The Rule of Knowledge

by Scott Baker

  Black uniforms surrounded her bed. Shaun slowed, not daring to face the moment he had so desperately rushed to meet.

  ‘Lauren?’ he called. The heads of several cops turned as one. There were four of them.

  ‘Lauren?’ he said again, stumbling as he walked now, like a drunk man trying to make it home. His eyes were fixed on the bed he could not see, the wall of uniforms stopping him.

  ‘Lauren? It’s okay, baby, I’m here now.’ His face was streaked with tears. One of the police officers, a woman in her twenties, walked over to meet him, putting her arms out to slow his progress and get his attention. Shaun was about to push past her when he caught sight of the bed. It was empty. He stopped.

  ‘Lauren? Where is she?’

  ‘Mr Streetlunds?’ the female officer asked. Shaun didn’t respond.

  ‘Are you Mr Streetlunds, sir?’ she repeated. He looked at the woman for the first time.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked. ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘Mr Streetlunds, calm down. Come over here with me.’ The officer put her hand on Shaun’s shoulder, pressing uncomfortably hard, and made to turn him away from the scene. He fought past her.

  ‘Where’s my wife?’ he demanded, staring at the patches of blood dotting the bed. The cops around the bed all looked a little strange; they weren’t saying anything or taking notes.

  ‘Mr Streetlunds,’ the woman continued from behind him.

  Don’t trust her, his brain warned.

  ‘Max, my name’s Max,’ Shaun lied.

  ‘Max, your wife’s body and that of your friend have been taken to the morgue. I’m very sorry.’

  Shaun turned back to her, confused. The morgue? How had they moved Lauren so quickly? How had they got here so quickly? And what about the hobo? What had happened to him?

  ‘We can take you down to identify the body in a moment.’ The female officer spoke in sympathetic tones. ‘I’m very sorry, but first we have to ask you a few questions.’

  She spoke with an Italian accent. Shaun’s suspicion gave him focus. The policewoman turned to him and gestured to a couple of chairs at the corner of the ward. She led him there and pulled one out for him and one for herself. She sat and offered for him to do the same.

  He sat cautiously, hoping his face wouldn’t betray his growing suspicion.

  ‘Mr Streetlunds,’ the officer began, pulling out a small notebook.

  ‘It’s Streetland,’ he corrected her as a test.

  ‘Streetland, sorry.’

  She doesn’t know who you are, his brain interrupted.

  Her pen seemed to act independently of the rest of her body. With her mouth she was asking questions, but with her notebook and pen she was working feverishly, writing, annotating, describing.

  ‘We believe that the people who shot your wife were looking for something. We believe they followed you from a motel out past Whitesville and were looking for …?’ she searched his face. The sympathy she had shown was gone and her expression was cold.

  ‘What sort of something?’ he asked.

  ‘Something very, very important,’ she said in measured tones.

  ‘I really don’t know what you mean,’ Shaun lied again, growing more suspicious. The woman smiled. She was pretty. Dark hair fell out from under her hat and curled across her forehead. Her eyes were an emerald green and lined with dark lashes.

  ‘I know it’s been a hard night for you,’ she continued. ‘Your wife has been killed, and your friend was shot also. These people killed your wife, and we know they will not hesitate to kill you in order to get what they want.’

  Is this the way cops usually speak to victims? Shaun wondered. Something’s up, his brain warned. He clung to his suspicion; it gave him something besides the shock and grief.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about your friend? The man with the beard. How long have you known him?’ Her pen was still working overtime, and she had filled three pages by now. He caught a glimpse of what looked like meaningless scrawl. What was she writing? The harsh fluorescent lights in the ward flickered. Shaun found it hard to focus.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Shaun began. ‘We were driving and we hit him with our car. He ran out in front of us.’ The pen continued to move, but for the first time he noticed the light on the end of it. A small red light … or wait, was it green? It seemed to change hue depending on the angle. His eyes followed it.

