Breaking Bad: 14 Tales of Lawless Love

by Koko Brown

  “Why do you think I’m going to give a shit what happens to this girl? As if I gave a shit about any of the others?”

  “Because, you stupid cunt, she’s one of the ones you handed over to Nicodeme.”

  That caught her off guard. Enough that the blank expression that glassed over her eyes allowed Atarah to leap for the gun. The shot brushed past her cheek and burned her ear with volcanic heat.

  “RUN!” she screamed at Saoirse, struggling with the gun gripped in Sybilla’s hands. “Let go,” Atarah hissed. “It’s over, so just let go!”

  “Get off me!” Sybilla roared. “I’ll kill her!”

  Atarah drove her knee into Sybilla’s ribs and the other woman heaved and gagged with pain. “Saoirse, run!”

  The girl didn’t. Instead, with tears streaming down her face, she drove her fingernails into Sybilla’s eyes. Sybilla wailed in agony and slumped in a faint, under Atarah’s barely-covered body.

  Saoirse looked up at Atarah. “Are you angry? She was going to hurt you.”

  Atarah rolled away from Sybilla and gathered Saoirse into her arms, taking off at a run. She wasn’t going to wait for her to wake up, to threaten them with another weapon. Priority had to be Saoirse. She ran back to the ward, her gown streaming behind her, Saoirse’s tears wet on her skin, the slippers lost in the struggle with Sybilla.

  She ran straight into Lonán.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered, running his hands over both of them, checking for injuries.

  “Sybilla…” Atarah could barely choke out the name. “She’s here, she’s back there. She took Saoirse, she put a gun to her head.” She started to cry at the very thought of Sybilla unloading a bullet into Saoirse’s sweet, sweet, loving head. “She put a gun to her head. Oh, my God…I’m getting the police.”

  A calm radiated from Lonán and he said in a low, even-toned voice, “Go back to your bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “What?” Atarah burst out. “What do you mean? You’re coming too!”

  “Go back to your bed,” he repeated, touching his mouth to Atarah’s cheek, then Saoirse’s next. “I’ll be with you in a minute. In the parking area, yes?”

  She nodded slowly and realised that there was nothing she could say to change his mind about what he would do. Atarah had already taken one bold revenge from his hands. It wasn’t her place to take another.

  Not putting Saoirse down, Atarah paced up the stairs back to the ward and padded back into her bed. She didn’t let Saoirse go, she simply lay in the bed and pulled up the sheets over them both.

  “Do you think Dada is making the bad lady say sorry?” Saoirse asked, tucking her face in Atarah’s neck.

  “Manners are very important,” Atarah replied after clearing her throat. “Remember that, okay?”

  “Okay, Rae. Rae?”

  “Yes, sweet pea?”

  “I don’t mind if that’s not your real name.”

  “It is my name,” she said, honesty blazing through her sore throat. “Because that’s what you call me. All right?”

  “Okay. Can we go back to the cottage, please? London is just too scary.”

  “I know, I completely agree with you.”

  Lonán nudged Sybilla awake with a toe in her ribs. “Come on, Syb. Time to open your eyes.”

  The older woman groaned, turning onto her side and pressing the heel of her hands into her eyes. “I’m blind. Your fucking kid blinded me.”

  “Self-defence was high on the list after your sicko of a friend abused her,” he reminded his former boss. “Gael and I had a little chat. He told me that he never gave the go-ahead for Nicodeme to take my daughter. He said that was all you. And just as he took his last breath, he blamed you for everything that had ever gone wrong.”

  Sybilla turned towards him, blinking rapidly at him. “Breathed his…what?”

  “Yeah, I had to make sure that no one else was going to come after Atarah. She, I, and Saoirse are going to have a good life together. That can’t happen if you’re living. You or your husband.”

  “Listen to me, Lonán, please, just listen to me. I can get you anything you want! What about your wife? I can get her out!”

