by Jake Cross
The distance grew. There were no missteps, no noises. There was no sense of forward movement either because they could see nothing ahead. But the gunman’s voice began to fade. The darkness condensed behind them, like a series of curtains pulled between pursued and pursuer, and soon his ranting was nothing but a background whisper.
Twenty-Six
Brad
Brad tore off the wrapping paper and shook open a Varsity jacket with a red leather torso and white canvas arms. There was a large B on the breast. He instantly hated it but smiled because Ian was awaiting his reaction.
‘Wear it all day. Try it now.’
Brad got it halfway unzipped when his mobile rang. ‘Job Centre’ popped up.
‘Attaboy,’ Ian said, leaning close to read the screen. ‘Remember to tell them that you’re willing to increase your travel distance.’
‘I’ll take it in the bathroom.’
Ian grabbed his half-finished cigar from the ashtray, and flicked a kick at Brad’s naked ass as he got off the bed.
‘Tell them we’ll have your website up and running later today.’
In the bathroom, Brad answered the call from Job Centre--, who he’d been in contact with for the last three months, since his last building site contract expired. The actual centre was in his phonebook, but under Job Centre-, single hyphen. As Ian had proved, at a glance it was hard to tell the difference between one and two hyphens.
‘One question of momentous importance,’ Mick said, as Brad answered the phone. ‘It all hung on Król. It’s what we were waiting for. Why didn’t you call me about it?’ He meant: why hadn’t Brad called to find out if Król had found the Grafton woman? Surely the stakes are high enough to warrant him worrying.
Brad said: ‘It’s all moot now Ramirez is out, so the missus thing is sixes and sevens. It’s your thing.’
He meant: Mick was the one worried about Liz Grafton, not Brad. Because with Ramirez no longer in the frame, it didn’t matter what she told the cops.
‘“My thing”? Like my pet peeve or something?’
‘Maybe. So what do you want? Picked who’s next yet?’
‘You said that before. What’s that supposed to mean, Brad?’
‘What’s next, I meant.’
‘Two things. First, I got a job for you. Not that you seem to care, but Król fucked up.’
Brad listened to Mick’s story with the door locked and the sink taps running so Ian couldn’t hear his replies. When the tale was told, he said: ‘Not the best news. But I say let them run.’
‘Well, Brad, this is my thing, isn’t it? And I say no.’
‘Yet you called me, so you think I can do something about it. What?’
Mick explained. ‘And it needs to be in thirty seconds’ time. Get going.’
‘And what else?’
‘Ah, yes. The bad news.’
‘I thought that was the bad news.’
‘Of course not. Sixes and sevens. You had a brick tossed through Ramirez’s window, right?’
‘Sure. With a note to freak him out. Watch your back, dead man walking. What’s that got to do with your guy?’
‘It fucking worked a treat, that’s what. So much so that Ramirez just called the cops. He’s so fucking scared that Grafton’s rent-a-lunatics are after him that he wants this case solved quick, before he gets chopped up. Apparently he says it might be a great idea to maybe look at the guys who hit his nightclub—’
‘What? Are you telling me we’re half a day into this and already the cops—’
‘Just calm down. You know there were all sorts of rumours flying around about who might have done it. And rumours that it was a hit on either Grafton or his old rival, Razor Randolph, and plenty of people wanted both of them dead. You haven’t forgotten Rocker, have you?’
‘’Course not, but—’
‘But nothing, Brad. So Ramirez is just assuming it’s the same guys, back for try number two. He’s rehashing old tales. That’s all. Just bullshit.’
‘But it’s not bullshit, is it? Not if my name’s been mentioned.’
‘Ramirez only mentioned a first name. Brad. A loan shark who worked for Grafton as a leg-breaker.’
‘Christ.’
‘He might also have said “Nancy-boy leg-breaker”,’ Mick said, laughing.
‘Stop fucking laughing, Mick.’
