The Mercy Seat

by Martyn Waites

  ‘Let him go,’ said the biker. ‘Let’s have a bit of a chase.’

  The bikers released Hammer, who fell to the ground on his knees.

  ‘Get up, you cunt,’ snarled the biker. ‘Take it like a man.’

  Kicks and punches, jeers and spitting. The bikers circled the two men, one prone; the prey brought to ground, the other the hunter, triumphant. He curled into a ball, covered his head with his arms. They gave exploratory prods with their bats and handles, building themselves up for the signal to let them loose.

  ‘Up.’

  Hammer felt himself being hauled to his feet. The biker leered in his face.

  ‘You picked the wrong man to mess with.’

  The bikers laughed.

  The other man smiled. Straightened his back to full height. No trace of his earlier faux fear or smiling clumsiness now, only that trembling feeling he experienced inside when he knew his hunger was about to be assuaged. ‘So did you,’ he said.

  Before the biker could attack, Hammer head-butted him. The biker’s head flipped backwards, blood squirting from the sudden wound, but he didn’t go down.

  The others were too stunned to react. It cost them. Hammer whirled round, disarming a biker of his pickaxe handle as he went. In the same fluid movement, he swung the handle at the nearest biker, connecting with the side of the man’s skull. So much force was behind the blow that the man’s head crumpled, like a punched paper bag. He fell to his knees, blood pumping down over his ears. The other bikers seemed locked in time, not knowing whether to fight or fly. Hammer gave them no choice.

  He held the handle like a kendo stick, swinging it to and fro, his grip loose, never once losing eye contact. The bikers’ realized positions had been reversed. They were now the prey. One of the chapter, fat, gruff and bearded, fumbled inside his pocket for a blade, found it, lunged forward. Hammer whirled out of the way with near-balletic skill. Dodged left. Then right. Then right again. The biker was becoming increasingly desperate, his strikes having less precision. Hammer smiled.

  ‘That the best you can do?’ he said. ‘This is getting boring.’

  He flicked his foot towards the other’s wrist, sending the knife spinning into the night. He followed up with a smash to the mouth from the stick. Teeth and blood flew on impact. The biker fell, hands clutching his ruined mouth.

  Hammer heard a sound behind him, turned. Too late. The first biker was bringing the axe down on to his back. Hammer pivoted to one side, the blade catching his left shoulder as it did so. It ripped through his T-shirt, breaking skin and drawing blood.

  ‘Bastard!’ he shouted. ‘Now you’ve got me fucking angry!’

  He turned and brought the handle down on the biker’s wrist, disarming him and breaking his wrist in one movement. It cracked loudly. He cried out in pain.

  ‘You’ve just got me started,’ roared Hammer.

  He chopped the biker with the stick, once, twice. He fell. Hammer continued smashing at the fallen man, driving him on to his back. Rage built up within his body, channelled down his arms, transferred into the handle, was released on the prone body.

  Blood and bodily tissue sprayed out. He ignored it.

  Pure rage-nourishment was drawn into his body. He felt himself growing, his body expanding and with it his power, his strength.

  Time stood still. All that existed was Hammer, his weapon, his hunger and the lump of meat before him.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, but eventually he was too exhausted to continue. Satiated and sighing, his arms trembling with exertion, his chest burning with effort, he looked down. There were no recognizable features left. The body had ruptured and split, like it had been dropped from a great height then danced over. He smiled. He felt tired happiness at seeing the body like that, a post-prandial contentment.

  Hammer looked around. The bikers had retreated. A crowd of wary drinkers were standing well back, horrified by what they had witnessed.

  Hammer turned, walked away. The crowd too traumatized by what they had seen to move, too scared to call 999, to do anything.

  He felt eyes on him as he walked, blood and matter from the body. And something else.

  Fear. And respect.

  He smiled.

  He had destroyed the biker’s body. He had eaten the man’s soul.

  Respect.

  He felt ten feet tall. A gargantuan, beautiful superhero. A blood-stain’d king, an emperor among peasants.

  They feared him.

  They loved him.

