Ruiz pauses. Listens. The sound of a soft groan punctuates a roll of thunder. He moves to the left. The X-ray room has warning signs about radiation and unauthorised entry. The double doors are splintered and smeared with blood.
He raises his foot and pushes it open. A body lies in a dark pool that looks like sump oil and smells like death. Ray Jnr; shot through the neck by a high velocity round; dead where he fell.
Ruiz scans the room and notices a smeared trail of blood that disappears behind a partition used to protect radiologists from exposure during X-rays.
A rasping breath comes from the other side; someone in pain, trying not to make a sound. Moving to his right, Ruiz uses the robotic arms of the machine as cover, he crouches and peers around the bed-sized plinth beneath the X-ray camera.
Bones McGee lifts his head from the rifle, which is aiming at the other side of the partition. A question forms in his eyes.
‘I see you’re still trying to make the Olympic shooting team, Bones. You’re a little early. Opening Ceremony isn’t until 2012.’
Ruiz quickly catalogues the scene. Bones has a high velocity rifle. He also has a shattered piece of wood that appears to be stuck to his spine. Looking at the trail of blood, he must have dragged himself this far.
‘So how are things going?’ he asks.
‘I can’t feel them,’ says Bones, looking at his legs, which flop at odd angles.
‘You want me to call an ambulance?’
Bones shakes his head. ‘You should have stayed out of this, Ruiz.’
‘I’m not the one who’s paralysed.’
Bones rests the rifle on his lap and brushes a non-existent fringe from his eyes. His finger is still on the trigger.
‘Where’s Sami Macbeth?’
‘That’s him over there,’ says Bones.
‘No it’s not.’
Bones doesn’t answer. Ruiz fills the silence.
‘I figured there had to be someone on the inside. Tony Murphy needed floor plans of the Old Bailey and knowledge of the camera system. And someone had to sabotage the lift and set up a cover story to get them inside. You’re the man, Bones. That’s why you’re here. And Murphy must be paying your rent rather than Ray Garza.’ He motions to the body on the floor. ‘If you were working for Garza you wouldn’t have shot his boy.’
Bones seems to gag and swallow hard. His eyes are plaintive like a supplicant’s.
‘I’m sort of fucked,’ he mumbles.
‘You are.’
‘You going to arrest me?’
‘I am.’
‘Are you armed?’
Ruiz raises the pistol.
Bones leans his head back against the wall and gazes out the window as if looking into the future and finding nothing to look forward to. In his next breath he swings the rifle across his body taking aim. The pistol jerks in Ruiz’s hands. The recoil snaps his wrists in the air.
Bones looks down at the hole in his chest as if grading Ruiz on his marksmanship and giving him a C for effort. Then he slides sideways down the wall, resting his rifle gently beside his head.
65
Sami covers the first few hundred yards across open ground heading for a line of trees that is etched darker against the low clouds. For half that distance Nadia hadn’t seemed so heavy, but now he’s labouring. Slowing down.
Sweat dims Sami’s vision and his mind is whirling like a broken fan belt in a runaway engine. Something slips through the grass ahead of him and disappears. It could be an animal. Something feral. He changes direction. The ground pitches forward. He notices a trail of silver water, a small stream surrounded by rotting trees and fallen logs. Everything seems scaled up and reeks of mould and decay.
The rain is heavier, drowning out other sounds. He has no weapon. The clip was empty. He threw the Beretta away.
Ahead he sees a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A building site. Turf has been peeled back and the topsoil scraped away by heavy machinery, bulldozers and earthmovers. Massive drainage pipes are stacked along the fence and silver pools of water indicate where boring machines have punched vertical holes deep into the earth.
He notices a gap beneath the fence where a ditch has been dug to let water drain away. He drops to his knees, lowering Nadia to the ground. Jumping into the ditch, he lifts her onto his back, screaming at the pain in his chest. Mud clutches at his shoes as he wades through knee-deep water, ducking beneath the fence. He falls. Gets to his feet. They give way again.
