The Abrupt Physics of Dying

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘Why, Clay?’

  ‘You know why.’ He’d left her there, burst through the door at the back of the ballroom just in time to see Medved disappear at the end of the service corridor. He’d followed, sprinting towards the far doors, Glock in hand. But by the time he’d emerged into the back alley, Medved’s chauffeured Mercedes was tearing away in the rain, turning out into the main road.

  She didn’t reply, just stood holding him. He could feel her warmth across his back. After a while she whispered: ‘Surely what we have done is enough.’

  ‘I’m going back to South Africa,’ he said. He could hear her breathing, the slow rasp in her chest still there, an echo. ‘Come with me.’

  No reply. There still, warm, moulded to him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I meant, want to come?’

  Her arms tightened around him. ‘I have always wanted to see Africa,’ she said.

  Clay turned to face her. She was naked. He put his arms around her waist, pulled her close, kissed her.

  Forty minutes later he was standing in the British Airways office in the hotel lobby. He had just finished booking two return first-class tickets to Cape Town, leaving Heathrow tomorrow morning, and was waiting for the sales clerk to print out the tickets when three men strode into the lobby. They made straight for the front desk. From where he stood, Clay could not see their faces. They walked quickly, with intent. Two of the men were big, thick-necked, tough-looking. The third was leaner, but tall, very well dressed. They stopped at the front desk, called to a clerk. There was a discussion. Clay saw one of the men flash some cash. The tall well-dressed man turned, scanned the lobby, turned his face towards the BA office. It was Medved.

  Clay turned away, lowered himself into the chair, faced the sales clerk who was tapping something into her keyboard. Ice crystallised in his bones. He glanced back over his shoulder. Medved and his men were heading to the lifts. Clay’s heart lurched, valves slamming as a massive slug of adrenaline flooded his bloodstream. ‘House phone?’ he blurted out.

  The clerk pointed to the next desk. Clay grabbed the handset, punched in the room number, waited. Medved was almost at the lift now, maybe twenty metres away. The phone rang once, twice, again. ‘Pick up,’ Clay breathed.

  They were at the lifts now. One of Medved’s men pressed the call button. They waited.

  Rania answered.

  ‘Rania it’s me. Don’t talk. Just listen. Get out of the room. Now. Medved’s here. He’s on the way up. Take the back stairs.’

  ‘Clay, I …’

  ‘Go now. You only have seconds. Back stairs. Not the ones near the lifts. Get to the airport. Go home. I’ll see you there.’

  The lift arrived, the doors opened. An older couple shuffled out. Medved and his men pushed in, turned, stood facing out. Clay slammed down the phone, stood, sprinted into the lobby. The lift doors started to close.

  ‘Medved,’ Clay shouted. His voice echoed from the walls, bounced from the granite tile flooring. Just as the lift doors closed he saw Medved’s eyes open wide. He was staring right at him. The doors closed.

  Clay sprinted across the foyer to the stairway doors, flung them open, took the stairs four at a time. Twelve flights of twelve, three seconds per flight. The lift slightly faster here, about four seconds per floor. With a ten second head start, they’d have twenty-two seconds on the 6th floor before he even reached it. If Rania had delayed even a minute leaving the room, they’d catch her in the hallway.

  Clay burst through the fire door out onto the sixth floor. The corridor was empty. A string of ceiling lights disappeared down an adit of red carpet and colourless walls. The lifts were there, three sets of doors, closed. This side of the hotel faced the park. Clay and Rania’s room was on the adjacent side, towards the back of the building. A rectangular footprint with a central courtyard, twenty-five rooms across the park front, twelve along each outer flank, twenty-five along the back. Stairwells and lift shafts set on the inside, fourteen rooms inner front, ten along each flank, twenty-two inner back, a hundred and thirty rooms per floor. It was a big hotel. Even knowing the room number, it would take Medved and his men time to find the room. Clay turned away from the lifts, dashed to the end of the hall, turned right and sprinted along the corridor towards 6119. He reached it in seconds. The door was closed. Either Medved was already inside, or they were on the other side of the floor, searching for the room. He put his ear to the door, listened. Nothing. Back down the hall, the lift gong sounded. Lift doors scraped apart. Clay shoved the key card into the slot, pushed the door open a couple of inches, wedged his boot into the gap, grabbed the Glock, and pushed open the door.

