Trial by Blood

by John Macken

  As Brawn takes a cigarette out and lights it, slowly and calmly, revelling in the moment, Reuben wonders how he has found the factory, and whether he has been here before. It is possible, but from what Kieran Hobbs said, Brawn was not someone he had associated with. And then, as Brawn blows a long stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, a more pressing question comes to him.

  Why is he here?

  ‘How did you know?’ Brawn asks.

  ‘What?’ Reuben says.

  ‘That I was still alive.’

  ‘Just a hunch. No blood residue anywhere in the lab, no stains anywhere, the bulky jacket you were wearing at the time. And then, of course, the fact that you answered your mobile.’

  ‘I was sincerely hoping never to set eyes on you again. But now we find ourselves in the same place at the same time, well, that changes things.’ Brawn gestures with his gun. First Reuben, then Valdek. ‘Walk backwards,’ he says. ‘Both of you.’

  Reuben glances over his shoulder, stepping back, short paces. In his jeans pocket, he still carries the folded yellow Post-It note. Brawn’s address, phone number and likely haunts, copied from his arrest file. Getting hold of him had been straightforward. Guessing he was still alive and unleashing him was the easy bit. Standing in front of him again now, backing up and staring into the short, brutal nose of his gun, is another matter. Reuben rewinds to his cell in Pentonville, the merciless blows, Brawn waiting for him to get up before knocking him down again, the jarring of teeth and the tearing of skin, the knife ripping into his tattoo, the utter control, the purest sadism widening his eyes and making him grin.

  Reuben sees that Brawn is backing them into an enclosed section of the factory. Two large countersunk tables section off an area the size of a small dining room. Reuben retreats as far as he can, his back touching the clammy wall. Valdek stays in front of him, standing closer to Brawn, still holding his weapon.

  ‘Before we start,’ Brawn says, ‘there’s something you need to know.’ He turns to Valdek, the gun pointing at Reuben. ‘Kieran Hobbs is dead. Killed him myself a couple of hours ago.’

  Valdek stares blankly back at him.

  ‘He had some money a copper called Abner owed me. And Abner had tried to end me with a bullet to the guts. So, like I say, Hobbs and Abner are both finished.’ Brawn takes a long, deep drag. ‘Business, that’s all, Valdek. Just so you don’t hear it from someone else first.’

  Valdek holds his gaze, unmoved by the news. And then, after a few more seconds, he says, ‘Appreciate that.’

  Brawn returns to Reuben. ‘So, here we are.’ He spits on the floor, taking a couple of paces forward. ‘No guards, no rules, no nothing. Just you and me and some unfinished business.’

  Reuben takes in the wide eyes, scanning around. They are cold and glassy, a distance to them. That is, until they turn on you. Then they suck at your features and rip at your composure, dazzling you till you squint, reading you as you squirm. Reuben again detects the unorthodoxy which slices clean through the normal rules of engagement. He battles flashbacks from Pentonville. Brawn is peeling back the bandage of his left hand, blood seeping into the gauze, the white bones no longer visible.

  ‘Got a mate to round the ends off. Fingers in a vice, electric saw, clean off. Took about ten seconds per bone. Any idea how that feels?’

  Reuben gives a small shrug.

  ‘Not fucking good. Think about it. The bone sticking out, being ground through by a power saw. Whining and screaming. The smell. The burning . . .’ Reuben notices a fine perspiration on Brawn’s forehead, as if reliving it hurts as much as the event. ‘Then casualty. Had these nice bandages put on. Bit easier to explain than some fucking scientist took the tops of my fingers off with liquid fucking helium.’

  ‘Nitrogen,’ Reuben mutters.

  ‘You see my fingers?’ he screams. ‘They’re fucked. And now it’s your turn. I don’t want this to be quick. A gun’s no good for what I’ve got in mind. Valdek, pass me the iron bar.’

  Valdek stands still, his muscular frame twitching.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Brawn says, ‘my problem’s not with you. It’s with this cunt.’ He waves his gun at Reuben. ‘We’re on the same side here. I actually came to discuss some business with you and Kieran’s other minder. Ex-minder now. Is Mr Bardsmore around?’

  ‘Nathan’s got a hospital appointment,’ Valdek answers.

  ‘Home address Colmore Garden Towers. Flat 113, isn’t it?’ he asks. ‘I’ll catch up with him later. But pass me the bar and you take the pistol. It’s time to start the fun.’