Dragging himself up the bank, he doesn’t have the strength to lift Nadia. Sitting on the ground, digging his shoes into the earth, he leans back and pulls. It feels like someone has taken a branding iron to his heart.
Suddenly, a forearm drops past Sami’s eyes and tightens across his throat, closing his windpipe. He can smell wet clothes and hear a rasping breath. Kicking his legs, he tries to twist free. One hand rises to his neck. The other loses grip on Nadia, who slides sideway into the ditch and comes to rest with her head just above the waterline.
Sami is being lifted and turned, held still. Tony Murphy swings a fist into his stomach. Hits him again. Gets into a rhythm.
The fat man is breathing hard. Saliva bubbles in his mouth.
‘Where is the gun?’
Sinbad loosens his forearm so that Sami can speak.
‘I dropped it.’
‘Like fuck you did.’
‘Back there - at the hospital.’
‘Where?’
Sami struggles to remember.
‘It was before I jumped out the window.’
He wants to reach Nadia. She’s slipping further down the bank, her face almost touching the water. ‘Please let me help her.’
Murphy glances back towards the hospital.
‘Who did you bring?’
‘Ray Garza.’
Murphy pulls a gun from a shoulder holster. Points it towards Nadia’s body.
‘She’s done nothing wrong,’ screams Sami.
‘You’ll watch her die and then I’ll kill you.’
He walks to the edge of the ditch and lowers his foot, pushing her head beneath the surface.
Sami hurls himself towards the ditch, but Sinbad wraps a forearm around his throat again. Sami kicks his legs and twists, trying to claw his fingers beneath the crushing pressure squeezing his windpipe.
Trembling with waves of nausea and shock, he’s losing consciousness. So this is how death comes. It’s not a disease that takes him in sleep when he’s an old man and it’s not the monster that stalked his childhood dreams. Instead, in those few seconds, he glimpses the damp blackness of puddles and smells the stench of decay.
From somewhere far away he hears a hollow popping sound and Sinbad’s head slams against his own. The forearm loosens around his throat. Sinbad collapses forward like a slaughtered beast, his brains in Sami’s hair.
Murphy rears backwards in surprise and seems to hover on the edge of a flooded hole, swinging his arms in small circles, trying to regain his balance. His toes rise. The fight is lost. Gravity takes over, sending him backwards into the hole.
Murphy surfaces and claws at the muddy sides looking for a foothold or a handhold, but earth crumbles in his hands. He swallows water, coughs and takes another mouthful. The hole is too narrow for him to kick his legs and stay above the surface.
Sami reaches Nadia and rolls her over. She’s alive. Conscious. He drags her out of the ditch and hears Murphy calling for help. His head looks like a sculptured clay bust, slick and shining, rearing up from the water with his mouth open, then disappearing again.
His eyes and ears are full of mud. He can’t see or hear. And his hands keep reaching up, as though trying to breathe through his fingertips.
Sami doesn’t stop to think. A moment ago he wanted Murphy dead. Wanted to do it close up. Would have pulled the trigger himself. Emptied an entire magazine into him. But now he crawls to the edge of the hole and grabs one of Murphy’s flailing hands. The clay is so slippery and Murphy so hea
vy, he can’t pull him out. He hunts around for something else. A plank. Drags it across the flooded hole.
Murphy reaches up and hooks his fingers over either side. He can hold his head above the water. Breathe.
‘Step away,’ says a voice. Sami turns slowly. Ray Garza has a gun in his outstretched hand.
‘He’ll drown.’
‘Let him.’
Sirens are coming. The sound cuts through the rain and crosses the common.
Ray Garza walks to the edge of the flooded hole and steps onto the plank. His shoes are next to Murphy’s fingers, which are struggling to get purchase on the wood.
‘Hello, Murphy. I was going to dig a hole and bury you but you found one all by yourself.’
Garza raises the toe of his muddy shoe and pivots on his heel, lowering it again on Murphy’s fingers. The fat man’s face contorts in pain. One hand collapses from the plank.
‘Do you think I’m a cunt, Murphy? Do you? Do you think I’m going to let some dumb-as-fuck Mick tear down everything I’ve built?’
