Breakdown (27 page)

Blood dripped from my mouth onto the floor, and I shivered.
Humpty
. The hell I shivered, choking some blood out.
Dumpty, sittin
—“Fuh, fuck you!”

Pushed down into a steel chair that had me hissing from the cold and nearly jerking my ass up, a hand then pressed into my throat, digging just below the windpipe and threatening to easily pop out my Adam’s apple like he was flipping a lid of a beer bottle. “I’ll say it again. Once only.” Blue eyes filled a very hazy room as they came close. “Fucking language. Mind it around me.”

He let go, pushing me back, then moving over to another chair close by and sitting down. The cut on my eye made it difficult to focus, but a long table came into view. A few folders, three of them, were piled haphazardly on the table. It took a while to force my gaze away and bury the need to scramble over and just inch the files into order. A long mirror filled the wall off to the left, leaving the door behind me. And apart from the two chairs sat facing each other, only two people filled the interview room.

Interview.

Life suddenly went very cold.

Fucking copper.

“Yeah.” A smile was given. “You’re fucked, kid.” A light tapping came at the table, just a fingertip on tabletop. “You just really need to decide which position you want to lie down and take it from, now you’ve been caught with your legs open again.”

A gaze ran over my nakedness and I pulled my legs up, heels on the edge of the seat, close to my ass. Anything to get that look of contempt off me.

He wore a suit. Considering he’d been roughing it up in an alley, there wasn’t a ruffle to his jacket. Knuckles were clean, scuffed, red, but any blood had been wiped away. One leg was drawn up casually on the other as he leaned back, watching. He never let his fucking gaze fall. I held it, not even through any bravery, just a need to know where he was. He moved damn fast, hitting hard. I made sure I stayed on those eyes.

He was late twenties, slim, a little taller than me, but so bloody toned with it. I still had that slim-waist, broad-shouldered look of youth, but his came with full-blown slender maturity and tailored so well to fit in that suit. With how quiet he’d been on approach, then how fast he’d taken me down with moves I’d been taught to block since I was a kid, it put him higher on the Shotokan scale. And I was a black belt. That made this bastard what in martial arts? First dan? Second? And the bastard came with a badge.

“Worried?” he said quietly. “Smart boy,” he added, picking up the first file off the pile and tossing it over. It caught my arm and skidded to a stop.

“Jack Harrison. Father Greg, mother Elena,” said the cop, and I didn’t bother looking down at the folder. “Eighteen, of mixed blood: English-Italian, the Italian being on your mother’s side.” That finger still tapped lightly on the table. “Schooled at St Joseph’s, then at Kingston at secondary level, you were expelled at fifteen, then again just before your GCSEs for assault on a teacher, the same one on both occasions after your parents won an appeal to get you back into the school. Education itself was disgraceful, most of your days spent skipping lessons, pissed up, and starting fights outside of the school gates.” He stopped his tapping to stroke at his bottom lip. “Then you became a little more serious after you left school: car theft, arson, assault and battery, not to mention taking a lead role in most of that.”

Yeah, I knew this shit.

“It was your father who tried to set you on the right track, making the call to the police the one night he followed you and saw firsthand what mess you were involved in.”

There was noise from behind me, back towards the door, but I didn’t shift my gaze.

“Sent to juvy for a few months at seventeen, guess what happened when you came out?” He gave a smile. “You found a new friend. Despite your father standing by you when most decent, hardworking parents would walk away, you managed to get yourself back into one rather... awkward position.”

A second file was tossed over. It hit the first, coming to a stop.

“Charles Groves, a.k.a Cutter.” He was back to tapping lightly at the table. “Thirty-two, raised by his grandmother, Charlotte, who owned a chain of shoe stores. Charles was given a luxurious upbringing: private education, own home and car paid for by his grandmother at nineteen.”

I frowned slightly.

