Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

What she remembers is his eyes. She sees something there she’s never seen in anyone’s before. Not her mom’s, and certainly not her dad’s.

*

‘He was angry for me. Not at me, but for me.’

Pope hadn’t said a word. How long had she been talking for? She stared at him, his face again in profile. He was utterly unreadable.

It struck Nina suddenly that she had no idea where they were going. They weren’t on the Interstate any more.

Before she could ask, Pope said, ‘What are your feelings towards your father?’

It really is like a therapy session , she thought, and that crazy reckless giggle threatened to erupt again. She swallowed it, hoping to seem as if she was finding difficulty organising her thoughts.

‘He abandoned me when I was eleven. Gave me to my grandmother and never tried to make contact again. No birthday or Christmas cards, no letters or emails. So I feel betrayed by him. Betrayed, hurt, and confused. I want to know why he did it. More than almost anything else in the world.’ The words started rolling out, beyond her control. ‘I mean, if he wasn’t up to being a single dad, I can understand, you know? He was an incredibly busy man, wrapped up in his work. Awkward with kids, from what I recall. But even if he felt my gramma was the best person to look after me — and she probably was — he could at least have called or written me from time to time. Or now that I’m grown up, made contact to explain to me why he did what he did.’

As though sensing she was saying more than she’d intended and wanting to save her from embarrassment, Pope cut in: ‘How do you believe your mother died, Nina?’

She took a breath, slowed herself deliberately. ‘She was killed in the storm. The big one that hit the island and the rest of Honduras that year.’

‘Your father told you that.’

‘Yes. And my gramma.’

‘And your grandmother heard it from… whom?’

‘My father, I guess.’ She stared at the side of his face again. ‘You said, how do I “believe” my mom died.’

He glanced across. This time there was sadness without the smile.

‘Your father killed her.’

Sussex County, New Jersey

Monday 20 May, 8.15 pm

There were four of them, spilling out of a black Range Rover that had pulled up past Nakamura’s Taurus on the driveway. Men in camo trousers and flak jackets hauling an assortment of weapons with them, the ratcheting clicks audible through the glass of the window.

Purkiss ran to the wall with the racked shotgun and hunting rifle. Kendrick had beaten him to it. The FBI agents stood at a crouch, handguns emerging smoothly from their jackets.

‘Four of them, armed,’ said Purkiss. Berg and Nakamura didn’t waste time going to the window. Instead they positioned themselves kneeling, guns aimed, Berg’s at the door and Nakamura’s at the window.

‘Where’s the ammo?’ Kendrick snarled at Crosby, who was rocking on the couch, head bent, muttering. Kendrick strode over to him and tapped his forehead with the stock of the rifle.

‘Where’s the fucking ammo?’

‘Sideboard drawer,’ Crosby whispered.

Purkiss said, ‘Got any more guns?’

‘No.’

‘Told you we should have been given guns,’ Kendrick yelled at Nakamura and Berg.

Purkiss hefted the shotgun. It was a Remington 870, a model he’d handled before. Shotguns weren’t his preferred weapon. He caught the handful of cartridges Kendrick tossed at him and thumbed them one by one into the tube magazine. Six in all.

The men wouldn’t come knocking at the door. They’d have seen the Taurus and realised Crosby had visitors. In any case, they hadn’t come in dressed suits, for a chat or even to threaten him. This was a hit.

To Crosby he said, ‘The back entrance,’ and Crosby indicated the doorway to the living room, curving his fingers to the left. Purkiss racked the Remington’s slide mechanism and stepped out into the corridor beyond, swinging to his left.

A short passage ended in a door with a pane of opaque glass through which the evening was visible. A dark silhouette rose into view, blurred by the glass but clearly raising its arms. Purkiss recognised the two-handed grip.

He pulled the triggers. The shotgun bucked in his hands as the pane erupted, the smashing glass a high counterpoint to the roar of the blast. From beyond there was a yell, then the emptiness of a back garden through the ruined gap.

Purkiss moved quickly to the door, pumping the gun again. He swivelled left, then right, peering through the remains of the door. A man lay on his back on the concrete of the back porch, a pistol several feet from his outflung hand. His flak jacket had absorbed some of the blast; so had his face. He was gone.

Behind him Purkiss heard hammering and yells. He ran back down the passage to the living room. Crosby sat, arms wrapped around his bony chest, rocking. Berg, Nakamura and Kendrick were fixed on the front door, which Kendrick had locked but which was taking a pounding.

‘The window,’ he yelled. Berg reacted quickly, spinning and raising her gun as the man’s head and arms appeared above the sill and the glass exploded as he fired. Berg fired back at almost the same moment. The man’s bullet smashed into the couch a few inches from Crosby’s legs. He flinched and wheezed.

The bashing on the door stopped. In the sudden silence the hissing from Crosby’s oxygen cylinder was startlingly loud.

They’re regrouping, thought Purkiss. They’ve seen how many of us there are in here.

He ducked his head back into the passage but there was nobody at the back door. A creak in the timbers made him look up. They could come from any direction: front, back, the roof.

Kendrick was advancing at a stoop towards the front window. He crouched below the sill, then stood quickly, aimed the rifle, and loosed off a shot, ducking down again immediately.

‘They’re back at the car,’ he said.

Berg said, ‘All of them?’

‘At least three.’

‘What’re they doing?’

Kendrick mouthed a countdown — three, two, one — and stood again, fired, and ducked.

‘Ah shit,’ he said. ‘ Down .’

He dived to the floor, barging into Berg who was crouched behind him. Nakamura sprawled a second later. Purkiss, at the door, hurled himself across to the sofa and knocked Crosby off the end, then rolled off himself and dropped to his knees and hunched his back.

The barrage was like the grinding of an impossibly vast engine, the shots ripping through the log walls and screaming through the living room, smashing furniture and shattering ornaments into cascades of glass and porcelain, sizzling like bees above Purkiss’s head beneath his clasped hands. He felt something wet spray across his back and heard a scream and opened his eyes to see Crosby upright and doing an odd dance, jerking and spinning like a fish on a line. He stood up, tried to make a run for it , and even as Purkiss watched, Crosby’s head burst sideways and his scarecrow’s body was flung across the sofa and over the back.

The gunfire went on, and on, and Purkiss tried to flatten himself on to the floor because some of the slugs were coming through very low now, either knocked off course by the log wall they had to pass through or because they were being fired deliberately low, which meant the men were advancing. He saw in his restricted, floor-level world Nakamura crawling in the direction of the front door, Berg haplessly wanting to sit up but unable to risk it, Kendrick squirming like a salamander towards the cover of an armchair which was itself a blooming tree of ripped and puffed upholstery and wood chippings.