by T. M. Logan
The screen switches back to the two news anchors in the studio as they move onto the next item, about a double stabbing in Tottenham. Dominic hurls the TV remote into the corner of the room, the black plastic case shattering into splinters across the floor.
‘Shit!’ He shakes his head at the screen, jaw flexing.
‘They made it look like I abducted her and did something to Kathryn,’ I say, summoning a calmness to my voice that I don’t feel. ‘That’s crazy, that’s not what happened at all.’
‘Welcome to my world,’ he grunts.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter—’
Finally he turns back to face me.
Freezes.
Stares down the barrel of his own gun, clutched in my outstretched hand, the remains of the black duct tape still hanging from my wrist.
I circle away from him so that Mia is on my right side, out of the line of fire. The compact bulk of the pistol is solid in my hand, my fingertip curled around the smooth, curved steel of the trigger.
‘You should have bound my feet, too.’
He nods slowly.
‘Yeah. Guess I should have.’
‘Now take three steps away from Mia.’ I gesture with the gun. ‘Then lie face down on the floor with your hands behind your back.’
He shakes his head.
‘I can’t let you go, Ellen.’
‘I know how to use one of these.’
‘I believe you.’
He takes a step towards me. I lower the gun to his leg.
‘You asked me why I didn’t make a run for it earlier?’ I indicate the sliding door to the balcony. ‘It’s because I had to be sure we could both get away. I knew you’d catch us if I couldn’t slow you down.’
‘Us?’
‘Me and the baby.’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘But now I can slow you down.’ I take aim at his kneecap. ‘In fact, you’ll probably limp for the rest of your life.’
‘You won’t do it.’
‘Lie down on the floor,’ I say, fighting a tremor at the edge of my voice. ‘I’m not going to ask you again.’
‘Ellen, there’s a lot going on that you don’t know.’
‘I know that Mia and I are leaving this place, one way or another.’
He studies me for a moment.
‘Have you ever shot anyone before?’
‘You’re going to be the first.’
He shakes his head, his hooded eyes never leaving mine.
‘You’re not going to shoot me.’
‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ I say, ‘but wherever I go in life, there always seems to be a man who wants to tell me what I can and can’t do.’
He takes another step towards me.
‘Two types of people in this world, Ellen.’ He spreads his hands. ‘Those who could shoot someone and those who couldn’t, and you’re definitely in the—’
I steady my aim and squeeze the trigger.
12
I brace myself for the recoil, tensing my forearm against the kick.
But there is only a dull, lifeless click as the hammer falls.
Our eyes lock for half a second as I rack the slide back with my left hand to put a bullet in the chamber. Pull the trigger again.
Click.
Muscle memory taking over, I hit the magazine release catch with my thumb and the clip drops out of the pistol’s butt into my left palm.
There are no bullets inside.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I say under my breath.
‘Empty,’ he says, pulling another of the slim black magazines from his pocket, brass bullets glinting at its top. ‘But this one isn’t.’
My arms and legs are buzzing with adrenaline, my head spinning, thoughts crowding each other out.
‘So in the car when you threatened to shoot me, it was empty then too?’
‘You wouldn’t have come with me if I’d just asked nicely, would you?’ He shrugs. ‘I had to get you to co-operate. But I’m not an animal.’
‘No, you’re just the kind of guy who beats women up. Kathryn had bruises all up her arm, I saw them.’
‘You have no idea what you’re—’
I sweep the gun up in a quick diagonal arc, cracking him across the side of the head with the barrel. He drops to the floor, the loaded magazine spinning out of his hand. I step over him, reaching towards it, and it’s there, inches away when he grabs me from behind, shoving me hard so I slam face first into the door, pain exploding above my eye. I turn and swing out wildly with the pistol again, feeling the ridged steel butt connect with flesh and bone, a groan as he hits the floor and then he’s on his hands and knees, a long sticky string of blood between his mouth and the floor. I kick him as hard as I can in the ribs, an oof of pain escaping from him as he collapses sideways onto the floor. I’ve lost sight of the loaded magazine.
Go.
I shove the gun into my jeans and scramble over to where Mia lies on the sofa, still sucking on a corner of her muslin cloth. I gather her in both arms and kick the swinging doors open. A wide corridor full of shadows, almost no light apart from the moonlight slanting in through high windows. In one direction a row of doors fading away into darkness, in the other, a flight of stairs. Which way? I had the hood over my head on the way in but instinct tells me to go left. I head for the stairs at a run, scratchy office carpet beneath my feet, gritting my teeth against the fresh stab of shooting pain that comes with every step. I run to the stairs, taking them as fast as I dare in the semi-darkness. There’s something wet on my face, stinging in my eye. Blood. I swipe it away.
An explosive crash – a door handle being hurled back into a wall – echoes through the building. A shout of rage follows it, an animal sound of anger and frustration, hurt and fury, that seems to come from right above me at the top of the stairwell.
I stumble and almost fall forward onto the first floor landing, staggering to keep myself upright, arms wrapped around Mia’s body, one hand cupping her hot little head. I recover my balance and run around to the next flight, following the stairwell down and back until I get to the ground floor.
