‘You had black hair,’ I said. ‘In the photo.’
She nodded.
‘The pub you went to that time, to meet Brenda, it was a place called the Fox and Globe.’
She nodded again.
That was the night, in the Fox and Globe. That’s why we’d gone there, why Brenda had wanted me there with her. She’d met Tina, told her about me, showed her who I was, to tell her they had protection. ‘He fights death,’ Brenda had told Tina. ‘He doesn’t lose.’
The girl with the dark hair and the pale skin: Tina. She’d dyed her hair, of course. That’s why her skin had seemed too white to me.
I remembered how Brenda had been, after she’d come back from the bar, how she’d stood there, at the table, and looked at me with a smile on her face, and pain in her eyes, and asked me to dance with her.
‘She said she had protection,’ Tina was saying. ‘I didn’t know what that meant until I saw you. I understood what she was doing then, that she knew she was risking her life but with someone like you, she thought they might not do anything to her. Anyway, that’s what she told herself.’
I listened to what she said. I didn’t know words could hurt so much. Was I, then, just protection, after all? Part of me believed it, had always believed it. Part of me knew, or thought it knew otherwise.
‘But you knew better,’ I said. ‘You knew she wasn’t safe, even with me.’
‘I told her. I tried to. She wouldn’t listen.’
Did it really matter? If she hadn’t loved me, wouldn’t I still want to help her, avenge her?
‘She loved you,’ Tina said, perhaps knowing what I was thinking.
I found that my hand had moved up to Tina’s throat. She kept her hands in front of her, and looked up at me with huge eyes.
‘Do it,’ she said.
I felt her blood pumping through her carotid artery. I didn’t need to put much pressure on there. Just a little. Just a little.
Maybe I was all killed out, the need for death all used up. I think, though, I was so sick of it all, the endless bloodletting, that I just couldn’t face it any more.
I stood and turned away from her and started to leave. But then I stopped, turned back.
‘There’s one thing I want,’ I said.
‘Anything, Joe.’
‘I want a picture of Brenda. As a girl. On her first day of school. Anything. I don’t have one. I want something, a memory, her memory.’
She walked slowly to a tall, narrow chest of drawers, opened the top drawer.
She handed me a photo. I looked at it, saw Brenda on the beach. She was smiling.
So there it was. I’d finished, closed the circle. Everything at the end had started at the beginning, and I’d had to crawl my way back there, back through mud and blood and fog and madness, back through death and fury and memories of death and fury, back through pain and betrayal and the dullness and greed of powerful men, back through the fear and agony of women and children. Back. Back.
But I’d made it, back to the start, and I’d closed the circle.
Everyone had now paid for Brenda’s death. Paget and Marriot had died at my hand. Glazer at the hands of Buck, who’d died at mine. Bradley had paid for it, and Compton too. Even Eddie and Dunham; they’d had nothing to do with Brenda’s death, but they’d tried to profit from it. Even they would pay, Cole would make them.
And the man in the DVD. Cole would use him first to get back at Dunham, or get peace, at least. Then Cole would make the man suffer, somehow. I trusted him to do that and if he didn’t … well, I’d make Cole pay too.
And Tina. She’d paid, perhaps more than anyone because she’d loved Brenda and had betrayed her. She’d paid every day since, and would pay every day now, forever.
But how did I feel about it?
In truth, I felt nothing. I was hollow, bloodless, finally. I kept thinking that I’d failed in the one thing I was on this earth for: Brenda had died, and I’d not stopped it, and for that I hadn’t paid.
FORTY-THREE
When I got back to Browne’s, he was up, and sober. I trudged in, shrugged out of my wet coat, pulled my boots off.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said.
‘Cuppa?’
I nodded.
He disappeared and came back with two mugs of tea. He handed me one. It was hot and strong.
His place was boarded up at the front. We’d taken the boards from the back and nailed them over the door and front window. He preferred it like that, he said. It meant he didn’t have to look at the groups of people who gathered to stare at a crime scene.
The law had come round. I’d made myself scarce. Browne swore blind that it had been a burglary. They laughed at that, but we hadn’t heard anything more from them. I reckoned the word had come down from up high. Compton’s bosses must’ve shat themselves over the whole thing and now all they wanted was for it to disappear.
So, we settled into some kind of routine. He’d prod and poke me now and then, stare into my eyes, ask me questions. Who was I? Where was I?
I’d ask myself the same questions. Neither of us got a good answer.
