The Cold, Cold Ground

BMW which was already there.
    She was shivering. “Cold?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “Did they make you sign all those forms?” she asked.
    I nodded. “What will happen to us if we talk?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What will we do now?” she asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Let’s get a drink,” she suggested.
    We made it to the Dobbins for last orders. I got two triple whiskeys and two double gin and tonics. We sat by the fire. The rain came on outside. “What’s going to happen to Scavanni?” she asked.
    “Nothing.”
    She gulped her gin and tonic.
    “Drink up, folks!” Derek boomed.
    “I’ll walk you home,” I said.
    She shook her head. “Let’s go to your house. I want to be with you tonight.”
    I didn’t feel sober enough to drive the car so I left it in the car park.
    “So that’s that, he’ll never be punished for any of that?” she wondered.
    “It’s best not to think about it any more,” I said and my voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well.
    We walked up Taylor’s Avenue, Barn Road, Coronation Road. We went inside #113. I lit the paraffin heater. We went upstairs and hugged under the blankets and closed our eyes and maybe even slept until the men in balaclavas came down the path and sledgehammered the front door and stormed violently into the house.

21: CORONATION ROAD
    I reached under the pillow but the revolver was still downstairs in my raincoat pocket. I put my hand over Laura’s mouth before she could scream.
    “Get under the bed. Don’t make a sound. You’ll be safe.”
    I heard the men thumping up the stairs.
    I had three or perhaps four seconds.
    If I hesitated I/we were dead.
    I grabbed a fire iron from the malfunctioning fireplace and ran naked onto the landing. I reached the top of the stairs at the same moment as the first gunman. His balaclava was impeding his field of vision but that didn’t really matter as he was a microsecond too slow onto the final step.
    I smashed the fire iron into his head, screaming as I did so.
    Metal into bone.
    He crumpled instantly and fell backwards down the stairs into gunman #2.
    Gunman #2, however, put his hand out and stopped his mate from knocking him down. He shot at me twice with a big .45 that banged horribly in the enclosed space of the staircase. The two .45 rounds missed me by inches.
    I ducked my head back round the staircase wall and desperately tried to think of a plan. They’d kill me if I went out either of the front bedroom windows and there might be a man waiting out the back too.
    Another .45 round smashed into the yucca plant at the top of the staircase. Gunman #2 had recovered and was walking slowly up the stairs.
    “C’mon, Gusty!” a voice said, a voice I recognized as Shane Davidson. So it was Billy White and his crew come to kill me before I told the world what I knew about them.
    Behind me Laura came to the bedroom door.
    “What can I do?” she asked.
    I ran to the end of the landing and picked up the five-foot-tall paraffin heater by one of the handles at the top.
    “Take the other handle!” I said.
    The heater was never supposed to be moved when fuelled up and it was never supposed to be moved when burning.
    We carried it along the landing to the very edge of the stairs. It was at full capacity and it blistered and burned our hands.
    “Now, get back!” I said lifting it from the rear by both handles.
    It was searingly hot and the enamelled stainless steel scalded my chest.
    I screamed as I heaved it to the very top of the stairs.
    The scream stopped Shane in his tracks, half way up.
    He saw me and the heater, didn’t compute it for a moment. He fired his gun but the .45 slug only smashed into the heater’s plate steel spraying paraffin over him and the unconscious man beside him. I tumbled the heater at him and dived back behind the stair wall but I wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the blast as the heater crashed into Shane and the glass flue shattered and all the fuel ignited at once. There was an explosion and the shock wave flung me against the landing wall.
    I tried to stay upright but I couldn’t manage it and I fell down the stairs into the horror of burning men and white-hot metal.
    I went head over heels into the glass phone table by the front door.
    An eviscerated, burning Shane slid down the stairs on top of me. I yelled in horror and kicked him off.
    I managed to stand and through the open front door a machine gun opened up on me from the street.
    I