The Cutting Crew (33 page)

In the centre of the nearest section, there was a bright blue paddling pool and a small multicoloured slide. My aim wavered slightly and I thought:

Children.

There were children here. I scrabbled back through my memory of the conversation, trying to recall the address I'd been given. Was I even at the right house? But I remembered it clearly: seventy eight. This was the right address. So what the fuck was with the slide and the pool? I couldn't go in and just start shooting. My reasonable and sensible course of action suddenly looked a little shaky.

I moved back up the driveway, and stopped by the kitchen door.

Fall back, I told myself. Call Rosh, Lucy. Call anyone. It's a possible hostage situation and you're on a roll of fucking things up at the moment.

I picked out my phone and dialled Rosh again, and - this time it rang out. No answerphone. I pressed myself against the wall and called Lucy. Once again, it rang out.

Fuck.

Call the normal police then, I thought - that was the sensible thing to do now. But at the same time, this was Rachel. And yes, I'd fucked up more than my share recently, but my mistakes had already affected her life. I owed her more - I couldn't just leave her inside and walk away, and let someone else sort out my mess.

Especially when everything that had happened to her was solely for my benefit.

I moved to the other side of the kitchen door, turned the handle and pushed it open quietly. Kept out of the way, waited for a second.

Nothing.

I shifted slightly. The door had come to rest against a tall fridge freezer. That was white and new, and it had lots of children's drawings stuck to it with plastic letter-magnets. The rest of the kitchen looked empty. I listened. No noise at all from inside nothing to hear.

I edged around, keeping the gun trained on the doorway. The kitchen was lit by a window facing out onto the garden at the back, and I could see most of it. There was nobody in there. Not even any cupboards or spaces large enough to hide someone, unless they were midgets as well as ghosts. Now or never, then. I stepped inside, turning quickly and training my gun on the doorway that led out of the kitchen. There was a hallway beyond - empty; full of misty, still air. But once again, I felt the subtle difference between an empty house and one where somebody was just hiding and holding their breath.

Keep calm. The emotions were rolling inside me - fear, anger and that was no good. I brought them out now, so that I could see them, handle them and then put them to one side where they couldn't do as much harm, and then I took a better grip on the gun and moved into the hallway.

My aim flicked round, quickly and carefully. There were stairs leading up from the hall, to the left. A half-open door to the right.

The stairs looked clear. The door led into a cluttered dining room. I edged in. There was a huge table in the centre, loads of books, glass sliding doors at the far end that led out into the garden. It smelled of paper and clothes. I worked quickly: round the table halfway, aiming the gun at empty spaces; then round the other side. Clear.

Nobody hiding.

Okay. Two rooms clear.

Back out into the corridor. There was another door further along to the right, and then the hallway ended at the front door, where angles of afternoon sunlight were streaking in through a semi-circle of coloured glass at the top. I could see motes of dust floating in the air, swimming slowly in invisible currents.

The next room - but as I started to move, the motes swirled suddenly, like a draught of air had blown through the hallway. I glanced to the right, almost without thinking, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a man moving quickly and impossibly down the hall towards me. My glance flicked back and he was gone, but I was already firing: three solid shots at thin air, the bullets swallowed up before they cracked into the front door. The noise was enormous, and the walls vibrated with each quick explosion. I closed my eyes against the muzzle flashes, and opened them to see a man rolling backwards over his shoulder as he was knocked down, finishing hard against the front door.

My ears were ringing and the hallway was thick with the smoke of violence. I kept my aim on the man, moving closer, ready to shoot him if he tried to get up. But I'd caught him in the chest with all three shots, and he wasn't going anywhere. I took him in quickly - a big guy, dressed in a neat, dark suit. Short, black hair.

Something prickled on the back of my neck.

I was turning before I knew it - firing off another shot that blew shards of wood across the hallway. Half the kitchen doorframe disintegrated into misty splinters. Had I seen someone as I whirled around? I glanced to one side, then the other, whipping my head round. Caught sight of him - coming low out of the dining room.

Another big guy, heading at me fast in a crouch. But I'd made him - I fired once, twice, the shots going into the floor like hammered nails, spitting up puffs of carpet fabric, and then I fired again and he suddenly appeared, barrelling at me but stumbling, the top of his head gone. He dropped just in front of my feet, and I shot him in the back.

In the silence that followed, I could hear my own breathing. Fast and thin.

And then, upstairs, a woman started crying.

Rachel.

I stepped over the first man I'd killed, uncurling my fingers from around the gun and taking a better grip. I fired off a shot up the stairs; shot once more down the hall behind me. Hit nothing, but at least both ways were clear. I started up the stairs, moving quickly and carefully, ready to fire again at the slightest movement. But then I heard Rachel start screaming - properly screaming, as though she was being hurt more than she could bear - and I lost all sense of caution. I charged up the stairs and onto the landing.

The screaming was coming from the nearest door on the left, and I went for it, but something grabbed my wrist and wrenched my arm around.

Fuck.

Suddenly there he was, right beside me. I caught a brief glimpse of him - it was like wrestling with a ghost - and then he was there just like anyone would be. Perhaps he needed to concentrate: he was gritting his teeth and pulling my arm down, then pulling it more, until the gun was pointing harmlessly at the carpet. I fired off a shot anyway, panicking, and managed to jerk my arm a little so that the bullet caught him in the foot, punching a hole through it.