  ‘Yes, you hit him with your car, didn’t you? You hit him with your car and thought you’d killed him. But he wasn’t dead, was he?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t dead,’ Shaun repeated her words. She wasn’t so bad.

  ‘Then you took him in your car, didn’t you? You took the man in your car and drove him to a motel.’ The pen kept moving. It was very interesting. He wondered where he could get one of those pens. Maybe they gave them out at the police academy.

  ‘And you took him to a motel, didn’t you?’ she said again. ‘You took him to a motel and he was carrying something. He was carrying something very important, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, he had a whole bunch of books and papers and stuff. They looked really old.’ He had stopped crying now. He felt better. Maybe it was better to talk about it, to tell the cops everything, to get it all off his chest.

  ‘So, you took the man and the books to the motel, didn’t you?’

  ‘We took the man and the books to the motel,’ Shaun heard himself say.

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘Then we called the ambulance. We took the man to a room.’

  ‘You took the man to a room and then the bad men turned up, didn’t they? The bad men turned up and shot everyone. They were very dangerous men, weren’t they?’

  ‘They were very dangerous,’ Shaun agreed. She really was a very sensible police officer.

  ‘The bad men killed everyone and then you escaped, didn’t you?’

  ‘We escaped.’

  ‘You took the man with you but left the books, didn’t you?’

  ‘We took the man and left the books.’

  ‘Did you leave all the books?’

  Shaun struggled a little. Did they leave them all? No, they had taken one. What a cool pen.

  ‘We took one. Lauren took one,’ he said. Best they should know everything.

  ‘Lauren is your wife?’

  ‘Lauren is my wife.’

  ‘And Lauren is dead because she took the book. Do you understand?’ the police officer continued evenly, explaining it all to Shaun. It made such sense now.

  ‘She’s dead because she took the book.’ The light in the pen did a loop-the-loop. He liked loop-the-loops. They reminded him of roller coasters when he was a kid. He hoped the light would do it again.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to die just for a book, would you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘So, if you knew where the book was, it would be best to tell the police, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t want to die just for a book.’ Shaun saw the reasoning clearly. He felt much better, calmer.

  ‘You can’t even read the language it was written in, so it’s useless, isn’t it? Where is the book now, Max?’

  Max? His name wasn’t Max. Why had she called him that? Not that it mattered.

  ‘Oh, I could read it. Lauren read most of it, but I read a little.’ The pen stopped moving.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lauren read most of it in the ambulance. She read it out to me.’

  ‘You read Aramaic, do you, Max?’ the woman asked with a different tone in her voice. The pen wasn’t so interesting anymore. He started to look up.

  ‘No … no, it wasn’t in Aramaic. It was written in English.’

  ‘You’re lying!’ the policewoman’s voice said suddenly, harshly. ‘Where is it? Where did you hide it? You fucking idiot, don’t you know they’ll kill you for reading it? Where is it?’

  Why was she yelling? She had been so nice. ‘Max! Max, where is the book now?’

&nbs
p; Max? Why was she calling him that … because he had told her that was his name. Why would he do that?

  ‘Max! Look at me you fucking pleb. Where is the book? Where is it right now?’

  He had told her his name was Max. He had told her because … because he didn’t trust her. He looked at her face again. Her nostrils were flared and her brow was furrowed. She was bright red, and clearly furious about something.

  ‘Where is the book, where is the fucking book?’ she spat, the venom no longer hidden.

  A cop doesn’t swear like that, his brain told him. Shaun shook his head hard and closed his eyes. The instant he did, they stung like detergent had been poured in them. He realised he hadn’t blinked in minutes. They watered up quickly and he squeezed them shut as tears formed and flowed down his cheeks. He suddenly felt a sharp slap across his face.

  ‘Where is the codex? Where is the map?’ she hissed.

  Shaun was stunned. He was now free of whatever influence he had been under, but her new tactic of fear was effective. He recoiled. His brain worked frantically. Where was the diary? The what? Codex? He didn’t know that word. Where was it?

