Cuffed

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Cuffed Page 23

by Marc Horn


  ‘Well, thanks, Noah. Though I’m kinda fucked now anyway.’

  ‘I know you are, but this would have stuck to you forever. Ethan was a youth and his mother had been singing his praises on the TV. All the good work you’d done would have been overshadowed by this.’

  ‘Possibly, possibly not. He was a thieving piece of shit.’

  Noah swallows a piece of sandwich. ‘I agree that Jumont deserved longer than ten years for raping that girl.’

  ‘Deserved to be fucked with his own dick if you ask me. Why didn’t you just tell me the truth when you took my prints?’

  ‘I’m not proud of what I’ve done,’ he explains. ‘I don’t like dishonesty. I wasn’t going to sing and dance about it. I wanted to keep it to myself. But I’m telling you now, because this is the last time we can meet.’

  ‘Ooh, it sounds like a forbidden affair—’

  ‘My corruption stops here, Razors.’ He hands me an envelope. There’s money in it. ‘I don’t want to do this kind of thing anymore. We’ll always be grateful for what you did, but we want to live honest lives. Please consider us even.’

  I hand back the envelope. ‘I don’t want your money, son. I need to tell you something...’

  And then I tell him about the Supercop plot. I tell him because he’s trustworthy and because I’m apprehensive about what’s ahead. My Hell Bell has never been so prominent. It’s ringing in my head and I feel very wary, that there’s much danger ahead. I suppose this is the closest I come to fear. I want Burton; I want to hurt him badly, but I sense that he’s ready for me. Anyone who’s ready for me is either deluded or very, very tough. And I know Burton’s not deluded. He’s ruthless, sharp and calculating. He’ll be ready for me. I don’t know what he plans to do to keep me sweet, as he’s got no hope of convincing me I’m wrong about My World, but two things are certain: he doesn’t want to die and he can read my mind. An opponent can’t be more dangerous than that. I suppose telling Noah is a back up plan. In case I’m beaten, left helpless and without hope. He’ll be the only one on my side, the only living person who’ll act in my interests. I’ll not tell him about My World. After all, his wife is the most important person to him. I tell him that she’s here but for the grace of me and... well, I was going to say he’ll do whatever’s best for her, but he’d not take my words seriously anyway.

  43

  It’s not particularly fun living on the run. Constantly looking over my shoulder seems cowardly to me, but I can’t rely on my Hell Bell anymore. It’s constantly activated. It rings incessantly in my head. It’s telling me to stay alert every single second. This means its usefulness is minimal. I mean, I’m always on guard, but the Hell Bell was essential for warning me of sudden, specific danger. Now I don’t have that warning to look out for. I’ve got to be ready for attack at any second. That’s exhausting. Imagine never being able to relax for one second.

  Maybe, when I find Burton, he’ll be able to help. Of course, I mean when he’s in agonising pain, about to die, and prepared to do anything to save his arse. Maybe, once he’s dead, I can erase this shitty situation I’m in. Because all I’ve got right now is a guarantee that once I’m caught, I’m back in the nuthouse. And I don’t think they’ll ever release me. Maybe Burton can pull some strings. I’d love to have my job back. I love policing. I was born to do it. Well, that’s not true; I was born here to present me with some kind of challenge, apparently.

  Why the fuck did Hilda read my journal? She didn’t need to. I suppose the super might have been lying about that, but, really, there would have been no reason for him to do that. He didn’t believe in My World, and therefore didn’t believe that I could end everyone’s life. It wasn’t important for him to convince me I was wrong about all that. All he cared about was the supercop plot. If anything, it was in his interests to get me to believe in Hilda, since believing it was my world would keep me in the loon house. His instructions were, after all, to get me sectioned. So I think he was probably telling the truth. Why would she need it? I don’t believe she got her information from there. She knew things that weren’t in that book – where I’d been, that someone was coming to kill her, that Cassandra wasn’t dead and so on...

  The super’s phone hasn’t rung for a couple of hours now. After nine a.m. it rang three or four times. I knew it was work wondering where he was. Of course I didn’t answer. They last called at eleven. They’ll know he’s dead by now. They would have gone to his house to check on his welfare.

