Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Oh, Mr Roland, isn’t it?’ she said as he made his way towards the stairs that led to the first floor.

‘Yeah?’

‘I thought you were in already. I guess you missed them.’

He turned round. ‘Who?’

‘A couple of gentlemen, they said you were expecting them.’

She studied the expression on his face, and then realised somewhere along the line she’d screwed up. ‘You uh… weren’t expecting any visitors, were you?’

Chris shook his head. ‘What did they look like?’

‘Uhh, middle-thirties, I guess. Short hair, smart, both of them.’

‘How long ago?’

She looked at her wristwatch. ‘I don’t know, earlier this evening.’

Chris looked up the stairs nervously. ‘Have they come back down yet?’

‘I haven’t seen them, but then I’ve been out the back in the office some of the time, you know?’

He nodded and thanked her, and then took the steps slowly up to the first flight of stairs, his stomach flipping uneasily inside him. There, he warily took a few steps up the second flight until he could see over the lip of the top step and down to the end of the first-floor hallway. There was no one to be seen waiting outside his or Mark’s rooms. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief.

Whoever it was, they had been and gone.

He climbed up the last of the steps and walked briskly down the short hallway, his trainers squeaking on the wooden floor. From the smell he guessed it had been recently waxed.

He reached in his pocket for the keys to the motel room while he rested his hand on the brass handle of the door. With a click of the latch, the door drifted ajar.

It’s open.

Chris remained frozen, expecting at any second for the door to be wrenched wide open and one of those two men to pull him roughly inside. A handful of seconds passed and nothing happened.

He remained where he was outside, though, listening intently, one ear close to the gap in the doorway, for subtle sounds of movement; the swish of skin against material, the creak of weight being shifted from one leg to another, the sounds of two well-built men, waiting patiently and readying themselves for Chris to commit to entering.

But he heard nothing, except the muted murmurings of the TV from downstairs, a roar of studio audience laughter and Ricki telling them they were heading for a break.

Sucking in air and puffing it out nervously, he leaned against the door to his room and it swung inwards.

‘Shit.’

His room had been thoroughly turned over. Every drawer from the dresser had been pulled out, his travel bag had been emptied on the bed and his clothes and toiletries sifted through. He saw several rolls of unused film had been broken open and the celluloid pulled out and exposed, useless now. He noticed that the roll of dollar notes he kept in his bag for expenses was gone.

He pushed the door open to his bathroom, knowing what he was going to see.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ he muttered.

The prints were gone, all of them, as were the negatives. For good measure, whoever had been here had smashed his enlarger, and poured all his chemicals down the sink.

‘Ahh, that’s just great.’

Chris was coming out of the bathroom when someone grabbed him from the side and roughly pushed him onto the bed. Before he could sit up, he felt something heavy land on his back, and his head was roughly pushed down into the covers on the bed. He could see nothing, and struggled to suck in air through the fabric of his bed’s quilt.

‘He came back too early!’ he heard someone say in a hoarse whisper.

‘No, we just took too fucking long processing the room,’ a second man said. He sounded older from the deep, grating timbre of his voice, and calmer.

‘What do you want?’ Chris tried to ask, his voice muffled by the quilt his face was being pushed into. In response he got a painful kick in the ribs, and then a moment later he felt hot, laboured breath against his cheek.

‘Be very quiet,’ he heard a voice mutter quietly; a younger man by the sound of it. ‘What do we do now? This wasn’t part of the plan.’

The older man replied calmly, his voice muted, speaking gently. ‘I’ll call him.’

Chris heard the tones of a mobile phone keypad, and then a pause.

‘No signal. Shit. We had a signal earlier, dammit.’

‘What are we going to do? Kill him?’

‘If we do, it can’t be here.’

Chris squirmed in response, his arms flapping around, blindly searching for something to grab on to.

His ribs exploded with pain as another swift kick landed. ‘Shut up and stop moving, or we will do you right here,’ the younger man hissed. ‘Try the phone again,’ he said. ‘Go over by the window, you might get a signal there.’

Chris heard the older man walk across the room towards the small window and once again he heard the key tones. Whoever it was they were trying to get in touch with would presumably decide his fate right now, one way or the other.

Oh Christ, I’m in deep shit.

He wondered where the hell Mark was. These bastards must have made enough noise to alert him in his room next door. Then he remembered, Mark had said he was taking the Cherokee up the coast to refill the air tanks. But surely he should have been back by now? It was gone nine in the evening.

Or maybe these sons of bitches had been next door dealing with him when Chris had entered his room.

‘No signal again.’

‘We’ll have to take him with us, until we meet up for the briefing tomorrow morning,’ whispered the man holding Chris down.

‘Yeah,’ the older one replied. ‘But it’s getting him out without attracting attention. Shit… maybe if I open the window and lean out — ’

Suddenly, Chris heard the door to the room swing open with a thud, and the sound of three heavy footsteps across the small bedroom followed swiftly by a metallic clang.

The hand that had roughly been holding the back of his head and forcing his face into the quilt went slack, and Chris found he could lift his head up and look to the side.

Just in time to see a lean, middle-aged man, with short, crewcut, greying hair turning round and pulling his gun out. He turned his head to see Mark holding up one of the air cylinders in front of himself.

‘Hit this and we’re all history!’ growled Mark.

Chris could see this stalemate would hold only a second or two. He pushed the unconscious form of the younger man off his back and found another gun lying on the bed beside him. He picked it up and levelled it at the grey-haired man, his hands trembling, fingers fumbling for the trigger.

The older man switched his focus and brought his gun to bear on Chris. ‘Put the gun down, son,’ he said in his calm voice.

Cool under pressure. The thought raced through Chris’s mind. Very bloody cool.

Without warning Mark hurled his cylinder at the man, who swung his aim back around towards him just in time to be knocked off balance by the heavy cylinder.

Chris got to his feet in a second and scrambled for the doorway. As he hurled himself out of the room he felt a hum of hot air whistle past his ear and a window overlooking the seafront in the hallway outside his bedroom exploded.

‘Fuck! He’s shooting!’ Chris heard himself shout as he pounded down the hallway after Mark.

He heard the man tumble out into the hallway after him, thudding against the wall opposite, feet crunching on the broken glass.

Another thread of hot air burned past him and the wall ahead erupted with a shower of plaster dust.

‘Pissing hell! Run faster, Mark!’

Both of them took the stairs down to the lobby four at a time and hurried outside into the night, gasping cold air into their lungs as they ran across the open parking area of the jetty towards the Cherokee parked up next to the two Runcies trucks.