Питер Мэй - Lockdown

‘Don’t do that,’ he told Mr Smith. But the only sound that came was some whispered, strangulated breath. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. But Mr Smith wasn’t listening. ‘Stop!’ he roared. A fearsome gurgle. Mr Smith heard that alright. He turned as Pinkie raised his SA80 rifle.

‘Pinkie, what are you doing?’

The remaining bullets in the magazine propelled Mr Smith right out of the door, and he soared like one of his own angels of death into the night.

MacNeil was going. He couldn’t hold on any longer. Pinkie heard Amy’s sobs of frustration and impotence. Such a shame, he thought. He dropped the rifle and staggered to the door. He met MacNeil’s eye. He saw his fear. And he felt his own life slipping away. He dropped to his knees. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and meant it. But knew that nobody would ever hear him.

MacNeil was gone when Pinkie caught him. And Pinkie held him now, his life literally in Pinkie’s hands. Perhaps they should go together. Or would a life saved by this dead man’s hand give his own life, finally, the meaning it had always lacked?

MacNeil closed his eyes. He didn’t understand any of this. But there were no questions he could think of that were worth asking when you were going to die. He knew this was the man he had pulled from the burning car on Lambeth Bridge. And he had no reason to be grateful to MacNeil, condemned as he had been to what must have been several hours of living hell. He hung there at the end of an arm of charred and weeping flesh, and as he looked into the man’s eyes, it was like staring into the abyss. A huge void, empty of anything. Another hand grabbed his collar and pulled. A superhuman effort. Legs braced against each edge of the door. A deep rasping sigh issuing from burned-out lungs. MacNeil got a handhold on the edge of the door, and then a knee on the ledge, and he fell inside, sprawling on the floor, utterly spent.

He rolled over to look up at his saviour. But there was no one there. He had gone, somewhere into the abyss that was his own soul.

MacNeil turned and saw poor Amy, tears streaming down her face, and managed to pull himself up on to legs like jelly. He slumped beside her on the bench and took her in his arms.

In the distance, the first glimmer of light in the winter sky reflected all the way upriver from the east, and MacNeil felt the first tickle at the back of his nose, and the first roughness at the back of his throat.

I would like to offer my grateful thanks to all those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for Lockdown . In particular, I’d like to express my gratitude to pathologist Steven C. Campman, MD, Medical Examiner, San Diego, California; Professor Joe Cummins, Emeritus of Genetics, University of Western Ontario; Dr A.W. (Freddy) Martin (CRFP), Past President of the British Association of Forensic Odontologists; Detective Sergeant George Murray, Northern Constabulary; Graham and Fiona Kane for letting me plagiarise their home; and Alison Campbell Jensen for her cinnamon and cloves.