To Die For

by Phillip Hunter

  He tossed the phone, pulled some keys out of his pocket, strode over to a corner bench and hauled it out. Underneath this was a plywood board. He threw that aside and I saw a trapdoor laid into the concrete. He unlocked the door and reached in and pulled out some Heckler & Koch MP5s and thirty-round magazines. Earring was backing up slowly, his gun aimed at the door. The other man was crawling towards us, leaving a trail of blood. He wasn’t going to make it. I went over to the side and tried to rip out the metal benches but they were fixed firmly into the wall and I couldn’t move them. I tossed the cardboard boxes aside, looking for a crowbar. Cole yelled to me and when I turned he threw me a Heckler & Koch. I fired bursts into the wall where the brackets were fixed to the benches. The concrete smashed into dust. There was a huge crash that sounded like a grenade explosion. The roller-door was twisted and bulging. They were trying to ram their way in. The door was holding, but it wouldn’t do so for long. I pulled the metal benches away from the wall and threw them on to their sides on the floor to give us some cover. My shoulder was agony and I was leaking blood all over the place now, but I could use my arm and that was all that mattered. Cole slid a magazine into one of the Hecklers and jacked a round into the chamber. He slung another couple of guns over his shoulder and kicked some magazines towards the bench. He was sweating, but his eyes were blazing with the same kind of ecstasy I’d seen in troops under fire. I heard him mutter, ‘Cunts.’

  They rammed the door again and this time the bolt started to wrench free from the floor housing. Another one and they’d have it. We took up position behind the bench and waited.

  ‘The lights,’ Earring said, moving towards the switches. I tugged him back.

  ‘Leave them.’

  They could blind us with their headlights if we went dark. There was another boom and screech as they rammed the door again and twisted it and tore it away from its fastening, leaving a gaping slash along the bottom. They reversed the car. There was enough room now for men to squeeze under the door, but I didn’t think they would come in until they knew what they were up against. They didn’t seem stupid. We waited behind the benches. Earring had set his MP5 to full auto and I reached over and flicked it to the three-shot setting. The way he was panicked, he’d have kept his finger on the trigger and blown his entire magazine in seconds. He stared at me, not knowing what I was doing.

  ‘Keep your eyes front,’ I told him. ‘Aim steady and breathe slow.’

  The first ones came then. Two dark-haired men peered through the twisted crack. I fired a couple of bursts at them and they scarpered. There was calm for a while, probably because they were unsure how many we were. Then something rolled under the smashed door and towards us, and I saw what it was and said, ‘Shit.’

  I closed my eyes and covered my ears and ducked down behind the bench. I saw Cole start to do the same, but Earring hadn’t moved. The flash-bang split the place apart with noise and brilliant white light and I felt the shock wave hit the bench and throw it back and the air seemed to be sucked from my lungs and I fell forwards and gagged and tried to breathe. But I knew I had to do something quickly before they followed up. I had ringing in my ears and couldn’t hear a thing and my throat burned from the stench of the magnesium, but I hadn’t been blinded. The place was full of white smoke and I couldn’t make out if anyone had come under the door. I hit the selector switch on the Heckler to full auto and aimed into the smoke and emptied the magazine to give them something to think about. I reloaded. Noises were distant and muffled because my hearing was fucked, but I heard Cole’s gun rattling away on my left. I glanced at Earring and saw that he was on his knees, his eyes shut and his hands over his ears. He’d taken the flash-bang without cover and was probably blinded. He was useless now. We took fire and ducked. Rounds hit the metal benches and the floor around us. Their fire was loose and I thought it might be covering fire. I peered quickly over the bench and saw one of them slide under the door and jump up quickly and run towards us. I fired a short burst and threw him back, dead. They’d decided to take Cole alive, probably because they thought they could get their money from him. Soon, they might decide to be done with it and kill him. We took more covering fire, and then they managed to get the door up a bit and the fire after that was intense and accurate and we had to take cover and I knew we were in trouble, and Earring started screaming something but I couldn’t make it out and I didn’t think it was language anyway. He started crawling away, trying to get to the small door and the fire was ripping everything apart and sending up clouds of concrete dust, which was choking us. Earring had lost it now and thrown his weapon away and was cowering on the ground and covering his head, deaf, probably, and half-blind. He tried to make a bolt for the small door and ran the wrong way and got wiped out without moving a yard and fell back in a sprawl. I looked at Cole and sweat was pouring down his face and his eyes were blazing and his teeth were gritted and there was madness there and he was going to slaughter every one of the cunts if he could and I had to admire that. I was down to my last thirty-round magazine and I rammed it home and thought, fuck it, and stood and emptied the magazine at them and charged and felt the buzz of a bullet whipping past my head and I slammed into the door and tried to push it down to stop them coming in, but it wouldn’t budge and I put everything I had into the effort and still it didn’t fucking move and by now I was choking on concrete dust and my eyes were stinging from the flash-bang smoke and bullets were ripping everything apart and I was firing at shadows because I couldn’t make out shapes and I thought, I’m dead.

