To Fight For

by Phillip Hunter

  And then I hit a clear stretch and forgot all about the law. Up in front, nearing the roundabout, was a white van. I eased closer and saw the last three letters of the number plate.

  KJP. That was it. That was the van. As soon as I saw it, I eased back, pulled into the left lane, let other cars overtake me. The van was sticking to the speed limit and pulled into my lane when they’d gone past an Astra. That was fine. I backed off a bit more and a small Ford overtook me, came into the lane.

  I could see the top of the van above the roofs of the cars in front. I had them, but I had to keep them. There was no way I could get to Glazer like this. I had to wait until they came to a junction or lights, and then ram them at speed, which meant I had to follow them for now, and try to anticipate when they might stop, then move into position.

  Then movement caught my eye and I was looking at the back of the Ford, at a young girl, staring at me through the back window.

  She was about nine, ten. She had large eyes, dark skin, dark hair. And for a moment, for just a beat of a heart, I was looking at Kid, and she was looking back at me in that way of hers, eyes wide with a kind of wonder, a kind of fear.

  Then the line of traffic moved forward, slowly, heading towards the roundabout. I was just starting to edge out to overtake the Ford when I saw the van go over to the left. That was wrong, surely. If they were taking that slip road, then they were going to take the North Circular east, not west, as they should’ve done.

  So now I had no choice. I had to close in and wait until they hit a junction, then ram the fuckers. They weren’t going into the City. I no longer knew where they were going. If I tried to follow and lost them, that would be it.

  The van slowed as it neared the North Circular. I tried to move past the Ford, but there was no room. We were all stuck in the same long, thin limb of traffic, all part of some massive animal, barely crawling along because it no longer had the life to do anything else.

  My eyes went back to the girl again. She wasn’t looking at me now. She was gazing out of the side window, hypnotized by the slowness of it all, by the endless fucking pointlessness. Or so it seemed.

  The Astra right behind the van was pulling out now, deciding it didn’t want to take this slip road. The Ford moved up, and I moved up with it.

  I was twenty yards behind the van. They weren’t going to be able to go anywhere quickly. All I had to do was stay cool, stay alert, wait my turn. All I had to do was make sure they didn’t see me.

  They saw me. The driver glanced in his wing mirror, then looked forward, then looked back. He spoke to someone next to him. A few seconds went by. Then the passenger door opened and a man got out and started to walk towards me. It was the man with short blond hair, the one I’d hit back at the house. He brought his assault rifle up. He had the stock locked open this time, and there was a smile on his face and I knew he was going to kill me if he could.

  I had a chance if I got out on my side of the car and went down low, took his legs out.

  I saw movement. The girl in the Ford had turned back and was watching me, a frown on her face. She was right between me and Dunham’s man, right in the path of fire. The adrenaline froze in my blood and turned my insides to ice, and all I could see was the girl, Kid, killed in the crossfire when I’d taken Marriot out, killed, perhaps, by me.

  For half a second I couldn’t move. I had to do something, and I had to do it quickly. I should’ve pulled my gun, got out of the car and killed the man walking towards me. But it was already too late. I’d lost it.

  Then he opened up.

  I didn’t hear the gunshots. But I heard the rounds hit the car, felt it judder under the impact, as if the sky was raining rocks.

  The windscreen broke into lots of spiderwebs. Something buzzed past my ear and cracked into the metal door frame. I ducked, shoved the gearstick into reverse and floored the accelerator, slamming into the car behind me. I kept on, wheels spinning, burning rubber pouring out from beneath and clouding the view out of the side windows. The car behind me was screeching back. I could hear shouting. I could hear panic, other cars trying to pull out of the way of the automatic fire.

  Then everything was different and I realized the car wasn’t getting peppered with bullets. I looked up and through the laced windscreen and saw the van mounting the kerb and racing off.

  I glanced back at the Ford, scared suddenly that the girl would be on the floor, another innocent victim of my life.

  A woman was holding the girl tightly, her hands about the girl’s head. The girl was unhurt, but she was staring at me, her eyes wide, fearful and yet, I thought, angry, condemning.

  I thought for a moment about going back to Glazer’s place and speaking to the woman there, but then I remembered that I’d called an ambulance for her. By now she’d be surrounded by law.

  In the end, I wiped the car down and walked away. Someone shouted after me, but I didn’t stop and nobody followed me.

  I walked. I heard sirens, lots of them. I kept walking, cursing myself for hesitating, wondering why I’d done it, wondering if I’d lost it, somehow.

  ‘This can’t go on, Joe,’ Browne had said.

  He was right. It couldn’t go on. Something was going to give, and I was starting to think that it might be me.

  I heard more sirens, further in the distance now. After a while, I heard a helicopter. I knew it was the law without looking up. It was looking for me or the van.

  It was circling above. I walked with my head down.

  THIRTY

  By the time I got back I was shattered, wasted. I’d lost. Dunham had killed Cole, got Glazer.

  He’d won.

