by Jan Swick
RED MIST
Eight years banged-up if I abort right now, the Judge thought. If he pulled the plug on this thing and the authorities later learned of the plan and the case landed on the desk of a judge just like him - eight years. But he would never face a judge. No charge would be put to him. There would be no arrest. He knew this because the plan was too good. The men he was paying were too good.
They turned a corner. They were almost dragging him and he went willingly. Bends and corners and crossroads. It was pitch black, but these men seemed to know where they were going. Onward, ever onward, as if towards the centre of the earth. The journey seemed destined to never end, and then it did.
They stopped at a wall and his first thought was that something had gone wrong. Some bend or corner or crossroad misjudged, and they were lost. Eight years banged up became an eternity in the dark depths of the planet.
A small light came on. The light from someone's phone. In that mediocre illumination, the Judge got his first real glimpse at the five men escorting him, and he was surprised. Normal faces. Typical clothing. Nothing memorable about any of them. They wouldn't have stood out on a street. Just some guys. Then their hands were on him, taking off his clothing. He let them, knowing it was all part of the plan. Their continued silence unnerved him. He'd paid for all this, he felt he was in some way in charge, but he felt violated. They could have a poker up his ass before he knew it, if they so chose. They didn't. They chose to slot him quickly into black trousers and a dark brown sweater and training shoes. A guy fiddled with the Judge's collar, fixing something to it. A small black item, plain-looking, no bigger than a thimble.
"Don't touch this," the guy said. The voice: typical, nothing memorable, just a voice.
A guy grabbed his hands, both wrists in one of his, and sprayed his palms with something. A thick liquid that smelled like cumin and dried on his skin in moments. He was told to close his eyes and open his mouth and stop breathing. The same spray on his face and neck, in his mouth, his nostrils. All over his head. Again, it dried almost instantly. Something to prevent skin cells and hair dropping, he guessed. But what he did know?
Another guy moved forward and held up a photograph. It showed a pretty girl, red hair, slim, outrageous outfit. Street outfit, designed to arouse men. This was her, then. For some reason they had insisted on picking for him, but he didn't care. The choice being out of his hands made it easier, somehow.
Another guy swept past him and put his hands on the brick wall. There was a rain of dust, a faint brick-on-brick scraping noise, and suddenly the guy was stepping back with a portion of the wall in his grip. As if the wall were painted wood and he'd just cut a section out. Only it was real brick. The Judge saw the depth of the segment as the guy stepped aside.
This time the Judge was quicker than these guys. He stepped through the makeshift doorway before they could tell him to.
He found himself in some kind of large room. It was dimly lit by a ragged row of candles by the wall on the right. Their flicking flames showed him an arched ceiling some forty feet above, with stubs of metal protruding, as if lights had once hung, and fixtures that had carried cables. The flat floor was littered with trash. There was a stone protrusion on the left side of the tunnel, like a giant shelf. Poking out from the back wall of the shelf was a series of what looked like wooden fence panels, spaced ten feet apart as if to create a row of booths. In a few of the booths there was a lone woman, while in others a man and a woman got intimate.
He understood. The shelf was a platform. He was in an abandoned underground train station. The local red light area girls were using it as a place of business. The upright fence panels had been placed for privacy.
"Hey, sexy," called a voice. He looked. A woman was standing up there in one of the booths, and although the light was dim he could see she was staring at him. And she was alone. Waiting for him, he knew.
She was the chosen one.
But in the booth beside hers a big guy and a woman were at it. He mostly saw silhouette, he mostly heard low grunting. He saw the guy's head thrown back as he thrust, pure lust in that pose. He saw the woman with her hand close to her face, as if trying to see her nails in the gloom, just for something to do to pass the time. Just metres away from the woman who waited for him. Just metres from where he was supposed to do his thing.
