The Slaughter Man (16 page)

I nodded and picked up a brick. Burglar’s route meant the front door – the entry point for most burglars.

I stepped to the ornate door with its rusting lion’s head and I brought the brick down on the handle as hard as I could. It came away clean. I kicked at the door. No deadbolt. The door swung open and we went inside and then we just stood there for a moment, trying to understand what we were seeing.

It was a palace that had been left to rot.

Either side of the front door, a double staircase swept up to the first floor where it abruptly ended just before reaching the top.

At the top of the staircase there was only a gaping black hole.

What remained of the staircase was covered in shattered tiles and shredded plaster and the torn branches of a very large tree, suggesting the top had been demolished when a tree caved in the roof. Something black flew out of hole at the top of the staircase and flapped wildly into the higher reaches of the house.

‘I bloody hate bats,’ murmured Wren.

Everywhere you looked, nature was taking over the derelict mansion. There was an old bird’s nest in the velvet curtains. Weeds and ferns and moss grew all around, and dead leaves from the fallen tree skittered down the staircase. Under our feet was a white pile carpet stained brown by the weather and covered in the droppings of birds and rats and foxes.

There was hardly any furniture, just a mattress in a darkened corner covered in stains, a velvet chair covered in mould and a grand piano that had been dragged from some other part of the house, and then smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer.

Water streamed down walls two storeys high and collected in paintings that were peeling with damp and decay, giving the faces in the old portraits the look of a leper colony. There was a crystal chandelier in the ceiling, half of its bulbs dead now, but still working, and it threw out light like a dying sun.

Suddenly I was aware of a flurry of wetness on my face. I looked up and I saw that snow was falling hard through the gaping black hole in the roof. A single snowflake settled on the back of my hand and then was gone.

The voices coming from the back of the house were a lot closer now.

‘Upstairs,’ Whitestone said. ‘Get the boy.’

But by now they had heard us.

At first there was just the girl.

Perhaps twelve years old, painfully skinny and pale with lank brown hair. Someone had given her a short dress that was too small and high-heeled shoes that were too big.

She held a paper cup and stared at us in amazement.

‘Do you speak English?’ I said, and then the first man was there, shoving her aside and coming toward us. He was heavy and middle-aged and his face was covered in a film of oily grease.

Wren stepped forward.

‘You’re under arrest,’ she said, and he punched her in the face with all his strength, and his fist must have connected with her chin because Wren went down very hard, unconscious before she hit the floor.

I felt a flame of pure fury rise in me that anyone would dare to lay their hands on her.

The man kept coming.

Stepping over Edie Wren’s prostrate body, fists by his side, showing his teeth to me, snarling something obscene.

He just kept on coming and that was perfect because he walked straight into the big right hand that I threw, a punch that was hard more than accurate, full of my suddenly boiling blood, my anger throwing my aim way off, missing his chin by six inches, but it still connected with the tip of his nose and it gave way with a sharp crack and there are very few men who can take a broken nose in their stride.

This bastard wasn’t one of them.

Gane kicked the man’s feet from under him and Whitestone got down to cuff him as I bent over Wren, saying her first name –
Edie Edie Edie
– and feeling terrified when she did not respond to the hands that I pressed against her pale face.

Then I felt eyes on me and I stared up at the child in the mini dress and I wanted her to know that she was safe now. But there was no time because there were more men coming for us.

Some of them were armed with hammers. I saw Gane raise his hand and catch a hammer blow high on his arm, and lash out the side of his foot, a side-thrust kick, some muscle memory from a martial arts class, and he caught the man at the soft spot where the top of a shin meets the bottom of a knee.

The man dropped his hammer. Gane got him in a headlock. The man’s fingers reached up for Gane’s eyes, clawing for them as he screamed abuse. Locked together, they stumbled around in the pale light of the old chandelier.

Then one of them had something small and yellow in his fist and I saw him point it at the side of Whitestone’s face as she stood up, her right foot resting on the back of the neck of the man on the floor. I shouted at her and threw myself at the man as he squirted her with acid.

