A Step Into The Dark

by Vince Vogel

  85

  Unlike on Regent Street, the killer had to engage armed men as he escaped the hospital. He came across two tactical officers in a maintenance yard as he’d run out the back of the main building.

  Diving around a recess, having spotted them before they noticed him, he hung on the corner and fired on both men. They dived behind some wheelie bins and stayed there. He took his chance, firing at the bins as he ran across the yard, and made it to a tunnel that burrowed underneath a road to an incinerator. It was used by the staff to transport waste out to a giant furnace.

  He ran to a black Honda CR500—a dirt bike—that he’d placed there the night before. He jumped on it, started it up, fired a volley of shots over his shoulder at the tactical officers, and then burst forward on the bike. He hit some steps going up and smashed through a gate at the top, having already partially cut the chain two days earlier.

  He sped along the roads, past the crowds of police cars parked there and then through the cordon of meandering officers. They heard the call too late and he was well past them, riding along the pavement at speed, when they realized who he was and darted into their cars.

  He quickly entered busy streets, two helicopters charging after him through the sky, jumping the bike down from the pavement and careering along the road, a fleet of police cars chasing after him, their sirens screaming in the air.

  Accelerating the Honda, he burst through a red at a junction and snaked through a line of cars that crossed his path. He heard the screeching brakes of the police cars pursuing him and saw the smoke of their tires when he glanced over his shoulder.

  Another police car raced out of the next junction and headed for him. He waited till the last moment—a game of chicken—and swerved to the other side of the road, dodging in and out of the oncoming traffic and then darting down an alleyway. He heard the screaming tires of a police car coming after him. A giant refuse truck was fifty meters ahead, blocking most of the alley. He shouted loudly and the men clearing bins at the side ducked back against the wall as he slunk through the three feet gap between the truck and the buildings.

  The police cars came to a stop on the other side of the truck and he was free for a second before the sounds of a chopper filled the narrow alley. It was right above him. He flew from the mouth and into a street filled with market stalls and a mass of people that resembled a swarm of insect larvae moving against each other, seething and writhing as a single mass. He came to a wall of humans, took the magnum from his jacket and randomly shot the first person he aimed at. The poor woman fell backwards in a spurt of blood. The insects were shaken and an unnatural energy burst through their ranks as they began dispersing with screams. The helicopter came above the crowd and added even more urgency to its chaotic movements as the air pushed down on them. He revved the bike and headed through a moving gap, the people acting like some intricate mechanism of sliding parts, the gaps closing and opening as he rode the bike through the tangled streets.

  Above in the helicopter, a police sniper took aim, the crosshairs settling on the killer’s back, just below the crash helmet. But each time his finger itched, someone would run in front of the hairs and he’d halt.

  The killer emerged onto the pavement from the crowd, turned the bike sharply and headed down some concrete steps into an underground station. On the way he hit a woman from behind and sent her careering forward onto her front. She ended at the bottom in a heap, broken and dead. He rode the bike over her, using her length like a ramp, and screeched across the stone floor, accelerating as he aimed the bike at a plastic disabled gate.

  He broke through easily and headed along the platform, snaking in and out of stone columns, riding past running people, aiming a kick at a few of them as he went by, hitting one woman in the hip and sending her spilling onto the floor. He was having fun; and why not? He’d spent so long planning and training for this and it wasn’t like it was going to last forever. Getting found out was all part of it. Now it was all about the fun. A fun that he’d never extracted from his natural life. In that, everything had been cold and tasteless. A strawberry made of ash. Only when he exercised his anger—when he gave free reign to the beast that burned in his heart: the ‘entity’—did he truly feel life. Tasted its bitter sweetness and felt its wet flesh underneath his claws.

  He brought the bike off the platform, the thing crunching down on its suspension as it landed with a jolt, almost throwing him off. He steadied it and roared off along the edge of the track into the tunnel, escaping into darkness. A darkness that felt like home.

  86

  It was more like a military hospital. Heck, it was more like a battlefield. Bodies strewn everywhere. They’d counted a total of seventeen dead and nineteen wounded. He’d even shot patients in their beds. One terrible scene that Alice and Jack came across involved a whole family, their bodies scattered on the floor, tipped out of chairs, one draped across the bed. Nurses and doctors lay dead, and he appeared to pay particular attention to anyone in a uniform. He’d apparently hunted down a police constable who’d been on duty, having arrived shortly before with the victim of an assault. The man had been shot dragging an injured nurse into a cleaner’s cupboard.

  There was no mercy, Jack kept repeating in his head. No mercy for anyone. He hated the world and wanted it burned to ash. The detective stood outside the front of the building, smoking a cigarette. In the sky, the sun appeared to be more intense. More angry and hostile. The whole place was drenched in bright light and Jack couldn’t help squinting as he gazed up.

  Below the malevolent sun, police vehicles covered the hospital carpark, the whole area cut off, the helicopters still hovering over the area. London was in chaos. London was being held hostage. While they were chasing spurious links, the killer was having his fill. Was it all no more than a smokescreen? All this guff about Robert Kline and David Burke. Was that just a diversion? Keep them busy while protecting his real identity? What did Carolyn Burke mean with her outburst? Sometimes… it’s not him. And even if it meant anything; did it even matter?