  Music from the pub jukebox travelled faintly over the night, trailed behind him. He smiled at the irony. ‘The Hammer’ by Motorhead.

  He wasn’t worried about being caught. He chose his locations carefully. Made sure he had a similar relationship with at least one local copper as he had with Keenyside. Made sure he knew where the bodies were buried.

  He walked away, flexing his arms, back to the Vectra.

  As he reached the car his phone rang. He pulled it out, smearing it with blood, placed it to his ear.

  ‘Get up here quick.’ Keenyside. ‘You’re needed.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘East Midlands. Leicester, I think. Took your advice. Had some time off. Bit of R and R. Good workout.’

  He heard sirens behind him, travelling in the opposite direction. They wouldn’t look at him. The car was too nondescript.

  ‘Right. Well, straight back. I need you. It’s on.’

  Hammer cut the connection, threw the phone on the seat.

  Smiled.

  ‘Ah well,’ he said out loud, ‘back to work.’

  He slipped a Cannibal Corpse CD into the player, headed off to Newcastle.

  29

  Caroline lay on her side. Feigning sleep; eyes open. Unable to stop touching the wound beneath her eye. Unable to believe it was all real.

  She looked at her father. Studied him. Wondered who this stranger was that had unburdened his secret life before her. Craved her understanding. Begged her forgiveness.

  Caroline hadn’t responded. She was still struggling to process the events of the last few weeks. More than understanding and forgiveness, she wanted the clock turned back. Wanted safety and comfort. Her old life again, the one she had thought was real.

  But that was gone. Like a blown cover in a cheesy spy movie. Gone. Never to return.

  Her father was backed up against the wall as far as he could go. He looked ill, broken. She felt for him. On a basic human level. Whatever else, he was still her father.

  And he had told her more. Everything, he said.

  ‘Look,’ he had said, ‘you don’t know how bad I felt about Tosher. The other travellers.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s a great comfort to them.’ Caroline’s voice as cold as the air they were forced to breathe.

  Colin sighed, wiped his forehead against his arm. He was hot. Feverish. He carried on talking.

  ‘You have to listen,’ he said. ‘You have to understand.’ He sighed again. Searched for the right words, the right tone.

  ‘What I did was wrong,’ he said, ‘very wrong. All of it. I saw Alan Keenyside almost every day.’ He shook his head. ‘He seemed to be flourishing … big cars, holiday home … while I had nothing. But guilt. And seeing you … It was eating me, killing me like the cancer that took your mother. I had to square it. Atone for it.’

  Caroline let him talk. His face was twisted by pain. Reliving it over again.

  ‘I tried to contact Tosher.’ He stole a glance at her, gauging her reaction.

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘To see if he was all right. I don’t know … to see if there was some way I might help him.’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘In the hope he’d forgive you.’

  ‘Well, I had to do something.’ His voice rose. He calmed himself, continued. ‘But I didn’t know how. I thought of hiring a private detective or something, but that didn’t feel right. Then I remembered this journalist. Joe Donovan from th
e Herald. He’d been around at the time. I tried to contact him, hoping he could put me in touch.’ He sighed. ‘But he’d left the paper. They gave me another journalist, Gary Myers, to talk to. By this time I was at my wits’ end. I’d had enough. So I thought, what the hell. Told him I had a story for him.’

  Another look towards Caroline. She was still, waiting for him to fill the void between them with more words.

  ‘We arranged a meeting. Secret. Neutral ground,’ Colin continued. ‘Away from home. Gary Myers used this place in King’s Cross. London. A hotel where prostitutes and rent boys went.’ Colin gave a small laugh. ‘If anyone saw us, he said, we’d just be mistaken for customers.’

  Caroline put her head back. ‘Jesus …’

  Colin noted her reaction. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, slightly embarrassed, ‘I talked to him. Told him everything. A calculated risk, but if I was going to get any peace I thought it was worth it.’

  Colin attempted to lean forward, into his story now. ‘And he listened. It was the first time I’d spoken it aloud. To anyone. It felt like a … like an unburdening of the soul.’

