The Last First Time

by Andrea Bramhall

  He stared up at the windows again, then back at the garage door.

  “Brannon, there’s no way we can know without getting eyeballs on whatever’s in there.” Clare’s voice sounded raspy, a little out of breath. “Dalton, get your team to fall back to the standby positions until the situation has been assessed. Let’s not give anyone an easy target, over.”

  “Roger, ma’am. Left flank falling back, over.”

  “Ma’am, right flank following, over.”

  Kate caught the look Mallam was shooting her as he looked up from his phone. His pursed lips, raised eyebrows, and slow nod spoke of a good impression. She was pleased… Even if he was a smug, untrustworthy bastard, it was still something to impress an MI5 spook, right?

  A police car screeched to a halt at the entrance to the alleyway, and an officer tumbled out with a bag in his arms before it was even still. His boots crunched the snow, and his heavy breathing, puffing in great clouds between his lips, was the only loud sound echoing off the breeze block and steel wall that were the fronts of the garages. Even the wind had stopped speaking to them.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 19

  Kate’s head ached. She lifted her hand to the back of it. The smell of copper, smoke, and something she didn’t recognise filled the air around her, and it took her a moment to realise that there was blood on her hand. And a lump on the back of her head the size of an egg.

  “What the fuck…?” she whispered and licked her lips. They were chapped and cracked, and she could taste blood on her tongue. She fought the desire to shake her head in order to clear it, suspecting that it would cause her more pain than relief if she did.

  She tried to focus on something and make her eyes work properly again. Across the wide alleyway there was a wooden cross-beamed fence delineating the garden at the end of the row of terraced houses. Icicles hung from the wooden beam, and the weak winter sun filtered through the crystalline structure, casting the weakest of rainbows as the prism split the light. The colours seemed to dance on a breeze she hadn’t felt earlier, and she couldn’t help but wonder why she couldn’t hear it. Or feel it cool her skin. All she could see were those two icicles, quaking.

  A tiny bead of meltwater slipped down the side of the frozen column, trembled on the tip, then lost its battle with gravity and plummeted to earth. Kate followed it with her eyes, her head slumped forward just enough to remind her of the pain and nausea she was feeling. Concentration hadn’t worked, so she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  When she opened them again, she wished she hadn’t.

  Rubble and twisted sheet metal were strewn across the expanse of the alleyway. Windows had been blown in on the houses directly opposite Ayeshydi’s unit. As for the unit itself…it was just a space in the row. The lock-ups on either side were half exposed to view, and the cars and junk that had been inside were smouldering or scattered. A piece of paper fluttered in the breeze, and suddenly, as the ringing began to ease, the sounds began to filter back into Kate’s world.

  A car alarm sounded, shrill and persistent.

  A scream. The pain in that voice was evident, but Kate couldn’t have told God himself if it belonged to a man or a woman. There was a level of pain where gender stopped being perceptible. And that poor soul was already there.

  She glanced down at her legs sprawled out in front of her, and she was surprised to find she was sitting on the ground, her back pressed against a brick wall. No bones sticking out anywhere they shouldn’t be, no signs of blood, no pain…besides her head… So far, so good. She lifted her knees and slowly managed to get her feet under herself. Using the wall at her back, she pulled herself up to standing. Dizziness swamped her, and she had to fight the urge to lie back down on the ground and leave…whatever it was that had just happened to…whoever the fuck it should be that dealt with this sort of shit.

  Then she remembered. It was her who dealt with this shit.

  She tucked her chin against her chest and wrangled her nausea into something a little more manageable. Like the desire to puke. Big words just weren’t cutting it for her right now.

  A moan to her left stopped her focusing on her own discomfort and drew her to the plight of those around her instead.

  Again, she wished it hadn’t.

  Suddenly, nausea was like a day at the seaside. With doughnuts and candy floss and donkey rides and fish and chips on the beach when the sun goes down. And it wasn’t anything like what was left of the lock-ups and the back of Diamond Street.