  “They lost him.”

  It was Alice. He turned to her from the raging sun and she appeared like a shadow.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “He was on a motorbike. Escaped through the underground again. They’re flooding it with officers now. Did you find out about Jonny?”

  “Yeah.” Jack sighed when he said this, blowing smoke out. “He’s in surgery. The guy shot his legs up. Murdered his son, too. We should have had him guarded better.”

  “No matter what I’ve said about Cockburn in the past, he didn’t deserve any of this.”

  “He’s not a bad bloke, for a reporter.”

  “What does he want, Jack?” Her voice was hollow when she asked this.

  He turned to her. She, too, was gazing into the sun, her eyes narrowed.

  “Carnage,” Jack replied. “To play with us. Show us how much better he is. It’s like he can read our minds. Like he knows what we’re gonna do before we do.”

  “He’s planned this for a long time. Now it’s up to us to catch up.”

  The two went silent, bleaching their eyes in the white rays of the sun. Jack’s phone went off and he answered it to Harry Dunn.

  “You still after Matt Brown?” the gangster inquired.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s just left one of his girlfriend’s houses. In Islington. Heading north along St. Augustine’s Road. Driving a red Volkswagen Golf GTI. Reg is V87 HOL. It’s the girlfriend’s car. You got that?”

  “Yeah. Cheers.”

  87

  Matt Brown had been in a panic since Monday night, when he’d watched the burning building on the news. From that moment, he knew he was in trouble. The news and his bosses claimed it was this guy calling himself the Shooter. But how could they be sure? Maybe it was a gang hit. His bosses reassured him over the phone that it wasn’t. There was no gang war. But how could he be sure? They told him to come in. He wasn’t even sure a
bout that. Maybe they wanted to clean everything up now that the police were involved. Clean him up.

  At the moment, Matt Brown couldn’t trust anybody. He’d been hiding at his girlfriend’s place, but had spotted someone he recognized in a car outside. One of the bosses’ men. He’d spared no second in running out of the house and taking his girlfriend’s car. Now he was driving along the Islington residential streets lifting a credit card topped with cocaine to his nose, snorting it, and trying his hardest to think what to do, confident that the drugs would kickstart a brain that had been ticking over at best since birth.

  He glanced up in the mirror. A prick of vanity. He still had his looks. He could be confident in that. He’d used them his whole life. At school, he attracted the older girls and had become popular with tough boys who wanted to gather around his bright light like lizards waiting for moths. He’d breezed through school coming in with nothing and leaving the same way, utterly unchanged by it. A friend of his had got him a job as a club promoter. He’d walk around gathering girls to take back to the club, getting commissions for each one. Within his first month, he was their biggest earner, making almost as much as the doormen; the pied piper of bitches, they’d called him.

  He was noticed by someone higher up in the food chain. If he could attract young girls to nightclubs, the logic went, what else could he attract them to? And so, he was offered the chance to make more cash than he ever could in the nightclub trade. Then they watched in awe as the little girls flocked to his impeccable looks, and they filled their houses and buildings with the young and the lost. All of those girls saw in the pretty boy some sentimental hope. His offer of a ride like a knight on a horse. His offer of a bed like the inevitable next chapter of a romance. His offer of work no more than fair. They were so easily led into hell.

  The radio was full of the news: live updates of the latest massacre. Terrorist? Maniac? Every channel was switched onto it. He’d hit the busy shopping district of Oxford Street. Then a hospital. He’d killed dozens. A maniac on the loose. They were saying that he must have been trained by the military. Must be some secret assassin.

  Matt turned it off. The sounds of police sirens in the background of the reports had unsettled him, as though they were right behind the car.

  His mobile went and he jumped. When he saw the screen, it was his heart’s turn to leap.

  “Hey?” he answered in a trembling voice.

  “The police are on your tail,” said a voice that felt like a knife across his bones.

  He looked up into the mirror. The road was clear behind him.

  “You sure?”

  “For certain. They’ll catch you soon. However, my old son, you’re to give in when they do come. You hear me?”

  “Bollocks, I am. They’ll want to know everything. What am I gonna say, huh?”

  “You’re to only tell them what we tell you to. The boss is very particular on this. No fuckin’ about. You’re to call the lawyer as soon as you get to whatever station they take you to. Don’t say a fuckin’ word till he gets to you. He’ll explain everything. They’re gonna ask questions about Tommy Lewis. You’re to answer anything on him that doesn’t lead back to his business partners or the other properties. Does that make sense?”

  Mathew had to think. The other man had said it slowly and clearly, but now as he tried to conjure the words back in his mind, it all seemed to have been spoken at speed in a foreign tongue.

  “Tell them about Tommy,” he muttered.

  “And what else?”

  “Tell them anything they need to know about Tommy Lewis.”

  “No, dipshit. Tell them anything about Tommy that isn’t to do with the business. That’s down for a ‘no comment’ from yourself. They’ll ask about Tommy’s place. Possibly about guns. They’ll want to ask questions about when you’ve delivered girls there. Tell them what they need to know regardin’ what you saw at the house. But nothing on the business. Nothing on the girls.”

