by Peter May
‘Yeah, right,’ Acne said. ‘You’re the fuckin’ fuzz, aintcha? Fuckin’ rozza.’ MacNeil said nothing. Acne nodded towards MacNeil’s coat pockets. ‘Got ’em onya, ’ave ya?’
‘Got what?’
‘The fuckin’ drugs, coppa. Know what I mean?’
‘I don’t have drugs.’
‘Course you do. They give ’em tcha. All the cops got ’em, din they? Fuckin’ FluKill.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Give us ’em, then.’ He held out his hand.
‘I’ll give you my FluKill if you give me some information. That’s a fair exchange, isn’t it?’ MacNeil tried very hard to keep the tremor out of his voice.
Acne frowned. ‘Wot kinda fuckin’ info you looking for, rozza?’
‘I want to know where Ronnie goes when he’s not at work.
Acne looked at him as if he was insane. ‘You wot?’
‘I want to know where he hangs out.’
‘Sssa Black Ice Club, innit?’ the black youth said.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Acne told him.
For a moment, MacNeil forgot his plight. ‘In Soho? All the clubs up there were shut down weeks ago.’
‘At’s wot you fink, mate.’ A cold smile narrowed Acne’s eyes. ‘Not that it fuckin’ matters wot you fink, does it?’ He held his hand out again. ‘Cough up.’ And he roared at his own joke. ‘Funny, eh?’
‘Sorry,’ MacNeil said. ‘I’m afraid I lied.’
‘You wot?’ Acne looked perplexed.
‘I haven’t got any FluKill.’ And he swung his left fist full into the boy’s face. He knew he had to take the initiative, catch them off guard, if he was to stand a chance. He felt bone and teeth break beneath his knuckles, and immediately stooped to scoop up the baseball bat as it fell from Acne’s hand. He grasped it with both hands and swung around. The bat, at full extension, caught one of the youths behind him square on the side of the head, and he went down like a sack of coal. The door to MacNeil’s right had been boarded up with plywood. He kicked it as hard as he could, and the sheet of wood splintered into darkness in a cloud of dust. MacNeil plunged through it into the unknown, the voices of his assailants raised in pain and fury at his back.
He was in a length of hallway from which the floorboards had long ago been ripped up. He ran from rafter to rafter and turned into another doorway. From here he could defend his position. They could only come at him one at a time. And the first of them came, screaming down the hall like a demented spirit. A crowbar embedded itself in the plaster beside MacNeil’s head. He hadn’t even seen it coming. He swung his bat and caught the black youth in the mouth, and the kid fell backwards, blood bubbling through split lips. MacNeil braced himself against the door jamb and waited for the next attack. But it didn’t come. The black kid, still whimpering, staggered back out through the gloom to the walkway. He heard the murmur of voices, and then someone cursing loudly. And then silence.
All MacNeil could hear now was the rasp of his own breathing in the dark. As his eyes grew accustomed to it, he looked around the room behind him. The floorboards were gone here, too. There was a torn mattress pushed up into one corner, and the rusted remains of an old bedstead. A window giving on to the walkway was boarded up. MacNeil fumbled for his phone. He could call for help, but it would take time, and he didn’t know how long he could hold these kids off. But there was no time even for a call. A whooshing sound came down the hallway, along with a dazzle of flickering white light. A flaming bundle of rags soaked in petrol. MacNeil could smell the fumes, and thick black smoke immediately forced him back into the room. It was insane. They didn’t care if they burned down the whole block.
He reacted instinctively, in panic as much as anything, and threw himself at the window. The whole board tore itself free of the nails which held it, and he went out through the window frame with it, pulling his knees up to his chest, catching his shoulder and his head as he went. He landed on top of one of his attackers, the board a barrier between them, and he heard the air being forced from the youth’s lungs in a deep, painful retch. MacNeil didn’t wait to see who it was. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the stairwell, legs nearly buckling beneath him. In his panic he had lost the baseball bat. But it didn’t matter. He was on the stairs now. He was on his way down, three, five at a time. Behind him, he could hear them whooping and shrieking, out for blood and revenge. If they got him he was a dead man.
