rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Forty-Four
For my brothers, Chris and Nick
He prays, but has a devil under the skin
Polish proverb
PC Natalie Kershaw gripped the wheel as she steered the armed response vehicle around the Green Man roundabout, the scream of the two-tone scything a path through the rush-hour traffic.
‘Third exit. Left, left,’ said Matt from the passenger seat, sending her a grin. She smiled back, breathing fast, her pulse marking a purposeful beat, yet feeling totally focused. This was what she’d spent eight weeks training for, and from what they’d been told about the shout, it was no false alarm this time – no kid poking a toy gun out of his bedroom window. Her brain noted the comforting cocoon of the body armour flattening her breasts, forcing her to sit upright, and the reassuring pressure of the Glock in its pancake holster against her thigh.
She felt … safe.
‘It’s the Maccy D’s on Leytonstone High Street, right?’ she asked, her voice sounding to her ears as tight and high as the engine of the BMW. She knew where they were going, obviously, but saying it out loud made it feel more real.
The gravelled voice of the Silver Commander came over the radio: ‘Control room to Trojan 3. Latest we have is the suspect is in the toilets. Staff have been instructed to stay clear.’
The Sarge leaned in from the back seat, his face impassive. ‘Pull up beyond the curry house, Natalie,’ he said, as calmly as if they were about to pop in for a biryani. A restless knot of rubberneckers had gathered on the pavement outside the McDonald’s. ‘No borough uniforms,’ he noted, with just the ghost of a sigh. ‘Natalie, you cover the front exit and manage the MOPs, okay?’ Although still conversational, his tone brooked no objection.
‘Sarge.’ She knew her place in the trio: she was the newbie, just a couple of months out of firearms training – still learning the ropes. No problem.
Matt and the Sarge approached the glass door of the McDonald’s at a crabbing run, cradling their weapons, while Kershaw radioed in an update. After signing off, she left the ARV and took a few steps towards the onlookers. ‘Armed police!’ she shouted, one hand on the MP5 carbine slung from her shoulder, the other gesturing south down the high street. ‘Move away now!’
Most of them scurried off sharpish, either at her tone or the sight of the gun. But one guy stood his ground, ignoring her command. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked in that ‘I know my rights’ tone that always made her heart sink.
She threw a look back at the Maccy D’s – wondering if the boys had immobilised the suspect yet. Where the fuck were the local uniforms?
‘Sir, will you just …’ She didn’t finish the sentence. Registered instead the sudden widening of his eyes, fixed over her shoulder. Heard the Sarge bellow ‘Natalie!’ His voice not cool any more.
She spun round. In the car park, jogging towards her from behind a parked van was a young guy. Not very big or threatening to look at. Mousy, you might call him. Except for the thing he whirled in a great flashing arc out to one side. Something that made a rushing noise as it carved a passage through the air.
A giant samurai sword.
‘This one is nice, no?’ Kasia leaned over to look at the pricetag. ‘Janek?’
Janusz Kiszka dragged his gaze from the black-denimed curve of his girlfriend’s rear to squint at yet another sofa, no doubt called something like Dipstykk or Kolon by some marketing executive in Stockholm.
He shrugged. ‘Yeah, it’s … nice.’
Tucking a lock of auburn hair behind one ear, Kasia shot him a mock-reproachful look. ‘You’re not taking this seriously, Janek! It’s your apartment we’re talking about here, you know.’
‘Your apartment, too, in a few days’ time,’ he told her, feeling the corner of his mouth tug upward. He and Kasia might have been lovers for almost three years but now, standing on the brink of this new chapter in their lives, he kept experiencing a return of that fizzing, heady feeling that had accompanied the affair’s early days.
Kasia regarded him sideways along her long lovely eyes, a dent in one cheek betraying a fugitive smile, before frowning down at the sofa again. She raked a long black-painted nail along its arm before giving a decisive nod. ‘Tak. I liked the tweedy one but leather is more hard-wearing, which is important with that cat of yours.’
Women, thought Janusz amiably. So … implacably practical. How the hell did men come to be labelled the unromantic sex?
As they queued to pay under the fluorescent glare of the IKEA exit hangar, he glanced over at another couple, also in their forties, in the neighbouring line. The woman looked purposeful, contented, but the guy had the air of someone who’d been shot with a tranquilliser dart before being handcuffed to the overloaded trolley he was steering. The men exchanged a comradely look. It lasted no more than a second but it summed up everything Janusz knew he was about to lose – and gain – by giving up his bachelor lifestyle.
Later, back at his apartment in a Highbury mansion block, Janusz knelt on the living room floor trying to assemble a bedside cabinet, while Kasia tidied around him, her movements quicksilver. She bent to retrieve an ashtray overflowing with cigar butts from under the sofa, wrinkling her nose – after giving up smoking a few weeks earlier she could no longer stand the smell of stale tobacco – before moving to the wide bay window, where she tried to straighten the collapsing ramparts of New Scientist magazines stacked against the radiator.
‘I’ll find another home for them,’ he promised, grinning up at her. She was still looking a little drawn and preoccupied, as she had for the last couple of weeks, but whenever he brought it up she just waved off his concern. He reminded himself that it must be a stressful time for her.
She paused for a moment, gazing out of the window over the soft green ellipse of Highbury Fields, marshalled on its eastern side by a phalanx of Georgian terraces. ‘Such a fantastic location,’ she said. ‘It must be worth a fortune these days. Have you never been tempted to move, buy something bigger