The lone woman called him again, and he went, quickly, in case she called a third time, louder, and someone else heard. Didn't know why he worried about such a thing. He clambered onto the platform. Just three feet high, but tough for a guy his age. The square fence panels were only four feet high and didn't look like they'd provide much privacy at all, but when the Judge stepped into the makeshift booth, stepped onto a blanket on the stone, he felt as if he'd entered an enclosed room. He felt soundproofed. And he turned his attention to the woman. Same woman from the photo. He'd only seen a head-and-shoulders shot, taken without her knowledge because she was in the process of turning her head, but he'd built an image of the rest of her body, and she was taller than he'd guessed. Same outfit, as if the photo had been taken today. Cheap short skirt, twin design: lure man, easy lift for man. Midriff exposed below a fluffy white coat that looked like someone had skinned a polar bear and she'd slipped part of that skin, fur and all, right over her head.
But she was also just as pretty as the photo.
"They said you'd come," she said, and took his hand. He squeezed back, but there his input failed. She had to lead him. She manoeuvred and bent him, much as the guys who'd brought him had done, but eventually he was in the money. Thirty seconds after their first touch, that clasping of hands, she was on her knees, and he was behind her, and he was throwing into her, and despite knowing what was coming, he was thinking of the last time he'd done this. His wife, his beloved wife, eight years ago, before the cancer took her away from him. Eight long years. He should have enjoyed this. He didn't. He knew what was coming.
It was what he'd wanted. He'd planned it. He'd paid for it. He'd prepared for it. But he worried. Twelve years, he now thought. If he backed out right now and the authorities later learned of the plan and the case landed on the desk of a judge just like him – twelve years. But there would be no Judge, of course. No charge, no arrest. He knew this because the plan was too good. The men he was paying were too good.
His hands moved. They moved from her hips, up. Waist, shoulders, then higher. He put his fingers lightly on her throat. This was the precipice, he realised. He realised that because he felt himself go instantly limp inside her. She felt it, too, started to move, and he knew he was at that point. She would pull away, and the moment would be over, and he would lose his nerve. Knowing this, his brain sent shockwaves into his hands and wrists. The Judge's fingers closed around the girl's throat, tight. He felt her airway shut off. He heard her grunt in shock, then try to suck in air, then try to scream. Then he felt himself start to grow hard again, and as he squeezed, he shut off all thoughts except one, three simple words that wouldn't go away: Life without parole.
The moment it was done was something he didn't understand. He wasn't aware of any time passing. It seemed that one second he was beginning to squeeze, and the next it was all over. He didn't understand, but the others did. A man grabbed his hands and pried them off her neck. Other hands lifted him and moved him. He was turned away, away from the grimy blanket of white and blue and red on the ground and the girl, unmoving, who might have been sleeping if not for her unnatural posture, face-down with one arm bent awkwardly under her chest. No one could sleep in such a way. Dead, for sure.
He felt his feet on the ground, but he couldn't feel his legs. He saw them moving, but he didn't power them. They rolled with the movement of his upper body as he was carried by men. Ironic that he felt he wanted to rewind time, undo
all this, because even as he had this thought, time indeed seemed to rewind. He exited the hole in the wall. The segment was replaced as the little black box was plucked from his collar and he was returned into his original clothing. He was rushed away down the tunnel. Bends and corners and crossroads.
Minutes later he was out of the sewers and in the van again, the one that had collected him from home. And now that the worst was over, the men were talking amongst themselves, just like regular guys. He wanted to join in. Instead, the Judge watched the man across from him scrutinising the little black box that had been clipped to his clothing, as if something was wrong with it.
Eight minutes after that, the van stopped and the guy next to the Judge held up a small tablet pinched between thumb and forefinger.
"The first night will be hell. Swallow this and you'll sleep like a baby. All night. That's part of the service, to make your day go perfectly. Any guilt or terror you feel tomorrow is your problem."
The judge took the tablet without question. He swallowed it dry. He looked at the man next to him, but the guy was facing forward. Even as he spoke again.
