by Kevin Brooks
‘Not really,’ I said, glancing through the window, checking the main entrance. ‘But I think we’d better get going.’
She started the car. ‘Where to?’
‘Let’s just get out of here first.’
We drove in silence for a while – away from the hospital, back towards town – and although I kept a close eye on the road behind us, trying to make sure we weren’t being followed, I didn’t have much faith in my abilities any more. I’d got Cal mixed up in all this, and I hadn’t managed to look after him, and now – because of me – Bridget was involved. And if I couldn’t make sure that Cal didn’t get hurt …
‘What’s on your mind, John?’ Bridget asked quietly.
I looked at her. ‘I think we need to stay in a hotel tonight.’
‘What about Walter? Hotels don’t take dogs, do they?’
‘Oh, yeah …’ I turned round and patted Walter. ‘Sorry, Walt,’ I told him. ‘I forgot about you.’
He wagged his tail.
I turned back to Bridget. ‘Can you stay at Sarah’s?’
She nodded. ‘She’d be happy to put all of us up. She’s got plenty of room –’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not putting anyone else at risk. I’ll find a hotel, you and Walter go to Sarah’s –’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m staying with you, John.’
I looked at her. ‘Bishop and his brother are looking for me … maybe not together, but they’re both after me. And if they find me with you … well, the least Mick Bishop’s going to do is cause you all kinds of shit. But Ray Bishop …’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t let him get anywhere near you, Bridget.’
‘All right, but you can’t just keep running away from him either, can you? You have to do something about him, tell someone what he’s done. He needs locking up.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I’m working on it. I just need to think things through a bit more. And right now I’m too tired to think clearly.’
‘Why don’t we all go back to the flat over the shop?’ Bridget suggested. ‘It should be safe enough there, shouldn’t it?’
‘Yeah, maybe …’ I said, thinking about it. ‘Mick Bishop knows that we know each other, but I’d be surprised if he’s actually in contact with his brother at the moment –’
‘So Ray Bishop won’t know about the shop.’
‘Probably not, but Mick will. He’ll have had you checked out as soon as he saw you at the house. He’ll know what you do, where you work, how much money the shop makes –’
‘Yeah, but he won’t know there’s a flat above it, because the flat’s not officially part of the shop.’
‘Isn’t it?’
She shook her head. ‘Sarah set it up like that for tax purposes … I’ve never really understood it. All I know is that, legally, the flat has nothing to do with the shop. So, if you want, we could go back there, get something to eat, get some rest … and you’d have as much time as you need to think things through.’ She smiled at me. ‘What do you think?’
I looked at her. ‘I think that sounds pretty good.’
I told Bridget that I needed to stop off at my office on the way back, so she headed for the old market square and parked the van there.
‘I won’t be long,’ I said to her, unbuckling my seat belt. ‘I just need to pick something up.’
She looked at me. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, if Bishop is after you, he’s bound to have someone watching your office, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, probably …’
‘Do you really need whatever it is you’re picking up?’
I nodded. ‘It’s all right, I know what I’m doing. But if I’m not back in fifteen minutes –’
‘Yeah, I know. I’ll call Leon Mercer.’
‘And –’
‘Keep the doors locked,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘And, yes, I’ll call you if I need you.’
I didn’t see anyone as I walked up Wyre Street towards my office. The street was deserted, the air cold and damp, and the only sound I could hear was the dull slap of my footsteps echoing into the night. But just because I didn’t see anyone, that didn’t mean that I was alone. There were plenty of hiding places along the street – shop doorways, shadowed alleys, piles of rubbish bags, extra-large wheelie bins. For all I knew, there could be dozens of Bishop’s men watching me.
It was an unnerving experience, and as I approached the office building and opened the front door, I kept expecting someone to jump out at me or something … but nothing happened. I went inside, closed the door behind me, took out my penlight, and went upstairs.
The office door was locked. I opened it up, paused for a moment, then went through into the office. I paused again, sweeping the beam of the penlight around the darkened room and listening out for any signs of life … but I neither saw nor heard anything that shouldn’t be there. I crossed over to my private office, opened the door, and made straight for the wall safe. It only took a moment to open it up. I removed the 9mm pistol, checked there was a round in the chamber, clicked off the safety, and put the gun in my pocket.
I saw the two men across the street as soon as I left the building. They were standing in the shadows of a shop doorway, their faces obscured by the darkness, so I couldn’t tell who they were at first. But as I closed the door and stepped down onto the pavement, they both moved out of the shadows and began crossing the street towards me, and as they passed under the sodium-orange glow of a streetlight, I could see their faces quite clearly. The man on the right was about the same age as me. Stocky, dark, wearing a black knitted cap … I’d never seen him before. But I recognised the other one. I remembered his hard-bitten face from the grainy video that Leon Mercer had shown me, and when I glanced down at his hand and saw the silver skull ring on his index finger, I knew I wasn’t mistaken. It was Les Gillard. The man who’d beaten me up, the man who’d beaten Cal to within an inch of his life …
I put my hand in my pocket and took hold of the pistol.