  “But they’ll wanna know?”

  “And you don’t tell them. You take whatever they’ve got on you and you—”

  “What have they got on me?”

  “The girls have identified you from an arrest photo.”

  “Oh, fuck.” He thrust a bony finger into the small baggie of cocaine, brought it to his nostril and snuffed hard, rubbing the finger around his gums afterwards.

  “Look, keep it clean and don’t take any deals,” the man went on.

  “But I’ll go down for it.”

  “Then you’ll be looked after. We control the prisons. You’ll have a cushy life and when you get out, we’ll set you up. You know how it works. Things have never been hidden. You go down, you make the right choice. The one that keeps your legs from breaking and your pretty face from scarring. Keeps your family safe.”

  Matt’s Adam’s apple juddered at the thought of what they’d do. It was true: he’d met many men in the business who owed their positions to keeping their mouths shut and doing their time. If they could be trusted to do a stretch inside, then they could be trusted with responsibility on the outside. They’d proved their loyalty.

  Now, Mathew Brown had to prove his. And as though to raise the point, the car suddenly filled with blue light and in the mirror, he caught sight of the first police car.

  “They’re here now,” he said.

  “Then now’s your time, kid. Be a man.”

  The phone went dead and Matt felt as though the whole world had put the phone down on him. He was all alone. Frantically, he opened the window and stuffed the drugs out of there. He poured a bottle of water down his face. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and recoiled.

  The sirens blared and another car shot out in front of him, stopping across the road and making a barrier. A part of him wanted to accelerate, say ‘Fuck them all’ and smash into the car, smash into every car in the world, and steam away, escape the city and keep going. A fugitive. A renegade.

  But that was only the drugs talking. The truth was that he was never the fighting type and never the running type either. He always did what he was told and anything extra he got handed him in life was a product of his looks. So he pulled the car over and placed his hands on the wheel.

  88

  “Look, I’m only a club promoter,” Matt Brown gasped across the scratched table of the interview room.

  He was attempting a pretense. Trying to deny it. There was belief in him. Slim belief that he could get out of it completely, even after what the lawyer had told him during the ten minutes they’d had alone. The detectives needed to crush that belief as quickly as possible. The lawyer sat next to him, a serious man in glasses and an expensive suit. He didn’t look like the type of lawyer you’d expect to see sitting next to someone like Mathew Brown. It even appeared to the detectives that the two had never met before. But Brown had been very urgent in getting hold of the brief. Now the lawyer gave off an odd impression, sitting in silence and offering his client no advice, merely watching him, as though ready to report any misplaced word that he should say.

  Alice shoved two pictures across. Young girls. It was Toisy Crowe and Tina Shaw.

  “I’ve never seen them before.” He was still playing his game. Still held onto his slim belief.

  “Cut the crap, Mathew,” Jack said sharply. “They’ve both identified you. They were both staying at the Gavin Road house. They were both working for men you worked for. Working as underage escorts. You used to drive Tina Shaw about. She’s made a full statement. Described the car you drive and everything. Toisy Crowe went further. Described you naked. I bet if we were to photograph you, she’d identify your body from a line up.”

  “How does that make you feel?” Alice butted in, leaning forward and eyeing him as he reverted his look to the table. “Having sex with a child. A thirteen-year-old girl.”

  “No comment.”

  “Tell us about Tommy Lewis,” Jack put forward. The kid’s eyes brightened. Jack wondered something, but let it drop. “After
all,” he added, “you used to drive Tina Shaw to his house.”

  “I… eh…” He spluttered like an engine. Trapped between two opposing thoughts like a metal filing between two magnets.

  The lawyer craned forward slightly in his chair, touched Mathew Brown’s arm, and said, “Perhaps you should admit your part in this.”

  The kid turned sharply to the lawyer with the startled face of a child who’s being forced to confess that he stole from his own mother.

  Turning back to the detectives, he said, “I used to take girls there. Tina, mostly.”

  “Who for?” Alice was quick to ask.

  He looked at the lawyer. The latter’s face had turned to stone.

  “I don’t know.” Mathew shrugged.

  “Yes, you do. Who for? The man who owns the club you’re officially employed by?”

  A nervous twitch fled down Brown’s cheek like an escaping rat. She’d touched a nerve. Slid a fingernail underneath it and plucked.

  “No,” he eventually coughed up like a fur ball. “They don’t know nothin’.”

  Jack opened a folder. He slid across two photographs of men holding up arrest cards.

  “These men died in the fire,” the detective said, noting the look of recognition on Matt’s face as he gazed down at the mugshots. “Two more are still unidentified. We’re thinking they were foreign. These two, you obviously know.”

  “I don’t.” He was looking up at him. A face that begged the detective to believe him. Jack didn’t.

  “Their names are Christopher Clark and Robin Henry. Well known enforcers. It was Clark who was named on the lease of the building. A building Tommy Lewis owned. Now, a year ago you were picked up alongside Clark, weren’t you?”