“He tell you something different, kid? Maybe man-up his history a little more?” There was such a smile there. “Groves spent a year in jail for fraud, but with such good behaviour on the inside, he won a get out of jail early card.”

Shooting pain in my ribs had me gripping at the cuffs, breathing now a little heavier.

“After his grandmother died and left him more than comfortable, Charles started buying up property, then pulling young kids off the street, giving them ‘a home’.”

The third file was picked up and tossed over. It tripled the size of mine and Cutter’s, pushing mine onto the floor. “But you know this last bit, right?”

“Call,” I mumbled. “I’m allowed a call.”

“But lately, Cutter’s found himself some new friends too, hasn’t he?”

I wasn’t stupid. I was no grass. Being an informant would always be answered with that razorblade hovering next to Carole’s stomach, how Cutter knew Steve, my old man. So he’d lied about being so tough in his youth, but something had changed that. The bastard was psychotic. “You...” I tried that again after I needed to lick across dry lips, finding the one corner with dried and crusted blood. “Are you that sad and in need of mates you have to go and list off every supposed one of mine? Of that Charles? I don’t know no Charles.”

A kick went to my chair, nearly tipping me off and forcing out a cry as a foot went down to steady myself.

“Liar.”

My leg was drawn slowly back up as shivering took over.

“He took a shipment of arms a few weeks back. You were all playing with them the night of the warehouse job. Tell me,” he said quietly, “what else is Charles ‘into’ lately?”

“I don’t know no Charles.”

He was up, pulling me up with him, pinning me face-first onto the table, the pressure of the hard table pressed against my ribcage. And in amongst all the pain, there was the humiliation of being naked, bound, and bent over with my ass on display as he pinned me from behind.

“Liar.” He picked up the thick folder, making me conscious of him shifting against me from behind, and a loud flutter of file was heard as he tossed it backwards and paperwork scattered over the floor. A moment later, a grip to the back of my neck made damn sure I staggered back from the table. My knees found the floor as my nose was made to touch the first scattered photo.

“How about this kid? You know him?”

A fourteen-year old stared up at me, the left side of his face melted down so he could only offer a smile from the left curve of his lip.

“Name’s Kyle. His dad found him rocking himself on the floor of his retail shop after Cutter sliced off his fingers for not jacking a car. Were you there, maybe holding the kid down?”

“Fuck. You.” Giving a cry, I tried to push away.

“Kid had a stroke that night.” He pushed me back down. “Did you ‘know’ that? Did you see that?”

Another photo was kicked under my nose.

“Maybe you ‘remember’ this kid.”

He was chubby, naked from the waist up. A left nipple was missing, the other sliced through. The kid, no older than seventeen, was left looking down, staring at the hands he cupped together.

“Or this one.”

Another came, this one a girl. Bite marks were on her throat and eight... she looked no older than goddamn eigh—

“Stop—stop.”

“Stop?” A rough grip pulled me back, and I cried out, snatching at it. “She said that too. Guess what Cutter did?”

“Enough.”

“He raped her.”

I cried out, not fighting as I was pulled to my feet and forced over to the mirror. I didn’t look as he shaped me from behind, his grip now under my jaw, wanting me to do just that.

“Take a look,” he said flatly. “See, I heard he had a cutting slag who’s always up for it in one form or another.” The grip tightened. “Fucking look.” I didn’t. “You on a promise tonight, Jack? Fuck with a copper and you get fucked in return?” My head hit the mirror and was pressed hard against it. “Did you know? That Cutter raped that little girl? And after he’d finished, did you want his cock up you then as well? You watched it rip her apart, then you begged for it yourself?”

I fought sickness, enough to choke it back down, but I was tugged away from the mirror with an arm around my throat, back toward the door. “Let’s go have a chat with that kid’s parents. Let’s go show them what sick fucks crawl around up piss-marked alleys in order to get cut ’n fucked.”

“Off. Enough. Fucking...” In the scramble, a photo had been kicked free from underneath some of the other photos and suddenly—

Humpty...

