by Kate Bradley
Gary was trying to turn his head, still talking, still crying, still pleading.
Aleksander pushed the gun against Gary’s neck. ‘Because you refuse to die with honour . . .’ He moved it to his knee. ‘I’m going to punish you first.’ He fired a bullet into his leg. Gary screamed. Then he sobbed, ‘Please, boss, I’m sorry!’
‘Fuck you,’ he said stepping over the blood already running onto the floor before moving the gun to Gary’s other knee. He fired again.
Gary screamed again, but this time, it was a lower, more guttural sound.
‘Now you know what is coming,’ he said, moving the gun to Gary’s stomach, ‘I’m going to make sure you have enough time for you to think about all the ways you’ve wronged me.’ Aleksander stood and watched him with an emotionless face. I started to think that he wasn’t going to do it, but when Gary maybe thought the same and said: ‘Please, boss, give me another chance. I’ll be . . . I’ll be . . .’
‘In about two minutes all you’ll be is . . .’ He said and pulled the trigger.
Gary fell forward, a gasp like he’d been punched in the stomach.
‘. . . is dead.’
Saturday
06:29
Destiny
I had dithered. I stood by the front door, wondering if I could go back and check on Aleksander, to make sure he wasn’t doing anything too bad to Gary, but couldn’t make up my mind, because I could tell that Aleksander was becoming pissed off that I didn’t trust him.
And then I did make up my mind, decided to and had turned back around. Then I heard the bang from the cellar, followed by Gary’s scream and I knew I was too late.
I stood in the hall and for a moment I wanted to cry. To cry for Gary, for myself, for all the poor bastards who live like we do.
Then I heard another bang, another scream and I became angry. All this could’ve been something real. This was supposed to be my way out; I could’ve been something different – this was my plan of how I was going to make it. But now it was ruined.
Those girls were nothing to me. But Gary was different. Gary was someone who always tried to do his best, who was always kind, who never treated me like I owed him something. And Aleksander not only took Gary away from me but, in killing him, had also taken himself. How could I love him now?
How could I look up to someone who didn’t care about me?
I felt everything I loved about Aleksander – his strength; his street smarts; his tenacity – fracture. He was clever, strong and on my side. Now he hadn’t only ruined Gary, he had also ruined us. I had asked him to leave Gary alone and he hadn’t. I hadn’t even got out of the house yet. It felt like disrespect: it felt like he didn’t regard me as his equal. Aleksander was now someone else who didn’t listen to me. He was just like every other adult I had ever met. Just like my mother; just like the social workers; just like those men who I won’t, can’t, think about.
He was Just. Like. Them.
I felt the burn of rage in my chest, my neck, my cheeks. And then I was running through the hall, opening the door that led to the cellar and down the steps, about to call out to Aleksander, when I heard the third shot. I saw Gary fall forward and I knew I was too late.
I nearly slipped on the stairs. I grabbed at the rail and steadied myself. Then, before I was even at the bottom, I could smell it: the stink of meat.
Miss was standing in exactly the same position and Gary was on the floor, face down, body collapsed forwards with blood on his legs and coming from his stomach. Aleksander looked up at me and I flew at him. I don’t know what got him first: my hands, my feet, my teeth, my nails, and I think I said: ‘He was my friend’ or maybe ‘He was so kind’ or maybe ‘He looked after me’, but maybe it was all of those things or maybe it was none of them.
Saturday
06:31
Aleksander
Destiny has gone mental, kicking and punching me. But I don’t see her, because I keep my eyes on the teacher. I manage to grab one of Destiny’s wrists. ‘He had to go,’ I tell her again and again.
She won’t listen. She rants and screams about him being pure, so I keep repeating it again and again. ‘He had to go.’