  Curtains fluttered in open windows. Rania’s makeup lay scattered across the bathroom counter. The closet was open, her clothes hanging there, her book on the bedside table, the unmade bed. The room was empty.

  She’d gone.

  Clay turned, ran for the door. Had the clerk given Medved’s men the wrong room number? Had they stopped the lift on the way up, sent one of their number back down the stairwell to intercept him? He wasn’t going to wait to find out. He jammed the Glock into his belt, grabbed the door handle, pulled.

  The fist was large, the knuckles well-calloused, broadened by frequent impact. The body to which it was attached was big, thick with muscle. The blow shattered Clay’s nose. He felt it go, the bone collapsing inwards, spreading. Clay toppled back at the knees, collapsed to the floor. Before he could move the man jammed his boot down hard onto Clay’s throat, and applied weight. Clay reached for the Glock, but as he did his hand was kicked aside by a second assailant, the weapon snatched away. He looked up. Medved’s face stared down at him from behind the gaping silenced muzzle of an H&K 9mm.

  ‘So, Straker,’ said Medved. ‘You live. My information was correct.’

  Clay said nothing. He had no doubt they would kill him, was surprised they hadn’t yet. It could only mean they wanted something. And every second he kept them here gave Rania more time. She was trained. She’d disappear quickly enough.

  Medved looked down at Clay’s stump. A smile creased his face. ‘I see you lost something along the way. How very unfortunate for you.’

  ‘It was a good deal,’ he rasped through a constricted windpipe.

  Medved frowned, brought the handgun’s muzzle closer to Clay’s forehead. ‘Where is your lady friend?’

  She’d slipped out in time. Good. Clay gave them a blank stare. There were only two of them. The big man stood to Clay’s right, his left boot and more than half his weight on Clay’s throat. Medved was to Clay’s left, bent at the waist, the H&K in his right hand, pointed at Clay’s head. The third one might be outside, standing guard. Or after Rania. Clay lay still, evaluated options. There weren’t many.

  Medved glared down at him. ‘Answer me, Straker, or you die.’

  ‘You killed a friend of mine. Did you know that?’

  Medved looked left and right, back at Clay. Then he laughed. ‘Only one?’ He moved his face closer to Clay’s. ‘Where is she?’

  On her way to Heathrow by now. He imagined her on the Tube, or in a black taxi speeding down the M4. Without his government contacts, now surely silenced, there was no way Medved would be able to find her.

  ‘It’s over, Medved. The world knows the truth now. A bit different from that image you worked so hard on. Your sister will be very angry with you.’ Medved – it was all about Medved. Get him talking about himself.

  Medved’s eyes flashed. He nodded to the big man who leaned in harder on Clay’s neck. ‘You greatly over-estimate the public’s interest, my naïve ex-employee. They don’t care about this. They care about their jobs, their pitiful mortgages, their pathetic little holidays and amusements. And governments? I keep the oil flowing. I generate the economic activity that keeps them in power. I’m their very best friend, Clay. Attentions spans are short. This will pass. Don’t you worry. And as for my sister …’ Medved’s eyes fluttered, wandered a moment.

  Clay moved his righ
t hand slowly across his torso, keeping his shoulder still. ‘Do the right thing. Isn’t that what you said, Rex?’

  ‘Say it enough, people will believe it.’

  ‘You’re quoting Goebbels, asshole.’

  ‘Paraphrasing, actually. No matter. He was right.’

  ‘Thierry Champard believed you. And you killed him for it.’

  ‘Unfortunate that you weren’t with him.’

  ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this,’ said Clay, arching his back a couple of inches above the floor, slowly drawing up his legs, pointing his toes, transferring weight to the balls of his feet. ‘Only God decides who lives and dies.’

  Medved looked down at him along the handgun’s elongated barrel, up at the big man, then laughed. ‘Found religion have you, Straker? Become an idealist?’ Medved spat in his face, a dry spray. ‘You really are pathetic. About to have your face blown off, and you still don’t understand, do you? I feel sorry for you in some ways, Straker. There is so much you won’t be around to see.’

