by J. D. Weston
“Thankfully, Harvey won’t have a chance.”
“How did you know, sir?’
“Know what,Tenant?”
“About that man in the suit?”
Frank thought back to the horrific scene that had played out. “Do you know what a kill zone is?”
“I’ve heard it being talked about, but-“
“What happens when a bomb goes off, or a shooting takes place?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, what would you do if you were in that situation?”
“I’d run I guess, I hope anyway.”
“Exactly, and where would you run?”
“Away from the bomb or the shooter.”
“Right. So a nasty, despicable, tactic that terrorists use is to create a second bomb in an area they know that people will congregate. For example, the emergency evacuation assembly point for Canada Square was that little flat area by the water, where the cameras were pointing. So once the first bomb had gone off on the ground floor, the bombers knew that the evacuation procedures would lead the workers all to that point. Simple. Send the second bomb to that point. There’s a few hundred people, maybe more all huddled together.”
“That’s sick, sir.”
“It’s modern warfare I’m afraid.”
“But how did you know it was him?”
“When all this is over, I’ll play the recording back, you’ll see for yourself. He had tell-tale signs.”
“You’ve seen that kind of thing before?”
Frank hesitated. “Many times. Over and over, Tenant. Each time I watched the people all run to what they thought was safety.”
“Sir?” said Reg. Frank was staring.
“Sorry.” Frank roused himself. “God forbid you’re ever in a situation like that, Tenant.”
8
Beast of Burden
Denver dropped Melody home and took the short ride to his own home. He kept the music off, absorbed by his own thoughts of the images he’d seen that day. It wasn’t the first terrorist attack he’d witnessed. He’d seen the reports of the 9/11 attacks in New York, and the subsequent 7/7 attacks in London. He even vaguely remembered the IRA attacks in London when he was younger, but that was the first time he’d actually seen the bomb go off. It was horrific. Lives had instantly been lost just as they had in other attacks, but witnessing the blast somehow made it more real. Maybe because technology was more efficient, it allowed the media to broadcast faster. Whatever it was, Denver had been hit hard. His eyes moistened as he drove. Sorrow, hate and all kinds of emotion consumed his mind.
It was late in the day when Denver arrived in Barking, Essex. He had a little two-bed house in front of a park. The ride to work was under thirty minutes, and the location was far enough out of town for him to feel away from it all. That day he felt closer than ever, but that was the job. He loved the team. He and Reg worked well together, and Melody was hard working, which pushed Denver to perform. Harvey had been difficult to get used to, but during the human trafficking case, Melody had been kidnapped and thrown into the sea, and Harvey and Denver had a few moments that brought them closer. Harvey was a good guy. He’d done some terrible things that Denver could never empathise with or even forgive, but it wasn’t his place to judge. From what he’d seen so far, Harvey had a stronger moral compass than any of the team.
Denver stopped at the church at the top of the road. There was no service on, but Denver liked to sit in the quiet. He’d been misguided as a youngster and considered himself fortunate to have been set on a new path, a good path, with a career that allowed him to do good things. He was certain that if the opportunity hadn’t arisen to join the force, he would be in prison by now. Reg had said once that maybe that's why Denver liked Harvey so much because they both had a background of crime. But Denver had argued that while he had graduated from stealing old Ford Capris and Escorts to high-end Ferraris and McClarens, Harvey had been immersed in a criminal world as a child and had killed his first man at twelve years old. It was a different league. There was no crossover.
A few people sat alone in the church pews. Candles lined the altar rails and cast weak shadows on the cold stone walls, lost in the gloom that hung above the wooden beams high above. Denver walked slowly and quietly to the front pew, where he sat and bowed his head. He wasn’t devoutly religious, but his mother was, and an element of her religious spirit carried with him. It guided his morals, as a blind man might use a cane. When a blind man’s cane hit something solid, the blind man would stop and feel around for the right way to go. When Denver found something that itched his sense of right and wrong, he’d stop and ask himself what his mother might do. It was his way of asking himself what God might do, but without directly being reliant on religion.
Aside from the morality guidance, Denver enjoyed the peace and harmony of the old church, which often sought following the horrors of his job. They were expected to be hardened to horrific scenes and evil people, and were asked to perform actions that crossed so many lines of morality. The church allowed Denver to reposition his actions; it cleansed him.
Denver lit a candle for those who had fallen earlier that day. He thought of their families and their suffering, although they would never know that, out there, a man unknown to them was grieving and sharing their pain. Denver left the church and drove the short distance home. After parking the van in his driveway, instead of going inside, he walked the one hundred yards to his local grocery store. The store was cheaper than supermarkets and more convenient for Denver’s erratic routine. A small price to pay for the quality of life he led.
“Mr Denver, sir, how are you?” said Ali, the grocer.
“Mustn’t grumble, Ali,” said Denver. “How’s the kids?”
“Oh, they’re fine, they’re upstairs playing on their video game. It’s quieter down here I think. All those car races, explosions and guns, I sometimes wonder how they sleep.”
