girl called out and a small bottle-blonde woman burst from the living room. ‘Jeezus, Briette, you’re alright. Y’frightened the shit outta me!’ She snatched the child from Uncle Dave’s arms. ‘Sorry, sorry, luvvy. Soap and water. Mum’s usin’ bad words again. Jist a bit worried.’ She crushed the child to her and planted loud, vigorous kisses over her head and brow. Then she seemed to notice the two men for the first time. Her eyes slid over Gareth and discounted him, but when they fell on Uncle Dave, held fast. She had beautiful eyes, wide and green and slightly tilted, like a cat’s. Their lids were large but not heavy, and they were green too. She had the kind of face for which a little makeup is too much, but it looked like someone from Revlon had been practising on it. It was what was in the eyes that interested Gareth.
There was definitely surprise, perhaps fear; suspicion and anger made an appearance; none of these were odd under the circumstances, but he hadn’t expected guilt. Finally her eyes were filled with defiance. She held Uncle Dave’s gaze and demanded. ‘What the fuck – sorry, Brie baby, Mummy’s bad – what are you doing here?’
‘Ben asked for me.’
‘It’s none of your fuckin’ business!’ she snapped defensively. There it was, the fear and guilt were back. She forgot to apologise to her daughter for her vulgarity. ‘Where is Ben? Where is the silly bugger? What’ve you done with ’im?’
‘He’s been shot, Sharon,’ he said softly. Her body and face froze. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and see what the damage is.’ He turned toward the doorway. As he did Collison came through it. He looked at the tableau in the hallway and summed up the situation.
‘He’s alive,’ he said. ‘But not in top shape.’
Sharon had a new culprit to release upon. ‘You fuckin’ bastards, you fuckin’, fuckin’, fuckin’ weak cunts … pigs … you …’ Her voice became shrill.
The child’s eyes grew wide with fear. She began to whimper. ‘Mummy, Mummy …’
‘Sharon,’ said Uncle Dave quietly, nodding toward the child. ‘Briette.’
Sharon stopped immediately, choking on her words. She held the child closer and buried her face in her thick hair. Then her head snapped up, her eyes awash with anger and tears, her cheeks muddied by mascara. ‘Where is ’e? I wanna see ’im.’
‘Not possible,’ said Collison. His voice was bluff but softened by sympathy. ‘They’ve got to move him fast.’ The sound of a siren working itself up to melodramatic pitch drew all their eyes to the grey world across the threshold. ‘There he goes now,’ Collison added redundantly. ‘We’ll get you to the hospital.’
‘Mummy. Where’s Daddy? Where’s my doll?’ the frightened child sobbed. The questions were a way to grapple with her confusion but they offered her mother another vent for her boiling emotion. A reflex grab to retain the dignity of righteous rage.
‘Where’s her doll?’ she demanded of Collison. ‘Where’s m’daughter’s bloody doll?’ It was clear to Gareth that she was desperately clutching to a raft of anger for fear of drowning in grief. She wasn’t coming apart in front of these bastards, she wasn’t going to lose any more than she had today. The female officer who had escorted her hovered uncertainly in the background.
‘It’s evidence now, Sharon,’ said Collison looking at his shoes. ‘Sorry.’
‘Evidence?’ She stared at the three male faces looking down at her. She was a short woman. She appeared stocky in her thick winter clothes. Her face wasn’t beautiful but it was striking. Her mouth was small, her bottom lip full, like a small pink pillow. She had high cheekbones and the bridge of her small nose was curved. There was something of a fragile, predatory bird about her. Where it was visible her complexion was pale olive, and Gareth guessed she was really a brunette. ‘Evidence!’ she repeated with gathering vehemence. ‘What the fuck kind of doll is this?’
‘It’s the kind that makes little girls happy and grown men cry,’ said Uncle Dave. ‘Come on, Shaz. I’ll explain everything.’ And he put his arm gently around her shoulder and shepherded her and the quietly sobbing child into the bedroom and closed the door.
‘Well, he’s useful for something,’ said Collison as they walked into the living room.
‘What’s the damage?’ asked the police media spokesperson.
‘Only three shots fired – there’s a plus,’ said Collison. ‘All accounted for, another plus. On the debit side: they’re in Benny’s back.’
‘Shit!’ said the media man.
‘Maybe you can highlight the quality of police marksmanship.’
‘They had no choice, Don, he was pointing a gun at you,’ said Gareth.
‘He was pointing a doll at me, Gareth,’ said Collison dropping into one of the Mrs Aldaker’s over-stuffed chairs and squeezing his forehead between thumb and fingers so that it puckered like a quilt. The rain had plastered his hair to his skull and exposed its sparseness. ‘A black plastic fucking doll.’
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ said the media man.
‘When our friend is finished in there,’ a roll of the head to the bedroom, ‘help him vanish. The press has a long memory. Get a look at his face, and you’ll need more spin than Cyclone Tracy. Don’t worry, he won’t be interested in publicity.’
‘We were helped in our negotiations by a friend of the family who wishes his privacy to be respected?’ said the media man, drawn, in the way of his tribe, to the silver lining.
Collison shrugged. ‘The bullshit is your department.’ He stared at his feet and the media man stared at him staring at his feet. ‘I’ll talk to you when the shooters have been debriefed.’ When it was clear no other advice was forthcoming, the media man made a clucking sound with tongue and teeth and left the room.
After a minute or two of retreat into their own thoughts Gareth said, ‘Did you see what he did when the bullets started flying?’
‘He fell over, Gareth.’ There were equal measures of fatigue, exasperation and sarcasm in his tone. ‘A fairly normal reaction in those circumstances.’ Their minds hadn’t been dwelling on the same thing.
‘Not Benny,’ said Gareth. ‘The Fair Unknown.’ He gestured with his chin toward the bedroom door.
Collison slowly raised his head. His sardonic gaze slid up Gareth’s length from his shoelaces to his face. ‘Took Arts at uni did you, Gareth?’ he said.
5
You wore your school uniform short in those days. And, out of the orbit of parent and teacher, you hitched it higher. Almost, but not quite, revealing the white scoops of your cottontails. Boys got herniated eyeballs trying to bend light when you sashayed by.
Her bra could carry cantaloupes when it wasn’t carrying her.
She was short but she had good legs. And the tops of them were very cheeky. She had an hourglass figure. Her school uniform, slightly flared in cut, flounced over her hips like a fluted lampshade. But few boys had the temerity to grope for the switch no matter how much they lusted for illumination. She chose the ones to turn her on.
She didn’t do well at school. Academically. It wasn’t lack of grey matter, it was the distractions. She put it down to hormones. She had the brains, she just lacked the common sense to use them. Or maybe she was seduced by power: the raw, visceral, sensual power that wears the mask of lust.
Lust. She remembered it squirming and wriggling in her knickers, insinuating its silken-furred body between her thighs, skittering on the pink pads of its tiny clawed feet across her belly, pricking her breasts with needle teeth. It filled her body with its lithe muscular heat and stared from her eyes with its predatory gaze. And it watched as, caught in the high beam of her bold breasts