Cog in the Machine

by Nigel Shinner

  Gary did as he was told, the military in the man taking over.

  The hangar had a large opening where there had once been shutters. The shutters were long gone. Their remains had crumbled to just damp fibres lumped near the opening. To the rear was a small doorway. The door was propped on its side against the wall of the hangar, leaving easy access for anyone to enter.

  The pair split and headed towards the two entry points. A stealthy approach was required and the stiff breeze covered any noise from footsteps on loose material. The breeze also covered any sounds coming from the building. Tall stems of wild grass and flowers were bending under the wind’s power, whispering as they moved as one, hiding all sounds near or far.

  The men timed their approach so their entry into the building would be staggered. Richards would enter first, then Gary. If one didn’t get Dom, the other would.

  *

  Sitting in the dark, his hands nervously gripping at the scratched leather steering wheel, Dom awaited a silhouette in the doorway of the hangar at any moment. It felt like forever but he wanted it to be never. If a figure came into view, they had found him. The game would be over. They would be armed to the teeth and Dom had a single handgun with an unknown number of bullets in the magazine. He had wanted to count the bullets, to see how many chances he had, but with his lack of experience, and general bad luck, he imagined he would remove the magazine and the bullets and not know how to put it back together again, rendering it useless. Rendering him dead.

  He heard a sound. It was difficult with the wind whistling through the decrepit building, but he was certain he had heard the sound of a tyre crunching on broken concrete. They were close. Too close.

  The engine was running. As old as the car was, the idle was reassuringly quiet, and probably silent against the sound of the breeze.

  He waited.

  And waited some more.

  And then he saw a figure.

  It was now or never.

  *

  Richards craned his neck around the rotten doorframe. Patches of the floor were littered with fallen roof matter and rusted corrugated sheeting. There was an old wooden dining chair knocked over in a pile of rubble and some old tattered blue police tape dancing in the draught, whipping back and forth from its tethering point.

  In the middle of the building was a holdall. It was out of place because it was the only new item within the old structure.

  Richards ran toward it without fear of surprise. There were no other hiding places in here. No chance of an ambush.

  Picking up the bag, he could feel a single item rattling about inside. The zip was already open, and his hand was in the bag without hesitation. He pulled out a single fake bundle of money. Attached to the top was the small black plastic GPS tracking unit, about the size of large SD card but twice as thick.

  Before he could even contemplate the possibilities, the wide light source at the front of the hangar was broken. A figure had appeared, silhouetted against the sunlight flooding in. It was a familiar figure. It was Gary. And a few seconds later he wasn’t the only thing silhouetted against the sunlight.

  *

  Flooring the accelerator, the car lurched forward. Tyres bit into the loose rubble, casting a spray in all directions. Dom was blinded by the intense sunshine in contrast to the gloom of the unlit hangar.

  Blinded or not, he knew where he was heading, straight at the figure standing at the mouth of the hangar opposite. The wheels, spinning hard, suddenly gripped onto a firm piece of concrete path, launching the car toward the target.

  There was no escape.

  One of the front wheels hit a turf-filled divot, lifting the nose of the bonnet high enough for the wheels to leave the ground. Gary was hit just above the knees, snapping both femurs like rotten twigs. He head whipped backward toward the hardened floor of the hangar, smashing his skull.

  Dom tried to aim the car at Richards, who stood open-mouthed in the centre of the building, but the divot must have damaged one of the wheels. The Astra swerved harshly, kicking the steering wheel out of Dom’s fingers.

  There was a lapse of time. It could have been a nanosecond. It could have been an hour. However long it was, Dom froze. He had a gun but didn’t raise it. He had to escape but couldn’t leave the car. Time was standing still, waiting for an event to restart the clock. It was silent.

  The car had stalled.

  The wind had eased.

  Then the event to start the world turning once more broke the silence.

  The driver’s side was facing away from the source but that was of little comfort. A 9mm round effortlessly penetrated the passenger window and exited through the driver’s side window. Dom flung the door open, diving onto the dirt-caked hangar floor.

  A bullet pinged through the passenger door, clipping the steering wheel before hitting the driver’s door - right where Dom had just been.

  Scrabbling to his feet, he pulled out the firearm from the door pocket. He fired toward where he thought Richards was. There was a thud. Was it a lucky shot?

  No.

  Richards had dived for cover. Returning fire from the debris-covered floor, adding another hole to the car that was Dom’s only protection.

  “Give it up, Dom,” the voice echoed as though in a steel drum.

  Dom had crouched next to a tyre. He had figured that if a door couldn’t save him, an alloy wheel might.

  “I’ve nothing to give up,” Dom yelled.

  “All I want is the money. Nobody else has to get hurt.”

  “Fuck you!” Dom’s rage gave him strength, but it didn’t make him bulletproof. He stayed where he was.

  “Hey, it’s not mine. It’s Dunstan’s and he wants it back.” Richards tried to come across as neutral, failing miserably.

  “Fuck him too!” Dom clutched the weapon. He knew it was the only thing stopping his aggressor from walking right up to him and blowing his brains out.