  It was here. It was right here tucked into the back of his pants. If Shaun knew one thing he knew this: if they found it, they would kill him. Right there, in front of everyone, they would shoot him dead.

  ‘It’s in the ambulance,’ he stammered. ‘It’s under the front seat in the passenger’s side. I didn’t know it was important. We just—’

  He was silenced by another slap across the face. ‘There is no more “we”, Mr Streetlunds. Your wife is dead because she took the diary. Now, where is the ambulance?’

  Shaun struggled to think. It had probably been moved by now, probably been taken somewhere for repairs.

  ‘I left it in the driveway of the emergency ward. I swear.’

  The woman turned and motioned to the three remaining cops who were standing by the bed where Lauren had been. They turned as one and marched off down the corridor. He watched them go, then looked fearfully back at the young woman. If he knew nothing else, he knew she was no cop.

  ‘You read the codex too,’ she said simply, unholstering her side-arm, ‘so you have to be terminated, like your wife.’

  Shaun knew that his wife was dead. He knew it as surely as it was possible to know something, and when he looked at this woman, this ‘cop’, and knew that she was involved with those responsible, a new emotion rose from his gut.

  Rage.

  He went from zero to a hundred in a flash. Within the space of a couple of heartbeats, adrenaline coursed unchecked through his body.

  She killed Lauren, she or someone working with her. She killed Lauren. Focus. She killed Lauren. Rage. She killed Lauren. Teeth grinding. She killed her.

  Shaun saw red. His vision tunnelled, his cares vanished. In all the world, in all of time, there existed only this woman before him.

  She killed Lauren.

  She killed her.

  The woman was still speaking, her demeanour smug. She thought she had won.

  ‘Now you get the chance to join your wife. Your dead wife.’

  The bitch. The bitch. Shaun wasn’t sure where the scream started. It rumbled from somewhere deep in his stomach and burst through his chest. By the time it hit his throat it was like a tsunami reaching shallow waters, unleashing devastating force.

  Then it broke.

  The woman had her gun out, but she hadn’t pulled back the hammer. She was enjoying taunting him, this man who had just lost everything and sat broken before her. It was she who was most surprised then, when before her eyes, he was transformed.

  The gun flew from her hand, knocked clear by a smashing, swinging backhand to her wrist. Then, driven by rage, driven by all the pent-up agony, his emotions peaking, Shaun leaped.

  He charged straight across at the woman, driving his forehead into her teeth. His body kept going, pushing over hers as she fell backwards out of her chair from the force of the blow. They crashed down to the floor, Shaun landing heavily on her chest, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

  The woman’s police hat flew off, releasing a wave of shoulder-length black, shiny hair as her head smacked down hard against the tiled floor. Shaun pushed himself up to straddle her, his knees pinning down her arms. Then he started. Driven by blind fury, Shaun’s fists rained down on her face. He punched and punched her, smacking her head from side to side, uncaring of who might be watching.

  ‘You … killed … Lauren!’ Within a few seconds her face was an unrecognisable mess. Teeth were missing from his head-butt, and now her lips were split and jaw broken. Her ability to scream long since silenced, there was now only the repeating dull thud of bone on flesh and her head against the floor.

  Gunshot.

  The slug took him in the left shoulder, burning as it knocked him sideways off the woman. Blood exploded from his arm, the bullet passing through the rear of his deltoid, missing the bone and exiting cleanly.

  Shaun’s hand went immediately to the wound, the sudden searing pain snapping him out of his fury. Seeing one of the other ‘cops’ with his gun pointed directly at him, Shaun scrambled. His feet slid on the tiling as he ducked to avoid the next shot. The zing ran right past his ear, splitting the air.

  He dived behind the nearby ward-administration desk as the man with the gun started to run towards him.

  If you stay here you’re dead, his brain said matter-of-factly. Would that be so bad? Shaun thought in response. Maybe not. What was there to live for now anyway? Lauren’s gone, what’s left? Then, as always, his brain gave him an answer. Revenge.