‘You got it wrong, Ray. This has nothing to do with you.’
‘It has everything to do with me.’
The sirens are getting closer. Garza raises his other shoe and lowers it on Murphy’s fingers.
‘Just tell me why you did it.’
‘It was a mistake. Your boy fucked up. He took something that didn’t belong …’
Murphy fingers slide off the plank and he disappears beneath the muddy surface, rearing up again a few moments later, more mud than flesh.
Another figure emerges from the darkness. Sami doesn’t recognise him, but he’s holding a pistol on Garza and looks like he knows how to use it. For a long while nothing changes. The stranger doesn’t move. Garza doesn’t move. Nobody acknowledges anyone.
Then the stranger says, ‘It’s over, Ray. Drop the gun.’
Garza turns slowly. Lowers his gun. ‘I’m here making a citizen’s arrest, what’s your excuse?’
‘Unfinished business.’ Ruiz glances at Sami. ‘Are you OK?’
Sami nods.
‘How about your sister?’
He nods again. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m the ex-husband of your parole officer.’
Sami tries to make the connection. It takes a while. Eventually he remembers leaving a message for an ex-detective called Vincent Ruiz.
‘Sorry it took me so long.’
‘That’s OK,’ says Sami. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Girl called Kate Tierney. You might want to do something nice for her. Buy her flowers. Take her to dinner. Girls like stuff like that.’
66
The wind has risen, shunting the clouds away. Now the moon emerges, shining onto puddles and creating thousands of silver lights on the common.
Police cars have surrounded the old hospital, which doesn’t seem abandoned any more. It was sleeping and now it’s come back to life with paramedics working in the corridors and bodies being wheeled from within.
Nadia is sitting inside an ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders and an oxygen mask over her face. Sami is wearing handcuffs and is under guard, but they’ve let him sit with his sister. His ribs are broken. He’ll need X-rays; painkillers. The adrenalin has stopped coursing through his system and exhaustion takes over. He closes his eyes.
Torches move across the common. Tony Murphy is being carried on a stretcher. It takes six men. Mud has been washed from his eyes and mouth, but his clothes make him look like a terracotta statue dug up from a swamp.
Ruiz watches two detectives climb into the back of an ambulance on either side of Murphy. Then he notices Ray Garza, arguing with Fiona Taylor and demanding to see his lawyer. Garza claims he was trying to apprehend the gang that robbed the Old Bailey and to stop Murphy framing him.
‘Listen, sweetheart, you should be thanking me instead of treating me like a criminal,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should talk to one of your superiors.’
Fiona Taylor doesn’t let her anger show but she’ll find a way of taking it out on Garza.
Another body is being brought out on a trolley, wheels rattling over the broken asphalt. Fiona Taylor tells the paramedics to stop. She summons Garza over.
‘Would you like to make a formal identification now or do it at the morgue?’
‘What do you mean?’
Fiona unbuckles one of the straps and peels back the corner of the sheet, revealing a face; a young man, serene given the circumstances. He might even be sleeping except for the blueness around his lips and the small hole in his neck at his larynx.
Ray Garza’s face says everything. Murphy sent a boy to do a man’s job - Garza’s boy; his wayward son; his only child.
Reaching out, he touches Ray Jnr, brushing the fringe from his eyes, letting his fingertips drift lower to his lips, willing him to breathe. Garza’s eyes fold for just a moment before he throws back his head and howls. Devastated. Inconsolable.
Ruiz watches without any sense of triumph or satisfaction. For twenty-two years he has wanted to see Garza pay for what he did to Jane Lanfranchi, to see a cell door welded shut behind him. But revenge is a poisonous emotion. Jane Lanfranchi’s parents lost a beautiful daughter. Ray Garza lost a good-for-nothing son. That doesn’t make it even. It doesn’t make it ironic. It certainly doesn’t make it right.
Four Months Later
Sami Macbeth is back at the Old Bailey. Third time lucky. His trial begins today and the courtroom is so full they’ve had to close the doors and limit public access.
