The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  A train map of the mainland was laid out on the bed; a number of locations circled marked a straggly loop. Against the headboard was piled a set of black zip bags. Blake palmed the sweat from his now bearded face, pulled on a pair of shorts and got to work.

  He split the money into wads and placed one firearm, ammunition and a chunk of cash into a zip bag, closed it up and then repeated the procedure. When there were no more guns left, he continued with just the cash. When the last of the money had been bagged, he placed all the small black bags into the two large holdalls and zipped them shut.

  He used the motel phone to call for a taxi, then showered and dressed in black chinos, black jumper and black light military boots. Clothing from his army days that he never thought he would wear again.

  Over that went a dark coat. His hair had grown almost to his shoulders now and he swept it back over his head and secured it with a band.

  Outside a taxi sounded its horn.

  He picked up the two bags, shouldering one and opened the door, squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight. If the taxi driver noticed his battered face, he hid it well.

  ‘Hello, sir, take your bags?’ he said, opening the trunk. Blake shook his head.

  ‘No thanks,’ and placed the bags in the rear, closed the door and gestured for the driver to get in.

  Blake waited for him to buckle his seatbelt before he did the same.

  The 9mm Glock dug into his chest where the holster pressed against it. He adjusted it so it didn’t.

  ‘Where to?’

  CHAPTER 16

  depositing stashes...outrunning grief...end of the line...ray...

  The train terminal was busy. Blake bought a ticket with cash and disappeared in the commuter crowd.

  Once on his train he placed the holdall on the seat beside him and stared out of the window. As the train moved off, he closed his eyes and another scene in a railway carriage filled his mind.

  Blake stood watching the scenery speed by. The light flickered across his face as the sun dipped behind a tree line. Seated across from him, Blake pulled a small camera from his pocket. As Sara turned to look at him, he clicked the shutter. Blake examined the picture of his new daughter on the camera’s screen and smiled. He held out his hand and Sara went to him, allowing him to lift him onto his lap. Sara rested her head on her new father’s shoulder. Blake kissed her and they watched the sunlight fade together.

  It took him a week to complete the route he had marked out. The map, once committed to memory, he burned. The journey itself had descended into a haze of train compartments, dingy hotels, greasy breakfasts and fast food. The only outward sign of progress was the slowly dwindling contents of the holdalls he carried with him.

  At the last station he closed the locker door and set the combination, like all the others he had bought it outright.

  The journey was tortuous, long periods of nothing as he stared out of the train window, too much time to think, too much time to dwell, too much time to wallow.

  His final destination brought him to the last great city in the north. He walked onto the busy station platform, jacket pulled tight against the freezing wind and found a quiet corner. A train ground into the station, opened its doors and began exchanging contents. Blake’s gaze fell on a casually dressed man, not much older than himself. He stood in the middle of the platform craning this way and that, occasionally rising onto his toes. He caught Blake looking and gave him a quizzical stare.

  He broke off at the sound of a shout. ‘Daddy!’

  A teenage girl ran weaving through the parting crowd and jumped into his father’s outstretched arms. For a moment he thought it was Sara she looked so similar. She wrapped her arms around her father’s neck and kissed him. They hugged tightly. The girl’s mother joined them. God, she too reminded him of Julia. Together they walked across the platform and into the station. The sound of the girl’s laughter carried through the air and cut Blake in half.

  He paid for and stuffed two whisky bottles into his rucksack and boarded the train. Before it moved, he had already downed half of the first.

  The ticket in his pocket was to take him to the northern-most point of this god-forsaken fucking country, to an old friend. His carriage emptied at the fourth stop. He passed out a little later, halfway through the second bottle. He woke to find an old man in a conductor’s uniform staring down at him. He sat up, regretting it immediately as his head swam with a violence that made him gag.

  ‘Whuur am I,’ he slurred, slumping back into the seat.

  The conductor sniffed once, wincing at something offensive. He stepped back and answered with a name he did not recognise.

  ‘End of the line, son,’ he elaborated.

  Blake looked out of the carriage window at the desolate platform outside. He shrugged and tried to push himself up. His hand slipped off the edge of the seat and he would have tumbled onto the floor had the old man not held out a steadying hand. He looked up from the hand on his shoulder. The pity in the old man’s eyes threatened to crack the drunken eggshell that had become his heart. The darkness had deserted him. Blinking away tears from his treacherous ducts, he shrugged off the hand and grabbed the seat in front.

  He gritted his teeth, jaw muscles quivering underneath badly shaved skin.

  He willed himself up. The conductor moved back, afraid that he may throw up. He steadied himself, grabbed the remaining bottle, his rucksack and pushed past the man, stumbling out of the train into air, so bitterly cold that it made him gasp for breath. His jacket felt as if it were made of paper. He took another gulp from the bottle and felt its warmth trickle down his neck and join the acidic bile in his stomach. The station was deserted. A wall map showed that this was actually not the end of the line. The train that would take him on was across the platform, rumbling on a single track. The ticket office was closed. He staggered onto the train. It was old stock, with separate compartments. He entered the first one and took a seat. The train lurched forward.

