by Tim Weaver
He released his grip ever so slightly, and leaned in closer to my ear.
‘What did you say?’
‘You think it’s a mission from God.’
‘I think?’
I felt him shift his weight. He was pinning me down with one hand and reaching for something else.
‘You know, David, I’m not a fan of politics. All it’s ended up teaching me is that power corrupts. You give weak men absolute power and you only breed more weakness.’
Prickles of fear rippled across my skin. My heart felt like it was swelling up. He’d given up asking me questions. We’d got to the end of the line.
‘Wait,’ I said.
‘But something sticks in my mind. Something Josef Stalin once said. I don’t admire the man – I just happen to agree with his sentiments.’
‘Wait a minute, I haven’t told you everything I–’
‘Do you know what he said, David? He said: “Death solves all problems – no man, no problem.”’
I heard a beep and then a ringing sound. He was using a phone.
‘Zack, it’s me. You can take him now.’ A pause. Silence. ‘And make sure you bury him where no one will find him.’
I came to as they pulled me out of a car. It was still dark and freezing cold – probably three or four in the morning. I was dressed only in my jeans and T-shirt. No top. No coat. No shoes.
Someone pushed me against the car and turned me around. It was the black guy from the house in Bristol. He had a knife in his hands. He stabbed it down through the duct tape they’d used to bind my wrists, and pulled my hands apart. I looked around me. We were on a country lane, muddy and black, trees looming overhead on both sides. It was quiet. We must have been miles from the nearest main road.
Behind me, the passenger door opened and closed, and from my left came a second man: Jason, the man I’d chased at the apartment in Eagle Heights. He moved around to the front of the car, a gun in one hand, a torch in the other, and zipped his coat up to his chin. He looked at me. A half-smile broke out on his face, as if he’d figured out what I was thinking: They’re going to kill me, and no one’s ever going to find my body.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I said to them.
Jason pulled me away from the car and along the path. I shuffled forward, pain in my legs, staring ahead into the darkness. When I looked at the ground in front
I’d always wanted to be close to her when it happened; to be thinking of her at the end. I’d thought about my own mortality a lot since she’d died, and I wasn’t scared of facing it down. But here, a hundred miles from the pictures I had of her, the memories, the reminders of what she once was to me, I realized – as she must have done – that all I would feel at the end was pain.
Suddenly, we veered off the path, into the woodland on the right-hand side. Jason’s hand tightened around my arm as the ground gently started to rise, sloping upwards through snow-covered undergrowth. I looked back over my shoulder at him.
‘Why do you have to do this?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
Behind him the guy from the house was scanning the woodland. His torch was sweeping from side to side, illuminating a dense clutch of trees to his right.
‘Jason,’ he said from behind me. ‘Wait a sec.’
Jason told me to stop, and then looked back at his partner. Further up the slope, deeper into the forest, moonlight carved down through irregular gaps in the canopy, forming pale tubes of light. Where it couldn’t penetrate the foliage, the woods were black as oil. Between my toes I could feel grass, and hard, uneven ground – the sort of ground you could break an ankle running across.
Jason was closer to the other guy now, whispering. It was incredibly still; so still their voices carried across the night: ‘You know what he told us. Take him to the usual spot. Come on, Zack, you know how it plays out.’
The black guy was Zack.
‘This is a better spot,’ Zack said.
‘It’s right on the fucking road.’
‘Look how dense it is there.’
‘Who gives a shit?’ Jason said, his voice rising. Then he quietened again as Zack stared at him in silence. Zack was the senior partner. Jason nodded his apology and leaned in closer. ‘All I’m saying is, I don’t really wanna piss him off. He told us to take him up to the top and do it there. That’s where we put the others.’
The others. There were more like me. More that had got too close. My heart tightened and a feeling of dread snaked along my back and down my legs: the anticipation of being put in the ground, of lying there in the freezing cold praying the end would come. I turned to face the darkness in front of me.
Run.
My face burnt, even in the cold.
You have to run.
I looked up the slope, then back to them.
They were still talking. Jason was gripping the gun tightly, his finger moving at the trigger. Zack glanced at me, his eyes narrowing, as if he sensed I might be on the cusp of doing something stupid.
Run.
Watching me die in the snow.
Do it now.
I looked back once more – right into Zack’s eyes.
And then I made a break for it.
I almost fell before I’d started, my toes grazing a tree stump. But then I was away, pushing through the darkness, heading for a pool of light about twenty yards up the slope.
‘Hey!’ Zack’s voice. It echoed after me, suppressed by the canopy of the trees, bouncing off the bark. Then I heard him say, ‘I’ll take the road.’
Something punctured the underside of my foot – a stone, maybe even a sliver of glass – but I didn’t stop. I tried to make my strides as long as possible, tried to swallow up as much ground as I could. Huge trees lurched out of the night and knocked me off balance. I arced further right, deeper into the forest. Then I finally stole a look behind me: Jason was about forty feet further down – concentrating on where his feet were landing – but he looked up, once. Our eyes met. He lifted the gun and lost his footing, adjusting himself almost instantly. He was quick and fit. Used to running. I knew that from before. He was probably closing on me already.
