[Eddie Collins 01.0] The Third Rule

by Andrew Barrett

  “No signal in here, mate,” Grant mumbled.

  “I don’t care. I’m playing spider solitaire. Now if you’ll excuse me.” I tapped my mobile phone’s screen a few times, activating an app but making sure neither of them could see what I was doing.

  I then scrolled through the various screens until I found solitaire.

  “What? We’re stuck in a lift and you’re playing fucking card games?”

  “I said, mind your language.” The old man turned to the youth, who was almost as tall as him, and growled like a pit bull. The kid shrank back into a corner, glancing at me for some kind of support.

  If I hadn’t been stuck in a lift, I would have laughed. I was kind of warming to the old guy; he had character, and he wasn’t boring. There seemed to be no stereotype he fell easily into, thanks to his trainers I suppose.

  I found myself staring at him, intrigued by his moustache and his sharp, mean little eyes. And then his demeanour seemed to change. He smiled at me. “I’m Reg,” he said. “Reg Harding.”

  Inside my head, I screamed, please don’t hold out your hand, please don’t hold out– and then he held out his fucking hand. I looked at it, and thought it just too rude not to swap the phone to my other hand and shake. He smiled wider, and I felt dirty. The warmth I had for him only a few moments ago, dissipated pretty quickly. I also saw that he was expecting a name; it was customary apparently, though I didn’t really see why I should oblige. But still, here we were, three strangers locked up in a metal box. And who knew how long for. Could be hours, and although I wasn’t bothered about those two getting on each other’s tits, I wasn’t so keen on being the outsider. It was more prudent to be liked right now. Reg was no streak of piss and the wrinkles and yellow hair belied a sturdy physique. “Eddie Collins,” I said.

  “I’m Grant,” the youth announced.

  Reg spun on his heels. “You just keep your dirty little mouth shut, boy.”

  Grant looked nonplussed, didn’t even swallow, but when Reg took a small step towards him, he practically shat himself, hands out, a placating smile on his face, wide eyes and exposed throat. “Okay, man, okay.”

  “That’s better,” Reg said, and turned back to me.

  And then Grant said, “What about your radio?”

  Now I wasn’t sure if he was being brave or stupid. I saw no reason for him to antagonise Reg by not keeping his dirty little mouth shut, so I figured he was just stupid. Either way, I didn’t want the temperature in here to rise, so before Reg could growl at the kid again, I said, “No signal,” and angled the radio towards them as if in confirmation. “Why don’t you see if the panel has an alarm button?”

  It did, and Grant gave it a solid push with his thumb. We couldn’t hear anything new, no buzzer, no bells or klaxon. He pushed again, and then punched the wall. “I gotta get out of here!”

  “Late for your jog?” I asked.

  “Come on, man, do something.”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Reg said with some force, and now any feelings I had towards him were edging away from like into dislike territory, with a healthy dose of caution thrown in for good measure.

  “Quiet.” I smiled at them both. “I’m on a winning run here.” My joviality had no effect at all.

  “Fucking piece of shit!” Grant kicked the lift wall.

  “Oi, calm it,” I said quickly, hoping to get in before Reg did his pit bull impression again.

  “Piece of shit!”

  “Yes, you already said that.”

  “No law against it, is there?”

  “The Anti-repetition Act 1996,” I said.

  Grant looked confused. “Really?”

  Thankfully Reg took a step back and laughed. “He’s pulling your pisser, boy.”

  It felt like hours, but it had probably only been about seven minutes since my last cigarette. I could really do with another. I even thought of offering them around, since I guessed Grant smoked and I could even see Reg’s packet of Richmonds poking out of his shirt pocket. But it seemed wrong. Not because of the camera peering over my shoulder, but because if the lift were to start up again in a minute and some old dear got in next… Well, it just didn’t seem right.

  Reg’s eyes were locked on my uniform. On the left breast I wear a badge that says police staff. “You a SOCO?”

  I nodded. “They call us CSI these days.”

