Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

At least the stairwell didn't stink of piss.

Logan froze. 'Wait a minute, how do you know dangerous people are after him?'

She kept on going. 'It was in the file.'

'Then why didn't you say anything about it?'

'I did not think it mattered — we thought he was too long ago, remember? We were concentrating on Lowenthal. Now come on…'

They stopped again on the fifth floor, outside the only door that didn't want to be different. It was a plain, bland slab, painted black. 'This is it.'

Wiktorja reached into her pocket, the one with the gun. Then she knocked.

A voice muffled out from the inside. 'Otwarte.'

She tried the door handle and it creaked, then the door swung open, groaning like a sound effect from a horror movie.

The corridor on the other side was dark and cluttered — piles of old newspapers, a broken sewing machine, shoe boxes, bricks, an ancient radio with the valves poking out. The walls were covered in 70s-style red velveteen wallpaper, the swirly pattern disappearing into the darkness, and the only illumination came from a twisting ribbon of little white fairy lights.

The same voice as before came from a room further down the hall, saying something about pierogi?

Wiktorja placed a finger on her lips and crept into the gloom, picking her way around the obstacles. Swearing quietly, Logan followed her, closing the front door behind them — shutting out what little natural daylight had oozed in from the stairwell. And now there was nothing but the fairy lights.

It was impossible to walk in a straight line, the piles of junk made the confined space into a twisting maze. Claustrophobic.

Wiktorja held up a hand and stopped, peering through an open door into the room beyond. She stepped inside, motioning for Logan to follow her.

It was the living room that time forgot, and just as dark as the hallway. More piles of junk, more Christmas lights. And as Logan's eyes slowly grew accustomed to the gloom he could see the stripy wallpaper, the swirly-patterned rug, the fake-teak sideboard, the old Bakelite phone, the framed pictures of Jesus, Pope John Paul II, and the Virgin Mary. The boarded-up windows. A broken alarm-clock-radio sitting on top of a stack of boxes. The man sitting in the armchair pointing a gun at them.

He had grey hair, liver spots, dark glasses, big rounded shoulders and hands like dinner plates. A bear in a cardigan. A three-quarters empty bottle of vodka sat on the table by his side. He was right in the middle of his maze of junk. A minotaur with a semi-automatic pistol.

He waggled the gun at them. 'Co zrobiliscie Zytka?'

Wiktorja answered him in English, 'We have not done anything to Zytka.' She eased her hand slowly out of her pocket — bringing her own gun with it. 'We are not-'

'Stop right there.' His accent was a strange mix of Polish and American. As if he'd learned to speak the language from watching Hollywood movies. 'You stop, or I will shoot you.'

She froze. 'I'm not doing anything.'

He raised his arm and aimed straight for her chest. 'Put it on the floor.'

She looked back at Logan, then did as she was told, laying the gun down with a clunk on the threadbare carpet.

'Good, now you sit. Over there, in the seat.' The gun waggled again, this time in the direction of a rickety dining-room chair, hard up against the wall. He kept the gun on her until she was sitting, ignoring Logan. 'You tell that cholernik Ehrlichmann I am not an idiot. He touches one hair on Zytka's head and I'll blow him and his whole pierdolony family back to the Stone Age. Do you understand?'

'I… I don't know who Ehrlichmann is.'

Logan stepped into the room. 'She's telling the truth.' And the gun snapped round. Oh God… He was looking right down the barrel. He put his hands up. 'We're not here to hurt anyone.'

'Where is Zytka?'

Logan glanced at Wiktorja, and edged a little closer. 'We don't know. We've not seen anyone since we got here.'

The man grunted. 'Then what do you want?'

Wiktorja: 'We're police officers.'

He swung the gun round again. 'Pierdolona suka!'

Logan lunged.

He smashed through a stack of hardback books, sending them flying into the shadows. The string of little white lights caught around his waist, hauling things from the walls of the junk-yard maze — a glass lamp hit the floor and shattered — Logan kept on going.

The gun came back round, the old man was fast, but Logan was already too close.

He ducked under Gorzkiewicz's arm, grabbed the vodka from the table and swung it like a tennis racket: using the man's head as the ball.

Only Logan's foot went down on one of the scattered books and it shifted beneath him mid-swing. The bottle missed its target, just catching the edge of Gorzkiewicz's sunglasses as Logan crashed into another pile of junk, sprawling out flat on his back. Something sharp digging into his spine.

The old man swore, 'Kurwa!' and Logan was looking down the barrel of the gun again. Gorzkiewicz was canted over to one side, clutching the armchair. He was trembling, sunglasses skewed off to one side, exposing a twisted knot of scar tissue where there should have been an eye. 'You made a big mistake, pizdzielec! I'll blow your fucking-' He stopped dead.

Senior Constable Wiktorja Jaroszewicz had a slab-like chunk of Soviet-built semiautomatic jammed in his cheek hard enough to force his face into a lopsided smile. 'No,' she said, twisting the barrel, 'you are going to drop the gun and hope I do not paint this shitty little apartment with your brains.' The kitchen was another blast from the past: old-fashioned units, painted a sickly shade of avocado, lurked in the darkness; yellow linoleum floor worn almost through to the underlay; a rectangular, mahogany clock with the hands stuck at twenty to two; kitchen gadgets that looked as if they'd fallen off the back of a dinosaur. There was just enough room for three people to sit around a tiny table, bathed in the faint glow of yet more fairy lights, and the gurgling hummmm of an antique refrigerator.

Gorzkiewicz opened a bottle of vodka and poured three stiff measures, keeping a finger on the lip of each shot glass — filling them right up to the brim and never spilling a drop.

He raised his glass. 'May we live to bury our enemies.'

Logan and Wiktorja joined the toast — her throwing the drink back in one, Logan taking an experimental sip… then deciding it was probably better not to taste the stuff on the way down. He coughed and spluttered as the alcohol hit: raw and bitter.

She pounded him on the back. Then asked Gorzkiewicz why all the windows were boarded over. 'I mean,' she said, filling their glasses again, 'I know you are blind, but do you not like to feel the sun on your face?'

'A sniper's rifle only works if he can see his target.' The old man downed his vodka, then removed his sunglasses. Both eyes were gone, and all that was left were deep furrowed scars, following the contours of the sockets. 'In my line of work, it is not good if people can see you, when you can't see them.'

'Uh-huh…' Logan looked around the cramped kitchen, 'Your line of work?' Whatever it was it couldn't be paying too well.

Gorzkiewicz smiled, his teeth too perfect to be true: dentures. 'They call me Zegarmistrz: the Watchmaker.'

Logan looked over his shoulder at the boarded-up windows. 'So why does a watchmaker need to worry about snipers?'

'It is a very competitive marketplace.'

Logan stared at him. Those scarred sockets were the most disturbing things he'd seen in a long time… which was saying something. The longer he looked at them, the more convinced he became that they were staring straight back. He suppressed a shudder. 'Who's Ehrlichmann? He make watches too?'

'Ehrlichmann is a German… businessman. He is not important.' Gorzkiewicz glanced up at the dead clock. 'What time is it?'