I stopped and dropped to the floor.
All I could hear was blood being pumped around my body, a thumping baseline so loud it felt like it was echoing through the forest.
Something cracked to my right, as I faced up the hill. I turned, narrowed my eyes, willing myself to see into the darkness. They’d both had torches – but they’d both switched them off. There was no light close to me now, and I realized, in some ways, that was worse: they knew this area. They knew the hiding places, the holes. They could be right on top of me and I wouldn’t even see them.
I reached down, slowly, and felt around for something to use as a weapon. The ground was covered in a layer of snow, hard and crystallized, and all I could feel were thick tangles of thorn bushes. In the silence, I started to notice the pain in my feet: it felt like there
My heart was punching against my skin so hard – so fast – it felt like it was about to explode. Another flash of pale blue. Moving up the slope, but maintaining the same distance from me. No sound came with it – not even the faintest crunch of snow. He was lithe and quick, every foot landing where it was supposed to. More blood broke free of my hairline; this time it ran down the centre of my forehead, over the bridge of my nose and down to the corner of my mouth.
Then I made him out against the night.
He was about ten feet to my right, up the slope from me, coming around the edges of the thorns. The jacket had been a bad idea. If he’d taken it off, he could have been standing next to me and I wouldn’t have even seen him. But, instead, the jacket was reflecting back what little light there was. He turned where he was, then swung back round in my direction, the gun out in front of him, and stared straight at me. I gazed back, looking at him, frozen to the spot. But then his head swivelled to face further up the slope, and he took a step up.
I could wait him o
ut, wait for him to pass and move further up into the forest. Then I could make a break for it, back in the direction of the bottom road. But
Either way you don’t know where the fuck you are.
Whether Zack was close or not, I’d still be running blind. The best I could hope for would be to get back to the car and head down the road the way we’d come in. Eventually it would lead somewhere.
I turned as quietly and slowly as I could and saw Jason continuing to climb. He was about fifteen feet up, at a diagonal from me, but slowly coming back around in my direction. He stopped. Looked down the slope again. Then something flashed – a blue light – and I saw him take a mobile phone out. He had it on silent. He looked at the screen, then back towards my spot. They were communicating by text now. I glanced back in the other direction. Had Zack spotted me? Was he telling Jason where I was?
Jason’s eyes were fixed on my position now, the gun in one hand, the phone in the other. I held my breath as he took a step closer. Then another. Coming down the slope towards my position.
He can see me.
He can really see me.
He edged even closer, padding across the forest floor, until he was about three feet from me, looking across the tangle of bushes I was hiding in. The gun drifted across my face.
He gazed across the top of my head, his eyes fixed on something beyond, and then raised a hand and pointed at himself. He was signalling.
Zack.
Jason was in front of me, up the slope.
Zack was behind, below.
Surrounded.
Jason scanned the forest, left, right, into the darkness of what was around him. He didn’t move, just stood there, listening to the sounds: the movement of the leaves, the creaking of the earth, the faint drip, drip, drip of water. A thought came back to me then of my dad, standing in the middle of the woods close to the farm, doing exactly the same thing. Dad had been an amateur tracker. He listened to the noises, took in the smells, knew what footprint belonged to what animal. But Jason was the real thing: confident enough to separate the sounds of nature from the sounds of what had encroached upon it. He knew I was close by. I couldn’t have got clear of him in the time available to me. He knew that. Now it was just a question of pinpointing my position.
A waiting game.
He’s in this area somewhere. He’d seen me go into the undergrowth and hadn’t seen me come back out. The undergrowth was thick and wild, but I hadn’t lost them. I wouldn’t lose them now. They were sure I was here – and they’d only leave again with my body.
Do something.
Slowly – so slowly it was hardly even a movement – I guided my hand to the ground and felt around again, my palm flat to the floor. Immediately around me there was nothing: just soft mud and hard snow. Zack took a step forward. I reached further out into the undergrowth, and my fingers brushed something. Rocks. There was a pile of them but only a couple felt big enough. One was larger than the other. I picked it up and brought it into me, then did the same with the second. My sleeve brushed against a branch, but the sound didn’t carry and neither of them registered it.
I wrapped my hand around the smaller one.
Steadied myself.
Waited.
Then, slowly, I opened up my body and threw the stone as hard and as far as I could to my left. It hit the forest floor with a thud, snow spitting up, brambles crackling.
The two of them spun around. Zack was quicker off the mark, moving forward, and around the thorns, towards the noise, gun primed. Jason seemed more reticent – as if he knew it might be a trick – but followed at a distance, walking rather than running. I gripped the thicker stone, and moved on to my haunches. The hardest, sharpest end poked out the top of my hands. Jason was about six feet away from me now, the gun still at his side. In his face I could see he hadn’t been fooled by the diversion at all.
Do it now.
I squeezed the stone and sprang at him. He half-turned towards me, his eyes widening as I jabbed the stone’s point into the top of his head. It made a hollow, splitting sound, like a punctured watermelon. His blood speckled against my face, his eyes rolled up into his head, and then he fell forward, hitting the ground almost silently.
