Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

Niemand took a pace and dived at the man in drag.

He was in the air when he saw the two short black barrels protruding from the top of the phone.

He heard nothing. Saw only a lick of flame.

The blow was high in his chest, no great pain.

Fuck, he thought, why didn’t I expect this?

Then he had his left hand on the weapon, brought his right hand down the man’s face, clawed his face, nails just long enough to gouge flesh from forehead, eyebrows, eyelids, cheekbones. He made a screeching noise, then Niemand had his fingers hooked behind the man’s lower lip, nails beneath the teeth, wrenching.

The man in drag was not prepared for this kind of attack, this kind of ferocity, this kind of pain. Blood running into his eyes, blind, he let Niemand drag him to his knees. Niemand got the weapon away from him, no resistance, let go the jaw, kneed him in the head twice, three times, the man fell sideways, head hit the carpet, the wig was half off, near-shaven skull revealed, pale, shocking.

Niemand jumped on his head, kicked it, looked around, grabbed the sports bag, suddenly aware of the people, shouting.

Go down, said his instincts.

He went up, ran up the escalator, hurting a little in the chest now, not much, people getting out of his way on the moving steel ramp. On the next floor, he told himself, Walk, be calm, no one here saw anything, no one heard anything. Seconds, it lasted seconds.

Walk, just walk.

He walked through games and dolls, toys, saw a stairway, no, not that one, a section full of plump women, maternity wear, shoes, children’s shoes, children standing around looking bored, rich children buying school uniforms, veer right, through a doorway, stairs. Yes.

He went down, as fast as he could go without causing people to look, not many people coming up the stairs, he was bleeding a lot, he could feel the warmth of his own blood on his skin now, but the pain was bearable.

Bearable, he said to himself, you’re not dying, this is not a terminal wound, not a lung shot. No, definitely not a lung shot. He’d seen enough lung shots, he knew lung shots. The sound, the strange bubbling sound. Nothing like that. He was breathing fine, just pain and blood, that was nothing.

Sonny, you die when I fucken tell you to and not a fucken second before.

They were the words mad Sergeant Toll shouted at him when he lay in an erosion gully, bruised all over, arm broken, at the School of Infantry obstacle course. Niemand used the same words to the curly-haired boy, Jacobs, whose blood was lying like red mercury on the ancient dust of Angola. But Jacobs hadn’t obeyed. He’d coughed blood and he’d died.

Floors, he’d lost track of floors, surely this was the ground floor. No, one to go, shit no, more than one. He wasn’t feeling well. Not a good idea this, he should have left Mr Fucking Shawn’s cassette where he found it.

More stairs. Another floor? No, he remembered this section, the smell, perfume, somehow not women’s perfume, too much lemon and bay, this was the ground floor, carry on down, he’d be in the basement.

An exit, right there, to his right, he hadn’t noticed it. He walked towards the doors. Upright, don’t hunch, the tendency was to hunch when hurt, why was that? It didn’t help, didn’t take away any pain.

He looked around, not feeling alert. Where were they? They hadn’t sent one man to kill him. One man in a dress and a wig. They’d sent two men to the hotel, that hadn’t worked. Second try, this place would be crawling with killers, a full fucking platoon of them.

He went past the doorman, who stared at him, then onto the pavement, lots of people, they were hard to avoid, all carrying bags. He bumped into a woman, said sorry. Daylight fading. Cold day, cold on his face, he felt warm inside, that was a good sign, they always talked about feeling cold when you were hit badly. The old hands. He was an old hand now. But he’d never taken a bad hit. Just the piece out of his side, the flesh wound in the bum and the grenade slivers in his arm and his chest.

He knew where he was. The underground was just around the corner. Catch the tube as planned.

The pain was in his jaw now, why was that?

He crossed the side street, walked to the corner, turned into the busy street. No, he shouldn’t catch the tube, he’d be trapped down there. He walked past the station entrance, halfway down the block. Cross, better to cross, he thought. Crossing the street, traffic stalled, walking between the cars. This was a silly thing to have done, you didn’t want to die for this kind of shit.

Too late to think about that. Anyway you didn’t want to die protecting parasites in Joburg, that would be a really seriously stupid way to go.

‘You all right?’

Someone was speaking to him. Someone on a motorbike, sitting in the traffic, a yellow helmet, waiting for the lights ‘Need a lift,’ said Niemand. ‘I’m hurt.’

‘Get on,’ said yellow helmet.

Niemand got on, bag on his lap, held the sides of the rider’s leather jacket. He looked back. Two men in dark suits were on the corner outside the store, looking around.

Then, through the cars, he saw another man in a dark suit coming, running around cars.

Coming to get him. Make sure this time.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t get off the bike.

What was the point? He couldn’t run.

The man was fifteen metres away, a pale face, dark hair, coming quickly.

Fuck, he thought. Stupid.

With a roar, the bike pulled away, went between a car and delivery vehicle. Niemand’s head went back and when it came forward he couldn’t stop it, it came to rest between the rider’s shoulder blades, wanted to stay there.

This wasn’t good. How much blood had he lost? He took a hand off the rider’s jacket and felt his shirt. It was wet, soaked.

Too much blood.

…LONDON…

‘You tell me what’s going on,’ said Caroline Wishart. ‘Two bastards sandwich me, take the package. Stolen goods, the one says. Then someone attacks Mackie.’

‘Close the door, will you?’

Colley was holding a plain cigarette in long ochre fingers, tapping it on his desktop, tapping one end, turning it over, tapping the other. ‘I’m buggered,’ he said. ‘Who knows how many people he’s swindled.’

‘Where’d you get the money?’

‘The money?’

‘Yes, the money.’

He lit the cigarette with an old gas lighter, many clicks before the flame and the deep draw, belched smoke, did some coughing. ‘Chalk this one up to character building,’ he said. ‘Some you win, some are fuck-ups. That’s life.’

‘Who’d you tell?’

‘Tell? Who’d you tell?’ He put on a high-pitched and squeaky voice, his idea of an upper-class girl’s voice.

Caroline wanted to strangle Colley, go over to him and slap his face and put her hands around his mottled neck.

‘Leaving aside the pathetic quality of your imitations,’ she said, ‘where’d the money come from?’

He smiled, a pleased expression. ‘It wasn’t actually real money.’

‘What?’

‘The top and the bottom ones, yes. The middle ones…shall we say Middle Eastern?’

It was dawning on Caroline that she was missing something. ‘Well, shall “we” tell me what the fuck’s going on here?’

Colley formed his lips into an anus and blew tiny, perfect smoke rings. She saw the pale, vile tip of his tongue. The grey circles met the thermal from the ground-level heating duct, rose, dissolved.

‘You came to me for help, remember,’ Colley said. ‘You could’ve gone to Halligan, but no, you thought he’d pinch your story, make you sorry you screwed him with your non-negotiable demands.’

She could not contain herself. ‘Well, not doing that, that was probably a big mistake.’