Free Screen of Deceit by Nick Oldham Page A

sitting with a coffee, reading a broadsheet newspaper; two lads in their late teens were huddled in one corner by a window. Mark paused on them and they immediately locked on to his gaze, glowering back at him nastily. Mark quickly averted his eyes. He knew that even glancing at someone could end up with a head-butt and the two lads looked mean. He gave them a quick label: dealers. They reeked of drugs … or maybe he was being unfair to them.
    He looked outside again. Jack was now leaning on his Cayenne, facing toward the restaurant, still in discussion. He spotted Mark and held up two fingers, meaning two minutes. Mark nodded. He was in no rush. He sat back, relaxed, hands behind his head, watched a blue Subaru Impreza pull into the car park. It was that fantastic shade of blue, with gold-rimmed wheels – a real speed machine. Quite a lot of dosh for four wheels, though not as expensive as Jack’s Porsche, which was a real beast of a motor.
    The Subaru rolled on to the tarmac and stopped as though the driver was deciding where to park. Not a difficult decision, Mark wouldn’t have thought. There were loads of free spaces. Or maybe it was a hard decision. Too many free spaces. Too much choice.
    Mark watched idly.
    There were two lads in the car. Their features were indistinct, faces hidden in shadow, but Mark could tell they were young and actually, as he looked harder, they were both wearing baseball caps with the peaks pulled down. Mark sat up as his eyebrows knitted together and a deep but unsubstantiated suspicion rattled through him. Something about it just didn’t seem quite right.
    Was it a stolen car? Were they car thieves, maybe? Maybe they had targeted Jack’s motor. Mark had heard stories about people nicking good quality cars and exporting them, even carjacking them, literally robbing the owners.
    Just as quickly as he had made up his mind about the ‘dealers’ sitting in the corner, he now decided the Subaru was either stolen or the lads on board were looking for their next car to nick. Two lads, peaks pulled down over their faces, fast car: it all added up.
    Mark’s brain jumped and bounded. Was the car connected to the two dealers in the restaurant? Had they come to do a deal? Was something about to go down here?
    Or was he letting his vivid imagination run riot?
    The Subaru was still stationary. Jack, leaning on his car, was located between it and the entrance to the restaurant, concentrating on his phone call.
    Mark shook his head to clear it and sat back again.
    But only for a second.
    The passenger window of the Subaru slid down.
    Suddenly the car screamed forward with a howl of its powerful, well-tuned engine, and Mark jerked upright in his seat. The car veered left so it was travelling parallel to the restaurant, placing Jack and his vehicle between it and the front door.
    Mark’s guts lurched and he sensed real, serious danger now, not just imagined. His eyes glued to the car and in particular the passenger who was now leaning out of the window – with a heavy-looking pistol in his hands, tilted over, held parallel to the ground. Mark knew nothing about guns, but he knew one when he saw one. This one needed two hands to hold and point it. He’d seen such things in plenty of American cop dramas. It was huge, almost the size of a machine gun.
    There was a dull but horrible ‘
Crack-ack-ack!
’ – the gun being fired. Jack twisted round, screamed something unintelligible and dived to the hard ground, taking cover by the side of the Porsche.
    Mark, stupidly, rose to his feet, like he’d been hypnotised.
    Everything was a blur.
    The Subaru accelerated past the restaurant, with Jack still caught between it and the intended targets – Mark assumed in his racing, tumbling mind that the two lads who he’d put down as drug dealers were the intended victims. So he had been right after all.
    One of the large plate-glass windows at the front of