To Fight For (26 page)

The older man cleared his throat.

‘We're only doing what we're told, Mrs Dunham.'

She sighed.

‘I know, Matt. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it out on you.'

‘We'll grab a coffee inside. We'll wait for you there, alright?'

‘That's fine. Thanks.'

The door closed and I let my gun down.

She took out another cigarette and lit it and stood in the middle of the yard, looking down at the paving stones and the weeds pushing their way through the cracks.

‘Shit,' she said, brushing some of her hair back.

I stayed with my back against the wall, watching her.

‘I heard Vic on the phone,' she said finally. ‘He was talking to Eddie. He said, “We've got him at the factory.”'

‘What does that mean?'

‘I don't know. Vic's got lots of places, all over London and Essex, but I never heard of a factory.'

That had been my fear. She couldn't help me, even if she'd wanted to.

‘Does that help?' she said.

‘No. I don't know where that is. I could try asking around, but it'll take time.'

We stood there for a while. The drizzle was getting heavier. Those two inside would start to wonder why Dunham's wife would want to stand out in the rain.

‘You'd better go,' I said. ‘Or they'll come back for you.'

‘Yes,' she said.

She dropped her cigarette and let it fizzle out on the wet floor. She wrapped her arms about her again and started to walk towards the door. But then she stopped and turned to me.

‘I could find out where it is,' she said. ‘If it's important. If you can help him, the man, Glazer.'

‘How?'

She shrugged.

‘I'll ask someone. There's no reason why they shouldn't tell me. There's a man called Andrew. He's a business manager.'

So, she called this Andrew and asked him about any factories her husband owned. She told him she wanted a list of her husband's properties. That was all she had to do. She wrote an address down and gave it to me.

‘Your husband will find out you were asking about it,' I said to her.

‘I know.'

‘You'll be in trouble.'

She laughed at that.

‘I've been in trouble a long time.'

Now, standing in the middle of that walled yard, with her arms wrapped around her like that, she seemed more alone, and I thought again of Brenda and wondered how alone she'd been, even when I'd been with her. Is that what we did to women – me and Dunham and Eddie and Paget and Marriot, all hurting them, making them suffer alone?

Here I was, lying to the woman, letting herself offer to get into the worst trouble with a violent man just so that I could exact my revenge on the man she thought I'd try to save.

Yes, that's what we did. We made women suffer. We made them suffer alone. It's what we've always done.

‘Tell them I had a gun,' I said. ‘Tell them I threatened your daughter. They'll believe that.'

It was past eleven by the time I found the industrial estate. The midday traffic was building up and my head had started to throb again. There was a dark, rainy sky, the lights from cars and lorries bouncing off the wet road and splintering into my eyes, the fumes smothering me, the engine noise drilling into my head.

It was a relief to get off the busy roads and into the estate.

I drove slowly, scanning the lock-ups and warehouses and the odd power generator. No vehicles passed me, there were no lights on in any of the buildings. There were no people that I could see, no sounds of industry. Some of the places had been closed up, wooden boards over the windows, graffiti on the walls.

There were trees around, and areas of overgrown grass and, running through the site were potholed roads. No repairs had been done to the roads in years. The whole place was rotting into the ground.

It was near the River Lea, so half of the estate faced a path with the river, straightened up into a canal, beyond. It seemed that the Lea had once been used here, maybe for transport, maybe for water or waste.

Plot 36 was at the end of one of the roads. There was a wooden sign screwed to the building. The paint had flaked, but the sign was still readable. ‘Curran Automotive Engineering' it read and, below that, in smaller letters, ‘custom fuel systems – bespoke carburettors – fuel injection systems'. This was the factory, then. I stopped the car, reversed slowly and parked out of sight. Then I got out and neared the place gradually, the Makarov in my hand.

There was an eight-foot high, spiked, galvanized steel fence going around the whole lot, except for the opening for vehicles. In the middle of the plot, surrounded by tarmac, was a stubby single-storey building that looked like some kind of government place, council offices or something functional like that.

The brickwork was a dirty brown colour, the mortar almost black. The windows were large but divided into small panes, and the glass itself was frosted so that the whole building looked like a prison.

