The Cutting Crew (16 page)

'Right.'

I pulled an old card out of my wallet that had my mobile number written on it and handed it to him.

'Soon as you hear from either of them, tell them to ring that number there. Okay? Tell them it's all right, but it's really important they get in touch. We just want to talk to them about Alison.'

'Okay.'

'You sure you got that, yeah?'

'Yeah, yeah. I'm sure.'

Rosh called out: 'Martin, we need to hustle.'

'I'm coming.'

'No - we really need to hustle.'

'Thanks for your help,' I told Simon, giving him what I hoped was a friendly smile, and then ran back down the path. Rosh was already clambering into the driver's seat. As he started the van's engine, I climbed in beside him.

'What news?' I said.

'It's Lucy.' I jerked back in my seat as he set off too quickly and then started to get faster. We left smoke, rubber and a screech behind us.

He said, 'She's in trouble.'

Chapter
Eleven

Not everybody within our city walls was born here, and not everyone who was born here stays. Our population is as transitory as in any other big city. But we have the illusion of confinement, because most of the outer districts are walled up at their furthest borders, so that in many ways our city is more like an enormous, sprawling castle than a normal city or town. Obviously, though, there are hundreds of gateways in and out, and they're never manned: this isn't a prison. And there are places where the walls have been broken down. Bull expands out to the north-east, for example, like a spill of acid, burning at the cusp; and Fish in the north-west is largely flooded, so you can get out of there easily enough if you're a good swimmer with a bad nose. But heavy traffic like trucks and cars and coaches have only four main roads by which to enter or leave the city. Basically, we have a criss-cross of motorways at the heart of the city, slightly east of the central square, and if you want to drive in then you have to enter by one of these, and then peel off onto smaller roads. Leaving is the same in reverse. From the back streets, you push your way onto the main arteries and then get pumped out with everything else.

Rosh and I were heading north. It was after midnight now, but the motorway was still busy: mainly with articulated lorries that had brought in produce for the shops and markets. Rosh was weaving between them dangerously, slowing down for no-one.

'We'll get there,' I said.

He didn't answer - just gunned the accelerator a little and shot past a bleached-yellow van. The driver blared his horn, but the sound faded away quickly as we left him behind.

'We'll get there.'

Lucy was heading north as well, some way ahead of us. She was in her unmarked car, pushing the speed limit without quite breaking it. Behind her, there was a black van. It had tried to run her off the road as she left the police station, failed, and then been behind her ever since. She could see at least three men in the front, and I expected that there would be more in the back. Even if there weren't, three were too many for her to deal with. So she was leading them out of the city as slowly as she could risk, and Rosh and I were racing to catch up.

He said, 'Phone her.'

I did. It took a couple of seconds for her to answer.

She said, 'Hey, Martin. How are you?'

'Hey,' I replied. 'I'm fine. But I hope for the sake of other drivers that you're on the hands-free.'

'Very funny.'

'Where are you?'

'Just out of the gates,' she said. 'Passed them about a minute ago.

You guys?'

I looked out of the window. Yellow streetlights curled up from either side of the road. Beyond them, there wasn't much to differentiate the landscape: just a lot of wasteground and trees as the city thinned out.

'Close,' I said.

'Two minutes from the gate,' Rosh told me.

'Two minutes and closing,' I relayed.

'Okay,' she said. 'I'm taking them down the woods.'

'Our woods?'

'Yeah. A bit of quiet to deal with them in. Plenty of cover.'

Typical Lucy. I had no idea whether she was even remotely scared; she often reacted strangely and it was a bit difficult to predict. Generally, the more intense a situation got, the calmer she appeared. I'd only ever seen her vulnerable in the kind of intimate moments that other people weren't around to see. But whatever she was feeling, I was frightened for her even if she wasn't. As fast as Rosh was driving, I wanted him to accelerate.

'We'll be there by then,' I told her.

'Plenty of cover for all of us, then. These guys mean business.'

'We'll take them.'

She paused, and then said:

'Okay. I'm sorry about everything, Martin.'

'Don't talk like that. There's never been anything to be sorry about.'

'I just wanted you to know. It was bad, the way things turned out.'

'It's okay. We'll see you soon.'

'City gates,' Rosh called out. He accelerated under them and, finding his way blocked by a taxi, blared his horn a couple of times.

The taxi driver swerved out of the way and gave us the finger as we passed him.

'Hear that?' I said. 'City gates.'

'Good.' Another pause, then: 'I'm at the turn-off now. Got to go.'

'Good luck,' I said. 'And don't get killed. Okay?'

'Remember who you're talking to here and don't be so fucking stupid.'

I hung up, feeling that it was the last time I'd ever speak to her.

But I didn't believe in fate - never had - and I reminded myself of that now. Whatever was going to happen would be decided when it did. I turned to Rosh.

'She's at the turn-off.'

'Two minutes away,' he said. 'But we'll make it in one.'

I nodded. Of course we would.

