The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  And so, for the next few years the abuse not only continued but expanded. The headmaster became rich, as did the boy who became known as Chicken Jack.

  Chicken Jack grew to be ruthless and vicious in his dealings and his reputation for being the man that could get you anything became quickly established in the underworld. He moved to Eastern Europe, first gravitating to the edges of the war in the Balkans where life was cheap. His black skin made him stand out, but his money made him invisible once more. Then along the refugee transit corridors stretching from Libya and Syria into the west. He spread his net wide, tendrils that flickered and hovered around places where all that remained were the dispossessed, weak and and abandoned. The children, starved and forgotten, many mentally ill, were cared for, fattened and then shipped all over the world to satisfy the cravings of the insatiable.

  The demand for leftovers seemed to grow all the time and even Chicken Jack was finding it hard to fulfill. More and more he had been forced to recategorise perfectly good chicken as leftovers. He was taking too many risks, but the money was too good to turn down.

  Anyway, Chicken had his insurance. There were far too many people with a vested interest in keeping him free and in business. It would have been easy to get complacent but he had seen too many men brought down by their own sense of invulnerability.

  He wasn’t going to repeat their mistakes. He was clever. He kept his material in both hard and electronic form. The hard was in a Swiss vault with explicit instructions for its distribution if he did not call in once a week. The electronic was encrypted and spread across various servers, each with a countdown that only he could reset weekly and, which if he missed, would automatically fire off packets to competing global news organizations and the world’s mafia guaranteeing a rain of fire on all his associates, whether complicit in his demise or not.

  With his network firmly established, he chose to base himself in a country where he could disappear amongst those that were similarly coloured. In Brixton, England.

  He continued to travel frequently. He liked to move around, to witness his operations working first hand and look into the faces of those that maintained them for him. He had an eye for duplicity, he could smell it and doing the rounds kept any young Turks in check, making sure they got no ideas of their own. Every so often he would have to make an example of an upstart. Then, bathed in blood and gore, he would lavish riches upon others that remained loyal - the extremes of carrot and stick. Time moved on and Chicken’s riches grew. He began to feel an equilibrium, one occasionally punctuated by spasms of vicious violence, but an equilibrium nonetheless. He even considered the pursuit of more legitimate business ventures, but equilibrium rarely lasted for men like Chicken Jack.

  The beginning of the end, when it came, was ushered by the sound of knuckles tapping softly on glass.

  He was in his Mercedes one bright afternoon in a car park at Heathrow Terminal 5. He’d just returned from Brazil, an anarchic country that would prove a useful addition to his supply chain. He jumped at the tap on his driver’s side window. He could see a slight figure standing next to his car through the heavily tinted windows. Chicken checked the gun he kept in his lap between his legs and pressed the switch to lower the window. The figure bent down and Chicken found himself looking at the face of a man he thought had been lost to the past.

  Caldwell joined Chicken in his car. He introduced himself and without ceremony proceeded to outline Chicken’s business activities over the last five years in worrying detail. He gave no indication that he recognized him.

  The man paused to let his words sink in and then went on to outline his requirements. Chicken’s mouth became drier and drier as the syrupy, hypnotic voice washed over him.

  ‘Can you help us?’

  Physically the man was nothing like his previous incarnation. But the clear blue eyes that sucked in the light were the same.

  Chicken tried to respond, but his words died in his throat. Instead he nodded like a school child.

  ‘Good. We will be in touch.’ And with that he left. Chicken watched him walk across the car park and disappear. Chicken scrabbled frantically at the door release and fell vomiting on the tarmac.

  With the arrival of this man who now called himself Caldwell everything changed. His appetite was insatiable and he had seemingly limitless funds to finance them. Chicken had never been one to tie himself to one particular customer, but Caldwell paid twice the market price for chicken. Problem was it all had to be leftovers.