Denver thought on that; it sounded like a typical day at work. “New generation Ali. Gone are the days of conkers and hopscotch.” Denver was filling his basket with a small loaf of bread, avocados, bananas and spinach. He picked up a few tins of soup and some tea and walked to the counter. Ali emptied the basket and placed the items in a plastic bag.
“All in one bag, Ali, no need to separate them.”
“Same every time, Mr Denver. “
“Save the planet, Ali.” Denver smiled.
“It all helps. Is this on your account?”
“I’ll settle at the end of the month?”
“That’s fine, Mr Denver, your credit’s good. Enjoy your evening.”
“You too, Ali. Thanks.” Denver walked out the store and heard the little bell above the door. He took a slow walk back to his house, locked the front door behind him and placed his bag in the kitchen. It was an old house built just after the Second World War, when babies were booming and industry had started to pick up again. The Ford factory less than two miles away had provided jobs for many of the local men. But in recent years, the British automobile industry had steadily declined, and the houses now provided homes for a vast variety of people and cultures.
Denver poured a tin of mushroom soup into a pan and set it to boil. While it cooked, he halved an avocado and scooped out the delicious fruit with a small spoon onto a plate.
His living room was small with a TV in one corner, a selection of DVDs on a shelf, and a large couch with a coffee table in front. There wasn’t much room for any more furniture and Denver didn’t need anything else. He rarely had visitors, unless he brought his mum home for Christmas, but typically he’d go to hers. Her house was more of a home than his own. He turned the TV on with the remote and found a nature documentary straight away. He didn’t flick through the channels as he knew that many of them would be showing the day’s horrors. Denver had quietened his mind, he didn’t need reminding.
He sat on his couch and ate the soup, followed by the avocado, then set about washing his plates and the pan in the
small kitchen sink. He placed the items on the drying rack where they lived. He rarely used anything else in the kitchen, and it was pointless putting them away each night.
He showered and dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an oversized t-shirt, then took the loaf of bread into the garden to scatter crumbs for the birds. His garden was small but stylish. There were no overhanging trees so there were no piles of leaves, just well-trimmed bushes and hardy plants. A small lawn area stood in the middle, and a little table with one chair sat by the back door. In the summer months, he’d drink his morning tea in the garden and watch the birds. The high walls around his property gave him all the seclusion he needed. It wasn’t a perfect home, but it was his home, and it was as nice as he could get until retirement.
Denver dreamed of St Lucia, where his family home stood near long, perfect beaches that lined the turquoise ocean, heated by the incessant, golden sun. He’d travelled there before with his mum, when her own mum had died. He’d lain beneath palm trees on his grandfather’s hammock with a book and enjoyed the tropical breeze. That’s how he’d spend his final days. It was all he needed to drag him through the horrors of the modern world.
The nature show was still on when Denver sat back on the couch and heaved his legs up. He settled down with the remote on his chest and his phone by his side, then pulled a thick blanket over himself. He fell asleep to the soothing voice of David Attenborough and woke to the harsh shrill of his phone’s ringtone.
“Harvey? What’s up? It’s late.”
“I have a problem.”
Harvey pulled into the driveway of his house in Buckhurst Hill. It was a rental. He only owned one property, and that was in the south of France. He’d owned it for a year and had only spent a few nights there when Frank had caught up with him and put the noose around his neck.
The little house in Buckhurst Hill was enough for Harvey. Frank had the rent covered, but Harvey had to pay the bills. It was a good deal, all things considered.
He clicked the button on the electric garage door that he’d had fitted himself, and watched it open. He never left his bike outside the house for a number of reasons. Firstly, he’d grown up in Theydon Bois not far from Buckhurst Hill, and knew that the affluent London suburbs were a target for small criminals from less affluent areas. Harvey had been on the wrong side of the law his entire life and had seen the people that openly spoke about heading out to Buckhurst Hill, Ongar, or Theydon Bois for a quick buck. They’d spend a few days sitting and watching then, when they knew the owner's habits, they’d empty the house. Not violent criminals, but heartless bastards who destroyed memories. Secondly, Harvey had had his bike for nearly ten years. He’d done enough jobs with it for anybody who was anybody in the organised crime world to know that the silver BMW belonged to the infamous Harvey Stone. Harvey didn’t want those types of people knowing where he lived.
He rolled the bike in and clicked the garage door closed, then put his helmet in its protective bag and hung it from a hook. The garage was bare except for the bike and a rack of three hooks fixed to the wall beside the door into the house.
The house itself was built in the 1930s. It was solid brick with a bay window to one side of the front door, which a person could sit on and watch the world go by. A large chimney breast and fireplace was the feature of the lounge. The house had originally been one much larger house, but an opportunistic landlord had split it into two properties some years back.
Harvey had chosen the house because he was familiar with the area, and it was only twenty-five minutes to headquarters on his bike. Frank had suggested an apartment closer to headquarters, but Harvey preferred to live in a building with a ground floor. He could defend himself more easily in a house than in an apartment with only one exit.
