The Takers

by Robert Enright

  Aaron looked at her blankly.

  ‘My car was stolen and…’

  ‘Stolen?’ Singh raised her finely plucked eyebrows. ‘Right. Well you see, Mr Hill, I’m in charge of a specialist task force put in place to ensure that Sam Pope is taken off the streets immediately. Yesterday evening, Pope committed two more acts of violence that the media are now spinning into something heroic.’

  ‘He’s taking down criminals, isn’t he?’ Hill asked, sipping his coffee.

  ‘That’s what we are for. The police. We abide by the same laws that we hold everyone else to and we uphold them with respect and dignity. Last night, Sam Pope tortured a known gang leader with acid to the extent where the man has had his arm amputated. Is that justice?’

  Aaron felt woozy as a sudden rush of vomit threatened to explode out of him like a fountain. The sudden colour drain in his face wasn’t lost on Singh, who recognised a terrified man when she saw one. Usually, it was after they’d realised how head strong and career driven she was after they’d slept together. Singh assessed the mild-mannered man before her and reached into her pocket, removing an envelope.

  Time to hammer the point home.

  She slid out four mug shot photos, all of them of young, black youths. All looked angry, all of them sporting facial wounds.

  ‘These four boys were also assaulted yesterday, before Sam took their leader. The youngest, this one here…’ She tapped the photo. ‘He’s only sixteen years old. Sam Pope broke his jaw yesterday. Tell me, is that justice?’

  Aaron stared at the photo, a light bulb threatening to go off in his mind. Singh re-shuffled the photos before stuffing them into her jacket.

  ‘Look, Mr Hill. If you can give us any information, anything we can do to stop this man, you need to help us. If you’re holding onto a shred of hope that this man is going to help you and find your daughter, just remember these photos as to just how far he will go for what he calls justice. Your daughter isn’t going to matter to him if there is a bigger prize on the table.’

  The sudden mention of his daughter caused Aaron’s eyes to open with fury.

  ‘I think you should leave now,’ Aaron suggested, ensuring he kept his tone unthreatening.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Singh agreed. ‘I know this is a hard time for you, Mr Hill and I’m personally going to ensure our missing person’s unit do all they can to find your daughter. But if you can think of anything, or need to tell me anything that can help, here is my card. You can call anytime.’

  She held the card out for a few moments, but eventually placed it gently on the table as Aaron glared at her. She nodded at him.

  ‘Thank you for your time. I’ll see myself out.’

  Singh marched to the door, hating herself for goading the man regarding his daughter but she was sure he had made contact with Pope. While she would honour her promise to help find his daughter, her entire focus was on finding Pope.

  She needed to. It was her neck on the line and the stern words of Carl Burrows that morning had reiterated the impact a public failure would have not just on her career, but on Mark Harris’s too.

  While he was a creep, he was a powerful ally.

  She closed the door behind her and marched back to her car, looking back once at Aaron Hill who stood in the bay window of the front room. Watching her briskly walk through the rain, Aaron waited for her to approach her car. As soon as she slid into the driver’s seat, he shot upstairs, the realisation that he himself may be able to find his daughter becoming very real.

  Bursting into his daughter’s room, he swept his gaze around the room, dismissing the piles of clothing that had sprung up in the corner, or the posters of Hollywood heart throbs. He approached her book case, moving past the Twilight and Hunger Games novels until he pulled out her year book.

  Yet another Americanisation that had filtered into British society but one he was eternally grateful for.

  He flicked through the book until he came to Jasmine’s class.

  Her beautiful face smiled back at him.

  But it wasn’t her face he was looking for.

  On the bottom left corner of the page, he saw the familiar face. Only this time, it wasn’t sporting a bruised jaw and a freshly blackened eye.

  Tyrone Clark.

  The member of the Acid Gang that was in Jasmine’s class.

  Hill shook with excitement as he raced to his bedroom to get ready, with his own ideas of justice racing through his mind.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sam Pope shot upright, his eyes darting around the dark room. His breathing was erratic, and his body was encased in a cold sweat. After a few moments, he recognised the sparse room that had been his bedroom for the last few months and his pulse slowed.

  It was just a nightmare.

  He collapsed back onto his damp sheets, the springs from the cheap camp bed poking through the thin mattress and pressing into his spine like a cheap massage.

  It wasn’t the “Jamie Nightmare”. The usual haunting image of his dead son, lying crumpled and motionless in the middle of the street, his hands inches away from saving him. Ever since that fateful night over three years ago, Sam had blamed himself.

  He could have stopped the drunk driver who had killed his son.

  Miles Willock.

  This was a different nightmare.

  This was him, surrounded by darkness, out in the sand-covered wasteland of Afghanistan. Under strict orders to eliminate the entire enemy squadron, Sam had ventured into their compound, finding it surprisingly empty. As the roar of gunfire echoed around the building, he made his way further in, the memory fading fast.

  Two bullets ripped through his chest.

  The life began to seep from him as he collapsed to the stone floor, his eyes wide and trying hard to focus on the boxes piled on the table before him.

  He heard his superior officer’s voice, echoing over the radio.