I never stop staring at the teacher, so I don’t know how she does it, because one second she still hasn’t moved, like she’s some kind of crazy statue and the next second – less than a second – she’s upon me. I’m still holding Destiny’s wrist when I realise that the teacher is bringing up her foot and is aiming it for my head. I recognise the move as some sort of karate kick before the pain connects with my jaw.
I hit the ground hard.
I am no longer holding Destiny. I know I have to move fast, so I put my hands down and twist round. I’m ready for it now. I know I can take her out. I have killed a man with my bare hands; I can kill this woman.
Another kick connects, this time in my face. The world edges grey.
Then I panic as I realise I’m no longer holding my gun. Where is it? I can’t even see it. There is only grey.
Another kick. I shut my eyes against the pain.
There’s white noise and the hyper feeling like when electiricy in a storm is about to strike really close, like happened in the forest when I was a kid and stayed out late to watch the lightning strikes across the sky. I haven’t thought of it in years, but I hear again the crack as the lightning splits the tree and smell burnt pine as it smokes in the heavy rain.
I remember the terror, thinking it was the end of the world.
I’m still smelling the hot wood when I feel the press against my neck. I can’t see; I can’t see. I can feel it and it’s cold and hard and I know that if I don’t move now then the teacher will—
Saturday
07:06
Jenni
After I told Destiny that Aleksander was dead, I held her tight. She screamed and cried and raged, turning on me like she’d turned on Aleksander after he’d killed Gary. Then she quietened. Some part of her had to accept that they were both dead and it was all over, before I called the police.
Our culture doesn’t really handle death very well. Other places I’ve travelled, the Far East, for example, live alongside death in a more – to my mind – realistic way than we do here. So I sat away from them and allowed Destiny to spend time with both Aleksander’s and Gary’s bodies, to say goodbye. It was messy and she was noisy but it was the right thing to do; it would help her in the long run. I knew that once the police arrived, it would rightly become a crime scene and she would never get a chance to touch either of them again.
She cried and cried and threw insults at me, at one point, even started picking up the things around her and randomly throwing them at me. I didn’t mind, it even felt like a privilege to help her process her anger. I felt a huge sense of achievement from the moment that man was dead – I knew then that Destiny was safe. In less than a day, I had driven my life into a wall, wrecking it beyond saving, but I would do it again. There has never been a point that I would not have done it again.
To save someone’s life is the greatest honour there is.
I could tell when Destiny was ready. She sat back on the floor, away from the bodies. Her face and hands, her clothes even, were smeared with their blood. But her face had become tranquil and she was quiet.
Then the other two men came down the cellar stairs. They were talking quietly as they came, and their mouths dropped open at the sight of their boss and Gary lying dead on the floor, Destiny sitting quietly by and me further away, the gun safely by my side, watching them.
They looked at her, then at me, then back at Destiny. She was sitting like a broken doll and looked at them and started crying again. Big heaving sobs of grief, noisy, unchecked.
They stared at her as if it were a horror movie – I guess to them it was. They were probably small-time thieves or drug dealers, led on by Aleksander’s big money and bigger deals than they had been used to. They may never have even seen a dead body before.
I ended it for th
em. ‘The police will be here any moment,’ I said. They left. They did not speak; they did not collect anything; they did not look back.
Without question, they would never bother Destiny again.
Now we were ready. First, I took a bottle of water left by the makeshift bed in the corner and held Destiny’s hands out. Like a young child, she let me wash the blood from her hands and using her ruined jumper as a flannel, I washed her face. She had struggles ahead and I would not be able to help her with those but I could help her now, not just keeping her safe, but with her dignity.
As I used careful, gentle dabs, the already sticky blood coming away with difficulty in some places, I thought of Billy. I hadn’t cleaned his face. Blood had poured downwards, covering him and I had just left it there. I didn’t even close his eyes. But that was then and this was now. I had done better, this time. ‘There,’ I told her, briefly placing my hand against her dry cheek, ‘we are ready now.’
I dug my phone out of my rucksack and dialled 999.
