The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  But this was no punishment for some perceived slight. This was a reward. Ray was impressed by his attack. The smile had said that. He wanted to show Blake how good he could be. He fought as hard as he could, trying new combinations, switching, sliding, rotating, snatching, tearing, seizing, grabbing, oblivious to all but the ghostly, blurring form in front of him. It was like grappling with air, air that suddenly solidified to deliver a devastating punch, before becoming inconsequential, immaterial, then reappearing again, in front, behind, below, at his ear, his abdomen, at his knees, in his face.

  Serena shouted ‘Halt!’. They stopped dead, Ray sweating, his breathing laboured. Blake had not landed a single blow on him, but that didn’t matter. Ray had had to expend effort to fight him. He had had to try.

  Hand to hand combat wasn’t the only skill he needed to perfect. His marksmanship was another area where he knew he was still weak. In his previous life he had been in the habit of practising regularly at the same stadium where he trained for his running, but a great deal had happened since then, which had affected his eyesight, his concentration and his physical control. He was not the same person and he needed to be sure that he could control whatever weapon fell into his hands without having to give it even a second’s thought. A moment’s hesitation before pulling the trigger or aiming a centimetre off a target could be all that stood between living and dying before his work was complete. Although his neighbours never raised any fuss about the sounds of him punching his wooden adversary, he was pretty sure that gun shots would attract the immediate attention of the police. Ray had directed him to a wood, which he jogged to most days, where he could set up makeshift targets and practice with Chicken Jack’s weaponry.

  He remembered the first early morning Ray took him there. They picked their way through the woodland to a clearing. Ray unfolded a makeshift paper target and pinned it to a tree across the other side. He unzipped the rucksack where the weapons were now carefully stowed in padded compartments. He pulled a Glock .37 automatic screwed in a silencer and chambered a round.

  He turned to Blake ‘You sure about this?’

  Blake nodded.

  ‘Ok. This is a Glock .37 GAP with silencer. Accurate, low recoil, high muzzle velocity.’

  Ray took aim and proceeded to pump bullets into the centre of the target. He flicked the safety on and handed the gun to Blake. Blake felt its weight. Took sight and flicked the safety off and fired. Six muted pops. All six peppered the target. None near the bullseye.

  ‘You’re not afraid of the gun. Good. Now we make it an extension of your arm.’ Ray adjusted Blake’s grip on the gun. ‘And practice until you know where the muzzle is pointed without having to look. When you can hit the bull with a snapshot, you’re ready.’

  Blake nodded. He sighted along the barrel.

  ‘Relax your shoulders, breathe.’ Blakes posture shifted in response to Ray’s instructions.

  When Ray spoke, it was with a whisper ‘Fire.’

  The Glock kicked up six times. Each round closer to the bullseye than the one before.

  ‘Good, again.’

  As Blake’s handling improved, Ray introduced Blake to other methods that might be useful.

  Satisfied with his progress he unzipped another smaller bag and pulled out a crude explosive device with a timer.

  ‘Explosive charge with timer. Made with everyday items from any home depot retailer. Too crude for killing but as a diversion.’

  Blake took the device. Behind him a sudden flash of white light and an ear-piercing bang. Blake turned to Ray and the muzzle of the Glock in his face.

  ‘You understand.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ray would leave and Blake would pack up the weapons, slip them back into the heavy-duty rucksack and begin his run, continuing until the pain in his knee returned and he stopped, walking back to his room. Over time it had become longer and longer before the pain set in.

  And so for a time Blake lived his life between the small room he called home and the hall and the woods, undulating back and forth between them, changing with each pendulum swing, becoming heavier, faster, stronger, placing a greater and greater weight on the thin cord of reason that kept him there. Soon he would be ready and would cut loose, as the cord connecting him to this place snapped under the weight of purpose unfulfilled.

  The lessons continued and Blake also came to learn of the nerve clusters that littered the human body, a myriad of weaknesses, some of which only required a touch to trigger, turning off bits of a body at will. Most were temporary, but some were irreversible and a few, he learned…killed.

  He caught sight of his reflection in the battered mirror as he stepped out of his shower. His once meager frame had thickened, thin slabs for a chest, flat hardness for a stomach, veins tracking muscular arms.

  The wind had picked up outside, harsh and violent as always, buffeting the window, piercing the uneven seals with tiny high-pitched screams. The night was black, the light from sporadic streetlights devoured as it reached outward. The room felt adrift, like a ship loose in the heavens.

  He shivered as an ice-cold breeze licked at his neck, goosebumps rising. He flicked on the paraffin heater he had bought, dried himself quickly and dressed. Coffee in hand, he inspected his silent opponent.

  The wooden man had begun to take on wounds, its dark dense surface pitted and cracked with contusions, whilst his own remained unbloodied, unbruised.

  This wooden man was now his clock. It alone contained moments left to him in this place. Its arms, its leg, its solid central column were like the hands on a crowded timepiece, each ticking slowly towards its own demise. The centre arm went first. Snapped by the flat ridge of a hand fat with strength and power. Soon the other two would be gone, then the single leg and finally the solid central column. His reason for remaining contained within. The day his fist could cleave it in two would be his last in this place.