  A shiver ran up her spine as the screaming faltered, took a breath, then began again.

  Gareth Collier lay ten feet away from her, hands clasped over his eyes, and that indistinct wail oozed from his soul as blood welled beneath his fingers.

  She staggered over to him, almost falling over blocks of rubble piled haphazardly around them. When she wrapped her fingers about his wrists, his screaming grew louder.

  “Gareth, it’s me. It’s okay. It’s Kate. You’re okay, you’re okay.” She rubbed a hand over his shoulder and down his upper arm, offering what comfort she could.

  “Kate?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” she said quietly.

  “Kate?” he asked again.

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah, it’s me,” she repeated with much more volume.

  “I can’t see, Kate. I can’t see anything.”

  What the…? “Well, there’s some blood there, Gaz. Move your hands, and let me see what’s going on.”

  “Don’t call me Gaz.” He lifted his hands gingerly from his face.

  Kate swallowed. “Well, we need to find you a decent nickname, then.” Both his eyelids were closed, but blood ran from them like tears.

  “What’s wrong with my name?”

  “Well, it’s not—I don’t know—if you get a nickname, it means people like you. It’s a respect thing. Like positive bullying. We only take the piss out of those we like and respect.”

  “You’re full of shit, Sarge.”

  Maybe, but you’re a lot calmer now, and I’ll take that. “I’m gonna lift your eyelids a bit so I can see, all right?”

  Gareth didn’t agree…but he didn’t disagree either. That was enough for Kate. Slowly she placed a thumb and forefinger of her left hand over his right eye, then used the thumb of her right hand to lift the lid. She could see grit, brick dust, and metal slivers. The white of his eye was bloodshot and blood covered, and she had no idea how extensive the damage to the pupil or the cornea was. But it was pretty fucking clear that it was badly damaged. She’d be surprised if he ever saw anything out of that eye again.

  “Looks like you’ve got a bit of something in it, Gazza mate. Brick dust or something. Can’t really tell in this light.” No way was she going to tell him what she was only guessing at. “The medics’ll wash it out, and we’ll see what they have to say when they get here. I’m gonna take a look at the other one now. Okay?”

  He grunted as she turned her attention to the left eye. The lid looked different to the right. There was more blood and some sort of clear fluid too. She frowned as she positioned her hands to lift the lid.

  Then she turned her head and vomited on the ground beside them, heaving silently as the image of Gareth Collier’s empty eyeball socket seared itself into her brain.

  “Sarge?” Collier whispered. “You okay?”

  She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. He’d probably never see her, or anything else, ever again. She choked back the sob even as the tears fell. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Her voice cracked.

  “You puked. I can smell it.”

  “Yeah, I…erm…I took a knock to the back of the head, kid. Probably a concussion.”

  “You sitting down?”

  She smiled. He wasn’t such a bad guy. She’d dreaded having to work with him after how badly he’d clashed with Tom and the way he’d conducted himself in the various other cases they’d worked together. But, really, he wasn’t such a bad guy. Just immature. �
�Kneeling. I’ll be all right. But, Gareth, your eye’s…well…”

  “It’s okay, Sarge. There was something stuck in that one. A rod, metal or something, and I was stupid. I grabbed it and pulled it out.” He held his hand out palm upwards. “The metal was hot and I dropped it somewhere, but…but…”

  Kate wrapped her arms about his shoulders and leant against him, resting her head next to his. “Help’ll be here soon, I’m sure.” She turned her head just enough to catch sight of the metal spike Gareth had pulled from his own eye. The hot sharp point had severed what she was pretty sure was the optic nerve, and Gareth’s eyeball clung to the shard. Blood and fluid dripped from the rent tissue, weeping its own twisted tears onto the snow. She looked up and spotted those two icicles again, glinting against the light. Kate needed to focus on something innocuous, something benign, if she hoped to keep it together. And she needed to keep it together. She stared at those tiny frozen shards, committed their sparkle and shimmer to memory, and breathed out slowly as she let that image stain the back of her eyelids.

