Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  ‘What did you think might have happened?’

  ‘Katerina went away sometimes, with Father Florian, with the church – on missions. To help, to help people, you see? We thought maybe she had gone away on a mission and forgot to tell us –’

  ‘But there was no mission?’ Rose nodded sympathetically. ‘I understand.’ She looked curiously at the two sisters. Adrijana wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. Sofia returned her look, blankly, emptily. Rose could see a vein quivering rapidly in the girl’s pale throat.

  ‘I want you both to know,’ Rose said carefully, ‘that you’re not going to get into any trouble. Do you understand? Not with me, not with the immigration people, not with anyone.’

  Sofia lifted her chin at that.

  ‘We have papers!’ she said sharply. ‘All of us. Passports. Papers, all legal!’

  Then what the hell are you so scared of? Rose thought.

  ‘You can tell me,’ she said softly, ‘if something’s bothering you.’

  Sofia looked at her sister. Out of the corner of her eye Rose saw Adrijana shake her head. At first she’d taken Adrijana’s passiveness as a sign of shock and taken Sofia’s greater openness as a sign of greater capability. She wasn’t so sure now. There was a kind of wildness in the older sister – and perhaps a kind of strength in the quiet, thoughtful Adrijana.

  Rose sipped her tea, pretended not to have noticed anything.

  A bang on the door jolted her to her feet.

  Not a copper’s knock, this. This was a brutish thumping with the meat of the fist, the banging of someone who meant to come through the door one way or another, even if they had to smash it off its hinges. Three more heavy bangs, and a shout in a language Rose didn’t know.

  She looked quickly at the two girls. Both had their white faces turned to the door. Both seemed too petrified to move. Adrijana clutched her dressing-gown to her chest. Lukewarm tea slopped from the mug held in Sofia’s shaking hands.

  Rose stood and took her badge from her pocket. Nasty surprise for someone, she told herself. Pounding on a door loud enough to wake the dead expecting a terrified teenage girl, then coming face to face with DI Lauren Rose.

  She’d seen what some sick bastard had done to these girls’ big sister just hours before and Rose was in no mood to tolerate another inadequate excuse for a man taking out his anger issues on the Zrinskis. Not now. Not ever, come to think of it.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told the sisters. ‘I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.’

  Wasn’t sure how she’d handle it. She’d have to figure that out as she went along.

  Three more thumps. Another yell. Aggressive, threatening.

  Rose crossed the flat and pulled open the door. Led with her badge, flashing it at head height. It caught the man who stood there off balance. He’d been tilted forwards, prepared to press the advantage of his heavy shoulders, chest and beetling forehead. On seeing the badge he flinched backwards, had to shift his weight, shuffle his feet. It wasn’t much, but it was something. An edge.

  ‘Who are you?’ Rose jabbed the question at him like a blade.

  He raised his square chin, looked down at her. Rolled his muscular shoulders. You’re wasting your time trying to intimidate me, pal, she thought. This sort of nonsense was bread and butter for any copper – especially a female DI who stood five-six in flats. Saw it every day.

  ‘I asked you a question. Who are you?’

  ‘Go,’ the man said. He turned his head and spat. Then he said it again: ‘Go.’

  He was a little over six foot, naturally heavy, with fine black hair trimmed close to his scalp and a wisp of black beard beneath his lower lip. One tapered end of a blue-inked tattoo – serpent’s tail, devil’s horn? – showed over the collar of his white t-shirt.

  ‘You’re a charmer,’ Rose said. ‘What’s your name?’

  The man focused his close-set eyes on her. Not a lot of intelligence there. She moved forwards a fraction, trying to see if there was anyone further down the corridor or if he was alone. Couldn’t see far enough past the bruiser’s shoulder to tell.

  ‘Name, not for you,’ he said. ‘Here, not for you. Zrinski, not for you.’ He banged his fist on the door frame. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  There – just on the edge of her sightline, where the corridor took a right-angled turn to the top of the stairway –Rose saw a man standing by an open window. There was something stacked at his feet. Pallets, or crates. Each one stuffed with plastic packets.

  The tattooed man took a heavy step to his right, blocking her view.