Gillard and the other man had almost reached me now. The other man was looking around as they walked, glancing up and down the street, checking to make sure there were no witnesses, but Gillard was keeping his eyes fixed firmly on me. There was no sense of bravado about him. He wasn’t trying to look hard or scary or threatening, he was simply intent on doing what he was about to do. But whatever his intention was – to arrest me, to hurt me, to kill me – I had no intention of letting it happen.
I waited until both men were about three paces away from me, then I pulled the gun from my pocket, aimed it at Gillard’s left knee, and pulled the trigger.
The sharp crack of the gunshot echoed dully around the empty streets, and I saw Gillard’s leg jerk backwards. He lurched to one side with a strange hopping motion, let out a low pained breath, and fell to the ground clutching his shattered knee.
As he lay there moaning and cursing, the other man stayed where he was, frozen to the spot, his eyes darting frantically between Gillard and me.
‘Hey,’ I said, looking at him.
He stared wide-eyed at me.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Fuck off.’
He hesitated for a moment, glancing down at Gillard again, and then he took off, running as fast as he could up the street.
I waited until he was out of sight, then I put the pistol back in my pocket, stepped around Gillard, and headed back to the van.
30
It was close to midnight when we got to the pet shop. We’d parked the van in a side street, walked round in circles for a while, and by the time we’d cut through a narrow cobbled lane that brought us out onto Market Street, I was fairly sure that we weren’t being followed.
Market Street was quiet.
There was no one around.
As Bridget unlocked the pet-shop door, I kept looking up and down the street, but there was no sign of life anywhere. Away in the distance, I could hear the wail of an ambulance siren. It was getting closer, coming this way, and I guessed it was
heading for Wyre Street.
‘All right?’ Bridget said to me.
I looked at her. She’d unlocked the door and was about to go in.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Let Walter in first.’
She opened the door and let Walter in. We waited a few moments, but Walter didn’t make any noise, and when he padded back to the doorway, picked up a copy of the Gazette from the floor, and stood there with it hanging from his mouth, wagging his tail at us, I reckoned it was safe to go in.
Bridget took the newspaper from his mouth and we went inside. It was dark, but there was enough light coming in from the streetlights outside to see that everything seemed normal – the fish tanks bubbling softly, hamsters scurrying around, mice nibbling quietly on cardboard tubes.
‘Is there a back door?’ I asked Bridget as she locked the door behind us.
‘Yeah, but we never use it. It’s all bolted up.’
‘I’d better check it anyway.’
‘It’s round the back of the storeroom,’ she said. ‘Down that little hallway, on your left.’
I clicked on my penlight and went out through the storeroom into the hallway. The back door was a solid old thing, locked and bolted at the top and bottom, and I could tell from its covering of dusty cobwebs that it hadn’t been opened in years. I went back down the hallway and met Bridget coming into the storeroom.
‘Look at this,’ she said, passing me the Gazette.
A photograph on the front page showed me cracking my elbow into the photographer’s face. Just behind me – in the background, but clearly visible – was Bridget. The headline read STACY’S HUSBAND LASHES OUT, and beneath that, in smaller writing, INJURED PHOTOGRAPHER DROPS CHARGES.
‘Shit,’ I said, beginning to read the story.
‘Is it all right if I put the lights on now?’ Bridget asked.
‘Yeah, I don’t see why not.’
As she put the light on and started climbing the stairs to the flat, Walter trotted past her and lolloped up to the landing. ‘Come on, John,’ Bridget said. ‘You can read that later. It’s all just newspaper shit anyway.’
She was right, most of the story seemed to be just the same old rehashed rubbish, but that didn’t stop me reading it as I followed her up the stairs. When I got to the third paragraph and saw that the reporter had included both Bridget’s full name and where she worked, I didn’t realise what it meant at first. I wasted precious seconds by stopping on the stairs to read through the paragraph again, angrily shaking my head and cursing under my breath, and only then did it occur to me that if Ray Bishop had read this, he’d not only know about Bridget and me, he’d also know about the pet shop …
I looked up and saw that Bridget had reached the landing and was just about to open the sitting-room door.
‘Bridget!’ I called out. ‘Hold on! Don’t go in …’
But I was too late. She’d already begun opening the door. She paused at the sound of my voice, turning round to look at me, but Walter had already slipped through the gap in the doorway, and even as I called out again – ‘Don’t go into the sitting room!’ – we both heard a startled bark, followed almost immediately by a muffled thump and a short pitiful yelp. Bridget didn’t hesitate, she just barged open the door and went rushing in, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her.
‘Bridget!’ I yelled, pulling the pistol from my pocket as I bounded up the stairs. ‘Bridget!’
I heard another dull thump from inside the room, and then a heavier sound, the sound of a body hitting the floor. And I should have stopped then … I should have stopped running, stopped shouting, stopped raging. I should have stopped to think. But I couldn’t. My mind had gone back in time, to a hot summer’s day seventeen years ago, and I was running up the stairs again, and my heart was pounding, and I was shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Stacy! STACY! STACY!’, and the whole world was humming inside my head as I crossed the landing and crashed through the open door, and there she was …
Bridget.
