Free Screen of Deceit by Nick Oldham Page B

the restaurant shattered spectacularly as bullets smashed through it.
    Now Mark reacted as he should have done initially – by throwing himself down between the chair and table legs and his own chair clattered away as he upturned it.
    There was a high-pitched, female scream.
    Mark hit the deck hard, catching a glancing blow on his forehead as he caught the edge of a table.
    A man shouted.
    More shots were fired – a dull, sickening sound, unlike anything he’d ever heard before and totally unlike the sound effects of gunshots on the telly.
    An engine revved. The Subaru?
    Had Jack been hit accidentally?
    Mark lay on the floor, his hands over his head, terrified. He had no idea how long he was there amongst the chair legs. Probably only seconds and then he was being hauled to his feet by strong hands and there was Jack’s cool face in his. He was OK.
    â€˜Let’s get out of here,’ big brother said calmly.
    â€˜What happened?’ Mark babbled.
    â€˜DBS,’ said Jack, yanking his younger brother across the restaurant and out through the front door.
    Mark just went with the flow. His head was in a vortex and he allowed Jack to manhandle him away from the scene. Still, he managed to utter, ‘What’s a DBS?’
    Drive-by shooting!
    Mark Carter sat there stunned, dumbstruck, in the front passenger seat of Jack’s Cayenne, Jack at the wheel, driving away from the KFC cool as an icebox. Mark’s brow was deeply furrowed, his eyebrows almost touching with his perplexity as he tried desperately to work it all out. A drive-by shooting. Hell! Something he’d only ever heard of. Something that only ever happened in London or Birmingham, or Nottingham – or the Bronx. Not here in Blackpool.
    He turned and studied Jack’s profile. He couldn’t even remember being bundled into the 4x4. It was all a sort of muzzed-up haze as Jack had dragged, prodded and forced him out of the restaurant and into his motor. Mark was now in shock. He was starting to shake a little. He held out his right hand in front of him, palm down, and watched it tremble uncontrollably. A look of horror morphed his face.
    â€˜You OK?’ Jack asked, not taking his eyes off the road. ‘I hope that’s not your gun hand.’
    Mark quickly dropped his hand back into his lap and blurted, ‘Yeah, yeah … Shit, Jack, a drive-by shooting?’
    â€˜I know. I can hardly believe it myself.’
    â€˜You seem dead laid back about it, though.’
    Jack shrugged.
    â€˜What was it all about?’
    He shrugged again. ‘Dunno.’
    â€˜Who were they shooting at?’
    â€˜How would I know? Somebody in the Kentucky, I guess.’
    Mark’s mind was beginning to clear a little. He cast his thoughts back to the few moments before the Subaru had rolled in to the car park and everything had gone to rat shit. The seconds when he was looking around, taking in the other people there. The bloke reading the newspaper, the lovey-dovey couple and, yeah, the two lads. It all slotted neatly into place for him then.
    â€˜It had to be those two lads,’ he gasped. ‘Real seedy looking guys, druggies if ever I saw any.’
    He tried to picture what had happened to them in the chaos of a hail of bullets, but couldn’t. It was all a blurred, frightening mess, and he couldn’t recall seeing them when Jack was dragging him away. They were probably flat on the floor. Had they been hit? Had anyone been hit?
    â€˜Yeah, must’ve been them. Looked just like dealers.’
    â€˜You know what a drug-dealer looks like, then?’ Jack asked.
    â€˜Spot one a mile off,’ Mark said confidently.
    Jack chortled.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Talk about stereotyping – what, shell suits, baseball caps and Reeboks?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜The guys who usually look like drug-dealers or pimps, usually aren’t, but they’d like people to think they were.