"One final point. You were already asked this, but I've been instructed to ask again now the act is over. Do you want the body to be found?"
This question had been with the Judge ever since he'd had this plan. He hadn't done this for notoriety. He didn't crave reading about his crime in the newspapers. He didn't want to taunt the police. He had a sick desire to murder a prostitute, that was all. Point blank. Hidden body was preferable.
But the guy before him snapped his fingers as if impatient for an answer, and under the pressure the Judge said, "Yes." He didn't know why. Had he said yes because he had expected they would want that answer? And before he could change his mind, the van's sliding door opened and he was handled out. Ten seconds later the van was gone and he was alone by the alleyway that led to his back garden, on a dark street empty of life.
Sixty seconds after that he was standing in his kitchen, again in the dark, and waiting for an influx of emotions now that it was all over. But there was no guilt, no shame, no fear, only a sense of achievement, as if he'd passed an exam. He'd done it. He'd gone out and murdered a prostitute and no one would catch him. They would catch others for similar killings and he may well be sentencing a few of them in the years to come. He could pass sentence against another killer and smile inwardly while doing so. He was king of the world, the ultimate, a genius. So why didn't he feel like a king?
He went into his cold, empty living room, darkness everywhere, and lay on the sofa. Now he willed emotions to come, but again there was nothing. Was this the calm before the storm? Was the rush on its way? Was the drug inhibiting his brain?
Only when he woke a few hours later to use the toilet did his mind begin to run. He sat and pissed and the Judge in the Judge arose again. He analysed all that had taken place, all the planning and forethought. The Judge judged himself. There was no death sentence in Britain, but that was the sentence the Judge in him passed.
He deserved to die for what he had done tonight.
A few months after Don Jones lost his home in a fire and moved to Sheffield, he was killed off by Ian Smith, who fled to Newcastle under the guise of a man who'd decided to relocate after his wife shacked up with his best friend. Three years after that, Ian Smith vanished and Peter Jackson, rising from his ashes, resettled in Glasgow with a claim that he'd lost his job and had chosen a new home by sticking a pin in a map.
Don Jones had waited tables. Ian Smith had worked a nightclub door. Both guys had left their jobs with no notice, and Peter Jackson was going to do the same when he winked out of existence. But for now he lugged potted plants and bags of stones out to customers' cars for minimum wage. He kept to himself. Never talked about his past, never asked others about theirs. Sometimes someone at the garden centre offered a night out or asked to pop round to his bedsit, but Jackson always refused. He was considered strange by his colleagues, but was polite to customers so the boss never had a problem with him. Every day he worked hard and mostly in silence and then went back to his rented bedsit and spent the evening alone. He would continue this antisocial routine until it was time to get the map and the pin and a new name and a new bullshit story to explain why he was in a city where he had no friends and no family.
Today the man whose real name was Matt Armstrong woke early and alone, as always. He sat up in bed and reached to his shoulder, where there was a small square of duct tape stuck fast. He peeled it away, exposing a micro Sim card. His phone was on the bedside table, next to a slip of paper with his latest fake name on it. The slip was there in case the boss called: wouldn't do to forget his alias. He slotted the Sim into his mobile, replaced the battery, and turned the phone on. The sliver of tape was screwed up and tossed in the bin, where dozens of its type lay. One hundred and eighteen, to be precise. One for each day he'd been here.
He went into the bathroom to shower while the phone booted up. In five minutes he'd be back. He would check the phone, and hopefully there would be nothing. One man other than him had the number for that Sim card and in seven years Matt had never received a call or a text on it. Every day for seven years, he'd prayed he never would. If that was the case today, he'd tape the Sim on his shoulder again, put the original Sim back in the phone, and head off to work to enjoy another day as Peter Jackson.
It was as he was stepping into the shower that he heard his phone perform the unmistakable double-beep of a text message received. A cold snake of fear slipped down his spine.