  The adrenaline had gone, and failure filled its place.

  I dragged my body into Browne’s house and closed the door carefully, closed it finally, on everything, on the past, on justice, revenge. Whatever.

  It was late afternoon. I think. There was still sunlight, anyway. I trudged through to the kitchen and fell onto one of the wooden chairs and rested my arms on the table.

  I thought about losing Glazer. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I was angry that Dunham had beaten me, sure, but that was something else.

  Browne wandered into the kitchen. He stopped, looked at me.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Glazer’s gone. Dunham’s got him. He wants the DVD.’

  Browne thought about that for a minute.

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t Dunham know you have a copy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, any copy he gets is useless if you still have one. If you gave it to the media, his copy would be valueless.’

  He was right, but I was too tired to care.

  Browne made me a cup of tea and put it down on the table. I tried to drink some, but my hands were shaking too much.

  Browne sat with me for a while, but I didn’t say anything more, and he didn’t push it.

  After a while, he got up and went off and came back with an armful of stuff.

  He’d got it into his head to do some work in the front garden. I think he just wanted to get out of the house and stretch his legs, but he was afraid to go too far. He hadn’t gone into the back garden since we’d sealed that part of the house. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen in the middle of the day. The precautions we’d taken were for a night attack. They weren’t going to be hiding in the rose bushes. On the other hand, I couldn’t blame him for being scared.

  I told him again to go somewhere – his sister’s or a hotel or something. But he still wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Things might get heavy,’ I said. ‘You’ll get in the way.’

  ‘This is my bloody house,’ he said.

  Anyway, all the gardening tools were in the shed in the back garden, so Browne used a carving knife, a pair of scissors, a pickaxe he’d found in the hall cupboard – and a comb. Fuck knows what that was for.

  He went out there looking like he was going to break into a prison and cut so
meone’s hair.

  I rested my head on the tabletop. I didn’t have anything left in me. I didn’t know what to do.

  THIRTY-ONE

  She stood by the window of her flat, one hand holding a cigarette by her side, the other holding the back of her neck.

  She’d slept badly, dreaming about something, mumbling in her sleep, tossing around. There was darkness in her mind, torment.

  I hadn’t slept at all. I’d watched her toss and turn, wishing I could do something to ease her. Instead, I’d felt the weight of my weakness.

  I’d thought about things, and kept thinking about them until my head was dizzy. I’d tried to remember what I could about the evening. The way Brenda had acted was wrong. All of it was wrong; the pub we’d been to, the people there – those fat businessmen, the heavy-set bloke with a beard, the thin woman with white skin and black hair.

  If I asked her about it, she’d clam up, like she always did, and I’d be further from her than I wanted to be. So, I thought about it and went round in circles. Always fucking circles.

  At some time in the early hours, Brenda had woken, breathing heavily. She’d pulled a cigarette from the pack by the bed and stood and gone over to the window. She hadn’t said anything to me, hadn’t even looked at me. I had no idea how such a small thing could hurt. It was as if she knew I couldn’t help, knew I’d fail her. She was alone with her nightmares, which were worse when she woke.

  The room was lit by the moon which poured its pale light onto the walls, the floor, and made the cigarette smoke shimmer silver. I watched it fold and curl and fold again into circles. I looked at Brenda’s slim body. The moonlight made her curves shine, as if she stood in a halo, but it also made her dark skin look livid.

  ‘Joe,’ she said, looking up at the moon, ‘have you ever thought about when we go out together? We always go out at night. Did you realize that?’

  ‘We’ve been out in the day,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s usually at night. Anyway, it always seems so.’

  I told her I hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense.

  ‘We live by night,’ she said to the stars.

  ‘We both work at night,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Exactly. We live under a dark sky, our sins to best conceal.’

  I said something – I don’t know what. It didn’t matter, she wasn’t listening anyway.

  ‘Funny,’ she said, ‘coz I love the sun. Isn’t that funny? I never thought about it before.’

  ‘It’s better at night. No people.’

  She turned and watched me for a while. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see the light glancing off her skin. She seemed lost.

  She opened the window and tossed the cigarette out. She came back to bed. I put my arm around her shoulders. She moved close to me. I felt her warmth press against my cold chest.

  She said, ‘Whenever I look up at the moon, I’ll think of you. It shines so beautifully.’

  ‘It’s dull,’ I said, ‘and dead.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. “We all shine on.” John Lennon sang that.’

  ‘Who?’

  Now she smiled, and that spark was in her eyes, brighter than any stars, brighter than the sun. She knew I was taking the piss. She knew I couldn’t be that stupid. She was the only one who did.

  She turned her face back to the window, to the dark sky, to the bright moon. Her eyes were so black in its light they seemed to be reflecting the black and endless night, or perhaps they were just reflecting something inside of her, as black, as endless.

  Now, years later, I felt old and grey. I felt like the moon, dull and dusty and floating around out there. And she’d been like the sun: brilliant, glorious.