Emerging from the underground cells, flanked by guards, Sami feels like he’s sneaking into the place when everyone else has had to queue for a seat.
He looks around the courtroom. Nadia is sitting in the front row of the public gallery. Kate Tierney is next to her. Holding hands. Keeping their fingers crossed.
Sami has everything crossed. He’s not particularly religious but he prayed this morning. It was easier than he thought, like having a one-sided conversation with someone in a coma.
Sami turns. Waves. They wave back. A few other friends are also in the gallery, including some of his mates who made quick readies selling stories about Sami to the tabloids. Their looks seem to say, ‘No hard feelings, mate, I was misquoted. ’
Vincent Ruiz is sitting next to ex-wife Miranda, Sami’s parole officer, who looks like she’s only wearing black until they invent a darker colour.
Ruiz arranged for Sami to get a decent solicitor this time, although Eddie Barrett doesn’t look much like a lawyer. He has a bulldog walk and growls at people like he needs distemper shots. Sami hasn’t met his silk, but Eddie has faith in the guy.
The prosecutor is a woman, who has short hair and a tailored black suit. She’s going for the androgynous look that turns professional women into lovely mysteries.
Everyone rises. The judge is coming - a crusty old fart, who puts a cushion on his seat. Settles down. Reads a long letter, which might be from his mother or could be important.
He takes off his glasses. Raises his eyes.
‘Am I to understand, Mrs Lascelle, that the Crown Prosecution Service has sought advice from the Attorney General and decided to alter its position on this matter?’
‘Yes, your honour.’
The judge looks at Sami’s QC. ‘And you’re satisfied with the case to proceed on this basis, Mr Gallagher?’
‘Yes, your honour.’
‘Has your client been made aware of the situation?’
‘I haven’t had an opportunity to consult with him. Perhaps I could take a few moments …’
‘By all means.’
The judge puts his glasses back on and returns to his mum’s letter. Sami’s QC sweeps his black robes behind him and leaves the bar table to talk to his client. His horsehair wig seems too small for his head, or maybe his brain is too big.
In a low rumbling whisper he begins telling Sami that he no longer has to enter a plea as the charges will ‘lay on file’ for the foreseeable future.
From this point in the briefing Sami becomes fixated on the idea of entering a plea and becomes completely lost.
Eddie Barrett joins them. ‘Trust me, kid, do as he says.’
‘I did that last time.’
‘This is a better deal.’
Mr Gallagher goes back to the bar. The judge folds the letter and puts it in a file. Then he begins writing notes. For the next twenty minutes the courtroom has to watch him scribbling, with nobody saying anything above a whisper.
Finally, he’s ready. He blinks through his glasses at Sami, addressing him directly.
‘Let me say this, Mr Macbeth. I spent last night reading the details of this case and I can only conclude that you are, without question, one of the unluckiest people to ever set foot in my courtroom. You also appear to have the unfortunate ability to turn a desperate situation into a hopeless one. Does that seem a fair thing to say?’
‘Yes, your honour.’
‘Armed robbery, manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, abduction, firearms charges, possession of explosives, trespassing, criminal damage … I could go on, but there doesn’t appear much point given I’ve been asked to let these matters lay on file until some later, indeterminate date.
‘Conceivably the Crown Prosecution Service has thought long and hard about how to proceed in this matter and has chosen to seek your co-operation in other matters before these courts.
‘Based upon the recommendations of the CPS and the Attorney General and given the ordeal that you and your sister have endured, I struggle to see how society would benefit from your further incarceration.’
He bangs a polished wooden thingummy on his desk and tells the clerk of the court to dismiss prospective jurors or reassign them to a different jury pool.
Sami raises his hand as though he’s still at school.
The judge pauses and looks at him quizzically.
‘You have a question, Mr Macbeth?’
‘Yes, your honour, I just wondered or hoped, really, that you could explain to me what just happened?’
‘There will be no trial today. You’re free to go.’
‘Free?’
‘The allegations against you, Mr Macbeth, have been set aside. They may one day be resurrected but that depends on your co-operation. What you know, Mr Macbeth, has become more important than what you’ve done.’
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