No More Heroes-#1 Dystopian Thriller Heroes Series

by Roo I MacLeod

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry, but the help are busy.’ I looked at the landlord asleep on the bar floor.

  ‘You taking the piss out of us, Dick Brain?’ He punched his mate and tried to put his arm around the girl with the windswept hair. She chewed on a serious piece of gum, her red lips rotating and snarling as she slapped his arm away.

  ‘He looks like that bloke on the news,’ she said, chewing and talking all together.

  With a cigarette alight, I blew smoke toward them and held the lead man’s gaze. He stumbled a little, his body wavering on the spot. He attempted to give the girl another feel.

  ‘What bloke?’ he asked, his arm draped across her shoulders.

  ‘He was on the news,’ she said. ‘Killed someone, he did.’

  ‘Fuck you, Dick Brain. You better serve us now, hadn’t you, else we’ll call the police.’

  I placed my cigarette in Ivan’s ashtray and allowed the knife to settle in my right palm.

  He pushed me, trying to knock me off my seat, but I swiveled my upper body before his hand landed and he stumbled forward. I pressed my knife into his neck and pushed his scrawny body back against the wall of the hatch. I didn’t like touching the shiny, slippery fabric, my body shivering at the contact, but I kept focused. I flexed my neck and resettled my shoulders with an exaggerated roll and pushed my knife, the rusty blade sharp against the flesh beneath his jaw.

  ‘Dick Brain thinks you should leave,’ I said.

  He looked to his mates for aid, but they weren’t moving. He nodded and mumbled an apology. I allowed him to slip out of my hold and scuttle from the pub. The girl snarled for a second, her eyes transfixed by the knife, before following her companion. The soldier, his cigar clenched to the side of his mouth, smiled and Harry jumped and ducked, punching the air and kicking at the bar.

  ‘Cool,’ Harry said. ‘You told ‘em, didn’t you?’

  ‘Seen you about, haven’t I?’ the soldier said. He removed the cigar and drank from his mug. He swiveled on his stool to face me.

  ‘Yeah, I’m in here all the time.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Private, I’ve never been here before. This isn’t my sort of pub.’

  ‘Well, I get about.’

  ‘Do you go to church?’

  ‘No, I don’t go to church. Who goes to church?’

  ‘Not been to a funeral recently.’

  Harry stepped onto the stool by the fruit machine and emptied his pockets into the slot. The stool wobbled on the uneven floor as Harry focused on getting the fruit lined up and the shekels into the machine quick time.

  ‘What was the tart saying? She’d seen you before too, hadn’t she?’

  ‘She was mistaken, eh? I can understand her confusion because I look like that bloke who does sport on Channel Three. You know him. ‘Rip roaring and ready to rock.’ He’s from up North and no one can understand his bloody local accent. People say I’m his double, but I can’t see it.’

  I sat back on the stool and picked up my cigarette. I still held the rusty knife, the Toffs blood thick on the chipped blade. ‘You got the time?’

  The soldier ignored my question.

  ‘She said something about the news.’ He took a big puff on his cigar and blew the smoke across the bar, clouding Ivan’s array of malts, brandies and vodka. ‘The news report said two cops were killed.’

  I sucked hard on my butt, wincing at the burn on my lips. I wiped the blade with the crusty beer towel. The police wanted me for murder and now the entire country owned my image. I stepped over the landlord and opened his Special Reserve and filled my flask. I needed to keep moving before the law caught up with me.

  ‘They reckon the same bloke did the coppers as did the body found in the allotments by the old brewery. There’s a big reward being offered, but we citizens are advised to approach with caution. Is that you?’

  I turned the knife so it pointed at the soldier. ‘Fuck this,’ I said. ‘You move for a phone, I’ll gut you.’

  He held his hands up as if in surrender. ‘But not in front of the boy, surely.’

  We both looked at Harry feeding the machine concentrating hard on winning.

  ‘Come on, Harry. I need to get you back to your mother. What the fuck is the time?’

  ‘Don’t know Ben.’

  He remained at the machine. I opened the door, but kept the soldier in view. Church Lane stood dark and empty. ‘What day is it today?’

  ‘Saturday.’ Harry stopped feeding the machine. ‘I told you that already.’