  A man with a balaclava stepped past him.

  That was when he had woken.

  Glimpsing at the time on his phone that lay on the floor next to the bed, he also lifted the loaded handgun beside it. Instinctively sliding the cartridge and checking the ammunition, he place the gun back down and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Despite only wearing his boxer shorts, Sam was sweating like a whore in church. He slid them off, walked across his cramped apartment and entered the grimy bathroom.

  He had worked diligently with a scrubbing brush to remove the thick layer of limescale that had covered the wall like a grim paint job. It would have been enough for the past few months and Sam didn’t even give the growing mould in the corner of the room a second glance.

  He turned on the taps, the water eventually trickling out into a steady stream.

  Allowing a few minutes for the water to rise above a temperature that would chill him to the bone, Sam turned to the smeared mirror on the wall. He wiped it with a towel and caught a glimpse of his face. The eyes were soulless, two dark balls of pure vengeance. They sat back in his world-weary face, the handsome smile faded and replaced with a hard jawline covered in stubble. His muscular body was covered in thick, purple blotches, reminders of the brawls he had been in and the increasing punishment he was putting himself through. His nose was sore from the attacker in the second High Rise and adorning his sculpted chest were the two white circles.

  The bullet holes from yesteryear.

  The end of his career.

  Staring back at him like lifeless eyes, Sam ran a finger gently over them, the skin a rough tissue against his fingertip. Lucy had called them his lucky spots as both of them had been a mere inch away from ending his life.

  He felt a twinge of pain in his chest, the usual response his heart gave when his mind drifted to his ex-wife. Lucy had been everything he had ever wanted, and she beamed with pride every time he returned home from a tour.

  She understood his desire to serve his country, stemming from the military childhood he had but never revisited. Sam knew that his mother’s de
ath at a young age caused him to latch onto his father, who served with distinction in the army until he was killed on his final tour when Sam was just fifteen.

  There was never any other choice.

  Sam was always going to be a soldier and Lucy understood that every shot he fired from his rifle, every terrorist he eliminated, and every person he saved was what he was born to do.

  Then Jamie came along, and he promised he wouldn’t kill anymore.

  Two bullets to the chest evicted him from the army.

  The want to be with his family kept him from returning.

  But that was all taken away on that haunting summer evening, when he crumpled to his knees in Hendon, just outside of the Metropolitan Police College where he was top of his class.

  The flashing blue lights.

  The shimmering pool of blood.

  His wife’s agonised cries of pain.

  His dead son.

  Fury rocked Sam’s body like a cattle prod and he drove his fist into the mirror, the glass shattering and two shards ripping into the flesh of his battered knuckles. That was why he had mutilated Leon Barnett. To help a man who was as helpless as he had been.

  Aaron Hill had no chance of saving his daughter. Not on his own.

  That’s why Sam had tortured Leon. It was why he had attacked that gang.

  It was why he had raged his one-man war on the entire crime empire that pulsed through the underbelly of London like a heartbeat.

  Because he had been helpless.

  As he stepped into the bath tub and allowed the steam of the shower to envelope him, he dipped his head under the boiling water.

  As it crashed against his face, his mind raced back to one memory over three years before and one name.

  Miles Hillock.

  Sam had been sat in the car for over fifteen hours. Parked on the side of the street in Edgware, he stared out onto the road. The pavement was lined with shops, a number of low market supply stores and cheap takeaways. The Broadwalk Shopping Centre had long since closed, the employees of JD Sports and Boots shutting up shop and heading up the road to the local pubs.

  As the clock ventured closer to midnight, Sam’s focus never shifted.

  It was locked upon the small flat above the Dallas Fried Chicken shop. A small, pokey residence, with just enough dark corners for somebody to fade away.

  Sam ran a hand through his overgrown hair, the brown locks flopping over his ears. It had been months since he had had a haircut.

  Since he had cared.

  The hair flopped down the side of his gaunt face, his appetite disappearing the moment he stared into the dead eyes of his son. His eyes, vacant and cried dry, sat back into his pale face which was framed by a scraggily beard.

  Sam had stopped shaving when Lucy left.

  For the first two months, they had grieved together. Each day melted into the next, the absence of their son weighing heavily on them both. Somehow, hand in hand, they had made it through his funeral, the room a chamber of broken hearts and shattered souls. As the weeks went by, Lucy decided to push forward, honouring the boundless energy of their son by trying to get their life back on track.

  Sam just couldn’t do it.

  He found himself sat on the floor of his son’s room, thumbing through the books that adorned the neat book case. Tears fell freely as he remembered his son’s love of books, the polar opposite to himself.

  His son was a bookworm.

  As he tried to digest the words that accompanied the colourful caterpillar before him, he broke down. Time after time.

  He could have stopped it.

  Sam had spent his entire life as a soldier, protecting the freedom of those under the relentless, oppressive boot of terrorism.

  But he couldn’t protect his son.

  He had failed in his one duty as a father.

  After those two months turned to six, Lucy soon packed her bags, refusing to watch as the man she loved allowed the guilt to swallow him. He had dropped out of the police, the idea that he was capable of protecting the public seemed almost cruel.