When I told him I hadn’t killed Glazer, he nodded. When I told him I hadn’t killed Tina, he smiled.
He started gardening. He liked it, read up on it. He dug up the violet he’d found in the garden, put it in a pot, brought it indoors.
He got some colour to his face, seemed fitter, brighter. All that outdoor work, he told me. I didn’t buy that.
He still got pissed, of course, but not as much and not as often.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked me one evening as we sat and watched a Bogart film.
It was a good question.
‘Grow old,’ I said.
He smiled at that. Well, I think it was a smile.
‘Hate to dampen the party mood, but I don’t think you’ll get there.’
‘Probably not. But I’ll try.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Fight the dying of the light. Knowing you, you might actually make it.’
Fight, I thought. Yes, I’ll fight.
‘Growing old’s not such a bad thing,’ he said. ‘It’s what Brenda would’ve wanted.’
Maybe he was right. Maybe I had paid after all, simply by not dying. Maybe I was still paying.
Later, as we sat in front of the TV and watched a programme about people sitting in front of the TV, I tried to think what life might’ve been like, if Brenda had lived.
It didn’t work. I couldn’t make it into a picture.
But I had that photo, at least. Photos are the cycle completed, the past now.
Yes, I’ll fight. What else could I do?
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
About Phillip Hunter
About the Killing Machine Series
An invitation from the publisher
About To Fight For
Before he became an assassin in London’s underworld, Joe was a soldierin the British army. He knows what it feelslike to fight enemies on foreign soil – but nothing prepared him for this.
Outside his home in East London, a turf war is raging. And Joe has nochoice but to join the fight. It’s the onlyway he can find out what happened tothe woman he loved – the only way hecan bring her killers to justice.
Revenge drives him forward.
Either they die, or he does.
There’s one way to find out…
Reviews
‘There is always room for thrillers that arecut to the bone and which waste not a word indelivering unputdownable narratives. Phillip Hunteris unquestionably in that estimable territory.’
The Good Book Guide
‘Grabs you by the throat from the very first line.’
Falcata Times
‘Great noirish atmosphere… perfect forfans of gritty crime fiction.’
Booklist
‘A taut thriller about betrayal, vengeance and redemption.’
SHOTSMA
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About Phillip Hunter
PHILLIP HUNTER has a degree in English Literature from Middlesex University and an MA in Screenwriting from the London Institute. Before he started writing, he worked in international banking for many years. He was also part of the team that sequenced the human genome.
About the Killing Machine Series
1 – To Die For
A BROKEN MAN
Joe was a British soldier, then a bare-knuckle boxer.
Now he’s a gangster in London’s East End.
Once, long ago, he fell in love.
But people like him don’t have happy endings.
A BROKEN CITY
Hackney’s most vicious gang is hunting
Joe down. He doesn’t know why.
All he knows is that until he kills them,
he’s a dead man walking.
A RAY OF HOPE
A twelve-year-old runaway, Kid, needs Joe’s protection.
Life has made Joe a machine.
Can this little girl make him human again?
To Die For is available here.
2 – To Kill For
Ex-boxer, ex-paratrooper, Joe once had meaning in his life. People who cared for him, people who needed him. Then he lost everything, and now he is a hitman for London’s most vicious criminals.
Brenda was the only woman who ever loved him. The only woman who believed he could escape the underworld. She died protecting others: now Joe wants revenge on her killers. With nothing left to lose, Joe prepares for the fight of his life…
This is a poignant thriller about love, revenge and redemption from a superb new voice in British crime.
To Kill For is available here.
3 – To Fight For
Before he became an assassin in London’s underworld, Joe was a soldierin the British army. He knows what it feelslike to fight enemies on foreign soil – but nothing prepared him for this.
Outside his home in East London, a turf war is raging. And Joe has nochoice but to join the fight. It’s the onlyway he can find out what happened tothe woman he loved - the only way hecan bring her killers to justice.
Revenge drives him forward.
Either they die, or he does.
There’s one way to find out…
An Invitation from the Publisher
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The story starts here
First published in the UK in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Phillip Hunter, 2015
The moral right of Phillip Hunter, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781853443
ISBN (HB) 9781781853429
Author photograph: Jenny Quiggin
Jacket design: www.mavrodesign.com
Street image: © Photocase Addicts GmbH, Alamy
Figure image: © decisiveimages, Thinkstock
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Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
About To Fight For
Reviews
About Phillip Hunter
About the Killing Machine Series
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
To Fight For Page 25