  ‘Moving house?’ she said. She swallowed hard, trying to wet her dry mouth. ‘You know you could use the stairs. We’re five floors up. Long drop. Wouldn’t risk it myself. Specially if it’s something – valuable?’

  He narrowed his black eyebrows stupidly at her.

  ‘Uh?’

  Lights on, no one home, Rose thought. Waste of time trying to talk; she was getting nothing out of this bloody lunk.

  ‘I think,’ she said, in a clear voice, ‘you should leave.’

  The big man crossed his arms. Another tattoo – a flag, or a crest – bulged on his right biceps.

  ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I stay.’

  She was about to snap back with an arrest protocol – wondering, at the same time, what the hell good it would do – when the man again shifted his position, quite deliberately, half-turning so that his left hip was towards Rose. She saw that his tight t-shirt was out of shape at the small of his back. Something was wedged in the waistband of his jeans.

  A gun.

  Her stomach lurched.

  If he meant to frighten her, he’d succeeded. If he meant to frighten her off –

  Rose grabbed for the weapon.

  The man was slow. She had her hand on the butt of the revolver before he managed to twist his torso and take a savage grip on her upper arm. She yanked, but the gun was snagged in the fabric of the t-shirt. The barrel slipped loose. Then, sickeningly, the corridor seemed to come loose from its moorings as she was swung in a tight quarter-circle and slammed into the opposite wall. She grunted, fought to breathe, swung a crooked elbow fiercely upwards. Felt it connect with the man’s soft, stubbled under-jaw. Heard his teeth clang together.

  Don’t let up, she thought. Don’t give them a second. She linked both her hands together and swung them with a shriek of effort in a crosswise swipe towards the man’s thick neck.

  Not so slow this time. He whipped a hand upwards, closed it about both her wrists. Squeezed. Grinned.

  Don’t scream, she thought. Screaming just wastes breath. She bit her lip as her wrist bones ground together in his grip.

  Her knee jerked up. This guy really was dumb – the first thing every woman learns about unarmed combat and the lunk wasn’t ready for it. The contact was punishingly deep. He howled, doubling forwards, releasing her wrists, grabbing one-handed at his groin – but he didn’t go down. Rose’s clawed hand swept towards his face but he lurched at her and her grasping hand scraped uselessly through his hair. Stooping lower, he drove his shoulder forwards, upwards, ramming the thick-muscled bone hard into the base of her ribcage.

  Everything vanished but the pain.

  Rose retched. The corridor lights seemed to strobe. She felt paralysed, utterly helpless. Walls of featureless grey pressed in on her vision. As the man backed away she bent forwards, clutching at her chest, her gut. A noise she could never have imagined making – hoarse, shrill, inhuman – broke from her throat.

  ‘Bitch,’ she heard the man mutter. Through the mist she saw him turn his back.

  He thought she was done with.

  He thought he’d won.

  Every muscle in Rose’s body tightened in spasm. Never mind the pain, she thought. Pain can wait for later. What you’re fighting for here is control. Breathe right. Let your muscles loosen. Hold it all together.

  This is your body, DI Rose, her inner voice yelled. Make it work.

  The man was yelling i
nstructions to the man at the open window. Rose sank into a crouch, bunched her protesting muscles, then sprang for his broad back.

  It was a wide target, but even then she almost missed as her knees buckled under her. Her hand, though, whipping out in desperation, found what she was after – her fingers closed around the exposed barrel of the gun.

  The man turned, snarling a foreign curse. The gun came free. Rose’s thumb caught in the belt loop of his jeans.

  The gun clattered to the tiled floor. Rose fell heavily, painfully. Her vision fogged again as she reflexively cradled her twisted wrist. She struggled to stay conscious – fought to keep her grip on her beaten body.

  She felt his brutish hands run from her neck to her waist. She thought of Katerina and the pale indigo bruises on her dead skin. Nausea overcame her and she closed her eyes, gasping for breath. Stop, she wanted to scream. Whatever you’re doing to me, stop. Her head felt as though it was filling with hot, pounding blood. Her shirt-collar came sharply tight about her neck, choking her.

