Exit Wounds

by Aaron Fisher

  The large room he was in took up most of the building. Besides another handful of office rooms, the upper floor was just a long walkway. Beneath that was a loading bay where most of the activity was happening but beyond that Paul could see a series of doors. The same layout was present in the clean storehouse although the ground floor had been transformed into a production line rather than a parking dock.

  Paul’s eyes moved to the weapons hanging from the men’s shoulders and necks. AK-47s weren’t uncommon these days and even in Cardiff it was easy enough to get strapped up if you knew where to go. But just like the production line, there was something wrong here. It was all too much. Too big. These weren’t some doped-up wannabes with an Uzi in one hand and a spliff in the other. This was more like an army, preparing for battle.

  Paul ran his fingers through his hair. He wished he knew what to do. He never had that problem when he was in the army. He knew who his enemy was and he knew what he had to do. At least he used to. Things had become so clouded. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore, even his own memories.

  Drifting again, Paul cursed, willing himself to snap out of it. Focus! Why can’t you just focus?

  The door at the front of the warehouse suddenly began crawling up the wall again. Paul shifted his weight from one foot to the other so that he could see more clearly what was going on.

  Another van drove into the warehouse, swung round and backed up near to where the other vehicles were being loaded. It was white and the same model as the one Paul and his brother had been in earlier that morning. As the driver hopped out and strolled round to the back to open the double doors, Paul realised it was the same man that had driven them too.

  Paul started to move further out from his hiding place but suddenly Dean’s snarly voice shouted out, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, prick!?”

  Looking up instantly, Paul initially thought that Dean was talking to him. As he walked towards him along the metal catwalk Dean was too busy looking over the railings at the driver below. Paul quickly, but softly edged back behind the boxes. Dean passed him, oblivious and made his way down the stairs to the ground level, still yelling.

  “Oi! Are you fucking deaf or have you just turned mute, dickhead!?”

  “I hear you, boss. I’m here already,” the apparently nameless driver finally answered.

  With Dean safely past him, Paul edged out again so he could watch as well as listen.

  Dean was now marching across the open space between the stairs and the driver. “Already? You were supposed to be here half hour ago!”

  “I thought I had a tail. It took me a while to lose them.”

  Dean’s eyes narrowed, “A tail? Are you sure?”

  “No. But like you said, boss, better safe than sorry.”

  Dean remained silent for a minute. He carried Paul’s Beretta in his left hand and for a moment Paul thought he was going to use it on this driver for being so cheeky.

  “What kind of car was it?” he asked, eventually.

  “Silver,” the driver said.

  “Make? Number?”

  The driver shook his head, “No sorry, boss. I was too busy losing them.”

  Dean went quiet again. From Paul’s limited experience of him he knew he was a loud and brash man. These moments of silence were unsettling. Even from where he was perched high above the two men, Paul thought he could see the driver’s skin crawling.

  After a moment Dean waved his free hand, shooing the driver away. “Get back to work.”

  Paul watched Dean leave. It was easy to feel disdain for a man like that. Within seconds of meeting him, Paul had learnt all he needed to know about him.

  Turning away, Paul looked around the warehouse again. He spotted the control panel for the shutter door and was pleased to see that it had no lock or door guarding the switch.

  It would be an ambitious move and just a little bit cheeky to try and get out the front entrance, but Paul could see no other option. If push came to shove they’d have to take their chances. The only other option was to explore what was beyond the loading bay. If that many people were there all the time they’d be better off chancing it with the front way but still, Paul needed to find out what was behind those doors.

  Curiosity killed the cat, his old sergeant had told him once, only half joking.

  Good. I’m more of a dog person myself, Paul remembered answering.

  As he moved out to start the task of evading capture and reaching the other side of the loading bay doors, Paul failed to see the resemblance between his own recklessness and that of his brother’s.

  M.I.T. (Murder Investigation Taskforce), Cardiff Branch

  Tony marched down the corridors to the archives of the evidence department, waving away the clerk’s protests as he let himself in without going through the correct procedures. Tony was all for protocol but that little man had a habit of wasting his time.

  The evidence archives was essentially just a large room behind a caged desk with row upon row of metal shelving, filled with cardboard boxes that were each marked with black, felt ink. These murders had accumulated so many boxes that it had two rows all to itself.

  Tony took less than a minute to find the box he was after: Denise Sanders – victim number twelve. He dragged it out and rested it on an empty shelve opposite and began pulling back the folded flaps. Rummaging through the various contents, he suddenly snatched out a brown envelope.

  Ignoring the clerk who had now followed him to continue his rant, Tony shuffled through a stack of photos that had been taken the night of Denise Sander’s birthday party. Almost every picture had been centred on Denise but Tony was sure he remembered a handful with the bar in the background.

