Hawk's Cross

by David Collenette

  He smashed it again and then again, until it had come apart at the joints and was scattered across the floor.

  Claudia was shaking, terrified for what was coming next.

  Terry reached behind his back and pulled out his gun, pointing it directly at her, panting and sweating.

  “I should shoot you in your ugly black face!” he yelled at her. Claudia just cowered into the corner.

  Terry stood like that for a few moments and then, unsure what to do next, he started to calm down. He put the gun back into the waistband of his trousers and just stood there, staring at her, panting.

  “That’ll do for now. I got what I wanted. Good to see you Terry-fied.” He forced a laugh out at his attempt at a joke and spat at her, turned and walked away.

  In the cage, Claudia just stared at him as he retreated around the corner.

  When she was sure he’d gone, she lay down, turned over and closed her eyes, a single tear squeezed itself out between her eyelids and ran down her face.

  ***

  Standing outside the small hotel, of which I remember little, I was feeling sick. My head was swimming and my mouth felt like the bottom of a bin. You had to hand it to alcoholics; they had commitment.

  We got to the car and Roche said, “I think I’d better drive.” I didn’t argue.

  We drove in silence for a while; the car seemed to sway more on the corners than I remembered and it wasn’t helping my stomach.

  I took another swig of ice-cold water and it helped a little. The painkillers I’d taken were starting to take effect and my head was now pounding with less intensity.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Home,” said Roche. “I need to find out what’s going on.”

  I thought about the bag. They’d traced us, twice, because of the tracker attached to the bag. No, not attached; sewn in. Whoever had done it had time to do that and had prepared well, and one thought kept going through my head: Sandrine gave me that bag. Surely she couldn’t have planted the tracker?

  Roche seemed to have an amazing ability to read my thoughts. “You need to remember one thing, Matthew: nothing in this world is as it seems. You can trust some people but you have to understand that just because someone behaves in a way that appears to break that trust, the truth may run much deeper.”

  He must have been talking about Sandrine. It would have occurred to him, the same as it did to me, that Sandrine gave me the bag which held the tracker which nearly killed us both, twice.

  I had nothing to say in response, so I just said, “I hope so.”

  We drove in silence.

  I must have fallen asleep soon after because Roche had to shake me awake. “Wake up, we’re nearly here.”

  I sat up and looked around. We were in a small village and I recognised a couple of the shops; this was the place we came through before. I took a swig of tepid water to drive out the foul taste in my mouth.

  I was expecting to go to the house but instead we turned off the main road and circled back towards the other side of the town. We circled a block of garages twice and, when Roche was happy that there was nothing out of place, he parked the Audi and we got out.

  We were standing in front of a grotty old garage. Large enough for maybe two cars, it was fronted by wooden doors mounted into a floor track. It seemed that the doors slid sideways and into the garage to allow cars in and out. The doors looked very old and the track was caked in mud and grit; it hadn’t been used in a while.

  Set into the sliding doors was a smaller door, about the size of a normal house door, and Roche retrieved a key from his pocket and unlocked it. He stepped in and told me to follow.

  I followed him in and found that we were in front of a wall, built behind the wooden doors with another, more secure and newer door with a keypad entry system. Above the door was a camera, aimed to view anyone standing there.

  Roche typed in a code and a faint click from inside indicated that the door was now unlocked.

  He opened the door and we stepped inside.

  Inside, the space was open plan apart from a small room in one corner. The main space was dual purpose: a small home and a workplace.

  “Toilet is in there,” said Roche, pointing to the small room in the corner.

  Gratefully, I followed his directions and found myself in a small bathroom, with a shower cubicle, toilet and wash basin. Towels hung from rails as if this place was used frequently.

  When I returned to the main room, Roche was sitting in front of a set of displays above the work table. On all but one of the displays were camera views of his main house: one of the drive, one of the gate and the rest of the inside. One of the camera monitors was divided up into squares and the larger square was cycling through images in the smaller squares.

  On the one display not showing camera views was a load of text, split into two windows. When I looked closer the one on the left was showing a log of what was going on:

  09:03 Light-Zone1A: On

  09:13 Light-Zone2C: On

  09:15 Media-TV01: VolumeUp(25)

  And so on.

  It was a log of every electrical event in the house and the right-hand window was showing call logs from phone numbers, with ‘from’, ‘to’ and ‘duration’ provided.

  Roche was fixing his attention on one video image. In the video, Sandrine was standing in the laundry room talking on the phone. Roche was squinting at the screen and I then noticed that he had an earpiece in his ear.

  I stood watching for a few minutes until Roche pulled the earpiece out by the cable and sat back. “I can’t hear anything. She’s switched on the washing machine to drown the sound and there’s no record of the phone call; it’s an unknown phone.”

  I looked around the room we were in. “What is this place?”