  “What you here for?” This was from Grant who seemed smaller somehow, melded into the corner.

  “I’m setting up covert obs on a bank robber.”

  He was about to say “really?” again, when Reg laughed, “He’s not allowed to say, idiot.”

  Grant deflated and looked away.

  “But,” Reg went on, “I’d guess you’re heading for 68.”

  I looked at him. Now I really didn’t like him.

  “Bogoff?”

  I asked, “Is that where you’re going?”

  “My sister’s flat,” he said.

  “It weren’t me.”

  Reg moved to strike him and the kid reacted so fast that he smacked his head against the wall. Reg had only moved a few inches, backhand at the ready, no intention of connecting, but it was enough to shut the kid up.

  “Enough of that, eh?” I stared at Reg and the old fuck stared right back at me.

  And then his face relaxed. “Fair enough.” He smiled. “Just having a laugh. And for the record, he did do it. The little bastard.”

  “I never,” Grant mumbled.

  “Can’t fool me.” Reg stuck out his chest. “Ex-copper. Leeds City Police.” He obviously expected some reaction, a pat on the back maybe, a thumbs-up, a professional nod of the head. He got nothing. “1976, Millgarth. You ever been inside Millgarth?”

  I had many times, and I nodded. It was the kind of building you couldn’t wait to get out of. It reeked of oppression. It seemed full of ghosts of old coppers swaggering about pissed in tweed sports jackets or rolled up shirt sleeves, fags dangling from their lips, pens behind ears, knuckles red or bruised. Indeed, the place still smelled of old cigarettes and there were still ashtrays in the lifts. Not that you were allowed to use them now.

  And I didn’t doubt for a second that Reg was telling the truth. He was the cliché I’d been searching for. The kind of copper that got results by being brutal. Didn’t matter if they were the right results or not. He was the kind of old school copper that abused the system so badly that the government created and introduced the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Reg’s own knuckles were so big and calloused that I assumed he had to have his knuckle dusters specially made.

  “Twenty-five years,” he said, grinning like I gave a shit.

  “Congratulations, you must be very proud.” I knew as soon as I’d mumbled it, and as soon as the sickly grin shrivelled under his yellow moustache, that I’d offended dear old Reg. I tried to mend the bridges again, but his face had soured considerably. “Get a long service medal?”

  “It might not mean much to you, kid.” He glared at me. “But coppering back in them days was bloody hard graft; proper police work, not sat by a bleeding computer like they do now.”

  All I had to do was mention one name and I knew I could deck his false modesty: Sutcliffe. But I chose not to, seeing as we were all trapped inside a steel coffin with pretty walls. And besides, I kind of saw the point he was trying to make. It must have appeared to him as though modern police work was inferior to the type of work it had been back then. I suppose demeaning women, inventing new names for black people, and beating the shit out of some random guy pulled in off the street without spilling your beer, was bloody hard work. And then, as if things weren’t quite bad enough, Grant decided to chip in.

  “Did you get to drive them old Granadas?”

  “Aye.”

  Grant was smiling. This was possibly an error. “Through cardboard boxes.” And then he laughed – definitely an error; the cardboard boxes thing was supposed to be a reference to old cop shows like The Sweeney, but Reg was nothing i
f not proud of his history, and the backhand deftly delivered across Grant’s right cheek soon stopped him smiling.

  Although I guessed him to be in his twenties, Grant stared at me over a hand that was curled around the redness of his cheek and his throbbing lip, and tears grew in his eyes like droplets growing on a pair of leaking taps. All this happened within the space of only a few seconds. And in that few seconds I went from being reasonably comfortable with my position in that steel coffin, to feeling vulnerable, the piggy in the middle. I felt like this fucking curse of a uniform they’d given me somehow entitled Grant to justice, or at least to protection, and somehow suggested I should mediate this situation.

  Fuck the old lady, I put my phone away and lit a cigarette.

