Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

His eyes lingered on me. I wondered whether he had come to the conclusion I was right, or was formulating some sort of alternative plan that didn't involve me. I didn't know him well enough to choose between the two. And now I was starting to realize I definitely shouldn't have enlisted his help. Once the anger died down, Healy became a stone wall. No expression. No obvious clue to how he felt. I was good at reading people, but I couldn't read him. And if I couldn't read him, I couldn't trust him.

'Fine,' he said, his voice even. 'Do what you have to do.'

He turned away from me. I waited a moment, wondering if I'd handled it the right way. Then I started walking back towards the camera, keeping my eyes off the lens, trying to make it look as if I was heading back to the bedroom.

But then it all went wrong.

Chapter Forty-five

As I got level with the bedroom, Healy appeared behind me and pushed me inside. For a second I was completely off guard: I stumbled into the bedroom, only just staying on my feet, and crashed into the nearest wardrobe. The door shut behind me. Beyond it, I could hear him heading out of the flat. Hard, fast steps. The front door crashing against the wall as he yanked it open. Footsteps in the corridor outside, fading quickly away.

Healy, you stupid bastard.

And then more movement, this time from upstairs.

I sprinted out of the flat and into the corridor. He was disappearing up the stairs, heading for the second floor, the noise of him echoing through the building. I took the steps two at a time, getting to the second-floor landing just as the door to the flat burst open and a figure emerged from inside, heading off in the opposite direction. It was a man. The same one I'd seen in the alleyway outside the youth club. Long dark coat, dark trousers, black boots, dark beanie. Healy was almost within touching distance; I was about ten feet back and closing.

At the end of the corridor were two doors, left and right. Both opened on to an external stairwell: the left one headed down; the right headed up. The man got to the end and tried the left one. It juddered in its frame, sticking and then coming out - but not far enough. He couldn't get through it. Switching to the right-hand one, he pulled at it hard - it didn't move an inch, his hand slipping from the handle.

He was cornered.

A second later, Healy was on him.

He grabbed the man by the arm, trying to pull him into his body. Face contorted. Coloured. Fierce, violent anger rupturing like a fault line. But the man moved fast. Jabbed twice. Once to the chest. Once to the throat. Healy stumbled back, his hand at his windpipe - but swiped a leg in an arc. It caught the man in the knee, knocking him sideways, back against the left-hand door. It slammed shut.

This time Healy came at him harder, hands out, teeth clenched. For a second, the size of him was immense. Not fat, not overweight, just powerful. Driven on by all the injustice and the heartbreak and the revenge; everything he'd felt in the past ten months, channelled. A second after that, he was at the man's throat, pushing him back towards the ground, fingers white. Squeezing. Pulling. But then everything slowed down. I was only feet away when something glinted in the sleeve of the man's coat. A syringe. He jabbed it once, up into the nearest piece of Healy he could find. In the split second it took Healy to react, the man had pushed him aside and was on his feet. He glanced back at me.

It was the man from Tiko's.

The man who looked like Milton Sykes.

He dropped the syringe into a coat pocket and reached into the opposite pocket for something else. A blade emerged. It was a hunting knife: about eight inches long with a rubberized handle and a guthook built into the end of the stainless-steel blade. He swivelled it inside his palm, so the right angle of the guthook was facing out in front of him, then swiped it across the air in front of me. I stepped back. My heels hit the door to someone's flat. But I didn't take my eyes off him. In the periphery of my vision, I could see Healy off to the side of me. He was slumped against a wall, his hand clutching an area above his heart where the needle had gone in. A speck of blood was soaking through his shirt. He looked like he was on the edges of consciousness, his eyes drifting in and out like a television reception.

The man started to edge around me, back towards the only way out, the knife up in front of him. As he glanced between the two of us, I noticed something weird: his eyes were moving fast, but the rest of his face was still. Completely still. Almost paralysed. It was a weird, detached kind of look. When I stepped towards him, he jabbed the blade forward again. A warning. He did it again as he passed beyond me. He'd come all the way around. Now all he had to do was turn and run.

I inched towards him.

'I wouldn't do that,' he said.

His eyes flicked to Healy, then back to me. His speech was quiet, but sharp and clipped, as if he was trying to disguise his voice.

'Where are you going to run?' I said, taking another step. He jabbed the knife at me a third time, his forefinger stretched along the edge of the handle and on to the metal of the blade. He was holding it like a scalpel. Like a surgeon. 'You can't get away.'

Something glinted in his eyes. You and me,' he said, glancing at Healy, but using the knife to indicate he was talking to me. 'We have something in common.'

'Put down the knife.'

'We have a connection.' A smile. Small and tight. 'Did you hear me?'

I studied him. 'Come on, put the knife down.'

'Did you hear me?'

'Put the knife down.'

He jabbed it towards me again. Another small smile.

'You can't outrun me,' I told him.

'I know.' He glanced between Healy and me. Healy was almost unconscious now. 'That's why you're going to stay here.'

'That's not going to happen.'

'Oh, it is.'

'No, it's not.'

He swished the blade, left to right. Whoosh. Yes, it is. You're going to stay where you are…' He stopped, looked down at Healy. 'Or his daughter gets her throat cut, ear to ear.'

Healy's eyes fluttered. Fixed on the man. Where is she?' he croaked, holding his chest. The man glanced at him and smiled again.

'You've got to get to her first,' I said.

'Wrong,' he replied, and jabbed the knife towards me. You don't control anything here, David. I'm in control. I always have been. If I don't make it back, I've made sure things are set into motion and his daughter…' He made a cutting gesture across his throat. 'She bleeds out like a stuck pig.'

Healy groaned from the floor.

The man didn't look at him this time, just stared at me. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment, his eyes flicking back to the flat he'd come out of.

'It doesn’t have to be like this,' I said.

He was still staring at the open door.

'Just give me the knife —'

'Shut the fuck up!' he screamed.

Suddenly he was on edge, angry about something. His eyes pinged from me, to the flat, and back again. Another step. More hesitation.

And then I realized what was wrong.

He'd forgotten something.

A trace of emotion passed across his eyes and, as he got level with the flat, he took another last, lingering look inside. Edged closer to the door, as if wondering whether he could take the risk. Then he turned back to me and realized he couldn't.

And he ran.

Chapter Forty-six

Five minutes later, Healy was starting to come around, but' his speech was slurred and one side of him — his foot, his leg, his arm, his fingers - lifeless and unresponsive. I propped him up against the wall and then looked into his eyes.

'How are you feeling?'

He glanced at me. 'Okay.'