  Roche looked at me. “Backup. From here I can control and monitor the house. I use it to check security before coming home if I’ve been away for a while or if Sandrine’s not been home.”

  He checked himself: “Or maybe if she is home.”

  Roche spent half an hour going through the house logs while I decided my time would be more productively spent lying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.

  “OK, she’s gone. Let’s go and see what we can find,” he said. “But first I need to use the bathroom.”

  Roche went into the small bathroom and closed the door, so I sat on the sofa and waited, wondering what was going through his mind.

  We left the garage-house and got into the car. We drove for a few minutes and stopped near a lane.

  “We’ll go in this way,” said Roche, and led me to a small gate in the wall. The gate was hidden from the road and required a key code to enter. The door clicked open and we stepped into the garden. Once inside, a small beeping noise started and Roche turned to tap another code into a keypad on the wall. The beeping stopped.

  We crept up through the garden and stopped short of a low wall. Roche sat there for a while, looking at the house through a small set of binoculars.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  We stood up and walked up to the house, where Roche unlocked the door, switched off the alarm and closed the front door.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “Trying to find out what the fuck is going on,” he replied.

  I followed Roche from room to room, partly because I didn’t know what else to do and partly because I was feeling creeped out.

  When we got to the living room he started going through the mail, getting more and more frustrated.

  “Merde.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing here, it’s all just as I’d expect.”

  “Not quite,” said a female voice and we both spun round.

  Standing on the other side
of the room was Sandrine. She looked just as I’d remembered her, except for the pistol pointing in our direction; I’d have remembered that.

  Roche twitched but Sandrine was quick. “No, Roche, don’t be an idiot.”

  As if on cue, three men appeared from the hall, each carrying similar guns.

  Roche shook his head. “Not you. Why?”

  She smiled at him. “Maybe you should pay more attention to superstition.”

  I jumped before I realised why; she’d fired. Once, twice. I looked at Roche and saw two blooming red patches on his shirt. He stared at her and staggered backwards against the wall. He struggled to stay up and tried to form words. Confusion crossed his face and he made a vain attempt to reach up to his chest.

  Finally, he slipped down the wall and his head sank onto his chest.

  I went to move; to go to Roche and try to help.

  “No!” shouted Sandrine. “Stay still.”

  I stood there. I couldn’t believe Roche was dead. I stared at her, tears forming in my eyes. “Why?” I said.

  She ignored my question and signalled to one of the three men. “Secure him and put him in the car.”

  One of the three men came forward, put the gun on a side table and span me around against the wall.

  My leg was resting against Roche’s shoulder and I looked down at the top of his head, tipped forward onto his chest. He was very still. The blood had stopped running down his shirt and I first thought that this was a good thing because he might still be alive. Then it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t pumping out because his heart had stopped.

  As the man behind me zip-tied my hands, tears ran down my face. Death was so final and so pointless. A couple of days ago he was planning on killing me and today I’m mourning his death. If Sandrine had waited another day would she be protecting him? Would he kill her? So much can change in an instant.

  I was marched out to a black four-wheel-drive car. I thought I was going to be put into the boot as it was open but they bundled me into the back seat and loaded some other stuff into the boot. In the car, the same guy cut the straps on my hands and retied them in front of me. Sandrine sat in the driving seat, one of the guys sat next to her and another sat beside me. The last one stayed behind.

  I looked down at my bound hands and at the cross tattooed onto my wrist. I wondered if that girl would still keep sending pictures to Roche; if she would ever find out he was dead.

  He saved her, he saved many others and he saved me. No one saved him. I wondered where he stood in the balance.

  I should have been scared but I was numb. I stared out of the car window as we raced across France with no idea where we were going and no real desire to ask.

  ***

  A loud clanging noise burst Claudia from a fitful sleep. She looked up with a start to see Terry Burrows running a baseball bat along the bars of the cage.

  “Aw, poor little nigger girl, all scared of the bad man.” He grinned.

  Claudia said nothing but regarded him the way a cat watches someone who has it backed into a corner. If Terry was brighter he might have recognised a certain look in her eye but it passed him by.

  “Actually,” said Terry, “I think I’m starting to warm to you, girl.”

  Claudia didn’t move.

  “Fuck yeah, I used to think I wouldn’t touch a stinking black whore with a fucking stick but you know you’re not bad looking for an old nigger bitch. Maybe you and me, you know, a little bit of romantic music, some candles, maybe a bottle of wine and a film? What do you say?”

  Claudia had nothing to say.

  Terry laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I have no intention of fucking you. I reckon that if I fucked your filthy black hole my prick might just catch some fucking gangrene or something and it would turn black and fall off!” He roared with laughter. “Nah, I don’t want to fuck you but I think I changed my mind about touching you with a stick.”

