by David Mark
It had been the same the next time. Yvonne had died quietly but there had been more blood than he expected.
But he’d made a fool of himself with Allan’s death. The defibrillator had been too fucking complicated. Had shown him up. Gary never left his skin that time. Stayed very much awake as he battered the former paramedic to death on the cold floor of the garage.
As he looks at Dr. Pradesh, he wonders how much of today’s work he will actually experience, and how much he will simply watch.
• • •
The surgeon is still blubbering. She’s got one of Olivia’s fluffy toys wedged in her gob and it’s turning pink. She’s bleeding from the mouth. He can’t remember if he punched her in the stomach or not. He wonders if she might have internal bleeding, or has just bitten through her cheek.
He rolls off the table. Brushes himself down.
Looks around.
Gary likes this place. It’s a ruin now. There are holes in the roof and the bare brick walls are surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The remaining internal walls are smoke-blackened, and the carpet has turned into something organic and squelchy beneath a covering of lime-tree sap and leaves. Still, it has character. It’s quiet. And he likes knowing that Angelo had, for a time, been happy here. He can feel him nearby.
Gary shed a tear this morning when he realized he had lost his friend’s body. He blames Dr. Pradesh. Blames her for a lot of things. The woman on the table saved Hoyer-Wood’s life. She opened him up and stopped the bleeding. Stitched his spleen back together. Repaired a laceration to his kidney. She’s going to learn how that feels. And then she’s going to bleed into her own exposed abdomen until she drowns and dies.
Gary pushes his hair back from his face. He’s a little hungry. In one corner of the room are a few empty tins. He’s been living on cold beans and spaghetti. Been sleeping in his van some nights and lying here, looking through the holes in the roof, on the nights he knows the security guards won’t be patrolling.
It had been more luck than design that he’d landed the job of looking after the mansion house. He’d driven up purely to see the place for himself, having heard Angelo’s descriptions so many times without ever laying eyes on it. He’d been parking up on the gravel when a load of posh blokes in suits and accents had walked out, looking over blueprints and chattering excitedly about their big plans. They’d approached him and said something about serendipity and needing somebody to keep an eye on the place. They’d hired him on the spot to keep the place clean and tidy. Given him a business card, and told him to e-mail his details across. Agreed to pay him cash in hand. It had felt like somebody was smiling on him.
Angelo had still been alive then. But he wasn’t communicating much. Wasn’t coming out of his room. Gary didn’t even really trust him to be left alone with Olivia. He’d taken to bringing her with him everywhere. She’d sit and chatter and play with her toys in the back of the van. She liked it in there. It was warm and dry and smelled of Daddy.
He couldn’t have known . . .
Gary looks down at Dr. Pradesh. The light isn’t very good and her face is only illuminated when the lightning flashes. She’s quite pretty, and her body is in good shape. She even has a little heart-shaped tattoo where her pubes should be. He’d expected more from a surgeon.
Gary looks into Dr. Pradesh’s eyes. Sees himself reflected in them. Realizes he’s forgotten the mask. He stole one from a dental practice a few weeks ago, along with some latex gloves and a fistful of scalpels and scrapers. He wants to do this right. To get it as close to perfection as possible. He hopes the doctor doesn’t think that he’s stripped her for any perverted reasons. He would like to put her in a surgical gown, but he doesn’t have one, and feels uncomfortable using this old pine table to operate on instead of a gleaming, cold slab of steel. But he has to make do.
Gary tears his gaze away and looks up at the sky. The rain patters onto his face and he closes his eyes to enjoy the sensation. When he opens them again, the jackdaw in the sky is staring again. A black pupil is turned upon him. He realizes he has an audience. That time is precious and Dr. Pradesh has already been alive too long. At some point, he’ll be caught. He’s already been stupid enough to give a name to those two coppers who turned up last week. He was trying too hard. Trying to be too friendly. Plucked a name from the air that could be exposed as bullshit with a phone call. He’d wanted to seem helpful so they didn’t sniff too hard and breathe in the rotting corpses in his van. He’d phoned security the second he’d got away from them, but they both seemed pretty bright and he knows that he has a limited amount of time left before they begin joining the dots. Before they catch him, he has more work to do. There are the nurses who tended to Hoyer-Wood after his operation. There are those who helped him with his rehabilitation. It struck Gary recently just how incomplete Angelo’s list had been. So many more people could be justifiably killed. He intends to put right that wrong . . .
Feet squelching on the carpet and the dirt, Gary crosses to the back door of the derelict property. His mask is in the van, parked behind the screen of lime trees. The scalpel which will be used to open Dr. Pradesh’s belly is in his pocket. He hadn’t been able to purchase the surgical rib-spreader he had wanted, but he has a hydraulic foot pump in the vehicle that should do a similar job in splitting her ribs and allowing him the freedom to poke around inside her with his blade.
He takes the door with both hands. The wood has expanded over the years and sticks on the uneven floor. He yanks it hard and steps out into the darkened day, rain turning the ground beneath him into a swamp of mud and standing water, its surface bouncing and rippling beneath the deluge.
