“Suck it, bitch,” he heard. “Oh no? Okay, then. Mac, cut her tit off.”
Sean moved.
He pelted into the clotted darkness, freeing his sweatshirt from the waistband of his track suit bottoms so that he could get at his knife. A woman was mewling under the thrash of bushes. “Stop it... please... stop it.”
There were two men crouched over her, their black jackets shining dully as they dipped in and out of the protection of a weeping willow. One of them had his trousers around his ankles. Sean veered towards him, his steps disguised by the din of their violence. Lashing out a foot, he caught the first man across the top of his thigh; he went down heavily, a yell cutting off the sobs of the woman pinned beneath them. Before the other could bring himself upright, Sean flashed his arm out and cut him across the bridge of his nose. Blood sprayed from between his fingers as he dropped to his knees.
“Come on,” he said, reaching down to the girl. Her skirt was piled up around her hips and her blouse was torn open. She drew the two halves of it together as she surfaced from the gloom, her eyes like silver bubbles moving through dark water. Wet soil was caked onto half of her head; blood formed a thin lather over the other. She resembled some grim harlequin. She took his hand and he pulled her towards him, and asked if she was badly injured.
“I’m okay,” she told him. “They didn’t stab me.”
She wrenched herself free and knelt down by the man whose face was trying to pour out all over the grass. Her hands jabbed into his pockets; she flashed Sean a smile as she emerged with a wad of cash.
“Twat,” said the other man, struggling to pull his pants up.
“I said come on,” Sean urged. The girl went to him and they backed away. Sean’s knife was raised now, pinning the man called Mac to the darkness. “I will use this, if you follow,” he said, levelly. “And I’m good with it.”
Mac spat at him.
“Yeah, sure,” he said and lunged. Sean stepped inside his outstretched arms and almost delicately carved a broad slice out of his leg. Mac dropped, clutching his thigh. Blood squirted from between his fingers. He looked up at Sean with an expression almost of hope. He seemed too shocked to make any noise at all.
By the time Sean had returned to the main road, the girl was making her way to the opposite path. He followed, stabbing a bloody finger over the keypad of his mobile, relaying his alert to the police switchboard; a nasal voice asked for his name, address and the location of crime. He lied about everything bar the site.
“No, it’s this way,” Sean called out, as the girl made to cut down an alleyway to more estate blocks. The area was crawling with them: drab grey monoliths, punch-drunk and lifeless, their tiny windows either smashed in or boarded over. She stopped and looked back at him, her hip knocked out to one side as she flipped him the Vs.
“What’s
this way
?” she asked. She was smiling at him. Kind of.
“My place. I’ve got some food. A hot bath. You can stay with me.”
“Oh can I? I’ve just pocketed me the best part of two hundred quid, Tarzan. I could stay in God’s penthouse if I wanted.”
“God doesn’t do rescues.”
“Oh really?” she sang. “What are you, my guardian angel?”
“Stay with me. It’s not safe around here. You might get attacked again.”
Somebody swore in the hive of dwellings behind them. Glass shattered.
“Place has changed since I was a kid,” he said. “Used to be you could leave your front door open and get back to find the place completely fucked over. Now though, they fuck your place over and sit around waiting for you to get back so that they can fuck you over too.”
“Fool with me, Tarzan,” she snarled, falling into step with him, “and I’ll use that knife of yours on your balls.”
C
HAPTER
S
IX:
A
RRIVAL
O
NE MOMENT SHE
had been heating a tin of Heinz vegetable soup on the cooker, the next she was a whining heap on the floor.
Will had been thinking of when they first met. How her hair had glowed in the sunshine as she stepped from the library into his path. Following her, and berating himself for his foolishness as he did so, he’d tried to picture her face – of which he’d only caught a glimpse as she brushed by him. The black jacket she wore only served as a backdrop for the red that tumbled down it. When she reached her lift and caught him standing awkwardly, library book clasped to his chest, he asked if he might buy her a drink, fully expecting her to tell him to piss off. She did tell him to piss off. But she had kissed him too. Things had gone well. She had become his new direction. He’d suspected that a wasted life spent shoplifting and fighting and making cameos in any or all of the local courts might be over. Things had gone so well that here he was now, two years later, looking down at his heavily pregnant, heavily sweating wife as a pool of soup spread beneath her.