  “Come on, Dom,” Richards calmed his tone, remaining in the dirt. “Nobody wanted this. It can all end here. You can run off into the sunset with McQuillan’s daughter and live happily ever after. All I want is that bag of cash.”

  “She’s dead!” The emotion was raw in his voice.

  “What? How?”

  “You killed her! You shot her!”

  “I’m sorry but it was an intense situation. People get hurt in intense situations – just like this one.” Richards slowly got to his feet, the gritty surface cracking under his shoes.

  Dom launched a single shot over the bonnet of the car. It missed. He whipped his hand toward Richards again, almost throwing the bullet out of the gun.

  Richards dived to the floor again.

  “Dom, let’s not do this. Let’s just talk.”

  A head popped above the top edge of the car’s wing. Two eyes searching for a way out appeared, gazing across the surface of the bonnet.

  A gunshot.

  “I thought you wanted to talk?” Dom knew now, if he hadn’t known before, that the talk was all just bullshit.

  “I do, I do.”

  Dom threw his arm over the top again, squeezing the trigger hard. The recoil lifted his hand. The bullet found no target. He tried again.

  Click.

  And again.

  Click.

  “Oh dear,” the tone was condescending, “no more bullets. I think we’ll have that talk now.”

  Dom threw down the gun, remaining perched against the wheel. He had given it his best shot and his best hadn’t been good enough. He had failed his family. He had failed the woman who had made the difference in his life. And now he had failed himself. It was not the end he had envisaged. Not the outcome he felt he deserved.

  Was this it? Was he going to end up buried in a ditch a hundred miles from home with a bullet through his brain? Had he earned this death? He couldn’t tell which side of the line he stood on anymore. Was he the good guy or the bad guy? Who could tell? The newspapers would tell everyone he was a career criminal coming to a natur
al end. Live by the sword; die by the sword; or in this case, a 9mm handgun. It was poetic.

  The sound of footsteps slowly crunching across detritus and debris from a time long since forgotten was a countdown to the end. Each step like the swing of a pendulum, marking time until there was no more time.

  Dom breathed out, maybe one of his last breaths, his eyes catching the gentle approach of a butterfly, a Red Admiral, fluttering towards the carnage. With nothing left to fight for, he gazed at the delicate wings struggling against the coastal breeze. How could something so small battle through something so wild? Yet it did, without effort. Dom’s eyes wouldn’t leave the insect, watching it gracefully land nearby - within an arm’s length. The majestic red and black wings opened and closed, stretching and resting, sending a message to the condemned man.

  The message was to die on his feet.

  He reached. He stood. He turned.

  There were no words left to exchange. No conversation to be had. The final word was a gunshot. It echoed throughout the dark chamber of the hangar, reverberating against the ancient bricks and mortar. The world stopped as a body fell.

  Then the world started again. Started anew.

  The butterfly lifted its wings, sailing back out into the breeze. It had been the witness right at the end.

  Chapter 86

  The dark nights were drawing nearer. It was a little after five and the sky was already a shade of gloomy ash and growing darker by the minute. The autumn landscape always seemed claustrophobic. The buildings were taller, closer together. Much like a prison wall, penning everyone in, only to be released when the lighter days returned. He hated the autumn.

  At that moment, he hated everything. Life had turned around, and not for the better. The Boss trudged along the pavement, dodging the puddles trapped in the dips of so many broken slabs. He hated walking. But he had to. He didn’t have his shitty white Transit van anymore.

  His van could have been the subject of an investigation into the murder of Georgia McQuillan, after all the shit had gone down.

  The shit being the death of both McQuillans, father and daughter; the drugs landing in the UK; the epic drug network the Boss was supposed to be forging till it went south because deals were no longer honoured and money hadn’t changed hands. After all the gunfire and killing, about a week afterward, the body of Georgia had been discovered at the house of Bob Deakin, a 9mm bullet hole in her back.

  Fearing for his involvement in the crime, in which he would have been directly implicated in if DNA evidence had been found, the Boss had declared the Transit stolen and set fire to it on some waste ground. At first he wasn’t too worried, as he would just buy another vehicle with the money he was earning from the deal he had made with Richards. Neither the deal nor the money ever materialised.

  To add insult to injury, his cocaine factory had been discovered. As shrewd as he was, the Boss never had any financial links to the building and was able to disconnect himself from the find. Although that did mean he had lost all monies and product found on the property. The loss of the factory, and all his trafficked prostitutes absconding, left the Boss without a penny. He lost his flat because the rent couldn’t be paid anymore, sold his other cars to try and get by, and he now had to live in the rundown shithole where his brothel used to be.

  His life had completely turned on its head. Some people stopped referring to him as ‘the Boss’ and started calling him ‘Kevin,’ which pushed his already volatile demeanour to the limit. He was currently nursing a black eye from a skirmish in the pub two nights earlier.

  Tapping out the last cigarette from the crumpled packet in his filthy jeans pocket, he cursed aloud at the final cigarette. He cursed even louder at the damp flint on his disposable lighter. Seventeen strikes later and a flame appeared briefly. His last smoke was lit.

