To Fight For (22 page)

‘This can't go on, Joe,' Browne had said.

He was right. It couldn't go on. Something was going to give, and I was starting to think that it might be me.

I heard more sirens, further in the distance now. After a while, I heard a helicopter. I knew it was the law without looking up. It was looking for me or the van.

It was circling above. I walked with my head down.

By the time I got back I was shattered, wasted. I'd lost. Dunham had killed Cole, got Glazer.

He'd won.

The adrenaline had gone, and failure filled its place.

I dragged my body into Browne's house and closed the door carefully, closed it finally, on everything, on the past, on justice, revenge. Whatever.

It was late afternoon. I think. There was still sunlight, anyway. I trudged through to the kitchen and fell onto one of the wooden chairs and rested my arms on the table.

I thought about losing Glazer. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I was angry that Dunham had beaten me, sure, but that was something else.

Browne wandered into the kitchen. He stopped, looked at me.

‘Well?' he said.

‘Glazer's gone. Dunham's got him. He wants the DVD.'

Browne thought about that for a minute.

‘But that doesn't make sense,' he said. ‘Doesn't Dunham know you have a copy?'

‘Yes.'

‘So, any copy he gets is useless if you still have one. If you gave it to the media, his copy would be valueless.'

He was right, but I was too tired to care.

Browne made me a cup of tea and put it down on the table. I tried to drink some, but my hands were shaking too much.

Browne sat with me for a while, but I didn't say anything more, and he didn't push it.

After a while, he got up and went off and came back with an armful of stuff.

He'd got it into his head to do some work in the front garden. I think he just wanted to get out of the house and stretch his legs, but he was afraid to go too far. He hadn't gone into the back garden since we'd sealed that part of the house. I don't know what he thought was going to happen in the middle of the day. The precautions we'd taken were for a night attack. They weren't going to be hiding in the rose bushes. On the other hand, I couldn't blame him for being scared.

I told him again to go somewhere – his sister's or a hotel or something. But he still wouldn't listen.

‘Things might get heavy,' I said. ‘You'll get in the way.'

‘This is my bloody house,' he said.

Anyway, all the gardening tools were in the shed in the back garden, so Browne used a carving knife, a pair of scissors, a pickaxe he'd found in the hall cupboard – and a comb. Fuck knows what that was for.

He went out there looking like he was going to break into a prison and cut someone's hair.

I rested my head on the tabletop. I didn't have anything left in me. I didn't know what to do.

She stood by the window of her flat, one hand holding a cigarette by her side, the other holding the back of her neck.

She'd slept badly, dreaming about something, mumbling in her sleep, tossing around. There was darkness in her mind, torment.

I hadn't slept at all. I'd watched her toss and turn, wishing I could do something to ease her. Instead, I'd felt the weight of my weakness.

I'd thought about things, and kept thinking about them until my head was dizzy. I'd tried to remember what I could about the evening. The way Brenda had acted was wrong. All of it was wrong; the pub we'd been to, the people there – those fat businessmen, the heavy-set bloke with a beard, the thin woman with white skin and black hair.

If I asked her about it, she'd clam up, like she always did, and I'd be further from her than I wanted to be. So, I thought about it and went round in circles. Always fucking circles.

At some time in the early hours, Brenda had woken, breathing heavily. She'd pulled a cigarette from the pack by the bed and stood and gone over to the window. She hadn't said anything to me, hadn't even looked at me. I had no idea how such a small thing could hurt. It was as if she knew I couldn't help, knew I'd fail her. She was alone with her nightmares, which were worse when she woke.

The room was lit by the moon which poured its pale light onto the walls, the floor, and made the cigarette smoke shimmer silver. I watched it fold and curl and fold again into circles. I looked at Brenda's slim body. The moonlight made her curves shine, as if she stood in a halo, but it also made her dark skin look livid.