The fence and tarmac were a problem. I wasn't going to get through that steel fence and getting over would be difficult. Even if I did that, I'd be exposed for ten seconds while I ran across to the building. If there were sentries, I'd be dead before I got a dozen yards. I could wander in through the vehicular entrance, but, again, I'd be exposed.

Because it was at the end of the estate, the river ran two sides and the road one side. The fourth side bordered a set of garages, all of which looked like they hadn't been used in twenty years. The roof of one had fallen in, and a few broken cars lay about, their skeletons rusted, weeds growing up the sides. The earth was dragging them back.

On that fourth side, the windows of the building were small, narrow and high up, and I thought they probably belonged to the toilet block or something like that.

The garages were open to the road, no fencing or anything. I went into that lot.

I waited for a few minutes and watched. There were no CCTV cameras that I could see in plot 36, no patrols came round. For a moment, I had the feeling that it was all a trap, that as soon as I entered the building I'd be caught. But that was just panic. I got hold of it and got hold of my Makarov and felt better.

There'd be men inside the building, sure, but nothing I couldn't handle. But then I noticed that there were no cars parked, and that only made sense if nobody was there. Dunham's men would've come by car in case they were called away suddenly. Maybe Dunham's wife had lied, or got it wrong. Maybe they'd come and gone. It always seemed to be too late.

I looked around the garage lot and saw something I could use. Over by one of the garages, half-covered in a tarpaulin, was a pile of tyres. I went over and tried to lift the first one. It wouldn't budge, had become glued to the one below by years of decomposition. I kicked at the pile, using the flat of my foot and all my weight. A crack appeared between the first and second. I tried to lift it again, and this time it came.

It took a while, but it was quiet work, and, over that side of the building, I was sure I couldn't be seen. Finally, I had a pile of tyres five feet high, standing next to the galvanized fence. I climbed on top of them, stepped up onto the top of the fence and let myself drop down to the other side, bending my knees to soften the impact. I landed quietly and stayed like that, in a crouched position. I'd stowed the Makarov. Now I reached for it and held it ready. Nothing happened. Nobody shouted. No sirens went off. No security lights came on.

I thought again about the lack of cars. They would've needed cars to get to a place like this, and there'd be at least one here if Glazer was here too. It had to mean I was too late.

There were two doors, one front, one back. Both were made of the same grey metal. Both were locked. I went around again, checking the windows this time. Mostly they were shut tight, with no way to open them from the outside short of smashing them, but there was one on the far side that had been broken and was an inch ajar. It was a large window, and the bottom of it was only waste high. I put my fingers in the gap and pulled. It was tight, and it creaked as it opened. I froze. To me, in that quietness, the noise had sounded like a tree falling.

After a while, when there was no other sound, I opened the window more, pulling it quickly this time. When the gap was wide enough, I climbed in and found myself squatting in a small, carpeted corridor, with white walls and a couple of doors leading off. The carpet was good quality and meant my footsteps were noiseless. I'd bought a small torch with an adjustable lens to make the light larger. I opened the first door slowly, my gun ready, the light from my torch bouncing around. It was a small room, windowless and empty. Probably it had once been a storage room. I tried the next one and this was about the same, only smaller.

I moved down the corridor and through a fire door. I went through into a big space. This had to be the workshop. It smelled of metal and dust. It felt empty, gaping and cold.

I levelled my gun and moved the torch's beam around. It was a long room, maybe fifty feet by twenty, and must've taken up half of the building. The ceiling was high and strip lighting ran the length. There were long metal benches along both sides of the room, and twisted metal shavings on the floor. There were small holes and angular patches where machinery had once been bolted to the benches. There was metallic dust all over the floor, and footprints in the dust. They could've been there years – or not.

I gripped the Makarov tightly, and moved forward slowly, listening, waiting.

When I'd gone the length of the room, I came up against the back wall, windows high up, too dirty to let much light in. To my right was another door, thick and heavy. I opened it slowly and stopped. The light here was enough so that I could see clearly.

The room was bigger than the workshop, and the windows larger. Probably it had been a place for fixing the motors; there was space for several cars. It was damp and cold and empty – except for the thin, metal-framed, plastic chair and the man tied into it.

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?