  And then I saw Cole standing next to me and he was saying something and tugging at my gun because it was empty and I was still trying to fire it at the gap beneath the door and Cole was smiling madly through a face white with dust and shouting at me and I couldn’t hear a fucking word he said.

  And then I looked around at the smoke clearing and the concrete walls shot to pieces, lumps of plaster and rubble and dust lying over everything like ash, and the body of Earring on his back as if he’d been crucified on the ground, and the other man in a lump, and three others in pools of blood. And Cole tugged at my arm and I understood. I dropped the gun. The world spun around me and I hit the ground.

  I must’ve been out for a few minutes. When I came to, Cole’s men were in the warehouse clearing it up. Cole stood over me and smiled.

  ‘They ain’t got me yet,’ he said.

  My hearing was returning.

  He helped me stand, then put a hand in the small of my back and pushed.

  ‘Get out of here,’ he said. ‘Go.’

  I started to leave, then stopped. There was something I needed to know. I turned to Cole.

  ‘How’d you find me?’

  ‘Contacts in the Met. That Dalston thing, when Beckett got killed, they said there was a lot of claret upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but it wasn’t the same type as any of the men killed. Once I knew you were injured, it was just a matter of checking doctors, hospitals. Wasn’t hard, just took a while. Your Doctor Browne is registered at some nursing home. Woman there remembered you.’

  That bloody woman.

  There were men outside, standing around, armed and ready. There were cars on a forecourt and the smashed car the Albanians had used on the roller-door. The men watched me as I came out. Cole said something and one of the men handed me some car keys and pointed to a Ford. I got in and drove off.

  27

  My shoulder was throbbing, but it was a distant pain. My arm was cold and caked in dried blood. My ears were still ringing and the magnesium and concrete dust had dried my mouth and scorched my throat. I stopped once at a late-night shop and took a bottle of water from the shelf and threw a fiver at the man behind the counter. He looked up and saw me and stumbled backwards over some stacked newspapers. I gulped the water and threw up. I took another bottle and poured it over my head.

  If Cole’s men had been a minute later, we wouldn’t have made it. Or maybe we would’ve. I don’t know. There wasn’t much of a f
ight outside. Cole had been expecting some kind of an attack and he’d made sure his men were close to hand and in force. When they turned up, the Albanians legged it. It wasn’t a victory, it was a reprieve.

  When I got to Browne’s, I was faint. I staggered in and he looked at me and didn’t say a word. He didn’t look too great himself. He had a cut lip and the start of a black eye. He followed me into the kitchen and gathered some gauze and disinfectant and that sort of thing. After he’d cut away my shirt, he said, ‘Is she safe?’

  I heard the words, but it took me a moment to understand them. He meant the girl.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ I said.

  ‘She got away from here, that’s all I know.’

  ‘How do you know she got away?’

  ‘I heard them talking. They didn’t know who she was.’