  Soon, Sam was left in an empty house with the request for divorce written before him.

  He granted it to her, his heart breaking when he realised that she was better off without him.

  It had been just over ten months since his son’s broken body lay before him, the bright lights of the smashed car illuminating him like a museum show piece.

  It was an image that would stay with him forever.

  As would the name.

  Miles Hillock.

  Twenty years old, Miles had been drunk behind the wheel when he had veered off the road and snatched Sam’s son from him. Sam had known because he had watched the man exceed the limit at the very pub he had been attending. But circumstances beyond his understanding saw the sentence reduced to a measly eighteen months.

  That was what his son’s life had been worth.

  Eighteen months.

  After nine, Miles walked with good behaviour, emerging from the prison a different man. The handsome face had been replaced by one that had experienced horrors. His previous calmness replaced with a skittishness that betrayed the abuse a pretty boy like him had suffered. Horrified with the crime he had committed, Miles had moved into the very flat Sam was staring at, spending his days drinking in the empty hope that it would erase his memories.

  Theo had begged Sam not to do this.

  But he understood.

  Sam slid open the glove compartment and removed the eight-inch serrated blade, the knife that had been strapped to his boot for a number of miles in the deserts of Afghanistan. A knife he had used to remove the innards of a violent terrorist who was about to unload his gun on Theo during Project Hailstorm.

  It seemed a lifetime ago.

  The scars that stained his shrinking chest were a memento to the times where he was part of society. A weapon for the same country that valued his son’s life at less than two years.

  At that moment, the cracked, white door that sat between the chicken shop and a closed estate agents opened, and Sam felt his heart stop. Miles Hillock stepped out into the flicking glow of the lamp post, the brightness revealing him to Sam like a prize on the world’s cruellest game show.

  The man seemed smaller than when he had been sent to prison, the nine-month stint clearly breaking him and he walked with his arms crossed against his chest, literally holding himself together. The wind swept by, causing some of the blossom on the trees to filter through the cool evening sky. Sam had been waiting nearly a year to be this close to the man who took his son, and as he watched him meekly walk up the street towards the newsagents, he felt a surge race through his body.

  It wasn’t of anger.

  It wasn’t of vengeance.

  It was guilt.

  Guilt that this was what his life had become. That he had let his son only spend five years on the earth before letting fate lead him away. That he had sat helplessly, staring into the abyss whilst his wife begged him for his support.

  Guilt that he had let her leave.

  Guilt that he would never have asked her to stay.

  Not when he knew what the future held. A lifetime in prison didn’t scare Sam. He had stared down the barrel of enough guns and had been under heavy fire in the treacherous mountains of Iraq. Coming face to face with a murderer or a corrupt prison guard would carry the same amount of threat as a bubble wrapped marshmallow.

  Sam felt guilty for the life he had worked hard for and the family he had literally walked through a war zone to return to. It had all crumpled to ash.

  All at the hands of the man emerging from the off licence. A blue plastic bag hung from his hands, the plastic wrapped tightly around numerous cans of cheap alcohol. With quick steps and frightened glances over his shoulder, Miles Hillock made his way back to the door to his flat, for another evening of guilt-ridden solitude, endless tears, and the mind-numbing power of alcohol. He shut the door behind him and headed up to his flat, already cracking open
a can and guzzling its contents.

  He was going to drink himself to death.

  Outside on the street, Sam pushed open the car door and stepped out onto the empty High Street that ran through Edgware like a concrete vein.

  With the knife hidden inside his jacket, he headed towards the door, hell bent on helping Miles succeed.

  Sam stared into the mirror, the cheap Braun beard trimmer had been surprisingly strong against his thicker, longer hair. The sink was now filled with clumps of his brown hair, entwined with the cheeky grey ones that were becoming more regular. In the army, the boys would quickly buzz each other’s hair, the sweltering heat soon made a fool of those who relented. Sam wasn’t exactly a stylist, but he had a steady hand and was able to trim his hair down to a passable level, with a shorter grade around the sides. The grade four on top left just enough hair to look presentable and his hair line and natural curl to the front gave it the hint of style.

  He kept the beard, enjoying the thickness of the brown and grey coating for his strong jaw. It wasn’t scraggly, but it was enough to hide his skin from the bitter cold.

  For the first time in a few days he felt refreshed.

  The evening before had been difficult, the torture of that man, no matter how horrifying his actions had been, had wiped Sam out. Now, with a good night’s sleep, he felt refreshed.

  He also had the information the man had spat out as he begged for his life before Sam had melted his arm with acid. Sam had taken the man to Northwick Park Hospital just outside of Harrow and dumped him on the steps of A&E, his brutalised arm wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket with no hope of being saved.

  Sam didn’t care.

  The man was a monster and removing his right hand would hinder his reign of terror.

  People couldn’t kiss the ring if the hand didn’t exist.

  As the world around him echoed through the thin windows and the rain clattered against the glass, Sam slid his gun into the back of his jeans and then pulled his long-sleeved top over it. He slid into his bomber jacket, pulled on a baseball cap, and headed to the door with Leon’s confession fresh in his mind.