  Clay watched Medved’s hand tightening around the handgun’s grip, readying himself for the recoil. Clay tensed, transferring more weight. ‘You let those people die. Just so you wouldn’t have to spend a few hundred thousand on a proper disposal system. That’s all it would have taken. Greed like that, you’re right, I don’t get it. But of course you don’t make the decisions, do you?’

  Hate exploded in Medved’s face. He jammed the silencer’s muzzle into Clay’s forehead, and pushed hard. Clay felt the steel cutting into his skin.

  ‘A few hundred thousand?’ Medved snarled. ‘I don’t give a shit about the money, Straker. I spend that much on dinner.’

  Clay looked up at him, said nothing. He didn’t have to.

  ‘You still don’t understand, do you? All that oil down there, and those fucking ragheads living on top of it? We …,’ he stumbled, stopped, restarted: ‘I wanted the land, Straker. Poisoning the water was the quickest way to get rid of them.’

  Medved pulled the handgun’s muzzle back a couple of inches, aimed it at Clay’s face, and tightened his finger down on the trigger. ‘I want you to know that we will find her, Straker. Make that your last thought.’

  Clay grabbed Medved’s wrist a tenth of a second before he squeezed the trigger. A nine-millimetre round slammed into the floor, millimetres from Clay’s head. Less than half a second later Clay’s left boot caught the big man’s right ankle in a vicious scissor kick. The big man toppled to the floor, back and away from Clay. Clay brought his stump up hard into Medved’s throat, kept his right hand viced around Medved’s gun hand, twisted inwards so that Medved fell into him, protecting him from the big man. Medved grabbed for the gun with his left, but Clay brought his knee up hard into Medved’s torso. Medved grunted in pain. Two gunshots banged out, loud, unsilenced, milliseconds apart. Not Medved’s gun. The big man’s? The air was full of flying debris, splintered wood, the smell of cordite, burnt carpet. Clay levered his left leg up, turned Medved, pinned his right wrist to the floor, jammed down hard. The big man was up, facing them, reaching inside his jacket. The hotel room door was behind him, lock smashed, casement splintered. He pulled out his weapon. Clay slammed his forehead into Medved’s face, felt his grip on the gun loosen. The big man raised his handgun, took aim at Clay. He hesitated. Didn’t want to hit his boss. The door crashed open. The big man managed a quarter turn towards the door before the crown of his head disappeared in a flash of bone and blood. His body crumpled to the floor.

  Medved’s face was a mess. Blood poured from his collapsed nose, filled his eyes. Clay jammed the point of his knee hard into Medved’s chest, heard the air escape from his lungs. He slammed Medved’s wrist into the floor. His hand fell open and the gun dropped to the carpet.

  Clay sprung, grabbed the gun, and looked up. Crowbar was standing in the doorway, a Glock .45 in his hand.

  Medved scrambled to his knees. ‘Get away from me, you fucking lunatic,’ he shouted, blinking blood from his eyes.

  Clay stood, looked at Medved, back at Crowbar. He looked down at the H&K in his hand. So many times he had been here, in this blood-soaked temple. And each time he had killed he had made the world poorer. The SWAPO kids – for that’s what they had been, children, boys – had not deserved to die. Those soldiers in Yemen, too, Jesus Christ, what a total fucking waste. Medved was babbling now, waving his hands, his words roiling dyslexic through Clay’s head, indecipherable. Time slowed. The big man’s blood wicked into the carpet, spread around Clay’s boots. Clay breathed deep, raised the gun to Medved’s head.

  ‘What are you doing?’ blurted Medved.

  ‘The right thing.’

  Clay pulled the trigger. Medved slumped back onto the floor, a neat round hole between his eyes, the back of his head splattered over the carpet, the side of the bed. Clay dropped the gun to the floor and stared at Crowbar.

  Crowbar stepped over the bodies, picked up the handgun, and started wiping it with the bedsheet. ‘Time to go,’ he said.