“Ambulance, Will,” she gasped as he tried to pick her up but she was fish slippery, her body so completely sheened she might have just stepped out of the shower. Her thick red hair had become dark and limp at the ends where it was plastered to her forehead and shoulders.
“Now?” he asked, incredulous. “But the doctor said–”
“Fuck the fucking doctor, Will. Fucking
now
.”
He lunged for the door, so shocked by her outburst he began to laugh. He tried not to look at her fingers as he spoke to the bland, professional voices – they’d become claws trying to gain purchase on the kitchen floor. Her face had gone horribly white with pain; her hair seemed to be leaking blood into her skin.
The first scream had him down on his knees beside her, pathetically trying to get her to breathe properly. He kept thinking of clean towels and hot water, not having a clue what to do with them. He thought the pounding was their baby trying to barge its way out but then he realised someone was at the door. He went to unlock it, grateful the ambulance crew had taken so little time but wondering why they’d come to the rear of the flat. It was Mrs Garraway, from next door.
“Out of the way, Will,” she squawked, pecking her tiny head in front of his. “You’ve phoned for an ambulance, no doubt. I should wait by the front door.”
Yes
, he thought, as she began tending to his wife, loosening her blouse and the drawstring of her leggings,
you fucking well should
. Catriona was all clenched teeth and eyes – he hoped it wasn’t all due to the trauma of birth; that she was as peeved with Mrs Garraway’s appearance as he.
“How did you–” he began.
“I’m not thick, son,” she admonished, throwing him a withering look with those pale eyes of hers. “I know a birthing cry when I hear one. Now off with you. Call me when the cavalry arrive.”
Once out of the kitchenette and into the dim warmth of their living room, he began to shake, or at least notice he was shaking. Catriona’s copy of
TV Quick
lay open on the couch where she’d been sitting not ten minutes ago. They’d decided to watch a Daniel Craig film that evening; it would be starting soon.
He squinted into the street, astonished by the lack of warning. Was it always this way? Oughtn’t there be signs – contractions and the like? Those of his friends and family who had children had never described an incident resembling this. So did that mean something was wrong? Pincers tightened inside him. Mrs Garraway didn’t give the impression that anything was amiss but maybe she was hiding her concern so as not to panic him. He willed the sirens to sound and searched the sky for flashes of blue, trying to ignore the hollowing of his guts. Another scream drew blood from his tongue as he bit it; it should be him with her, not Mrs Garraway, yet he held back, afraid he wouldn’t hear the ambulance above his wife’s pain or the clamour of his heart should he return to the kitchen. As if suspecting his dilemma, Mrs Garraway called for him to stay put; she was in control, though her voice suggested otherwise.
He forced himself to resist anxiety and opened the door to the cool air. As much as he strained, he couldn’t hear a siren.
Why tonight?
he thought, cursing the thrum of traffic. Another cry pierced him. He must have been ready to faint for it appeared that great streamers of the night were sailing past him, destined for Catriona’s lungs as she sucked in the fuel for a scream that he was dreading. It wouldn’t sound of anything, that scream. The dying never scream. He heard Mrs Garraway moan, “Jesus Christ!” He fell against the door and a sheet of pain wrapped around his ribs; it cleared his head. Mrs Garraway’s face floated in front of his, twisted with grief and revulsion.
“Catriona,” he mumbled, searching to give muscle to his voice.
“She’s all right, Will. She’s okay.”
His relief was momentary. A skin of panic stuck his tongue to his palate. “The baby–” But his voice was a whisper. He looked past her to the kitchen door, which was barely open, offering a sliver of a view. The floor was awash with red. “The
baby
,” he wailed at last. Was that a towel there, that red heap? But it was moving, it was moving very slightly.
Mrs Garraway was shaking her head and crying. “The baby–”
“
The baby what? The baby fucking what?
” But he was pushing her aside. If it was moving, it must mean the child was alive. She said something else but he thought he must have heard wrong; she couldn’t have said that. At the kitchen door though, he saw she was right. Catriona was unconscious but breathing regularly, a peaceful look on her face. For him to scream now might wake her and he didn’t want to do that, not when it would mean she’d see that the baby had been born inside out.