Gary pushes aside the sagging fence and ducks under the dangling barbed wire. His work boots sink into the soft earth and he feels water up to his shins. Carefully, he pulls one foot free, then the other, and manages to slurp his way onto harder ground. The van is only a few feet away.
A sheaf of lightning rolls across the blackness and for an instant the scene before him is illuminated.
A big, broad-shouldered man is climbing out of the back of his van.
He’s holding the decaying body of Olivia in his arms.
Gary’s blood takes over.
He takes the scalpel in his fist. He throws his head back.
Feels the jackdaw’s eye upon him.
The flash of recognition is lost in his rage. Even as he realizes that the man who holds his daughter is the policeman who spoke to him a few days ago, the knowledge is swept away on a tide of angry blood.
He runs forward.
And sticks the blade in the big man’s back.
• • •
McAvoy doesn’t hear Gary Reeves approach.
The thunder and the driving rain mask the sound of footsteps on sodden earth and it is only as pain rips down his spine that he realizes he is in danger.
He pitches forward. His first thought is not for himself. He just doesn’t want to drop the dead girl whom he holds in his arms as if rocking her to sleep.
McAvoy places the little girl back on the hard floor of the van. Only then does he turn.
Metal flashes past his face. He jerks his head back just as it whistles past his cheek, then does so again as the screeching, howling features of Gary Reeves are lit by another flash of lightning.
McAvoy feels the van at his back. Tries to find somewhere solid to put his feet and looks down for the briefest of instances. It is long enough for Reeves to lunge with the scalpel again and McAvoy sucks in a gasp of agony as the blade digs into his hip.
He pushes hard with both hands, sending Reeves back and onto his arse. McAvoy looks down, expecting the weapon to still be stuck in him, but there is nothing there save a spreading patch of warmth. He looks over and sees Reeves pulling himself back to his feet. The blade is still in his hands. McAvoy scrabbles in his jacket pocket for his exte
ndable baton, but Reeves runs at him again. Savagely, the smaller man stabs and stabs again, opening wounds in McAvoy’s arms as he throws his hands up to protect himself. There is warm wetness upon his face and his vision turns red as the scalpel slices down to the bone above his eye.
In desperation, McAvoy grabs Reeves around the middle, shouting out as the blade sticks in his left bicep and stays there. They go down together, splashing to the ground in a spray of mud and blood and dirty rain.
Reeves slithers free and kicks out; the steel toe of his boot catching McAvoy in the throat. McAvoy raises his hands to his windpipe, gasping for breath, and without warning Reeves is on him. Kicking his hands away and forcing his head down into the great puddle of rain and leaves.
His mouth and nose are suddenly full of mud and water. He can’t see. Can’t speak. Can feel only cold pain in his lungs and the weight of Gary Reeves upon his neck, holding his head below the surface.
McAvoy tries to push himself back but the ground is too slippery and his hands give way, forcing him deeper under the water. The sound of the storm dissipates and he realizes his ears are under water, too. His lungs feel as though they are bursting. His face is agony.
Despite himself, his mouth opens and filthy rainwater fills him.
Lights dance in his vision. He feels himself growing weak. Feels his limbs shake.
Sees, for the briefest of moments, Roisin’s face, picked out like a constellation in the dancing stars of the fading darkness.
McAvoy reaches under himself. Through the dirt and the leaves and the swirling water, his hand closes on the scalpel that sticks in his left arm.
In one movement, he pulls it free and stabs, weakly, desperately, at the man on his back.
He feels the blade hit home. Feels a momentary loosening of pressure.
McAvoy throws himself backward, gasping for air, eyes opening into the rain and the storm.
Gary Reeves is a few feet away, pulling the scalpel from his collarbone. His fingers are slick with blood and his hair hangs forward across his features. It’s black, like a jackdaw’s wing over his eyes.
McAvoy puts his whole weight into the punch. Throws it while staggering forward in a half run.
His right hand connects with Gary Reeves’s jaw. McAvoy feels a knuckle break with the impact. Then his feet slip out from under him and he lands on top of the unconscious man; a wave of brown water rolling away from their entwined limbs to break against the chicken wire and brick of Tilia Cottage.
Drowsily, feebly, McAvoy gets back to his feet. He staggers a little and presses a hand to the wound at his hip. He feels the warmth of fresh blood, but keeps his feet long enough to cross the grass and stumble through the lime trees to his minivan. In the glove box he finds the tie-wrap cuffs he should have had in his pocket. He takes them in his blood-soaked fist and slithers his way back to where Reeves lays. He’s half-submerged in a puddle, and his jaw hangs slack to one side. McAvoy tries to stop his hands from shaking and slips the cuffs around Reeves’s wrists. He drags him clear of the rising puddle, then climbs back to his feet.
He almost falls: his progress across the grass is that of a man trying to stay on his feet on the deck of a boat in a force nine gale.
He ducks under the barbed wire. Pulls open the door.
Sees.
Dr. Pradesh.
Naked.
Bleeding.
Alive.
He crosses to her quietly. Begins untying the blue ropes that lash her to the table.
Blood-soaked and mud-spattered, he knows he looks terrifying and fearsome. He talks to her as he would to a skittish horse.