“Is that why you’re keeping your mouth shut? Did Cutter let you take a turn or two with the kids too?”

Dumpty—

“There was blood on your coat. It wasn’t yours. Tell me, that a new kink of yours? You Cutter’s protégé in every sense of the word?”

Humpty...

The snapshot on the floor looked recent, just a few days old: a young man twisting his face away from the camera as he pulled his T-shirt up. Skin was pale. Always fucking pale, like the man needed a blood transfusion just to keep on his feet and, pale. He was always so fucking pale, he—

...Dumpty.

Nips from a razor messed up some of Steve’s chest: a fresh cut beneath the left nipple, another older slice looking at least two inches long down by a bony hip. Two older cuts, looking well into scar territory touched a collarbone, then another looked out from the top of the man’s jeans.

Humpty.

That cut looked new too, like the knife had rested lightly against skin, idly grazing down to his pubes, towards his—

“Cock. The fucking—”

“Oh, know that one, huh?” came a quiet voice against my ear. “Another of Cutter’s cutting toys he liked to rape. You join in there too? Fuck him and—”

“Cunt.” Then all struggling stopped as—“Humpty...”

I let a smile creep up, then kissed at the cop’s arm, really up for some fun now.

Martin. Age 18

“Humpty Dumpty,” I said quietly, loving that arm around my throat as we stood in the interrogation room. “See he sits on the wall, drinking his ale, not watching shit fall...” A kiss went to the cop’s wrist, then a lick, but another teasing bite was so much fucking better. “You into secrets, Welsh? Wanna share a few with me?” Twisting slightly to look back, I watched those blue eyes, wanted to dance in them as people screamed and ran away in the chaos.

“You like secrets, Welsh? The kind that keeps a guy up all night?” I kissed lightly at his jaw and the taste of cologne wanted to make me carry on chewing through bone to get the scent inside of me. I settled for another lick at his neck. “Have a thousand and one ways to keep a guy up all night long, me. How long has it been since you were kept up all night long, boss?”

A slight frown, the cop took a pace or two backwards. As he did, I held up his lighter I’d slipped from his pocket, not even looking back as I made it to the photos. I’d found the keys to his handcuffs too, just a few moments before and had let them slip to the floor. Or maybe he’d let me find them? He didn’t seem the type to balls things up like that. This bastard was playing games, but what sort remained to be seen. “Do you have any cigarettes to go with this?”

He didn’t answer, and as I bent down and picked a photo up, I glanced over at him. “No reply, came the firm answer.” The photo took my attention. “What’s your name, Welsh? You know so much about our Jack.”

Quiet, then—“Gray. Mr. Raoul to you.”

“Oh, nice exotic mix: Spanish on the surname, but a hint of Welsh in that accent. Thank you for your honesty, Gray.” I looked him over. “The quality going on there. Want to play Lord and Master? I’ll be a good lad.” I winked. “Mostly. You like the control and getting brutal with it. You like it kinky in bed too? Question is...” I cocked my head to the side. “Do you keep that control, or plead to be controlled instead?” His body was taken in again. “Please say it’s the latter. Fuck, I’d make you cry for it.”

The photo took my attention again and I snorted. “Fucking idiot,” I mumbled. “Steve always did wait behind for Jack when he should have carried on running. Didn’t matter what shit Jack was into. Who knows, maybe with him spreading his legs for Cutter, the bastard was sniffing around for something else entirely, eh?”

Giving a huff, hearing joints crack and pop but nothing more from Gray, I eased up and went over to the huge mirror. Running a hand over my jaw, I turned my head this way, that. Blood leaked from a gash by the left eye, followed by more dried redness inside the nostrils. Right cheekbone had a rainbow of colour, the left, gravel from the scuffle in the alley still bit into the skin. Looking down, prodding at the dark bruising covering both the left and right rib cage, I whistled. “Nice artwork.” Gray got my attention. “You favour any particular artist, or this your own style?”