Authors: Peter Helton
Death. It was faint, but McLusky could smell it. The metallic odour of spilled blood and the stench of bowels and bladder discharged. He held his breath and listened. Not a sound. He held his
pencil torch as far to the side of his body as he could stretch and risked a short flash. A few feet away stood a blue van; beyond it McLusky got the impression of a dark bundle lying by a thick
supporting beam. No gunshot was aimed at his flashlight. He stood up, clicked it on again and advanced, bent low, stabbing the thin beam into the dark spaces between mouldering junk. He rested the
beam on the slumped figure on the ground. It was the girl, still tied and gagged. Her hair and T-shirt were smeared with blood, her face destroyed. All around lay bloodied lumps of brick, concrete
and wood. He felt for a pulse at her neck. She was dead.
The door of the van was open. He shone the light inside; it was empty. Engine noise erupted; not here, but close, outside. Bright lights pierced the dark through chinks in the side of the barn.
The crunch of tyres as a car sped alongside. McLusky ran. He could hear the car skidding away. When he barged through the barn doors, the brake lights of the silver Toyota flashed at him as the car
negotiated the gate and turned left. McLusky ran. Even as he splashed through the yard, he could hear the car braking as it reached the MiTo blocking the lane. As he skidded out of the yard, Kaya
threw his car into reverse and screeched towards him. McLusky raised the shotgun and held his breath. No matter where he pointed the gun, he couldn’t miss. His adversary was invisible inside
the car but kept on coming. Ten yards, five yards. McLusky swallowed hard. Three yards. He leant into the gun, and when the car was nearly on him, he fired and jumped aside. The rear window of the
Toyota shattered; the car slewed into the hedge and stalled.
Silence. McLusky picked himself up and approached the car cautiously. He opened the passenger door, poked the shotgun at Kaya and snatched the keys from the ignition. Kaya was bleeding from his
cheek and was holding his shoulder. He looked stunned but wide awake.
‘I’ll call you an ambulance,’ McLusky said.
Kaya looked straight ahead. ‘Fuck off.’
From beyond the parked MiTo several sets of headlights approached. McLusky gently set the shotgun on the ground. His hands were steady as he shook a cigarette from the pack and lit it. Then he
walked away up the lane into the dark, in the curiously mild air, smoking, enjoying a last few moments of peace.
They hadn’t come. They didn’t pay up. And he was alive. Three hours he had waited beyond the arranged drop-off time, and they hadn’t come. He had convinced
himself that they would kill him. Kill him without paying up, or pay up and kill him when he went to claim the money. But not turning up at all, that he had never expected. There was no sign of
them, no sign of the holdall full of money, in the agreed place or anywhere else. He took another turn of Queen’s Square in the strangely mild evening air, strolling along in the dim light.
Somehow, he found, he did not feel disappointed. He felt light. As though a weight had been lifted. They had just ignored him. And him with the ferry ticket bought and the car packed and
waiting.
He’d go to Spain anyway. It would always be this mild there in winter; that was where this air was coming from, they had said on the radio. He would expose them, of course. Just as he had
promised. The picture would get them convicted, no question about it.
He looked for a postbox and eventually found one close to where he had parked his car. When he pulled out the letter with the complete photograph inside, he saw he had stuck a second-class stamp
on it but forgotten to address it. He found the biro in his jacket, but now he couldn’t remember the proper address. It didn’t really matter.
The Bristol Herald
, he wrote, and posted it. It would get there eventually.