  It must be about one p.m. when the phone rings again. I’m crossing Waterloo Bridge. I take it out and stop dead when I read the caller I.D.

  I open the flip.

  ‘Afternoon, Kane.’

  His voice sends chills down my spine. It’s deeper, grittier, and posher than I remember it. I take a deep breath. ‘How d’you know it’s me?’

  A coarse, brief laugh. ‘How do I know you killed Superintendent Chapel? Well, ask yourself how I know what you told PC Ayres...’

  I close my eyes. Noah. Shit. ‘This is about me and you, Burton,’ I hiss.

  ‘His blood’s on your hands too, son.’

  I end the call. I don’t know Noah’s number, but I know where he lives. I sprint to Waterloo station and take the tube to Turnham Green. After a change of line and about forty-five minutes, I’m there and I bolt out of the station. It’s a hot day and sweat has plastered my t-shirt to my back. My heart sinks when I see the coppers reeling police cordon tape around a lamppost. It’s just happened. There are four coppers here, two of them marking a perimeter with the tape and the other two tending to a body lying on the ground. Distant police sirens are drawing closer.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

  When I get there, I run into the plastic tape which wraps around my body as if I’ve crossed a finish line.

  ‘Oi! This is a crime scene! Get back!’ The copper runs up to me as the tape stretches against me. I’ve stopped. He puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back. Noah’s body is ten metres away. He’s still. Blood is around him. The copper’s studying me. His hands have relaxed. ‘What’s the big rush, mate? D’you know something about this?’ Sweat pours down my face. My body’s shaking. I’m incensed.

  The copper’s calling on his radio for a unit to join him. His fingers tighten on my arm. ‘Wait here a minute, mate,’ he says, trying to conceal his nerves. ‘We need to ask you something.’ He reaches for his handcuffs, slips his other hand down to my wrist. I whip my arm free and hook him to the temple. He drops to the floor. The other copper on the cordon runs over, but I’m away, sprinting back towards the tube station.

  An police car screams towards me, and stops in front of me. But by the time the two coppers get out, I’ve run past them. One gives chase while the other jumps back into the car. I’m too fast and I can hear the copper falling back. I run past the tube station and turn right. A bus is waiting at a stop. Three customers are waiting to get on it. When I get to it, just one customer is about to swipe his Oyster Card. I jump on, take a fiver out of my pocket and place it on the counter. The driver gives me change and the bus moves off. The bus is pretty packed, but I can see through the rear window that the copper’s not yet turned the corner. I might be safe. The bus is about a hundred metres from the junction I just used, when I see the police car skid around it, swerve, and then accelerate towards us. If he stops this bus, I’m gonna have to activate the emergency button, open the doors and run off.

  This is dangerous. A critical incident’s going on, meaning there’s an ample supply of police in the vicinity. The IRV shoots past us. I exhale hard and stick my cap in my bag. Coppers get too excited and lose the ability to think. The driver slows down at each side street and checks along it before screeching onto the next one. It made no sense for me to try to outrun a car. Either I was going to go to ground somewhere, or I was going to conceal myself among a crowd. Since India 99 will shortly be here, with its thermal imaging capabilities, going to ground was out. The bus was the obvious option. That knobhe
ad police driver will probably realise that, when he’s calmed down and thinks clearly. About three hundred metres in front of us, the police driver turns into a side road. He’s reasoned that I couldn’t have got that far on foot, so he’s either going to recheck the route, or contain the area between him and the first junction and wait for the chopper and probably police dogs to fish me out. As we pass by the side road, I see he’s stopped. He’s out the car and on his radio. He’s rummaging around in the boot, and just before I lose sight of him, I see him take out some cordon tape. He’s putting in a containment. He’s gonna seal off this road at the junction and stop traffic and people entering. Other officers will do the same at the other end and at the far end of each side road in between. They’re gonna sterilise the area in the belief I can’t get away. In fairness, the officer acted pretty fast and would have caught me out if I’d stayed on foot.

