The Artisans

by J G Alva

  Using the girl as a shield, he barrelled into the boy…faced with such an event, the boy could do nothing but back up. The girl was beginning to get her wind back, so Sutton threw her at him; the two collapsed on top of each other, and on top of the TV on a stand in the corner. There was a moment where the stand held…and then, under the weight of two adults and the TV, it collapsed, the boy and the girl rolling off it, crying out in pain…and then the TV fell on top of them.

  “Sutton!” Aimee cried out.

  Sutton rushed down the hall toward a nightmare.

  There was a third attacker who favoured knives. One stuck out of the side of Greg’s neck; his hand lay around it as if to pull it out, but he was dead, and there was nothing else he was going to do, ever; blood was rapidly pooling under him on the parquet flooring.

  Knife Boy was busily stabbing Dr Ruminatra, where he had pinned him just inside the front door. Dr Ruminatra’s eyes had that glazed look of deep shock, and seemed to be staring down at his own gutting with disbelief. Toby cowered behind Aimee.

  Before Sutton could get to them, Knife Boy turned away from the doctor and focused his attention on Aimee, running at her with frightening speed. Aimee did the only thing she could do, with what she had to hand: she stuck the arrow that she still held into the boy’s throat. Sutton saw Aimee’s muscles stand out under the skin of her arms as she forced the arrow in as deep as she could push it. But Sutton could have told her that the boy was already dead, despite the warm jetting of blood pumping out of the wound in his neck, and splashing not only the hall but Aimee liberally with blood: the eyes were gone, and his soul – if he had one – was no longer in attendance.

  Aimee released the arrow, pushed the boy away from her and jumped back against the wall. The boy hesitated, as if some last vestige of nerve impulses tried to retain his balance…and then he slipped backward, falling on to the bodies of the doctor and Greg. Aimee looked at Sutton, and her expression was so horrified it was almost comical: her mouth open and pulled down at the corners as if by invisible string; her eyes wide, staring, and as big as dinner plates.

  “S-S-S-Sutton…”

  Sutton ran down the hall, grabbing both Toby’s arm and pulling him to his feet, as well as driving Aimee back. She stumbled over the corpses but didn’t lose her balance.

  “The car,” he said to her.

  “W-w-hat?”

  “Toby,” he said, handing the boy to her. Automatically, she took him. “Get to the car.”

  He gave them both a push, and then turned away from them, moving back into the hall.

  “Sutton?” Aimee said, her voice full of a querulous and most terrible betrayal.

  “I’m right behind you,” he said. “Go.”

  Sutton squatted on the floor next to Greg, mindful not to step in the blood. It was fucking everywhere.

  He began searching his pockets. He found his wallet. Automatically, he put it in his own pocket; they might need the cash.

  From the living room he heard sounds of movement.

  The car keys were in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “I’m sorry, Greg,” he whispered, and then stood up. He didn’t like the man, but he didn’t deserve to go like this. The two in the living room were on their feet and coming. Sutton backed away, and then pulled the front door closed. It wasn’t much – only a few seconds delay, at most – but it might be enough.

  Toby and Aimee were standing on the far side of the People Carrier. Sutton used the fob to turn off the alarm.

  “Get in,” he said to them both as he got into the driver’s side.

  He scanned the driveway for any other visitors.

  He couldn’t see any.

  Aimee helped Toby into the back seat. Sutton heard the car door slam shut.

  The car started first time.

  As he was pulling out, the front door opened, but before he had time to see their faces, he was speeding down the driveway toward the road.

  ◆◆◆

  Sedgemoor Services was reasonably busy, even in the early hours of a Sunday morning. The People Carrier wouldn’t be particularly noticeable amongst the indistinguishable inert metallic lumps of other vehicles, but he parked facing toward the exit just the same.

  The place was hidden from the motorway by foliage. It was an oasis in the dark and lonely night, a beacon of fast food convenience and exorbitant prices, a collection of boxes of various sizes clustered around a glass entryway. A desultory stream of people milling around inside was visible from where they were parked: lonely motorists stretching their legs or relieving their aching bladders.

  Suddenly, Toby started crying.

  It wasn’t desperate, or explosive, or even particularly loud; it was a gentle snuffling. Sutton didn’t know what to say to him, and by her expression in the rear-view mirror neither did Aimee, so the crying continued, a lonely and desolate sound without end. Sutton thought it was best that he got it out.

  It did end, eventually, and then the silence returned once more.

  “What do we do?” Aimee asked.

  A flash of Dr Ruminatra burst on to the cinema screen of Sutton’s mind suddenly, an echo of the event…or an aftershock. Patel. It was terrible that Greg was dead, of course, but he had instigated this war, and his death wasn’t perhaps as unexpected…but the doctor’s was.

  What was Dr Ruminatra’s crime? An age old one, he thought cynically: being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It didn’t make him feel any less sorry for the man though.

  “Get Toby somewhere safe,” he said eventually.

  “Where’s safe?” Aimee replied, cynicism colouring her voice. “Mark was meant to be safe. And they still found us.”

