Chasing Innocence

by Potter, John

  She took Boer’s lead, could almost hear his voice in her mind. Knowing now how she would prise open that subtle flaw. ‘Tell me what you know about Brian,’ she asked the stepfather.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  He jerked conscious at a sound, his panicked eyes immediately going to the door and seconds of anticipation. It stayed closed and the cause of the sound stayed outside. He looked over his shoulder and judged the distance and angle to the gnarled workbench. He had no idea how long he had been out. His left arm hung loose at his side, his hand throbbing with a vengeance, his back busy with its needling dance. He needed to turn the chair.

  Turning was near impossible. He tried jumping the chair around but gave up almost immediately, instead he rocked precariously onto his feet, stooped and managing to shuffle around in very small increments, the chair legs scuffing and unbalancing him, his free arm knocking against the chair. Finally he faced the bench and immediately started rocking from side to side, each sideways movement rewarded with a small step forward. A modernist hunchback gradually moving from the view of the metal door.

  He stopped with the top of his head pressed against the wood, eyes on the floor. He swung his free arm up onto the surface, searching blindly, each bump and contact causing a schism of pain which he ignored, using alternate movements between the ball and heel of his feet to shuffle sideways, the sweat dripping from his nose and chin, tracing his path on the dusty floor. His senses were on constant alert for any sound, aware of each passing second, his fingers bumping over the metal of the knuckledusters, the bat and across the fabric of his kitbag, to their destination. He struggled with four fingers to get a grip on the blade. Each time he managed to lift it, the weight caused the knife to fall. So he gave up and used his hand to drag it over the edge.

  It clattered onto the concrete and just under the workbench, forcing him to spend precious seconds scraping with his fingers to pull it into the open. Being able to see the knife helped, picking it up was an ordeal. His reach was restricted by his right hand, still tied to the chair which was now set square on the floor. His outstretched fingertips just reached the cold metal. He rocked perilously onto his feet again, scrabbling frantically then grasping the hilt between his fingers. He would hold a special reverence for his thumbs from now on, the knife held precariously in four fingers. He lifted it carefully and levered the serrated edge under the plastic at his ankle. He applied pressure and his grip slipped.

  The knife clattered to the floor again and he used his fingertips to claw it back. Lifting and levering the serrated edge three more times and dropping the knife each time, trying to temper his anger and frustration, but each time the required pressure was becoming more familiar.

  He heard a sound at the metal door, a padlock or key into a lock. He manoeuvred his fingers around the hilt and lifted the knife as rusty hinges protested. He positioned it against the plastic tie and steadily twisted. The plastic gave and snapped and his fingers lost their grip. One leg and a broken hand now free as the door creaked open. He clawed at the knife, trying to scrape it closer as he heard feet, which paused and then came towards him, uncertain at first and then at a run. He focused, blinked away the sweat that rolled into his eyes. He rocked forward, concentrating with life and death in every movement.

  He held his breath, fingers searching for purchase, the footsteps quickening. He held the knife in four fingers, pushing it up and into the plastic, with just the right amount of angled pressure. The footsteps close now, a loping run favouring one leg. He mentally adjusted. The plastic gave and snapped and now he had a broken hand and two legs free as the shoes made the opening.

  Not enough time for the remaining hand. Brian was already moving, the movement fluid. Starting with the blade clamped between his teeth, he set his feet, trusting his aching legs to keep him upright, the chair clasped in his right hand as he stepped forward with his left leg, stepping into the swing. The chair came up and around as Oddi turned, a defensive arm raised as the chair crashed across his shoulders and head. Brian’s foot raked Oddi’s shin and immediately swept the back of his leg, forcing him to the ground. Brian jabbed with his foot again but was blocked with a hard forearm, but not the second strike of the chair. The joints splintered and broke free, another strike and it broke apart. Brian ignored a knee to his calf and fingernails that gouged his ankle, punching down with the remaining length of chair attached to his wrist, straight into Oddi’s centre mass. Brian shifted his weight and body, the opening now at his right periphery, kicking the ball of his foot into exposed ribs, Oddi curled foetal at his feet, Baldur coming at him fast.