  Valdek sums him up for several long moments. He is taller and wider than Brawn, and as mean as they come.

  ‘Gun first,’ he says.

  Brawn turns the weapon round and passes it to him. Reuben again pictures Valdek beating Ethan de Groot to death, repeated body blows with the iron bar, and is almost glad when Valdek hands it over in exchange.

  ‘Right,’ Brawn instructs. ‘Keep that fucker on him. If you have to shoot, make it somewhere painful.’

  Reuben watches them both, edgy and alert. The low ceiling of the factory presses down. He is fucked, and he knows it. Brawn winks at him.

  ‘You see, if you really want to damage someone, a gun is useless. Doesn’t hurt enough. And if you’re wearing a Kevlar vest, just feels like a bad punch in the guts. Bruises, that’s all, even when Abner shot me from point blank. Couple of cracked ribs at worst. But half an hour with an iron bar, that’s different. There’s no vest for iron bars. You just fucking take it, and your body falls apart. Ain’t that right, Mr Kosonovski?’

  Valdek nods, gun hand dipping with each movement of his head. Stupid, violent and very strong. A bad combination.

  Reuben has one chance, but it won’t be enough. His chemical weapon will only disable one of them. The SkinPunch gun in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. The tiny probe holding a minute amount of aqueous potassium cyanide. Enough to kill a man in seconds. But he will only have a single shot. Reuben hasn’t banked on facing more than one maniac.

  Michael Brawn raises the iron bar, running his eyes along its surface, enraptured for a second. Seeing the damage it will do, the bones it will crack, the flesh it will mash. ‘Nice weight,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘And the edges . . .’ He turns to Valdek. ‘The edges are what makes it.’

  Valdek stares back, impassive.

  Reuben hopes he will pass out before his limbs are crushed. He moves his hand into position, gripping the SkinPunch weapon in his pocket. And then Brawn spins round in an instant flowing move and crashes the bar into the side of Valdek’s head. Valdek drops to the floor, poleaxed, out cold. Reuben struggles to pull out the SkinPunch. It snags as he rips at it, catching on the lining of his pocket. Brawn spinning back round. Reuben levelling the gun, aiming. One shot. Sighting along its thin aluminium body, the hammer cocked, the probe and its poison ready. Brawn lifting the bar, a glint of metal. Focusing on his face, his tight, pale, psychotic face. Pulling the trigger, feeling it click, the whizz of the probe through the air. A crashing, grinding explosion in his arm, bones cracking. The SkinPunch falling. Reuben dropping to the floor, breathless with agony. Trying to focus on Brawn’s face, desperate to see where the probe hit. Reuben’s arm a funny shape. Bent where it shouldn’t be. Through his jacket, a throbbing, swelling bump urgently pushing to the surface. His right forearm, beneath the tattoo. Grinding his teeth, shock giving way to incredible bursts of pain. Vision narrowing. Looking up. Brawn lighting a fresh cigarette, his eyes on fire, reflecting the match. Calm and measured, seeming to stand taller. If the probe hit, he would be dying now. Choking and writhing, coughing his guts up. Reuben knows it must have missed.

  He watches Brawn take the gun from Valdek and slowly load it with six rounds from his pocket. The smell is ground into the floor. No matter how many times it has been mopped. Death. Gutted fish and violent death. He wonders where the hell the Skin-Punch probe ended up. Reuben looks at Brawn again and knows for certain it didn’t hit him.r />
  Brawn turns around and walks away, quick and purposeful. ‘Got something in my car,’ he calls back over his shoulder. ‘Meant for Valdek and Nathan, but you can have some too.’

  Reuben stares at Valdek. He is motionless. Reuben wonders whether his skull is cracked. Thick redness is starting to pool under his hair. Reuben sits up, unable to stand for the time being. He senses instinctively that bones have breached skin. He is bleeding into his jacket, ulna and radius poking out. He grits his teeth. A wave of nauseous agony burns deep in his arm. He feels cold. The fracture is disabling, making his whole body feel shivery and useless. He knows this is just one blow with the iron bar. One heavy blow. For a second time he prays he will pass out rather than be beaten to a conscious death. And he wonders what the fuck Brawn has brought for Valdek and Nathan.

  Reuben cannot see Brawn or hear him. He looks through the steel legs of the nearest table. He is nowhere to be seen. ‘Valdek,’ Reuben gasps. ‘Valdek. For fuck’s sake.’ There is no answer. Valdek remains motionless, his breathing hard to detect. Reuben scours the floor around him for the probe. If he can find it and reload it, he has a chance. Blood drips out of the cuff of his denim jacket. It is running inside his sleeve. Crashing waves of sick torture, making him weak. He grabs at the table with his good arm and tries to pull himself up. He has to get out. Every movement is paralysing agony. He makes it to his feet, dizzy for a second. The table is thirty centimetres deep, almost like a sink. He grabs hold of its chrome plumbing and uses it to steady himself. Then he starts to walk.

  As he reaches Valdek, there is a noise, a scraping sound, punctuated by grunts. He swivels his head. Michael Brawn lets go of the large metal cylinder he is dragging and takes his gun out.

  ‘One more fucking step and I’ll fuck your other arm.’

  Reuben stops, rocking on his heels. He forces himself to focus, knowing he could go into shock. A bad fracture, losing blood, locked in a factory with a killer . . . it is more than possible.

  He watches Brawn struggle to lift the cylinder on to the table. Brawn is gripping it with his right arm, his left there more for balance and support, wounded fingers kept well away from the lifting, but the gun kept pressed in the palm, safe and ready. Reuben guesses the barrel is forty or fifty litres, weighing roughly the same in kilos, and again appreciates Brawn’s wiry strength. Sweating and manic, he positions it on a firm base under the taps. He appears energetic, excited, up, as if he is on drugs. A dangerous high. Reuben pictures Ian Cowley’s charge sheet, the multiple convictions for wounding, and remembers Kieran’s prophetic words in the back of his Range Rover. Cowley just had something about him that told you not to mess, something that said this guy would fuck you over if it killed him doing it.

  Reuben peers at the cylinder. His first instinct is liquid nitrogen. But there is no way Brawn could have got access. It is a chemical of some sort, though, its markings removed, a round, silver barrel with an aperture in the top for pouring.

  ‘Come here,’ Brawn instructs, breathing hard. ‘I want you to watch this.’

  Reuben takes an unsteady pace forward, knowing that something very bad is about to happen, something worse than being beaten to death. Brawn pushes the gun against Reuben’s broken arm, feeling along its length, finding the spot. Then he slams the butt of the pistol hard into the exposed bones.

  ‘Next to the sink, just there,’ he says. ‘Let’s run you a little bath.’

  Reuben is almost paralysed with pain, his vision blurring for a second, fighting the urge to cry out. He smells the distinctive odour as Brawn carefully unscrews the top of the metal container. He watches him slot a large plug into the gutting table. Brawn tips the metal cylinder, right arm around it as if he is propping up a drunk, his injured hand still nursing the pistol. Reuben listens to the glug as the fluid spills out, thinking, I should lunge at him, this is the moment, right now. But he is unable to move, the gun telling him not to, his arm gushing out blood, its shattered bones grating against the denim of his sleeve.

  The countersunk table begins to fill, five centimetres, ten centimetres, fifteen. Deep enough. And now Reuben is certain what it is. Fizzing, burning, scorching. Attacking anything in the gutting table it can get its acid teeth into. Snarling like a dog, hungry for flesh. Brawn tips it up, shaking out the dregs of the sulphuric acid, using his left hand as well, now that the weight has gone. He has done this before, Reuben realizes. Maybe not here, but somewhere. He wonders where Brawn has been able to get hold of the stuff, and comes up with the name Abner. Laboratory grade, highly concentrated, used for making buffers and solutions. But never without very careful dilution and protective wear.

  Reuben’s arm is cold, and he is trying not to shake, his body wanting to go into shock, Reuben refusing to let it.

  ‘You fucker,’ Brawn snarls, nodding his head. ‘Stand fucking here.’

  Reuben steps slowly forward. The gun or the acid? he asks himself. The gun will be quicker, but he knows what will happen. Brawn will shoot him somewhere disabling, a knee or an elbow, then throw him in anyway. The table is low, a metre off the ground. Reuben could easily step into it.