It had taken seven years, but finally the unthinkable had happened.
I HEARD YOUR SISTER JUST GOT KILLED, the text message said.
Emotions he'd kept in check for years bubbled up in an instant, but they subsided quickly. Just like that. Like a spike on an electrocardiogram. And then it was all over. He'd survived news of the most despicable and wrenching kind, and now his mind would be stronger for it. Like an instantly healing broken bone.
Karen, his sister, was gone, but nothing could happen to her now. There could be no more bad news. Now, selfish as it might sound, he could set her aside. It was the rest of his family he needed to think about. Their pain. That was the right thing to do. So he would do that.
He composed a reply text message: THANK YOU. That was it. The recipient was an old army buddy whose life he had once saved. His reward: the guy would keep tabs on Matt's family and let him know if anything happened to them. Anything bad. Only the bad. And only by text message, to a number Matt kept only for that reason. And the guy had done his job.
Matt put his phone in his pocket and thought. He had to be practical here. He had to go back. He had to contact the rest of the family, even though they wouldn't want him there. He had to go to the funeral, all that stuff. But he also had to find out what had happened. Killed. That word could be so vague, but undeniably it meant something bad and quick. Victims of disease weren't considered to have been killed.
He just prayed that her death hadn't been someone else's fault.
Matt had also decided that four months in Glasgow was going to be it. He felt he couldn't return here after the funeral, even if he found out nothing foul had happened to his sister. He would have the memory of learning about her death right there in his bedsit. He wouldn't be able to enter the place again without thinking about her, and thinking about dead loved ones too much was akin to ripping at healing wounds. So he would have to get a new flat, and if he had to look for somewhere new to live, why restrict himself to the same city? Why not move on, start afresh? Again.
Home?
His biggest fear over the last seven years, and something he worried about every day, every hour, had been something bad happening to someone he loved. And now it had, but the aftermath had proved to be bearable. So what else could hurt him after this? No stubbed toe had ever been felt by a man who just had his eyes torn out. So maybe he could go back, wriggle his way back into his old life, rekindle things with old friends. With his f
amily.
Home?
He packed his things. He called his boss at the garden centre, said he wouldn't be in today, duty calls. The guy said no problem, see you tomorrow. Matt said okay, even though he knew he'd seen his last of the garden centre. He turned off the bedsit's mains electricity, wrote a note for the landlord and left him a month's rent in cash, and then went to his car and tossed his bag in the boot. He fired up the Satnav. And sat staring at the screen. He had taken the device when he left London, but he had never used it, preferring a pin and a map. So for the first time he was seeing a list of destinations in its memory, places input by his mother or father, and it was one of those that drew his surprise.
GO HOME.
He clicked it and watched a little arrow whiz across a map and alight on a spot in LONDON. It made his skin prickle.
GO HOME? It might never be home again.
His parents' house was in Muswell Hill. When he turned onto their street, the nerves hit him. Seven years away, no contact. They hadn't known where to find him to tell him his sister had died. How many other times had something in the family necessitated their trying to find him? Maybe there was a nephew somewhere, seven years old and wondering where this elusive Uncle Matt was.
The house was as he remembered it, except the front garden was different. The grass was gone, replaced by crazy paving. And blinds were in the kitchen windows, not net curtains. He had an awful thought that his parents had moved. Some strangers were going to answer the door, tell him the previous owners had sold up and moved to Zimbabwe.
Matt steeled himself. Exited the car slowly, his eyes never leaving the front door, the kitchen window. Kitchen at the front, living room at the back. Mid-sized semi, built in the seventies. Last he'd known, Dad had been driving a Vauxhall Corsa, but there was no car in the driveway. It was mid-afternoon, though: his parents could be at work. Dad was a train driver, Mum a seamstress working in a shop in the Strand. His brother, Danny, had moved into the City of London while Matt was in his final year in the Army. Again, seven years ago. A lot could happen in seven years.