  ‘A confession,’ said Caroline. ‘Like you’d give to a Catholic priest.’

  Colin’s features became animated. ‘Exactly right.’

  ‘Or a policeman.’

  Colin’s face fell. Connection lost. He sighed. ‘Gary didn’t think it a good idea to contact Tosher. But he came up with a better one.’

  Caroline waited.

  ‘A sting.’

  She frowned. ‘A what?’

  ‘A sting,’ he repeated. ‘A good old-fashioned, Fleet Street-style sting, Gary said.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Entrap Alan Keenyside.’

  Caroline just stared at him.

  Colin continued. ‘It would get the story into the open. Alan Keenyside would be punished for his actions. The whole world would see it.’

  ‘And it would sell papers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Colin, a light gleaming in his eyes. ‘But more important it would give me peace. You don’t know how much … how much I needed that to happen. There was a chance I could have gone to prison for my part. I knew that. But it was a chance I was willing to take. I had to. We came up with a plan. One that played on Alan Keenyside’s weaknesses.’

  Gesturing with his shackled, damaged hands, he was now lost in his story.

  ‘He was always asking me about NorTec. What we were working on, any industrial secrets he could pass on, that kind of thing. And the biggie: had I been approached by a buyer offering big money for some secret formula.’ He shook his head. ‘He kept on at me. On and on. You must get approached all the time, what are you working on now that you can sell, I know how to deal with these people, I’ll sell it for you … On and on …’

  Colin sighed. ‘Now, industrial spying is very big business. And I get approached more often than you think. But in reality it’s, I don’t know, a rival company wanting to be first with a new … washing-up liquid. Which there is a lot of money in. A lot. But Keenyside was thinking al-Qaeda, international terrorists. James Bond. He was a fantasist. So we came up with a scenario. One that used his fantasy of being some kind of international dealer against them.’

  Colin paused for breath, continued. ‘I told him I was working on a special project. The experimental development of a genetically engineered compound for use in the treatment of cancer. Something that when introduced into the body would be programmed only to destroy cancer cells.’ He smiled. ‘Sounds plausible, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I wish we’d had it a couple of years ago,’ said Caroline.

  ‘So do I,’ said Colin sadly. ‘In fact, I wished it really existed. But it doesn’t. But Alan Keenyside thought it did. Especially when I told him how lucrative the field of cancer research is. Like looking for the Holy Grail. And the one who finds it and patents it is made for life. And if that wasn’t enough for him, I told him this compound also had a wide-open market application. It could be changed, reprogrammed, to attack any kind of cell in the human body. Weaponized, even.’

  ‘And I suppose you told him you had a secret buyer for this compound.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And he believed you.’

  ‘Jumped at it. I told him I couldn’t do it on my own. Needed someone to be the front man. Almost bit my hand off. Even when I said he’d have to break in to NorTec.’

  Caroline almost choked in disbelief. ‘What? The one that was on the news?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I asked you about it.’ She frowned. ‘That was you?’

  ‘Keenyside, actually.’ Colin couldn’t keep the pride from his voice. ‘I just coordinated.’

  ‘They said it was eco-terrorists or environmentalists who had lost their nerve. Nothing was stolen, you said.’

  ‘Nothing was stolen. There was nothing to steal. I showed Keenyside where to get into the grounds. Gave him a time. Met him, handed him a case containing what he thought was a sample of the compound. Told him I’d take the written formula out myself.’

  Caroline shook her head.

  ‘I wanted Keenyside’s complicity.’ Colin’s eyes danced with electricity. ‘Photographic evidence of him breaking into NorTec and committing a criminal act. And thanks to Gary Myers, I got it.’

  Caroline rubbed her forehead, her eyes. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this …’

  ‘Caroline …’ He stretched out a hand.

  ‘Don’t fucking Caroline me!’ She tried to stand up, pull away from him. The cuffs reminded her she couldn’t. ‘You’ve had an ex-boyfriend of mine seriously hurt, destroyed innocent people’s lives, and now you’re telling me you’re some kind of cross between a criminal mastermind and James fucking Bond!’

