Alex Palmer: The Tattooed Man

In the shadows of corridor they couldn’t be seen and instead watched him. He carried a gun in one hand. In the other, he held his mobile phone. It showed a small pinprick of blue light on its display. He was tracking someone. Brinsmead, Harrigan decided. Elena Calvo must have finally had enough. He turned in their direction, apparently heading for the stairs they had just come down. Harrigan and Grace withdrew silently back into the darkness of the corridor. They waited but he didn’t come to where they were.

‘DP,’ Grace whispered.

‘Is that what you call him?’

‘It’s what Brinsmead calls him. What’s he doing here?’

‘My guess is he’s after Brinsmead,’ Harrigan said. ‘Elena’s been playing for time throughout. There was a message on her phone earlier. Despatch. 45. CPT. I think it was from DP saying he was on his way to get Brinsmead and where it was going to happen. She was waiting for the lights to go out, but I think she might have been waiting for him as well. It was about forty-five minutes ago.’

‘Didn’t Sam work it out?’

‘Elena’s like Brinsmead-she can lie convincingly. It was signed S. I don’t know what that stands for.’

‘Saviour,’ Grace said sarcastically. ‘He’s not coming after us.’

‘He might do if he gets both Sam and Brinsmead. I don’t think Elena would be very sentimental about either of us ending up dead.’

‘She can’t just kill us. The security guards know I’m here.’

‘If you end up shot in a situation like this, who knows who shot you? Come on. He’s gone. Let’s see if we can open that door from the inside.’

They reached the main corridor again but heard shots down the stairs. Harrigan dragged Grace to the ground as one cracked past them. There was the sound of footsteps running down the stairs towards them.

‘Back this way,’ Harrigan said urgently. ‘Let’s find a place to hide.’

They turned and ran down towards the animal house. Running into the dark. It was no way to die.

Asmall shadowed creature sat in front of them near a floor light. When it saw them it shrieked and ran back towards the animal house.

‘Was that a monkey?’ Grace asked.

‘The cages must have been locked open as well,’ Harrigan said.

They ran into a huge and cavernous room lit by pale lights spaced at intervals high up on the walls. The lower half of the room was in deep shadow. On three sides, two tiers of glass cells rose up to the ceiling. A set of ladders and walkways gave access to these enclosures. The wall lights were reflected in the glass. Faintly visible in the centre of the room was a long and wide stainless-steel bench, set crosswise. The wall lights glimmered on its surface in the dark. There were no windows; no means of external light. A strong animal smell filled the room, a stench of urine and sweet rotting fruit. All the doors to the glass enclosures were open. The monkeys had climbed down into the room. Several sat on the steel bench, darker shapes against the shadows. They scattered when Grace and Harrigan ran into the room. There was the sound of rustling, of animal movement and hissing.

‘Get down behind the bench,’ Harrigan whispered. ‘It’ll give us some cover.’

They crouched down. Very soon afterwards they heard shrieking from just outside the doorway. ‘Fuck you,’ a voice muttered softly, angrily, followed by more shrieking and then silence. The door was lit more strongly than the rest of the room, the lights casting a square of low yellow light around it. DP appeared, shaking his head angrily. Immediately, he crouched down in the shadows out of their sight. There was a short pause, then words echoed bizarrely around the room. ‘I’m waiting. You come to me, man.’ The acoustics of the room were such that any sound carried clearly to all listeners. The words were followed by a deeper silence, as if the speaker realised quiet was his only option.

Harrigan hoped DP couldn’t know they were there. They stayed still and silent as the room slowly filled again with the soft sounds of animals moving, small hissings, occasional shrieks. Harrigan tapped Grace on the shoulder. He wanted the gun; she gave it to him. She didn’t need to be told he was going after DP. Still crouching, he moved to the end of the bench. Seen from Harrigan’s perspective, DP was somewhere to the left of the doorway. In the darkness, Harrigan saw a fine blue light that shifted slightly while he watched. DP would be intent on that tiny bit of light. Harrigan knelt and aimed at the deeper shadow.

Suddenly there were running footsteps along the corridor. Before Harrigan could fire, Elena, seen briefly in the yellow light, the contract clutched in her hand, rushed inside the room at full speed. There was shrieking as Elena fell heavily to the floor, then more shrieks. She had collided with at least one monkey. Harrigan could not fire; she was between him and DP. There was a flurry of movement as several monkeys leapt up onto the bench and then down on the other side, climbing up the ladders and walkways that led to their cages.

‘Get to the back,’ DP hissed.

Elena scrambled to her feet and ran behind the bench. Harrigan was already there. Elena was about to call out when Grace got her in a hold, pressing her down on the floor with a hand over her mouth.

‘What’s that? Who’s back there?’ DP called, but there was no answer from Elena who was pinned to the floor by Grace.

Harrigan was back at the end of the bench but the blue light was gone. There was a brief waiting silence, then a shot flashed across the room in their direction. It cannoned into the glass, filling the room with a shattering sound, then further clatter as the broken glass hit the floor. Elena began to wrestle hard with Grace, scrabbling to get to the end of the bench. She made enough noise to be heard.

‘There is someone. I know where you are, man. I’m coming for you.’

You do that, Harrigan thought. I’m waiting for you.

Intent on DP, he then realised that another figure was entering the room at speed, disappearing into the dark. A bright flashlight raked across the darkness above his head. It caught DP in its beam. Harrigan fired from a crouching position, almost with no time to aim. There was darkness again. DP gasped. Harrigan heard a clatter. DP had dropped his gun. Brinsmead was outlined against the door, then gone.

‘Fuck you, man,’ DP said.

‘Danny, get down!’ Sam shouted.

The two voices clashed.

‘We’ve got a fish, Danny,’ Sam called out. ‘One you’ve wanted for a while. He’s your protector, Elena. We’ve got him. You’re screwed even with a gun. I’m going to see him burn like the others.’

‘Jesus, man. You’re not going to do that.’

Sam laughed.

Behind the bench, Elena stopped wrestling with Grace. She lay on the floor, breathing hard. She didn’t have the contract with her. When she fell, it must have dropped from her hands and been lost in the dark. A monkey landed lightly on the bench just above their heads, peering down. In the shadows, there was the gleam of its eyes. By now Harrigan’s vision was accustomed to the darkness. He saw moving shadows near the door.

‘Crawl,’ Brinsmead’s voice said.

‘Come on, man.’

‘ Crawl!’

‘You take it all so fucking personally. It could have been any of us in there.’

In the dark, Harrigan moved close to Grace. He didn’t trust Elena to be on their side if he took out either Brinsmead or Sam.

‘We need to get DP’s gun,’ he whispered to Grace.

‘I’ll get it. I can shoot,’ Elena said. ‘My father taught me.’

‘You’ll shoot us,’ Grace said softly.

‘No,’ she said.