  “You think I give a shit about the woman who pimped out my nine-year-old child for money? To save her own skin? Atarah didn’t give birth to Saoirse and she’s protected her as if she carried her.” Lonán kneeled next to her, watching the protective water clear from her eyeballs. “You have nothing to bribe me with. Nothing to offer me that I would accept that is less than your death.”

  He reached across her and checked the cartridges in her gun. “Plenty. But we’ll only need one, won’t we?”

  He caught her hand and wrapped it around the barrel.

  “No, Lonán,” she begged, “please don’t! I’m sorry! Please, I’ll do—”

  The shot exploded in the echoing garage, her blood spraying over the concrete.

  Straightening, Lonán removed the white doctor’s robe and threw it into the industrial waste, where the needles were kept and no one would sift through. The same with the protective coverings on his shoes and the gloves he wore.

  Quickly he headed back to Atarah’s bed. He sat next to her, and watched as police rushed past and headed for the garage. Atarah lifted the sheet from over her head and caught his gaze. Without saying a single word, she reached over Saoirse and held out her hand. He wrapped his fingers tightly around hers and gave a single sharp nod.

  For the first time in a long time, Lonán felt at peace.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Seeing Chambers’ body splayed in the parking garage of a hospital utterly depressed him. What a sad ending for a woman he had, in all honesty, admired. Deeply admired. And what had she sacrificed herself for? Money. Notoriety. He suspected that she had killed Gael to keep him silent, but that would mean someone bigger, badder, uglier had killed her. The problem with traffickers happened to be their Greek-myth-like ability to supplant each other. His job would now be to make sure that there were no other crims masquerading as coppers. At the very least, the SI would go through them all like diarrhoea.

  Leaving the forensic team to take their swabs and make their assessment, he headed to the ward where Atarah had been recovering. Once the body had been discovered, no hospital personnel or visitors had been allowed to leave the grounds. Everyone had to be spoken to, and CCTV in the hospital checked.

  Atarah sat up in her hospital bed, a young, red-headed girl wrapped around her like a scarf. A man with matching hair, and his hand tucked into Atarah’s sat next to her. They looked instantly like a family and Xiu’s heart sank at the very idea. He’d lost her. Or had he even ever really had her?

  He approached her bed warily. “Can I have a word?” Xiu asked, tucking his hands into his pockets. The little girl shook her head, squeezing Atarah more tightly.

  “No,” she grumbled. “Dada, tell him I said no.”

  “Sweet pea, you have to give me a minute. This is my friend,” Atarah confided, pointing at Xiu, touching her mouth to the girl’s head. “You know I wouldn’t have met you without him.”

  The first cut is the deepest, he thought, stepping aside as Lonán got to his feet and pulled his child from Atarah’s bed.

  “Come on, princess, let’s go and get you a hot chocolate.”

  Lonán sent him a strange, almost possessive warning look.

  Xiu sat down in the spot vacated by Lonán and watched her. She looked a thousand miles from the blank-faced woman who mutilated a dead body, even the woman who’d met him in North London two weeks ago. Obviously, it was the relief of having her terrorist caught, and moreover, dead.

  “I know I’m taking up NHS resources, but they won’t let me go until someone’s taken a statement from me. They’ve taken one from Lonán and Saoirse.” She nodded in the direction of her substitute family. “Have you really never met them?”

  Xiu shook his head. “Nope. ’Fraid I never had the pleasure.”

  She seemed to take offence to th
e words and sat back in the bed, against the pillows, increasing her distance from him. “What do you want to know? I thought you’d really have more to tell me?”

  “I scared the beejesus out of Chambers, then she came here and met her doom. Do you know who that was?”

  She shook her head, looking down at her palms. They were full of cuts and bruises. “I didn’t even know she was here.”

  Xiu immediately knew she was lying. The entire time he’d known her and nothing rang as untruthful as that statement. “Yes, you did, Atarah. What did she say to you?”

  She bit down on her bottom lip. “This is off the record. Any record. I tell you and you forget everything I told you, okay?”