  He put the bat between his legs and started rubbing his hand up and down its length. “How would you like that, eh? They reckon that nigger men have big dicks. What about this big? Do you reckon you could fit this in your big fat nigger arse?”

  Claudia just stared at him. For the first time Terry caught a look which made him frown, just a little. Was that a twitch of fear that crossed his face? He quickly gathered himself up. “Anyhow, maybe you and Mr Bigstick here can have some romantic time later. Don’t you worry, it’ll feel good.”

  He banged the stick hard on the cage and Claudia jumped. Terry laughed, turned around and walked away with the bat over his shoulder.

  20

  Looking out of the window of the car I noticed some towns and villages go by. We kept pushing on, slowing down only when we reached Nantes, and that was due to traffic.

  I thought about making an escape attempt. Carefully, I reached up with my hand and tried the door handle to see if it offered any resistance. It didn’t – child locks – so I just sat there and stared out of the window.

  I couldn’t believe that Roche was dead. I became aware that I was subconsciously stroking the cross on my wrist. Ethan had said that nothing mattered from a distance; that everything was irrelevant and that the world just kept on turning no matter what happened.

  Looking out of the window it seemed that way. People were driving to work, walking their dogs, buying food, drinking coffee, laughing and arguing.

  Suddenly a memory popped into my head of a woman I met when I was not long on the street. She’d been standing outside of McDonald’s with a coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid and she was complaining to her friend that the coffee was no good. “Who can drink this shit? I’m chucking this; we can head down to Starbucks.”

  As she headed for the bin I called out to her, “May I have it?”

  She’d looked at me, curled up in a doorway on a cardboard box with a ragged blanket over my legs.

  “You don’t want this, mate, it’s fucking horrible,” she’d said as she dumped it in the bin.

  When she’d left I went over to the bin in the hope that the lid had stayed on and the cup had landed upright but no such luck. I watched her walk off with her friend, examining her phone as she walked that waddling, slow-motion walk people do when they’re trying to use their phones and avoid the crowds at the same time.

  People are so disconnected from each other.

  Eventually I fell asleep.

  I’m not sure how long we’d driven for but I was woken up by the guy sitting next to me shaking my shoulder. “Hey, Goldilocks, wake up.”

  I chose not to correct his literary reference and straightened up, stretching my back.

  We were parked in a layby, the sun streaming in through the window making my arm and the side of my head sweat where I’d been sleeping.

  My door opened and I felt a cool breeze against me. “Get out,” said Sandrine.

  I got out.

  “Stretch your legs for five and don’t try growing a brain. Dead or alive, it’s all the same to me. Oh, and take a piss; the next bit is going to take some time.”

  One of the men cut my hands free.

  I walked around a bit. We were parked in a layby on a curve next to a steep hill. Cars went past with no one paying any attention. People my age riding past on scooters; how much different their lives were to mine.

  I wandered into a copse of trees by some bins and, ensuring that no one could see, I relieved myself, zipped up and walked back to the group.

  After a few minutes she said, “OK, let’s go.”

  I walked back to the car door to see that the rear seat had been folded forward, allowing access to the boot. Some of the stuff that had been put in the boot had been pulled out and stuffed into the floor space.

  “Sorry, kid, we need you hidden for the next bit. Climb in.”

  I squ
eezed into the boot from the back door, through the gap made by folding the seat forward, facing forward.

  “Hands please,” said the guy I had been sitting next to.

  I held my hands up and he zip-tied them again. As he was doing it I stared at the closing latch. There was a square ring sticking out of the door pillar which went into a catch on the seat. The zip-tie on my hands was a long one, with plenty of it left flapping around.

  An idea struck me. The problem with ideas is that they just sort of pop in there, into your head. They don’t come with any reviews as to whether they’re good or not, they just arrive, insisting that you take some time afterwards to evaluate their pros and cons. What would have been nice would have been a review for the idea that popped into my head; it would have probably read:

  “I had this idea and expected great things of it. However, I would suggest that anyone else having this idea should ignore it! It sounds perfectly reasonable at first but will lead to nothing but trouble.”

  Which led to the next issue: the additional problem with this idea is that I didn’t really have an enormous amount of time to do any background research into its suitableness; it happened in seconds.

  The guy stood up and, talking to Sandrine in French and mildly distracted, he lifted the seat back into place. As he did so, I lifted up my hands and shoved the plastic zip-tie end into the socket that held the seat locked upright.

  Darkness.

  This is what I meant about ideas, as I was now locked in the boot, with no light, and my hands suspended in the air by the zip-tie, wedged in the locking mechanism of the seat.

  I was an idiot.

  The car started and we moved off, the road noise eerily close to my head.

  We drove for about twenty minutes and then stopped for a while with the engine off. I could hear noises outside the car, mechanical noises. Around us car engines were also being switched off and I could hear people opening and closing car doors and talking, although they were too muffled to make any sense out of what they were saying.