The Cutting Crew (32 page)

'Your brother killed her?'

'Yes. He killed your friend too. And he tried to kill the three of you last night, but he obviously underestimated you. He won't make the same mistake again.'

'Right.'

I rubbed my eyebrow. What was Kama's motivation for telling me all of this? If it was his money we'd taken, then he knew enough just to kill me and have done with it. He could find Rosh and Lucy.

What was the point in having a fucking conversation with me at all?

'Why are you telling me all this?' I said.

'Why? Like I said - boredom. Amusement.'

'Boredom and amusement?'

He shrugged to himself.

'I can't act directly to harm my brother. But it pleases me to stir things up and make it difficult for him. And this really couldn't have ended up any better, could it?'

'Right,' I said. 'Of course.'

Kama smiled.

'I know you don't believe me,' he said, 'but that doesn't really matter. It's going to be interesting to see what you do next. You and your friends.'

'And what will your brother do next?' I said.

'He's tried to take you once and he failed.' Kama was lighting another cigarette. 'But he'll try again very soon, and the next time he'll succeed.'

'Can I kill him?' I said.

'Could you kill me?' he replied, waving out the match.

'Yes.'

'If you got the chance, you could kill either of us.' He nodded.

'But you'll never get near enough. And Eli will be quick and ruthless now that he knows who you are. He will do everything he can to undermine the three of you, to break you apart. He'll go after those you love, as well - assuming you have any. Eventually, he'll have wiped away all traces of you entirely. He will clean away everyone who's out of place. You, your friends and family, those students - he'll remove all of you.'

For the first time in a few minutes, I was aware again of the bodyguard standing directly behind me. Something in the atmosphere had changed.

'That's reassuring,' I said, wanting to turn around, but finding that something was stopping me. I tried, but I couldn't even move.

After a moment, I realised that Kama was staring straight at me, slightly differently from before. This time, he wasn't blinking.

'That's what you're up against,' he said. 'And now, it's time for you to leave and take your chances.'

I tried to move again, beginning to panic. I was stuck. How was it fucking possible that he was doing this?

'Oh,' he said, noticing my predicament. 'Don't get up.'

And with that, Kama nodded at the bodyguard behind me.

Before I could react in any way, everything went black for the second time that afternoon.

'Young sir?'

It was very dark. A man had his hand on my right shoulder, shaking me, and his fingers were pressing into me too hard for comfort. I jerked angrily awake, grabbed his wrist with my left hand and twisted it, standing, coming around with my right to lock his elbow and put him down. Ready to scream at him. He cried out in alarm and tried to cower away, but he wasn't going anywhere.

Hang on, I told myself. Not letting go, but looking around.

I was in a room filled with four or five rows of wooden pews, all facing the far end of the room, where there was a small stage, spotlit from above. Two naked people were having sex on it. The man was middle-aged and fat; she was middle-aged and plump; and they were both paused in mid-coitus and staring in my direction with annoyed expressions. They obviously felt that they'd suffered enough indignity today without having to put up with my shit too.

All the other patrons - and the theatre was nearly full - were watching me cautiously.

The man I was holding was the canvas-man who'd spoken to me earlier that afternoon in western Wasp, and he was struggling against me now without making much ground.

'Young sir, please,' he said, finally giving up. 'You were asleep.

Your phone was ringing. You were disturbing the performers.'

I shook my head, aware for the first time that my phone actually was ringing. It was audible even over the hymn music that was accompanying the sex show. How embarrassing.

'I'm sorry.' I let go of the man and headed quickly to the back of the room, fighting my mobile out of my pocket the whole way.

They didn't take my phone, then.

I didn't recognise the number that was flashing up, but pressed green anyway, moving down the dingy stairs at the back of the theatre and out into the light.

'Hello?'

'Martin?'

It was Rachel, but at the same time it wasn't. Her voice sounded strange and dulled.

'Yes,' I said. 'What's wrong?'

'Martin, I really need you to help me.' She swallowed, and I leaned against a black and yellow railing, my heart sinking. Her voice was flat, but there were little oscillations in it that I thought I recognised - peaks of fear. She said, 'I think I've just been raped.

I'm not sure, but ... I think that's what's happened.'

'Okay, Rachel,' I said, trying to sound calm, reassuring. My free hand was clenched so tight that the knuckles looked ready to burst.

'Where are you now?'

'This house,' she said.

'Our old house?'

'No. Some other house. This ... this ... guy's house.'

He'll go after those you love, as well - assuming you have any.

'Is he still there?' And when she didn't answer I said it again more urgently. 'Rachel - is he still there with you?'

'Yes,' she said. 'He's right here. He's watching me.'

The hairs on my neck stood on end. She started crying.

'Rachel,' I said. The district around me had faded away to white.

'Please try to keep calm. You're going to be okay.'

But the sobbing had moved away now and I knew she couldn't hear me. There was empty silence for a second, and then a sense of purpose gathered at the other end of the phone. The buzz on the line was quiet and forceful.

'Hello?' I said.

Nothing. But someone was there.

I waited, moving away from the railing and reaching inside my jacket. The gun was still there. I took it out and checked the clip. A few people who had been walking near me veered suddenly away.

Fine; the clip was full. I clicked it back and replaced the gun in its holster.

'I know you're -' I started to say.

'Seventy-eight,' a voice interrupted. It was a male voice. Gritty but young. And angry, too, as though whoever it belonged to was reading information off a sheet for the fifth time and losing his patience. 'Fisher Lane. Turtle.'

In the background, for just a second, I could still hear Rachel crying.

And then the line went dead.

Chapter
Nineteen

The address was too far away to make on foot, and public transport was out of the question, so I stole a car. I found a relatively old one parked out of the way and on its own, smashed the passenger window with a brick, cracked the steering column, and in less than a minute I was on my way. A few people saw, and then wisely elected to ignore me. I felt bad, even if I didn't have a choice. Here I was again, though: breaking the law to serve a higher moral cause. But stealing a car felt quite minor in comparison to most of the shit I'd done.

The car hurtled out of Wasp. Two minutes later I was on the motorway, with a breeze whipping in through the broken window.

A couple of crunching gear shifts, and I was heading south. Turtle was directly below Wasp, but it was a large district and the Fishers were right at the bottom. I put my foot down.

I had the wheel in one hand; phone flipping open in the other.

I hit Rosh's speed dial number, held the mobile to my ear and waited. But not for long - it was engaged, and the nasal beeps sounded even more smug and annoying than usual. I swore, cancelled and tried Lucy instead.

It rang out; not even an answerphone. Where the fuck were they both?

I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, swearing loudly. Call the normal police? Not a good idea. If Kama had been telling the truth then Eli ran law and order and calling the police wasn't going to help; and if he was lying then what was I going to tell them? Just how much of this could I actually explain, and how seriously were they going to take me?

I'd be close soon, anyway, and I'd certainly arrive before anyone else showed up, especially from a random, unsubstantiated call.

Even if I did phone it in, I'd be lucky to see the police before nightfall.

Two minutes later and the last exit for Turtle was coming up on the left. I drew my gun, rested it on the seat beside me, and then took the exit a little too fast. The car tyres screeched as I rounded the fat, curling roads leading off into the district's centre.

Rachel

A flood of images and emotions rushed me, and I did my best to blot them out. Anger was one thing, but I needed to think clearly if I was going to make a difference here.

I thought about the gun instead. I hadn't had the chance to use it when Kama's man had taken me down in the old hotel, and I considered that now. What the fuck had happened? Whenever I'd seen him, it had been out of the corner of my eye; the rest of the time it had been as though he was invisible. Had he moved that quickly, or was there some other explanation? Kama's story aside, I believed my own memory. It had happened, and if I was going to meet more people like his bodyguard then I needed to figure out how to deal with them.

Fisher Lane ...

Here were the Fishers - coming up on the right. Mostly red-brick back-to-backs.

Fisher Road. Fisher Avenue.

Fisher Lane was the last one, separated from its kin by a small, neat stretch of wasteground. I stopped at the end of the street, picked up the phone and the gun, and then got out and took the corner on foot. There was nobody around, but I kept the gun concealed, holding my hand inside my jacket.

The guy in the hotel. When I was younger, I'd heard these martial arts stories about people who trained so as to move within their opponent's blind spots. A portion of the eye doesn't receive light properly, and if you could throw a punch partially within this then you'd have an advantage. I didn't think Kama's bodyguard had been doing anything remotely like that, but I had no other explanation. It was as though he'd come out of the walls, just as Jamie had said.

I checked the house numbers - early thirties - and I started to run, abandoning any pretence of hiding the gun. My shoes pounded the pavement: past the forties; into the fifties. There was an old couple on the opposite side of the street. I saw them stop and look at me, and then say something to each other.

One thing about Kama's bodyguard was that he had to actually physically hit me. Not a normal punch, I was sure, but he'd had to get close enough to touch me. These people were flesh and blood even if it was hard to see - and if they could hurt me then I could hurt them right back.

Number sixty-eight. Number seventy.

I scanned the parked cars up ahead. There weren't that many and they all looked empty, but that didn't mean they were necessarily. I slowed down and started walking, gun held out in front slightly. Good two-handed grip.

Seventy-two. Seventy-four.

The way I saw it, the only person in that house who I cared about right now was Rachel. Anybody who moved who wasn't her, I was probably going to shoot. Given what had happened already that afternoon, it seemed a pretty reasonable and sensible course of action.

Seventy-six.

I checked each car as I approached: aiming in, peering from behind the gun. Each one was empty.

And then here was number seventy-eight: semi-detached, on the right-hand side of its pair. Two storeys. All the curtains drawn in the three windows I could see. There was a small, well-tended garden at the front of the house and a driveway to the right, and I moved cautiously but quickly down that, heading for a door halfway along the house. I guessed it would lead into the kitchen.

At the far end of the drive there was a red garage, its wide double door topped by small, black windows, and a path led round the back of the house. I dodged under the kitchen window and quickly checked out the back garden. It turned out to be bigger than the front, but equally well-tended. There were flowerbeds around the edges, and it was divided in two by a small strip of soil where someone had been growing vegetables.