  ‘Didn’t they ask you?’

  He glared at me.

  ‘Of course they did. You think I’d tell them anything?’

  He wiped the blood away with alcohol-soaked cotton wool. Then he cut away the old stitches and pulled them out with tweezers. He said something, but I missed it. I thought about the girl. I couldn’t remember her name. I said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know what happened. They came and took you away.’

  He did the work on me impatiently, as if he was fixing a kettle that kept breaking. He started stitching, swabbing now and then. There wasn’t much pain. I thought that was bad. I should’ve felt something. I had trouble focusing and I think I passed out, but so briefly as to not be noticed by Browne.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘are they coming back? It would be nice to know.’

  ‘They won’t be back. Did you call anyone? Police?’

  ‘One of them stayed here. He said they said they’d kill you if I called anyone.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He got a call and left.’

  ‘You call the police or not?’

  He stopped his work and looked at me. He had that look of disappointment he sometimes had.

  ‘I should have done, shouldn’t I? I mean, why would I care what happened to you? The girl got away and I thought they still had you and I didn’t call anyone and I should have done.’ He dropped the needle and threw the cotton wool down. ‘Damn it. What you did was a good thing.’

  Everything blurred for a moment, and Browne’s voice sounded muffled. I shook my head to clear it.

  ‘What?’

  My tongue felt thick.

  ‘You saved the girl, man. I don’t know where she is, but I know you saved her from them.’

  I didn’t know what he was on about. Brenda was dead.

  ‘I didn’t save her,’ I said.

  Browne stared at me. I didn’t like the look on his face.

  ‘You’re slurring.’

  Then I was back in the ring, sitting in my corner with the fight doctor – with Browne – asking me if I was okay. Then I blinked and I was in a kitchen and Browne was there and I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not bloody fine.’

  I wondered where Brenda was, and when I thought of her I had this feeling, this sickening gut-twisting feeling that something was badly wrong. I wasn’t in the ring, though. I had to remember that.

  ‘Tired.’

  ‘The girl. Don’t you remember?’

  What was he on about? He was talking about a girl, not Brenda. No, not Brenda. I couldn’t separate them in my head. Where was Brenda? Christ, where was she? I had to go to her. I had to save her. Didn’t I? I had to do something.

  ‘Joe?’ Browne was saying. ‘Joe? You understand what I’m saying? Kid. You saved her. Don’t you remember?’

  I had to think. There was a girl. The girl. Kid, yes. Had I saved her?

  The next thing I knew, Browne had my head in his hands. He was peering into my eyes, moving his hands over my head, feeling for bumps. I didn’t catch what he said. I brushed him off.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He looked at me a moment longer, then tied off the suture and wrapped my shoulder in bandage.

  My head was clouding over again and thoughts clogged and jammed and I watched as Browne dug some food out of the fridge and filled a glass of milk. He seemed to be a long way off and kept looking at me like he used to when I was in the ring and, again, I didn’t know where I was or why I was there and I watched Browne move in slow motion and all the while thoughts or memories were moving sluggishly, as if they were sinking in oil, and I was back in a corner of the ring and I could see Brenda there, ringside, watching me and I thought, she’s in danger. I must have said it out loud because Browne turned and said, ‘Who?’

  I had to fight the confusion. I had something still to do.

  Browne dropped the food and stuff in front of me. When he’d done that, he slumped into a seat. I ate, or tried to, and he watched me and his face became grim.

  ‘You look worse than ever. I didn’t think that was possible. You look... Jesus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look dead.’

  And I thought, yes, I am.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Joe? What happened?’

  But I couldn’t get Brenda’s face out of my head, and she became a small girl, a kid, and I heard her saying, ‘Poor old Joe, heading for the breaker’s yard.’

  Sometimes, I thought she might be right.

  And Browne was there again and I was saying, ‘She’s in danger.’

  And then she was holding my head and looking into my eyes. Sometimes she would ask me questions to which I didn’t have an answer. She would want to know what I was thinking, what I wanted, why I did what I did. That sort of thing. I said, ‘I don’t know.’