  Recently, I’ve been such a frequent user of charity shops, that I should get a loyalty card. I bet I’m the only person who uses them for tactical rather than thoughtful reasons. That’s not to say I don’t care – I pay money to charities, but my use of the shops has been solely to help me evade capture. I tell the cashier that I want to wear the items I bought, so she lets me change into them in the changing room. When I leave the shop, I’m wearing blue Bermuda Shorts with islands printed all over them, a tan t-shirt, a pair of flip flops and new, ill-fitting shades that constrict my head. They were the only pair they had.

  I make my way home. It’s the last place they’d expect me to go, isn’t it? It’s too obvious. I’m a hunted man. My face is everywhere – in the papers, on the telly, on the police briefings. It’s just a matter of time before I’m found. I need to get to Burton before then. There’s no point in going to him. He’s prepared for me to go his place, and will be ready for me if I do that. Fuck him. I’ll outsmart the piss flap. He can come and find me. If he’s so aware of everything I do, then he can come to me. He knows I won’t run from him. And he’s got to intervene before I work out a solution to all this. Hilda said that death was the only way for me to find peace. But I reckon there must be a way for me to consciously manipulate this world I’ve created. Surely the creator can change the things he designed? I must be able to kill Burton, Cassandra, and convince everyone I’m entirely innocent. All I’d be influencing is the people I put here. Surely it can’t be hard to brainwash the minds I formed? I can be exactly where I want to be. It just takes practice. I need to search deep within and learn how to work the controls.

  After slipping the communal lock with the super’s credit card, I make my way quietly up the stairs and then I’m facing my front door. It looks the same as it did after Cliff had forced entry. That one dead lock is bust, but the other two are fine. The police would have used my keys to enter after seizing them from the mental hospital. They would have ransacked my place, looking for contacts and leads after I first escaped from the hospital. I lift my knee and then strike the working dead lock hard. The door flies open. There’s no one inside and the place looks as it did when I last left it. That was... fuck me, that was before I dangled Mushroom Lolly out the factory window!

  The door still closes okay and though the deadlock’s ruined, the latch lock works. I drop my bag on the lounge floor and walk into the bathroom. That hasn’t changed either. It’s still a fucking mess, and unless I clear my name, that’s how it’s gonna stay. There’s a big hole, the size of the entire wall, covered with a waterproof sheet. Through the sheet, on the balcony, I can make out the shape of the building materials. The builders would have been told that I wasn’t coming back, that I’d gone wibble-wobble, and that they’d have to make a civil claim for money owed. I go into the kitchen and make myself a brew.

  I’m riddled with guilt about Noah. I should have known that telling him about the plot would put him in danger. I was selfish and blind and now his wife’s a widow. ‘Fuck!’ I shout. I’m sorry Noah. I’m so, so sorry... I blink hard to resist the tears. This is not like me, feeling these emotions. But then, it’s very rare that I regret my actions; I’ve never been a liability. I save people, that’s what I do − I don’t sacrifice them. I’m not a fucking liability. I grit my teeth as my eyes get wetter. Burton’s my target. He’ll pay.

  ‘Fuck!’ So I saved Noah’s wife and took him. I’ve undone much of the good work I performed on her rapist, as now the one she loves is dead. The most important person to her has gone. She might as well be dead, too. ‘Fuck you, Burton!’ I scream, my fists clenched hard.

  What the fuck is happening to me? I’m losing this. He’s winning; he’s changing me. I’m an outcast, a wanted man, and yet I’m forced to wait here for him, rather than track him down and attack him with all guns blazing. I have to sit and wait to give myself the best chance. And who knows how long he’ll take? I ditched the super’s phone, of course. The police could’ve tracked me down with it.

  I brace myself when the intercom buzzes. Is it now? Is this him? I cautiously move up to it, listening carefully. There’s no one outside my door. I press the button. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Razors, it’s the builders. We need to have a chat. We ain’t here to grass you up.’

  ‘Open the door,’ I say as I unlock it.

  One thing’s certain – they’re brave. I’m an escaped mental patient. But then people are obsessed with money.