  Chicken’s operations expanded quickly with Caldwell’s arrival. He began to take greater risks. The time from grooming to delivery became shorter and shorter. Mistakes were made. Some of those picked up were not as expendable as first thought. Paying off the cops and the occasional politician had been part of the deal from the outset and they had come cheap, but they were taking more heat and buying them off was becoming too expensive. One Sergeant in particular was beginning to turn down too many requests. There was a momentum building here. Chicken could see that at some point in the future it would come apart. Shit, they couldn’t even keep him out of the courts. He had greased so many palms he shouldn’t even have come close to this. But he couldn’t stop. The thought of saying no to Caldwell never entered his mind.

  A few months after their first meeting, Chicken had asked him what he did with the children and the young men and women that he sent him. He had expected to be told to mind his own fucking business, but Caldwell merely smiled and offered to show him. That night he took him to an old warehouse and Chicken watched as Caldwell methodically dismembered a young woman to the occasional sound of mewling and the faint whirring of a video recorder.

  When he finally stopped, he had turned to Chicken and asked him if he would be interested in seeing his video collection.

  Chicken checked the rearview mirror. The station-wagon was still there. The money sat in the boot of his car. The final batch of human cargo was due in the afternoon. One last deal and he was gone forever. It had been a hard choice for Chicken but he couldn’t bury the memories that had been jarred loose by that night in the warehouse. It wasn’t repentance or any such shit like that. It was a survival instinct, pure and simple. Chicken felt himself being consumed, inside and out, dissolving as if soaked in a foul toxic brine, the diluted essence of Caldwell slowly eating him away.

  His planning had been meticulous and quiet. He was sure Caldwell suspected nothing. He had only one more stop; everything had been going like clockwork…until this idiot had started tailing him.

  There were fewer other cars around now and Blake had to fall further back in order to be less conspicuous. They passed a number of light industrial estates and eventually entered an area which looked as if it had been fenced off in preparation for demolition. He saw the Mercedes in the distance turning into a side road. Despite the barbed wire and padlocks many of the empty buildings had been vandalised and the roads between them had obviously been used by fly tippers for some time. Much of the garbage had rotted down to form compacted layers of filth strong enough to walk and drive on if you didn’t mind risking a puncture. Blake slowed down, crawling past the road he had seen the Mercedes turning into, and saw it parked at the other end, conspicuously clean and shiny amongst the discarded electrical goods, mattresses and ripped bin sacks. A fox strolled past and paused for a second, looking directly at him, apparently unconcerned by the strangers entering its territory.

  Blake pulled in one block further on, climbed out of the car and jogged back to the entrance of the side road. He edged round the corner and approached the Mercedes cautiously. It was empty. He looked around. The only other exit was an alleyway piled high with garbage. Blake made his way gingerly between the buildings, trying to keep his footing amongst the slime and the sharp edges of broken glass. He hesitantly pulled the gun from his pocket, unsure if he was ready to use it but wanting to feel the comfort of it in his hand. He moved forward again, his other hand covering his mouth to keep out the stench. There was a
rustling of rats scurrying through the tangled, man-made jungle as he proceeded carefully to the far end of the alley.

  Peering round the corner he saw he had reached an open space with high walls on every side. There was no way out. Something moved in his peripheral vision and half a second later his head was slammed into the wall. He lashed out but his arm flailed in empty air. A brutal kick in the small of his back sent him sprawling forwards, landing face down in the black filth, the gun flying from his hand. He tried to roll over but another kick deep into his belly winded him, making him temporarily incapable of movement.

  Chicken Jack stooped to pick up the fallen gun, holding it up between a finger and thumb feigning puzzlement. In his other hand he was holding an automatic the size of a small cannon.

  ‘You should have brought a bigger gun,’ he sneered.

  Blake struggled to turn over, coughing painfully. Chicken Jack pointed the cannon at him, stretching his neck as if trying to alleviate a strain.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘And why are you following me?’

  Lifting his shades, he peered more closely at the expression of loathing and hatred which was overcoming the fear on Blake’s face.

  ‘What did I do,’ he teased, ‘your woman? Your kid?’

  Blake was unable to repress a twitch, giving himself away.