The house was old and cold, but Harvey seldom used the heating system. He kept his jacket on and sat at the island counter in the kitchen on a bar stool. His Macbook was the only sign of modern technology in the house. The lounge had no TV, just a single armchair and a sofa he’d bought more to fill the empty space than to sit on. He slept in the armchair frequently.
Harvey had many nights where his mind would go over and over the facts surrounding his parents. He’d sit in the armchair in the darkness, his mind a whirl of possibilities. One day, he knew that one of those possibilities would be plausible, and he’d be able to delve deeper. But for now, his only knowledge of his parents was the cock and bull story his foster father had told him, verbatim, for close to thirty years.
Harvey pictured John telling him the story with a tumbler of brandy in his hand. Three ice cubes chinked to the side of the glass as John recalled his fable to repeat it once more.
“We only had one bar back then, we did things ourselves, your mum and me. We served drinks ourselves if the barmaids were off, we put orders into the brewery, and we even cleaned the bar at close up. That was when we found you both. You in a little picnic hamper wrapped in blankets with a note. Hannah sat beside you, wide-eyed and scared.”
The note had said that Harvey’s parents had killed themselves; life had got too much for them. John and Barb had fostered Hannah and her baby brother, Harvey.
Harvey had been researching his birth parents, based on John’s story, for as long as could remember. There were no records of anybody named Stone in Plaistow, where the alleged bar had been, not that matched the ages that Harvey’s parents would have been anyway. There was no record of a single suicide in the area at the time, let alone a double suicide. There were no marriage records, no mortgages, not anything that pointed to something of any use. The only consistent thing Harvey had discovered was the story that John had told him time and time again.
Harvey opened his laptop and stared at the little box in the search engine. It was as empty as the results it would produce. He closed the lid without typing anything and rested his head in his hands.
His mind wandered to the blast they’d seen earlier that day. It had been shocking, disturbing even. Harvey was a ruthless killer. He’d done things to people that would make most people vomit with disgust. But even he was hit hard by the images they’d seen that day. It was so much worse because they’d seen the killer walking nonchalantly towards the huddle of innocent people.
Perhaps that was it, perhaps that was why Harvey was disgusted. He’d always stood up for the weak and innocent. He’d always preyed on cowardly bullies that ruined peoples lives. During the time that he worked for his foster father, he and Julios had been hitmen. They'd done things that required a certain skill set and a very specific mindset. Things that John’s other men could have done, but they would have been messy, and brought retaliation to the family’s operations.
It was during Harvey’s time as a hitman that he’d taken on training, in preparation for the day when he met his sister’s rapist. He would scour the news for early releases or arrests of sex offenders, rapists or molesters, and target them. He honed his skills on the bullies. He would track them, watch them and learn them, then plan their suffering and execute his plan with brutal force. He’d seen many a man suffer, and watched them as they fell from the lofty heights of self-assurance to weak, soiled and pitiful victims. They all cried, all thirty-three of them. They all pissed themselves in fear. They all died a prolonged and agonising death.
Harvey couldn’t shake the image of Al Sayan from his mind. Crimes such as robbing a priceless buddha were not harmful to anybody. In another life, Harvey would let Stimson do what he wanted, it was no skin off his nose, nobody was hurt. But when victims’ lives are ruined, and pain and suffering are brought upon the weak and helpless, Harvey couldn’t help but feel the anger inside him grow. Yet the politics surrounding the good side of the law placed Al Sayan in the jurisdiction of some other team.
Harvey moved from his kitchen to his lounge and fell into the soft armchair. He put his feet up on a soft footstool and linked his fingers on his stomach. He sat for a while, and tried to steer his thoughts towards his parents. What might they look like? Ho
w old would they be? What did his father do for work? But each time, his mind took a U-turn and brought him back to the photo news broadcasts had shown; the bearded, unsmiling face of Al Sayan.
Peace wasn’t ready for Harvey that evening. His mind raced with the blast, the beard, the crooked nose, and, of course, his parents. He decided instead to go for a run to try and clear his mind of everything. He changed into shorts and a hooded sweater and started with a slow jog from his door. Harvey ran every morning except when he was on an all-nighter with work. He never ran the same route, a lesson he’d learned from Julios.
Epping forest was once a vast area that covered much of the county, but was now reduced to a few miles of woodland. In Buckhurst Hill, it was still a great place to run. Harvey followed no trails, he just ran where his feet took him. He hurdled fallen trees and streams and sprinted up hills. By the time he was finished, he’d run six miles, and warmed down by walking the last two hundred yards from the end of his street to his house. It was a quiet night.
He closed the front door behind him and slid the bolt across, an old habit, then kicked off his running shoes and walked up the stairs. He reached behind the shower curtain and turned the shower on; it usually took a few minutes to get hot. Then he stepped into his bedroom, which was the smaller of the two rooms at the back of the house. He preferred it; the view of the forest was calming and familiar, and there was less chance of people looking in.
He stripped off his sweaty clothes and strode naked to the bathroom. Steam clouded from inside the shower, and the mirror was already beginning to fog. He slid the shower curtain back, looked down and stopped at what he saw.