To Fight For

by Phillip Hunter

  I waited in the doorway, expecting someone to move or say something. As I waited, and looked at the man in the chair, the place become darker, foggier, colder and I saw that Argentinean conscript again, lying in the mud a dozen feet from me, watching me, smiling at me in his death.

  He came to me like that, in the darkness, in the quiet-ness, when I was myself closest to death, closest to that time, when I’d been a kid, no older than the conscript, tasting the sourness of blood and fury and fear and murder for the first time. Another flashback, as Browne would say. And yet, it was more than that. It was as if that kid was now a part of me, and lived, even in his death, while I lived. He shared the darkness with Brenda, shared the same air and space and nothingness that lived in that hole inside me.

  And then I was back in the factory, in the room, staring at the man in the chair.

  I turned the torch onto the wall and saw the light switch. I tried it and the ceiling lights flickered then came on. I saw him clearly now.

  His body was slumped forward, as far as the rope would let him, and his head was bent. It seemed like half his face was hanging off, blood congealing all over, a dark pool gathering on the concrete beneath. That must’ve been how Brenda’s face had looked by the time Paget had finished with her.

  Both his eyes were swollen shut, his mouth was split open, his nose was smashed in. Looking at those injuries, I thought he must be dead but I watched him closely and saw his chest move in shallow breathing.

  So, here he was; the man I wanted to kill, the one who’d finish this cycle I was stuck in. Glazer – all neat and tidy and done up in a fucking bow. That would’ve made Eddie laugh. All I had to do was push his head back until his neck snapped. It would be so fucking easy.

  I put my hand onto his forehead. Push, I thought. Push and be done with it.

  He mumbled something, the sound coming out in bubbles through his broken mouth. I didn’t hear what he was saying. I didn’t really care. All I could think was that I was here, at last, with the last of them, the last who’d killed Brenda, or had a part in her killing – or, anyway, that’s what I was telling myself.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t know.’

  What didn’t he know? What did Dunham want? The disc, probably. Well, I didn’t care about that. I’d come to kill him and here he was.

  So what was I waiting for? Why hadn’t I done it already? It was easy. Push. Snap. Go home. Go back to Browne and tell him it’s over, and see the disappointment creep into his face, and the resignation. Watch him open another bottle. Go back to Eddie and Dunham and tell them, ‘Fuck You,’ and sit back while they hit me with everything and destroy all around me. Go back to Tina and tell her, ‘It’s over, I killed again, can I stay here? Can we be together? Is there a life for us?’

  Yeah, sure, easy. Did I give a shit about any of that?

  ‘Since when did you start caring about things, Joe?’ Eddie had said. ‘About people?’

  And still Glazer sat before me, slumped, bleeding. All I had to do was push, or squeeze his neck, or smack another across his jaw. Anything. I could put a round through his brain.

  And then I saw that Argentinean boy again, lying out there, almost within my reach, but beyond anything. And I thought what I’d thought a million times before: I was the last person to see him alive. I was the last thing he saw. That was our meeting, our departing. We were nothing to each other. We were life and death to each other. And why? Because we were doing the bidding of our overlords, our masters who wore their pinstriped suits and mouthed their lies while their eyes told the truth, and who, months later, would have cocktails with each other.

  Lift the gun, put the muzzle an inch from his head, put my finger on the trigger and squeeze. I could do that. It was easy.

  What would I do now, I wondered, if that Argentinean boy was in front of me? Would I kill him? Could I do it again?

  And still, part of me was screaming: end it, kill him, close the cycle, get your fucking revenge.

  Instead, I found myself putting my hand under his chin and lifting his head. I don’t know why I did that, except that I couldn’t shake the image of the Argentinean boy from my mind, as if it was him, not Glazer in front of me.

  He looked at me through the swollen eyes – or tried to. I must’ve been a blur to him, just a shape. He tried to pull away from me, but it was a weak effort and he gave up. I let go of him and his head fell forward again.