‘Joe,' she said, looking up at the moon, ‘have you ever thought about when we go out together? We always go out at night. Did you realize that?'

‘We've been out in the day,' I said.

‘Well, it's usually at night. Anyway, it always seems so.'

I told her I hadn't thought about it, but it made sense.

‘We live by night,' she said to the stars.

‘We both work at night,' I said. ‘That's all.'

‘Exactly. We live under a dark sky, our sins to best conceal.'

I said something – I don't know what. It didn't matter, she wasn't listening anyway.

‘Funny,' she said, ‘coz I love the sun. Isn't that funny? I never thought about it before.'

‘It's better at night. No people.'

She turned and watched me for a while. I couldn't see her face, but I could see the light glancing off her skin. She seemed lost.

She opened the window and tossed the cigarette out. She came back to bed. I put my arm around her shoulders. She moved close to me. I felt her warmth press against my cold chest.

She said, ‘Whenever I look up at the moon, I'll think of you. It shines so beautifully.'

‘It's dull,' I said, ‘and dead.'

‘It's beautiful. “We all shine on.” John Lennon sang that.'

‘Who?'

Now she smiled, and that spark was in her eyes, brighter than any stars, brighter than the sun. She knew I was taking the piss. She knew I couldn't be that stupid. She was the only one who did.

She turned her face back to the window, to the dark sky, to the bright moon. Her eyes were so black in its light they seemed to be reflecting the black and endless night, or perhaps they were just reflecting something inside of her, as black, as endless.

Now, years later, I felt old and grey. I felt like the moon, dull and dusty and floating around out there. And she'd been like the sun: brilliant, glorious.

And if she'd ever looked at me and seen me shining, it was only because I'd reflected her light.

I woke when I heard the front door bang shut. It took me a moment to remember where I was, what had happened. It took me a moment more to remember that the woman I'd remembered was dead. I had a good memory for once.

I got up and went slowly out of the kitchen and into the hall. I saw Browne, standing by the front door. He looked more confused than usual. I thought, He can't be pissed already.

But he wasn't.

He dropped the pickaxe and brushed some rain from his coat.

‘Strange,' he said.

He kicked his shoes off and put his slippers on. I waited for him to finish, but it looked like he'd forgotten what he was going to say. He was probably talking to himself.

‘What's strange?' I said.

‘Huh? Oh. William.'

‘Who?'

‘My neighbour. William. Remember? He came over the other day. Complaining about all that stuff you made me do outside. Said he was going to call the police.'

‘Yeah. The Rotarian. What about him?'

‘Oh, nothing really. It's only that just now he was so nice. Said he hadn't meant to offend me. Apologized. Very unlike him. He can't stand me.'

I didn't think much of it then. It seemed odd that this bloke would suddenly change tack, sure, but so what?

It was when I was halfway up the stairs that the thing hit me. I remembered what Browne had said to me a while back, about how even if Dunham got hold of a copy of the DVD it'd be useless because I had a copy.

I looked down at Browne, who was standing by the front door, scratching his head, still confused by his dumb fucking neighbour.

‘When was this?' I said.

‘Huh? Oh, twenty minutes ago. I saw him peering out of his window. I thought about what you'd said to me, about not wanting to annoy him unnecessarily. So, I went over to apologize.'

‘And?'

‘Well, he was nervous, wanted to get rid of me I think. That's when he apologized.'

Browne's hand stopped moving over his hair. He looked at me with wide eyes. Now he was getting it.

‘What's wrong?' he said. ‘Joe. What is it? Christ.'

I jumped down the stairs and went into his front room. He came with me, still asking me what was wrong. I looked out the window. It was just getting dark. There was no traffic, no people.

‘There's something I didn't tell you,' I said. ‘Cole. Dunham got him.'

‘Got him?'

‘He's dead.'

‘Oh Christ.'

‘You said this bloke, your neighbour, he's friends with some copper?'

‘What? Yes. He's a Conservative, or on some board of something. He knows the local police people, the high rankers.'