He could see daylight falling in through the open doorway at the foot of the stairs. Half a flight, and then once he was out he could sprint for the car.
He drew a lungful of sweet, fresh air as he swung through the doorway out on to the concourse, and a baseball bat caught him full across the chest, forcing it all back out. His momentum carried him on for several steps before he fell amongst the broken glass and felt it cut into the flesh of his palms and cheek. He rolled over and saw a tall, gangly black youth in drainpipe jeans grinning down at him, his bandana pulled down to his neck. Three others emerged from the stairwell behind him and pulled up short. Acne had discarded his mask, his face thick with blood drying around his nose and mouth. He held a metal bar in his hand now, eyes filled with hatred and fury.
MacNeil lay on the tarmac, pulled up on to one elbow, still trying to catch his breath. He knew there was no way he could reach the car before them. These kids were like wild, wounded animals. They were armed, and they meant to kill him.
Acne confirmed his intent. ‘You’ra fuckin’ dead man, rozza!’ He lifted the iron bar clutched in his hand and took a step towards him. Then his chest burst open in a spray of pink. The youth barely had time to register surprise, before toppling forward on to his face without a sound. His weapon clattered noisily away across the flagstones.
MacNeil looked at him in amazement. He had no idea what had happened. The others stood frozen in disbelief.
‘Wot the fuck . . . ?’ The black kid who had smacked MacNeil in the chest with his baseball bat moved towards his fallen friend, and the right side of his head just vanished. He spun around, toppling on to his back, his one remaining eye staring sightlessly up at the cloud overhead.
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, he’s fuckin’ shot!’ MacNeil heard one of the others shout. ‘Someone’s got a fuckin’ gun!’ And then he heard them sprinting off in different directions, like animals scattering at the report of a hunter’s rifle. They were gone in moments, and MacNeil was left lying on his own with two dead kids at his feet. He swung around and got quickly on to his knees, remaining crouched there, eyes flickering along the skyline of the surrounding apartment blocks, trying to spot the marksman, wondering if he would be next. But he saw no one, and there was no third shot. He got to his feet on shaky legs and looked at the two youths lying in slowly gathering pools of their own blood. He winced, as pain seared across his chest, and drew a sharp breath. He put a hand to his chest, and gently pressed. He didn’t think there were any broken ribs, but he knew he was going to be black and blue.
As he walked to his car, he scanned the semi-derelict buildings that rose up all around him. Someone, somewhere, from one of these abandoned apartments, had saved his life. He had no idea why, and it was only later that it struck him as odd that he had not heard either shot.
He slumped behind the wheel of his car and took out his phone.
CHAPTER TEN
Pinkie watched through wooden slats as MacNeil sat behind the wheel of his car. He could see his mouth moving as he spoke into his phone, and he could imagine what the cop was saying. Maybe, Pinkie thought, he could even read his lips.
He rested the barrel of his rifle again on the window ledge, and nestled his chin against its wooden butt so that he could look through the sight. He focused the cross-hairs on MacNeil’s mouth, but his face was partially obscured by reflection. Pinkie’s finger caressed the trigger. How easy it would be just to squeeze, ever so gently, and watch that face dissolve in fron
t of his eyes, like those stupid boys across the street.
But Mr Smith had told him that if anything happened to the investigating officer it would only draw unwanted attention. And, anyway, it hadn’t been right, the way they had ganged up against him. Six against one. It wasn’t fair. And Pinkie always backed the underdog. He liked to see a man triumph against the odds. He had watched events unfolding on the walkway, unable to get off a shot. MacNeil had done well to escape down the stairs, and once the yobbos were out in the open, well, they’d been easy meat. He had particularly enjoyed their consternation. And then their fear. And MacNeil? His expression had been a joy to behold. It was fun to give a man back his life. Almost as much fun as it was to take it. But what had made it all the sweeter was MacNeil’s confusion. His utter lack of comprehension. He had no idea how, or why, he was still alive. And never would.