  There. He pulled out three photographs of Denise dancing with a couple of friends. In the background he could just make out the dark figure of a man in a camouflage jacket. He could try and crank up the brightness digitally but the original quality was so low that it wouldn’t tell him any more than the CCTV already had. The second photograph from that angle taken only moments after the first was just as useless. This time, whilst the flash had caught him he had been quick enough to raise his hand to scratch his head, cleverly covering his face. Tony ran his finger behind to flick through to the next when he noticed a small dark area on the back of the man’s hand. At the cinema only his left hand had been in shot as he tapped the magazine against the side of his head. Yet here, it was his right hand that was raised. What was that mark? A bruise from a struggle with one of the victims?

  Horton pushed the angry, little receptionist aside, accidentally knocking him to the ground. He practically ran out of the evidence archives, rushing through the corridors back to his desk as quickly as possible.

  Hitting two hot keys at the same time brought his already booted up computer back to life. He flipped open the lid of his copier and scanned the photograph in at the highest possible resolution. Seeing it on his screen Tony realised that there was a slight motion blur to the image, so he played around with the sharpen tools until he was happy he could get the picture no clearer. He selected the area around the man’s hand and magnified it to full screen. Instantly the monitor was filled a messy mosaic of pixels, the little squares that make up any digital image.

  Tony sighed. Television would have us believe that you could take any image no matter what the quality and magnify it to see the individual hairs on a man’s neck at forty miles away. Sadly this was not the reality.

  Even though in a way it was a step back, Tony added a subtle gaussian blur, softening the edges of the individual pixels so that edges of the picture themselves would take priority. If he blurred it too much he would lose all quality, but with not enough he would still be left with what resembled a badly tiled floor.

  Tony decided to change his strategy. He reset the zoomed image to its original state and duplicated it so that he had two copies, one on top of the other. Then re-adding the gaussian blur to the top layer, he gave it a soft overlay effect so th
at he kept the images detail but didn’t have the fragmented pixels.

  It took only a few moments for the computer to render the effects Tony had chosen for the photograph, and when it did he realised that his work had paid off a lot more than he had hoped. Flipping the image upside down, it became clear the dark mark on the back of the suspect’s hand wasn’t a bruise, it was a tattoo. It was blue, indistinct and faded; lacking the skill of a professional, but despite this Tony could see clearly the emblem of a bloody dagger flanked on either side by wings.

  An Abandoned Warehouse, Cardiff Bay

  Making sure not to make eye contact with anyone but also not to look away too obviously, Paul Russell had picked up one of the crates and pushed it on to the back of one of the vans, then picked up another crate from the truck that was being unloaded and carried it with him all the way to the back of the room. No one had paid him any attention as they hastily carried on with their own work. The first of the doors had been locked and Paul fought the urge to look around to see if anyone had seen his mistake, quickly moving to the next one.

  On the other side, Paul found himself at the start of a long corridor. There were doors on the left every fifty metres or so and whilst there was a slight turn about a hundred or so down, Paul got the impression that the corridor probably ran through the entire length of the terraced warehouses.

  Paul had to admit it was a relief to be able to drop the heavy crate down. The first one hadn’t been anyone near as heavy. Determined to find out what he had been carrying, Paul looked around for something to ply the wooden lid off. A bit of metal skirting hung from the wall behind him. Paul tore it off and forced one end in the gap between the lid and the crate edge. As he pushed it underneath and put his weight down on the opposite end the cover began to lift.

  The skirting snapped off in Paul’s hands before he could get it fully open. He swore and struggled to tear off another piece of the metal. This time the skirting held, and the lid popped free of the crate.

  Casting the metal bar aside, Paul pushed the crates lid to the floor. He reached inside and drew out a handful before letting the contents fall through his fingers back into the crate.

  Bullets. 7.62x39mm rifle cartridges. Standard ammunition for an AK-47 assault rifle.

  The crate was filled to the brim. It didn’t take a genius to guess what was in the first crate.

  Drugs for guns.

  It wasn’t exactly a new idea. Russian gangsters had been smuggling in heroin to Britain from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns since before the war had even began. Russian arms dealers met with Taliban drug lords on the old Afghan-Soviet border. The drugs would end up on Britain’s streets whilst the guns went straight to the Taliban front line. One kilogram of heroin could buy around thirty AK-47 assault rifles at the bazaars where they traded.

  British Special Forces arrested or killed drugs smugglers they could link to the insurgency, but the bulk of the I.S.A.F. (International Security Assistance Force) was still handicapped by its mandate. Their directive didn’t include counter-narcotics operations, unless they could be linked to the insurgency.

  Paul held on to one last bullet, rolling it back and forth between his index finger and thumb, forcing himself not to mix the past with the present. No way was Giacometti a member of the Taliban. Yet Paul still couldn’t place his accent. It was European but that was all the distinction he could get from it. There was an almost aristocratic twang to the way he pronounced his words.

  The name, Giacometti, sounded Italian. But Paul knew that meant nothing. It was probably just an alias. Most likely a name he picked at random because he liked the sound of it. Whoever he was or wherever he was from, Paul knew one thing about Giacometti. He was building an army.

  Suddenly a piercing scream echoed down the corridor. Paul instantly rose to his feet. He waited for another sound but none came. Slowly he edged forward, his eyes fixed on the point where the corridor cut to the right.

  Paul moved to the right, putting his back flat against the wall as he put one foot in front of the other with slow precision. His eyes remained set on the bend in the hall.

  When he reached the edge of the wall before it turned Paul moved his head to peer round. A second horrific scream made him retract abruptly before he had even seen anything. He waited and then looked around again. The hallway was clear.

  Moving round the bend, the corridor straightened up again and Paul moved back to the centre. No use hiding against the wall now. Another scream alerted him to the thick trail of red on the floor. It ran down the corridor in front of him, forcing Paul to quicken his pace without thinking.

  Adrenalin had already started pouring into his veins by the time Paul had followed the blood to one of several closed doors on the left. He had no idea what was in the next room and he knew better than to just barge in there, hoping for the best. He breathed deep and tried to calm himself down a bit. He needed to think first.

  He looked round for something to use as a weapon but found the hallway empty. The same screaming voice shrieked in agony again, howling loudly.

  Fuck it. Against all his training Paul took a few steps back and got ready to kick the door down running.

  Paul sprinted the few feet to the door but just as he raised his right foot the impact of his boot on wood was pre-empted by the loud bang of a gunshot.

  The resonance of the sound brought Paul to a halt, his feet skidding slightly on the tiled floor. The movement was loud and echoed down the empty corridor in the silent wake of the shooting.

  Paul quickly made for the door next to the one that the gunshot had come from. This time luck was on his side and it was unlocked. Making sure he made no other noise, but still being as fast as he could he darted inside and closed the door behind him. He crouched down behind the handle, so that he could peer out through the lock into the hallway.

  The door opposite opened and shut again. Paul remained absolutely still. If this guy was switched on and had heard Paul’s feet, then he’d be on his guard and the slightest movement would alert him to Paul’s location. Of course, there was still the chance that if had heard Paul outside the door he would check all the rooms anyway. Paul silently reached up and took the door handle in his hand. If that happened he was getting the door thrown back in his face. Hard.

  The room Paul was in was dark and the light from the corridor shined in through the tiny lock. Paul looked out from his position but wouldn’t move to get a better view in case he made too much noise.

  A figure passed by the room, striding away down the corridor casually. Paul hadn’t been able to see the man’s face but his hands had been at eye level, and the right hand had been carrying Paul’s gun.

  Dean. Paul couldn’t help the swell of hate he felt rising inside for this man. The thought that Dean had just killed someone with his gun made him burn.

  That was it. They had to get out of here. Paul was going to go back, get Richard and get the hell out of here. And then, he was going to come back, and get Dean.

  Paul waited a few moments more and then ventured out back into the corridor, heading the way he came.

  The room had been dark and with his mind focused first on remaining undetected and then his fury at Dean, Paul hadn’t even bothered to look round. If he had, he would have noticed Becky, bound, gagged and lying unconscious in the corner of the room.

  M.I.T. (Murder Investigation Taskforce), Cardiff Branch

  Tony praised the god of the atheists when he found that there was a digital database of known gang tattoos and emblems available on the department server. But that victory was short-lived. The software was still pretty basic and after it brought up eight different possible matches that looked nothing like the image he had uploaded, Tony wondered if it was even worth having.

  Drumming his fingers on the desk, Tony considered the option of tasking one of the subordinates to go though the database manually. He shook his head. Share the workload, share the victory.

  Tony had been chasing this ca
se since the first body had been found and had fended off his fare share of other ambitious officers, hungry to beat him to the prize. He needed this result badly. It was his ticket out of his current position. He had been stuck here longer than he had planned anyway. With this result under his belt he would more than catch up with his scheduled career. And yet the thought of shifting through the thousands of possible images himself still filled him with dread.

  There was another possibility that Tony hadn’t yet considered: The camouflage jacket. What if it was more than just a fashion choice? If the suspect had a background in the forces then it could be a military tattoo, specific to a particular regiment.

  Tony reached for his phone and hastily punched in a sequence of digits. As he waited for the other end to pick up, he spotted Craig entering the room, coffee in hand. Tony had hoped he’d be able to avoid Craig whilst he was on one of his regular cigarette breaks but their eyes met immediately.

  “Hello?” a polite female voice said, giving Tony an excuse to look away.

  “It’s Horton from upstairs again. I spoke to you earlier about the software for matching known emblems and insignia.”

  Tony heard an inaudible sigh down the receiver. “Yes, I know it’s pathetic but it’s all our funding allows at the-”

  “Oh no, it’s not a complaint at all,” Tony interrupted, switching into auto-charm. “The searching program is a bit preliminary but the database is very comprehensive.” Tony paused for a breath. Judging the sound of silence as a good one, he continued, “I was just calling to inquire as to whether the database possibly contained images of military tattoos?”

  Tony looked up. Craig was hovering around his own desk, the occasional glance flickered over Horton’s way.