by Mark A. King
Charlie looked at the short, sharp shadows that cut across the city. Splayed fronds of light and dark contrasted on the bustling streets. Would Maria be smart enough to hide? Survival required hiding, ingenuity, and guile—assets hard enough for any twelve-year-old. Maria’s disability would hinder her—as would shock, grief, loneliness, and terror in an unknown city. The daylight might be easy enough. But the night—
In her daydream state, Charlie failed to notice the elongated shadow creep up beside her. She shifted her focus to the reflection in the window. She gasped.
It was the tall guy in the suit. The one who’d been stalking the wards.
She reached for her alarm button.
“I wouldn’t do that, darling,” the deep bass voice threatened. “I’m not sure you want me to visit your little boy, do you?”
Oh my god. Noah!
The man turned her around and started to wheel her out of the side-ward. “You’re a lucky girl, Charlotte Banks. My boss wants me to look after you and keep you safe. He’d like to meet you,” he said, increasing the speed of his stride. “I’ll have to keep you safe, that is, until the old guy snuffs it, of course.” His laugh was dry and humourless.
“Where are we going?”
“Just down the corridor. To the visitor’s room. Don’t call for help. Don’t talk to anyone about this, or it’ll be Noah that’s in trouble, not you. Is that understood?” he growled.
Charlie nodded.
When they arrived at the visitor’s room, it was empty. They found a place where the wheelchair faced the large LCD TV.
“I’ll leave you now, sweetie,” the wet-look-hair man said. “Be nice to him. He’s old. He doesn’t have long left.” He smirked and patted her on the head on the way out. “Good girl. Good girl.”
An older man shuffled into the room. Out of concern that he could be the boss of the creep in the suit, she turned to him and smiled.
The old man lumbered along using a walking frame. He looked in some discomfort as he walked, his skin alabaster white, his movements slow and rusty.
“All right, love?” the man said.
“I’m dandy,” Charlie replied. “You know, in this century it might be considered slightly rude to say ‘love’ to a woman you don’t know.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, but didn’t make any effort to rectify it. “I hope my employee, Ryan, treated you well. He’s always needed a bit of work, but he’s as loyal as they come.”
“He was the perfect gentleman,” Charlie said with as much conviction as she could muster.
The man started to cough and dabbed a tissue at his mouth, almost unbalancing himself from his frame. “You’d think they’d have been able to make these places better by now, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked trying to play along. What do they want with me? How the hell do they know about Noah? How am I going to get out of this?
The older man edged closer to one of the armchairs. “Mind if I sit here?”
Charlie nodded and smiled compliantly.
“Fancy some TV?” he said.
“If you must,” Charlie replied.
The older man doddered over to the TV, clattering into the table as he passed. Charlie went to jump out, to help him, but then realised she couldn’t. The old man managed to get the TV on; he grabbed the remote and returned to the seat next to Charlie.
The man delicately lowered himself into the chair. He changed the channel to the rolling 24-hour news station. “It’s good to know what’s going on in the world,” he said. “I mean, it’s easy to lose all sense of reality in here. Don’t you think?”
Charlie didn’t want to watch the news again. She thought about telling the old man about his employee. How dare he threaten her and her boy? But what if the guy in the suit was acting on the instructions of his boss? He’d been very insistent that she didn’t talk about their little chat with anyone. “I find the news depressing,” she offered.
The main news stories ran on loops. The report that Charlie had seen earlier came on.
“Terrible business,” the old man said. He tutted for a few seconds and shook his head as if to emphasise his words.
“You can say that again,” Charlie replied.
“The city is on a knife-edge. No respect for people. There has always been criminal activity. And, I don’t mind telling you, love, that I was a part of that scene.” The man rubbed his hands, one side, then the other as if washing them with soap and water. His mottled hands were saggy and chaffed with skin that looked like old burns. “But this stuff is too much.”
“In what way? Random acts of violence have always happened. It was just bad luck for those inside the shop.” Charlie deliberately withheld the fact that she had been there. Her injuries tugged at her, making her flinch.
“I know things,” the old man said.
Charlie looked away. She wanted to roll her eyes. Of course you do, old man. Don’t you guys always know everything? From the fact that he’d sent one of his men to bring her here, she knew she couldn’t dismiss him. She looked back at him, trying to keep her face rigid and unreadable. “What do you know, old man? Please enlighten me.” Charlie offered him the bait while thinking of nothing but Noah.
He raised his eyebrows at her. “You know; this century it might be considered rude to call someone you’ve never met before an old man.”
Concerned for Noah, Charlie smiled in an attempt to appease the old man. She held her hand up, in a you-got-me motion and then manoeuvred the wheelchair to face him. She held out her hand, “You’re right, sorry. I’m Charlie.”
He reached across; his grip was bony but he insisted on squeezing, trying to prove a strength that was long-gone. “Jimmy,” he replied. “I don’t want to upset you, Miss, but I know who you are.”
Charlie’s pulse quickened. The noise of the TV faded into the background. She looked at the door. Hovered her finger over the help buzzer.