  I watched him as a man watches a dying insect. The insect doesn’t mean anything to the man, but he watches it anyway.

  Glazer stirred and mumbled.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said.

  I looked at him and saw that he was trying to open his eyes.

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  ‘Don’t know. You can’t do this. I’m the law.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You’re the law and I’m justice.’

  I don’t think he heard me. He’d slumped forward again. I pushed him back.

  ‘Look at me. Look. You know who I am?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said.

  I took my knife from my pocket and sliced through the swollen skin above one eye. It seemed important to me that he knew who I was. My bloody ego, I suppose, as Browne would say.

  The blood drained down his face. I wiped it out of his eye as best I could, then I cut through the ropes. He fell forward and I caught him and pushed him back onto the seat.

  He looked at me drowsily. Blood dribbled from the corner of his eye.

  ‘You know who I am? Hey.’

  I slapped him a couple of times. He shook his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re him.’

  ‘You know what I want?’

  ‘I don’t know where it is. I don’t know.’

  ‘What? Where what is?’

  ‘The disc.’

  ‘That’s not what I want.’

  He retched, throwing his head forward. Bile and blood mixed into a dark mess and fell over his legs.

  ‘Brenda,’ I said. ‘Remember her?’

  ‘Brenda.’

  ‘Six years ago. You were in vice. She worked for Marriot. She made a copy of a film and sent it to you and you grassed her up to Marriot and he had Paget kill her. Remember her?’

  ‘And now?’ he said. ‘Now you’re going to kill me? You’re with them?’

  ‘I’m with nobody.’

  ‘Where are they? They were here. Where are they?’

  ‘No one’s here.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘It’s just me.’

  He moved his head back, and focused on me, saw my face. Then he understood.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I remember her. Yes, I grassed her up to Marriot. She contacted me, told me who she worked for. I told Marriot, but I didn’t know what they were going to do to her.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kill him, my brain said. Kill him. End it. Take his blood for Brenda’s.

  But I didn’t move. I didn’t squeeze or push. I just stood there, dumb and stuck.

  I couldn’t do it – not like this. Maybe it was too close to murder. Murder has a different taste from vengeance. It makes you sick.

  Or, maybe, after all, it was what Brenda had written in that letter: ‘Don’t destroy yourself for me, Joe.’

  I’d thought she’d meant don’t end up like the ship in that print of hers – Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, that once glorious ship, that deadly thing, now being pulled to its death by a dreary black tug.

  ‘Poor old Joe,’ she’d say. ‘Heading for the breaker’s yard.’

  She was right, of course. But I don’t think she’d meant that.

  What had she meant? What did it mean? Destruction. I could be alive, sure, but I might end up being what she hated, a thing full of acid, spewing it out at the world, at all my enemies and then, when there was nothing left outside, the acid would start to eat me alive from the inside. That’s what Browne had said. I might li
ve, but I’d be dead. The Killing Machine would’ve destroyed itself – an empty hull, not worthy of her memory.

  I knew now, standing above Glazer, that if I killed him, I’d be doing just that: destroying myself. And I couldn’t live like that – not because I cared about Glazer, or Browne, or even myself.

  But I cared about Brenda – what was left of her, which was nothing but my memory, fading all the time, but still there. If I killed him and became as Dunham and Paget and all those, I’d lose the right to remember her. I’d have destroyed something inside, a place where she lived still.

  ‘Don’t destroy yourself for me, Joe.’

  That wasn’t it, after all. It was her that I couldn’t destroy – what was left of her.

  Glazer mumbled something.

  ‘I haven’t got it. I never had it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The disc.’

  It took me a moment to understand what he’d said.

  ‘You had it,’ I said. ‘Brenda – she sent it to you.’

  ‘Never had the disc. Never had it. Don’t know where it is.’

  That didn’t make sense.

  ‘She sent it to you.’