  I breathed smoke upwards, and tried to fulfil my newly designated role as UN Peacekeeper. “You,” I nodded at Grant, “would be wise to shut the fuck up.” The taps dripped some more. “And you–”

  “Don’t give me none of your bullshit. That badge means nothing to me. Got it?”

  I did get it. Very well, thank you. “Calm down, Reg. We might be in here for another ten hours and I’m telling you right now, I’m not playing referee to you two.”

  For some reason, that made Reg smile. “We don’t need no referee.”

  “You will when we get out of here.” I held his gaze. I usually loved intimidating people, did it for a sport. But now I was doing it to preserve the pecking order. If it worked, everything would return to simmer; if it didn’t, Reg would likely relive some of his old coppering days. If I hadn’t been stuck inside this lift, I would have gladly opened the door and walked away, leaving them to it. That’s a shit thing to say, but my role in life is to find criminals after the event, not watch them create the event. And yes, I was nervous. Reg was not so much a loose cannon, he was plain fucking nuts. And everyone I’ve ever come across who is plain fucking nuts is a person you cannot reason with on anything other than a shallow level, such as the weather or the football results.

  I still stared, because once the bear’s out of the cage, he’s never going back inside.

  He looked away first, and I hastily swallowed the bucketful of saliva that had collected in my mouth, but maintained the stare for when he returned his own gaze, complete with smile.

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “I want to put in a complaint.”

  I closed my eyes and took a huge swallow on my cigarette.

  “He just hit me. You saw him do it.” Grant stared through his running taps right at me. “You saw him,” he said again.

  I wanted to scream at these two arseholes that all I did was spread fingerprint powder around people’s houses. Aside from any street sense I’d picked up along the way, I had sod-all training in how to keep the peace.

  “And when we get to 68,” Reg said, “you’ll have something else to complain about.”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  Reg was unimpressed by the vehemence of Grant’s protests. “Really?”

  “Your sister won’t even recognise me. It’s the only reason I came along. You haven’t got shit-all on me, man.”

  “You came along because I fucking dragged you, let’s get that clear. And let’s get this clear too: you did it, I know you did it. A copper never loses his sense of smell, and right now I smell a scrote, kid.”

  I’d read the log and I knew there was no way she could know it was him. “So what happens if your sister doesn’t recognise him?”

  Reg took a step towards me, and I don’t mind admitting that I wanted to take a step back. But there was a steel wall in the way, so I did what I could to preserve that delicate pecking order – I took a step towards him, eyebrows raised in some unspoken challenge, like a taunt, something that said, “You wanna try your luck?”

  Reg placed his hand gently on my shoulder. And squeezed. Eyes drilling into mine. “He did it. My sister will say he did it.”

  “You see?” Grant cleared his throat and any of the emotion he’d recently shown had vanished. It was as if he’d resigned himself to his fate and was steeling himself in preparation for it. “Old coppers never die; they just get twisted.”

  Reg’s face grew red and he let go of my shoulder. He turned to face Grant, but stopped moving because of the blade at his throat.

  Shit. I dropped my cigarette and stood on it, glanced at the LED on my radio – still red. And through the little window in the door the bricks were stationary. Fuck, I did not need this. The tension in that small lift had ramped up to intolerable. Writing statements seemed like a great proposition just now. Apart from Reg’s imminent death, all I could think of was my boss asking why I didn’t prevent a stabbing. But what could I do? Really?

  “Take it easy, kid,” Reg said. “No need for this.”

  “Like fuck there is. I’ll be a bleeding pulp when you’ve finished with me.”

  Reg slowly turned his body, blade scraping across the loose wrinkled skin of his neck. The kid didn’t take the blade away, held it out at full arm’s length, its tip slicing a neat cut and leaving behind a narrow crimson streak that developed into a curtain, and with each degree Reg turned, Grant’s bravery was tested. He did well, but his arm began to shake, his bravery collapsing slowly.

  “You just crossed a line.”