  She opened her eyes. Five floors fell away dizzyingly beneath her. She became aware of hands gripping her shirt, her right ankle, the painful pressure of the iron stair-rail against her bruised midriff.

  Poised over the deep stairwell, Rose fought to breathe, fought to think, fought – oh God, oh God – to keep still.

  The man tilted her body an inch further towards the drop. She tasted vomit.

  ‘You go,’ the man said. ‘Now.’

  Rats trapped with snares of salvaged barbed wire. Thin stray cats and wild-eyed street dogs in narrow cages. The scalpel spotted with red rust. The sounds and smells of animal fear, animal panic.

  The priest talked as he worked.

  ‘What do you feel, Little Mouse?’

  ‘I feel … thankful.’ He had not been allowed up from the cot since he had woken.

  The black-smocked priest bent over one of the dogs. Strung by its feet and neck, the animal struggled in its bonds. It was screaming. Terrible shadows were cast by the candlelight. Little Mouse could do nothing but watch.

  ‘Thankful to me, for saving your life? Or thankful to Christ, for saving your soul?’

  Little Mouse hesitated, groping for the right answer. Was there a right answer?

  ‘To – to Christ, Father.’

  ‘Good.’ The priest nodded in the gloom. ‘Good.’

  There was the scrape of bone under the shrieks of the creature, then the dog’s cries subsided. The priest whispered a prayer. There was the smell of blood.

  And, afterwards, the relic, the icon – the thing of bones, tied with leather, greased with scented tallow.

  Little Mouse feared the strange objects the priest fashioned from the poor beasts. He tried to see them as holy things, items to be revered, as the priest said they were. He tried to love them, as he loved Christ and the True Church. But he could not keep himself from being afraid.

  ‘They will redeem you,’ the priest said. ‘Are we not ourselves mere things of bone and leather? They will redeem all of us.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Some might say, Rose, that starting a ruck with an eighteen-stone Balkan bank robber in the flat of two grieving young girls was, I don’t know, unwise? A misjudgement? Unprofessional, even?’ DI Phillips smirked and smoothed his silk tie. ‘I’m not saying that, of course. I’m sure you had your reasons.’ He looked down at her. ‘Although I struggle to imagine what they were. Do you think you could enlighten me?’

  Sitting on the front steps of the housing block, Rose scowled and rubbed at her aching ribs. Her head throbbed; she blinked irritably in the weak sunshine.

  ‘He had a gun, Phillips. Highly aggressive, unpredictable. Probably juiced.’

  ‘Oh well, in that case your conduct makes perfect sense. Page one of the police training handbook, isn’t it? When confronted by a roid-raging gunman, don’t call for back-up and try to defuse the situation – instead, start an impromptu UFC bout on the fifth floor.’ He gave a stagey laugh of disbelief. ‘Dear oh dear, Rose. Dear oh dear.’

  Rose stared into the middle distance and paced her breathing. Footsteps and shouting reverberated in the lobby behind her, along with the crackle of radios. The place was busy with uniform, community liaison, CID. No translators, though. Just three of those worked the whole Thames Valley beat, Rose knew. It wasn’t enough – but that was policing. Nothing was ever enough. Nothing ever would be.

  CID had had their eye on a smack-running racket out of the Leys for months, it turned out. If things’d gone differently, Rose would have been carpeted for getting in the way of a major drugs investigation – but as it was she’d shown her face at just the right time. Interrupted a big stock transfer. CID had seen their chance and thrown the kitchen sink at it.

  Vanfuls of coppers turning over a housing block full of illegals. The coppers with nothing but English, the poor buggers up there with no English at all. The place hummed with tension. The ‘communication problem’ it was called in the manuals – but if anyone put a foot wrong, the communication problem wouldn’t be the half of it.

  From the first floor, a yell, and the wrenching crash of a door going through. Rose sighed. She tried to block out the noise – tried to focus.

  ‘A bank robber?’

  ‘Uh?’ Phillips looked round at her without much interest.

  ‘A bank robber, you said. The heavy up there.’

  ‘Oh, him, yeah – we ran his name through the system. Once we’d worked out how to spell it.’ He snorted at his own joke. ‘Did time a few years back for knocking over a building society in Cowley.’

  ‘Background?’