  ‘Your kid, eh? No matter. You ain’t the first and you won’t be the last. It’s a bad business but we all have to look after ourselves as best we can.’ He paused for a moment and looked around at the desolate surroundings, spreading his arms with a theatrical gesture. Blake moved to get up.

  ‘You’re in a different world now, boy. Ah ah, Stay on your knees where you belong.’

  As Blake struggled to get up onto his knees Chicken Jack made a show of looking round.

  ‘Look at this place. You ever think you’d end up here? In this shithole?’

  Chicken Jack moved closer, until the gun was no more than a foot from Blake’s forehead. ‘I’m going to kill you. You know that, don’t you? Look at me.’

  Blake kept staring at the mud, seeing the imprint of where he had fallen, waiting for Chicken Jack to make his next move.

  ‘Look at me!’ Chicken Jack shrieked, taking another step forward and pushing the muzzle into the side of Blake’s head, tipping it to a painful angle. Blake put up no resistance but still did not look up. Chicken Jack was angry now, staring at Blake’s head as if he could make him look up through the sheer force of willpower.

  ‘Look at me!’

  He did not see Blake’s hand moving behind his waistband. He leant forward as if disciplining a particularly stubborn and disobedient child, roaring into his ear.

  ‘Look at me!’

  As Blake finally looked up, Chicken Jack pulled the trigger. As the gun exploded next to his ear Blake pushed his head forward, into the muzzle, as Rafiq had advised, twisting it at the same time. The gun slid off his skull, the bullet punching a crater in the dirt behind him. Blake’s hand came up at the same moment, slamming the knife into his would-be executioner’s crotch. Chicken Jack let out a scream which bounced back from the surrounding walls, dropping the gun as both his hands automatically clutched the knife embedded up to the hilt in his groin. He reeled backwards, the screams ringing round them as Blake stood up unsteadily, picking up the fallen gun and sighting it with both hands onto Chicken Jack’s face, shaking his head to try to clear the ringing of the explosion.

  Chicken Jack looked up and for a second forgot the pain searing up from between his legs, freezing in the middle of his dance of agony, a look of incredulity spreading over his face at finding himself on the receiving end of the barrel.

  Blake shot him in his flawlessly toothed mouth. For a brief moment the alley wall was visible through the hole in the back of his head. He teetered then fell onto his front, into a pool of dark filthy water.

  Blake watched him gargle and drown in his own blood. He lowered the quivering gun. As soon as the blood bubbles stopped and Chicken breathed no more, Blake shot him again, twice, in the head.

  When his body finally stopped twitching, Blake picked up Chicken’s automatic and stuffed it into his waistband. He bent down and searched his jacket pockets; a wallet stuffed with cash. He emptied the contents onto Chicken’s chest. A small faded photograph fluttered down and landed in the pool of stagnant water. Blake fished it out. It was a picture of a mixed-race woman, holding a child in her arms, taken in a photo booth. That the child was Chicken Jack was unmistakable. A faint scar across his cheek was in the same place as the one of the smiling child.

  Blake dropped the picture onto Chicken’s body.

  ‘We were all children once,’ he whispered.

  He pulled the blade from underneath him, it was slick with his blood.

  ‘Not any more.’

  Picking up his phone he pulled off the back, flicked the battery out and scattered the pieces across a pile of rubbish at the other end of the alley. Walking back to his car he placed the big gun under the mat in the trunk and slipped his own gun under the driver’s seat. Taking a deep breath, he held his bloodied hands out in front of him and willed them to stop shaking. On the passenger seat the evening light glinted off the gold lettering of the copy of Erebus and Nathaniel Winter’s voice filled his head.

  ‘There is a darkness inside us all. For most it is buried deep, carried for our whole lives without us being aware of its existence …. It was asleep in me, and had they not taken everything I would never have known of it. But they did. And I do. And now when I hunt them down it is not me they see but the darkness I have become.’