  “There was never a fucking line, you old prick. I was always gonna be the sludge you scraped from under your fingernails when this day was over with. I thought once your sister had ruled me out, you’d see sense and let me go, like. But I’m your feel-good factor. I’m the one who’s gonna make you look good.”

  “Shut it, kid.”

  The knife dug a little deeper, but rather than shy away from it, Reg gritted his teeth and moved into it. “You spineless little fuck; robbing old ladies, but with no balls to take the punishment. Happy to spend their pension money but no too keen when it comes to payback, are we?”

  “She can’t possibly pick me out.”

  “Why?” I said wondering if my dream of spending ten minutes with a bogoff was actually here.

  “She… she just can’t!”

  “Why?” Reg screamed.

  “It wasn’t me, that’s why.”

  “Lying little shit. Tell me why you think she can’t pick you out.”

  “Fuck off.” Grant’s bravery waned further.

  “Tell me!”

  “Cos she’s blind as a fucking bat!” Grant’s eyes widened slightly, and then his entire face sagged. “Oh fuck,” he whispered. The knife fell to his side.

  “And how do you know that?” Reg asked. “How do you know she’s blind?”

  Grant swallowed, and his face begged for mercy.

  Reg scraped at the blood on his neck, leaving a smear right along his forearm. “Her name is Shirley. She’s ninety-one. She’s lived through the war, was blinded by it in a munitions factory accident. And even after the war, she still had her fair share of bad luck. Her husband died five years ago, so now she’s all alone on the tenth floor of a shithole slum like this.

  “But that’s not quite bad enough. Is it, Grant? You obviously thought her life was still too good, still too fucking easy! Because your life is far worse than hers, isn’t it. Isn’t it!”

  Grant said nothing.

  “No, she’s too trusting. Opened the door to you and you took her cash, and you took her husband’s medals. Did you see how shiny they were when you sold them on for a fiver? Did you notice that? Do you know why they were shiny? Because she handled them every day. They were all she had left of him.

  “Photographs are no good to her, see? Bert, he was called – he was a hero, kid. He was a true fucking hero. And that fact makes you even more of a lowlife.

  “You want to know how I know she’ll pick you out?” Reg’s top lip was raised in disgust, his massive hands curling into fists. “You smell like a toilet. That’s how she described you to me. A toilet. And that’s how I know it was you.”

  Grant backed up till the wall stopped him, and that was ab
out the time I realised I was trapped with a knifeman and crazy fucker. Despite that, I couldn’t stop myself saying, “Drop the knife, Grant.”

  Grant stared at Reg. “No fucking way, man.”

  “He’s not going to touch you. Are you, Reg?”

  Reg ignored me.

  “Are you, Reg?”

  “Tell me you did it.”

  “Reg, back off, leave him alone.”

  “I know you did it, kid. You just got to admit it.”

  “Reg,” I warned. And then to the kid, “Did you do it?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You tell me now, kid.”

  “No!”

  “Did you fucking do it!”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I did it.”

  Reg was about to lunge, “Stop,” I shouted. “Reg, you will leave him alone. Do you fucking hear me!”

  Reg didn’t really get a chance to answer. The lift jerked, the lights flickered slightly and then we were moving again. Through the door’s window, the bricks were tumbling quickly, becoming a blur. The old lift motor was whirring again, cables twanging in the lift shaft.

  Grant nearly stumbled, and Reg took his chance, swiped aside the blade and threw a punch at Grant’s face. If it had connected as intended, his head would have imploded like a crushed egg, but Grant moved just enough to make it a glancing blow, and the fist dented the steel wall.

  I was about to scream at Grant to drop the knife when I saw him bring it up and saw it disappear inside Reg somewhere. It could have been his abdomen, I wasn’t sure.

  The lift stopped, the red numbers displayed ten and my world had turned from boring to crazy into the space of a few short minutes. So crazy that I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t process the enormity of what the hell was happening in front of me. That, though, was partly because everything was so cramped. What with my kit at my feet and the lift only being five-feet square, it was crowded, it was fast, hot and furious. And I missed it.