by Kevin Brooks
The estate was unusually quiet as I crossed the stretch of grass between Compton House and Crow Lane. The towers, the streets, the empty black sky . . . everything was bathed in that dead-of-night silence that makes you feel like you’re the only living thing in the world.
The night was cold. My breath was misting in the air, my hands were icy, and I could feel the soft crunch of frost beneath my feet.
But I didn’t care.
Hot or cold . . . it didn’t make any difference to me. I was in that state of controlled brutality again — in control of being out of control — and the only thing I could feel was an overriding and irresistible sense of purpose. Get there, find them, find him . . . get there, find them, find him . . . get there, find them, find him . . .
I walked on — across the grass, through the gate in the railings, along Crow Lane — and as I approached the entrance to Baldwin House, the sound of voices began to break through the darkened silence. Raised voices, laughter, the soft rumble of an idling car engine . . .
I couldn’t see anyone yet, but it wasn’t hard to guess what kind of people the voices belonged to — I mean, they were hanging around Baldwin House at quarter to four in the morning . . . they weren’t going to be choir boys, were they?
I heard the car engine revving, a dog snarling, another shout of laughter, and then — as I turned off Crow Lane and into the square around Baldwin House — I saw them: half a dozen or so gang kids, all in hoods and caps, hanging around a VW Golf in front of the tower-block doors. A skinny Doberman and a Staff with a spiked collar were skulking around the car, neither of them on leashes. A couple of the kids were quite young — twelve or thirteen — but most of them were about seventeen or eighteen.
I didn’t recognize any of them.
The dogs noticed me first, and as they both started running at me, barking and snarling, the kids all stopped whatever it was they’d been doing and turned to see what was happening. They saw me walking toward them — my skin shimmering, my hooded face a pale glow of radiating light — and they watched, confused, as the two dogs suddenly sensed something about me that scared the shit out of them. They skidded to a halt about six feet away from me, their ears flat, their tails between their legs, and then they both sloped off, whimpering quietly.
“What the fuck?” one of the kids said.
As I carried on walking toward them, a tall black guy with a knife scar on his cheek moved toward me, blocking my way.
“Hey, fuck,” he said. “What you —?”
I didn’t stop walking. I just raised my arm, placed my hand on his chest, and blew him off his feet with a surge of electricity. As he lay on the ground — his hooded top smoking, his legs twitching — I stepped to the side and laid my hand on the hood of the Golf. The engine was still running. The kid in the driver’s seat was staring openmouthed at the tall black guy on the ground. I pressed my palm against the metal of the Golf’s hood, twitched something in my hand — some kind of nerve or something — and shot a spark of electricity through the hood. Nothing happened. I tried it again, and this time the spark ignited. A burst of orange flashed under the hood, something went WOOF! and suddenly the car was in flames.
As the kid in the car scrambled out, and the others quickly backed away, I left them to it and carried on into Baldwin House.
Troy O’Neil’s flat was at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. Number Six. The front door — which was made of reinforced steel — was guarded by a full-length metal grille. I’m sure I could have got through both the door and the grille if I’d wanted to, but instead I just reached up and rang the bell. Light was showing through the edges of the door, so I guessed that O’Neil was in, and probably awake.
I waited.
Orange light from the blazing Golf was flickering through the corridor window, and I could already smell the faint stink of burning rubber in the air. From inside the flat, I heard a ringtone (2Pac’s “Hit ’Em Up”). Inside my head, I tuned in and listened to the call. It was from one of the kids outside, calling O’Neil.
Yeah? he answered.
You know that weird kid? The one done your brother? He’s here, man. He just fucking —
Yeah, I know.
O’Neil ended the call.
I scanned the flat for other mobiles.
There were three of them, including O’Neil’s.
I rang his number.
He answered, angrily. “I just fucking told you —”
“Are you going to open your door, or what?” I said.
“Eh?”
“I’m not waiting all night.”
“Who’s this?”
I saw an eye appear at the peephole in his door.
I waved at him.
“Is that you?” he said.
“Is what who?”
“What?”
I sighed. “Just open the door, for Christ’s sake.”
There was a pause then. I heard the phone’s mouthpiece being covered, muffled voices, and then the metallic clack of locks being unbolted. After a few seconds, the inner door opened, and through the metal grille I saw Troy O’Neil standing in the doorway. He looked a lot like his brother — mixed race, tall, with dead-looking eyes — and I guessed he was in his early twenties. He had his phone in one hand, and the other hand was stuffed in his pocket.
“What d’you want?” he said to me.
I smiled at him. “Can I come in?”
He frowned at me. “What the fucking hell are you?”
“Let me in, and I’ll tell you.”
He stared at me for a moment, and then — with a shake of his head and a suck of his teeth — he unbolted the metal grille, swung it open, and moved to one side to let me in. His right hand, I noticed, never left his pocket, and as I stepped through into the hallway, I wondered what kind of weapon he was holding. A gun or a knife? And I started wondering then if my electric force field was strong enough to protect me from a bullet . . . but I quickly realized that it was too late to start worrying about that.
