End of the Line

by Robert Scragg

  ‘Where is he?’ Kamau screamed into Tyler’s only functioning ear.

  ‘You shot me, you fucking shot me,’ Tyler shouted, almost as loud, no sense of volume thanks to the thunder still rolling around his eardrum.

  ‘You don’t tell me where he is, next one’s for real.’

  ‘Henry! Henry!’ Porter shouted. ‘We’ll help you find Ben. Just put the gun down, and you have my word I’ll not rest until we do.’

  Tyler moaned in pain, head tipping towards his shoulder, like he was trying to scratch an itch. ‘In the boot. He’s in the bloody boot.’

  Henry glanced at the Range Rover, then across at Porter. Started to drag Tyler in the direction of the vehicle, but Porter held out a hand. If Ben Kamau was in there, and anything apart from perfectly healthy, there was no telling what effect that might have on his brother, what it might make him do.

  ‘Stay there, Henry. Let us check that for you,’ he said, gesturing for O’Connor to take a look. The young officer glanced at Pittman, who nodded, and they watched as he walked around to the boot, casting nervous glances back at them.

  The boot opened with a soft whirr. Porter held his breath, shifting his weight, ready to dive towards Kamau if needed.

  ‘He’s here, boss. Bashed up, but alive.’

  Pittman jogged across, helping lift a dazed Ben Kamau out, peeling a strip of duct tape off his mouth. His hands looked secured with a cable tie, and they brought him around to the passenger side, easing him into the seat.

  ‘Ben! Ben! You OK, bro?’

  The older brother’s head bobbed up at the mention of his name, and Porter saw the damage to his face. One eye closed, swollen shut, Blood from a split lip had tricked down his chin. He managed a nod, but nothing more.

  ‘Now, tell him,’ Henry snapped, turning his attention back to Tyler. ‘Tell him who drove the fucking car.’

  Tyler said nothing, cheeks puffing out loud breaths, blinking like he’d had sand kicked in his face.

  ‘Tell him!’ Henry shouted again, clubbing the injured ear with the butt of the gun.

  Tyler howled this time, sagging, eyes rolling with the pain. A second blow landed. Same spot, same force.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said, mini grenades of spit bubbling at one corner of his mouth. ‘Me. It was me. You happy? I drove. I did it.’

  The confession bellowed out, any sense of volume lost no doubt thanks to the perforated drum. The echo bounced back from the ceiling, whispering a ghostly did it, did it to Porter, just in case he missed it first time around.

  Being told it back at the ward was one thing. Hearing it said out loud by his wife’s killer was another. One of the most surreal moments in Porter’s life, beaten only by the split second after he’d been told about the crash over three years ago. He stared at the man who had taken a wrecking ball to his life, and all he could think of was how much he’d love Henry to pull the trigger.

  Tyler’s admission was like a pin to Kamau’s angry bubble, one long, loud exhale escaping the young man’s lips. Porter saw his shoulders sag, gun starting to follow suit, bobbing down a few millimetres with each breath.

  Porter kept his tone neutral, took baby steps forward, sliding his taser back into its holster, hands held out for Kamau to see. The very definition of calm. Inside, his stomach knotted, twisting in on itself, feet away from his wife’s killer.

  ‘You’ve won, Henry. Ben’s safe. Tyler’s just confessed. You’ve won. I need you to put the gun down now though. Let me take him in.’

  ‘You don’t understand, man. I got to do this. I don’t, how long you think I’ll last?’

  Porter shook his head, six feet away now. Five.

  ‘Doesn’t have to be that way, Henry. Don’t chuck away the rest of your life for scum like him. Let me take him in.’

  Edging nearer. Close enough to reach out and touch, but he held off.

  ‘Yo, H,’ a tired voice came from behind, and Porter turned to see Ben Kamau out of the car, holding onto the door for support. ‘Enough’s enough, man.’

  ‘You know I’m right,’ Henry said, ‘He ain’t gonna let this go, not now they know.’

  ‘He ain’t gonna be walking the streets for a long time,’ said Ben, shaking his head slowly. ‘He’s finished. Just doesn’t know it yet.’

  Henry’s hand twitched up again, barrel pressed right up to Tyler’s damaged ear, making his captive hiss in pain. Henry held it there for a few seconds, before he let out a frustrated growl, hand sagging back down, gun resting on Tyler’s shoulder now, pointing a few degrees away from his body. Porter exhaled slowly, looked around at the others, seeing postures relax despite faces full of tension.

  Tyler moved fast for a man swimming in pain. As the gun lowered, Henry’s grip around Tyler’s shoulder and chest relaxed, and the gang leader drove a heel down into Henry’s foot, reaching up at the same time with his left hand, clamping onto Henry’s wrist. A second kick, this one square on the shin bone, and Henry released his grip on the gun as Tyler’s right hand closed around it.

  Porter reacted out of instinct, lurching forwards to close the gap, seeing with startling clarity as Tyler took possession of the gun. Two feet and closing. Tyler turned the gun around, settling the grip into his palm just as Porter hit him. He dipped as he made contact, shoulder catching Tyler square in the ribs, feeling the flare of pain from his own already broken ones.

  A cacophony of shouts behind him as they went down. No sense of where the gun was. Porter landed on top, Tyler half twisted around, and a second supernova of pain washed through Porter, ribs on fire as he straddled Tyler across the hips. The younger man’s head bounced off the floor with a loud double tap, and Porter clocked his outstretched right arm holding the gun. Tyler gave a loud groan, initially trying to push Porter off with his left, but jerked his head towards the gun, as if seeing it for the first time. As it swung back up, Porter grabbed the wrist with his good hand, pushing and pinning to back to the floor as he slid off Tyler to the left, swinging a leg around, trapping Tyler’s forearm. Something crunched, although could just as easily be Porter’s knee. Tyler’s fingers spasmed open, and Porter lunged for the gun, stripping it from scrabbling fingers and turning it back on Tyler, breathing hard like he’d just crossed the finish line at a marathon.

  ‘Jackson Tyler, I’m arresting you on suspicion of assaulting a police officer, and for the murder of Holly Porter.’

  Those last five words nearly didn’t make it out, forcing their way past almost four years of grief and anger. Porter heard someone else reciting similar words off to one side. He looked over to see Pittman cuffing Henry Kamau.

  He felt, rather than saw, Tyler move. Hips arching up, trying to throw Porter like a rodeo bronco unseating its rider. At the same time, he reached up, grabbing for the gun, but bucking up the way he had sent Porter’s hands up six inches, and the best Tyler managed was scratching against Porter’s fingers. Porter clenched his thighs, clamping tight to Tyler, letting his weight bear down again. A white-hot wave of anger came with it, losing all sense of any spectators. This man, this piece of shit, was the sole reason Holly wasn’t here now. His gun hand swung down, hammer-fist style, butt smashing into Tyler’s nose, bursting it like an overripe strawberry. Porter pointed the barrel back down at him, hating the tiniest of tremors he saw in his own hands.

  Tyler yelped in pain, eyes rolling back for a split second, before snapping back into focus and hitting Porter with both barrels of pure hate.

  ‘Do it!’ Tyler snarled, lips pulled back from his teeth, looking borderline feral. ‘Go on! Do it!’

  His trigger finger tightened. Half a pound of pressure closer to making a broken nose and burst eardrum the least of Tyler’s worries. He’d imagined this moment so many times. Dreamt about how satisfying it would feel.

  ‘Fucking do it!’ Tyler spat up at him, wet spray speckling Porter’s hands with streaks of saliva.

  He heard Tyler’s words reverberated in his head, except it was his own voice shouti
ng them back at him. Half a pound more. It’d be the end of him, never mind Tyler, but right here, right now, that felt a fair trade.

  Shadows played across Tyler’s face. Someone moving in behind. Strong hands reached past Porter’s face, clamping over his, lifting the gun skywards. It had only travelled inches when the shot rang out. Porter saw the puff of grey dust where it did a Dam-Busters off concrete flooring, punching a hole in a nearby crate. He looked up, seeing Tessier take the gun from him. Ayla came across, flipping Tyler over onto his back as Porter stood up, clicking on cuffs.

  ‘I didn’t … That wasn’t …’

  ‘’S OK, boss. My fault. Must have caught your finger. My fault.’

  Tessier nodded, just the once, holding Porter’s gaze long enough to show he had Porter’s back if anyone tried to spin it any different. He looked back down at Tyler, the gang leader lying cheek to the floor, bad ear to the concrete. Ten feet beyond him, a groove in the concrete where the bullet had struck. Inches. If his aim had been inches lower, life as he knew it would be over.

  He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the trigger click, unable to separate the feel of his own finger from Tessier’s hand. Not sure which version he wanted to believe.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Milburn looked from Porter to Pittman and back again, looking for holes to poke.

  ‘And that’s your story as well, Pittman, is it?’

  ‘That’s how it happened, sir. Henry Kamau fingered Tyler for the hit-and-run and gave us a location. DI Porter had called me for an update, being as that it’s my case, and you’d told him to let me run it my way. I didn’t want to go in after Tyler short-handed, so took the opportunity to ask DI Porter and DC Tessier to join us.’

  Muscles bunched in Milburn’s jaw, not wanting to accept being spoon-fed a version that sat as awkwardly as glasses on a one-eared man.

  ‘You were supposed to be at the Henderson press conference with me,’ he said finally. ‘What do you think that made me look like, sat next to a stand-in with my lead detective missing?’

  Pretty safe bet that it made him look like the centre of attention, but best not poke the bear.

  ‘And you,’ he said, looking at Pittman, ‘could have called in any one of a dozen others. Don’t think for a minute I believe this crap.’ Milburn gave the pair of them his sternest headmaster-style stare for a five count, then sat back down. ‘As if that wasn’t bad enough, Sally Ashbrooke came along. She was wanting to present you with a cheque.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘That reward that was put up. You know, that anonymous extra fifty K. Told her you couldn’t accept anyway. Said she could donate it to the Benevolent Fund. She’s insisting on handing it over to you personally for some reason, so you need to call her office and set that up.’

  ‘If it’s all the same, sir, I’d rather she just popped it in the post.’

  ‘She could end up being your Prime Minister at this rate, so no, you will not ask her to pop it in the post. You’ll arrange to meet her. You’ll actually turn up this time, smile, shake hands and play the hero she thinks you are.’

  Not a battle worth fighting, Porter thought, so he nodded and let it drop. Never one to stand on ceremony without a camera about, Milburn sent them both packing, muttering again how this wasn’t the end of the conversation. Two massive wins in the space of twenty-four hours and the man still had his nose turned up like he’d trodden in the world’s biggest turd.

  His team were all waiting for him back in the incident room, Taylor Bell included.

  ‘Rogered?’ she asked, one eyebrow bobbing up.

  ‘Well and truly.’

  ‘You need a drink,’ Styles said, pushing to his feet. ‘Come on, after a result like this, you’re buying.’

  Porter’s head felt like a shaken snow globe. He’d expected more of a sense of victory, Tyler behind bars and likely to stay that way. As it was, it felt like an anti-climax. Something that had built up over the years to the point of feeling like an impossible goal that didn’t exist any more. Now what? Just all felt a bit … flat. He dug in his pocket, pulled out three tenners and handed them to Styles.

  ‘Think I’ll take a rain check, mate. I should get home and see Evie, but here, get a round in on me.’

  ‘Gonna be a lonely evening for you then,’ Styles said. ‘She’s on her way in for a drink.’

  ‘Eh? How’s that?’

  ‘I called her. Said you needed to get drunk, and that I wasn’t responsible enough to look after you.’

  Twenty minutes later, Porter was weaving his way across from the bar in The Green Man to their table, carrying a tray with enough bottles to rack up a frame at a bowling alley. Wasn’t until he’d handed the last drink over to Bell that it hit him. Shit! Evie hadn’t exactly been Bell’s biggest fan when she’d found out about the one drink that Porter had kept from her. Last thing he wanted was confrontation. Not with everyone here. Not today. He pulled out his phone to text her, ask her to meet him back at the station when he saw her picking her way between pockets of people. He made his way over, meeting her halfway.

  ‘Hey, I was just about to drop you a line. Buy you a drink?’

  She held up a bottle of Corona. ‘Already been via the bar. You can get the next one though.’

  So much for his delaying tactic to give him a chance to at least mention Bell’s presence rather than Evie just stumble into her. He was about to suggest they got that second drink in now before they joined the group, but Evie had already started heading across. She managed to squeeze her way through gaps he couldn’t and made it across a full ten seconds ahead, standing on tiptoe to give Nick a peck on the cheek, and as Porter caught up, Evie turned to Bell, introduced herself and fell into a conversation with her and Sucheka.

  Styles sidestepped past her, sidling up to Porter. ‘What’s up, boss? You look a bit peaky.’

  ‘Hmm, oh, nothing. I just thought …’

  ‘That the girls were going to have a cat fight over you?’ Styles said, aiming for poker face, but Porter spotted the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘Oh, come on,’ Styles said, ‘didn’t take a genius to spot she was pissed at you for having a drink with Taylor. Don’t worry though, I sorted it.’

  Porter frowned. ‘Sorted it? What do you mean, sorted it?’

  Styles shrugged. ‘Just helped her see that she had nothing to worry about. You’re not Taylor’s type.’

  ‘How do you know what Taylor’s type is?’

  ‘Love that you’re now getting arsey at the suggestion she might not be interested. Let’s just say you’re not the one in the team she’s got eyes for.’

  ‘Oh, here we go, it’s all about you,’ Porter said with an eye-roll. ‘I’m grassing you to Emma.’

  ‘Not me, you fool,’ Styles said, nudging Porter, inclining his head towards the trio.

  ‘What? Kaja? Really? I thought she was already spoken for?’

  Styles shook his head. ‘They broke up two weeks ago.’

  Porter soaked in the new info, realising how far off the mark he’d been with Bell.

  ‘Some bloody detective I am,’ he muttered, annoyed that he hadn’t known about Kaja’s break-up to ask how she was doing. Too wrapped up in his own shit to notice. That was one thing that had to change. Now Styles had pointed it out, it was like someone had whipped the blinkers off. Glances between Kaja and Bell, a coy smile as Kaja fiddled with a stray strand of hair. He took another swig from his bottle.

  ‘Mmm, forgot to ask, how did the follow-up with Finch go?’

  Styles rolled his eyes. ‘You’d get more conversation on a coma ward. Just sat there doing his strong, silent type impression for most of it.’

  ‘Still bothers me,’ Porter said. ‘If it’s all about some idealistic notion of what he wants the country to look like, you’d think he’d be singing that crap from the rooftops non-stop. That and the fact he tried to stitch up his boss. You’d have thought he’d want Winter to keep stirring things up as well.’

  ‘N
o idea,’ Styles said. ‘To be honest, the more we looked into him, I’m surprised he was slumming it with the likes of Winter. They might have a similar world view, but the firm he works for, Sentinel, have got a hell of a client list. I’m talking actors, footballers, proper politicians, party leaders, not the likes of him who just play at it.’

  Styles pulled out his phone, hopped onto the Sentinel page, scrolling through a who’s who of familiar faces on the testimonials page.

  ‘Guess he just pimped himself out to someone with more cash than sense.’ Porter shrugged.

  ‘Turn it up, mate, can you turn it up?’

  Glenn Waters chased after a retreating glass collector, pointing at a screen on the wall. The poor young lad looked positively harassed, glasses with assorted dregs in, tightly crammed onto his tray. He shook his head, zigzagging through gaps in the early evening crowd.

  All heads in their group swivelled mid conversation, fixing on the screen. Volume wasn’t essential as it happens, blocky white subtitles popping on screen, overlaying Roger Milburn’s face. Shame he couldn’t be muted more often. The screen cut to footage of a previous press conference, Porter’s own face, gravely serious as he addressed the camera. Subtitles popped along the bottom.

  Witnesses say Detective Inspector Jake Porter tackled Leo Finch single-handed after Finch tried to fight his way out of the Victory Services Club, on Seymour Street in Central London yesterday.

  A chorus of cheers and repeated pats rained down on Porter’s back as the group gathered around him. More subtitles. A mention of Holly brought a soberness to those around him. He disappeared from screen, replaced with a series of talking heads, chipping in their ten cents. Politicians spouting soundbites, the Mayor praising the restraint shown by the majority, condemning those who had borderline rioted these past few days. The fuss around him began to die down, and he lifted his bottle to drain the remainder, when he glanced back at the screen. The words floated under the speaker’s face, hovering, snapping away, replaced by the next sentence, but stayed front and centre in his mind. A ghost of a memory floated forwards, solidifying, crashing into any notion of this being over.