Another furious shout from the floor above. Coming nearer.
‘Come back!’ he shouts. ‘You can’t take her! She belongs with me!’
In front of me, the corridor splits left and right. Left is in almost complete darkness. I go right, plunging down a wide corridor studded with closed doors. Another crossroads. I continue straight on, the agony of the cut in my left foot a rolling thrum of pain. I run past a faded sign that says STUDIO 7, half-illuminated in the watery moonlight, an arrow pointing in the other direction.
Thundering footsteps behind me, on the same level now. Closer.
‘Ellen!’
Shit. I can’t outrun him with the baby, stumbling around in the dark. He knows this complex; he’s going to catch up. I pass another stairwell and stop, doubling back, tucking myself into the shadows beneath the stairs, holding Mia close. I squeeze myself into the darkest corner, sliding back to a sitting position, lifting my left foot and feeling along the skin, slick with blood. There. I find the edge of another sliver of broken glass, grip it between my bloody thumb and forefinger, and with a silent grimace, ease it out of my flesh.
The footsteps are slower and clearer now. He’s almost level with us, the beam of a torchlight sweeping back and forth across the corridor. Mia makes a low contented gurgle that sounds horribly loud in the stillness of the abandoned building.
‘Shh,’ I whisper into her ear, heart thundering in my chest. I rock her gently and stroke the downy hair on the back of her head. ‘Shh, baby.’
Mia coos and squeaks.
I stroke her cheek with a fingertip. My hand brushes something laid over her shoulder. The muslin cloth, half wrapped around her body. I take a corner of it and touch it to Mia’s lips.
Please be quiet. Please, Mia.
She instantly latches onto it, falling silent as she b
egins to suck on the cloth again.
The footsteps slow to a stop and then he’s there, maybe fifteen feet away from my hiding place. A shaft of moonlight glinting off steel. The knife. He is turning his head from side to side, listening for the slightest sound. As soon as Mia makes another noise she’ll give us away.
The beam of his torchlight probes the darkness a few feet from our hiding place.
I reach into the pockets of my jeans for a coin, a key, anything. All I have is a tube of lip balm. I ease it out and throw it as hard as I can, launching it in a long arc down the corridor. The little plastic tube skitters and clacks in the darkness and immediately the torch beam shifts that way, towards the noise.
‘Stay where you are!’ Dominic shouts into the dark. ‘Stay exactly where you are!’
He runs past, just a few feet away from us.
I can feel the pistol digging into the small of my back, ridged metal against my skin. But even unloaded it’s better than nothing, better than bare hands. I count to three in my head and then move away from the corner.
I run headlong into the dark, Mia clutched tightly to my chest, turning through corridors, left and right, purely on instinct, lungs screaming, heart thudding, my foot a symphony of agony with every step. Going as far as possible away from the man with the knife.
A long glass window. There. A solitary car in an empty car park. The BMW.
Finally, the door. As I push my way through it another shout of rage echoes down the corridor. I turn right and run towards the distant street lights. Clutching Mia with one arm, I draw the pistol. The night air is cold and sharp, only a full moon and the weak light of a neighbouring warehouse throwing any illumination onto the car park. I’m on some kind of industrial estate, windowless blocky buildings looming up on both sides. No flats or houses.
‘Help!’ I shout. ‘Help me!’
My own voice echoes back to me on the night air.
I run on, cold air burning in my lungs, through the car park, towards a boarded-up security post with barriers lowered on both sides. Running, running, expecting a rough hand on my shoulder at any second. Barefoot, half-dressed, half-blinded from the blood running into my eye, one arm clutching Mia to my chest and the pistol in my other hand.
I dodge around the security barrier and run out into the road.
A pair of headlights approaches, twin halogens dazzlingly bright after the darkness of our escape.
I stop in the middle of the road and raise the pistol.
WEDNESDAY
13
Leon
So close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to reach out and grab her, if he needed to.
To be that close to her – for the first time – gave him a shiver of excitement, of expectation. But not there, not then; there were too many people around, too much potential for disturbance. Of course he had established certain facts already, facts that pointed strongly in this direction. But to have it confirmed gave him a glow of satisfaction. The switch on the train was a surprise, something he wouldn’t have predicted, but it didn’t change what needed to be done. If anything it made it easier, gave him more options. New options. And it added another twist, another layer of fascination. They would talk about this one for years.
Leon didn’t grab her. Instead he had watched her walk out of the station and onto Melcombe Place, only half-aware of the tedious security man holding up a hand to him, ‘Sorry to trouble you sir but I’ve had a complaint about your behaviour,’ giving his little pidgin-English lecture on respect for other passengers and allowing people the personal space they need and ‘the lady says you were taking pictures without her consent’. Leon had stopped walking and studied the security guard, a small, thickset man with big hands and a heavy forehead that gave him the look of one of the cave-dwelling Morlocks from The Time Machine. He pasted on a concerned expression.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he’d said, putting on his best faux-Oxbridge accent. ‘Just a bit of a misunderstanding, I think.’