As O’Neil pulled a pistol from his pocket, a figure moved out from behind the door and put a knife to my throat, and at the same time a door on my right opened and a fat Korean guy came out holding a rifle in his hands.
O’Neil grinned at me, waggling the pistol in my face. “You’re not so fucking smart now, are you, eh?”
I stared at him.
The Korean guy — who was only about five feet tall, but seriously fat — was just standing there, pointing the rifle at my head, and whoever it was with the knife at my neck was making a weird kind of panting noise in his throat. I couldn’t see him without turning my head, and I couldn’t turn my head without the blade of the knife digging into my skin, but I guessed it was probably Jermaine Adebajo.
I kept my eyes on Troy O’Neil.
He moved closer, peering curiously into the shimmering whirl of my face.
“What is all that?” he said. “I mean, how do you do it?”
“Do you want to see what else I can do?” I said quietly.
Before he could answer, I tensed myself — from within — and then, almost immediately, I released the tension and blasted out a surge of power. It came out from all over my body, a blinding white CRACK! that knocked O’Neil and Adebajo and the Korean guy off their feet and sent them all flying. O’Neil and Adebajo smashed back against the hallway walls and crumpled to the floor, and the fat Korean guy was blown back through the bedroom door.
I waited a while, just looking down at their smoldering bodies, but none of them got up. The barrel of O’Neil’s pistol had fused together at the end, and the blade of Adebajo’s knife had buckled and melted.
I leaned down and checked O’Neil for a pulse.
He was still alive.
So was Adebajo.
I closed the front door, locked and bolted it, then went into the bedroom and checked the Korean. He looked a bit worse than the other two — blood coming out of his ears and his nose — but he was still breathing, too. Th
e rifle was still gripped in his badly burned hands.
I went over to the window and looked out to see what was happening with the burning Golf. Nothing was happening. There was no one around. The car was just burning away, thick black smoke drifting up into the night, and nobody gave a shit about it.
I went into the kitchen and found a roll of duct tape in a cupboard under the sink, then I went back out into the hallway and got to work.
After I’d tied up Adebajo and the Korean guy and locked them in the bedroom, I dragged O’Neil into the front room, tied him to a chair, and then I just sat down and waited for him to wake up.
The room was filled with all kinds of drug stuff — bags of white powder, bags of brown powder, blocks of cannabis, ziplock bags full of grass and pills. There was plastic wrap for wrapping, scales for measuring, spoons and knives and syringes and foil . . . piles of cash all over the place.
I wondered how much money they made here. And how come, if they had so much money, they didn’t find somewhere nicer to live? I mean, even by Crow Town’s standards, this place was a hovel. Dirty walls, dirty windows, greasy carpets, foul air . . . the whole place stank.
O’Neil groaned.
I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to open. I waited a few seconds, just enough time to let him recognize me, then I leaned forward and spoke to him.
“Howard Ellman,” I said. “Where does he live?”
“Munh?”
“Howard Ellman,” I repeated. “I want to know where he lives.”
O’Neil just looked at me for a moment, not quite sure what was happening, and then — suddenly realizing that he was tied to the chair — he started struggling. Wriggling and writhing, cursing and spitting, trying to break free . . .
I touched his knee, giving him a short sharp shock. He yelped, stopped struggling, and stared wide-eyed at me.
“Listen to me,” I said to him. “Just tell me where Ellman is, and I’ll let you go.”
“What?”
“Ellman. I just want to know where he is.”
O’Neil shook his head. “Never heard of him. Now you’d better fucking —”
I zapped him on the knee again, harder this time, and once he’d stopped screaming and shaking, I said to him, “I’m going to keep doing this until you tell me what I want to know, and each time it’s going to get worse. Do you understand?”
He glared at me, trying to show me that he wasn’t scared, but I could see the fear in his eyes. I reached out toward him again. He jerked away, rocking from side to side in the chair.
“Just tell me where he lives,” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t know . . . nobody knows.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t know,” he spat. “It’s the fucking truth.”
I didn’t want to believe him, but the way he said it — the passion in his voice, the fear in his eyes — I was pretty sure that he was telling me the truth.
“What about a phone number?” I said.
O’Neil shook his head. “He doesn’t give it out.”
“So how do you get in touch with him?”
“You don’t . . . if he wants something, he gets in touch with you.”
“How?”
“He’ll send someone . . . or maybe get someone to call. One of the kids, usually.”
“What kids?”
He shrugged. “The kids, you know . . . the little fuckers who want to be Crows.” O’Neil looked at me, a bit more confident again now. “You’ll never find him, you know. Not unless he wants you to. And then you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“Yeah?”
He grinned. “You’ve got no fucking idea what you’re dealing with. When he finds out what you’ve done tonight —”
“How’s he going to find out?”