‘What service do you require?’ a female voice asked me.
‘Police, please,’ I said and listened to her repeat my number as she connected me to them.
Saturday
07:37
Jenni
I didn’t mention what had happened on the phone, other than to say that there had been a double murder and we had a gun for disposal. I’d had to stop to ask Destiny the address. She gave it in a dull voice as if I’d answered a question in class that was so easy I’d both bored and insulted her. They asked me to remain at the property. I said, of course – where else would I go?
Destiny jumped when the police started banging on the door, but neither of us bothered to get to our feet. I suppose, looking back, we were both exhausted. Certainly not from the lack of sleep in my case, as I’d actually had several hours and could function on very little. But I later found out that Destiny hadn’t slept at all and of course, had not had the benefit of military training.
When they burst in, visors down, shields up, shouting at us to remain on the floor, I almost felt relief. I’d listened to the shouts through the letterbox, then silence while they decided what to do, then they came back with a battering ram. By the time they came in, I had finished cleaning the gun. It was soothing to do while Destiny sat mutely, watching me. It made me feel like I was back in service and everything was as it should be. I’d left it next to me, but only to stop Destiny from grabbing it. It was clear that she’d decided to hate me for what had happened, and she was a child, in a heightened state, and I wanted to protect her from herself.
I had removed the magazine and placed the two parts next to each other, knowing that when they came in they would see a gun, but they would also see that it was disarmed.
I thought briefly about washing my own hands, but I didn’t need to. I was the cleanest I had been for a very long time.
Saturday
07:59
Jenni
Some people don’t believe in the Devil. This is understandable if they don’t believe in God, or heaven or hell, and live a nine-to-five existence, working in air-conditioned offices, returning on predictably disordered public transport, returning to homes cleaned by their cleaner and receiving orders of goods from Amazon. I live like that too. Our worlds are predicable, safe, constructed and run by ourselves largely, so much of our existence produced by the arrangement of ourselves or our fellow man.
Sometimes, we will all slip from these worlds and often it’s when we least expect it. A car accident. The sudden death of a loved one. A dreaded diagnosis from a doctor. But even then, these things aren’t completely unexpected. We see these things happen to friends and family and it is not completely unforeseen when they happen to us – unwanted, tragic, devastating, but not unusual.
But I have been to places in the world where villagers know that something dark, something evil has stalked through their village. Where neighbours have picked up new arguments and old machetes and have slaughtered, maimed and raped those they once knew peace with. I have found men tied to trees, their penises severed and put in their mouths; people with arms missing; children left blind in a ditch because someone stole their eyes to sell. These people know that the Devil passed through their lives, they believe in the darkness that can feel tangible, real, not a childish horned cartoon, not an expression of human failings, but of an inhuman presence. A thing.
I felt it again. In that room, when Gary was crying on his knees, asking for forgiveness he wasn’t going to receive. Aleksander was clearly an evil man, bent only on greed, but it wasn’t his evil that I felt.
But when he had died, and there was only me and Destiny, I didn’t feel it then. It had gone. It left us to deal with what was to come.
So when the police pointed a gun at me and told me to lie face down on the floor with my hands on my head, and Destiny started screaming and pointing at me, screaming again and again: ‘She killed him!’ I felt calm. I inhaled the smell of the filthy cement, its cold pressing into my forehead, and knew only peace.
Saturday
08:18
Jenni
I stood, handcuffed by the booking desk. The custody sergeant was asking me questions and I answered them. ‘You understand,’ he continued, ‘that you’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder?’
‘I killed Aleksander,’ I told him, ‘but not Gary.’
The portly sergeant with the kind eyes told me to save it until I had a solicitor. When we’d finished his paperwork, he told me I was going to a cell. ‘Is there anything you need?’