  Sutton wondered if she had put two and two together, and when she next spoke, he realised she had.

  “It has to be the police,” she said.

  He had come to the same conclusion…but he had found that it was sometimes dangerous to assume the obvious.

  “Not necessarily,” he said.

  She was silent a moment.

  “What? Of course it’s got to be them.”

  “Not necessarily,” Sutton repeated.

  “But they were the only ones who knew where we were-“

  “Alfred knew,” he pointed out.

  That stopped Aimee for a moment.

  “No.” She was shaking her head. “Not Alfred.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “I’m sure. Positive.”

  Toby said, “my father always trusted Alfred.”

  Sutton turned to look at him, but the boy’s face was hidden in shadow.

  “Well,” Sutton said, “we can find out if your father was right about him easily enough. Have either of you got any change?”

  ◆◆◆

  “Hello?”

  “Alfred?”

  “Yes. Is this…?”

  “Yes, it’s Sutton Mills.”

  There was silence on the line a moment.

  The phone box was a vandalised piece of shit. Besides smelling faintly of urine, all the glass had been removed, the interior was decorated with stickers for strippers and hot sex phone lines, and the handset looked as if it had been attacked by a drunk with a grudge.

  Aimee and Toby stood just outside of the phone box, looking tired and miserable. Toby’s eyes were at half mast, and he seemed to have slipped back to an earlier oblivious mental state.

  “Yes, Sutton Mills,” Alfred said. Sutton had never met him, but his smoke ravaged voice put Sutton in mind of an eighty year old man on oxygen. “Where’s Greg?”

  “Dead.”

  A shocked pause.

  Eventually, Alfred asked in a subdued voice, “tell me what happened.”

  Sutton related the story to him, his own voice growing leaden under the weight of the unpleasant revelations he had to deliver: three dead, with potentially more violence to come.

  Immediately, Alfred said, “do you suspect the police?”

  Sutton looked at Aimee. She was s
taring at him. She had the face of a young girl in her fright, he thought distractedly.

  “We don’t know who to suspect.”

  Another pause.”

  “Do you suspect me?”

  Ah. So he was reasonably astute. It would save them all time.

  “We don’t know who to suspect,” Sutton repeated.

  “Of course. Then let me offer you some proof. You’re currently at a phone box somewhere in the vicinity of Sedgemoor Services?”

  That woke Sutton up.

  Before he could answer, Alfred continued.

  “You’ve been there for approximately forty minutes.”

  “You’re tracking the car?” Sutton said.

  “Yes.” No hesitation. It was looking good for Alfred’s innocence. But then again, he might be trying to get them to lower their guard; they’d be easier to take if they didn’t suspect him. “I have been since you left Greg’s house.”

  “Alright.”

  “So if I was the betrayer-“

  “Yes, yes, we’d be fighting off kids with machetes right now.” Speaking of which…Sutton turned to scan the car park; there was nobody skulking in the shadows, not that he could see anyway. “So any thoughts on who has been betraying us? Who else knew we were in Mark? Besides the police.”

  “No one here. The only person I told was DCI Kent.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t know who he told. If anyone.”

  “Well. He told Detective Harris and his team. They were coming to get us.”

  “Yes,” Alfred admitted. “You’re right.”

  “Who are the other people on the team? Do you know?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Can you give them to me?”

  “I can, but…what are you planning to do-“

  “Just give them to me.”

  “Very well.” There was some shuffling of paperwork. “Besides Detective Harris, I have a Detective Constable Darren Board and a consultant, a Robert Costar.”

  “Can you spell the names for me please?”

  Alfred did, and Sutton made a mental note.

  “What do you know about them?” Sutton challenged him.

  “Vital statistics, and a credit history,” Alfred admitted. “But I must confess, that side of our operation I entrusted to DCI Kent.”

  “As you would. Hm. Is there any way somebody else could be tracking the car?”

  Alfred sighed.

  “It’s possible…but highly unlikely. My advice to you would be to get rid of the vehicle, either way. Do any of you have mobile phones?”

  “No, they’re back at the house,” he said. “That’s why I’m calling you from a phone box.”

  “Okay. Good. What time do you have?”

  Sutton looked around for a clock, and found one mounted above the glass entrance.

  “It’s thirteen minutes past three,” he said.

  “I can send a car out to you right now, and it would be there within-“

  “Don’t,” Sutton interrupted. “The less people who know where we are, the better. We’ll find our own way.”

  A reluctant pause.

  “Aright. Where are you going to go?”

  Sutton smiled.

  “I don’t think it would be a smart thing to tell you, would it.”

  “No. Probably not. But do you have a place you can go?”

  He had an idea. An old friend, who might be willing to help them out…if they could get there.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good. I’m going to give you my address. My home address.” He read it out, and Sutton committed it to memory. “Do you think you can meet me there in three hours? There’s a small stone porch out front, sort of like an extension. You can’t miss it as you come up to the front of the house. There’s a small exterior light attached to it, that shines on to the path. If it’s OK to come in, I’ll leave it on.”