  Half a minute later they were walking down the alley behind the hotel. Clay’s steps were even, calm like the beating of his heart. When they got to the corner, he glanced back towards the hotel. Police sirens wailed in the distance. It had stopped raining and low clouds scuttled across a clearing sky. The air was cool and sea clean. Pedestrians streamed along the crowded pavements. Crowbar nodded to him, turned north, disappeared into the crowd. Clay turned away from the hotel and walked through the morning traffic towards Leicester Square, south to the Thames. After a while he stopped on the embankment and stood looking out at the river, the reflections of the city dancing on the metal-plate water, the traffic flowing on Southwark Bridge. For a moment, he was alone. And then he turned away and disappeared into the churning anonymity of the city.

  Acknowledgements

  I’ve been lucky in my life. And all of that good fortune has, in some way, contributed to this book. To my mother and father, for instilling a love of words and stories, my wife Heidi for saving me all those years ago and for her unflinching support as hours and days have slipped by, me hammering away on the keyboard or musing over a notebook while she kept everything going. To my sons Zachary and Declan who are already so much more than I’ll ever be. I would also like to acknowledge and thank all the people who have helped bring this book to being: Claire and D for reading an ancient and much-changed version of the manuscript; my dad for his helpful ideas; Eve Seymour for her fabulous reviews, support and introductions; my agent Broo Doherty for taking me on in the first place and sticking by me; Gary Pulsifer for giving me my first chance; and Karen Sullivan, my publisher, for having the guts to start her own business and publish this book. And, of course, to all of those who chose to devote a few hours of their valuable time to sit down and read this story. I hope you enjoyed it.

  EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT

  Claymore Straker returns in

  Paul E. Hardisty’s

  THE EVOLUTION OF FEAR

  Published by Orenda Books in 2016

  No Easy Way

  Claymore Straker stood face to wind and watched the storm come in off the Irish Sea. Rain clouds scuttled overhead, low and fast, moving inland over the gorse and the stunted, wind-bent trees. The first drops touched his face, the cold fingertips of a ten-hour corpse. Two months he had been here now, anchored into the cliffside, staring out at the slate grey sea, watching the depressions deepen. Winter was coming, and he was a fugitive.

  It seemed half a lifetime since he had walked into Crowbar’s flat in London, the blood still wet on his hand. After the killing they’d separated, found their way through rain-swept London streets back to the Kilburn apartment. His old platoon commander, Koevoet – ‘Crowbar’ in Afrikaans – had sent him to the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a razor, given him a change of clothes. Ten minutes later they were speeding down the A4, heading west in Crowbar’s old Ford. After eight hours on the back roads, they had arrived here, on the North coast of Cornwall, ten miles from the near
est village, the closest farmhouse six miles across the gorse.

  Stay put, Koevoet had told him. There’s enough food to last a year. No electricity, no phone. Kerosene lamps, coal for the fire, gas for cooking. Keep clear of the villages and farmhouses. The smaller the place, the more they notice. I’ll be back soon to check on you. Then he’d clunked a Glock G21 onto the table, along with three spare mags, a box of .45-calibre ammunition and a silencer, and walked out into the night.

  Clay Straker turned away from the storm and followed the low stone wall back towards the cottage, staring down at the bands and folds of the cliffside. The cottage was almost invisible, notched into the top of the bluff, made from the same stuff, slate and mudstone, fragments of extinctions past. At the gate, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, out across the grey solitude of the sea.

  And he was back there, in that damp ballroom in London amidst the shambles of Medved’s capital raising, bankers and moneymen scurrying for the exits, the stench of bad publicity starting to rise like graveyard fog. He could hear Rania’s voice still. ‘We have done it, Clay,’ she’d said. ‘As soon as the story hits the papers, Rex Medved is finished. Leave it now, please chéri.’ She’d pleaded with him. Africa, she’d said. Time to start something new, together.

  And he’d tried. Tried as hard as he’d ever tried at anything in his life. But the pull was too strong. A black hole of lust. He’d even been given a second chance – how often do you get one of those in the real world? He’d followed Medved out of the ballroom’s back exit, left her standing there among the financiers and speculators, chased him down the corridor to the alleyway behind the hotel. He’d had the gun out. He’d been ready. No, not ready. Ravenous. Ten days in the Highveldt without food, baying at the smell of blood. But by the time he’d reached the alleyway, Medved was gone, just the tail lights of his chauffer-driven Mercedes disappearing around the corner. And then that impossible second chance.