  ‘Does it seem quiet to you?’

  Snowflakes fluttered on the icy wind. Lights shone in the church. The street lacked pedestrians and cars. The light by the gate to the cemetery flickered, still shining orange the snowflakes large in its glare. I took a big slug of the cognac, resealed the flask and shoved it back inside my coat. ‘Is the curfew still in place? I mean it’s not late, eh?’

  The soldier stood with Harry by the machine advising him what buttons to push. He looked at a large watch on his left wrist.

  ‘4:58,’ he said.

  He looked at me and smiled. ‘Don’t you need to be somewhere private?’

  Why did he say that?

  Paranoia ruled my life, but I didn’t trust the soldier for sound reasons. Soldiers get programmed to do right and having accused me of murder the soldier’s duty meant he had to capture or shoot me.

  I needed to make a move, but Church Lane standing empty didn’t inspire me to take the first step from the door. No pedestrians or cars.

  The old clock in the town hall struck the first chime of the hour and the street stood empty. No vendor vans or music to be heard. Perhaps the curfew remained in place.

  The second chime inspired me to poke my head further outside the door. I scanned the street, stopping on Sylvia’s coffee shop wondering if Linda and Tilly sat inside waiting for me.

  With the third chime I looked up at the church, the dark steeple reaching up into the low cloud. A loud bird’s squawk broke the quiet.

  ‘What’s up, Ben?’ Harry stood on the stool, looking at me, poised with a coin ready to drop it into the slot.

  ‘I’m not sure. You done yet?’

  ‘Nearly. You got a shekel going spare?’ Harry asked. ‘I reckon this will pay out, like, big time.’

  The clock struck the fourth toll and I flicked a gold coin at the boy. He caught the spinning disk without taking his eyes off the bright lights and revolving fruit.

  With the fifth toll Linda appeared in Ostere Lane, standing by the entrance to Ahmed’s Emporium and facing Sylvia’s coffee shop.

  Coins clattered into the tray as the fruit machine paid out. Harry jumped and smacked the machine. ‘We’re in the money. So much money.’

  ‘I’ll have my shekel back.’

  The sixth toll suggested my time for leaving the pub had passed. A car, traveling at speed, sounded at the top of Church Lane. I closed the door as a police car skidded to a stop on the footpath with a riot van in its wake.

  I ran for the back door. ‘Harry,’ I called. Two officers entered from the rear of the pub and tapped their truncheons in their hands as I stopped in the puddle by the men’s toilet.

  ‘Bugger,’ I muttered.

  The copper on the right hitched his utility belt up high on his fat gut and let his hand rest on his revolver.

  ‘You’re a hard man to get in touch with,’ he said. His fingers drummed a beat on the grip of his gun and pointed at the front door.

  Police cars pulled up from the right and left with an army jeep for company. I pushed the door open and sighed at the array of blue and green threatening me with all manner of weapons.

  Snowflakes fluttered and brushed against my face. Trigger fingers itched as I tried to pull my hood over my head and I left my hands held up in submission.

  At the crossroad to my right past the church, the water cannon sat blocking the road pointing straight at the pub.

  ‘Jesus, mercy, chaps,’ I said. ‘Normally you can
’t bribe a cop for love or money, until you don’t need one and then you all want to party in our misery. Don’t be putting your hands out, eh? I haven’t got two shekels to rub together.’

  ‘Mr. Jackman, isn’t it?’ The policeman from inside pushed past and stood toe to toe with me on the footpath. He kept his hand on his revolver until I nodded.

  ‘You do not have to say a whole lot, however, we suggest you do, because we can’t be arsed with procedure back at the station.

  ‘And it may harm your life if you try to run, because we have a trigger-happy sniper above Ahmed’s Emporium, waiting for an opportunity to paint the laneway with your blood.

  ‘And that ensures we won’t have to rely on anything you say later in a court of law. And anything you have done, or haven’t done, will be given in evidence.’

  He smiled and straightened his rounded shoulders. ‘Do you understand your rights?’

  I shook my head as I hadn’t understood a word he said.

