Free The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 by Craig Russell Page B

holding the drawing office, I could perhaps find my way in and up to find out what the hell had happened to Tommy.
    I almost missed it.
    There was a dull thump about fifty yards ahead of me. I didn’t see the object fall, nor hear any sound as it fell – just the noise of impact. To start with I thought it was a heap of empty sacks – a dark bundled shape on the cobbled yard, no more than three feet out from the wall – but the instinctive lurch in my gut and chest told me that it wasn’t. I looked up to the roofline but couldn’t see anyone, just the black silhouette of the building against the stars, like cut-out stage scenery; no sound except the brick-muted throb and rattle of the foundry. I ran across to where the bundle had landed.
    I knew before I got to it, before I could make out its shape as human, that the object on the ground was Tommy. When I got to him I could see right away that he was dead: his eyes were open and lifeless, a halo of blood blooming black on the cobbles around his head, his hair and the injury still concealed by the dark woollen tuque. I didn’t need to check for a pulse: unless Tommy had been preternaturally double-jointed, I could tell instantly that his neck was very definitely broken. I again looked up to where he must have fallen from, but there was no sign of anything or anyone untoward.
    My mind raced. Unusually for me, I didn’t have a clue what my next move should be but I was prompted into action by a horn sounding somewhere inside one of the halls, presumably announcing a refreshment break or change of shift. About three hundred yards away, double doors opened, flooding the cobbled yard with light and workers. I shrank back into the shadows and started to trace my way back to the side gate, hugging the wall and keeping an eye out for the geriatric night watchman. I got to the gate and hoisted myself onto the roof of the shed, then hauled myself up and over the iron gates, dropping clumsily on the other side. I landed badly and was rewarded with perfectly synchronized sharp twinges in my left ankle and in my ribs, which had been slowly easing over the last week. Limping off towards where I’d left the van, I realized that nothing was broken and the sprain was a mild one – it wouldn’t cause me too much trouble, so long as I got back to the van and got my weight off that ankle as soon as possible.
    I got clear of the gates and made my way back along the rear perimeter wall. I stopped before I got to the corner and looked back to make sure no one was following me. They maybe even hadn’t found Tommy’s body yet, and if they had, there would be a lot of confusion about who he was and how he’d ended up broken and dead on the foundry yard. Searching for an accomplice wouldn’t come to mind.
    Quiet Tommy Quaid was dead. He was dead and had been killed pulling a job for me.
    It was a fact: a brutal, sudden fact that I would have to come to terms with. But later. For now, my instincts were telling me to get as far as possible, as quickly as possible, from the foundry and Tommy’s body, but I knew I would be doing a lot of reckoning afterwards.
    Pulling the ignition key from the pocket of my overalls, I came round the corner and saw the van; I also saw a black police Wolseley pulled up alongside it, two coppers examining it, one cupping his eyes with his hands as he peered through the driver’s window. I ducked back around the corner and pressed my back against the greasy brickwork while I considered how famously my night was going.
    I tried to work out how the police could have cottoned on to the van so quickly; perhaps my slow drive twice past the main gates had aroused suspicion, but I doubted it. I tried to think it all through: there was no way of getting back to the van, but at least the coppers wouldn’t find anything to link me to it – unless they caught me with the key in my pocket. I had no choice but to hoof it back to where I left my own car. A dull throb in my