  How long it would stay alight was another question. The sky had been threatening to dump the contents of the bulbous grey clouds for the past hour and now they decided to give in, dropping everything at once. The downpour drenched Kevin through to his underwear in a matter of minutes. He shuffled along the street, a non-waterproof jacket pulled over his head, shielding that last cigarette as though it were his life.

  So distracted by the rain, and protecting his smoke, he didn’t see the man coming toward him.

  He didn’t see what the man had in his hand. And he definitely couldn’t see the intention in the man’s head.

  At first he thought to be an accidental stumble in the rain. A hard strike to the midsection from a wayward elbow surely. He continued up the street.

  But only for another few steps.

  A fire had been sparked in his core, burning inward, igniting his organs.

  He stopped. The wind had left his lungs.

  He turned. The figure was away in the distance, not looking back.

  He touched. Blood ran far too quickly from the point of impact.

  He fell, crashing down hard against the cold wet slabs.

  He died on the street just twenty yards from the hovel he called home. His body left undiscovered for almost an hour.

  Some said he had been found within five minutes but left for dead when his identity had been discovered. The autopsy would say the cause of death was a knife wound to the torso, penetrating his liver and nicking a heart valve. The verdict would be murder. The general consensus would be that he deserved it. No one would cry for Kevin Dunstan. And no one would ever know who struck the fatal blow.

  Chapter 87

  After a rough evening of heavy rain on the previous day, the clear blue morning was a surprise. It was even quite warm in the direct sunlight, which was pleasant for a change after a few weeks of changeable conditions.

  Karl Longhurst was sitting outside, enjoying the glory of the cloudless sky with a cup of coffee and a jam-filled croissant, sitting on a wooden bench in the middle of his self-built decking area. It was the little pleasures that put a smile on his face: a sunny day; a laugh from one of his children; a pint with the boys. The latter was long overdue. That was what often happened when jobs changed. People lost touch and texts became infrequent. The connection was severed, the need lost.

  Although while Karl had quit his job just a few months ago, he still had a weekly text from at least one of the boys sharing a dirty joke or arranging a golfing meet, which often turned into a drinking meet. He had received a text late last night. It wasn’t anything unusual.

  Karl used to be a police officer until an accident ended his career. He still worked for the police after his rehabilitation - answering the phones. It was an important part of police work but not the one he had signed up for, and definitely not one that excited him.

  The text he had received, while not exciting, was one that he had wanted to hear for a very long time.

  His old beat buddy, Steve ‘Patto’ Patterson, dropped him a message saying that he had been called to a stabbing at the rough end of Bristol. The poor unfortunate was none other than career criminal, Kevin ‘The Boss’ Dunstan. The indirect reason Karl was no longer a beat cop.

  He reached for his mug, swigging down a good portion of the bitter drink.

  His foot started to itch. It often did. He looked down to where the itch was, somewhere beneath the cooling mesh of his Adidas trainer. Most people would afford a little scratch, or take off the shoe to really gain access and have a good go at the offending irritant.

  But not Karl.

  Underneath the upper of Karl’s shoe was a posable foot made of titanium and acrylic. In fact the titanium went all the way up to the rubber and acrylic cup that fitted over the short stump of bone jutting out below his knee joint.

  When he first lost the limb in that fateful car crash thirteen years ago, Karl was told he might suffer from phantom itches and sensations in the missing limb for months, even years, to come. Even after all this time, the phantoms were still present.

  He was glad to hear that Dunstan was dead. Evil was too nice a word for someone like him. At the tria
l, while Karl had been sitting in the dock, Dunstan smiled defiantly. One time he even winked at the injured officer, lapping up the attention and notoriety such a case would bring. Rumour had it that Dunstan went into the prison system a dangerous criminal and came out a deranged psychopath. But a deranged psychopath better schooled in organised crime than most gangsters. Violence ran through the man’s veins.

  Trying to forget about the itch, and the death of a local hoodlum, Karl took a bite from his croissant, the flakes falling down the front of his favourite running jacket. He brushed them off, hoping not to get a sticky mess of jam smack in the middle of the garment before he swapped his prosthetic leg for a running blade and took his morning run.

  He liked being in his garden, morning, noon and night. It was his haven. A blend of turf, chippings and decking, with potted plants dotted about and solar powered lamps at regular intervals. Lazy summer evenings would turn into chilled summer nights at least four nights a week, if the weather was in his favour. Julie and their boys, Matthew and Jacob, would often join him until bedtime called. It was the place where he healed his hurts, not thinking about the darkness that had marred his life.

  As he gazed around the garden he had looked upon thousands of times, he noticed the padlock was missing from his shed. It had been there yesterday, he was sure of it.

  He approached with trepidation. What would he find? A homeless person curled up in a sleeping bag? The theft of his lawnmower? The theft of his bike? The theft of his bike and his lawnmower. There was only one way to find out.

  He carefully opened the wooden slatted door.

  The lawnmower was still in the corner, up on its front wheels. His beloved bicycle, with specially adapted pedal for his prosthetic leg, was hooked on the bike rack. There didn’t seem to be anything missing.

  But there was something extra. A small black holdall nestled on top of a deckchair; a deckchair that should have been closed and tucked away.