  Time passed. The train came to a stop on a wooden platform and he got out. It too was deserted. An ice sun glared from between freezing clouds. Behind him the diesel engine revved and he turned to watch, swaying, as the train made its way back. Another track marked the final leg of his journey, the train yet to arrive.

  Three small wooden steps led off the platform onto a frozen mud track. In each direction there was nothing. He brought the bottle up and gulped down the remaining half. His stomach protested violently and it was all he could do to clamp his hand over his mouth to stop it coming back up. He stood convulsing alone on the freezing dais, dribbling whisky between clenched fingers.

  He managed to keep most of it down and wiped his mouth and then his hand on his jacket. Even now the image of the girl running into her daddy’s arms spun round and round in his head. He could not rid himself of it. Echoing peals of a girl’s glee stabbed like a blade in his skull. The whisky had not been able to shut it out, nor had it been able to dull its edge.

  His heart twisted inside his chest. Why was it always the heart? It started falling, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The memories came unbidden and suddenly he was the saddest man in the world. His suffering was the worst. He looked up at the sky: the sun had gone, a layer of black cloud swirled threateningly. He screamed at it, at God, at the four winds, at the maker, that all-seeing all-knowing entity that could have prevented this happening to him but chose to let it be. He roared at the top of his voice, the vibrations in his skull causing his vision to flicker. Every obscenity, every perversion flew from his mouth at the sky. Then the tears began and as if to push him further the clouds burst, as if the all-seeing, all-knowing wanted to drown out his sobs. The ice rain drenched him in seconds, his tears lost to it. In between cries and jagged breathing, he fell to the floor, the rage building inside him. He wanted to hit something, wanting to claw, to kill, to maim, to do anything to destroy the world and all there was. To know that those that had done this to him no longer existed. His fi
sts clawed and smashed the sodden platform. He beat them down again, again and when the anger and the wretchedness threatened to tear his heart asunder, when he could breathe no more, when there was nothing left to feel, the image came unbidden to him: The girl in which was contained all the love in the world.

  He screamed her name and told her that he loved her, that he was sorry, begged for forgiveness. The rain stopped, a stray wind parted cloud and the man stood squinting at the sun ray, peering through the clouds. He watched it and loved his daughter more than anything else.

  He ran to the edge of the platform and jumped. He hit the frozen mud sprinting, legs pumping furiously. The icy air numbed his gasping throat within seconds. His heart threatened to come free of its moorings. His screaming lungs began to drown out the sound of a daughter’s joy. Cold tears streamed down his face.

  He raced, over a shallow hill and down the other side into a valley. He tore along the bottom, arms wheeling up and down, up and down.

  ‘Ha! Ha!’ He had found a way to overcome this thing called grief!

  ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ He would outrun it!

  He raced across fields, up hills, through trees, his shoes caked in mud, jeans sodden, his heart fit to burst from his chest, legs staggering, face contorted. One valley gave way to another, then another.

  He slipped and fell.

  He threw up translucent steaming liquid until his stomach was empty.

  He rolled onto his back, rucksack digging in painfully and he lay there, breath rasping, erupting like steam from a locomotive.

  He pulled the rucksack from under himself. Above a hundred birds made black dotted patterns upon a sky the colour of cold grey steel. A negative of a starry night.

  Tears streamed either side of his face, some from the cold, some not.

  The sound of a girl’s laughter tinkled in his head. ‘Papa!’

  Sometime later he picked his way back to the platform and waited. He cut a lone figure on the small wooden platform as the single carriage train wound its way along the valley floor towards him. It stopped and waited for a few minutes then it slowly continued along its path across the valley to its final destination leaving the platform empty.

  Ray picked up the framed photograph of himself and Blake that he kept on his desk. He had been frantically trying to get in touch with him since that day. He had travelled down to see Blake the moment he had heard only to miss him by minutes at the police station and then again at the morgue. They would not let him see Julia. He then drove to Blake’s house and waited but he never came. He asked the police and they knew nothing. It was not their concern that he had not gone home and they didn’t know where he was. They did however want to know who he was. Ray cut the connection. They called him back several times. The phone was a burner and Ray ditched it at the end of the day. Old habits died hard.

  For a couple of days Ray kept tabs on Blake’s house, but aside from the occasional visit by that girl Stephanie there was no activity. The only plausible explanation was that Blake was not ready to come home. Ray didn’t blame him. He didn’t know how he would handle such a thing himself if he was in Blake’s position. Which meant that he was gone for the time being and there was very little Ray could do to find him. Blake knew more than him on how to become an electronic ghost so calling in any favours from his former intelligence colleagues would be a waste of time.

  It was with a heavy heart that Ray took one last look at the home that had represented so much hope and love for the man he had come to look upon as his son and left. He could only hope that sooner or later Blake would come to him. But he also knew the man. The guilt and failure he felt would bring back demons they had spent so much time burying. And if those took hold of him then Ray knew Blake would be lost to him forever. He hoped that he had done enough, that when Blake rose from whatever pit he was in, he would seek out his friend and not the demons that awaited him.