  He climbed into the car and started the engine. Doing a u-turn he drove away. The late afternoon sun, low in the sky, threw long shadows across the road and onto the buildings opposite. Blake’s silhouette travelled across the walls, a dark nebulous shape that dipped and weaved with the uneven surfaces, disappearing at the end of one block and reappearing at the next. He glanced at his own gaunt, dirt-smeared face in the rear-view mirror, Nathaniel Winter’s voice still in his head.

  ‘Be not the slave, but the darkness. And take from them everything.’

  He looked out across the industrial wasteland. The wind whipped up piles of dirt and leaves that had collected at the edges of the pavement. He watched their random meaningless movements, not wanting to move. Something stank in the car. It was him. He had carried the stench of the alleyway with him and he could smell it now the adrenaline had run its course. He rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned across and did the same with the passenger side. The dank afternoon air here felt sweet.

  He drove slowly through the deserted streets.

  He felt empty. Spent.

  Calm even.

  Catharsis.

  A moment of peace had descended on him.

  Then the road opened up and the voice was gone. He focused on the road ahead but the shadow remained, imprinted on his retina: a creature without morality, without form, a darkness as old as the light that threw its shape across the world.

  Moonlight filtered through the bars set in the high window. The only other light was from the candle slowly melting wax onto his desk.

  ‘I never expected so many to live in the shadows and so few in the light. I have come to realise that the truly evil are those that travel the fringes, the ones whose true faces are hidden by smiles, words, money, position. They understand the nature of the darkness and its depth yet choose to do nothing, choose to let the horror go on unabated and sometimes choose to partake.

  The ones that travel the Penumbra. The place between the light and the dark. In the clubs, on the websites, in the empty houses and disused warehouses. The ones who seek each other out, sensing a kin, smelling a similar. The ones who create things that no man should ever see. Images that sear the soul.

  That I am not alone in my fight comes as a surprise. Others are out there. I can see the patterns they make in the dark. But unlike the dark ones they never seek each other out. An unwritten co
de among us. Besides, there is too much to do and so few of us.

  Maybe.

  Or perhaps it is just an excuse, bluster. To ensure past lives are left unremembered and feelings kept well hidden, buried deep beneath the surface along with the bodies of our loved ones.’

  Winter paused and his hand went up to his face as it always did when he was alone and thinking. He traced the length of his birthmark with his finger.

  Nathaniel Winter, white, male, caucasian, fourty seven years old, imprisoned for the murder of seventeen men and women over the course of two bloody nights. All seventeen were unconnected to each other except for one thing. They were the immediate friends, family and associates of the man responsible for the kidnap, rape and murder of his daughter ten years ago.

  From his capture and conviction solely on circumstantial evidence to the present day, Nathaniel Winter had not uttered a word in his own defence nor offered any explanation for the choice of the men and women that died over those two nights. A hero to many and the devil himself to others Nathaniel Winter became even more of a polarizing figure when his first written work, Erebus, appeared online, the pages smuggled out by his lawyer over the course of the first two years of his incarceration. Many expected it to contain his side of the story, they remained disappointed. The work quickly gained notoriety for being adopted and quoted by vigilantes, survivalists, anarchists and even some of the more extreme sects of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It was banned in most countries, the result being it was downloaded and read by more people than had it just been ignored by the authorities. Then came the wave of vigilantism, spurred by the words of Nathaniel Winter and even being quoted in courts across the world. The authorities pressed Winter to recant what he had said. They were met with the same silence that had remained unbroken for the last ten years. Secret services went over Winter’s past life trying to find anything to destroy the public persona that had built up around him. They couldn’t find a thing. In the end it was left to the masters of the dark arts, the CIA, to manufacture a history for Winter. Stories of homosexuality, child pornography and a reduced manhood along with doctored images began to appear online. The online community chose not to believe, but the CIA knew that would be the reaction, what they also knew was the corrosive nature of those images and information over time. The seed had been planted. They let it grow, occasionally feeding it, in the way that only a government agency and its resources can. Two years later Nathaniel Winter was no longer the cause celebre of those that sought to fight the power. Instead he was a man that you may have admired once but couldn’t shake that niggling feeling about.