There was a moment when she burned and her clothes burned with her, skin and flesh and nylon jacket and fake fur all hissing and burning and dissolving in the stream of sulphuric acid.

Then Whitestone screamed, holding her neck, hideous steam rising from the scalded flesh just above the neckline of her jacket and the man was below me on his back and I could feel his front teeth cutting into the knuckles of my hand as I knocked them into the back of his mouth.

I looked up.

I saw the skinny legs of girls in shoes that were too big. And boys too – the boys younger, and all of them standing there with the paper cups in their hands and staring at us in wonder.

‘Water!’ I was screaming at Whitestone, and she howled with agony and clutched her neck. ‘Water on it! Now!’

The men were running.

I saw Gane still grappling with one of them, and then the man broke free and ran into the backroom they had all come out of, and I heard cars starting up, voices full of panic and fury, engines being gunned and tyres skidding on the wet grass.

They were getting out of here.

Whitestone had disappeared, looking for water. Wren was still out cold.

And through the falling snow, heavy inside the house now, I saw Gane slowly climbing the staircase.

Gane was going to get the boy they kept upstairs, and I saw he was dragging one of his legs as if he had done something to his knee, and I didn’t see how he could get across the destroyed staircase with a leg that bad.

And then I saw the man who followed him.

Fat Roy was doused in blood. It still poured from his nose where I had ripped out the ring and now it covered his hands where he had beaten out the window of the BMW X5.

Tiny shards of broken glass covered the arms of Fat Roy’s jacket, catching the light of the crystal chandelier that shone like the last rays of some fading sun.

And I knew that Gane had not seen him.

I got up and went after them.

Gane had stopped at the top of the stairs, staring into the black hole, and I called his name.

‘Curtis!’

They both turned. Gane at the top of the smashed double-staircase and Fat Roy just behind him now and it was only then that I saw the knife in Fat Roy’s hand.

A black carbon lock knife.

Aluminium-handled.

With a blade somewhere between three and four inches long.

I looked up at him as he stabbed me in the stomach.

A stab like a punch. The way a good teacher will show you how to punch. The hand snapping back as fast as it snaps out.

Because then you are ready to do it again.

I sunk to my knees, the shock kicking in but the pain still some distance away, touching my side as he took half a step towards me, telling me what he had wanted to tell me all along.

‘You stupid flat-footed bastard,’ he said, not loud, this between the two of us. ‘What the fuck do you think we do with them when we’ve sucked out all the juice? Let them go home to Mummy and Daddy?’

He turned away.

I was on my knees. Not falling, not getting up. Stunned, looking with wonder at the palm of my hand.

Nothing but fresh blood.

I looked up at saw Gane back away from the blade in Fat Roy’s hand, and I saw him step backward into nothing, and fall away into the blackness.

And then I was on my feet and climbing the last few stairs, Fat Roy looking down into the space where Gane had fallen, the knife by his side, still slick with my blood.

‘Hey,’ I said, and he turned towards me.

And as we were facing each other, and I was a few steps lower, my right fist was on a direct line to his heart.

It was one straight punch. Full force. In the heart.

Fat Roy staggered backwards and his eyes were wide with horror as he stepped into nothing.

He screamed all the way down.

I clutched my side, still not feeling the pain as I stared into the black hole and at the two bodies that lay in the darkness two storeys below.

They were not moving. Gane opened his mouth as if to say something and I stopped and saw the black blood come spilling from his mouth. Then I kept going, gripping the broken banister and edging as far as I could around the rim of the smashed staircase before throwing myself over the distance that was left.

Then I was running down an empty corridor, the destruction in the house not so pronounced up here, the paper peeling and cracks showing and moss on the carpet but no weather damage, no animals using it for a toilet. My left hand on the stab wound in my gut, feeling the warm blood pulsing out against my palm.

And I called his name.

I kept calling his name.

‘
Bradley! Bradley! Bradley!
’

I threw open doors.

Empty rooms.

The rooms all the same. Swag velvet curtains limp with age and the only furniture the odd bare mattress. But rubble everywhere. Smashed bits of plaster and tiles and bricks, as though a war had passed through this luxurious wasteland.

‘Bradley! Bradley! Bradley!’

And then I was in the room with the bodies.

They lay entwined, half-sleeping, half-naked, the mattresses pulled together, waiting for some terrible call, and as I stood in the doorway they stirred and I recoiled at the sound of all that shifting flesh.

It was like a pit of snakes that had been disturbed more than a room full of children who had been woken from their fitful dreams. They moved at the sound of my voice and my flesh crawled at the sound of that slow, slothful movement.

‘Police officer! I’ll be back! You’re safe now!’

The boy was in the room at the end of the corridor.

The last room.

Locked.

I kicked at the lock. That is what you must do. You must bring the full force of the heel of your strongest foot to bear on exactly the spot where the door is locked.

And then it will fly open.

The boy was lying face down on a single bed with just an old white sheet beneath him.

He was wearing a T-shirt and pants and there was a single streak of blood towards the top of one thigh.

And I knew the boy was dead before I felt the pulse in his wrist, before I felt the pulse in his neck.

I knew he was dead before I looked into his open eyes.

I sank to the floor beside the bed, suddenly too exhausted to remain standing, and I hung my head as the tears came, all those useless tears of rage and grief that change nothing.

‘Please God. Please God. Please God.’

I might have said it or I might have thought it. I don’t know. And I wondered what exactly I was asking God for because it was too late for Him to help me now.

Or the child.

And I choked on the thought of the mother waiting for her son in the block of flats they call the Barrier Block, just around the corner from Electric Avenue, as with one hand I stemmed the blood pumping from my stomach and with the other I held the lifeless hand of four-year-old Michael McCarthy of Brixton.

‘Your family are here,’ the nurse said.

I stared at the open door until Scout appeared. She hovered there uncertainly for a moment, wearing her school uniform but matched with her favourite trainers, the ones with the lights in the heels that flashed when she moved. They sparkled green and blue in the hospital gloom. She walked to the bed where I was sitting as the Murphys piled shyly into the room behind her.

They were all there. Mrs Murphy and Big Mikey. Little Mikey in his work clothes leading Shavon and Damon by the hand. Siobhan holding Baby Mikey.

My eyes stung with relief and gratitude.

What the hell would I do without them?

Then Scout was by my side, not quite touching me, but leaning in, a five-year-old girl with something urgent to say.

I leaned towards her.

‘I don’t want you to get hurt any more, OK?’ she whispered. ‘Is it a deal?’

My heart filled up with guilt and shame and a terrible helplessness. I believe it was shame more than anything. Scout’s words choked my throat and stung my eyes and for long moments I could not speak. I held her close so that she would not see my eyes shining. She deserved a far better father than me.

‘It’s a deal, Scout,’ I managed, and I knew the raw terror of the lone parent, the terrible knowledge that you are the last line of defence between your child and all that is rotten in the world.

I kissed her on the top of her head and she smelled of shampoo and sugar and felt-tip pens and that fresh biscuit smell that you get on young dogs. In response she placed her small hands on my face and stared at me hard. I hung my head, choking down the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me.

Live, I told myself. Just live. You have to live for long enough to raise this beautiful child. Don’t you know that much, you stupid man? There’s nobody else to do it.

Then it was time to stop whispering. Scout and I moved away from each other. The Murphys had gifts – fruit, chocolate, and a small bouquet – and as I thanked them they stared at me with real concern.

‘I’m sorry for all this,’ I said to Mrs Murphy, feeling that I owed her an explanation. ‘It comes with the job.’

‘I understand, sweetheart,’ she said, but with a tiny flinch that made me feel my job was becoming harder for her to understand.