  He placed the photograph back on his desk and felt a breeze as the door behind him opened.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re closed for today.’

  When there was no answer he turned round and saw the silhouette of a man standing in the doorway. The man stepped closer and Ray could see that he was thin and disheveled. His face and fists were covered in cuts and bruises, his boots caked in mud. It was several seconds before he realised it was Blake. Neither man said a word as Ray stood up and walked across to him and put his arms around his shoulders and held him close.

  CHAPTER 17

  winter’s love...josie and the teacup...the hitlist...

  Nathaniel Winter stood naked in the moonlight that was pouring directly into the cell. He stared unblinking at the grey orb split by the bars and whispered.

  ‘It touched my heart once. This thing called love. Then they came. Brutal men with their black hearts and terrible will. They reached into that love and left behind a thing shattered. But they didn’t reckon on my will. And that cracked and broken psyche reformed into something else. Something that these terrible men came to understand. And when the time came, I listened to their screams as they laid their souls bare to my will. And I too reached in and took from them, hoping one day when I had taken enough that the black thing in my heart would say enough. Enough. But it didn’t and love would never touch my heart again. It had no place, no moor, nothing to hold onto. It was a distant thing. Like a face that one cannot place and cares not to try. You can try to forget, forgive, make excuses for the things that these men do. But it is better that you curl up and die. For you will forever be beholden to them. And that is no way to live.’

  Josie had chewed through the third plastic pen and this time had managed to get all the way through to the ink. Cursing, she spat tiny bits of blue into a tissue. Her makeup mirror revealed a deep blue stain at the edge of her mouth.

  ‘Bugger.’

  She wiped as much as she could and checked her watch. It was eleven thirty at night.

  The office had long since emptied. Not that it made much difference. She had spent most of the day alone. Rainer had been out, just a single call checking to see how she was doing. The rest of the team were out as well.

  She had felt a little deflated after Rainer had accepted her into his team. It had seemed a little too easy. Her fool’s gold. That feeling had evaporated the moment she was given access to the team’s files and became privy to the jealously guarded list of men who served under Rainer. Reading it had made her feel a lot closer to the ground but at the same time had re-inflated the ego that was still jostling for rank amongst her peers. The thought of rank brought her back to her task.

  The request had seemed pretty simple. ‘Predict Caldwell’s next target’, but it was proving easier said than done. She had the most likely targets down to ten and she was having a hell of a time getting it down to the four that would eventually be placed under surveillance. She kneaded the sides of her head, trying to dissipate the pressure building up behind her eyes. It was late and a heavy blanket of tiredness had draped itself across her shoulders like a needy lover, weighing her down. The sensible thing would be to quit and pick the task up again in the morning.

  She made her way to the toilets, energy saver sensors flicking on the lights as she entered. The toilets were clean but looked like they hadn’t been touched since they’d been installed sometime in the nineteen seventies, with their cracked stone tiles, bulky porcelain washbasins and fade-spotted mirrors. She looked tired. The lines that had been etched under her eyes that first morning had remained. Her skin felt greasy and shone like a billiard ball. She contemplated fetching her make-up bag but settled for splashing cold water over her face and working the ink stain from the corner of her mouth. The water had smeared what little makeup had survived the absent-minded face massaging throughout the day’s efforts, making her look even worse. She grabbed a sliver of white soap, worked it into a lather and washed her face, rubbing hard like her father used to when she was little, making her skin tingle. She straightened up and stared at her unmasked self. The sm
aller eyes, tiny marks, a pimple, the heightened colour in her cheeks, the darker lines under her eyes. Still a ‘looker’ though.

  He checked her watch. Midnight on a Friday night. For a moment she wondered what the bloody hell she was doing there. Thirty four years old, the wrong end of a failing marriage, no real friends to speak of, parents dead, no family that she would cross the street for. The face in the mirror stared back, it began to shake its head as if to say, ‘Don’t do it’.

  Josie twisted the faucet open. Steam from the scalding hot water rose and a few seconds later she was gone. Back at her desk, fresh coffee in hand.

  Josie had been surprised to discover the amount of information Rainer’s team kept on paper only, off both the PNC and their internal computer network. The full files were kept in a big safe in a room at the far end of the office. It didn’t make much sense and seemed an overkill until she realised the kind of information that the files contained. Some of the files were politically atomic. Kamal, one of the oldest serving members of his team had explained.

  ‘Rainer’s methods are unorthodox. He has a talent, a gift. He understands them. He has this sixth sense about them. He hunts on it. He’s got files on people he has no business surveilling; men and women who have never broken the law. If this were to get out, it would destroy him and us. So, we keep it hidden. All the files are paper so they don’t come under data protection. The eventual collars are all handed to someone else, never him and never us.’

  Kamal pulled another section of filing out. ‘You’ll want to familiarise yourself with these first. So you know who to trust.’

  The names on the group of file headers were all actively serving policemen. Two of them were men in her former department.