  One-armed and tiring, Brian needed an advantage. He pulled the remaining length of wood through the plastic, ignoring the splinters that snagged his forearm, dropping to one knee and pounding the wood into Oddi, into his torso, neck, chest, face and head, fending off arms and legs frantically trying to ward him off or kick him away. A final vicious stab to Oddi’s stomach and he discarded the wood, taking the knife into his right hand, ignoring Baldur now only three strides away, the strike timed for the reaction he hoped it would have. Oddi gave a final weak kick as the knife plunged through ribs into a healthy heart, his shocked wail quickly turning to a despairing moan as Brian immediately turned and defended a ferocious kick with crossed forearms. The kick carried Baldur off balance, giving Brian the chance to push up and run him into the bench, the impact hard and jarring and causing them both to shout out.

  An impasse. Baldur was wedged between the bench and Brian, his back to Brian, neither able to move. All of Brian was now invested in pinning him against the bench, both gasping in the frenzy before sudden death. Brian’s strength was failing, his grip loosening, trying to twist an arm up around Baldur’s neck. Baldur managed to pull his arm free, slamming his elbow immediately back into Brian’s shoulder, and with more space into the side of his head, trying to turn. Brian returned each blow with a blind punch into Baldur’s back and ribs, a war of attrition he was never going to win, adrenalin now a distant memory.

  An elbow exploded against his ear, causing a hum inside his head and then a second, smashing across his cheek, catching his nose and blood into his throat that he choked and coughed into Baldur’s hair. Another blow scuffed his shoulder into his neck and another into the side of his head and almost a ten count. Brian managed two last punches, steeling his mind against the next two seconds. Baldur realised victory, using his strength and the bench to push back and spin around.

  Two seconds. The first second Brian invested in grasping blond hair in four fingers amid a wall of pain he would never know, his right fist managing a single last punch. The next second was the time it took for him to fall backwards, buckling his knees to create the right angle, Baldur spinning around and forward, except Brian was no longer there.

  One second of free fall. Two synchronised movements. Brian held Baldur’s hair with his left hand and pushed up under his chin with the other, turning the head back against the body’s movement as Baldur spun around. Baldur’s neck muscles tensed in reflex but momentum and gravity were now his enemy, the sound of gristle and cartilage stretched and snapped and bone shifting over bone, cutting and tearing through the complex tangle of nerves connecting body to brain. A cry cut off. Brian hit the floor and Baldur landed heavy on top of him, a dead weight.

  Brian immediately pushed the body one way and rolled the other. Sitting up and gasping, he tried to stand but his legs failed him. He spat blood, wiped more from his face and shuffled back, kicking out at the head lying at an unnatural angle to the body, releasing his barely contained fear and anger. He spat again and studied the face of Baldur.

  Green eyes stared back at him, unblinking. Not technically dead yet, just paralysed from the neck down. With no pumping heart to push blood to neurons, no lungs to fuel oxygen into the blood, it would be minutes before starved cells began to die. He’d be unconscious after two or three, technically dead after five. Brian wondered as he watched if Baldur could hear or was aware. Not that Bri
an had anything to say to him, he just wondered.

  He turned his attention to the matter in hand, his thumb, swollen and oddly angled in his palm. His medical training dictated that the pull of ligaments made setting a bone easier than breaking it. This break was a good way back to the wrist, the skin broken with the bone now pushed through. He was beyond verbalising pain so he breathed deep and grasped the thumb. Lifting it and using the natural pull to set the bone amid barred teeth and a low, drawn-out growl.

  He was not sure if he had blacked out, he blinked and his thumb was roughly normal amid purple bloated flesh. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and stepped around the blood pooling from Oddi. He pushed a foot against his ribs and the knife sucked free from the vacuum of wet flesh. He cleaned it on Oddi’s trousers and cut strips from his top. He cut a small splint from the chair frame and bound it to his thumb and wrist. He then searched both dead men. Both were completely devoid of any identification or personal possessions. No phone, receipt or loose change.