He did, abruptly. ‘Just calm down—’
‘There aren’t that many gay enforcers called Brad in London, Mick. Jesus.’
That made Mick giggle like a schoolgirl. ‘No, there aren’t. But relax, okay? Keep your legendary cool. Names are flooding in about who might have done this. You think anyone’s going to take a criminal’s word as gospel? Wait for the Queen to give you up, and then you can worry. So relax, right? Are you relaxed?’
‘And what if Grafton’s wife recognised my eyes?’
‘What, now you’re suddenly worried about her? Let them run, you said. That doesn’t sound relaxed, Brad. Try again. Summon it up from deep within. Are you relaxed now?’
‘Hell yes,’ Brad said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. ‘But they’ll look into me. Can’t afford not to. Then they’ll find out I was investigated for that murder a few years back. I’ll get the knock on the door at some point, and if Ian—’
‘There’ll be no door knock for him to answer, Brad. You’re just a person of interest based on some claim by a low life, one of a thousand who’d benefit from Grafton in a grave. But you’re right, you’re a guy with form, and maybe, even if you’re innocent, you might go underground if you know the cops are after you. That’s an extra headache. So, nobody’s going to tell your bloke anything. A pair of guys will probably hang about outside your house, that’s all. If you turn up, all they’ll do is follow you, see if maybe you go dig up the murder weapon or they can hear you bragging about the killings. Solution: don’t turn up for a few days.’
‘Why a few days? What can you do to kill this?’
‘Nothing. But the plan was always to clear out, right? We bring it forward.’
‘Leave the country in a few days? Mick, I can’t just hop on a plane. This was supposed to be six months, remember?’
Was Mick’s memory bad, or did he just not care? Brad had agreed to hit Grafton, in part, for a share of whatever money they found in the cottage, but mostly because he wouldn’t get the chance again. In six months he’d be living in Thailand with Ian, who was transferring to a branch of his company out there. The Ramirez angle, he’d been promised, would muddy the murder investigation long enough to let it go cold. But now the cops were on the cusp of getting Brad’s name. And when they learned of his plans to emigrate, their suspicions would increase and they’d lob a spanner in the works. It was all set for six months from now, not a couple of bloody days.
Mick’s great plan was: ‘So you fly out in a couple of days, and then your bloke goes on the sick for six months.’
Brad cursed. ‘Christ, Mick, there’s visas to get, a house to sell. Ian’s going caravanning with his brother in April. It can’t happen, it ain’t possible. And even if everything was ready to go, and the sickness thing was possible, I’d have to tell him what’s going on, wouldn’t I? How’s that going to work? He thinks I gave all that crime shit up way back. If he even thought I nicked a Twix from the corner shop, he’d leave me. Now I’m supposed to tell him I’m on the run from the cops for triple murder and we’ve got to escape the country right now? No, you’ve got to sort this out.’
‘How? The Ramirez plan was good, but now it’s out the window and we deal with it. The cops want you, Brad. Like it or not, you don’t have six months to sign forms, show people around a house and look at fucking holiday photos of some caravan park.’
‘Well, you’ve got to do something. I can’t hide from the cops. And even if Ian never found out I’m on the run, what about the cash? I was supposed to have some magical luck on the horses each week to explain earning ninety grand in six months. I whip out that much dough in a fe
w days’ time, he’ll know it’s nicked. No, Mick. You’re supposed to be smarter than everyone else, so prove it. Fucking sort this out.’
Silence, as Mick thought. For a moment he worried that Mick would abandon him because he already had his escape plan ready to go. But he had to trust that their history guaranteed loyalty. Brad was the one who had made everything possible up until this point. Without Brad, Grafton would be walking around still, untouched and untouchable. Mick had to respect that.
‘I’m working on a plan,’ he said. ‘Then that’ll just leave the bitch. If she can tell the police who you are, the solution is to make sure she can’t tell anyone anything, right? So, go do what I said. You can have Seabury. But you save her for me, right?’