  ‘Some kind of Serbo-Croat-Boznoslavian.’ Phillips shrugged. ‘A Mr Nitić. Been here about nine years, in with the work gangs.’ He did an if-you-knew-what-I-know face. ‘And some other gangs,’ he added in a murmur.

  There were raised voices behind them: someone shouting furiously in a foreign language, and, over that, the familiar, deadening copper’s intonation. ‘All right, pal. Settle down. Calm down. All right, pal.’

  It was him – the heavy who’d come about an inch from dumping Rose down the centre of the stairwell. Smear of blood drying on his cheek. Limping through the lobby between two thick-necked PCs.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ said Phillips. Rose glanced up at him – it was almost gratifying to see the surprise on the DI’s face when he took in the extent of the damage she’d done to the vicious lunk. There were advantages to growing up with a rugby front row for a family: being the little sister of three rough-arsed brothers taught you quickly enough how to break a wrestling hold and get in a telling blow or two of your own in reply.

  ‘Uniform really did a number on him, didn’t they?’ Phillips said.

  Rose’s mind leapt back to the stiff-handed jab to the throat that had finally brought Nitić, grey-faced, to his knees. She’d happily have given Phillips the same treatment if she thought it’d be worth the paperwork.

  The limping heavy – Nitić – saw her as he was being manhandled into the back of a police van. His thick-featured face twisted with fury. He opened his mouth to yell something, a threat, a volley of abuse – but the impassive PCs slammed the doors on his anger.

  Rose grinned for the first time that morning.

  But she wiped the smile when she saw blonde, fragile Adrijana Zrinski standing hesitantly in the shadow of the building’s stairwell. Rose stood painfully and waved.

  ‘Adrijana! I’m here.’ She stepped into the lobby and made her way towards the stairs. The girl swallowed nervously and lifted a packet of frozen peas.

  ‘Face,’ she said. ‘For your face. Modrica. Zamrznut.’ She hefted the dripping green packet again, smiled weakly. ‘Birdseye. Grasak.’

  Rose returned the smile, took the packet, pressed it to her pulsing cheekbone. A burst of pain from the cold – then numbing relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it. A packet of frozen peas wasn’t much – but in its way it was the first touch of true wa
rmth she’d felt in days. She gestured for Adrijana to sit beside her on the bottom step. Phillips, bored with goading her, had wandered off to chat to a local reporter. An opportunity, then, to form a useful connection amidst all this mess – a living, human link with poor Katerina.

  A sudden, saw-edged wailing broke from the floor above. Fat chance of that, Rose thought bitterly, jumping to her feet.

  Adrijana stopped her with a hand on her forearm. She shook her head.

  ‘No trouble,’ she said. ‘Grief. Tuga. Katerina.’

  Rose sat down again. Through expressive broken English Adrijana made her understand that Sofia was sharing the news of Katerina’s loss with the family’s friends and neighbours. Many of them had known Katerina since she arrived in England – some since before then.

  Adrijana stood.

  ‘I should go to her,’ she said.

  Quickly, firmly, making it clear she wasn’t asking permission, Rose said: ‘I’ll go with you.’

  Back up the stairs. Back into the tense thrum of murmurs, whispers, urgent conversations behind closed doors.

  While she still had Adrijana to herself, Rose took another stab at finding a chink in the Zrinski family’s self-protective armour.

  ‘Katerina was well loved, then?’ she said, as they climbed together. ‘Many friends here? In the community?’

  Adrijana nodded gravely.

  ‘Many,’ she said. ‘Katerina, always helping, helping others. She help at hospital, where she work. Help with benefit, immigrant, landlord. Help all the time. Problem, go to Katerina. Sometimes too help.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘What do you call? Svetac. A saint?’ A nod. ‘Katerina was a saint.’

  Rose quickly joined the dots. Nitić. A criminal gang. A saint, a do-gooder. For the bad guys, a do-gooder was a troublemaker.

  It didn’t seem to fit, though. That horror, that thing out in the field – a gang hit? Hardly. Bullet in the back of the head and a splash in a canal, that was how the gangs dealt with troublemakers.

  Keep going, Rose thought. Keep thinking.