When the police arrested people, those people went to jail and then court and then - if we were lucky - jail again. But when the four of us arrested people out of hours - if we couldn't fake the scene well enough - those people disappeared. These weren't pleasant people we were dealing with after all; they had connections, and they would be missed. A corpse in a room is a question that needs an answer. But a missing person is more of a vague puzzle, and the even more unpleasant people who would want to know what had happened are left with nothing to go on. They would assume that a rival was responsible, but they'd have little to work with beyond their own back catalogues. And who knew maybe the guy in question had just run.

Rosh had some land outside the city that he'd inherited from his parents when they died. It had once been used for farming, but now it wasn't used for much of anything: the main house was still standing, but Rosh had emptied it of any valuables, and the wooded acres of land around it were untended and overgrown. Old farm equipment rested wherever it had stopped, rusted now, wrapped in grass. The land itself was fenced off at the extremities and only really accessible by a series of half-roads that nobody would ever take by accident. So it was private and perfect for what we needed. Deep in the woods, there was an old skip and that was where we disposed of any evidence. Afterwards, we'd drive away from the house - down its dusty driveway and then onto the tangle of awkward trails - and we'd see the pinprick of fire behind us, burning in the woods. But nothing would ever be visible from the motorway, or anywhere else where unsuspecting drivers might see it and grow suspicious.

'Here we go,' Rosh said, peeling the van off to the left.

All that sounds bad, and it was. But we're talking about murderers, here. We're talking about serial rapists and abusers and major-league players whose absence in the world inarguably made it a better place. Who were we to make that decision, you might ask. We were just us.

Regardless, this was where Lucy was now leading the men who wanted to kill her. A bit of cover. A bit of privacy.

We bumped along. Within a minute, the road was barely wide enough for the van and the ground was churned up: all tractored muck and soil, frozen into a fractured wave. There was a little open space over a fence to the right - a field that might once have housed cattle or crops, or who knew what. Thick woods to the left.

'Get ready,' Rosh said.

He switched off the lights, slowing down only slightly, and drove blind. The van rolled up and down, from side to side, tracking the rough ground. I already had my gun in my hand. I checked it once and then forgot about it. It was fine.

And then, up ahead, I heard the noise of gunshots. They were hard sounds that hammered the air. Lots of them - more than one gun, maybe three or four. I was shaking - frightened of reaching them, frustrated that we weren't there already.

Lucy.

I said, 'Go faster.'

Rosh accelerated slightly around a corner we both knew was coming up - and then suddenly the world shattered, jerked, blew apart. My eyes were shut and all I could feel was pain from my shoulder to my hip, an enormous strain in my neck.

'Fuck.'

The van careered and stopped. There was another van ten metres away from us, half off the road now, its doors hanging open. We'd slammed it off the road, coming to rest a little way behind and to one side. The beam from its headlights illuminated the undergrowth. Silhouettes flashed across. I undid my seatbelt, beginning to feel panic rising and fighting it down.

There was a sudden spray of gunfire and our windscreen exploded.

'Out.'

We kicked open the doors and dived out to either side of the van.

I crouched down, using the door as cover. More bullets thudded into it, coining the metal. One, two, three.

'Two of them by the van,' Rosh shouted.

The side window above shattered, covering me in glass.

'Shit!'

'One out in the fields this way.'

I caught the flash of a muzzle in the woods beside me, but the shots came nowhere near. Two of them by the van, and they must have sent a man out to either side to flank Lucy.

More flashes amongst the trees, and the air reverberated around me. As if things weren't bad enough, the guy in the woods had a fully automatic rifle.

I said, 'I've got one this side too. I'm on it.'

Optimism. Obviously I'd killed people before, but I'd never been involved in any kind of shootout or gun battle. Trained for it a little. Never in woodland.

"I'm on it.

I took three deep breaths then stood and ran out from behind the door, hammering shots in the direction of the van we'd hit. A few came back, missing me. Just single shots, fired on instinct rather than aimed. Half of the first tree I passed blew apart in a hard, wet spray. Then more, tearing apart the undergrowth. I stopped firing and concentrated on running. The trees were dense here and I had to dodge between them, but the dark was on my side: the shots coming after me were wide of the mark and the shooters gave up quickly, deciding to concentrate on Rosh and Lucy. She must have been holed up by her car somewhere ahead. Not wanting to think about that, I slowed down and watched for the muzzle flashes amongst the trees. There - not far now. I crept carefully towards them. With a bit of luck, I'd get him before he knew I was here.

Then, a voice I didn't know shouted out: 'One in the woods, one on the field.'

The shooter in the woods went quiet. No more muzzle flashes.

Shit.

I stopped moving and crouched down. My hands were shaking.

There was another spatter of gunfire from the road. Then quiet held for a second. Then three solid shots, and someone started screaming. My heart flipped for a moment, but I didn't recognise the voice. Lucy or Rosh had clipped one of the men by the van.

Probably Lucy - Rosh would be after the man in the field.

Immediately, more shots rang out at the road: flat and hard and sustained. A few people, exchanging fire. I heard glass shatter, angry shouting.

Keep moving.

But the woods in front of me were pitch black and dangerous, and without the muzzle flashes amongst the trees I was blind. I had an idea of where he'd been - not far ahead - but surely he would have moved by now. I kept low and worked my way quietly between the trees. The fucker knew I was here somewhere.