  He reclaimed his rounders bat and searched for his trainers. They were gone, along with his T-shirt and jacket. He checked Baldur and Oddi for shoe size; one was too big and the other too small. He pushed the bat between his belt and jeans, dropped the long chain of blades, the knife, the rubber cosh and the knuckledusters into his kit bag. He hauled it over his head and onto his back as he surveyed the scene.

  You’re alive! How many times had he thought that? He had lost count. This time it was different. He was fighting for one thing only, the chance to hold Andrea and say sorry. Not for the here and now, but for the last two years, the endless love she invested. That is, if Andrea would forgive him? Which he felt quite certain she would. He took a final look at the bodies and walked through the metal door into the open.

  Outside he was immediately assaulted by the sea air, refreshing against his shirtless skin. He stepped from concrete onto sandy scrub, the sea rolling to a stop a few feet away, then walked around the building to an open area with discarded fridges and shopping trolleys. A silver car and a dark figure leaned against it. They saw each other at the same time. The figure by the car hesitated for a second, reached inside his jacket and pointed something at Brian that looked very much to him, in the dark, like a gun. A Walther he guessed in that fraction of a second. Then it spewed fire, the casing ejected in an arc and a single 9mm bullet cut through the air.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  What do you want to know about Brian?’ the stepfather asked.

  ‘Tell me about him, anything at all,’ Ferreira said. ‘What’s he like as a man and a father, what do you think of him?’

  The mother sighed and shook her head. ‘Is this necessary?’ She flicked her hair behind her ears.

  ‘Yes, Beth. Maybe you two know something about Brian that we don’t, it may be important. Maybe you’re right about Brian. Humour me please.’ She turned back to Kevin. ‘What are your impressions?’

  ‘Well, for a start, he’s not someone I’d want to get the wrong side of. He’s a hard kind of man. You meet them sometimes. They just don’t know how to deal with people. He’s not the sort of guy I’d ever spend time with. He’s just different, I suppose. I’ve known him for seven years on and off. We never saw him for long periods. We used to exchange the odd word in lay-bys at weekends as we handed Andrea back and forwards. He only moved to Hambury after he was discharged.’

  Ferreira flipped over a page. The stepfather continued. ‘The army was his whole life, he lived for it. Now his whole life has been turned upside down, his whole sense of worth.’

  The mother pressed the palms of her hands flat on the table. ‘I really don’t need to listen to this. I’d better check on the girls.’

  Ferreira reached across. She could not touch the mother’s hand but pressed hers onto the table in the same way. ‘Please, Beth, this is important. Check them in a minute.’

  The mother lowered herself back down and placed her folded arms back on the table.

  The stepfather addressed Ferreira. ‘Brian is struggling, what can I say? I hoped for Andrea’s sake things would sort themselves out. I offered him some work but he turned me down flat. Said…well, he said he should probably keep his distance. To be honest I think the injuries are not his problem, as bad as they are. It’s not being in the army that he really struggles with. It must be a hell of a shock being a civilian now, going from being the best of the best, surrounded by like minds, to nothing.’

  The mother was growing increasingly agitated, visible most in her shoulders. Ferreira took her time catching up with the notes then paused to drink her tea. She reached down to her purse and pulled out the scrap of paper Boer had found in Andrea’s picture frame. Four pairs of eyes followed its journey to the centre of the table. The stepfather briefly studied it and looked away. The mother picked it up with trembling fingers.

  ‘This is Andrea’s writing. A Hambury number?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘But Brian doesn’t have a phone now, of any description.’ Her face twisted. ‘I absolutely forbade Andrea from calling him, she would have plummeted us into more debt in no time. She would have spent her whole time on the phone trying to call him. Just imagine what that would do to the child.’