  “I’ve kept your secrets for as long as I have. Even when threatened with arrest and death. I’ve protected you all this time. You owe me.”

  She exhaled heavily, tucking her hair behind her ears. He saw the stitches on her left ear and linked it to Chambers.

  “Lonán used to work for Sybilla and Gael. One day he didn’t do what he was supposed to do for them, and he and his wife were threatened with worse than what you were threatened with. Lonán looked to escaping abroad. Lonán’s wife, Saoirse’s mother, had other ideas. She handed over her own child to Nicodeme for a few hours as punishment. Your boss, Chambers, neat hair, neat nails well-dressed, well-decorated Chambers used a then-eight-year-old child as currency. Just like she allowed Nicodeme to do to Wen. Except Wen’s a boy. And that was my mistake. I very nearly paid for that.

  “So Lonán isn’t happy with me for bringing this all back to his cottage life, easing his traumatised daughter into normal life, and he’s even more unhappy with the fact that I decided without consulting him—trust me I know how this sounds—to get rid of Nicodeme, the man who abused his daughter. So Sybilla…Chambers, whatever the fuck, I don’t know what to call her. Who is really, really angry with me. After all, this is entirely my fault. She puts a gun to Saoirse’s head. After everything that poor girl has been through, after everything Sybilla put her through and forced her to endure, she puts a gun to her head? I, er…”

  Xiu understood. A motherly instinct had kicked in and she’d killed Sybilla to protect that little girl. She tucked her tongue into her cheek and forced tears back by blinking.

  He reached over and gripped her hands. “It’s all right. I understand. You know Gael’s dead as well, right?”

  Atarah wriggled out of his grasp, and tucked her hands beneath her thighs instead. She didn’t even make eye contact. He supposed killing once in self-defence was understandable. Twice looked like the commencement of a career. “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Did she tell you?”

  “She probably did it,” Atarah shrugged. “Self-preservation is the name of the game for bitches like her. What did she do to you? Lock you up for a few hours?”

  The anger in her tone shamed him. Compared to what she’d endured, it seemed tame to even recall it. Atarah leaned back and wiped the tips of her fingers beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. You’ve been a fucking rock, Xiu.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you,” he admitted, clearing his throat and staring down at his feet instead of at her bruised and battered face.

  “Your SI will want to come and debrief me, although you really do need to check that there isn’t anyone else connected to or benefiting from the Chambers/Sybilla regime.”

  He nodded in quiet understanding before he ventured, “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  She froze. “Tell you what?”

  “About…you know what…your work. I could have helped you better.”

  “How could I?” she asked, gesturing to his form. “I knew there was something going on within your station, but I didn’t know who to trust.”

  “Fucking me didn’t count, did it?”

  Atarah looked away. “I knew you would take it there. But sleeping with you didn’t mean I was safe with you.”

  “Even after Nicodeme? Really?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say it. But I thought you knew. Things you’d say or the way you’d stop whenever I said something that sounded remotely like a copper…it was like you knew. And it never seemed a good time to tell you. I didn’t know what planet I was on after Nicodeme, and then with everything else…I had to think, I made a choice as to what was important and it was bringing Sybilla and Gael down. Not pulling me out of a life I’d been living for the better part of two years.”

  “You don’t fuck people and not say, Atarah, you know that, we all know that!” he hissed, enraged with her, how she’d fooled him. How she’d been so honest with someone else. A someone else who wasn’t him. Why not him?

  “I know, I know!”

  “You don’t fool people like that, it’s not the job, it is never the job to use that to get someone into bed.”

  “Hey, I didn’t. I never did that! Me and you were always mutual. It was never about what I did, being some sort of trafficker as you’d be just as culpable as me. If I really did what I did, then you did some pretty fucking questionable things with me and for me. You know that.”

  “Okay. Okay…” He held up his hands in surrender.