  “Have you called it in?” Gareth’s voice was shaky and broken.

  “Shit. No, I’ve got to—”

  “Go on. I’m not going anywhere.” He patted her arm gently, and she wrapped her hand around his, squeezing his fingers.

  She pushed the button on her airwave set. “Sir, ma’am, this is Brannon at the rear alleyway of Diamond Street, and I’m declaring a major incident, we need help.”

  “Kate, it’s Clare. What the fuck happened out there?”

  “Ma’am, the lock-up… It was rigged to blow. Possibly a remote detonation, because everyone was falling back when it went off. We’ve got multiple casualties. We need paramedics, fire service, and a police cordon, ASAP.”

  “How many casualties, Kate?”

  “I’ll be back, Gareth.” She stood up and started to walk towards the site of the explosion.

  Commander Jack Dalton was on the ground, looking straight up at the sky. His hips and legs were three feet away from the rest of his body. A razor-sharp sheet of metal that had once been the door to Ayeshydi’s lock-up had severed him in two with the force of the blast. Palmer lay face down, in one piece, but not moving. Kate held her fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse. There was none.

  She kept scanning around for people, looking for any that were moving, any that were crying or calling for help. Fortunately there were more of them than those who weren’t. She could see Vinny on his knees, holding a wad of cloth to Mel’s shoulder while she struggled to her feet.

  “Kate?” Clare’s voice was shrill over the radio.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I make it two dead and ten wounded in the alleyway. Unsure of wounded in the houses, but I suspect more. The windows have all been blown in.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Ma’am, can you get hold of Commissioner Collier? He’s…well, Gareth’s…injured.”

  A pause on the line and then she heard ringing from her own personal mobile phone. She answered quickly and just remembered to let go of the button on her airwave handset. Commissioner Collier was Gareth’s father and the reason that young Collier had joined the force to begin with. Throughout his career, Gareth’s driving force had been to make his family proud by getting as far, if not further, up in the ranks than his father had.

  “Critical?” Timmons asked.

  “No, sir, he’ll live. But he’s lost one eye, and the other’s in bad shape. I’ll be very surprised if he’s not blind.”

  “Bloody hell. Where’s Dalton? I’ve been trying to get him on the radio.”

  “Dead, sir. Palmer too. They were closest to the unit when it…when it exploded.”

  “Right. Everything’s on its way, Brannon. I’m getting in my car now. Find out what’s going on in those houses if you can.”

  “Sir.”

  “Wait. Are you hurt?”

  “Knock on the head. I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Right. Be there in five.”

  Kate stepped over bricks and twisted metal until she stood beside Vinny and Mel. “Can you walk, Mel?”

  “Yeah, if this tosser would let me the fuck up.” She scowled at Vinny as he continued to hold a huge wad of something that looked like a coat over Mel’s shoulder.

  He ignored Mel and spoke directly to Kate. “How long until the troops come wading in?”

  “Timmons said five minutes. I suspect less for the ambulances. I need to finish assessing the most critically injured.” She turned and pointed to Gareth. “Any chance you two can move over and sit with Collier?”

  Vinny narrowed his eyes. “Can’t he come over here? I’m not keen on moving Mel. I don’t want this wound to open up more.”

  “He’s…he had shrapnel in an eye. When he pulled it out…” She pointed to her own eye and pulled her hand away quickly.

  “Fuck.” Mel staggered to her feet. “Not leaving the poor bastard on his own.” She stumbled the twenty feet to Gareth’s body, holding the coat over her shoulder as she went. Vinny blanched but followed, and Kate straightened up enough to walk around. She needed to know where to direct the medics when they arrived on scene.

  She lurched forward, her headache making her unsteady as she went, but she put aside the thought that the bodies she was checking for pulses and open wounds were those of colleagues, people she’d been laughing and joking with not half an hour ago. Some she’d known for years, some just a couple of days, but every one of them, she knew. Kate couldn’t think about that, though. She had to put that aside and deal with the task at hand.

  Assessing the scene.