K
ERWICK SAID,
“I love this job.”
“What’s to love, for Christ’s sake?” Trantam leaned into the bend as he steered the Merc left. “And where, for the love of minge, are we?”
A voice from the back seat said: “Saddle up those sirens, children.” Out of the shadow, a head emerged, along with two huge, gloved hands that grasped the front seats. Black collars jutted into the grooves of a face so thin it seemed it must collapse in on itself.
“And can we have flashing lights too, Gleave?” sang Kerwick, clapping his hands. “Can we? Can we?”
“Nipple,” spat Trantam, but he was smiling. He turned to Gleave. “What’s happened?”
Traffic fell away from them as the Merc wailed and strobed through the north London streets. Gleave said, “We have to make a special pick-up. Same kind of shit we usually do, but we’re using a different hand to wipe the mess up with.” Gleave flexed his fingers; his directions were accompanied by the squeal of leather. “We’re on Pandora now. Hang a left into Narcissus. Top of the road, right into Mill Lane. West End Lane is straight ahead.”
Trantam braked hard outside Cumberland Mansions. The three men got out of the car. Gleave rang the bell. A few seconds later, a frantic voice yammered down at them about ambulances and police.
“That’s right, sir,” said Gleave firmly. “We’re from the hospital. Could you let us in, please?”
As the buzzer released the door, Gleave leaned against Trantam as Kerwick disappeared up the stairwell. “There are five flats in this block. Shoot anything that breathes. Shoot anything that doesn’t.”
W
ILL GOT SO
far as to ask where the stretcher was before a great bright flare went off in his head. It took a while to blink it free and when he could see again, he was sitting in a puddle of his own piss on the floor, looking into the silenced muzzle of a gun.
“Congratulations! It’s a... it’s a... sheesh! What
is
it? Dog food?” Kerwick was pumped, jittery as a candle’s flame. Will saw, through the gap at the kitchen door, his wife being moved. She moved very easily on her slick of blood. He thought, hoped, he heard her moan.
Mrs Garraway was lolling over an arm of the sofa. Someone had used the philtrum between her nose and mouth for target practice. Splinters from her dentures had become embedded in her cheeks on their way out; it seemed as though she was eating herself from within.
“What did she do?” Will asked, his voice thick and sleepy with fear.
Kerwick snorted. “She died, brainiac. Jesus.”
Gleave appeared behind Kerwick, drifting from the kitchen. He didn’t look up as he passed them and stepped into the bathroom. “The mother’s dying. We have to be quick. Kill him and then we have to go,” he said. He turned to Will and smiled. It was almost compassionate, if you could get beyond the wolfish, densely packed teeth and the lack of animation in the eyes. “Godspeed, you nobody cunt,” he said.
C
HEKE SPAT TWICE
and waited for her eyes to clear. Mucus filled her nose and throat, and burbled wetly in the creaking cavities of her chest. Beyond the blurred limit of her vision, shapes rocked and nodded like restless trees viewed at dark. There were voices too, although she could not yet decode their patterns. It was a painful time and one best suited to introversion. She was barely conversant with the skill of torpor but tried to retreat into it now, seeking shelter in which she could rejuvenate herself at her own pace. The journey had been a shock, both physically and mentally. She wasn’t sure if she had escaped serious injury. She needed torpor to give her time for reflection as well as the chance to heal any injuries.
But they wouldn’t give her the chance. Again the needle sought her armpit, again the injection flooded her with bitter blue panic, the electric juice they’d pumped her with flirting with heart and brain as though it might violently dissolve them like sodium in water.
She flailed backwards, tipping up over an obstacle, landing heavily on her backside.
“What do you want?” she asked, but it came out all wrong, her lips failing to coalesce around the words as she uttered them. Another glut of sputum loosed itself from her lungs. She did not feel good. Someone must have understood her question however, for:
“We need you to find someone. We need you to end someone’s life for us. It’s a job beyond me or my men.”
The light bleeding into her eyes was less painful now, allowing her to make out a tall figure in a black coat, the lapels of which were raised high to his cheekbones. His eyes were hard and grey but surrounded with creases and crinkles that softened him, gave him an avuncular air. “My name is Gleave, by the way. Daniel Gleave. I was sent by friends to collect you.”