  Later that night. When sleep eluded him once more, he stood before his silent unbending opponent. He held his palm flat tracing the lines with his other hand. He brought it to his face covering it and then slid his fingers through his hair. He looked around the room and knew that if he stayed another night he would not leave. The dark thing inside him uncoiled at the merest suggestion of such a possibility. He tried to push it down but it was awake, its dark inky tendrils permeating outwards suffusing him supplanting any sorrow, any melancholy, any want of peace with a cold hard black rage. Blake pulled his fist back and hit the wooden man dead centre with such force that the already heavily calloused skin over his knuckle split under the force. The darkness did not care. If the wooden man was his clock, then it was time. It filled Blake’s head with a carousel of leering images, Chicken Jack, Fallon, Tony, Billy and the others from his list.

  Blake’s fists were a blur, blood spotted the floor. The central column shuddered, the left arm suddenly loose in its moorings. Blake pounded it with an elbow and it cracked, when he hit it again it flew out of its mount.

  He stood panting. He had no more excuses. The dark thing receded and he fell onto his bed.

  The wind picked up during the night and with the high tide the sound of the undulating sea and waves pouring and receding over the walls of the docks dredged up memories that he had tried too hard to suppress. But it was not Sara or Julia that he dreamt of.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  A part of him, a part he thought buried, whispered a reply. The darkness reared within but languidly, it too suffering from the same torpor as he. Inside something small pushed. Too tired to resist he let it jump free.

  He tracked a small blackbird across the sky and watched it dive down and perch itself on the pier wall close to him. It examined him for a moment and then with a squawk it was gone again, out across the bay. The man from the past vied with the present, flickering between the two.

  ‘Stay with me.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Why?’

  He stood and looked down at her bea
utiful brazen face and a single reason would not come to mind. Black hair flicked across petulant lips and piercing brown eyes bore into his. Her gypsy summer dress billowed in the wind; a jacket tied round her waist accentuating her hips.

  She reached out and offered her hand. He felt his arm rise and place his hand into hers.

  She led him along the promenade and across the street to a small worn looking place, at a junction between an unused lane and another road leading nowhere. Anyone would have been forgiven for thinking it was awaiting demolition. Only when they got close could Blake smell the deep rich aroma of freshly ground coffee. He reappraised the old building, with its worn red colonnades and caught their reflections in the gold translucent windows. A stray thought formed in his undisciplined mind. They looked good together. He pushed it away. The tiny beginnings of a thrill fluttered helplessly against cold hard will and died. This man in his dream was not the one that had lived this.

  They chose a booth with an uninterrupted view of the sea. The ageing one-way glass put a golden tinge on everything making it look brighter than it was. One could almost forget where they were and imagine themselves on the deserted gold coasts of America, taking a break before jumping back into their tired, faded 4x4 pickup and continuing the rest of their journey to who knows where.

  There were no rear windows, just a couple of huge dark spotted mirrors with the names of old long forgotten products fading into the silver. The place seemed dark when they had walked in, but as the eyes became accustomed it became bright and warm. The atmosphere was calming, the quiet clinking bubbling sounds of fresh coffee along with the faint kitchen bustle from the rear gave the place a feeling of home rather than a place of business.

  A small beagle padded over and sat staring up at Blake. He knelt down and offered the back of his hand. The beagle licked his hand making him smile.

  ‘Who’s a beautiful boy.’

  ‘It’s a girl actually. Isabella,’ came a cheerful shout from the kitchen and an old man appeared untying an apron from around his back. He looked fit; his eyes clear.

  Blake patted Isabella and stood.

  ‘Beautiful girl,’ he said, sadness beneath the smile.

  They ordered then sat in silence. Isabella made herself comfortable under their table. Outside, the sun disappeared behind a small procession of clouds dimming the world.

  A teenage girl ran along the street, blonde hair billowing. A man caught up to her and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around with a shriek. Blake moved to get up. Then the girl laughed and threw her arms around the young man. He lifted her off her feet, twirled her around once and then hand in hand hurried away. Blake settled back into his seat.

  Stephanie opened her mouth to speak. But closed it again.

  The silence hung in the air like a dark mass, draining everything around it. The light from the windows suddenly seemed less bright, Stephanie’s face seemed smaller, the eagerness sucked away leaving a hollowness in its place, the ever-present smile gone no longer having the strength to sustain itself. Her eyes dropped away.

  And then he stood up, slowly looked around the place and involuntarily shivered despite the warmth. He placed some coins on the table covering the cost of the drinks. She put her hand on his. He looked at her, at eyes brimming. She smiled and pulled at him. He sat once more.

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes with a napkin. She looked out across the yellow tinged beach.

  ‘What do I say now? What words aren’t meaningless?’ she asked.

  His eyes glittered in the refracted sunlight. His jaw set tight, the muscles in his face stood out like rope. He hadn’t asked for this. He didn’t want to feel like this. In another world, in another time maybe. But not now. The dark thing inside him coiled around his weakness and for a moment he saw through its eyes.