I thought about that.

‘We've got to go,' I said.

‘What? I—'

That's when the front door smashed inwards. If it'd happened a minute earlier, me and Browne would've been finished.

A handful of dark figures burst through, shouting, holding their semi-auto rifles up, barging each other, swarming all over the place. Browne had frozen, his face white.

They didn't see us at first. They had those helmets on, and those dark visors, and their vision was limited.

I'd made a mistake. I'd secured the place from an attack by Dunham, but not by the law. For Dunham I needed a fortress. They'd try and break in and I had to hold them off long enough for them to realize the danger of exposure was too great. But the law was the law. They could stay outside as long as they wanted. For them, I needed an escape. And I didn't have one.

I saw them through the lounge door, and they were pouring up the stairs, along the hallway towards the kitchen.

I thought at first that it must have been Browne's neighbour, William. He'd gone and told his friends at the local nick that there was something going on, and they'd looked into it and found me.

But as I watched this mob, I realized there was something wrong. Either they were stupid, or they were badly trained. They should've fanned out straight away, clearing each space as they came to it. Instead, they were falling over themselves to get into the house. There was no order there.

Then I knew they weren't there to nick me. They were there to kill me.

I shoved Browne aside, slammed the door shut and braced myself against it.

It was a stupid thing to do. We were trapped now, in the front room. But I couldn't think of anything else.

‘Take cover,' I said to Browne.

He looked at me with a blank face.

‘What's happening?'

‘Take fucking cover.'

He backed up against the far wall, as far as he could go from me.

Someone had now noticed that the door was shut. They were hammering into it. There must've been two or three of them. Each time they rammed the door, it slammed into my shoulder, thrust me back a couple of feet. I'd set my weight and shove back. At some point, someone would decide to riddle the door with automatic fire. I had to think of something. Anything.

I couldn't think of a fucking thing. The only way out was the front window, and that would take us right out into them.

Meanwhile, they kept smashing that door, and I was getting weaker, or they were getting stronger. They must've had three men there by now. They were bashing the door regularly, in, back, in, back, every second.

All this time Browne was still up against that back wall, pressing himself into it, staring at me, at the door.

‘They're police.' he said.

I had an idea. It wasn't much, but what else was there?

‘Joe, they're police.'

I let them hit the door another time then waited and snatched it open. One of them fell right in. I kneed him as he fell and he went straight down. I grabbed him, yanked him in and slammed the door on another bloke. I think I broke his arm. I broke something, anyway. The one who'd fallen in was trying to get up. He was onto his knees when I kicked him in the face. He went down for good after that. I pushed his body up against the door. I had a few seconds, at most. I hauled the sofa over and threw it against the door, on top of the bloke.

Then I got the chest of drawers that Browne kept his papers in. That went onto the sofa. It was made of oak, and weighed a fucking ton.

The bloke's gun was still under his hand. It was a sub-machine gun. I pulled it from his grip. I unscrewed the silencer. Fuck their games. Let's have some violence.

The gun was heavy, dead. Then I touched it and gave it life, and it kicked and bucked and struggled in my hands, fighting to break loose, spitting its fury. But I held it tight and let its fury speak for mine.

The noise of the gun was one endless explosion. It bounced off the walls and hit me. It was thunderous, crashing into my ears. The rounds smashed through the wood of the door, through the wall, ripping into the plaster, throwing up dust, brick.

When the magazine was empty, I ditched it and reloaded with one from the bloke's black vest.

In the pause, Browne scrambled over, felt the man's neck.

I heard shouts out in the hallway. But then Browne was at me, clawing my arm.

‘This man needs a hospital,' he said. ‘Joe. For God's sake. You're going to kill a policeman.'

‘They're not coppers,' I said.

‘I don't understand. Who are they?'

‘Dunham's.' I grabbed Browne by the shoulders. ‘We've got to go.'