  ‘She contacted me, said she could get evidence. But I never saw it, didn’t know what it was. Then she was killed. I never got anything.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I know you. I know you’ll kill me anyway. Why would I lie about that but admit I told Marriot she contacted me?’

  ‘You’re lying,’ I said.

  But even as I said it, I was unsure. It was hard to look at Glazer and believe he was lying. He’d had all the lies beaten from him. There was nothing left.

  And, as he said, why would he lie if he’d already admitted that Brenda had contacted him and that he’d told that to Marriot? He already expected me to kill him.

  But if he hadn’t had the DVD, that meant something else was going on, had been going on for a long time. And I was starting to understand what it was.

  Dunham’s men would be coming back to finish with Glazer. Maybe soon. And that made me think too; where were they? Why weren’t they here? Why hadn’t they left at least one man as a guard?

  I stashed the Makarov in my jacket pocket, and held him up with one arm while I finished cutting his legs free.

  I’d come here to kill him, and now I was saving him. That would’ve made Eddie laugh even more. Still, fuck Eddie. It would’ve made Brenda smile, and that was all I cared about.

  I put the knife away and put the gun back into my hand. I lifted Glazer and saw his eyes widen and knew I’d made a mistake. They had left someone. I swung round and slammed into a wall.

  I tumbled back and crashed into the floor. Glazer landed on me and pushed the air from my lungs. I heard him scream out in pain as he bounced off me and hit the concrete. I heard my gun clatter away somewhere. My head banged into the ground and I felt an electric shock spurt down my spine.

  My skull was ringing from the punch. The side of my face felt like someone had set fire to it. I tried to focus, but I couldn’t control my eyes and felt them go up into my head as the world started to spin away.

  Then I heard the count. Six. And I could feel the canvas beneath my fingers and I could taste the salty, metallic blood in my mouth and I could hear the crowd jeer. Seven. I’d never been floored in the ring. But here I was, on the deck thinking that Browne was going to have to patch me up pretty good later, thinking I was finished, at last.

  Eight.

  Then I looked up and saw him looming, staring down at me with his dumb mouth open.

  Roy Buck.

  Nine.

  And I felt a surge of anger. Buck. I was damned if he was going to KO me. The Reaper? Fuck him. I’d show him what death was.

  I rolled over onto my hands and knees. Buck should’ve come in and finished me. But he just stood there, waiting.

  The counting had stopped and I remembered where I was.

  ‘I was having some grub,’ he said, and I cursed myself for not searching the whole place. ‘I heard something.’

  And still he waited, staring at me in that dumb, open-mouthed way of his. Maybe we were back in the ring after all. I didn’t know any more. It seemed every time I thought I knew where I was, when I was, I’d blink and find I was wrong.

  Buck. Yes, of course he’d wait. He’d fought me in the ring, and beaten me. Now he could do it again.

  Now I understood why there’d been no cars outside. Buck couldn’t drive. It was too difficult for him. They’d come in cars and left Buck to finish the job on Glazer. And he’d wait until they came back for him. If he had to wait a year, he’d wait because he was too fucking dumb to do anything else.

  ‘I know you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. We fought. I was the old bloke.’

  He thought about that for a while, as much as he could think about anything.

  ‘The old bloke,’ he said. ‘Joe. The Machine. I remember. The Killing Machine.’

  I stood slowly, expecting him to rush me while I was getting up. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. Instead, he waited and I had the feeling he was enjoying this, wanting the fight, as if it was all a bit of fun.

  I glanced towards my gun, and he stepped that way, not trying to get the gun, just making sure I couldn’t.

  ‘Do you know where it is?’ he said. ‘The DVD?’

  He wasn’t taking the piss. He really wanted to know.

  Lots of us old pugs walked around with our brains scrambled from half a life of being pummelled a couple of times a month for a few hundred quid a go. But Buck’s head was wrong in a different way. It was more as if he didn’t have anything in his head to mush, but rather had a lump of concrete that someone had once poured in there.