  “Don’t be angry with me,” she begged. “You can’t be. We’ve cleared out two of the worst people to have ever lived in this city. Maybe someone else will replace them, but at the very least, you’ve got a lead to clear out the department.”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. You.”

  “Don’t you think you should help?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I should. It’s not my place, Xiu. It can’t ever be my place to do that anymore. Not after my minor body count. I told Lonán the same thing. I won’t be able to go back to policing.”

  “I think that’s the wrong choice,” he ventured, his throat dry from holding back his anger and disappointment. “We need you.”

  “You really don’t. I’m too emotional. I got in too deep. I can’t control my emotions…look what happened with us.”

  “That’s because of the nature of what you did. Going under isn’t an easy task. It doesn’t mean leave the force.”

  “There’s a strong possibility that I’ll be prosecuted for Nicodeme’s death. And probably Chambers as well…”

  He shook his head firmly. “No. Armed response will take that one. The Met won’t have it publicly acknowledged that an undercover officer killed a senior member of our policing force. It won’t ever happen.” He touched a hand to her knee. “I won’t let that happen, and the SI fucking owes you.”

  “All this owing,” Atarah murmured. “When do any of us get paid?”

  “With honours. And not abandoning this now.”

  She sighed. “You know, me and Lonán want to go back south. To Henley. Hire out the cottage again. Get Saoirse into one of those private schools where she can go riding and be safe and happy. She’s the sweetest little girl, Xiu.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “Mate, I speak three different languages, I will find something to do,” she said with a tearful laugh. “This job isn’t my life. It never should have been. I’m sorry, Xiu.”

  “What for?”

  She shrugged, but he knew what she wanted to say. He couldn’t let her say it. The pain of it was far too great.

  “If you need anything, at all, let me know. You know where to find me.” He got to his feet and left her ward. He’d speak to her again. See her another time.

  For now, he desperately wanted to forget he’d ever met her.

  Alan placed the coffee in front of Xiu, and clapped him on the back. “What a story, eh?” he said with a laugh. “How much money did your boss have hidden away?”

  Xiu blew on the surface of the steaming mug to cool it before taking a large, burning gulp. “Millions. Shannon’s done some incredible work. Traced all the accounts. Traced the others that Pollard squirrelled away. And some other coppers. We’ve weeded out quite a few and they’r
e all going on trial. If they make it to trial. You know what prisoners do to us when they find out what we are…”

  The commander took plenty of the credit for the success of the coup and Xiu was more than happy to take a back seat. It meant less questions for him and Andrews, and more importantly, Shannon. The three of them headed a task force to collate all the evidence on what was now called Operation Stingray.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Well, I could really do with a statement to support Wen’s case. It’s still being considered by the Home Office, fucking lazy bastards that they are.”

  “Yeah, of course. How is he?”

  Alan sat back in his huge leather chair. “He’s doing well. He’s in touch with his social worker every week and he’s going to school. He’s a good lad. Talks about you and the lady with the big hair all the time.”

  Xiu smiled, feeling pained at the barest mention of Atarah. “I’ll visit him really soon. When do you need the statement by?”

  “ASAP. Lady with the big hair made her statement to the CPS available last week. It would be good to have both ready.”

  Xiu jerked, taken aback by how swiftly Atarah had got involved and extricated herself. Just like she did with you… “When did she get in touch?”

  “She didn’t. I asked your SI, and he asked her and she didn’t have a single objection. Are they going to prosecute?”

  Xiu shook his head. “No chance. You’d never get another copper going undercover otherwise. She did what she had to, to protect that little boy who was illegally brought into this country by a terrible man and an even worse police officer. She’d get off anyway,” he said with absolute certainty. “She’s leggy, gorgeous, and a protector of sweet children. I think her little girl would fight any jury with her bare hands.”

  Alan frowned. “Her little girl?”

  “Her partner’s daughter.” God, how that stuck in the throat, and yet he had accepted it. Mostly. Almost. Close to it.

  “Fair enough. What are you doing with yourself?”