I thought about asking him to phone my father, but reconsidered. I rarely saw him at the weekend, so he wouldn’t worry if he didn’t hear from me. And it would be so much better if he heard it from me in person. If it looked unlikely that would happen, I’d call him then. Then I thought about my job – how were they going to manage? I felt tension work into my shoulder muscles. They’d have to arrange cover for me: it was going to be a massive inconvenience for the poor sod who would have to work out what to cover. ‘Can I send an email to my employer?’ I asked. And the cost of an agency, of course. I’d saved Destiny but it would explode George’s budget. I knew though that when he understood I’d saved Destiny from being trafficked, he’d consider it worth it.
The sergeant shook his head.
I’d have to phone then, but the thought of telling George, the thought of his face as he heard the news, almost – but only almost – made me regret the whole thing.
I’d half expected a strip search, but instead they showed me to a cell and let me have a cup of tea. It was too milky and therefore it was too cold, but I appreciated their kindness. I sat down on the joyless bunk and sipped my drink. I thought about what Destiny said and I thought about the sound that Aleksander made when he died. I thought about Gary crying and how perhaps I should’ve have saved him instead. I thought about what would’ve happened if I had saved Gary but then hadn’t been able to save Destiny. I thought about the girl who had been shackled in the basement who had got away and where she might be now. I thought about the two men that had been part of the gang and had legged it. But most of all, I thought about Destiny.
Saturday
10:47
Jenni
‘For the purposes of the tape, this interview is conducted by Detective Sergeant Anna Fields, speaking, and . . .’
‘Detective Constable Simon McManus,’ said the young too-skinny man next to her.
I looked at DS Fields across the interview table and decided she had intelligent eyes. About thirty, she was a little overweight and when she spoke, her voice was low and reassuring. To the tape, she introduced my solicitor, a youngish man called Jim Boyce.
DS Fields gave the time and asked me again if I wanted a cup of tea. She’d already asked me twice and I declined again. I nearly accepted because she clearly wanted me to have one, but I’d had several teas and not a hot one among them. Coffee I could drink if cooled, tea no. And at the risk of sounding fussy eve
n to myself, the coffee was too cheap to want. I figured that where I was going anyway, it’d do no harm to give it up now.
I’d declined legal advice, but they’d pushed and I’d conceded to having a duty brief. I’d spoken to Mr Boyce before the interview and he understood it was important for me to say I was guilty. The advantage to me, he’d conceded, was that I could get a reduced sentence.
‘Jenni, I wanted to do that because we see a lot of . . . I’m pausing, trying to get the right word . . . we get a lot of scum. Lowlifes. But I don’t think you’re like that. I think you’re someone who tried to do the right thing.’
‘I didn’t try to do the right thing; I did do the right thing.’
She pulled a face to suggest it wasn’t true.
‘What would you have done?’ I challenged. ‘Would you let a girl be sold for prostitution, lost forever to goodness knows where, just so your life isn’t inconvenienced?’ I looked directly at each person in the room, directly in the face.
‘You broke the law.’
‘Everything in context.’ I let them think about that for a moment. ‘I’ve killed many times. But the permission I’ve had means it’s legal. You drive too fast in your cop cars; you break into houses to arrest criminals; you assault people when you arrest them. But the permission you’ve had means that it’s legal. If I had waited for legality there would’ve been no one to save. Fuck context – I did the right thing. Now there isn’t a girl being injected with heroin in a hovel in Amsterdam or Frankfurt or Rome, before being raped by a never-ending queue of scummy men who don’t give a shit. You might choose to look the other way, but I won’t, not just to keep myself safe.’
Credit to DS Fields, she nodded as if what I had to say was totally expected and thoroughly reasonable. ‘Jenni, is it all right if I call you Jenni?’ I nodded. ‘Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?’ And she did. She went through my job in some detail, before going back to my life in the army. She asked about my regiment, about my medals, about what my assignments were. I told her what I could, and what I couldn’t she accepted with grace. We talked about my breakdown after Billy’s death and about my being discharged and I didn’t hide anything.