Pinkie withdrew his rifle and began the slow, meticulous process of disassembling it, lovingly wiping down each piece with an oiled cloth, to slot it back into its allotted place in its felt-lined case. They said that sometimes a silencer would reduce accuracy over distance. But Pinkie had never found that. He never took a shot if he thought there was a risk of missing. And he had never missed.
If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
He appreciated those simple things his mother had taught him. She’d had wisdom beyond her years. Her only mistake had been in the company she kept. The succession of men who came to the house had not always treated her well. He could remember hearing her cry out the night it happened. A lack of judgement on her part. But Pinkie had always liked to imagine it was only because she’d been so trusting. She had always seen only the best in people. Especially her boy, her precious son.
He looked around the front room of this tenth-floor apartment, fading daylight falling in shadowed strips across the littered floor. Evidence of down-and-outs, or junkies, in the discarded cans and cigarette ends, the bundle of filthy clothes abandoned in the far corner, the mattress on the floor. Perhaps these shadow people would return when it was dark. Pinkie did not relish the thought of being here when they did. Who knew what contamination they might bring with them. And Pinkie was nothing if not fastidious. He disliked human contact of any kind. Just being in this place left him feeling unclean. He would shower and change as soon as circumstances allowed.
Meantime he was trapped here, for as long as MacNeil remained at the scene. He snapped shut the polished case that held the pieces of his profession and settled down to wait.
It was nearly twenty minutes before the uniforms arrived, and an ambulance, and an unmarked van which deposited two men and a woman in strangely luminescent white protective suits. Pinkie watched as MacNeil spoke to them, and the group assembled around the bodies of the two youths beneath the block opposite, before turning to follow MacNeil’s pointing finger. For a moment, Pinkie felt exposed, as if they could see him, and he drew back from the boards at the window. A reflex action. But of course they saw nothing.
The street lights had come on, and dusk was falling fast. Lights appeared in the few remaining inhabited flats on the estate, frightened residents peering out in the gathering gloom before drawing curtains and turning on TV sets to blot out the real world.
When Pinkie looked again, MacNeil had begun walking back to his car. Time, he thought, to move. He gathered his things and hurried down the deserted staircase. By the time he emerged into the area at the back of the block, once designated a parking area for residents, MacNeil’s car was turning the corner at the end of the street. A smear of brake lights in the cold twilight.
Pinkie put his case in the boot and started up Mr Smith’s BMW. It purred smoothly, leather seats softly creased. He eased it over traffic bumps into the lane that led out to the street behind the estate. He turned left, and left again, and breathed a sigh of satisfaction as he saw the lights of MacNeil’s car ahead of him. With luck the cop would lead him straight to Kazinski, and the useless lives of those two boys would have found some meaning in death.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was dark in Kennington Road, lights all along the police station falling out across the deserted street below, reflecting in the darkened windows of the shops and restaurants opposite.
Laing waved MacNeil into a seat and shut the door. There were more people now out in the detectives’ office. It was almost seven, a changeover in shifts. A brief congregation of officers and staff who met only rarely when their rotas diverged. And in just a few minutes, all across the city, the curfew would begin. A signal for most people to lock down their homes for the night and wait for morning. A signal for others to emerge under cover of darkness to embark on a rampage of looting and vandalism. It was not a time anyone wanted to be out on the streets.
MacNeil had spent the last two hours writing up his reports on the bones found in Archbishop’s Park, and the two youths shot dead on the housing estate in South Lambeth. Laing had just finished going through them, half-moon reading glasses still perched on the end of his nose. He was shaking his head. ‘Weird,’ he said. ‘Fucking weird.’
‘What is, sir?’
‘These kids that got shot. Not some casual shooting, some lunatic with a gun. It was a real pro job. A professional weapon in professional hands.’ He regarded MacNeil speculatively. ‘Do you think there was a connection?’