  The splintered explosion of another bullet smacking into the desk just above his head gave Shaun a jolt. He only had a couple of seconds before the cop would be in a clear firing position. There was only one option.

  Directly across from him was the stairwell he had run up earlier. There were two flights of stairs between each floor, one folding back on the other. Shaun ran straight across the hall and threw himself into the open space, spreading his arms and legs as if to fly. Instead he crashed down hard and awkwardly on the bottom couple of steps, not quite making the distance needed to reach the halfway landing.

  Fortunately for Shaun, and unfortunately for the orderly he had crashed into earlier, the man had been racing up the stairs to see what the problem was. He provided Shaun with just enough cushioning to stop any serious damage.

  Before the small Englishman had time to complain, Shaun was up and racing down the next flight of stairs, clearing the last step just as it exploded beneath his feet. Fragments of cement flew everywhere as another shot blasted the rest of the remaining step and he pushed through the door into the stark white corridor.

  Running blindly, his only thought was survival. He needed to live to avenge Lauren. As he sprinted down the hallway, leaving bloody footprints behind him, he swore he would make them pay.

  He took a corner and looked around him, panting. His bloodied shoulder was still pouring crimson. He needed to lose his pursuer but he didn’t have much energy left. He was stopped in a cross passageway connecting one long corridor to another. He had reached the end of one hallway and ran perpendicular to the police impostor chasing him. He came to another T-junction and knew that his choice here would mean life or death. Hard-soled shoes echoed behind, clanging with increasing volume.

  When in doubt, turn left, his brain commanded. It was a rule he had lived by most of his life, and one that had rarely failed him – but the stakes had never been quite so high. He turned left and ran, just as the other two ‘cops’ came around the corner at the opposite end of the corridor. They saw him and drew their guns. Shaun knew there was no time to debate, so he found the first door and turned left again, into the women’s restroom.

  Oblivious to the commotion outside, a teenage girl looked in the mirror while she applied make-up to her too-young face. She wore a short skirt and tight midriff top, and her ears were filled by small headphones. She didn’t notice as Sh
aun entered and looked about frantically. He ran right through the restroom and out the door on the opposite side. Seeing the reflection behind her, the girl screamed and jumped, sending a smudge of eyeliner across her cheek, down to her jaw.

  Shaun found himself back in the original corridor. Having inadvertently run a shortcut, he was now behind the first gunman. Shaun turned right, towards the stairwell, knowing now that all the cops trying to shoot him – the ones he knew about – were on this level. It was then that he saw something else, right at the far end of the hall. A semi-opaque set of double doors with large letters on them: ‘Laundry’. Shaun ran the length of the corridor and crashed through the doors at speed. The room was empty, most people having cleared out when they heard the initial gunshots.

  He quickly scanned the room and found the big silver panel set waist-height in the wall next to a plastic label that said, ‘Chute’. Shaun pulled the handle and the whole top section swung out, pivoting at its base. Grabbing a nearby tarpaulin bin, he fished out a large wad of soiled hospital sheets. He stuffed the sheets into the laundry chute and listened. They bounced down, the passage obviously widening after the initial bottleneck entrance.

  About three full seconds passed before he heard the soft thud of fabric on fabric. He quickly stuffed another two bundles of bedding into the narrow chute entrance, a space barely wider than his hips – if he was going to free fall for three seconds, it was going to hurt, but not as much as a bullet in the head. He spun around as he heard footsteps echo from outside the doors. They were looking for him, he thought, probably trying to decide if he had run back down the stairwell or was hiding in one of the rooms on this floor. He grabbed onto the sides of the chute and climbed up – it was tight and difficult to do without making noise. First one leg, then both into the small opening, then he lowered himself slowly down in a reverse chin-up to find his legs hanging in empty space. His feet searched about for walls to press against, but he could not reach them.

  The chute started to close as his body inched lower, the sharp pain in his injured shoulder no longer masked by the adrenaline. Trying to bear his body weight, his arm gave way.