Ryan shot him twice through the throat and upper chest, one of the bullets going clear through and hitting the man behind him in the shoulder.
“Bastard!” The cry of anger and anguish came from the last of the trio as he dropped his .22, fumbling for it with his free hand as it fell, but missing it. He saw it clunk into a puddle of splattered blood on the carpet in the middle of the corridor and started to stoop to reach for it.
Ryan had a moment to aim, and shot him precisely through the top of the head.
The bullet slanted downward, forcing the right eye from the socket, where it dangled onto the cheek, held by the sinews of the optic nerve. The bullet, distorting as it rolled, plucked out three teeth from the upper jaw, smashing it as it passed by. Crimson flooded over the man’s check shirt.
All three bodies were flopping around in a tangle of limbs, blood splashing high up the walls.
Ryan stood watching them, in case another bullet was needed, seeing that the residual twitching was slowing as the lines all went down. He reloaded the warm gun.
“Stupes,” he said to himself. “Cold-heart stupes.” He noticed now that the youngest of the corpses had a deep, fresh cut across the inside of his right arm, where the sliced material of his shirt flapped, bloodstained. It looked very much like the cut you might get from an enraged old man wielding a cutthroat razor.
Maybe Paddy Maxwell had it coming after all.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
You can’t breathe life back into a corpse.
Ryan went into the bedroom, picked up his coat and walked past the butchered trio, wincing slightly as the soles of his combat boots stuck for a moment in the crusting blood.
He went cautiously down the stairs, expecting the gunfire to have brought some eager, and possibly murderous, spectators. But the lobby was deserted.
Then he noticed that the young wife was on the far side, near the half-open front door, polishing the top of a player piano, her back to him.
For a moment Ryan was totally confused at her seeming indifference to the butchery that had been carried out upstairs in her house. Then he remembered that she and her husband were both deaf.
Ryan considered creeping past her and sneaking out of the building into the darkness of evening. Then he stopped, not wanting any sort of alarm. If he’d known that her husband was safely out of the way, he might have succumbed to the temptation to quiet her while he escaped.
At that moment she had to have sensed his presence or the movement of his shadow, and she turned with a startled expression on her face. Ryan managed to paste a smile in place, holding out both hands to show that he hadn’t meant her any harm. He spoke slowly, watching her eyes.
“Sorry to make you jump.”
She shrugged, then walked quickly to the desk and started thumbing through a box filled with rectangles of white card, picking one out to show him.
“Supper in a half hour.”
He nodded. “That’ll be fine.”
Another card read, “Would you like a bath?”
He was desperately conscious of the blood that splattered all over his boots, but they were out of sight behind the registry desk. He shook his head. “No, thanks.”
She mouthed, “Your friend?”
Again Ryan shook his head. “No. He’s he’s taking a rest in the room.”
The woman smiled and nodded, looking intently at Ryan and rubbing her stomach.
“What? Oh, am I hungry? Yeah. Guess I am.” He could smell the delicious aromas of roasting meat filtering along into the lobby from the kitchen. Paddy Maxwell hadn’t been too strong on cooking, and it was tempting to take a chance on the four corpses remaining undiscovered in the quiet upstairs corridor while he snatched a quick meal.
“Going for a short walk,” he said. “Get me some fresh air. Be back in time for supper.” The risk was too great, and the last thing he needed was to get hauled up in a small pesthole, involved in a multiple murder. In places like this, it wasn’t that hard for a penniless stranger to finish up dancing on the end of a length of hemp.