Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

As for Harry, he was used to spending his days alone; used to falling asleep just as the pub got busy in the evening, and being woken by a weary Suze after eleven so they could walk back to wherever they were staying. Suze knew what people thought when they saw him, and that was one of the reasons she moved from town to town so often. It would only take a single bleeding heart to report them to social services and all of a sudden they would become a matter of public record.

And that was something she definitely could not risk. The very thought sent ice down her spine. She would hear a deep, masculine voice in her head. Hide, it said. Don’t stop hiding. In her mind she would see a blazing farmhouse and a dark-haired woman with cold eyes. And she would hug her child, conceived the very night everything changed in her life, and vow to keep him safe.

The TV was on as usual today, but Suze was the only one watching it. The rolling news about yesterday’s train attacks might have been sickening, but the alkies in the Crown and Sceptre only appeared concerned with their own misery. They were oblivious to the scenes, even when Suze pointed the sticky remote control at the TV and turned up the volume. As one of the punters, a skinny middle-aged guy with thinning hair tied in a ponytail, came up and demanded his second pint of the day, she caught fragments of commentary.

‘ International condemnation… no word from the Palestinian administration .’

The guy coughed as he handed over the money for his drink.

‘ Troop mobilisation across the Middle East… precautionary measure… tensions running high… ’

Suze put his change into his sweaty hand and went back to watching the screen, vaguely aware that, rather than returning to his table, he was loitering around the bar. For the third time that morning she watched the footage of a young reporter unable to cope with the horrific scenes the previous night.

‘ As we stand here, relatives of the passengers on the 16.55 are beginning to gather in a neighbouring field, anxious for news of their… ’

‘Them fuckin’ Muslims,’ the punter snarled. Suze ignored him.

Suddenly the screen changed, taking Suze away from the repeated footage of the atrocity and back to the studio. An immaculately dressed female reporter with an earnest look on her face was speaking hesitantly, as if she’d just been fed information she wasn’t quite sure about.

‘ News just in… ’ she announced, before pausing. ‘ In the last few minutes, police have released a photograph that they believe shows two of the UK bombers moments before they boarded the fateful 16.55 train from Bristol Parkway. ’

A grainy black and white image filled the TV screen.

Suze stared up at it. And then, as if someone had suddenly flicked a switch, she gasped.

The picture showed a crowd of people — maybe fifteen in all — with two men’s faces circled in red. They both wore rucksacks, and it was difficult to make out their features with any certainty.

‘Pakis,’ the guy with the ponytail muttered. ‘All look the fucking same to me.’ He scanned around vaguely, as if he was searching for someone to agree with him.

But Suze had barely heard what he’d said. She was staring at the screen as a familiar sensation of dread crept over her body, draining away all her strength.

‘What’s the matter, sweetheart? Time of the month, is it?’ The punter chuckled at his own joke.

Suze couldn’t answer. She just stared and stared.

It wasn’t the men circled in red that had caught her attention. It was someone else, standing just behind them, with features almost as clear as if she had appeared in the Crown and Sceptre itself. A woman with dark hair, flat eyes. Older than when Suze had seen her last, but without question the same person.

Her fingertips moved involuntarily to her neck as she remembered how the woman had tried to throttle her, and the force with which Chet had pulled her off. And her insides seemed to twist as she remembered watching her from the burning house in which the man who had saved her, and who had fathered the quiet, strange little boy she loved with all her heart, had perished.

‘Oh my God,’ she muttered.

‘What’s up, sweetheart?’ the punter asked. But he didn’t get a reply.

Suze wasn’t supposed to leave the bar for long, but she had to. She turned and ran into the back room, where Harry was sitting on a battered sofa, surrounded by crates of brown ale and Schweppes tonic, carefully colouring in a Dora the Explorer picture book. Harry couldn’t read, but he would happily colour in childish pictures from morning till night. He stopped when he saw his mum, and looked up at her with big, wide eyes that were full of questions as she paced the room nervously, digging her fingernails into her palms and chewing her bottom lip.

From in here, the sound of the TV was just a distant hum. Suze continued pacing in silence, as though movement would dispel the fear in her gut. It didn’t.

‘What is it, Mummy?’ Harry asked after thirty seconds. His voice was very soft, but it was unusual enough for him to say anything without being asked that Suze immediately stopped pacing and went to sit next to him. She held out his arms and he snuggled up to her. Harry was always ready for a hug. She felt some of her anxiety fall away.

Some. But not all.

She started to shake.

‘Are you crying?’ the little boy asked. His voice was quite matter-of-fact. And when Suze didn’t reply: ‘You always tell me not to cry.’ It wasn’t an accusation. Harry spoke with such concern that she wanted to cry twice as hard. But she forced herself to get control and, drawing away from her son, she cupped his precious face in her hands.

The look he returned was serious. Not the look of a ten-year-old, but the look of an adult. It made sense in a way. Little Harry had never spent any real time with children his own age, but it caught her off guard sometimes, how much he looked like his father. It was almost as if Chet was staring out at him from behind his son’s eyes. ‘ Why are you crying, Mum?’

What could she say? How could she explain such things to someone so young? How could she share her fear with someone so innocent? She closed her eyes.

‘Mummy’s just… just a bit sad,’ she whispered.

‘Why?’

‘Because… because sometimes… sometimes there are people who do bad things.’ She opened her eyes again to see Harry’s concerned little face still looking up at her.

‘But we don’t do bad things, do we?’ he asked.

Suze blinked. Do we? she wondered. She thought of the occasional shoplifting he knew nothing about; the secrecy; the deception. She’d never told Harry about his father. She’d never told anyone what happened that night. She didn’t have anyone to tell, and even if she did, fear would have held her tongue.

Stay anonymous. Stay dark.

Whenever she thought of going to the police, Chet’s words had echoed in her head. She remembered leaving London with him, and the two police officers in the service station bearing down on them. If she made herself known to the police, she could throw her anonymity out of the window. If it had been just her, maybe she’d have done that before now. Maybe she’d have given up. But it wasn’t just about her any more. It was about her son, and nothing in the world was going to make her put his life at risk…

‘Well, if we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Harry interrupted her thoughts.

She looked at him. He was so earnest. So right.

Countless people were dead and Suze was in possession of important information. She had to tell someone.

Not the police. But someone.