  And if she’d ever looked at me and seen me shining, it was only because I’d reflected her light.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I woke when I heard the front door bang shut. It took me a moment to remember where I was, what had happened. It took me a moment more to remember that the woman I’d remembered was dead. I had a good memory for once.

  I got up and went slowly out of the kitchen and into the hall. I saw Browne, standing by the front door. He looked more confused than usual. I thought, He can’t be pissed already.

  But he wasn’t.

  He dropped the pickaxe and brushed some rain from his coat.

  ‘Strange,’ he said.

  He kicked his shoes off and put his slippers on. I waited for him to finish, but it looked like he’d forgotten what he was going to say. He was probably talking to himself.

  ‘What’s strange?’ I said.

  ‘Huh? Oh. William.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My neighbour. William. Remember? He came over the other day. Complaining about all that stuff you made me do outside. Said he was going to call the police.’

  ‘Yeah. The Rotarian. What about him?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really. It’s only that just now he was so nice. Said he hadn’t meant to offend me. Apologized. Very unlike him. He can’t stand me.’

  I didn’t think much of it then. It seemed odd that this bloke would suddenly change tack, sure, but so what?

  It was when I was halfway up the stairs that the thing hit me. I remembered what Browne had said to me a while back, about how even if Dunham got hold of a copy of the DVD it’d be useless because I had a copy.

  I looked down at Browne, who was standing by the front door, scratching his head, still confused by his dumb fucking neighbour.

  ‘When was this?’ I said.

  ‘Huh? Oh, twenty minutes ago. I saw him peering out of his window. I thought about what you’d said to me, about not wanting to annoy him unnecessarily. So, I went over to apologize.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, he was nervous, wanted to get rid of me I think. That’s when he apologized.’

  Browne’s hand stopped moving over his hair. He looked at me with wide eyes. Now he was getting it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Joe. What is it? Christ.’

  I jumped down the stairs and went into his front room. He came with me, still asking me what was wrong. I looked out the window. It was just getting dark. There was no traffic, no people.

  ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Cole. Dunham got him.’

  ‘Got him?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘You said this bloke, your neighbour, he’s friends with some copper?’

  ‘What? Yes. He’s a Conservative, or on some board of something. He knows the local police people, the high rankers.’

  I thought about that.

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ I said.

  ‘What? I—’

  That’s when the front door smashed inwards. If it’d happened a minute earlier, me and Browne would’ve been finished.

  A handful of dark figures burst through, shouting, holding their semi-auto rifles up, barging each other, swarming all over the place. Browne had frozen, his face white.

  They didn’t see us at first. They had those helmets on, and those dark visors, and their vision was limited.

  I’d made a mistake. I’d secured the place from an attack by Dunham, but not by the law. For Dunham I needed a fortress. They’d try and break in and I had to hold them off long enough for them to realize the danger of exposure was too great. But the law was the law. They could stay outside as long as they wanted. For them, I needed an escape. And I didn’t have one.

  I saw them through the lounge door, and they were pouring up the stairs, along the hallway towards the kitchen.

  I thought at first that it must have been Browne’s neighbour, William. He’d gone and told his friends at the local nick that there was something going on, and they’d looked into it and found me.

  But as I watched this mob, I realized there was something wrong. Either they were stupid, or they were badly trained. They should’ve fanned out straight away, clearing each space as they came to it. Instead, they were falling ov
er themselves to get into the house. There was no order there.

  Then I knew they weren’t there to nick me. They were there to kill me.

  I shoved Browne aside, slammed the door shut and braced myself against it.

  It was a stupid thing to do. We were trapped now, in the front room. But I couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘Take cover,’ I said to Browne.

  He looked at me with a blank face.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Take fucking cover.’

  He backed up against the far wall, as far as he could go from me.

  Someone had now noticed that the door was shut. They were hammering into it. There must’ve been two or three of them. Each time they rammed the door, it slammed into my shoulder, thrust me back a couple of feet. I’d set my weight and shove back. At some point, someone would decide to riddle the door with automatic fire. I had to think of something. Anything.

  I couldn’t think of a fucking thing. The only way out was the front window, and that would take us right out into them.

  Meanwhile, they kept smashing that door, and I was getting weaker, or they were getting stronger. They must’ve had three men there by now. They were bashing the door regularly, in, back, in, back, every second.

  All this time Browne was still up against that back wall, pressing himself into it, staring at me, at the door.

  ‘They’re police.’ he said.

  I had an idea. It wasn’t much, but what else was there?

  ‘Joe, they’re police.’

  I let them hit the door another time then waited and snatched it open. One of them fell right in. I kneed him as he fell and he went straight down. I grabbed him, yanked him in and slammed the door on another bloke. I think I broke his arm. I broke something, anyway. The one who’d fallen in was trying to get up. He was onto his knees when I kicked him in the face. He went down for good after that. I pushed his body up against the door. I had a few seconds, at most. I hauled the sofa over and threw it against the door, on top of the bloke.