  It saw nothing of value to it, to its purpose, his purpose. It whispered. It asked him what he was doing there. How this helped him in his search for his daughter’s killers. In what he was becoming?

  Its logic was cold and irrefutable. He glimpsed Stephanie through its eyes and saw not beauty but diversion, an irrelevancy, a waste of his fucking time. Part of him recoiled at its cold assessment. To attribute the worth of a person solely to how they could aid him. To reduce a person to a transaction, to abbreviate her worth to something he could use.

  She watched the inner struggle play itself on his face.

  He saw through his mind’s eye at how he must seem to her now. How cold he looked. How impenetrable. How little difference she made to him.

  Yet, despite this, she held onto his hand. For a moment he had opened. She had found a way in. She could do it. She stood too.

  ‘Don’t go like this. Talk to me. Just talk. Nothing more. Please.’

  She held his cold hand in hers, his eyes in hers.

  ‘We don’t even have to talk. Just stay.’

  Blake looked down at the hand clasped around his. It was soft and small. It felt warm.

  The other Blake, the one from a long time ago, watched from a distance now, like a man swept out to sea on a current he had no hope of fighting. She became smaller and smaller, the skies darkened and the water ice cold. He held her warmth in his hands. He could still feel her fingers in his, the ridges, the small calluses. He held it high, above the darkness, the last vestige of her, until he could breathe no more.

  The small sliver of warmth, of offered love perished. He watched it die on her face. It was held in the single tear that fell from her eye.

  She didn’t stop him when he walked out.

  She was waiting for him when he returned to his block. Silently he took her hand and led her up the stairs. With the remains of the day dying in the sky, they made love. Not a single word passed between them.

  Her eyes were sore from crying. She couldn’t eat. She felt sick. The terrible pain in her chest would not abate. He was leaving tomorrow and she didn’t want him to go. She loved him. She couldn’t believe he didn’t love her. She wiped her eyes. She would not let him see her cry.

  She watched him as he slept beside her. Amber light from the street pooled around the bed.

  ‘I’ve waited my whole life for someone like you to come along and when you finally do, you’re just passing through,’ she whispered.

  She laid her aching head on his chest.

  ‘I wish I was enough.’

  She slipped from under the covers and padded silently across the small space and into the bathroom. She gently clicked the door shut and tugged on the strip light, her eyes wincing against its humming brightness.

  She caught herself in the mirrored cabinet. Feint dark lines under her eyes. She looked tired. She clicked the cabinet open. It was full of bottles and boxes of tablets. She recognized some of the names, heavy-duty painkillers, high-dose sleeping tablets. Stephanie’s heart dropped. She felt an immense sadness at the things she saw. The things that were used to dampen pain she could understand. She had never met anyone that had trained as hard as he had. Without the painkillers to see him through he would never have gotten this far. She bit her lip at the damage that could be endured by taking them.

  Then the sleeping tablets, the drugs that verged on the anesthetic. The sedatives and tranquilizers that bordered on the narcotic Any one of these would put her to sleep for two days straight. A double dose could see her into a coma…and she had seen him take a handful once.

  Stephanie reached in and took a box of light headache tablets. Behind it lay a photograph.

  Blake stepped into the bathroom.

  She held it out to him, tears streaming down her face.

  He had forgotten about the photograph.

  ‘Look at you…’ she whispered.

  He took the photograph from her on which shone three faces. One of them had changed. All the softness gone.

  She held his face. She cried.

  ‘Look at you…’

  She pulled him to her. The photograph fluttered to the floor. She led him out of the bathroom.


  The early morning sun had painted the sky the colour of burnished steel. She traced the smooth skin across his chest. Not a single hair, like a baby’s. He smiled and flinched when she hit a sensitive spot. She allowed her hand to rest and felt the slow rise and fall of his chest and the gentle beat of his heart. She loved him. She had known that from the first stolen kiss. She felt helpless, unable to stop herself pouring mistake upon mistake. She knew she shouldn’t open herself up, knew that the more she did the softer the layers beneath and the harder they would be to heal. But she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I love you, Blake.’

  And with those words she opened the most delicate part of her and lay it before him exposed, weak and innocent, like a newborn baby.

  She whispered it again.

  ‘I Love you.’

  Her words hung in the air, unanswered. A declaration made to an empty room.

  The child inside her couldn’t understand why he didn’t answer. Her face became wet with tears. But she did not make a sound. He did not deserve her blackmail, she would not have him turn and hold her because she cried, but because he loved her.

  Stephanie wiped her tears careful to not let him notice and snuggled. She knew he would not answer because he did not love her.

  So she would love enough for both.

  When Blake woke and the last wisps of the dream slowly dissipated, he cried. And for a moment he thought of stopping. Staying. Finding Stephanie. Making a life for himself. Starting again.

  The girl watched smiling ruefully from the mirror. He felt his heart crack with the knowledge that if she were here, she would beg him to do just that.

  Blake stood.

  But she wasn’t here. She was dead. And the men that stole her from him were not.

  Battered kit bag over his shoulder, Blake stepped into the training hall. The hall was empty. Just Ray piling mats on top of each other.

  ‘Need a hand?’

  ‘Take the other end.’