  Using the clothes of the victims to cover the faces of those beyond help, she walked through the alleyway, leaving each victim where they had fallen.

  By the time the first ambulance arrived, she’d found four dead bodies amongst the rubble and identified three that needed immediate attention. She directed the two paramedics to them. It was their call who they worked on first. She knew the third would be unlikely to make it to hospital, but there was little more she could do to help them with that as she was already giving him CPR. Fred Martin. Twenty-eight years old, father of three girls, all under five. The youngest only a few weeks old. Kate couldn’t help but think about that baby and how she was probably going to grow up without any memories of her dad. Kate knew how that felt, and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone. So she pictured her icicles and pounded on his chest harder. He wasn’t going to die just because she didn’t keep his heart pumping, too afraid to break a rib. Ribs would heal. Hearts wouldn’t spontaneously start beating again.

  Kate was entering her third cycle of reps when a pair of strong hands and a green coverall-clad figure pushed her away and took over. She nodded and teetered to the houses, first entering the one directly opposite the lock-up. The door hung off its hinges and glass from the windows crunched under her feet as she called out, “Hello? I’m a police officer. Does anyone need help in here?”

  “Get out!” a man shouted, a thick Eastern European accent colouring his words. “Your fault! You!” He cradled a crying young girl in his arms, blood pouring from a gash in her belly.

  Kate looked about the room and spotted the table in the middle of what looked to be a kitchen-cum-dining-room. She swept her arm across the surface, clearing it in one swipe. “Put her on here,” she demanded, staring at him until he did. She grabbed a fist full of dishtowels from a hook where they hung and pressed them to the girl’s belly, catching a glimpse of her intestines and the stench of sewage that could only mean part of the intestine was open. “Find me more towels.”

  The girl cried and wriggled as Kate pressed hard against the deep wound. “Hurts.”

  “I know, honey, I know. I’m sorry. But we’ll get you some help now. One of those nice ambulance men is going to get you to the hospital, and they’ll make this all better, okay?”

  The girl nodded, and her father stepped back into the room, his arms full of heavy cl
oth. Kate nodded and grabbed a handful of fabric, discarded the claret-stained dishcloth, and replaced it in one seamless motion.

  Kate looked the man in the eye. “There are paramedics outside. Tell them you have a child with a gut wound and a perforated intestine visible. Tell them she needs immediate evac.”

  He nodded but didn’t move.

  “Now! Go!” Kate screamed at him.

  He jumped and tore out of the door. When she looked back at the girl, she was almost glad to see she’d passed out. She checked for a pulse and found it, weak and thready and growing fainter by the second. But for now, it was still there.

  She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. Not even as old as Sammy. Kate shook her head and reached for another towel, ready to swap them out again. She didn’t even want to guess at how much blood the kid had lost. However much was too much.

  While Kate knew that Ayeshydi hadn’t targeted this child, he would have known that she lived here. He may have even met her. She was his neighbour, after all. Yet now she was his victim, because there was no doubt in her mind that Ayeshydi had set this bomb off. Either he did it remotely or Palmer and Dalton had triggered something when they were searching it. Either way he was responsible for another four murders and God knew how many more injured today, including the sweet little girl dying on the table under Kate’s hands.

  “Come on, come on.” She looked over her shoulder, desperate for someone, anyone, to come back in and take over. To do what Kate couldn’t and save the child. “For fuck’s sake, what’s taking so long?” She swapped out another saturated towel and tried to ignore what it meant when blood didn’t gush from the wound when she relieved the pressure. But she couldn’t. “No, no, no, no. Don’t you fucking die on me, kid. Don’t you do that.” She pressed her fingers to the girl’s neck, then shifted them and pressed again. And again. And again. Finally, she found the tiny flutter of a heartbeat beneath her fingertips.

  “Thank fuck,” she whispered and looked up at the ceiling. Kate had never been a religious person. Never thought of herself as believing in much of anything beyond what she could see and deal with. Right now, she was ready to pray to whatever god there might be to keep this little girl alive.