A pause from Brad as he thought about this. There was nothing he could do, so he had to leave it up to Mick. This relaxed him somewhat. ‘That tosspot Ramirez really call me a Nancy-boy?’
Mick started laughing again.
Twenty-Seven
Karl
Karl let out a breath, and that was when he realised that he’d been holding it. His chest was heaving as if he’d been running. He heard Liz’s ragged breathing a couple of feet away. Saw the shape of her chest rising and falling. Same story. Nervous energy oozing out of both of them.
She stumbled. His anxiety exploded, and he grabbed her, fearful that the noise would bring the gunman pounding down upon them.
‘I’m okay,’ she said. She struggled out of his grasp, and her black shape bent and sat on one of the rails. He didn’t want to stop, was desperate to get out of here and back to Katie, but he sat opposite her, facing her. He knew the gunman was far behind.
‘Let’s hope a train doesn’t come,’ she said, repeating her joke from earlier.
‘We could do with the light.’
‘Nah, you don’t want to see my face. Make-up all messy.’
‘I think with all this dirt around we probably look like coal miners by now.’
They sat for a few moments. Back down the tunnel, the darkness seemed to pulse and shift. He stared until he was sure the kaleidoscopic swirl didn’t camouflage a man crawling towards them.
‘What was that thing with the smoke, that grenade thing you threw?’
She was rubbing her hands across her face, trying to remove the grime. His coal miner joke must have set that off.
‘The grenade that let off all the smoke? Smoke grenade.’
She laughed. ‘Very funny. Where did you get that?’
‘Internet. Two hundred quid, up in smoke.’
‘Who’d need one of those for personal defence?’
He said: ‘People on the run, apparently.’
She laughed. ‘I’m guessing that stuff’s not legal to sell.’
She was just killing time, talking to make the minutes fly by. Time was not something he could spare, though. He stood. ‘No. That’s why I had it upstairs.’
He watched her straighten her dress and could tell she was thinking of something else to say. He looked at the way ahead. How far until the station? A mile, or was it thirty feet away? He wanted to get moving.
What she decided upon was: ‘How did you meet your wife?’
He sighed. ‘Let’s go. We can’t waste time.’
They started walking again. After a minute, he answered her question.
‘Like you. Childhood sweethearts. She was the neighbour’s kid. We were the only children on that street. Just friends until she was thirteen, and I was twelve. She wanted to practise kissing, and there was no one else around.’
‘So you having a loving wife and a baby on the way. I guess you feel you’re a lucky man.’
‘I never won the lottery, but never got stabbed to death in a piss-stained alleyway, either. I’m happy with the middle ground.’
More silence. Thirty seconds in, she stumbled over something and he turned, caught her as she crashed into him. In his arms, she said: ‘What’s your plan?’
He made sure she was balanced, then turned and started walking again. ‘Get to a phone. Tell the damn police what happened. And tell my wife she’s got to run from our family home because of all this shit.’ His anxiety was rising again.
After another minute or so of silence, she said: ‘It’s morning now. They shouldn’t still be after us. Something’s wrong. We need to find my husband.’
‘I’m going home. You do what you want.’ He could feel his anger welling up.
‘He might still be tied up at the cottage. Maybe they tied everyone up. We have to go there and release him. Then he can get to work sorting out this problem. You have to take me there.’
Knowing he was so irritated that he would only say something she wouldn’t like, he refused to respond. Was the gunman approaching his house right now? Closing in on his wife and child?
‘Ron can fix all this. He’ll know what to do. But he’ll be worried about me. We’ll find a taxi and get straight there. They won’t still be there, not if they’re out chasing us.’
He wanted to believe that Katie would be safe. The gunman and his cronies hadn’t gone to the house this morning, had they? They’d chosen the shop. The hunt was for Karl and Liz, after all. Hopefully Katie would be ignored. Safe. Hopefully, when he hadn’t called her, she had packed a bag and got out of there.
‘Are you listening? I need to get to my husband.’
