my time, and don’t ever screw things up again. Not while you’re working for me. Or you’ll end up in a lot worse state than Ewan bloody McCulloch.’