D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

With an acquiescent grunt, Tremain hauled the woman to her feet and brandished the gun at Gareth. He glanced over to Lambert-Chide, but the man had his back to them all. ‘If they cause the slightest trouble, Randall,’ he said, his voice a little cracked and husky, ‘kill Davies and take the kneecaps off the woman. Don’t kill her just yet. There’s plenty of time for that.’

Lambert-Chide waited till they’d all left the room and then lifted the photograph album, peering at the images for a good two minutes, his chest beginning to heave, the breath rattling in his throat. Then he threw the album across the room, his cry shrill and banshee-like.

The room was small, no more than six feet square, with no windows, its walls painted an insipid cream colour. A single bulb inset into the high ceiling bathed the interior in a dull, half-hearted glow. The floor beneath them was made of shining black ceramic tiles. Gareth beat at the locked door with his fist. There was no handle on the inside of the brushed-steel door.

‘That won’t do you the slightest bit of good,’ she said. She was sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the wall and her gaze resting somewhere at a point just in front of her feet. Her hand still had blood between the fingers, her hair matted and bloody.

Gareth groaned in frustration and anger and turned sharply away from the door. What she said made sense, but it galled him all the same to be reminded that he was in a desperate situation that he could fathom no way out of. And what’s more he was stuck with the woman who’d admitted she’d dragged him kicking and screaming, literally, into this damned mess.

‘I don’t care to hear your opinions,’ he snapped. ‘Christ, to think you almost had me fooled back there as well! What on earth was I thinking?’ He found himself becoming infuriated by the nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. ‘I’m in God knows what kind of shit because of yours and Muller’s greed — you think that makes me feel good about things? I’ve been subjected to hell since you came into my life, and I can’t for the life of me see any way this is going to end well.’ He slammed his back against the wall and folded his arms. ‘The lowest thing you did was that you made out you were my sister. You know how that cuts me up? If Tremain doesn’t kill you then I’m tempted to do the bloody job myself!’

She put a hand to her forehead. Held it there a while, shielding her eyes, and then ran her fingers back through her hair. She flinched when she touched the wound. He noticed how absolutely beaten she looked, as if she’d given up caring about anything. ‘What can I say? I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry?’ He let out a humourless laugh. ‘That’s alright then, isn’t it? That’s guaranteed to make everything better.’ He went over to her and she eyed him cautiously. ‘Why has he put us in the same room together? Is he hoping I’ll rip your throat out or something? I tell you, he’s not far wrong on that account.’

She nodded towards the ceiling, to the far corner. He hadn’t seen the tiny plastic box. ‘They’re watching us, listening to everything we say. I don’t know, maybe to see if I’m lying. To see how we behave with each other.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘It isn’t enough that we’re dumped here like animals.’ He joined her, sitting on the floor. ‘So what do I call you — Evelyn, Erica, Beth — what suits you?’

‘I prefer Erica,’ she said tiredly.

‘Is that your real name?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Suit yourself,’ He closed his eyes. ‘So does she really exist, this Evelyn Carter, or is it all a figment of the old man’s atrophied brain?’

She studied his face closely whilst he had his eyes closed. ‘Would be amazing if it was true, but no, it’s more the latter. Lambert-Chide is living in a dream world of his own making. But there again he has enough money to chase any dream, no matter how ridiculous. Do you miss not knowing your mother?’ she asked.

He breathed heavily down his nose. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘I guess we all need to know where we came from, who we are. I’ve spent so long hating her for what she did to me that I realise I’ve been consumed by it. It has coloured my life in a way that hasn’t been healthy. I wanted to ditch all that bitterness, and I thought I’d discovered a sister whom I could relate to, to help me get over it. But it turns out I’ve been living in a dream world of my very own making. It was all just too good to be true. She didn’t exist. Turns out she was a con artist all along. Story of my fucking life.’

‘Maybe she had good reason to abandon you,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was for the best.’

‘What do you care?’ he said angrily. ‘Keep your nose out of my business. It’s nothing to do with you. I don’t need to hear your little philosophy on life. For all I know you’re in the pay of Lambert-Chide, this is still all part of the game. I can’t trust anyone. And I ain’t about to start trusting you. So cut the fucking nice lady crap. Another word from you and I really will tear your throat out.’

It should have made him feel better, to get something off his chest. But instead it made him feel worse. He saw her fingering the top of her head. She looked totally beat up, a husk of a person with the insides all scraped out. He bent to her.

‘Here, let me take a look at that,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing. I’ve had worse,’ she said.

He felt so damned cheated. He thought he had a sister. Like coming up on the lottery only to lose your winning ticket. He desperately wanted to hate her also, but his capacity for hate was being spread a little too thin these days.

‘Whatever,’ he said, resting back against the wall and closing his eyes again.

He stared hard at the piece of paper. On it was simply an address scrawled in blue pen. His own handwriting had gotten weaker, more spidery, he thought. Was that a sign of something? A sign of old age? What? Or was it foolish to read something so significant into a series of loose and florid lines on a torn-off page from a notebook? It had become less definite, that was sure, like him. Less definite about things. There was a time once when he knew what he knew and didn’t question things as readily; nowadays everything was there to be queried. Again, was that just maturity kicking in at some point, or the older mind struggling to comprehend? Needing answers. Well he needed one now like never before.

Four months, that’s all he had left. After four months he could close the door on all this and set off into the sunset in his brand new camper van. He didn’t need to be bothered with it anymore. So why was he getting so worked up? Because the force he knew and loved (after a fashion — all love is painful at times) was rotten, that’s why. When it had become so he didn’t rightly know, had never even suspected it was beginning to stink of decay. OK, so it was never perfect, always one or two bad apples to remove from the barrel, always something that happened that pulled the lid on dodgy practices, but this? This went even deeper, like a cancer that had infiltrated it so thoroughly he doubted you could ever get it clean again.

He felt totally crushed by Styles’ revelations. Dismayed to the point of depression. So what? He could easily wash his hands of it, leave them to sort it out amongst themselves, slink off to keep a low profile. After all, look what happened to Wood and Baxter. This Doradus bunch didn’t mess around. But it wasn’t as simple as that. They’d dirtied the thing he admired. He didn’t want to let it go, like Styles had insisted; to lie low and leave it up to him. He was a good police officer, and everything about this was so wrong it was rancid. That cut across the grain of decades of police work. He wanted to have a part in getting it clean again. He wanted to get even, especially with Superintendent Maloney. He bluntly told Styles that he wouldn’t rest until Maloney was behind bars, in spite of Styles’ protests. He’d do his best to crack this case and put Maloney’s head on a platter, and if that meant treading all over MI-bloody-5’s softly-softly approach then so be it. He still had four months left and he was going to use it to good effect. What was the worst thing they could do? Sack him?