  “That shows a hearteningly deep level of paranoia.”

  “It is most likely someone in the police, Mr Mills…but let’s not take any unnecessary chances. What do you say? Now – can you be there at six fifteen?”

  Sutton debated.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’d like to get you all somewhere safe. At least until the police operation has come to a reasonable conclusion.”

  “But how effective are they going to be if they’re compromised?”

  “None of my research on the taskforce has turned up anything that might cause me concern. However, in light of recent events, we need to err on the side of caution. Once the bulk of the Cult – and its leader – are in custody, then I think we can safely assume that what influence they have will be nullified.”

  There was something in his voice that nettled Sutton. A pride, or a conceit…or ego, which indicated to Sutton that he – Alfred – did not believe he was at fault in this. Sutton couldn’t deal with that kind of complacency. If he was going to trust him, he’d have to motivate him a bit; shake him up; make him doubt himself, so he would be doubly careful.

  “Alfred?”

  Something in his tone made the other man hesitate.

  “Yes. Sutton.” Unfamiliarity with his first name.

  “Fuck your research.”

  “What? Excuse me, but-“

  “Your incomplete research resulted in the death of Greg Matheson and a kindly doctor by the name of Patel Ruminatra. You fucked up, Alfred. Nobody else. Do you understand?”

  Alfred did not reply. He was either choking on pride…or accepting his guilt. Sutton hoped it was the latter.

  “If we decide to come to you, it will be on our terms,” Sutton continued, his voice calmer. “Now. I’m fully aware your employer is dead, and that you might feel that you don’t owe me the same loyalty. But that would be a mistake. If you fuck me on this, then I will fuck you back. I’ll have to. It’s simply the way it is. And I have your employer’s son with me. And you owe him a debt. Not one you will ever fully be able to repay. So you better tuck in your shirt and start doing your job right, or I’ll find a way to make you pay back that debt. Do you understand what I’m saying? Are the words coming down the phone line and into your ear making any sense to you?”

  There was some harried breathing, and then a forced, “yes.”

  “In three hours, I will be at your address,” Sutton said. “Not Aimee and Toby, just me. And I will decide, based on that meeting, whether to trust you. Only when I’m satisfied will I reveal their location…and you will not get it out of me for any other reason. Ever. Yes? Is that clear?”

  “That is…yes. Clear.”

  “Good.”

  “How…”

  “What?”

  He heard Alfred swallow. He sounded uncertain, upset, rattled; Sutton liked hearing him like that.

  “How is the boy?”

  Sutton looked at Toby.

  “Grieving,” he said finally.

  “Please. The family…I’ve been looking after them for-“

  “You’ve been riding Greg Matheson’s coat tails,” Sutton said. “Well. Now the bill has come due. Do your fucking job, Alfred, and find out who leaked the address to the Cult.”

  Alfred was speaking, but Sutton hung up, slamming the handset down on to its cradle.

  After he released his hold on it, he noticed his hands were shaking.

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 9

  Sutton sat with Aimee at the front of the horse box, propped on a bale of hay, his back to the driver. Each bump in the road gave a corresponding jarring impact to the spine that was more than just unpleasant. Aimee sat beside him, cross legged and holding one of his hands. Toby was lying face down in the hay, asleep; no jarring or rocking seemed to disturb him. Exhausted. Or in shock. Or a bit of both.

  “Are you sure we can trust the driver?” She asked again.

  It was too dim to see her face, and by inference too dim for her to see his, but he smiled anyway.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Explain to me
how you’re sure.”

  He shifted once more, trying to relieve the pressure on his vertebrae.

  “Did you see all the keys on his key ring?”

  Aimee nodded.

  “So?”

  “So the more keys you have, the more responsibilities are piled on you. Trust me, judging by all the keys on his key ring, giving three people a lift to Bristol in a horse box for £200 is the least of his worries.”

  She stared at him in the dark.

  “I’ll never understand you,” she said. “The way you see things…”

  “What?”

  “How do you do it?”

  He tapped out the words on her hand.

  “Observation. Speculation. Interpretation.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  They rolled into a bump, which echoed in his spine.

  Sutton cleared his throat.

  “You’ve never asked before.”

  “I’ve never seen you in action before. It’s always just been kind of this thing…out there somewhere. On the edges.”

  “Okay.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Well.” He paused. “Art is what I do. What I want to do. What I feel most comfortable with. This…it’s not so much different.”

  “Really?” She was openly sceptical.

  “Well. When you paint someone, you don’t just see their face. You can’t; it’s not enough. It’s hair and skin and muscles and bones, all moving together, in tandem…and it’s them, but it’s not all of them. You have to see the way they move, the way they hold themselves. To capture them, you have to learn something about them, about who they are, to give the portrait some life. The quicker you can do that, the better you can be. It’s not all about light and shade.” Sutton looked away when he said, “I got so good at it that I started to use it against people. To find out what they were thinking, what they were hiding…and how to manipulate them into giving it up. For my own ends.”