  ‘Please don’t swear, Caroline. You know I don’t like it when you swear.’

  That sounded more like her father. Or one aspect of him: the picky, pedantic paternalist she tolerated until the warm, friendly one returned. Hearing that, she now didn’t know which aspect represented her real father. The one she loved. Perhaps all of them.

  Perhaps none.

  Caroline tried to speak. The words were exasperatedly choked off in her throat. She fought for control. Regained it.

  ‘So what happened next? A car chase through the streets of Ponteland? A giant death ray aimed at Morpeth? What?’

  Colin sighed. ‘I realize it must sound ridiculous …’

  Caroline snorted.

  ‘But it’s true. Things like this happen all the time and we never get to hear about them. Secrets and lies. The way of the world. Real life isn’t what we see every day. Real life is what happens under the surface.’

  ‘I think I’m well aware of that now.’

  Silence fell again. The lockup seemed especially cold.

  ‘So,’ said Caroline eventually, ‘where did it all go wrong?’

  ‘Well, Keenyside may be a fantasist, but he’s a dangerous one.’ Colin gave a sad little laugh. Looked around the lockup. ‘I didn’t realize how desperately he wanted to believe in it.’ Locked eyes with Caroline. ‘I misjudged him.’ He dropped his gaze. ‘Sorry.’

  Caroline said nothing. They sat in silence for a while.

  The light faded in Colin’s eyes. He began to resemble a sick old man once more. His voice was tired now.

  ‘Well, things came to a head. Gary Myers and I met regularly in the King’s Cross hotel room. Gary ran everything by the Herald’s lawyer, Francis Sharkey, to get a legal standpoint. He liked the sound of it. So much so that he wanted in. It made sense. Extra bit of security, avoiding entrapment. Gary and him would pose as buyers, have the meeting. Sharkey also wanted a full first-hand record of the plan. So I told the whole thing to Gary and he committed it to minidisc.’ Colin sighed. ‘Unfortunately, he never had a chance to do anything with it, poor bugger.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Keenyside was having me followed. Obviously didn’t want to lose his investment. Well, you’ve met Hammer. His ba
rely house-trained psychopath.’

  Caroline shivered from something more than cold.

  Colin continued, his features in shadow. ‘Hammer … found me. Brought Gary and me here. We made a deal with each other. Don’t tell them about the sting. Make out I had an attack of conscience and talked to a journalist.’

  He shook his head. ‘But then there was the disc … what Keenyside would do when he heard it.’ He sighed. ‘But that didn’t happen. The minidisc player with the disc inside it went missing from the hotel room.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘No idea. But it never turned up. If it had, I doubt we’d be alive.’

  Caroline looked at her father. She wanted to tell him he was being melodramatic, but seeing his sad, old, tired eyes she knew he was telling her the truth. She looked away.

  ‘I was needed to make the call,’ said Colin. ‘And you were needed to make me make the call.’

  Caroline’s voice was quiet. ‘But now you’ve done that.’

  Colin nodded.

  Silence, cold and hard, filled the room up to bursting.

  ‘And it was answered,’ said Colin, his voice lifting lightly. ‘I never expected that.’ He looked at his daughter, a faint glimmer of hope dancing behind his eyes. ‘If the call was answered, it means the meeting is set to go ahead. It means there’s a chance we’ll get out of this alive.’

  Caroline sighed. ‘Our only chance.’

  She drew her knees up to her body, wrapped her free arm round them, lowered her forehead. Eventually there came the sounds of muffled sobbing.

  Colin watched. Unable to approach her, unable to comfort her.

  He turned away, looked at the floor, sighed.

  Said nothing.

  The bus pulled up to the stop, disgorged its passengers. Westerhope on the westernmost fringes of Newcastle. Late-autumn early-evening darkness. The threat of winter in the air.

  Janine walked her usual route home. Over the pedestrian crossing, turning left off the main road, going further down, then left along the hedge-lined alleyway running by the side of the church. She always worried about that path. It was well lit but lonely, the hedges casting deep shadows into the churchyard.