‘With Kazinski?’ Laing nodded, and MacNeil shook his head. ‘I can’t see how. No one knew I was going there, or why.’ He’d had time in the intervening hours to think about it, and was quite spooked. Someone had saved his life. Someone had shot those kids to stop them beating hell out of him with iron bars and baseball bats. Without that someone, it was MacNeil who would be lying on Tom Bennet’s autopsy table right now instead of those boys. He could imagine how much satisfaction that would have given Bennet.
‘So you’ve just got some kind of guardian angel looking out for you, then?’ Laing said.
MacNeil could only shrug. How easily that gunman could have shot him, too. From some empty apartment in the abandoned block opposite, from where he must have been watching, even before MacNeil arrived. But watching for what? What on earth had he been doing there?
In normal circumstances, the flats would have been sealed off, and officers drafted in to search them unit by unit, until they found the gunman’s vantage point. And then forensics would have combed it for any tiny piece of evidence that might have been left at the scene. But they simply didn’t have the manpower, and the approach of darkness and the curfew would only have complicated things. Perhaps Laing would order some kind of search in the morning. But in any event, it would no longer be any of MacNeil’s business. In twelve hours he would not be a police officer any more. He would be a former cop, former father, former husband. Everything behind him, only uncertainty ahead.
Laing held out his hand. ‘I’ll take those pills off you now, Jack.’
It took MacNeil a moment to drag himself back to the present and realise what Laing was asking for. He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have them.’
Laing glared at him. ‘You’ve taken them?’
‘No, sir, I’ve lost them.’
Laing glared at him, disbelief burning in his eyes. ‘You’d better fucking find them, then. These bloody things are like gold dust. They’re not on my desk first thing tomorrow, you’re in big shit, son.’
MacNeil just nodded. What were they going to do? Shoot him? ‘I’ll need curfew clearance to go up to Soho, Mr Laing. If you could enter it up in the computer.’
‘What for?’
‘To check out the Black Ice Club.’
Laing regarded him as if he had two heads. ‘You mean you think those kids were telling the truth?’
‘I don’t think they meant to. But, you know, the black kid just sort of blurted it out.’
‘Well, if it’s open for business, it’s doing it illegally.’
‘I doubt if it’s advertising the fact, sir.’
‘You’d better put in a courtesy call to the local bobbies. Let them know you’re in the area.’
‘Fine.’ MacNeil got to his feet and turned towards the door.
‘MacNeil.’ He turned as Laing stood up and extended a hand towards him, before pulling it away again, as if from an electric shock. ‘Sorry, forgot. No shaking hands. No spreading germs.’ He grinned awkwardly. ‘Just wanted to say, you know, good luck. You’re a fucking idiot, MacNeil, but I don’t wish you any harm.’
MacNeil managed a pale smile. ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll always remember your final words of kindness.’
Laing grinned. ‘Fuck off.’
MacNeil was nearly halfway across the detectives’ office before he realised that things were not as they should be. A bunch of coloured balloons danced above his desk on the end of a string. Most of his colleagues were gathered in a semi-circle beyond it. Someone had filled a trayful of plastic cups with orange juice, and on a cue they all leaned forward to lift one, and began a refrain of ‘He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.
MacNeil stood, frozen with embarrassment, as they sang their ragged but hearty way through to the last line. And so say all of us. Someone shouted, Hip, hip! And there were three loud cheers before cups were tipped and orange juice downed. Rufus thrust a cup in his hand. ‘Sorry we couldn’t do anything stronger, me old son.’
‘You don’t know how jealous we all are,’ someone shouted.
‘Lucky bastard,’ someone else said, to much noisy agreement.
MacNeil turned to see Laing standing grinning stupidly in the open door of his office.
DS George Murray leaned back behind his desk to pull out a box wrapped in brightly coloured paper, and peppered with the cartoon faces of smiling kids. ‘We had a bit of a whip-round,’ he said. ‘But we had no idea what to get for the man who has everything.’ A lot of loud laughter. ‘So we got something for your kid instead. A box set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD.’