  And Browne had my head in his hands and was shouting something to me, but there was a ringing sound and his voice was a long way away.

  Sometimes she would ask me if we were going to be okay. I didn’t ever understand what she meant. I don’t think she did. I don’t think she expected an answer.

  And then she had a knife and was skewering me and sucking something out and I felt empty, hollow. I’d always felt empty, but this was different; now I felt emptier. I didn’t think that was possible. It was more than emptiness. It was pain where emptiness used to be, and I thought, it’s better this way.

  And then I saw Browne’s face close to mine and he had a syringe and was pulling it out of my arm and he was frightened, panic in his eyes, and then he was Warren and I was slapping him stupid, and then Kendall as he tried to make a dash for it, and then he was that kid, the Argentine, dying in front of me, lips pulling back in agony. And I wanted to say, ‘It’s better this way.’

  But I couldn’t, because there was something I had to do, something I had to finish, and it wasn’t time. And I thought, one time I didn’t see her for a week.

  And then I understood, and I knew what had happened, and my heart hit my chest and I slammed back in the seat. I knew why it had been me at the centre of this whole fucking thing – me from the start, played with, at the mercy of unseen hands, thrown into a bloody pit. I knew everything. I think I’d known for years. And the blood drained from my head and I lurched forward and Browne was saying something to me. I heard him, but I didn’t understand, couldn’t make out the words. And then he was shaking me and shouting something about hospital. The room was sliding and rolling in front of my eyes, and my head felt weightless. I tried to stand and hit the deck and tried to stand again. I was muttering something, but I don’t know what it was, and Browne looked at me in horror. I knew where I had to go. I’d been there before, years ago. I tried to make it to the kitchen door and I hit the table and Browne was grappling and pulling at me and I threw him off and I heard a voice say, ‘You won’t make it, Joe. You’re falling apart.’

  I thought that was probably right. I thought it had been right for a long time.

  28

  It happened in a daze, a kind of wa
king dream. It was early morning, not quite light, and foul. Rain lashed against the windscreen and made the lights blurred and dazzling. I saw it through someone else’s eyes. The steering wheel was loose in my hand and the car slid around a road that moved before me. I think I scraped a parked car and set off the alarm. I think I heard a shout.

  ‘Poor old Joe,’ Brenda said.

  I turned and saw her in the passenger seat, smiling softly at me.

  ‘You’re dead,’ I told her.

  ‘We’re both dead, Joe,’ she told me.

  And then it was blazing daylight, hot, heavy, the shirt sticking to my body. We were driving through the Essex countryside, green trees and hedgerows lining the narrow roads, passing fields of wheat, brown and swaying in the breeze, catching the sun so that whole fields would shimmer with light. It must’ve been late summer. The sky was hazy; high white clouds lay in thin layers across the blue like they’d been sprayed from a can. It must’ve been a couple of weeks before she was killed. ‘In London there is no sky,’ the girl had said. Well, I saw the sky that day.

  I had to keep my hand on the gearstick because of the roads, changing down to slow around a bend, speeding up on a stretch, changing down again for a steep hill. Her hand rested lightly on mine so that whenever I moved through the gears, her hand moved with it. Every now and then, she’d stroke my hand, just to let me know she was still there, still with me.

  We had the windows open and the braids of her hair blew about like tiny ropes. She wore a thin cotton dress, and her skin glistened with sweat, though she looked cool. She always looked cool to me, and I wanted to touch her neck, where her throat was, and run my fingers down to the edge of the cotton, but I had to drive, had somewhere to go, had something to do. Hadn’t I?

  ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to the side of the road where a lay-by opened on to a huge flat field of glimmering bronze. ‘Here.’

  I turned the car and the sun bounced off the bonnet and blinded me and I slammed on the brakes and Brenda screamed and I turned to her and she stared at me with blood pouring out of the gashes on her face and horror filled me.