  Ferreira looked at the stepfather. He looked at her. He did not say anything, just shrugged, the meaning implicit. I’m already in the shit, why not!

  The mother saw it as well, immediately shaking her head disbelievingly from side to side, lifting her chair further away from him. She crossed her legs and folded her arms. ‘Pray tell, do!’

  For the first time in a long time Kevin looked at his wife, relaxed now as if he had seen into his own future and accepted it. Ferreira had seen the reaction in interviews before. She tried to recall the statistics, it was often the least guilty who confessed first because they felt the guilt more. Everyone in the room waited for him to speak.

  ‘Don’t be so high and mighty, Beth. You’ve become obsessed with chipping away at the man. As if you’ll only be satisfied when he’s finally erased from your life. As if you are embarrassed by the fact you were fancy free when you were younger, and Andrea is the living proof. I should have stopped it a long time ago. But…but you’re a hard woman to face up to.’

  He reached across and picked up the scrap of paper, confirming to himself what he already knew, dropping it back onto the table. ‘It’s Brian’s boss’s number. Ali’s his name. I give Andrea my mobile on the Saturday nights she’s here. She calls Brian while he’s working. I guess the paper is how she remembered the number.’

  That was about all the mother could take. She gave a low scream and launched herself at her husband, the liaison officer and the constable scrambling too late to their feet and knocking their chairs over in the process. The mother rained blows that bounced off his shoulders and arms and the side of his head. The words forced from her mouth each time a blow hit home.

  ‘What…kind…of…man…have…I…married?’

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Simon finished the last checks and powered down the console, turning in his chair to look down at the quay, the trolley moving backwards and forwards. Another hour and he would start the engines and complete the final preparations, in two hours they would be in the North Sea heading towards Scotland. In three nights all navigation and tracking would be powered down. They would be skirting the Irish Atlantic coast. He was nervous and excited, which had nothing to do with getting his cargo out of UK waters undetected.

  He dropped down the steps to the lower level and walked along the narrow corridor, unlocking the bedroom door and stepping inside. Sarah was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing only a pair of his red shorts, a book open on her lap. The shorts were impossibly large on her.

  The bare expanse of her flesh quickened the fluttering inside him, not the dark slithering, but a giddy sensation he barely recalled. He stepped around the bed towards her and tipped the book to see the cover.

  ‘Why are you reading the end?’ he asked.

  ‘Because it’s not
my kind of book,’ she replied, looking up at him. ‘I just wanted to know what happens.’

  His eye skimmed the page. ‘It’s one of my favourites.’

  ‘What happens to him?’

  ‘It’s not about him,’ he answered. ‘It’s about her, he’s just her guardian.’

  She closed the book and he drifted his fingers across the skin of her back and shoulder. She sent a tentative smile up to him. ‘Why don’t you shower and I’ll finish this, then you can explain to me your favourite book.’

  His fingers paused on her shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You can see what I’m doing.’

  ‘No, why are you being like this?’

  She let her head rest back against the headboard. ‘Because if I don’t try and do something normal I’ll go mad and I really mean that. It’s not something you ever expect to do, to run away with a…a kidnapper and that’s the best light I can paint you in.’

  ‘So you’re coming, of your own free will?’ he asked, his voice hopeful.

  ‘You mean I have a choice?’

  ‘You know the choices. I meant you are here rather than fighting me.’

  ‘What is there to fight with? I go where the girl does. You know my intentions. I’m hoping to show you the error of your ways. What will you say to Hakan?’

  She watched him pull off his shirt and walk back around the bed, unable to pull her eyes from him, the natural poise of a predator with few peers. He stopped by the door that led to the shower.

  ‘Hakan thinks you’re still in the house. He’ll need machinery to get into the room, and for that he needs the brothers. How long before he finds out depends on his priorities. I would say a day, maybe two. By then it will be too late. He won’t be thrilled but what matters to him is delivering the girl. He’s not worried about that.’ He unbuckled his trousers. ‘He practically owns me.’