  When they knock on my door, I let them in. It’s just the two of them. They’re dressed in their workman’s clothes. The short, fat one, still wearing the overalls caked in paint marks, opens his mouth to speak. ‘Listen, Razors, mate, we’re sorry about your condition, but we’ve put a lot of work into your bathroom, and we both ’ave families to feed, so we need paying for what we’ve done.’ He looks sad. ‘We ain’t gonna tell no one that you’re ’ere. All we want is the money we’re owed.’

  I nod. ‘That sounds fair to me. Take a seat. I’ll make some brews.’

  After finding out how they take their brews, I walk into the kitchen. The short builder follows me. I fill the kettle up with water. When I turn, the builder’s inside the doorway. ‘So, how you feeling, Razors?’

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. Go and take a seat. I’ll be in soon.’

  He laughs. ‘I’ve been on me arse all day. It’ll do me some good to stand for a bit.’

  I stick the kettle on and take out two mugs from the cupboard.

  ‘We’re sorry about the way things worked out,’ he says. ‘Hopefully, when your situation improves, we can finish what we started.’

  After dropping a teabag in each mug, I turn and smile at him. Then I walk towards him. ‘Excuse me a second − I need to get past you.’

  He doesn’t move, just stares quizzically at me as he blocks the doorway. But I’m not about to stop whether he’s in my way or not. He shuffles backwards, leaving me space to pass. I stop by the lounge doorway.

  ‘What about this one?’ I ask the other builder, who’s emptying the rounds from my Glock as he kneels on my lounge carpet. He stares blankly at me, my Glock magazine in his right hand, a palm full of rounds in his other, and my open bag beside him. He sees the spare Glock in my hand and his eyes expand. ‘Think I’m that stupid?’ I pull the trigger twice. Both rounds find his head.

  The fat builder behind me tries to lock my arms, but I elbow him hard in the stomach, spin round and stamp kick him. He goes crashing into the kitchen, ending up on his arse. He raises his palm towards me, scurrying backwards along the kitchen floor. ‘Please, Razors, please! We’re just builders. We don’t want no violence. That’s why he took the bullets out your gun!’

  ‘Yeah. I buy that.’

  I shoot him in the face, too. As I inhale, I’m aware that someone’s behind me. Both builders are dead... I spin round to my right, fast as a Mamba, both hands on the gun. Burton blocks my arms before they can aim the pistol at him. I release my left hand from the weapon, step in and throw a hook at his face, but I’m on the floor before it connects. He’d hit me first with his left! He was quicker! I lift up m
y Glock, still fixed to my right hand, but he’s drawn his handgun and shot me twice in the forearm before I can fire. I roar as my Glock drops to the floor.

  He smiles at me. ‘Not that super, are you, Kane?’

  My forearm’s pissing blood and hurts like a motherfucker. I reach across and press my thumb hard against my brachial artery beneath my right armpit, applying direct pressure to stem the flow of blood. I elevate the injured arm too. I can’t pass out.

  I glare at his lean frame. He’s fifty-something now, his hair greying and his facial skin has slackened. Beneath the black trousers and black shirt I can tell he’s well-muscled and in shape.

  ‘You here for their funerals?’ I gloat, flicking my head back in the direction of the builder behind me.

  ‘They’ve done what they needed to,’ he replies, flatly. ‘It’s actually quite a relief to remove other links from the equation. They think they know best.’ His pistol’s level with his waist as he stands four feet away from me. ‘It’s a difficult position for a person to be in, I accept that, but any course of action requires careful thought. It has to be my way.’

  ‘You’re just my bitch, Burton; remember that. I put you here and I’ll end you when it suits me.’ I’m cocky as I know he can’t kill me. I have that guarantee.

  He steps forward. ‘You’ll have no such privilege,’ he says, taking a syringe out of his pocket.

  As he hovers over me, I hook my foot behind his heel and stamp out towards his shin with my other foot. The push-pull effect will make him hit the deck. But he’s outguessed me again – he’s leaning forwards in anticipation and I can’t drop him. His knees buckle slightly, but not enough to knock him off balance. I cry with pain as he sends a bullet into my kneecap. Writhing with agony, I roll onto my side. And then I take a hit to the head...

 

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