Not Stacy.
Bridget.
She was lying on the floor, just to the right of the doorway. Her eyes were closed and she was bleeding from the corner of her mouth. A few feet beyond her, Walter was splayed out on his side against the wall. The top of his skull was split open, a bone-white furrow showing through the bloodied fur, and his staring eyes were dull and lifeless.
I saw all this in a timeless moment.
Just before my head exploded.
And then there was nothing.
31
All I could see when I first opened my eyes was a haze of blood-red mist. I wondered for a moment if the blow I’d taken to the back of my head had blinded me, but after a few seconds the mist in my eyes began to clear, and all I could see then was the disarming serenity of Ray Bishop’s face. He was sitting in an armchair in front of me – his legs crossed, his hands joined together in his lap – and I got the feeling that he’d been sitting there for some time, watching me, examining me, studying me. There was no emotion in his slate-grey eyes, just a vague sense of detached curiosity, like a scientist studying a bug.
My vision momentarily blurred again, and when I shook my head to clear the fog, a stabbing pain ripped through the base of my skull. I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut, and when I instinctively reached up to soothe the pain … I realised that I couldn’t move my hand. I opened my eyes and looked down at myself and saw that I was sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair with my arms tied behind my back and my feet bound tightly to the legs of the chair.
I struggled uselessly for a second or two, trying to free my hands and feet, but all that did was send another bolt of pain through my head, making me cry out like a baby.
‘Fuck,’ I whispered, closing my eyes again. ‘Fucking hell …’
‘It’s just a mechanism, John,’ I heard Bishop say.
I forced myself to open my eyes and look at him. ‘What?’
‘Pain,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s just a warning mechanism, an evolutionary development that serves to protect the vessel. Pain lets you know when the vessel has been damaged, or is in danger of being damaged. And then, if necessary, the vessel can shut itself down – or shut down the relevant parts – in order for repairs to be made.’ He shrugged. ‘Personally, I think a system of warning lights would be a lot more efficient. A lot less fun, of course. But who the fuck am I to argue with the evolutionary process?’
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
And, more to the point, the red mist had finally cleared from my eyes now, and I was too busy staring at Bridget to listen to what Bishop was saying. She was sitting on the floor behind him, her hands tied to a heavy brass radiator against the wall. Her jaw was reddened and swollen, her face white with shock, and she was crying – the tears streaming silently down her face. I glanced over at Walter, dead on the floor. The blood on his split-open head was already drying, darkening in the matted fur.
‘Bridget?’ I said, looking over at her. ‘Listen to me … Bridget?’
‘There’s no point,’ Bishop said.
I looked at him. ‘What?’
‘She can’t answer you.’
‘Why not?’
He looked over his shoulder at Bridget. ‘We have an agreement, don’t we, dear?’
Bridget glared back at him, her eyes burning with hatred and fear.
Bishop smiled at her, then turned back to me. ‘As long as she doesn’t make a sound, I don’t go over there and cut out her tongue. That’s our agreement.’ He reached down and picked up a carving knife from a coffee table next to the armchair. ‘And so far it seems to be working very nicely.’
I stared at him, knowing full well that he meant what he said – if Bridget spoke, he would go over there and cut out her tongue. And it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. This man … this middle-aged man sitting calmly in front of me – a picture of banality in a green V-neck jumper, cheap shirt and tie, nylon car coat, an
d beige cotton trousers – this man was a psychopath, a sadist, a stone-cold killer.
‘How did you get in here?’ I said to him.
‘I’m a ghost, John.’ He grinned. ‘I can float through walls.’
‘What do you want?’
‘What do I want?’ he echoed, shrugging again. ‘No more than anyone else … pleasure, felicity, the fulfilment of my needs and desires … food, water, shelter … survival.’
‘What do you want with me?’ I said.
‘You went through my things,’ he replied, carefully placing the carving knife back on the coffee table. ‘My personal things …’ He shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
I noticed now that my pistol was on the coffee table too. And next to it was a short-handled axe, the blade smeared with blood, which I guessed was Walter’s. Also on the table were two mobile phones – mine and Bridget’s – both of them taken apart, the sim cards removed and snapped in half. I glanced quickly around the room, looking for a landline phone. There was one on the wall to my right, but Bishop had taken care of that too – the cables were ripped out and the phone socket smashed.
‘You should have left me alone, John,’ Bishop said.
‘Look,’ I started to say, turning back to him. ‘There’s no need –’
‘You saw what I did to that other whore, didn’t you?’
‘Anna Gerrish?’
He nodded. ‘I liked her, so I went easy on her. If you piss me off, I won’t go easy on that one over there.’ He jerked his head, indicating Bridget. ‘I’ll cut the fuck out of her. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ He cocked his head to one side, looking thoughtfully at me. ‘You know … I’ve never killed a man before.’
‘Just women.’
‘I always think of them as girls, not women … I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just the terminology. I mean, woman is such an ugly word, isn’t it? It brings to mind a sense of age, a sense of dullness and desiccation … do you know what I mean?’ He smiled. ‘A woman just doesn’t taste the same as a girl –’