The man watched her. “No need for that, Charlie. Look at me—I’m hardly a threat.”
No. But your employee is.
“I know this world,” Jimmy said. “Let’s just say that I know about the incident at the newsagents’. The police can’t really help you. The security protection in here is probably not up to much either. That wasn’t just a random job. It was part of a bigger crime—”
“I think I better leave now,” she said. She edged her wheelchair back from him.
He waved his arms about theatrically. “There weren’t supposed to be any casualties Your injury. The death of the mother. The missing kid. They’re all accidents. But the criminals involved with the robbery don’t care about anyone. They import people like toasters. They’ll sell drugs to mums knowing that children are being neglected.
“They only care about getting caught. Millions, if not billions of pounds are at stake. They can’t have mucked-up crimes like this being connected to them. It’s hard, even for them, to make this stuff go quiet. Nobody cares much about stabbings in rough neighbourhoods between gang members. But what happened in the shop is different. Normal people want to feel safe. The people involved in this will know there will be pressure on the police to get results—they’ll try to remove links to the crime. Including, I’m sad to say, the witnesses.”
Jimmy alarmed Charlie. She wanted to get away. She wanted to press the button, but there was no way of doing it without him seeing. Despite his condition, he had a charisma and a compelling threat in the way he talked. He was someone not to be messed with, even now. But he wasn’t threatening her. He was threatening Noah—or at least, his employee was.
On the TV, a Breaking News banner appeared. The newsreader said that the police had identified the key suspect in the newsagents’ shop attack. A picture filled the screen. The name Theo ‘Leo’ Jeffers appeared. They also tagged it with known to be violent. The newsreader urged the public not to approach him, but to phone a dedicated hotline, or use the supplied social media channels.
C
harlie remembered the suspect. His face clear in her mind. It was the older criminal from the newsagents’. Now, more than before, she felt an overwhelming sense she had met him, or knew him from somewhere.
Charlie’s heart was racing so fast that she could feel thudding pressure behind her ears. She tried to control her breathing, which was panicked, rapid, and urgent. She was almost hyperventilating. She pressed the button almost without thinking. Nothing happened.
“Don’t worry, love. The staff will be here in a minute,” Jimmy said. “I’m sorry to say this news is bad. The people who employed this low-rent Leo bloke have started purging evidence and links. Think the news station or the police found this information? No. It’s a tip-off. They’ve started closing the loops. Giving up their own. This Leo guy has no chance now. Next it’ll be the witnesses. Let’s just say I feel partially responsible for all this—though I couldn’t have stopped it. I need to help. You’ll be fine, love. Don’t worry. Ryan, the guy who wheeled you in, he’s one of my finest. I’ve got him keeping an eye on you. You see anything suspicious, you let Ryan know, he’ll look after you. It’s the missing kid, Maria Mathan, I’m really worried about.”
Charlie remembered the tall, suited man with the hair-gel. She remembered his threats.
She pressed the button again.
Pressed it hard.
Then again. Again.
Finally the lonely guard came wheezing in like an asthmatic summer.
He looked at Jimmy and then at Charlie as if confused. As if he should have been there to protect the old guy from her.
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” The security guy puffed.
“Can you take me back to my bed, please?” Charlie pleaded, waving vaguely between the TV and Jimmy. “This place is freaking me out.”
As the guard wheeled her out, Charlie shot Jimmy a sideways glance. What was his problem? Why was he trying to scare her? Hadn’t Ryan, his henchman, done enough of that already by threatening to harm Noah?
What was wrong with people these days?
Iona
Iona approached her neighbourhood, thinking about the conversation she’d just had with Rafel. She struggled to understand how she was feeling. Euphoria was too strong a word—especially as her thoughts were primarily on Maria Mathan and her own suspension.
Phoning Rafel felt like being released from crushing atmospheric pressure. She had feared he wouldn’t want to see her again, let alone help her find Maria. Maybe he’d still be willing to help with Operation Scythe, finally get into the higher levels of the organised crime networks? But that was too much to ask. The last time she had recruited him, the job had almost killed him. Maybe they could rebuild what they once had? Unlikely. She was moving too quickly. She remembered what happened to divers when they moved too quickly between different pressures.
She took the shortcut through the small, deserted park.
Distracted in her thoughts, she didn’t see him until it was too late.
She should have been more alert, seen him coming.
Thickset muscle came charging at her, a giant mass colliding with a smaller object—like some chaotic event in outer space.
The collision felt as though she’d been hit with a human anvil. Iona toppled; the momentum flung her towards the unforgiving concrete of the pathway. The fall was a graceful, slow-motion path to the inevitable. She braced herself and anticipated just how much the pain would hit her. She felt the briefest moment of blunt trauma in the hands, arms, neck, head. Her vision blurred and her head felt like she was mid-spin on a violent rollercoaster.
The coarse concrete paving scoured her back as she was dragged by her assailant. Then the feeling of grass—she welcomed the cool blades even if they sliced like dozens of paper cuts . She was hauled into the boot of a car. She struggled, her body and mind estranged partners in a once-happy marriage. Then something covered her mouth and a cloying chemical smell filled her nostrils and seeped down her throat. Her hands were bound behind her back. She tried to shout—but it was just a muffled whimper.