  He scans the factory desperately, thinking, clutching, knowing he is about to die. With his last broken breaths, he sees Joshua, coming round from his operation, the chemotherapy commencing, and longs to be there. He pictures Judith, deep bruises in her neck, passing the pheno-fit of her attacker to Sarah Hirst. He sees CID and Forensics running the picture through their databases and drawing a blank. He imagines Charlie Baker realizing he has been duped, and that Aaron, with his freshly cut hair, is of no use to him. He sees frantic, pointless endeavour across the capital. GeneCrime, CID, Forensics, all missing the point. He flashes through years of laboratory work, of lessons and lectures, of academic progression. Formulae chalked on blackboards. Scratchy white letters copied down into his school book. Basic chemistry, the beginning of his scientific journey. He grits his teeth, ready, still dizzy and numb with pain.

  ‘Now, I shoot you first, in the bollocks. Then I take the tips of your fingers off. And when you’re paying attention, I put you in.’ Brawn bares his teeth, alive, on fire, a zealous excitement igniting his face. ‘Or you just get in yourself. This can be easy or difficult. Your decision. But you’ve only got five seconds.’

  Brawn steps closer to the table, ready.

  ‘One.’

  He nudges the empty cylinder out of the way with his leg.

  ‘Two.’

  He aims the gun at Reuben’s groin.

  ‘Three.’

  His finger tightens on the trigger.

  ‘Four.’

  He sights along the barrel, one eye closed.

  ‘Five.’

  He pulls the trigger.

  25

  Reuben hears the word ‘five’ and dives forward, through the air, muscles launching him, bones grinding, reaching and lunging, his fist punching the flat paddle of the tap, knocking it fully open. A shot being fired, the echo in his head, Reuben crashing down and hitting the floor hard. Above him, the one reaction that should always be avoided – pouring water into a concentrated acid. Water continuing to gush out of the taps and into the volatile liquid. A pause, the reaction spreading and intensifying, unstable molecules unleashed and on the rampage. Sudden oxidation on a massive scale. A deep whooshing noise. A volcano of boiling acid tearing through the air. A sharp, stinging burn in his nostrils. A scream from Michael Brawn.

  Reuben is lying on his shattered arm. He turns on to his back, grunting with pain. Brawn is grasping his face, still shrieking. He has the gun. He turns blindly and fires at the floor. The shot misses Reuben and ricochets off the second gutting table. Brawn is clawing at his eyes with one hand, the other waving his pistol around. Reuben drags himself under the table. Another bullet randomly fired, this time closer. He glimpses Brawn’s face as he spins wildly round. It is red and blistered, patches of chemical burns. Reuben glances over at Valdek. He is starting to come round.

  A stinging
burn in his hair. A screaming man firing shots at the floor. It takes a minute, and then Valdek remembers. Michael Brawn.

  Valdek’s head is ringing and buzzing and bleeding. He feels into his hair and inspects his fingers. A lot of blood. He sees the iron bar lying on the floor and shudders. A weapon for psychos. Fine as a visual warning, but actually using one . . . He thinks of Nathan, the iron bar his favourite plaything, and shakes his aching head.

  Valdek pulls himself slowly up, blurry and disorientated. He spots Maitland sheltering under a table. Fucking copper. Not to be trusted. And just because he isn’t in the force any more is no reason to let up. All coppers are cunts, never to be helped in any way. But compared to Brawn . . .

  Valdek is on his feet. He rolls his head, his thick neck clicking as he does so. The vision in one eye is blurred and his hearing is patchy. But he is OK. Good enough to take care of business. He walks slowly towards Maitland and Brawn. Brawn spins round but doesn’t see him. He is swearing and spitting and screaming, deep red craters in his face, fingers rubbing his eyes. Valdek watches Brawn shout Maitland’s name and fire another shot. This one is not far away, inches at best. The copper, to give him his due, doesn’t flinch.

  Valdek stares at the back of Brawn’s head. He flexes his biceps and his lats, and tenses his abs. He reaches slowly forward, grabs the left arm that Brawn is shielding his eyes with, pulls it back hard, and instantly snaps it to the right. Brawn doesn’t have a chance. The movement is too quick, the shoulder having no strength in that position. Valdek pictures his sessions in the gym with Nathan, working on the shoulder groups, smaller weights used in awkward positions to build tone rather than mass. Brawn screams, louder this time, his arm going slack, dislocated at the shoulder. He twists round with the gun but Valdek catches his other arm. Brawn is strong, but he is no match for Valdek. Day after day in the weights room, legal and illegal supplements, years of bulking up and working out. For just such a moment.