  So, Eddie or Dunham had told him to find out where the DVD was. They’d pointed him at Glazer and let him get on with it. They’d chiselled the order into his concrete head, and now it was there for all time. Where’s the DVD? Where’s the DVD?

  Whatever I said now didn’t matter. He’d work on me like he’d worked on Glazer.

  ‘The DVD?’ I said. ‘I know where it is. Dunham’s got it.’

  I saw the confusion as it crossed his brain. It was enough. I stepped in to him, and smashed his face with a quick combination; left cross, right hook, left again. It rocked him and he stepped back. Then, as quick as he’d been caught by surprise, he recovered. He spat blood, raised his hands. And I knew I’d blown it and all I could think was that I had to get to my gun. But there was no chance of that.

  I went in again and threw a right cross, as fast as I could, trying to catch him off guard, but I was too late for that. He stepped back and watched my hand pass his face. I’d put a lot into that punch, and I wasn’t as quick on my feet as I used to be, and even then, I wasn’t quick. I staggered as I hit air and almost lost my balance. When I straightened up and turned, he was looking at me as if he was trying to work something out.

  Then he smiled.

  ‘Not bad for an old bloke,’ he said.

  I’d landed good solid punches on his face. There was a lump on the bridge of his nose, blood dripped from it. I thought I’d broken it, but he didn’t seem bothered.

  Then he came at me and I couldn’t believe the speed. His blows hammered into my face until I couldn’t see straight. I tried to turn and glance him off, but I was too slow, too dazed. I put my head down, my arms up in a block and he switched to my body and I felt a shrieking pain in my kidney that paralysed my entire side. I went down on one knee, and he pounded my head until it went numb. Somewhere inside I was scared. It was like a far off shudder. Another blow could finish me, Browne had said. Another one? Fuck. Buck’s fists were thudding into my head faster than I could think. And there were things I still had to do. That was what scared me, knowing that I was so near to finishing it, and so close to the end of living.

  I had to move, block him, get away, anything. I tried to stand and my head snapped sideways from a hook. I didn’t see it
. I didn’t even know what direction it came from. I saw the room spin around.

  There was no escape. I knew I was dead unless I hit him back. I swung blind and missed and tried again and hit something. I saw a blur as he came and went from my sight. I lashed out again and felt my arm bounce off him. Then came another flurry of blows, but he was hitting my body and that was a mistake. At least it gave my head a chance to clear up. I tightened the muscles in my torso, tucked my head in and hoped he’d punch himself out.

  But he just kept on pounding until my guts were twisted up and my rib cage was about to cave in.

  And then, as suddenly as he’d started, he stopped. I staggered as I swung. I couldn’t see him. All I could see was that fucking room, spinning around me. For a moment, I thought I’d lost all feeling, that he was still pummelling me, that something had snapped and my neck had broken. But I fell forward and hit the ground and I fucking well felt that.

  Then I heard a voice, Buck’s voice. It said, ‘ …you going?’

  I turned enough to see him standing over Glazer who was crawling away from us. Buck put a foot on Glazer’s back and pressed him into the ground.

  ‘Where is it?’ Buck said.

  Now he’d remembered what he was there for. He had to question Glazer. He had to find out where the DVD was. It was scratched into his brain. And Glazer was trying to get away, so he had to stop him. He forgot about me. I was nothing.

  Glazer wasn’t going to be able to speak soon. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything. Buck didn’t know that, or didn’t care. He’d go back to beating him. One more blow to the head and I was finished, so Browne had thought. Well, I wasn’t. But Glazer would be.

  I tried to stand, but the room was all over the fucking place and the floor hit me smack in the face. The gun was behind me. Buck was in front of me, hauling Glazer up by his neck.

  I wouldn’t get to the gun before Buck had killed Glazer, but I’d get there, and then I’d let the Makarov do its stuff and everything would be just fine because everyone would be dead, except me – or maybe including me.

  I could make it to the gun, too, because Buck was busy with Glazer. So …