He cried out and let go and - suddenly released - my hand sprang back up and I pulled the trigger again; but he was already reacting, quick enough to bat my aim to one side so that the shot just took a chunk of powdered brick out of the wall. And he had hold of me again, the sheer weight of him knocking me over onto my back, knocking the gun out of my hand, and knocking half the air out of me. I was frantic - crying out - trying to do him some damage, trying to get a grip on his ear to rip it off, or his eyes, or his throat.

Anything. But he was holding me too well. I managed a weak punch to the side of his head - nowhere near hard enough - and then had time to see him raise his head a little before everything in my vision exploded. My arms went limp and weak and the world filled itself with sickening, hollow stars.

Fuck.

My eyes streamed with tears and closed against my will. All my strength had gone. Someone grabbed my hands and held them down to either side of me, and the rest of the weight lifted off me a little. I knew it was coming even though I couldn't see: two hard blows to the side of the face. Bang, bang. My head went white and fuzzy and loud. I rolled over on to my side, the rest of the fight gone out of me.

Someone kicked me very hard in the stomach, just to be sure.

Everything receded as I tried to breathe, but I was aware of two of them jostling me: pulling me upright and maneuvering me awkwardly through the nearest door. It seemed such a waste, I thought - I'd been heading there anyway. I really couldn't breathe and was going to die, and then I could - just about - and the world came slightly back to life around me. I'd failed again. Rachel was still screaming, screaming badly, and at that moment I would have joined her if I could have drawn enough air into me to let anything loose.

Where's the gun? I thought.

Somewhere out in the hall still. Too far away.

The men let go of me and I dropped to the floor, eyes closed, grateful for the comfort of the carpet. Left alone for a moment, down on all fours, I worked very hard on breathing, trying to blot out the noises that Rachel was making. I wanted to cry. They didn't have to hurt her anymore. They'd got me now; they could stop. But they carried on anyway. Apart from her, the room was strangely silent. I concentrated on my lungs, counted quietly to myself, and after thirty seconds my breath had come back to me again. My nose felt enormous and swollen. I didn't want to open my eyes, but I did. The carpet was beige. Rachel had stopped screaming. Now, she was just crying quietly.

'Get him up.'

The two men from the hall - visible now - pulled me roughly to my feet and then moved away. I was surprised I could stand up alone. Rachel was on a bed, naked, curled into a foetal position, facing away from me and shaking slightly. There was a third man standing close to her, dressed in the neat black suit that seemed to be standard uniform for all of these people. Standard haircut too:

dark, short, tidy. His face looked a little more worn than the others, though, and his body seemed a little roomier. Like an older man who might have bounced in his prime but now mainly just told other bouncers what to do. I thought back to the photographs Sean had taken, but didn't recognise him from any of them.

He had a long, thin knife, and he was wiping the blade on the pillow, leaving small red streaks on the fabric.

'Martin Weaver,' he said.

It was the man who'd given me the address over the phone.

I tried to speak and was quite surprised when I managed it.

'I'm going to fucking kill all of you.'

If I'd known my voice was going to work then I might have picked something a little more convincing.

He smiled blankly, and then inspected the knife. I guessed it must have been clean enough, because he folded it up and placed it inside his jacket. My eyes flicked from him to Rachel, who was still crying quietly, and then I glanced back to him.

'That's what your friend said when we took him.' The man wasn't smiling anymore. 'And after a while, he stopped saying that.

He didn't say much of anything.'

The images of Sean's murder hit me again, but it felt different from when I'd woken up at Kama's. I'd been scared then, but I'd realised after the first few minutes that I wasn't going to be killed.

But these men were going to take me away and hurt me and there was nothing I could do to stop them. Worse, they were going to do the same to Rachel.

'What do you want?' I said. 'You want your boss's fucking money back? Because I can get you the fucking money back.'

The blank smile returned.

'Right,' he said. 'You see, you're scared now, aren't you?'

'You want the money back?'

'It's not as easy as that.'

'No,' I said. 'Well, you've got me anyway. Why don't you let my wife go?'

He shook his head.

'That's not going to happen. But you're right - we don't really need her anymore.' He took the knife back out. 'Would you like me to kill her?'

'No,' I said. But then I looked at her, curled up on the bed with streaks of blood on the pillow behind her head, and wondered if that was the right answer.

The man walked over and stopped in front of me.

'She was easy to pick up,' he said. 'And to begin with, she was happy to be with me.'

'What do you want?' I said. 'Because I'm not interested in this shit. If you want to kill me, then just fucking kill me. There's nothing I can tell you. And if you don't want your money, then what's the point in this?'

'Like I said,' he told me, 'it's not going to be that easy.'

And then he reached out slowly, the way you might reach out to touch a lover's face.

Fuck that.

I hit him so quickly that it surprised even me: knocking his hand away with my left, while throwing good and hard with my right.

The impact was solid but indistinct - I just felt an explosion in my fist, and then saw him falling backwards onto the bed. The other men were already moving towards me, one to each side, and so I just launched myself, swinging hard and fast at the nearest. This time, I hit nothing. But I felt their strong grip on me, and the room spun around. I saw the man get up from the bed, seriously pissed off now, unfolding the knife, and I struggled as best I could but I was off-balance. The floor suddenly hit me in the shoulder, and a second later everything went black.