Locks eyes with her for a moment.
And then her arms are around him and she is sobbing into the soaked cloth of his jacket; her body heaving as she holds him tight.
He strokes her hair, leaving blood upon her crown. Looks around at the ruin of Lewis Caneva’s old home. Imagines, for the briefest of moments, what Angelo witnessed here.
And then he is pulling out his phone.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, disentangling himself from Dr. Pradesh and putting his jacket around her shoulders.
And then he falls to the ground.
Before he loses consciousness, he repeats it.
“It’s okay.”
And then, as blackness washes over him: “I’m a policeman.”
TWENTY-TWO
Hessle Foreshore. 1:26 p.m.
Downey hadn’t expected to see this place again. He wishes she had gone somewhere else. This was the scene of his humiliation. The place where his revenge turned sour. He’d nearly pissed himself when the husband came home.
He lowers his head and snorts up another line. Feels it blast through his system. Feels as if he has opened a window at thirty-five thousand feet.
Bitch!
He watches her climb from the car, rain coming in sideways to patter against her attractive face. He watches her arse as she leans over and into the backseat of her friend’s stupid little car. She emerges with her baby in her arms. It’s crying, and she hushes it, cooing and singing, as the pouring rain turns her white top see-through, and her mate stands there gormlessly huddled inside a waterproof coat.
He sees the lights of another car, farther up the road. Sees them as the eyes of something powerful and monstrous moving toward him. Has to shake his head to turn the lights back into something safe and unthreatening.
The women run through the rain to the front door of the house. There is some complicated fumbling with keys and then they are pushing inside.
Downey has to time it just right. He wants the door to be closing as he puts his weight behind it. Wants to see her face as she realizes who she has dared to cross.
He pulls himself free of the car and splashes through the fast-moving water that covers the road. He hears thunder above and looks up, past the Humber Bridge and into a pewter sky that rolls and twists as if pregnant with a belly full of snakes.
Stumbles.
Curses.
Charges hard.
He puts his shoulder to the door and hears the squeal of surprise.
“Bitch!”
Downey doesn’t hesitate as Mel slams into the wall. Just jabs his right fist into the seamstress’s face and watches her crumple, falling in a tangle of arms and legs in the doorway.
“Where are ya!”
He’s bawling and screaming, his own voice alien to his ears.
The bitch appears from the living room door. Her eyes widen in surprise as she sees him and then she turns her back on him, moving fast. The baby is over her shoulder, bobbing comically, and Downey almost giggles at the silliness of it all.
Roisin bangs at the back door, desperately rattling the handle, then looks around for a weapon. Her eyes are furious. If she had a blade she would stick it through his heart.
“I’ll blow you fucking up!”
Downey hadn’t rehearsed the line. Had planned to say something else entirely. But it erupts from his lips unbidden.
“He’ll kill you,” she says, turning on him, hissing through bared teeth.
Downey pulls the grenade from his pocket. Looks at it and laughs.
“He wouldn’t kill a fly for you, you bitch. Couldn’t even kill those blokes who whipped you bloody when you were a kid. Let them go with a big bunch of flowers and an apology. Move and I’ll blow you and your baby into a million fucking bits.”
Roisin looks at the object in his hand. At the cocaine-fueled hysteria in his eyes. Feels her world tilt as his words slide into her consciousness.
“Please, I’ll get you more money. I’ll give you everything . . .”
Downey giggles, high-pitched and effeminate.
“Too fucking late. You’ve spoiled it. I was supposed to be prince of the city, you know that? Supposed to get some fucking respect. And some pike
y bitch just waltzes in and it’s over? You have to pay. Have to!”
Downey steps forward. He doesn’t know if he’s going to throw the grenade or not. He just likes the look in her eyes. He wonders what she’ll do if he pulls the pin out and holds it in front of her. It won’t detonate unless he throws it. He could have fun. Could make her piss her fucking pants . . .
Downey pulls the pin from the grenade at the exact moment Helen Tremberg clatters into the room.
She has her phone in one hand, her baton in the other. She’d arrived outside just as Downey ran from his vehicle and smashed through the door. She hadn’t hesitated. Knew the right thing to do. Knew she would rather be shot or stabbed or have her heart squeezed in a fist than stand back while somebody hurt McAvoy’s wife.
Helen lashes out with the baton. It cracks across Downey’s arm.
The grenade tumbles onto the floor.
Four pairs of eyes turn to watch the object rolling in a lazy semi-circle on the carpet.
Then there is a flash.
The explosion can be heard even above the sound of the thunder.
There is silence for a moment.
And then nothing but the sizzle of rain falling on flame, and the rumble of falling stones.
EPILOGUE
2:06 a.m.
A small hatchback, quiet and dark on a cold country lane.
Chamomile House sits brooding and silent beneath light rain and a half-full moon.
Maria Caneva whistles something she can’t quite place. The news is on the radio but she’s not really listening. The evening bulletin had been full of reports from East Yorkshire. The doctor who operated on Hoyer-Wood has been found alive. A twenty-five-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of three murders and abduction. The body of a child was also recovered from a vehicle at the remote medical facility in Driffield. A police officer had been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries . . .