To Kill For Page 23

  ‘I’m going to put you down. If you scream, I’ll hurt you.’

  She nodded as much as she could, her eyes wide in terror, her mouth trying to work, trying to say something. I let her down and loosened my hand but kept it on her neck. With my other hand, I pocketed the gun and took a handful of her nightdress and turned it tight and pulled her towards me. She staggered and threw her hands around my arm to hold herself steady.

  She held on like that for a few seconds, letting her breathing become regular, letting her heartbeat slow. Her face was white, her lips pale. She shivered and squeezed my arm again, trying, I thought, to stop herself fainting. We were in a kind of dance, locked together by our arms, and by powerful and murderous men.

  After a while, the colour came back to her face. It came with a vengeance. Her lips flamed, her cheeks burned red, her eyes flashed fire. She had guts, this one.

  I couldn’t hear the gunfire any more. If Dunham’s men had got the upper hand, I didn’t have much time.

  I still had a hold of the woman’s nightdress. She trembled, but she stood straight and looked me directly in the eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes. It does. It matters a lot. This is my home.’

  ‘My name wouldn’t mean anything to you.’

  ‘I see. One of them. You want my husband, I suppose.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could scream.’

  I tightened my hand around her slim neck. ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  My middle finger touched my thumb. Her eyes went big. I loosened my grip as her hands started to pull at my arm. She staggered back a step, rubbed her throat.

  ‘I suppose you enjoyed that.’

  ‘No.’

  I took my hand away. The noise of gunfire picked up again.

  ‘What do you want? What’s all that noise out there?’

  ‘That noise is Bobby Cole.’

  She caught her breath.

  ‘That’s shooting? What’s he doing? What does he want with us? My husband’s not here.’

  ‘He doesn’t want your husband. He wants the same as me: a man.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Where is he?’

  ‘The police—’

  ‘They won’t save you. Now I can tear the place apart, or you can tell me where he is.’

  ‘My daughter’s here.’

  ‘I know. You don’t want her caught up in the crossfire, do you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Please, just go.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Why do you think anyone’s here?’

  ‘Eddie told me.’

  That stopped her. I let go of her nightdress. If she noticed, she didn’t do anything about it. She could have run. Instead, she said, ‘That’s a lie. Eddie wouldn’t tell you anything.’

  ‘I came here before.’

  ‘I remember. So?’

  ‘Today I saw something in Eddie; I saw pain. I only ever saw that once before; here, with you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I saw the way you ignored him, the way you were cold to him. You wanted to hurt him. And he was hurt.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You knew who Eddie and your husband were dealing with, what kind of man, what monster. And you hated them for it. But your husband is a ruthless man and I don’t think you’d expect anything else from him. But Eddie… your anger was targeted at Eddie. And it hurt him, as you knew it would.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  Her hand went back to her throat. I don’t think she knew she’d done it.

  ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I know it like I know my own face. It fits. It makes sense in a mad way. I would never have thought it until today. But now I know. He’s in love with you.’

  Her lips were closed tightly. Her eyes blazed. She breathed heavily. Her heart must’ve been racing. Her hand stroked her throat. I could see her vein pulsing there.

  ‘You’re guessing,’ she said. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘There’s something else. They brought me here.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles.’

  ‘There was no reason for them to do that. When they got me here, they didn’t tell me anything new. If they’d wanted to give me a message, they could’ve done it any time. So I had to think why they would bring me here.’

  ‘And now you have the answer.’

  ‘It was misdirection. They brought me right to where they were hiding the man I was after and made me think they were after him too. For a while it worked. This was the last place I thought he was stashed. It was twisted thinking, a joke. Your husband doesn’t think like that. He’s a club, a hammer.’

  ‘And Eddie…?’

  ‘He’s a blade.’

  ‘Even if that was the case—’

  ‘It was the case. It is.’

  ‘You’re so sure.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you want me to point him out to you. You’re going to kill him, aren’t you? You want me to condemn a man to his death.’

  ‘He’s already dead. The question is, do you take me to him or do you wait until Cole arrives with his army and rips the place apart, you with it, your daughter maybe. Is he worth it?’

  I wasn’t touching her now. She looked up into my face, her eyes wide, her chest heaving. Her hand left her throat, glided down, stroked her nightdress.

  ‘Why do you want him? Why do you want to kill him?’

  ‘I knew a woman once, a bit older than you, and a girl, a bit older than your daughter. That’s why.’

  She looked into my eyes for a long time. The sounds outside didn’t matter. Finally, she nodded and her arm lifted and her hand pointed towards the side of the house.

  ‘There’s an extension. He’s in there.’

  ‘Describe the room.’

  ‘It’s about twenty foot by fifteen. There’s a single bed along the connecting wall and a table and chairs around the place. There’s a bathroom at one end. Two windows are in the far wall. The door has a lock. I don’t have a key.’

  ‘Right. Now go and get your daughter and lock yourselves up somewhere. Don’t come out.’

  She went, but at the bottom of the stairs she stopped and turned.

  ‘It should have been my husband,’ she said. ‘Or Eddie. Not you.’

  I watched her go, then went and found the extension. The door was shut. There was no light coming through the cracks around the edges. It was a heavy door, probably locked. I knew he’d be in there, listening, armed, waiting. If I tried to open the door, I’d alert him. I took a step forward and put my ear to the wood. I couldn’t hear a thing except the distant rattle of the gunfight and my own heart pounding in my throat. But I knew he was there. I knew it.

  The door was solid and if I went for the windows, I’d be an easy target. That didn’t matter so much, just as long as I got to him. I didn’t have time to work at this slowly, Dunham would have men on the way and who knew when the law would turn up.

  I pulled the Makarov from my pocket, moved away from the door and took a breath and aimed. The gun bucked in my hand. The shots were explosions in the small space. The lock tore apart. I threw myself at the door. It crashed open, smashed into furniture. I fell and half-rolled and got back to my feet and brought the gun up and aimed into the darkness. And froze. A face was there, small and white, something glinting below it. Above it, something else hovered; a mask, long and thin, a scar of a mouth, razor-blade eyes.

  The scream came from behind me. It was wretched, savage. I half turned to see who it was, but, as I turned, I knew who it must have been and why. I lifted my gun as I spun back around. It was too late. The flashes lit up the room and blinded me. The roar of gunfire split the air and deafened me. The screaming started again, and it didn’t stop. Something slammed into my left arm and threw me back. I fired blind, the gun rocking in my hand, the rounds s
lamming all over the place. My arm split with pain. I fired until my gun was dry. The flashing lit the room and left after-images on my eyes; a man with a girl, a knife. Something ripped through my side. My mind screamed at me to fill the gun. ‘You’re naked,’ my mind said. ‘You’re dead,’ it said. I had to get another magazine from my jacket pocket but my free arm was useless now, a lump of meat. I tried to find the faces again. I saw them. The girl had her eyes shut. Above her, the mask gleamed sickly, the mouth twisted now, mangled with pain.

  The woman was in the doorway. Light came through her nightdress and surrounded her with a silver mist. She was still screaming, her hands at her mouth, staring at her daughter. Blood had spattered her. My blood. I turned back to Paget. I should’ve charged him, not given him time to aim. All he had to do was squeeze. He was good at squeezing. I couldn’t do anything. I was lead. I was dumb. I was a carcass waiting to drop. I was dead and I knew it and I didn’t much care, except my mocking mind was clear and I knew I’d failed her, and that hurt.

  The woman’s hands were still at her mouth, but she’d stopped screaming. I waited. She waited. Time waited.

  Nothing happened.

  The gun pointed straight at me. And then I saw that the slide was all the way back. It hadn’t recoiled. His gun was empty. Still I couldn’t move. I knew he’d slice the girl’s throat. I felt coldness creep down my right side. Then I felt stabbing pain in my ribs. The room tilted and my head went light. I was leaking blood fast. The pain disappeared. I saw Brenda. I saw Kid. I lived with the dead.

  We stood there, the four of us. I saw Dunham’s daughter, and the blade Paget held to her throat. It was a kind of joke; both of us standing like actors on a stage, waiting for the cue, both surging with the need to destroy the other, both scared, both impotent, both unable to reload and finish the job; me with a fucked-up arm, him with a blade in his free hand. I should have charged anyway. Fuck the girl.

  The blade moved across the girl’s throat. He was going to cut her. I knew it, knew how his mind worked. I lunged forward. And knew I’d made a mistake. I’d done what he wanted me to do. He sneered and turned the blade towards me. At the last instant, I turned side on. The blade sliced through my left arm, my fucked-up arm. Someone screamed. It might’ve been me. I hit Paget and the girl like a bag of cement. We crashed to the ground. Something broke under us. My gun fell from my grip. The girl was there, somewhere. I didn’t care any more. I wanted Paget. Everything was a mass of bodies, seething limbs, seeping blood, pain, darkness. I saw him. His face was screwed into a fury of agony. His fists pounded my face, but he had no room to move and there was no power in the punches. His eyes were wide, he breathed frantically.

  ‘Cunt,’ he said. ‘Cunt.’

  My left was fucked; it had a gaping bullet wound, the knife was stuck in the muscle. I threw a punch with my right that missed and hit the floor. Paget laughed hysterically. I grabbed for his throat. I saw the woman near. She kicked us, shouted madly. The girl was on the floor, crying, her leg trapped beneath us. Paget saw them. He saw the knife in my arm and seized it and pulled it out. The pain was electric. He tried to plunge the blade in my throat, but he kept missing. He reached over and tried to skewer the girl. I tugged him and he missed her. The woman pulled the girl free. I threw another punch, landed it on his jaw, but there was no weight behind it. I needed leverage. I got to my knees. The room spun. I hauled him up with my right. He laughed. The knife arced towards me. I put all my energy into my torso and shoulders and legs. I stood and wrenched him up. The knife flew from his hand. He laughed harder. He collapsed and I saw that he was crying. His right leg was pumping blood. His knee was shattered. One round had hit home. Christ knows what had kept him up. I lifted him by his throat. His hands reached up and took hold of my jacket, pulling himself up, keeping the weight off his knee.

  ‘All this,’ he said through blood and spit. ‘Insane.’

  He saw the punch coming. I hit the top of his skull. It felt like I’d broken bones in my hand.

  ‘Cunt,’ he said. ‘Dumb fucking cunt. All this, for what?’

  I reached down and took a hold of his face and turned it up so that I could see his eyes. Pain was coming at me all over, my arm, my side, my hand. It didn’t matter. It was important that he hear me, that he understood. It was the most important thing in the world.

  ‘I want to remember her alive,’ I said. ‘I want to remember her alive, not in a fucking alley with a face of blood.’

  ‘All this? For a fucking whore? Why?’

  ‘I want to remember her smile,’ I told him, snarling. ‘But I can’t see it, not without the blood.’

  ‘She used you, you dumb cunt. She knew who you were.’

  ‘You took that from me. You took her smile and her shining eyes.’

  ‘She was grassing us to the law. She was only with you because she thought you’d protect her.’

  ‘I know.’

  I smashed his face. Pain shot through my fist, through my arm. Some bone was cracked. It didn’t matter. He coughed blood.

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he said, to himself, I thought. ‘It doesn’t make any fucking sense.’

  ‘I know.’

  He pulled at me, his hands grappled for a hold.

  ‘Dunham needs me. I’m valuable to him. I can’t die. He’ll gut you. He needs me.’

  ‘I know.’

  I hit him again but I couldn’t ball my fist. He shook it off. I hit him again, but it was weaker. I staggered. He pulled. I was losing strength. He pulled harder.

  ‘Cunt,’ he said. His voice rasped.

  I tried to hit him again, but my body was weak, my hand busted, my punches useless. He clawed at me. I thought I’d failed.

  Something tugged at my elbow. The woman was there. There was something in her hand. She held it out to me. I took it. I held it. Paget saw it. He flailed. I smashed him on the head with the butt of my Makarov. I heard his skull crack. He held onto my jacket, his fingers, like daggers, tried to pull me down with him, tried to tear at me. His face was the colour of porridge. He wanted to rip my throat out. I could feel the life draining from me. I could see blood pooling at my feet. I didn’t know if it was mine. We grappled with each other, each trying to tug the other down to some hell.

  ‘She wanted to be a beautician,’ I said. ‘That’s why you cut her face off.’

  He laughed madly, and blood fell from his mouth.

  ‘She died screaming.’

  ‘As you should.’

  His face curdled in pain.

  ‘Cunt,’ he said.

  His head swayed and his fingers loosened. I swayed with him and felt cold. The Makarov fell from my hand. My arm was heavy. I was losing strength and he knew it. He lunged and fell on his broken knee and screamed. His hands were on me, pulling me down, down, and I was afraid. I reached for the gun. The room moved. I got hold of the gun, I lost it, I got it and tried with all my strength to hold onto it.

  ‘Madness,’ he said.

  I clubbed him with the gun, pounding his face, mashing it to pulp, but still he held on, still he looked up, his mouth a wrecked smile.

  ‘Madness.’

  ‘I know.’

  I kicked him off. He sprawled backwards and rolled over onto his front and crawled to my feet in some kind of final act, a death throe. I raised the gun and smashed it into his skull, again and again, crushing the bone and pulping the thing that had been a head until it was nothing but a kind of clot of flesh and bone and brain and blood. I wanted to enjoy it. I didn’t. I felt sick. Madness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The woman and girl had gone. I walked out on shaking legs. Blood was running down my shirt, down my trouser leg. I was cold all over.

  Cole stood at the top of the steps, his men around him, Dunham’s men face down on the ground, lined up, arms behind their heads. I saw bodies in the distance, by the gate. One of Cole’s men was being propped up by comrades, another held his shoulder. Cars were coming up the driveway. Cole
looked at me. They all looked at me.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  When the cars got there, Cole’s men got in. Cole helped me get into one of the cars. He got in beside me.

  ‘Will you make it?’ he said.

  ‘Dunno.’

  We took a long route back because Cole didn’t want his car tagged on some CCTV camera, returning from a crime scene. We didn’t say anything. There’d be comeback for this, we both knew that. It didn’t matter.

  As soon as we got back, Browne got to work on me.

  ‘Happy now?’ he said as he cut my shirt away.

  He didn’t touch the booze while he was looking after me. It was all too much for him, though, and Cole sent his doctor round. Browne didn’t complain this time. I passed in and out of consciousness for a couple of days. Browne told me there’d been nothing on the news about Paget, which meant Dunham must have cleaned it up. I didn’t think he’d come for us straight away, but Cole had a couple of men at Browne’s place just the same. There’d been a lot of stuff on the news about the fight in Barking, but Cole had been lucky about the location and had managed to cover his involvement. The news said something about a turf war and Dunham had had to fend off the law. But he had contacts and the thing had died down after a few days, blamed on rival East European gangs, who nobody particularly cared about. As long as they were killing each other and not some local upstanding citizen, everyone could pretend it didn’t happen.

  After a few days, Compton and Bradley and Hayward came round. There was a bit of fuss outside when they came face to face with Cole’s men, who wouldn’t let them through, but Browne settled things and they came traipsing in like they’d come to pay their respects to the dear departed.

  I was propped up in Browne’s favourite chair, ban-daged around my arm and torso. It only hurt if I breathed. There was a break in the clouds and sunlight bounced around the room and lit up the specks of dust floating in the air.