  He smiled as he spun me around to shackle my hands. Across the road, Linda talked with another officer and a soldier leaning against a jeep.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ I said. The two officers thought my claim amusing. ‘See the girl over there,’ I said, pointing at Linda. ‘Just ask her.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ the assisting officer said to the soldiers in the jeep. ‘He thinks the bird’s going to get him out of this. How’d you think we knew you’d be here, smart arse?’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Locked up with nowhere to Go

  I turned my back and rattled the cuffs so Linda could witness my dilemma. ‘Why!’ I shouted.

  The copper slapped me hard and gave the cuffs a shake making them bite into my wrists. She turned her back, leaning against the car as a copper offered her his jacket.

  A man stepped out of Sylvia’s Coffee Shop, placed his black hat on his head and a phone to his ear.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ I muttered. ‘They’re bloody everywhere.’

  I turned to Harry. He stood inside the pub, the man next to him. ‘Harry, get away from that arse.’ Harry jumped from the stool and joined me at the door. ‘I need you to get help, Harry, eh? And be quick.’

  ‘No worries. I’m on it.’

  He ducked around the coppers, running right toward the church, his pockets jingling with shekels. I looked across at Sylvia’s Coffee Shop, Tilly’s probable location and wondered why he ran in the opposite direction.

  The copper guided me toward the back seat of the police car with a slap and a kick. Doors slammed shut as the engine ignited and we left the Poet with a sharp squeal of tires and an encouraging roar from the copper in the seat beside me. We bounced from curb to curb, frightening a slow moving alley cat. The engine whined for a gear change, the driver veering at two homeless lads bunkering down in a doorway, over revving and breaking in a staccato joy ride. We drove two blocks, burnt serious rubber on the cobbled laneway and taught the citizens looking left and right mattered when crossing the road.

  Youth loitered at the front of the station. A pile of tires burnt thick black smoke in the front room of a building, its front having collapsed into the road. The car pulled into the rear and the coppers hurried me out of the car. As the raven flies, we travelled a long hundred yards.

  ‘Why didn’t we walk?’ They didn’t even bother looking at me. ‘I mean there’s a worldwide shortage of oil and no bugger can afford to buy it, but you guys are burning it for a laugh.’

  The hand slapped me hard and caught me off guard. I stumbled forward, my fall stopped by the copper grabbing me by the cuffs and yanking me toward the front door. I’d never met a copper with a sense of humor and the youths out front weren’t helping. Scarves covered their faces. Baseball bats beat against battered tin rubbish lids. They jeered and chanted and spat as we scuttled into the safety of the station. As the door closed, an avalanche of rocks and refuse bounded off the reinforced window.

  ‘Is it feeding time?’ I asked. They ignored me. ‘Why don’t you arrest them instead of picking on innocents like me? I thought the Man wanted the Scum off the streets. Shoot on sight I heard.’

  They persisted with the silent treatment.

  I was a dead man.

  We stopped before the desk sergeant, his massive frame abusing the small office chair. A vacant look greeted the uniforms as they demanded keys to the cell opposite the sergeant’s desk.

  ‘Not booking him in?’ he asked.

  ‘Dooms Ville trash. What’d be the point?’ He shoved me toward the cell. ‘Guilty as fuck for one murder and there’s two corpses we can throw at him. He’s a good catch and a cop killer, you know. The two DC’s found in the dumpster by the morgue.’ The sergeant’s wrinkling pig nose suggested disgust, but the bloated face struggled to form any expression but fat. ‘This is the guy. Just leave him in the holding cell. Mr. Cooper wants to have a chat.’

  The desk sergeant tossed the keys at my arresting officer. ‘What do I write here?’ He jabbed with his pen at the book before him.

  My man took the pen from the sergeant’s pudgy fingers and tapped him on his thinning scalp. ‘Nothing. He’ll be gone before the days out. This is payday for us. Cooper wanted this prick bad. So, Porky,’ he said, ‘just keep him locked up.’

  He turned to the girl sitting at the back of the station, her head resting on the palm of her right hand while she tapped at a laptop. Her face looked pale against the thick black eye liner and purple black of her hair. She glared at the copper as if he smelt. ‘Hey, Gruesome,’ he called out. ‘Learn to smile and you might get a cut.’