O’Neil hesitated for a moment, then he just shook his head and shrugged again. I raised my arm and moved my hand toward his face, palm first. I let the energy flow into my skin, feeling it pulse and burn, and I could see my hand glowing with heat as I moved it ever closer to O’Neil’s face. His skin was reddening now, his forehead dripping sweat, and he was starting to panic — straining backward, arching his neck, trying to get away from the heat.
“No!” he screamed. “No! Please, don’t . . . please . . .”
I paused, my hand a few inches from his face. “How’s Ellman going to find out I’ve been here?”
“He won’t . . . I won’t say nothing,” O’Neil spluttered. “I promise . . . I won’t tell him —”
“Yeah, you will. I want you to tell him.”
I heard the siren then. Faint at first, but rapidly getting louder. I got up, went over to the window, and looked out. Beyond the burning Golf, I could see the flashing blue lights of two police cars speeding down Crow Lane. I knew that no one in Crow Town would have called them, especially about something as trivial as a car on fire, so I guessed that they were on their way to somewhere else. But, just to be on the safe side, I tuned in to the police radio frequency and simultaneously hacked into the communications system at Southwark Borough Police Station to find out what was going on. And it took me less than a second to discover that I was wrong — they weren’t going somewhere else, they were answering a call from a passing motorist about a burning car outside Baldwin House.
“Shit,” I muttered as the two patrol cars turned off Crow Lane and started racing down toward the square with their lights and sirens blazing.
I knew that I was probably safe enough staying where I was, that the police were probably just going to check out the Golf, make sure it was nothing more serious than just another burning car . . . then they’d probably just wait for the fire department to arrive and leave it to them. The last thing the local police would want to do at four o’clock in the morn-ing was to go round Baldwin House knocking on doors, waking people up.
So, yeah, I was probably safe enough staying where I was . . .
In this stinking flat.
Surrounded by drugs and guns . . .
And drug dealers . . .
Electrocuted drug dealers.
One of whom was tied to a chair.
No, I realized, probably wasn’t good enough. If by any chance the police did find me in here, I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
I had to get out.
I moved away from the window and quickly went over to a table in the middle of the room. It was piled high with clear polyethylene bags filled with what I assumed was heroin and cocaine. I picked up two bags of each and put them in my pockets.
“Hey!” O’Neil called out. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ignoring him, I reached out and picked up a small black automatic pistol from the table and put it in my pocket with the drugs.
Car doors were slamming outside now.
Police radios were squawking.
It was time to go.
I turned to O’Neil and said, “Tell Ellman I’m coming for him.” And before he could answer, I walked out of the room, went down the hallway, opened the flat door, and left.
As I headed down the corridor toward the fire exit, I called 999 from my iBrain.
It was answered almost immediately. “Emergency. Which service?”
“There’s been a murder,” I said, pushing open the fire door. “6 Baldwin House, Crow Lane —”
“Just a moment, sir. I need to know —”
“It’s on the ground floor, 6 Baldwin House,” I repeated. “The Crow Lane Estate. Someone’s been shot.”
I ended the call.
The fire door opened out to the rear of Baldwin House — a concrete jungle of weeds and wheelie bins and broken syringes and dog shit — and from there I headed south, away from the tower, scrabbling down a shallow grass slope to a makeshift path that led me along a dip in the fields all the way back to Compton.
By the time I’d crept back into the flat and tiptoed down to my room, the police officers dealing with the burning car had been alerted to
a possible fatal shooting at 6 Baldwin House, and they’d sealed off the area and were waiting for additional officers and an armed response team to arrive.
As I got undressed and climbed into bed, tired and drained, I wondered what the police would think when they finally smashed O’Neil’s door down and found that there was no dead body, no murder, just three slightly battered drug dealers, all of them tied up, and a flat full of drugs and guns.
Would the cops care that they’d been wrongly tipped off?
Did I care whether they cared or not?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t care.
I lay down in the darkness and tried to think about myself and what I’d just done — my violence, my rage, my savagery — but I couldn’t seem to find anything in me to feel anything about it. I knew that I’d done it, and I knew that there was a reason for doing it, and I knew that — despite the validity of that reason — I still ought to be feeling some degree of shame or remorse or guilt or something . . .
But there was nothing there.
No feelings at all.
Just me and the darkness . . .
And iBoy.
Us.
Me.
And i.
We lay there in the silence and thought about ourselves. What were we doing? And why? What were we trying to achieve? And how? What was our goal, our plan, our aim, our desire?
What was our reason?
The heart has reasons
that reason cannot know.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1893.html
It was 04:48:07.
We closed our eyes and waited for the sun to rise.
A fugue state is a dissociative memory disorder characterized by an altered state of consciousness and an interruption of, or dissociation from, fundamental aspects of an individual’s everyday life, such as personal identity and personal history. Often triggered by a traumatic life event, the fugue state is usually short-lived (hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.