Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

De Valois looked irritated. “Other people would kill you,” he said. “I am being generous, very generous. In future you will work for me. As will she. But first, we have business.”

When the music stopped it left Neku frozen in mid swing. “Tell her to come here,” de Valois said, looking at the girl.

Instead of climbing from the stage, Neku vanished through a door at the back and when she reappeared it was wearing a tatty silk dressing gown that reached her ankles and was tied tightly around her waist. Sweat dripped from her face and a pulse beat steadily in her neck. Kit could smell her from five paces away.

“I need a shower,” she told him.

“Later,” said Kit, keeping to Japanese.

“What did she say?”

“That she needs a shower.”

Mr. de Valois grunted. “There’ll be time for that later,” he said. “Tell the girl I have a job for her. A very suitable job.”

So Kit did.

Neku’s eyes were arctic, devoid of light and so cold they made Kit shiver. It would have been better if a sneer or scowl gave anger to her face, but instead she smiled, almost blandly. “Tell him I’m always willing to help.”

Things moved swiftly after that.

From somewhere a chopping board was produced, along with a stained Sabatier knife and a chrome bucket full of ice. Armand demanded rubber bands and when these failed to appear announced that string would have to do.

“You ever seen this done before?”

She had, Kit realised, having translated Armand de Valois’s question. Which was more than could be said for Kit, unless one counted films. Because he’d just worked out what was about to happen.

Kit only knew a gun had been pulled when he felt its muzzle touch the side of his ear, a cold kiss just behind the hair line. Alfie’s hand was shaking. A poor start for someone holding an automatic so cheap it lacked a safety catch.

“Taking my drugs, trying to trick me, and not showing sufficient respect. Three transgressions,” said de Valois, handing Neku the knife. “That means you cut three times, one joint after another.”

He smiled while he waited for Kit to translate.

“My finger,” said Kit, meaning, My finger, not that man’s throat.

Neku weighed the blade in her hand.

“Just do it,” Kit said. “And we’ll get ourselves out of here.”

She knew exactly where to make the first cut. Placing Kit’s left hand face down on the board and positioning her knife above the first joint of his little finger, Neku slammed her palm across the back of the blade.

Fuck.

The severed tip of a finger was rolling across the board before Kit even registered the pain, but by then Neku had his hand back on the board and her blade against the same finger, one joint lower.

A slam of her hand and two segments of finger rested beside each other.

“Take the last joint,” said Neku, “and I’ll have nothing to tie off.” Barely bothering to wait for Kit to translate, she held Kit’s hand to the board and repositioned her knife.

“She’s good,” said de Valois.

“The best,” Neku said, in fractured English.

Armand de Valois laughed. “Okay,” he said. “Tell her to have this one on me.”

Cutting a length of string, Neku bound the last section of finger and tied it off in a quick knot. “One section you can re-attach,” she whispered, “two is much more difficult.”

She was supporting him. Her single hand beneath Kit’s elbow to brace his entire weight, should he need time to compose himself.

“We’re done here,” Kit said.

“Almost,” promised de Valois. “But first, Ben…your finger, it hurts?”

Of course it fucking hurts.

“A little.”

What was he meant to say? A lot, hardly at all… it was, Kit suspected, a question to which there were only wrong answers.

“Luckily,” said de Valois, “I have just the cure. Sixty-five percent pure and freshly delivered. Here we go—” wiping the Sabatier on a beer mat, de Valois dipped the blade’s tip into an open bag of heroin.

“Lighter,” he demanded.

Robbie held a flame beneath the blade, until the metal tinged orange and dreams began to spiral from the oily mess.

“Come on, Ben,” said de Valois. “Let’s make friends.”

A million dreams twisted towards a nicotine-stained ceiling. A hundred thousand nightmares and every shade of longing in between. All Kit had to do was lean forward and inhale the smoke.

He made his decision without even realising there was a decision to make.

Twisting the hot blade from Robbie’s fingers, Kit moved before anyone had time to react. A sizzling slash to the throat, a smoky drag across both eyes, and Kit was almost done, his final strike hissing its way under de Valois’s chin and through his soft palate, braising his tongue.

A thing done with moderation may be judged insufficient.

A cold click told Kit that the slide had been pulled back on Alfie’s gun. So this is the way the world ends, he thought. With a Chechen gangster blinded and a bullet through my head.

When one thinks one has gone too far…One has probably gone far enough.

“Let it go,” ordered Robbie.

Alfie hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, Robbie leaned forward and tapped the heel of his palm under the knife, driving the blade clean through the roof of de Valois’s mouth and into his brain.

“Arsehole,” he said.

While Neku finished washing in the staff bathroom behind the stage, Kit ran through her parentage again, simplifying it, just to make things really clear. The more Kit iterated his points, the more convincing they sounded.

Walk with a man a hundred paces… Kit’s smile was sour. He was planning to walk far more than that in the company of Robbie and Alfie, assuming they all got lucky.

“Shit,” said Robbie. He’d been a foot soldier when he originally met Kate O’Mally, standing silent while she ripped strips from some local don. It was, admitted Robbie, unlikely Mrs. O’Mally had even known his name, for which he remained extremely grateful. As for Alfie, the boy was too young to have those kind of memories. He’d heard of her nephew though. You didn’t cross central London without getting Mike Smith’s permission first. At least people like Alfie didn’t.

“You mean,” said Alfie, “the girl is Mr. Smith’s cousin?” It was an interesting update in the lexicon of fear.

In unspoken agreement, Alfie and Robbie moved to the bar and got themselves a whisky chaser, washing the spirit down with a bottle of Beck’s. Robbie lit the teenager’s cigarette for him, because Alfie’s hand was shaking too badly to work the lighter. Neither would look at Neku when she returned from rinsing out her mouth, splashing water on her face, and whatever else she’d been doing in the staff bathroom.

“How many ways out of here?” asked Kit.

“Only one,” Robbie said. “Why?”

“Because it’s a trap,” said Kit. “Gunmen are out there, waiting…” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the corridor. “And we’ve got about half an hour before someone blows down that door.”

“Oh shit,” said Alfie. “You were telling Mr. de Valois the truth?”

“Yeah,” said Kit. “It’s a bad habit of mine.”

“But he had his own man in the drug squad.”

“I know,” said Kit. “But Sergeant Samson has been suspended. I bet he didn’t tell de Valois that.”

Alfie looked sicker still. “How many ways?” Kit insisted.

“Front door, side windows…”

“Both covered,” said Kit. “Anything else?” The two men shook their heads. “Over the roof? Across a back garden? Come on,” he said. “There must be another way.”