up with one hand and turned to see a man leaning over the banister on the next floor, gun already raised, finger tightening. I realized I didn't have time to move or much to lose and just unloaded the gun at him.
The first shot caught his shoulder, sending his wide; the second parked in his lungs and sent him stumbling backwards. I leapt up the stairs still shooting, piling shots into the darkness, the gun jumping and bucking in my hand.
After the seventh shot he was no longer firing. I saved one and ran in a crouch up the remaining stairs, being careful when I turned the corner but opening out on seeing him twisted on the floor against the wall.
When I reached him I kicked the gun out of his hand and yanked his head up. The face was unknown, one eyelid fluttering and his breathing ragged. The body below was a mess which wasn't going to survive. I slapped the guy across the face and leant in close to him.
‘Who sent you?’ He just stared at me, eyes glazing. I slapped his face again to keep him perky. ‘Give me a name.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said eventually. ‘You're dead.’
‘Not yet, I think you'll find, and not nearly so close as you. Who sent you? SafetyNet?’
His lips managed a smile. He said nothing.
‘Last chance,’ I said. He tried to form the words ‘Fuck you,’ but it was too much of an effort. I looked in his eyes, and knew he wasn't going to tell me. I respected that. So I dragged him by the throat to the banister and swung him into the slats as hard as I could. They broke, he went through and tumbled down the stairwell.
His legs hit the banister going down, twisting his fall so his head caught it the next time round. When he landed far below he hit the earth like a bag of wet sticks landing in a shallow pool.
Mal's door looked shut, but when I got up close to it, I saw the panel of the door wasn't quite snug with the jamb. I held my breath, listening, and slid another clip into the gun.
I couldn't hear anything. I debated quiet versus noisy, lost patience and just kicked it in.
The long room. Empty and dark. A pot of noodles tipped over the floor in the foreground, still steaming. Down at the end, spread in front of the window, a body.
I took a step into the room, swung right. Nobody. Walked to Mal's room, the bathroom. No one. Then I ran over to Mal.
One through the temple, one in the mouth, and one to the back of the head.
I lost it for maybe five minutes.
When I got it together again my throat was raw, and I realized I'd been shouting. Mal's body lay still on the floor, not in any way healed or made less dead by my lack of control. Now that I was no longer making noise, I could hear movement in the corridor. I loped to the door and swung it wide.
It was the two men from the floor below, standing at the top of the stairs. Come to see what was going on, to see if there was money to be made from it.
‘Fuck off,’ I suggested. The rat-faced one in front leant against the banister, all cool indifference.
‘Or what, homeboy?’ he said, with a blank-faced smile. I knew the look. You learn it on the day you discover that with most teachers, if you just front them down, they won't be able to do anything. It's a lesson you can take out into the world, into any number of grimy situations. Most people, if you front them hard enough, will not call your bluff.
I am not most people. That's part of my problem.
I jammed my gun into rat-man's forehead hard enough to dent his skull, and spoke very clearly.
‘Or,’ I said, ‘I blow your head all over your friend's face. And then blow his head off. And then go down to your apartment and kill everyone I find until I run out of bullets or you run out of friends.’
He looked at me, eyes wide, and took a step backwards onto the staircase. Then he spat fluently at the floor beside me. He was going, but protocol required some exit line. I felt like ricocheting off the walls, but I waited for it. You've got to let them have their line. It gives them a sense of closure, and the episode finishes for good. If more people let their enemies have the last word the world would be a safer place.
‘Be seeing you,’ he said, eventually.
‘That's getting old,’ I snarled. ‘You're not even the first person this evening to say that. Think of another and e-mail it to me.’
They clattered sullenly down the stairs.
I turned and saw Suej standing in Mal's doorway, her eyes wide and filled with terror.
The others were gone.
I hadn't taken Suej away from anything, simply brought her somewhere worse. I held her close, watching over her shoulder as Mal's blood hardened on the floor, and knew that we weren't going anywhere tonight.
Suej sat in an old and bedraggled armchair in Howie's private office, sipping from a mug of coffee. The smell of it filtered across to me, as I sat in front of Howie's desk and looked at my hands. It reminded me momentarily of Ratchet; a strong, rich coffee aroma, in a place which was secure.
Maybe we should have stayed at the Farm, I was thinking. Maybe this was just one long fuckup, and all that could happen was that it would get worse. I glanced at Suej, and then looked away. I should have been worrying about the spares, but all I could think of was Mal. The things we'd seen, the things we'd done. Right back to The Gap, twenty years ago. All that was gone now, turned into a dream because there was no one alive to share it with.
The guys at the hidden entrance yukked when we arrived, evidently thinking, ‘Mr Howie was right: here's the strange dude again, lurching towards his fate.’ They started trying to charge for Suej, took one look at me and decided it wasn't worth it. Or maybe it was Suej's face that did it, the blank incomprehension and loss. This was the first time in her life David hadn't been within reaching distance, and she looked miserable and alone – almost like a real human being. It was also the first time I realized that I wasn't going to be enough, that being surrogate Daddy only went so far. Exactly the sort of news I needed at that stage.
On the way through New Richmond's tunnels I'd got the bones of what had happened from Suej. Mal had been doling out the first bowls of noodles when he'd thought he heard a noise outside the door. He tried to get the spares into the loft space of his apartment. Only Suej and David had understood; she went up the ladder first, David trying to herd the others towards her. Panic, incomprehension and fast, flashing movement: it must have been just like when we left the Farm, except that I wasn't there and they had to try to cope with it on their own.
Then a knock at the door – hard – a ‘Let me the fuck in’ knock. Mal opened it, gun held behind his back, first turning out the light. Usually a sound tactic – but it just meant that the killer mistook him for me, and blew his lights there and then. As the killer planted another couple in Mal's head, two other guys ran into the apartment. They cracked David and Mr Two across the face and dragged everyone out. Suej watched through a crack in the roof, knowing there was nothing she could do and rightly judging that I'd want her not to get killed. The men fumbled round Mal's apartment and then left, leaving the killer to clean up any stragglers who arrived.
Me, in other words.
It had to be SafetyNet. Somehow they'd tracked us. I didn't know how and it didn't make much difference. The result was the same: Mal got wasted, when it should have been me.
The men who'd done this had to be found, had to be killed, and it was going to be my job. Finally, I had a task I could understand.
When I got back to Howie's bar my plan was simple. Dump Suej, borrow all the bullets Howie had and go fuck somebody up. Though a little rough round the edges, the plan had worked for me. It hadn't for Howie, and he – with Paulie slightly shamefacedly helping – had physically