  I sat on the wooden bench lining the back of the cell, my hands under my thighs and my shoulders hunched forward. For two years, I’d dedicated my life to preventing this exact scenario. Ever since I’d turned eighteen and my father told the army to come and take me away, I’d kept well low and off the radar. Two years running from the army and Marvin drops from nowhere, dragging a bag-load of trouble and raises a flag by dying in my patch.

  ‘Bugger it,’ I muttered to the floor.

  ‘Thought you were safe,’ one of my cellmates said.

  I looked at the two lads sitting on the dusty gray floor by the stained metal sink. Black skullcaps suggested a pair of the Projects’ finest urban guerrillas. I nodded to both of them, trying not to smile at the image of Harry and me bowling them over not more than an hour ago.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re the smart arse who got us arrested.’ He wore black leather gloves and a scowl. ‘Hour ago you knocked us over and buggered off.’

  ‘What? By the gardens? You should’ve run when I told you, eh?’

  ‘Prick.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t see you warning anyone about the bombs you set off in the square the other night.’

  ‘We didn’t set no bloody bombs off in no bloody square.’

  We settled into an awkward silence. The fat sergeant escorted my arresting officer to the back door. Outside the building, the chants of the youth grew in anger with the odd rock smacking into the building.

  ‘How’d you get caught anyway?’ the man wearing the gloves said. Curls of dark hair stuck out from his cap. His mate wore his straight blonde hair long. He kept rubbing at the blonde growth on his chin and tapping his foot on the gray concrete floor. ‘With your cunning, I’d have thought you’d have someone else to piss on.’

  ‘Been thinking about that myself,’ I said. ‘I think it was me ex, but it could’ve been anyone. My mug’s been flashed on the news accusing me of murder. I just had a smart arse Toff giving me grief in the Poet.’

  ‘Toffs are twats.’

  ‘Tell me about it. I didn’t help my cause pulling a knife on him. He could’ve called the police.’

  ‘My money’s on your ex,’ the darker lad with the gloves said. ‘It’s the sort of crap prank an ex likes to do.’

  ‘You might be right. She thinks I have something that belongs to her.’

  ‘I had an ex lik
e that.’ He slapped a gloved fist into his palm. ‘She called the cops on me over the bloody cat. I never took the grumpy bloody fur ball. The old cow next door spoilt the cat rotten, feeding it prime rib and cream, while my ex fed it no-label brand crap so it shifted owners.’

  ‘Yeah, but this is an ex from two years back. She’s only back in my life because everyone keeps telling her I killed her husband.’ I shrugged at my two companions as their jaws dropped low.

  ‘You killed your ex-girlfriend’s husband,’ they both said.

  The sergeant tapped his truncheon against the ironwork before producing a large bunch of keys from his belt. He smiled as he unlocked the gate.

  ‘Can I go?’ I asked.

  He waddled through the narrow gate and stood before me, his truncheon lifting my chin so I had to look up at his flabby chins, bulbous nose and sagging cheeks. With a light tap on my larynx he caused me to blink and gag.

  ‘Stand up.’

  I eased my frame vertical, leaning back, so I didn’t touch his ample gut. A sour smell clung to his body and large damp patches stained his armpits. My warden stepped back rather than suffer me looking down on him. He whacked the truncheon against his palm as he glanced at the two Project lads staring at him. He pointed the truncheon at the wall, indicating the two lads turn away.

  They didn’t move fast enough. He raised the truncheon.

  ‘Stand and kiss the bloody wall.’

  My two heroes from the Projects jumped to their feet and faced the dirty, pockmarked plaster before the truncheon battered their heads. The sergeant’s face glowed red and perspiration beaded on his forehead.

  ‘You all right?’ I said. ‘Pulse racing, eh? Your old heart must be thumping, jumping against your chest, bursting your arteries to get blood to your muscles. Go take a pill and get a grip, sergeant. You aren’t built for police brutality and you’re all alone. The real coppers have left the building.’

  I didn’t get a slap. The truncheon struck hard in my solar plexus. It hurt. It paralyzed my diaphragm and dropped me to my knees. By the time my respiratory system resumed a frantic but functional operation, I found myself shackled again. He tapped me in the kidneys and the ribs. He took two meaty slaps at my face.