The place was way out in the marshes. There was nothing for miles except endless mudflats, the salty stink of washed-up seaweed, and the eerie cry of curlews. It was a dilapidated old shack, long abandoned by the look of it, and there was a rusted hulk of a barn at the side. Once a farmer might have lived here, tilled a meagre field or two, grazed his sheep on sea grass and samphire. Now, there was nothing. Not even a car.
‘Looks empty,’ said Max, getting out of the driver’s side. Alberto got out of the front passenger seat and stood there, surveying the area. Two of his men including Sandor clambered out of the back. Two of Max’s boys were up ahead, in another car. They piled out, and Annie got out with them. They closed around her. They were mob-handed. They were all armed. She looked at Max, at Alberto. Looked at the house.
‘Let’s see,’ said Alberto.
They approached the house. There was no cover, which was worrying. Any moment, Annie expected to hear the crack of a pistol-shot as they were fired on from the building, but nothing happened.
A marksman in there could finish off the lot of us, she thought.
It wasn’t a comforting notion.
She watched Max go round the back of the place with his boys, watched Alberto and Sandor go to the front. Max went to the door, standing to one side of it to offer no target for anyone inside. She felt her skin crawl as her brain offered up possible outcomes to this. Someone could be crouching in there, hiding, waiting for them to try to come in.
Annoyingly, Max’s boys were crowding around her, keeping her at a distance, keeping her protected. She was trying to see past a ton of muscle, and not managing very well. But she was on the corner of the building so she could just see Max at the back door, and Alberto, about to launch himself and Sandor into the front.
Max paused at the back door. It was hanging loose on rusted hinges. As the breeze sighed, it made a noise like something freshly dead coming back to life and crawling out of a grave. There was a window beside it, filmed with dirt and caked from the salty breeze. He could just about see through it into the room beyond. There was an old table, a few chairs. It was habitable, almost. Then he glanced down, his eye drawn by something on the ground at his feet. Something green.