Then sleep took her in a deep, troubled embrace.
Iona was six again.
Her mum (or Scarlet as she liked to be called), wasn’t the sparkly-smiling, loving mum of the TV screens.
Other kids weren’t happy with their parents. The kids moaned because they had to go to school. They bitched because they had to attend yet another boring family event, or because they didn’t get the iPad, X-box, or new phone they demanded.
Iona didn’t know why these things were important. She guessed the other kids wouldn’t like the flat she lived in. Inside her flat, there were stained carpets, overflowing ashtrays and sinks full of plates and mugs that looked like they were alive. The flights of concrete stairs were covered in dog mess, and the unforgiving surface was slippery in the rain—injuries from falls came easily and took time to heal. The smell outside the flats was a curious concoction of festering neighbours and strange herbal smells that came from the mists which hovered on the landings. The other kids probably wouldn’t like the strange men and women that visited—people so unsavoury that even her mum didn’t want her near them.
Iona had a laptop. It was a battered and riddled in gaffer’s tape. The sort of machine that would make a good door-stop. It was the only thing she owed, if you excluded the tatty charity-shop teddy bears. The laptop screen was cracked; it happened after one of the visiting men got angry with her mum, but Iona could still use it. The hinge on one side was missing, but she’d found cable-tie lying around that she’d slotted into the holes. The keys were worn and it was hard to tell the letters, but she’d gotten good at knowing where they were, and she could mostly type without looking.
The machine came from a man who Iona thought looked kinder than the others. When she asked her mum about him, her mum laughed and said that he was her boss—the laptop was a gift for good work that Mum had done, but Iona was still to stay away from him.
In the dusky evenings, when Scarlet was busy and wanted Iona out of the way, Iona would stash the laptop in a shopping bag (she’d learned long ago that a backpack drew attention) and walk it down to the burger place. She’d sit outside with the passing lights of the drive-through cars, the orange glow of the older smokers, and the blue glow of the newer ones, wondering if she should eat leftover food or drink. She was thankful for the occasional waft of warm air spilling out of the door and the free, if slow, Wi-Fi.
The machine was old. She couldn’t download games or stream TV.
She’d already mastered the checkers and chess games and the computer was no longer a challenge for her. She enjoyed games that required coding skills, creativity, and experimentation. The characters she created became real to her. She could make them become anything she wanted. Real life wasn’t like that. Real life was full of creepy people.
She saw other kids like her sometimes. They were brave enough to eat the discarded food and they weren’t ashamed to rummage in the wheelie-bins. Would these desperate kids think she had it easy? Would she be able to cope in their place? Street children had eyes that were glazed and looked like they’d seen things that no adult should see, let alone a child.
“Hey, little girl,” the crackled voice of an older man said from behind her. She froze, unable to respond, unable to run, penned in by the wire fence.
“My mum’s inside, she told me—”
“Don’t bullshit me, little girl,” he replied. “You said that a few days back. Don’t you think I didn’t notice you? Little girls out on their own don’t go unnoticed.”
Iona’s tummy went tight—mashed and twisted like a dog chew. Her mouth was dry. She wanted to scream, she wanted to shout, but she knew if she tried, all that would come out was a gasp and a broken voice.
“Why are you out here all alone?”
Iona looked around and scanned her available options. But she was still too scared to turn to him. What sort of monster might she face? He smelt of old beer and wee.
“Maybe your home
isn’t where you wanna be? Maybe you don’t have a mamma? Maybe your step-daddy beats you?”
The dog chew was wrapping itself tighter and slowly rising into her chest. Her breathing became forced and tight.
“Maybe you’d like somewhere nice to sleep? Somewhere nice to—”
She turned sharply. Smashed her heels into his feet.
The old man whimpered and crouched in pain. Iona smashed the laptop across his face with as much speed and power as she could gather.
She dropped the only possession she cared about. She ran, trying desperately not to look back, darted into nearby bushes and weaved through the gaps in the fence behind. She headed for her estate, for the maze of alleyways and streets that she knew so well.
When the burning in her chest became too painful, she stopped in the shadows of a doorway. She waited. Then waited some more.
Nothing.
No stink of beer. No sound of footsteps.
The city at night was full of creepy people. People who shouted, staggered, and leered.
Iona jolted awake.
She was dreaming of her childhood, of being alone and frightened in the city.
Maria Mathan would be going through worse.
Searing pain assaulted the inside of Iona’s skull. Her mouth was parched and her lips tight, cracked. She went to wipe them, but she found was restrained. Where was she? What had happened?
In the darkness, through the disorientation, it took her a moment to understand she was in the boot of a car. Tied and gagged.
By the vibration she could tell she was moving.
She remembered the wall of bulk that had charged her as she was walking home. She’d been distracted after her conversation with Raf.
Raf had agreed to help find Maria, but Iona was in no position to meet him. The gag was wet and tainted with chemicals.