‘Fuck him,’ Karl snapped.
‘No, fuck you.’
He heard her stop, but he continued walking. Faster now, with bigger steps. If she wanted to stay down here, so be it. But he was going.
He stopped, and turned.
‘I’m sorry.’
It hit him then. He had a duty to protect his wife and unborn child any way he could, but that didn’t mean he could abandon this woman. The men who had tried to break into his house had failed, hadn’t they? Because Katie had slept soundly all night in a warm bed. But they hadn’t failed at Liz’s house, had they? Because Liz had fled through the woods, pursued by a masked man, and this morning she was lost underground and still had no idea what had happened to the man she loved. He hadn’t wanted any of this trouble, but he was in the thick of it now and had a responsibility to help. Anything less would be wrong. If Katie had been lost down here with another man and that guy had refused to help…
But there was something else. Something he hadn’t wanted to think about, but now, knowing Katie might be in danger, knowing that their pursuers were not going to give up, it was pushing to the front of his mind.
‘I’m sorry. Look, we’ll sort this out. We’ll call the police and send them to our houses, and we’ll get there and make sure everyone’s safe. But let’s get out of this tunnel first, okay?’
‘I don’t think you should assume the police will make everything okay.’
Her sentence highlighted exactly what he couldn’t stop thinking about. Maybe the cops wouldn’t be able to do much. They might fail to get the names of everyone involved, or miss a vital gang member when they took everyone down. All it would take was one bad guy left on the streets with a working pair of legs and Karl’s address. Maybe the only person who could totally fix this problem was this woman’s husband. Street justice wasn’t exactly what Karl wanted, but if it meant an end to the threat against Katie and Michael… And it wouldn’t be his fault, would it? All he’d done was save someone’s life. What Liz did with her continued existence would not be on his head.
He stopped and waited for her, and, side by side, they stumbled on into the void.
Twenty-Eight
Mick
Sixty seconds after the call to Brad, Mick’s Nissan Almera pulled up outside Karl’s shop. Right outside, because nobody was around yet and there were no CCTV cameras about, not even watching the shop specialising in surveillance technology. The road was peaceful, quiet, secretive. But that could change in minutes.
He ran into Sunrise Electronics and found exactly what he’d expected: Król acting like a kid in a sweet shop. There was a large cardboard box in
the centre of the room and Król was filling it with items grabbed off shelves.
‘What the hell are you doing back here? We need to get away from this place. We need to burn that stolen car. How stupid you are is always a surprise, Król.’
Król ignored him. Electrical items continued to sail through the air and crash into the box.
‘These other shops will be open soon. Leave that shit and let’s go.’
Król ignored him again. He moved to the ladder, but stopped when his foot stepped on something. He picked it up, took one look and tossed it to Mick.
‘That’s knackered. You can have it.’
Król climbed the ladder. Mick looked at the item in his hand. A mobile phone with a cracked screen. Mick lit it up and got a surprise.
He was staring at a photo of Król leering close to the camera. Grainy, green. Night vision. Doubtless taken at Seabury’s house last night when Król and his crony were trying to break in. A neat idea settled into his head. He put the phone on the floor and kicked it under the counter.
‘Get back down here,’ he said. He strode to the ladder and grabbed Król’s foot, and yanked him right off. Król crashed to the carpet, but the wiry little bastard bounced up in a second. He shoved Mick away, hard. Mick couldn’t believe it. He got a bigger shock a second later when Król jerked something out of his jacket. Some kind of knife with no handle. Looked like a lawnmower blade. But it was the look in Król’s eyes that concerned Mick more. A look that said he wasn’t scared. Not any more.
‘Things are a-changing round here, Mick,’ he said. He waved the blade. ‘Nice, eh? Saw this thing on the floor when I bust in his shed and figured, beats my little home-made shank. Imagine this thing sliding into the guts. You want it in your guts like that shopkeeper? And you don’t hold that over me any more. I want that knife back, and some cash for my troubles.’