I dropped to my knees next to him. There was blood all over his jacket. When I leaned in a little closer, I realized he wasn’t breathing.
I’d killed him.
A shot rang out and a puff of bark flew from a tree about a foot to my left. I fell flat to the floor and tried to pick Zack out against the darkness. Next to me,
I headed right, around the thorns, and down towards the road, parallel to the way we’d climbed. A second shot rang out, shattering the silence. I kept running. A tree loomed out of the dark and I grazed my arm against the bark, my body swerving too late to avoid it. An ache shot up through my muscles, into my shoulder. I pushed it down with the rest of the pain, and carried on running.
A third shot, then a fourth. A fifth narrowly missed me, hitting a tree as I passed it. My lungs felt like they were squeezing shut. I knew I was losing ground. I knew I was slowing down. I couldn’t keep this pace up – my feet were torn to shreds and there was still no sign of the road. I wasn’t even sure I was heading in the right direction.
Then I fell.
My left foot clipped the grasping arm of a tree root. I tumbled head first, hitting the ground hard. Collapsed on to my front and cried out in pain. It felt like I had broken my arm.
Looking up, I could see Zack, about twenty feet away to my left. He hadn’t spotted me yet, but he’d heard me and he was heading in my direction. I looked around. The gun was wedged against the bottom of an oak tree, its gnarled bark closed around the weapon. I scrambled to my feet and reached for the gun, pulling
I fired twice.
He jolted sideways. The first bullet went through his shoulder, the second hit him in the chest – then he stumbled, his feet giving way, and hit the ground. His gun tumbled away from him, making a metallic clang as it bounced across the frozen mud.
When my eyes snapped back to him, Zack was looking at me, blood oozing out of his chest. In his eyes I could see an acceptance. That sooner or later, whatever he was involved in was going to catch up with him. He blinked once, twice, and then his eyes started to lose some of their shine. He didn’t blink again.
Zack had the car keys in his pocket. I took them out and headed back down to the road. The sky was starting to lighten a little, turning from black into grey, and grey into green. By the time I found my way back to their car, the green had finally become blue.
As I got in, I realized it was a week since Mary had first entered my office.
I was still barefoot. I looked in the mirror and saw I had a thin, deep gash right on the hairline where Zack had clocked me with the gun at the house. My face was bruised and battered, streaked purple and blue, and one of my eyes had started to close. My shoulder wasn’t broken, nor was my arm, but they both hurt right down to the bone. And I could see a knuckle imprint, close to one of my ears, where the man in
I sat still for a moment and composed myself. Studied my reflection.
Who are you?
I wasn’t the same man who had worked that first missing persons case. I wasn’t even the same man who had woken up the day before. I’d killed twice. I knew that changed me; a part of me knew it changed everything. Suddenly, I was capable of ending a life; of looking into another man’s eyes and, for a split second, losing enough control to pull the trigger. Somewhere buried beneath the surface I’d discovered a man I knew nothing of.
A man who knew nothing of order.
I wondered, for a moment, what Derryn would have made of what I’d done. Would she still have trusted me? Would she still have wanted to lie next to me in our bed? Would she have been able to feel a change in me, a sudden barrier between us, as if there were two men now – the one she had always known, and the one she didn’t recognize.
I started up the car and turned on the heaters.
&nbs
p; As air pumped into my face, I realized the thing she’d probably have been most scared of was that I felt so little for what I’d done. I’d killed, but I wasn’t a killer. I’d done what I’d needed to do in order to come out of those woods alive. I didn’t want to have to do it again, but I knew, in some part of me, if I had to, I would. They’d come for me, and when they did, I’d
This was about survival.
I looked at the clock. 7.49. They all thought I was dead now, so I had to use that. We must have been gone a couple of hours, and burying a body would take another couple on top of that. That gave me two, three hours tops before they realized Zack and Jason weren’t coming back.
The place where I was supposed to have died wasn’t on the map they had in the car. But when I finally pulled up at the main road, four miles down a winding gravel path, I saw we were about twenty miles from Bristol, in the middle of the Mendips.
In the glove compartment there was a phone, empty like the last one of theirs I’d found. No names in it. No recent calls. I sat there for a moment, deciding what to do next, then used the phone to dial into my answerphone at home. I had one message. It was John Cary. He’d rung the previous day, at five o’clock in the evening.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. ‘Call me.’ He left a number. There was a pen in one of the side pockets on the door. I took it out and scrawled his number on the back of my hand, then called him. He answered after two rings.
‘John, it’s David Raker.’
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ he said. He sounded annoyed. ‘You ever answer your phone?’
‘I’ve been…’ I paused.
Should I tell him?
The truth was, I could use some help. I could use some protection too. But I’d just left two dead bodies
‘I’ve been busy,’ I said finally.
‘Yeah, well, that makes two of us. Let me transfer you.’ I waited. Two clicks and he was back on, whispering this time. ‘I got your stuff back from the lab. If you get anything out of this, that’s great. You take it as far as you want. But whatever you choose to do with it, I don’t want to be kept informed. Understood?’