Little people – like this officious security guard, given a tiny bit of power and squeezing every last drop from it – were always impressed by a posh accent, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. A thousand years of hereditary monarchy and the oldest class system in the world had to be good for something. Leon wondered what it would be like to take the stun gun casually from his pocket, hold it to the security guard’s thick neck and give him a taste of 50,000 volts right there on the station concourse. He put his right hand in the pocket of his black leather jacket, fingers wrapping around the stun gun’s smooth plastic.
It was always comforting to feel the power of it in his hand. The pure elemental force of it, like having a bolt of lightning tucked into your pocket. But unleashing it there wouldn’t have been a smart move. Walking through the concourse he’d counted at least six cameras on this area, two pole-mounted, two on the shops and two more on the main exit – not to mention the smartphones carried by every passenger that would inevitably turn in his direction at the first sign of a confrontation.
So instead he had smiled, and nodded, and said sorry.
By the time he had finished apologising and shaken off the Morlock in the high-vis jacket, she was nowhere in sight. Leon hurried to the exit, his thin legs propelling him forward through the crowds of people. He checked left and right, then saw the taxi rank, a small queue of people waiting for black cabs. An old white-haired guy, tweed jacket and tie, was helping her into a taxi. Leon had glimpsed the first half of the number plate but the taxi was already pulling away, a bus coming up behind and blocking his view. Her cab turned right onto Great Central Street and was lost among the afternoon traffic. He had stared after it, still feeling the tingle of excitement.
She was gone, for now.
But it didn’t matter. He’d got what he needed.
14
The interview room is a small airless box, a table bolted to the wall and four uncomfortable plastic chairs. I thought there might be one of those two-way mirrors like they have on TV police shows, but there’s nothing like that. Just a thin window threaded with wire mesh, four tired grey walls and dirt baked into every surface. It’s gone midnight and the police station is quiet around me.
I’m shaking and can’t stop, the spike of adrenaline long gone, a crash that’s sent my energy levels plunging. My hands shake like an old woman’s when I try to pick up the Styrofoam cup of sweet tea. A jittery shake in my shoulders, my thighs, my tapping feet, one of them freshly bandaged by a softly-spoken paramedic. I sit at the small table in a faded blue sweatshirt I was given by the duty sergeant at the front desk. It’s rough blue cotton, slightly too big for me – a man’s size, probably – frayed at the neck, with slack cuffs and the ghost of a logo that tells me it has probably been washed a thousand times.
I can smell Mia on my skin, my hands, on the collar of my shirt. That sweet, clean, infant scent, a perfume of innocence. My arms feel empty and my skin itches with thoughts of Mia, of where she is, who’s looking after – have they fed her again, have they found Kathryn? They offered me a sandwich an hour ago but I couldn’t eat, couldn’t even force a mouthful down.
I can’t stop thinking about the scrawled note Kathryn left for me.
Please protect Mia.
I’ve done that, haven’t I? I’ve protected her from harm, removed her from a dangerous situation and delivered her to safety. When we arrived at Harrow police station a few hours ago, an injured woman with a baby in her arms and paramedics in tow, the desk sergeant initially took me for a battered wife fleeing domestic violence. He had smiled kindly and arranged for one of the PCs to bring me the faded blue sweatshirt, flip-flops for my feet and a sweet, milky tea. When I was asked to put all of my possessions in a clear plastic bag – phone, watch, keys, purse, change – before being interviewed, I simply shook my head and indicated the pistol that was already in an evidence bag on the other side of the desk.
‘He took everything,’ I said. ‘Apart from that.’
/> Mia’s gone too now, whisked away by a small, birdlike woman from social services. One minute swaddled in my arms, sleeping in a soft grey blanket provided by the paramedics, the next roused and crying and manhandled into a car seat. I listened with my jaw clenched, fingernails digging into my palms, as Mia was carried away from me through the police station and her crying grew fainter and fainter until it faded to nothing.
That was it, was it? The last time I’ll ever see her. I’ll never hold her again, the bond built up over the last six hours blown away like gossamer on the wind. I pat my pockets for my phone, to look at the picture I took in the café, before remembering it was taken from me hours before. There was no time to grab it during our escape so I don’t even have a single picture to remind me.
Nothing.
The ache builds in my chest, like a bruise spreading outwards, a feeling of loss so overwhelming that for a moment I think I might collapse to the floor, curl into a ball and just cry. Wait for sleep, for oblivion, for a time when I can’t feel anything anymore.
But who are you crying for? For Mia, or for yourself?
I know the answer to that one.
Instead I put my palms flat on the cold metal surface of the table, straighten my back and blink the tears away. Six deep breaths in, six out. I focus on what I can feel – the dull throb of pain in the sole of my foot, the rigid band of a headache behind my eyes, the rough cotton of the sweatshirt – and wait for the feeling to pass.
The spherical glass eye of a camera looks down on me from the far corner of the room.
Don’t trust the police.
But this was the right thing, the only thing to do. Wasn’t it? What other option was there? Abandon her to a violent kidnapper? Take her home? I know this is the right thing to do.